History of the Concept of Mind: Volume 2: The Heterodox and Occult Tradition [1° ed.] 0754639916, 9780754639916

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Heterodox Tradition in Western Philosophy
Chapter 1 Ideas About Human Nature in the Ancient Near East
1. Life, death and the soul in ancient Egypt
2. Life, death and the soul in ancient Mesopotamia
3. Life, death and the soul in the Zoroastrian religion
Chapter 2 The Ancient and Medieval Horizon of the Shamanic Soul
Chapter 3 Secret Teachings about the Soul in the Post-Classical World
1. Secret teachings about the soul in the Hermetica
2. Gnostic secret teachings about the soul
3. Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness
4. Oracles, ritual and theurgy in the soul's ascent
Chapter 4 Byzantine Doctrines of Mind, Soul and Spirit
Chapter 5 Christian Mystical Ideas About the Soul's Ascent
1. The emergence of mystical ideas from Neo-Platonism and Esotericism
2. The soul's ecstatic accounts of the other world
3. New ideas about the soul's place in nature in the twelfth century
4. The summit of Christian mysticism in the Late Middle Ages
Chapter 6 Magical Ideas about the Soul from Isidore to Goethe
1. The medieval rediscovery of magic and its view of the soul
2. The magical soul in the High Middle Ages
3. The magical soul in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
4. The magical soul in the Early Modern Period
Chapter 7 Plurality of Dualisms and Duality of Life
Sectional Bibliographies
Index of Names
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

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HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF MIND VOLUME 2 ‘... this volume is a must ... There simply is nothing like it on the international publishing menu … the author has found a very appealing style of presentation, keeping the reader fascinated without sacrificing soundness of scholarship.’ Professor Horst Ruthrof, English and Philosophy, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

Exploring the ‘roads less travelled’, MacDonald continues his monumental investigation of the history of ideas. The history of heterodox ideas about the concept of mind takes the reader from the earliest records about human nature in Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and the Zoroastrian religion, through the secret teachings in the Hermetic and Gnostic scriptures, and into the transformation of ideas about the mind, soul and spirit in the late antique and early medieval epochs. These transitions include discussion of the influence of Central Asian shamanism, Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness, and Neo-Platonic theurgy, ‘working-on-god-within’. Sections on the medieval period are concerned with the rediscovery of magical practices and occult doctrines from Roger Bacon to Francis Bacon, the adaptation of Neo-Platonic and esoteric ideas by the medieval Christian mystics, and the survival of these ideas mixed with natural science in the works of von Helmont, Leibniz and Goethe. It concludes with an investigation of the many forms of dualism in accounts of the human mind and soul, and the concept of dual-life which underpins our aspiration to understand how humans could have an immortal nature like the gods.

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History of the Concept of Mind Volume 2 The Heterodox and Occult Tradition

PAUL S. MACDONALD

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First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Paul S. MacDonald 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data MacDonald, Paul S., 1951– History of the concept of mind Vol. 2: The heterodox and occult tradition 1.Philosophy of mind – History 2.Mind and body I. Title 128.2'09 Library of Congress Control Number: 2002100873

Typeset in Times Roman by Express Typesetters, Farnham

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3992-3 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3991-6 (hbk)

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Contents Acknowledgements

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Abbreviations

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Introduction: The Heterodox Tradition in Western Philosophy Chapter 1 Ideas About Human Nature in the Ancient Near East 1. Life, death and the soul in ancient Egypt 2. Life, death and the soul in ancient Mesopotamia 3. Life, death and the soul in the Zoroastrian religion

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Chapter 2 The Ancient and Medieval Horizon of the Shamanic Soul

65

Chapter 3 Secret Teachings about the Soul in the Post-Classical World 1. Secret teachings about the soul in the Hermetica 2. Gnostic secret teachings about the soul 3. Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness 4. Oracles, ritual and theurgy in the soul’s ascent

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Chapter 4 Byzantine Doctrines of Mind, Soul and Spirit

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Chapter 5 Christian Mystical Ideas About the Soul’s Ascent 1. The emergence of mystical ideas from Neo-Platonism and Esotericism 2. The soul’s ecstatic accounts of the other world 3. New ideas about the soul’s place in nature in the twelfth century 4. The summit of Christian mysticism in the Late Middle Ages

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Chapter 6 Magical Ideas about the Soul from Isidore to Goethe 1. The medieval rediscovery of magic and its view of the soul 2. The magical soul in the High Middle Ages 3. The magical soul in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance 4. The magical soul in the Early Modern Period

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Chapter 7 Plurality of Dualisms and Duality of Life

403

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Sectional Bibliographies

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Index of Names

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Index of Subjects

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Acknowledgements To Prof. Richard Moran, Chairman of the Philosophy Department, for his kind invitation to spend my Sabbatical Leave at Harvard University in Fall 2004; to Prof. Rafael Woolf for discussing with me the intricacies of Plato’s account of the soul. To several members of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at Harvard University: Prof. Piotr Steinkeller for his suggestions about the use of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts for reconstructing ancient belief systems; Prof. Paul-Alain Beaulieu for reading the section on the ANE concept of soul, spirit and ghost, and Prof. James Russell for reading the section on Zoroastrian ideas and the section on Central Asian Shamanism. To Prof. John Duffy, Classics Department, for reading the section on Byzantine philosophy, and to Dr. Lawrence Berman, Curator of Egyptian Antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, for his helpful advice on the section on Ancient Egyptian ideas. To Prof. Michael McCormick, History Department, for letting me take part in an extraordinary conference on the Early Middle Ages (October 2004); also to Mark Mamigonian, Director of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (Belmont, Mass.) for his advice about the current state of Armenian studies abroad; to Greg Smith, Ph.D. student in the Cultural Setting of the Late Antique Soul, for his valuable comments on our overlapping areas of research interest, and to Father Paul at Schoenhof’s Bookshop (Cambridge) for his stimulating ideas about Arabic influences on Franciscan thinking in the thirteenth century. To Pat and Henry Breen for hospitality and kindness in their home during our four months in Cambridge, and for bringing to life Walden Pond and Mt. Auburn Cemetery. To the faithful members of Murdoch University’s Philosophy Work-in-progress Seminar (aka Walter’s Café Group), where many sections of the current work were first presented, for their questions, comments and suggestions: Rodrigo Becerra, Peta Bowden, Mark Brown, Tim Davey, Sam Delaney, Judith Glover, Clive Hutchinson, Matthew Jamieson, Joe Naimo, Steve Schofield, Lubica Ucnik, Robert Victorin-Vangerud and Koral Ward. To Dr. Brian Mooney, Philosophy Department, University of Notre Dame (Australia) for reading and critiquing the sections on Christian mysticism, and to Father Placid Spearett, Abbot of New Norcia Monastery, for helpful advice in sorting out my ideas about Pseudo-Dionysius. To the editors of Antiquity for permission to reproduce the BMAC seal on p. 76. As ever, with love and thanks to my wife Fiona, who listened with patience and good humor to three more years of unasked-for expatiation on these ideas, and who shared with me the delights of the Widener Library and all the old churches and museums of Boston.

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Abbreviations

Abraham

Lyndy Abraham, Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. AH I–XI Achaemenid History. H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Amélie Kuhrt et al. 11 vols. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1987–98. ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972date. BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. BNP Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Hubert Cancik & Helmuth Schneider (eds) English Trans. of NPEA. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2002–date. BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. CAD Oriental Institute (eds) The Assyrian Dictionary, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CAH Cambridge Ancient History. New edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. CH Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius. Brian Copenhaver. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. CHLGEMP Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. A. H. Armstrong (ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. CHRP Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Charles Schmitt et al. (eds) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. DMA Dictionary of the Middle Ages. J. R. Strayer (ed.) 13 vols. New York: Scribner, 1982–89. DSA Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique doctrine et histoire. 17 vols. Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–97. EEC Encyclopedia of the Early Church. Angelo Di Berardino (ed.) 2 vols. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1992. EER Encyclopedia of Religion. Mircea Eliade (ed.) 16 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1987. EEP Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Paul Edwards (ed.) 8 vols. London: Macmillan, 1967. EHPhR Etudes de l’Histoire de Philosophie et Religion (journal). EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam. New Edition. H. A. R. Gibb (ed.) 7 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill. EofC Encyclopedia of Christianity. Erwin Fahlbush & others (eds) 3 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. ERE Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. James Hastings (ed.) 12 vols. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1913. ix

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GMPT HCM Hist Rel JAOS JECS JHI JHP JRAS JTS JWCI PGL LSJ NCE NEJ Nov Test NPEA NRSV NRT NTS OCD ODCC OED OLD PL PG RAC RAW REP RHPR RTAM Segal

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History of the Concept of Mind, Volume 2

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Hans Dieter Betz (ed.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986. History of the Concept of Mind, Paul S. MacDonald, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. History of Religions (journal). Journal of the American Oriental Society. Journal of Early Christian Studies. Journal of the History of Ideas. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Journal of Theological Studies. Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institute. Patristic Greek Lexicon. G. W. H. Lampe (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Liddel, Scott & Jones (eds) Greek-English Lexicon. 9th edn rev. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. New Catholic Encyclopedia. 16 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967–74. Encyclopedia of Judaism. Jacob Neusner et al. (eds) Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000. Novum Testamentum (journal). Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike. Hubert Cancik & Helmuth Schneider (eds) Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1997–date. New Revised Standard Version. Nouvelle Revue Théologique (journal). New Testament Studies (journal). Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd edn. Simon Hornblower & Anthony Spawforth (eds) New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2nd edn. F. L. Cross & E. A. Livingstone (eds) New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Oxford English Dictionary. New edn. 13 vols. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. P. G. W. Glare (ed.) Oxford Latin Dictionary. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968–72. Patrologiae Latina, cursus completus. J. P. Migne (ed.). Patrologiae Graeca, cursus completus. J. P. Migne (ed.). Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. 18 vols. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–98. Religions of the Ancient World. Sarah Johnston (ed.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward Craig (ed.) 10 vols. London & New York: Routledge, 1998. Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses. Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale. Alan F. Segal. Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

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Abbreviations

xi

TDNT

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. G. Kittel & G. Friedrich (eds) 10 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–76. TDOT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. G. J. Botterweck & H. Ringgren (eds) 10 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974–90. Thorndike Lynn Thorndike. History of Magic and Experimental Science. 8 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1923–58. Note:

Greek and Latin texts are cited according to the standard abbreviations in OCD, 3rd edn.

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The true doctrine is like this: it is in relation to the king of all things and on his account that everything exists, and that fact is the cause of all that is beautiful. In relation to a second, the second kind of thing exists, and in relation to a third, the third kind. Plato, ‘Second Letter’ Human life is too impoverished not to be also immortal. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Immortal’ (1949) The eternal existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity; if I work incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit. J. W. Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (1829)

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Introduction: The Heterodox Tradition in Western Philosophy There are two (or three) main highways along which western speculation about the nature of the world and the human soul have traveled: the Platonic dual nature account, the Aristotelian matter-form account, and the Epicurean materialist hypothesis (interrupted for 1500 years and not taken up again until the mid-17th century). But there are also other roads, ones less traveled; some twist and turn in unusual directions, some are cul-de-sacs. They are not so much unorthodox, ‘notright belief’, as heterodox, ‘other-belief’, that is, other than the mainstream. Homeric and ancient Hebrew ideas about the human soul squarely situated its principle and power in the life-force which originated with an individual’s birth and vanished with its death. Plato’s mature thought marks a watershed, since in the Phaedrus, the Republic and the Timaeus, he builds in an exogenous shamanistic concept of the soul as an immortal, autonomous entity contingently joined with its host’s body. As the ‘ruling part’ (or aspect) of this immensely influential and fruitful doctrine, the Platonic rational soul begins to lead a life of its own (so to speak) and reaches its highest state in a perfectly ordered cosmic hierarchy under Plotinus’ mystagogic teaching. Augustine syncretized this divinely ‘inspired’ soul with NT Christian ideas and propelled it forward through the Renaissance Hermeticism of Ficino and Pico. The Platonic and Augustinian rational soul finds its modern home in Descartes’ thinking thing, the human mind elevated to the status of a god in its own domain. Where for Plato the rationality of the rational (logismos) soul is the result of its inception in and participation with a divine mind (or power), for Descartes the cognitive power (vis cognitiva) of the human mind is due to its attainment of a godlike rationality. Aristotle’s concern to account for the conditions a concrete substance must realize in order to have a soul as its form relied on a matter-form model of explanation. He complained that the ‘mystics’ expounded only upon the nature of the soul itself and not on the nature of the body that is needed to receive or house the soul. For the mystics, the body might be anything, and thus it would really be irrelevant to its having a soul; in principle the soul might be taken into or housed in any kind of body. In contrast, since Aristotle’s idea of the soul is property-like, the soul is dependent upon its body, but not as another bodily part upon the whole body, since the soul is not any kind of body at all. Despite its official dominance in schools for five centuries or longer, it lost ground to the Neo-Platonist innovators and disappeared from the Latin West. Under the curatorship of Arabic and Persian scholars the Aristotelian model was made complete and consistent. This internal philosophical completeness was a distinct advantage when Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas reconciled the matter-form account with the Christian doctrine of xiii

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personal immortality. The third stream of tradition about the human soul had its source in Stoic and Epicurean physical theory and materialist ontology. This alternate route was rendered heretical by the Church Fathers for its overt denial of the human soul’s immortality and its alleged tendency toward atheism. It was not revived until the early seventeenth century under the tutelage of Pierre Gassendi and Kenelm Digby who thought that some version of atomism was more amenable to the new mechanistic theories of matter in motion. But there are other less well-remarked paths, trodden usually by the few or the chosen alone. These are the distinctive features of heterodox lines of thought about mind, soul and spirit. (1) They are arcane, esoteric teachings, kept secret from the public, open only to insiders. (2) Their emphasis is not on an explanatory account of nature, but on techniques for the soul’s ascent. (3) They are formed in close alliance with magical ideas and lend themselves readily to various occult theories: (a) some aspect of these ideas can be externalized in some form, such as rituals, spells, etc.; (b) these external forms can become detached from the theoretical base which explains them. (4) Their diagnostic, therapeutic and practical effects are achieved by natural and/or demonic magic. One of the earliest and most influential statements of the esoteric, hidden teaching is made by Plato in the ‘Second Letter’. Plato said that he would transmit ‘a secret teaching’ that must be written in riddles in case someone might read the letter while en route. The true doctrine, he said, ‘is like this: it is in relation to the king of all things and on his account that everything exists, and that fact is the cause of all that is beautiful. In relation to a second, the second kind of thing exists, and in relation to a third, the third kind’ (312e). This enigmatic statement was to become one of the cornerstones of Plotinus’ strange philosophy and a key text in the Neo-Platonists’ efforts to expound their theurgy, working on the god within each human. In addition to philosophical, naturalscientific and religious texts; the ancient world bequeathed to the early Christian world an abundance of works on magic by Greek, Egyptian and Roman writers. Empirical and medical accounts helped to explain what was possible and impossible in the physical world, at the same time that fabulae told stories about magical persons and events; some of the apocryphal texts of the NT also contributed to this magical repertoire. The Christians writers of the early centuries carried out a continuous diatribe directed against all magical practices, and routinely issued condemnations and prohibitions against such ‘evil’ and heretical activities. Richard Kieckhefer forcefully argues that the conflict between Christians and pagans rested on their differing notions about magic and its place in society: ‘For pagans who opposed magic, it was reprehensible because it was secret and antisocial. It was a force that worked against society, from within society itself, and for that reason it had to be uprooted.’ The pagans worshipped their gods in the open and did not call on them for help in carrying out evil deeds; moreover, the pagans were not intolerant of other gods and other forms of devotion than their own. On the other hand, ‘for the Christians, magic was reprehensible because it was the work of demons. These were evil spirits, ultimately subject to God, but they paraded as gods and received veneration.’ The Christians could not complain about secretive behavior because they themselves were secretive; in addition, they were intolerant of other gods and other forms of devotion except their own. Thus Kieckhefer concludes that, in

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sharply distinguishing between Christianity as the true religion and paganism as a parcel of false religions: early Christian writers in effect introduced a distinction between religion and magic which had not previously been made and which was not easily understood except from a Christian viewpoint. It was a short step from saying that paganism was inauthentic religion to maintaining that it was no religion at all, but mere idolatry and magic … In short, the pagan definition of magic had a moral and a theological dimension but was grounded in social concerns; the Christian definition had a moral and a social dimension but was explicitly centered on theological concerns. Between these two different models there was little room for discussion.1

Secrecy, exclusiveness and ‘right-opinion’ (orthodoxy) help to define the criteria that allowed for the separation of (true) religion and magic; the hidden (occult), dynamic and unnatural helped to define the criteria that separated the demonic, spiritual dimension from the natural dimension.2 The distinction between ordinary, manifest powers and occult powers could be subjective, that is, a power that is little known and arouses wonder, unlike those powers that are well known and taken for granted. But it could also be a power in a more objective sense, that is, one that resides in the object itself and which cannot be explained, but only educed through spells and charms. Natural magic was the ‘science’ of such occult powers and was strictly segregated from demonic magic which invoked the assistance of spiritual agents in bringing about the desired changes: ‘That which makes an action magical is the type of power it invokes: if it relies on divine action or the manifest power of nature it is not magical, while if it uses demonic aid or occult powers in nature it is magical.’ There is an alternate way of defining magic in terms of the intended action the operations are designed to elicit instead of the powers they invoke. According to this theoretical approach, the central feature of religion is that it supplicates God or the gods, and the main feature of magic is that it attempts to coerce spiritual beings or hidden forces.3 The history of magic is above all a crossing-point where the exploitation of natural forces and the invocation of demonic powers intersect. One could summarize the history of medieval magic in capsule form by saying that at the popular level the tendency was to conceive magic as natural, while among the intellectuals there were three competing lines of thought: [1] an assumption, developed in the early centuries of Christianity, that all magic involved at least an implicit reliance on demons; [2] a grudging recognition, fostered especially by the influx of Arabic learning in the twelfth century, that much magic was in fact natural; and [3] a fear, stimulated in the later Middle Ages by the very real exercise of necromancy, that magic involved an all too explicit invocation of demons even when it pretended to be innocent.4

One could distinguish between the wisdom of the magus and the learning of the philosopher, but they are actually interdependent aspects of the same enterprise. 1 Kieckhefer

1990 pp. 35–7. of secrecy are emphasized by Stroumsa 1996 pp. 1–7. 3 Kieckhefer rejects this approach for several reasons, 1990 pp. 15–16. 4 Kieckhefer 1992 pp. 16–17; also Jolly 2001 pp. 13–26. 2 Conditions

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According to Angela Voss, ‘the magus is a scientist, as he investigates the hidden laws of the cosmos, learns of the correspondences between all things, and seeks to understand the world from the perspective of the Creator himself. But he is also a diviner, as he does this through action, perfecting the techniques and rituals which may lead him to the deeper level of insight required to reap divine gifts.’5 Marsilio Ficino declared, ‘the perfect efficacy of ineffable works, which are divinely performed in a way surpassing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable symbols, which are known only to the gods, impart theurgic union.’6 Voss draws a salutary lesson from this attitude: Thus images, prayers, invocations, talismans – in whatever ritual use appropriate for the particular condition of the individual – may all contribute to the process of realigning his or her soul. It is important to understand that divination does not originate from the energies used in everyday life, or from human fabrications or ingenuity. Rather, the devotion, intent and desire of the operator will allow a superior power to ‘perfect’ the ritual and impart its authority to it. In other words, human beings may partake of Divine Revelation through their own efforts.

In their final summary statement about Giordano Bruno, Copenhaver and Schmitt admirably characterize the central attitude of the magic-inspired heterodox view of human nature. They claim that Bruno did not care about individual human beings, but thought that particular things of any kind were no more distinct than ripples in the calm sea of being. ‘Nature thrives and breeds transitory forms out of living matter through her own internal force of soul. The single universal form is the world-soul that drives things from within as their principle. Causes that act externally are superficial; a deeper dynamism belongs to principles that move inside. Matter and form unite in the infinite substance that comprehends all … Individual souls … cannot be discrete specific forms because soul is really one; what enlivens a human and a fly are fragments of the same world-soul, which is like a light reflected in a shattered mirror whose splinters are the souls of particular beings.’8 Or, as Philip Batz said in 1876, in a now forgotten book, ‘humans are fragments of a desperate god who destroyed himself at the beginning of time; universal history is the shadowy death throes of those fragments.’9 The Cartesian-Galilean understanding of the mathematical order of the natural world and the mechanical laws that govern change and motion would definitively overthrow the fundamental principles of the late medieval and Renaissance picture of a dynamic, spiritual nature. The model of a world-machine would supplant the model of a world-spirit, imbued with celestial and terrestrial intelligences that could be intuited and handled by wisdom-seekers. Wisdom would no longer be the special endowment or privilege of a few initiates, but a collective achievement that can be realized through cooperative endeavors, pieces of which can become available to anyone with the right scientific education. The occult philosophy and its many 5 Voss

2001 p. 5. quoted in Voss 2001 p. 5. 7 Voss 2001 p. 7. 8 Copenhaver & Schmitt 1992 p. 315. 9 Philip Batz quoted in Culianou 1992 p. 56. 6 Ficino,

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heterodox variants are not so much driven underground as channeled into sideroads, away from the main highway; dusty roads traveled by amateur alchemists, juridical astrologers, counterfeiters, and the other conjurers and tricksters commonly satirized by the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights. This work investigates both the richness and the strangeness of these less well-traveled paths in their speculations about the nature, function and structure of the human mind and soul.

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Chapter 1

Ideas about Human Nature in the Ancient Near East (1) Life, death and the soul in ancient Egypt The ancient Egyptian view of human life, death and the afterlife evolved over thousands of years; it was not fully formed in the earliest period. One of our tasks will be to trace the development of the central ideas about human nature from the formation of a unified state (c.3100 BCE) through the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom (c.2350–2180 BCE), the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.1987–1640 BCE), and the various Books of the Underworld (the best known of which is the Book of the Dead) in the New Kingdom (c.1540–1075 BCE).1 Our investigations will employ different kinds of supporting evidence: (1) contemporary exposition from mortuary texts; (2) literary and pseudo-literary texts, such as ‘The Dispute Between a Man and his ba’, ‘The Eloquent Peasant’, ‘Merikare’s Instructions’, ‘The Story of Sinuhe’,2 and others; (3) images associated with mortuary texts and funerary practices, especially the vignettes found in the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead, and (4) artifacts associated with embalming, burial and funerary practices. The last group alone would not be sufficient for making certain claims about Egyptian beliefs, but is often suitable for supporting claims derived from direct and indirect exposition and testimony. The exposition from mortuary texts, as well as artifactual and testimonial evidence, strongly indicates that the ancient Egyptians did not hold anything like a dualistic idea of human nature, as John Taylor says. Their concept (or complex) of human nature was a composite of physical and non-physical components, or more accurately, aspects or modes of human existence. The most important of the physical components were the body and the heart; the most important of the non-physical components were the ka, the ba, the name, and the shadow. Each of these aspects was thought to ‘enshrine some unique quality of the individual … [each] was capable of supporting independently the continued existence of the person after death, but each had to be nurtured and maintained according to its special needs if the afterlife was to be successfully attained’.3 The great Egyptian archaeologist Alan Gardiner said that ‘the Egyptians believed that the human individuality could present itself under a variety of forms, which are less “parts” of its nature, as vulgarly stated, than shifting modes of its being. The often visualized bird-like soul (ba) is 1 In Hornung 1999 as follows: Pyramid Texts pp. 1–6, the Coffin Texts pp. 7–12, the Book of the Dead pp. 13–22; detailed summaries of the various Books of the Netherworld pp. 26–111. 2 Translations of these texts in Simpson 3rd edn 2003, pp. 25–45, 54–65, 152–65, 178–87. 3 Taylor 2001 p. 16.

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one of these forms, the ka or double another, the shadow a third, the corpse a fourth, and so on.’ Louis Zabkar says that Gardiner was correct in this assessment, but that his ‘trend of thought’ was not followed in subsequent discussions. In his highly influential commentary on the Pyramid Texts, Kurt Sethe4 was probably responsible for reinforcing an older view of the ba as part of human nature, introducing a dichotomy in the Egyptian concept, a dualistic opposition between body and soul.5 Karl Luckert also rejects the idea that the Egyptian view of human nature can be rendered in dualistic terms, one that employs the concept of two or more substantive entities. Rather he proposes something like Plotinus’ emanationist system: every single living thing is a manifestation of a cosmic life-force; every thing in its sentient being is a participant in the divine essence: The Egyptians called the invisible life force, that spark of life which energetically manifests itself from within, the ka. They named outward manifestations, which … register as phenomena or as phenotypal mutations of that life force, the ba. Both ka and ba are what we might call soul. The ba, appearing along the outer reaches of divine ka emanation, is a visible, shadow-tainted, and estranged unit of ka, whereas a ka unit by itself may be characterized as a relatively pure participant within the original plethora of divine essence. The ka represents divine essence, and as such it exists in and emanates from the divine source of all being.6

Zabkar vigorously concurs when he declares that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Egyptians thought in dualistic or trialistic terms.7 Phillipe Derchain says that the ancient Egyptians talked about numerous aspects of the human person, aspects which are difficult to understand and without equivalent in modern European languages. The commonly accepted polarity between body and soul cannot be applied ‘in every case’ to the Egyptian schema; it is not possible ‘to trace clear boundaries’ amongst the physical, social, religious and magical fields. Derchain suggests ordering all the essential aspects of human nature along two axes, the concrete and the imaginary, arranging them from the most perceptible (observable) to the most private, while noting a displacement between the two series which are not synonymous. The concrete series comprises: the body, the name, the shadow and the heart; and the imaginary series comprises the akh, the ka, the ba and the god-in-man. In the New Kingdom and late epochs there is a reduction and internalization of some psychical aspects which, Derchain says, caused the imaginary terms to disappear, ‘transferring to the organs themselves the functions that they expressed and that had always been manifested through those organs’.8 4 Kurt Sethe’s (still) definitive edition of the Pyramid Texts appeared in 1908–22 (reprinted, Darmstadt 1960); his exhaustive commentary in six volumes (1935–62) appeared only after his death. 5 Zabkar 1970 p. 1; Zabkar’s criticism is similar to the strong caution sounded in HCM pp. 47–50 about the illegitimate imposition of Latin partitive terms to translate Plato’s aspectual view of the human psyche¯. 6 Luckert 1991 p. 44; these aspects amount to ‘a harmony among forces’, Segal 2004 pp. 50–51. 7 Zabkar 1968 p. 112. 8 Derchain 1992 p. 220.

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In some respects, the setting or frame in which such aspects are manifest is an ordinary human being, but other texts speak of external entities or properties as falling within the domain of the psychic amalgam: ‘The limits of the person are not reached by the limits of the body and its faculties.’ The inclusion of such items as the stele, the tomb, the birth-stool, and so forth are claimed to be constituents of an individual’s personality; ‘but since they also belong to other categories of beings, it is impossible to establish an ontological distinction between human and the others’. However, the difference is only a quantitative one, depending upon the relative participation in the two facets of the world, the imaginary and the perceptible. The imaginary world is essentially composed of the gods, who are connected to the perceptible world through their statues, temples, and diverse manifestations. Human, by contrast, located essentially in the perceptible world, passes into the imaginary through the intermediary of the Pharaoh, who is the incarnation of the idea of human and is in this way on an equal footing with the gods on the level of artistic representation.9

However, it is not necessary that one postulate two axes of being, one real and the other unreal, in order to account for the otherwise disparate and incongruous properties and powers claimed as aspects of human beings. Some of the confusion in Derchain’s statement above comes through in the use of ‘essentially’ for ‘mainly’ or ‘mostly’, and by expecting but failing to find an ‘ontological distinction’ between one category and another category. The Egyptian concept of human nature appears to be diffuse, over-determined, polyvalent, and so forth because a cognitive concept employs the formal ideas of genus and species, substance and property, essence and attribute, whereas a cognitive complex embraces more than one genus and does not have one essence. Derchain also says that there is no ontological difference between human and god, ‘since it is possible to define both of them in connection with the same components’; hence, ‘the distinction must be sought elsewhere, essentially in the relative proportion of the real and the imaginary’. But the very ideas of ‘definition’ and ‘distinction’ are closely tied into the same Aristotelian categories that have already given rise to so much difficulty in accommodating the many diverse aspects. The structure of Egyptian religion, he says, is organized in a unitary way where the gods of every region are found in every temple and yet are entirely realized on the local level in each temple: ‘The indigenous god is the synthesis of all the gods of the country, whose functions he fulfills to the extent that they are differentiated; and his person is recognized in each foreign god who would, in his own locality, perform his specific function.’10 This is indeed very close to an appropriate formulation of the ideas involved in human nature: one might say that the ka or the ba (and so on) is the synthesis of all the psychic entities in the earthly domain whose functions it fulfills to the extent that it can be differentiated from other psychic entities, and can be recognized as that person’s ba or ka in the unearthly world insofar as it carries out functions specific to its ‘nature’.11 9 Derchain

1992 p. 223. 1992 p. 224; see Meeks & Meeks 1999 pp. 51–2; Assmann 1995 p. 41 note 19. 11 Taylor 2001 p. 17; on the imagery of divine bodies, see Meeks & Meeks 1999 pp. 57–60. 10 Derchain

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Let us now consider in detail the various aspects of human being according to the exposition and testimony of ancient Egyptian texts. One of the most striking features of the Egyptian picture was the notion that the human body played an important role in the individual’s survival after death. John Taylor is quite explicit about this: ‘It is clear that a physical body was considered essential for the deceased’s continued existence. Attainment of the afterlife depended on preservation of the body and the ability of the individual members to function, but more importantly the body served as the physical base for the entities known as the ka and the ba, which required a physical form.’ The production of a mummy was the preservation of the corpse by artificial means and arose in response to the need to maintain this physical substrate. But the mummy was not merely the same earthly body: ‘the aim was to transform the corpse into a new eternal body, a perfect image of the deceased. This body, the sah, was not expected to rise up and be physically active after death, since its principal function was to house the ka and the ba. Only through the survival and union of these aspects of the individual after death could resurrection take place.’12 The Egyptians distinguished between the earthly and the unearthly body with separate words: the words khet (form) and iru (appearance) referred to the earthly body in this life; the dead body or corpse could be referred to as khat, the embalmed body or the mummy itself as tut, and the unearthly body of the next life as sah: ‘The distinctive appearance of the sah is well known from mummies, anthropoid coffins, and mummiform statues: the limbs enveloped in brilliant white wrappings, the face and hands of gold, the hair a long tripartite wig, usually colored blue. These were attributes which belonged to divinities, and through the processes of mummification they were conferred on the deceased, making him too a divine being.’ Humans, as well as all other living beings, had been created by the potter god Khnum: a divine form constituted a totality that could not be apprehended in and of itself, for such a form coincided with the very being of the god it belonged to. It lay beyond what could be known or described and could only be grasped – imperfectly at that – through its projections. These projections constituted the kheperu, which corresponded to the series of ephemeral individual forms, indefinite in number, that a divinity was capable of assuming. None of them could encompass the totality of what a god was.13

Nevertheless, Meeks and Meeks argue, these localized specific forms did not constitute a change in the god’s basic nature, instead they showed the god undergoing a process of constant evolution. Each of these forms was a facet of the god in which he was fully implied. By adopting a kheperu, a god created for himself the possibility of signifying a state of his being or distinguishing one of his actions by individualizing it. To enter such a state or perform such an act was to inscribe the kheperu in visible reality. This projection, called the iru, was a perceptible, intelligible manifestation of the god, accentuated, as a rule by various material attributes.

12 Taylor 13 Meeks

2001 p. 16; Hornung 1992 pp. 169–70; and esp. D’Auria 1988 pp. 14–20. & Meeks 1999, p. 54; Silverman in Shafer 1991 pp. 33–8.

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The terms kheperu and iru often occur in texts as synonyms, so difficult was it to distinguish between their referents; no one form was the exclusive property of a single god. In general, the average person could recognize a god only in his or her iru, and Meeks and Meeks argue that only through religious and spiritual practices could a trained person perceive a god’s kheperu.14 According to John Taylor: In the ancient Egyptians’ view of the universe, the continued existence of the world and its inhabitants depended to a large degree on the fulfillment of natural cycles. The rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, the motions of the stars, the annual flooding of the Nile, and the growth and death of plants were perceived as manifestations of potent creative forces and as reassuring signs that the ideal order of familiar things would continue indefinitely. Human life was also viewed as part of the great scheme of creation, and was regarded as cyclical, an experience which, like the endless re-emergence of the sun each dawn, could be expected to repeat itself throughout eternity.15

In this scene-setting statement, Taylor’s use of ‘manifestation’ is entirely apt since the ancient Egyptians viewed the stages of human existence as manifestations (kheperu) of one life, one continuous duration, whether on this earth in its living organic form, or beyond this earth in another form. An individual’s death was not considered to be an end, but a transition to another, and better, kind of life; the Book of the Dead (Spell 178) describes death as ‘the night of going forth to life’. The earlier Coffin Texts offers an enigmatic formulation: ‘You have departed living, you have not departed dead’, and again, ‘Rise up to life, for you have not died.’ Both of these sayings are issued from a posthumous perspective, however, and do not give voice to the natural and normal fear that the living may feel when they think of their own death. In addition to the body, the second important physical aspect of human being was the heart, symbolized by the glyph for a squat, lidded jar. The heart was regarded by the Egyptians as the anatomical, emotional and intellectual center of the living human. In the embalming and mummifying process the heart was removed and then replaced in its proper setting within the chest cavity. As the emotional center, it was in charge of and ruled over the positive and negative feelings, as well as being the seat of the moral sentiment.16 As the cognitive center, it was the locus of imagination and memory; in many vignettes showing an individual’s posthumous judgment, the heart is the witness of the measure of the person’s deeds.17 In amuletic magic, one 14 Meeks & Meeks 1999 p. 55; according to Finnestad, ‘the Egyptian deities were encountered face to face, in cosmic happenings as well as in temples. They were not invisible, spiritual beings imperfectly revealing themselves in material form. The kheperu of the deity is the spiritual and material manifestation of dynamic life. The focus of attention is on the becoming of life which … is a divine spiritual and material phenomenon’, Finnestad in Boreas 20, 1989 p. 34; for some instances of specialized priestly knowledge of the gods, see Assmann 1995 pp. 17–21; Zivie-Coche 2004 pp. 24–36. 15 Taylor 2001 p. 12; see also the comments by Segal 2004 pp. 27–30. 16 For details on the heart as the seat of conscience, see Piankoff 1930 pp. 78–93; Assmann 1993 pp. 96–106; and Brunner 1983 pp. 21–6. 17 Taylor 2001 pp. 17–18, 36–7; Derchain 1992 p. 221; Hornung 1992 pp. 101, 143–5.

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of the most important (and common) charms was a special type of scarab which protected the deceased’s heart. Since the heart contained a record of its owner’s deeds in its earthly life, a record that would be examined by the gods to see whether its owner deserved eternal life, it was crucial that the heart was protected against loss and damage. One of the spells in the Book of the Dead would guard against the heart revealing potentially damning information to the judges, another to ensure that the deceased retained his heart in the underworld, yet another against theft, and so forth.18 The heart was also the seat of cognitive activities and hence the locus of knowledge, memory and imagination. Meeks and Meeks’ recent study offers a lucid and concise description of the ancient Egyptian ‘picture’ of the gods’ knowledge, and by extension the more limited domain of human knowledge. The gods’ secret thoughts, they argue, were nothing more than the intimate knowledge lodged in their viscera or ‘inner selves’, knowledge which could not but be expressed in a creative manner. The totality of what could be conceived exactly coincided with the totality of what had been set in motion by the gods; this totality was reflected, at least to some extent, in the set of writings composed by [the god] Thoth. Nevertheless, what could be known never coincided perfectly with what was known. Between the one and the other, there remained a space open to the kind of knowledge that could be progressively elaborated and subjected to questioning. This type of knowledge was men’s portion and it set them on an endless quest.19

It was not the proper place or power of humans to invent anything, but rather to limit their beliefs and actions to appropriating a part of what was already known, provided that the gods gave their consent and a suitable means. Unlike the creator god, who knew everything, the other created gods could be ignorant of many things, though they could learn much more than they began with. Each created god knew certain things the other gods did not know; this inner knowledge was concealed by each god from the other gods and ensured their individual nature. The special faculty or power that enabled the gods to perceive an event when it occurred was called sia, whose limit concept embraced all the possible knowledge brought into being by the original act of world creation. Meeks and Meeks claim that this cognitive capacity was ‘a dormant kind of knowledge’ that became active in the presence of the event that brought it out; ‘it enabled the god to grasp, in the fullest sense of the word, what was going on’. In other words, sia made it possible for already extant knowledge to emerge at the conscious or explicit level.20 Not to have sia of some thing was thus not an issue of not knowing it, but rather of not being able, or no longer being able, to recognize or identify it. This served to establish a conceptual distinction between sia, which the authors call ‘synthetic knowledge’, and rekh, which they call ‘technical or practical knowledge’. Along these lines, ‘sia operated like an absolute intuition irreducible to logical knowledge. Rekh implied a way of defining concepts that necessarily entailed the use of speech, 18 Taylor

2001 pp. 205–6; Pinch 1994 pp. 155–6. & Meeks 1999 p. 94. 20 Meeks & Meeks 1999 p. 95; J. P. Allen in RAW pp. 533–4. 19 Meeks

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and later writing; they endowed it with its specific character, that is, the capacity to be transmitted. Only if filtered through the spoken and written word could sia become accessible in the field of rekh.’21 The god Thoth was the intermediary between the gods’ omniscience and humans’ limited acquisition of knowledge. As the recorder and preserver of the gods’ knowledge, Thoth had the power to diffuse information to whom he chose, and the vehicle of his transmission was rekh. In this sense, Thoth (for the Greeks, Hermes) was both the teacher of humans, through his gift of speech and writing, and the teacher of the practice of teaching itself, the means whereby humans could acquire knowledge from others. Unlike the heart, the brain was thought to be merely stuffing for the skull and was extracted through the nose during the embalming process and then discarded.22 The viscera were removed and stored in four canopic jars, one each for the liver, the lungs, the stomach and the intestines. Much later the standard mortuary practice was to remove the four main organs, wrap them in linen, and then replace them in the mummy.23 The intestines were considered to be vitally important because they consume and store life-energy (heka) via exogenous material.24 Of all the components of human nature, only heka was personified as a divine being, the titular deity in charge of magical power.25 Although Heka had no major temples, unlike the other Egyptian gods, he did have priests and shrines. The goddess Weret Hekau (Great of Magic) was usually depicted in cobra form and acted as foster-mother to the divine kings. Due to his god-like status, the king had heka, and in this respect was akin to the gods themselves and other unearthly beings. Pinch remarks that the ancient idea of heka is comparable to the modern Arabic idea of barraka, a magical force possessed by many kinds of beings and places; anything strange, exotic, or ancient can be credited with barraka.26 As a divine being, the Egyptian Heka is thus closely related to the ancient Greek goddess Hekate, the personified form of magical power. She was unknown to Homer and a harmless figure in Hesiod, but emerges in the fifth century BCE as ‘a more sinister divine figure associated with magic and witchcraft, lunar lore and creatures of the night, dog sacrifices and illuminated cakes, as well as doorways and crossroads’.27 The name (ren) was also considered to be an essential component of the individual’s survival; in part, this idea rests on the fundamental assumption that

21 Meeks

& Meeks 1999 p. 96; see also TDOT vol. 5 pp. 454–5. 2001 p. 53; D’Auria 1988 pp. 16–18. 23 Taylor 2001 pp. 64–76. 24 Meeks & Meeks 1999 pp. 96, 237; Taylor 2001 p. 86. 25 Baines in Shafer 1991 pp. 164–72; Sternberg in RAW pp. 454–6; Segal 2004 pp. 60–62. 26 Pinch 1994 pp. 3–5. 27 OCD 3rd edn 1996 p. 671. Despite the fact that many features of the Egyptian god(dess) Heka and the Greek goddess Hekate are parallel – patroness of magic, depicted with snakes, associated with childbirth, cults localized at crossroads, an epithet with ‘Great’, etc. – the OCD entry authors do not mention the Egyptian connection, but tentatively offer an unnamed exotic aetiology; see esp. Sarah Johnston, Hekate Soteira, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; and H. D. Betz, Greek Magical Papyri, Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992 pp. 78–92. 22 Taylor

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symbolic representations, such as images and words, are causally connected to the ‘objects’ the image or word signifies.28 Thus, it is more telling to speak of the cognitive ‘complex’ rather than the concept of a name. In the complexive understanding of representations, words have object-like and causal properties. Some words, in any case, were thought to strictly resemble the things they referred to; the thing was causally influenced when the word was written or spoken; sameness of word-sound (homophony) indicated sameness in ‘nature’ (homoöusia). Words for things were god-given to humans for use in communicating about and effecting things which were themselves god-given signs. When we turn our attention to the decorations and artifacts found in tombs we will see that the Egyptians thought that images of bread and drink could feed and refresh the deceased person.29 Further, one type of magic ritual consisted in the discovery and manipulation of a human (or a god’s) secret name in order to influence his wellbeing or his actions. The name was not only a means to identify an individual, it was also, like the physical and non-physical elements, a medium through which his existence was manifested, allowing one to be distinguished from others. It was common for Egyptian personal names to contain the name of a god in compound with a word meaning well-being, birth, prosperity, life, and so forth. One penalty for the most serious crimes was to have one’s name changed to contain a word meaning death, damnation, hate, and so forth. One extreme punishment exercised by some pharaohs and foreign conquerors was to physically remove all traces of a despised predecessor’s name. Aside from what we would think of this Stalinist rewriting of the historical record, this erasure process was designed to eliminate the memory of that person from the general population, as well as to actually ‘scrub away’ or diminish the deceased in the afterlife.30 On the other hand, the continued remembrance of an individual’s name by those left behind was thought to help ensure that person’s survival in the unearthly realm. The deceased person’s name (and sometimes his image) was carved on the tomb and elsewhere, not just to identify the burial, but also so that visitors could pronounce the name and hence ‘maintain’ the deceased’s existence. During the elaborate offering ritual in which food and drink (or their simulacra) were placed around the sarcophagus it was vital (sic) that the name was pronounced in order to call the deceased to the site.31 Derchain says that the name both gives power to its bearer when he is enclosed in the tomb and gives power to others who may call him back to collect the libations offered.32 The Egyptians ‘took great care to ensure that the names of the dead were preserved. They were inscribed prominently on the public parts of the tomb structure, such as doorways, façade, stelae, and funerary cones, and also on coffins, sarcophagi and other objects which were to be sealed up in the burial chamber and storerooms within the tomb. Although these 28 See Meeks & Meeks 1991 pp. 97–105; Hornung 1992 pp. 24–31; on the parallel idea in the ANE, see Bottero 1992 pp. 87–102. 29 See Taylor 2001 pp. 92–8; Pinch 1994 p. 153. 30 Taylor 2001 p. 23; Derchain 1992 p. 220. 31 Taylor 2001 pp. 192–3. 32 Derchain 1992 p. 220.

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things were not intended to seen again after the burial, the very presence of the written name on the objects would ensure the owner’s survival.’33 In addition to the name, an image or statue of the deceased had the same intimate connection to its owner; the name was almost always fixed to the substitute statue and/or the coffin. Yet another physical component of the whole person was his shadow, though its role is less clearly defined than the others. Like the ba (with which it was often confused), the shadow can become completely detached from the body after death, so that it can move and act freely.34 As with other ‘complexive’ entities associated with the individual, since it did indeed have a dependent relation to its owner during earthly life, it was thought to be an intrinsic ‘part’ of the individual. According to its nature, the shadow does not leave its owner when the sun is in the sky, but can wander about at night, since the sun’s absence is just like death. In the intense heat of the Egyptian setting, shadows provide coolness and protection, something like the succor of a god or a king. George also suggests that ‘the silent mobility of the shadow is also a quality that one would wish to retain in the hereafter, which was thought to be totally bereft of movement’.35 Derchain remarks that in the late Egyptian epoch, the shadow became confused with the ba and the name with the ka. He says that this ‘implies a simplification and an impoverishment of the anthropological analysis for reasons that are unknown to us. This runs in opposition to the evolution of cosmology, theology, temple architecture, and their symbolic system, all of which, by contrast, become more and more refined and differentiated.’36 This observation and hypothesis is strange indeed, since it reverses the direction of symbolic psychic evolution outlined in HCM Chapter 1, section 1. The schema for this was (concrete + outward) ➞ (concrete + inward) ➞ (abstract + inward) ➞ (self-referring or reflexive). The ka is yet another psycho-physical aspect of human nature; its most common hieroglyph was a pair of upraised arms, folded at the elbow. In later texts the kaglyph is shown walking behind a small copy of the individual; this probably inspired the now-outdated interpretation of the ka as the ‘double’. Along with the ba and the akh, the ka is a baffling idea, straddling several concepts normally rendered by ideas like life-force, double, and soul. Taylor says that it is ‘a highly complex notion, which defies direct translation into a single English word or phrase. The nature of the ka was multi-faceted and, as the concept changed over time, the Egyptians’ use of the term was not consistent.’37 The ka came into being with an individual’s birth, fashioned by the potter god Khnum on his wheel, and was severed from the individual at his earthly death. Although it was intimately connected with the person’s bodily life, it was not a physical entity, nor did it have a concrete form; it was only given substance through its depiction in funerary texts and images. Pinch 33 Taylor

2001 p. 23. Hornung says that ‘two main attributes characterize the shadow; it is able to carry and transfer power, and to move with uncanny agility and speed’, 1992 p. 179. 35 George 1970 in Derchain 1992 p. 222. 36 Derchain 1992 p. 222. 37 Taylor 2001 p. 18; Segal 2004 pp. 46–53; illus in D’Auria 1988 pp. 43, 57, 74, and so forth. 34

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says that the ka itself is a person’s vital force, without a distinct personality, but when it appeared as an image it was depicted as a double.38 Taylor, Derchain and Hornung agree that the idea behind the ka is life-force, a human or god’s vitality which allows him to enjoy food, drink, sex, and so forth.39 However, one should immediately note that the very concept of life involved here is not defined by an organic, bodily state; rather, the force of the life-force maintains an individual’s being in both the earthly and the unearthly state. The ka is active in some respects and passive in others during this life, whereas it becomes active in different respects after its host’s death, that is, when it becomes freed from certain corporeal constraints. It seems that the vital functions of the whole individual are interrupted by bodily death, but then resume in its posthumous state provided that the correct mortuary procedures have been followed. Hornung says that ‘the ka is all that enlivens. It is both a life force and the enjoyment of life – or, in even more concrete terms – well-being and appetite. Then vital energy that flows from the ka experiences only a temporary interruption in death.’40 The glyph for the ka is phonetically identical to the glyph for bull and hence connoted the idea of sexual potency; in its plural form, the same glyph denoted ‘food’ or ‘sustenance’, thus further tying it to the idea of life-force. After its bodily death, an individual could no longer feed himself, and hence the deceased relied on mourners to offer nourishment to its ka. The single most important role of the ka was as an intermediary to nourish the dead person in his journey through the underworld. Inscriptions and pictures in tombs clearly show that offerings of food and drink were made to the dead person’s ka. The ka could leave the body in the burial chamber, pass into the tomb chapel, and partake of the offerings left there. But the ka required a material vessel to inhabit during its unearthly ‘life’ and hence the dead body was mummified. Given that the tomb itself and the chapel were separate, the ka needed to move between them in order to find its food and drink. Thus, when it was in the chapel it was given a special statue to inhabit; these special statues could be located either in the tomb chapel or in a god’s temple. Such statues were called shesep r ankh, ‘receiver to live’, and should not be confused with the tiny full-figure shabtis or ushebtis which were images of the deceased’s servants who went proxy for their owner in the underworld.41 The receiver statues made it possible for the deceased to be ‘present’ in some other place aside from the location of its corpse.42 However, the Egyptians did not think that inert inorganic material like stone or wood could by itself manifest life, especially the life-force of a human being. Hence they employed an elaborate magical ritual known as the Opening of the Mouth, details of which have survived in a number of texts; this ritual was also performed on the mummy as the final stage of its reanimation.43 (Remote descendants of this magical ritual were probably the inspiration of Plotinus’ reference to magicians ‘bringing statues to life’ 38 Pinch

1994 p. 147. 2001 p. 19; Derchain 1992 p. 221. 40 Hornung 1992 p. 175. 41 Taylor 2001 pp. 117–35. 42 Taylor 2001 pp. 162–5. 43 Detailed reconstruction of the ritual and texts, Lorton 1999 pp. 147–8. 39 Taylor

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in Enneads 4.3.11, an assertion avidly taken up by the theurgists Iamblichus and Proclus.) The priests used several implements shaped like a sculptor’s adze, a chisel, and a finger-pointer, uttered incantations, and touched the statues’ apertures reinfusing it with the form of life.44 Magical animation of statues also had a precedent in Egyptian theistic ideas, since amongst other suitable vehicles the gods were thought to inhabit their temple statues by means of their ba’s union with the image.45 Derchain concludes his analysis with these words: The ka thus has a double nature, sometimes active, sometimes passive. It expresses life itself as an exchange of actions for food. This explains how during life the ka can never be distinct from its owner. After death its importance becomes central, as it must express a vitality of which no sign is to be found in the corpse. The assertion that the dead have a ka is in a way the negation of death, a negation that makes no sense unless the living continue to attend to their ancestors through remembrance and offerings.46

Taylor explicitly links the ka with another important human aspect in the afterlife, the akh: ‘The ka was thus essential for survival in the next world and in order to reach the transfigured state [akh] and enter the afterlife the deceased needed to be reunited with his ka, which separated from the body at death. Hence the dead were often referred to as “those who have gone to their kas”, while the tomb was termed the “house of the ka”.’47 Perhaps the most difficult to define component, and the one which has seen the most discussion, is the ba. The use of the ba ‘complex’ changed over time and according to whether it was applied to gods, the king, or non-royal persons.48 In the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, the ba of a god or a king encompassed that being’s powers. It was the main vehicle by which they were manifested as individuals and hence it is sometimes translated as ‘personality’, though as Taylor and others point out, this is an unsatisfactory interpretation, since inanimate things such as a town or even a door could be said to have a ba. In these early texts, a god or a place or a building could have more than one bau (pl.) which manifested the totality of the divine powers or deities associated with them.49 Zabkar points out that the greater the god in the cosmic scheme, the greater was the power of his ba; this greater power was often expressed by saying that some god had a larger number of bau.50 Through his ba a god is manifest in various entities: (1) in another god, for example, ‘Re is the ba of the Lord of Heaven’, ‘Osiris is the ba of the Lord of the Cavern (Anubis)’, or ‘Amun is the ba of Shu’, and so on; (2) in sacred animals, for example, ‘the ram of Mendes is the ba of Osisis’, ‘the ram-god Harsaphes is the ba of Re’, ‘Apis (the bull) is the ba of Ptah’, and so on, and (3) in stars and other inanimate things, for 44 Taylor

2001 pp. 190–92; Pinch 1994 pp. 152–4. Zabkar 1968 pp. 39–40; Lorton 1999 pp. 179–201; Zivie-Coche 2004 pp. 170–75. 46 Derchain 1992 p. 221. 47 Taylor 2001 p. 20; on the development of ideas and images associated with the royal ka, see Frankfort 1978 pp. 61–78. 48 In brief, see Hornung 1992 pp. 179–83; J. P. Allen in D’Auria 1988 pp. 29, 43–5. 49 Taylor 2001 p. 20. 50 Zabkar 1968 p. 11. 45 See

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example, ‘Orion is the ba of Osiris’, ‘the moon is the ba of Osiris’, ‘the decan stars are the living bas of the gods’, and so on.51 However, by the time of the New Kingdom, in the texts associated with the new solar religion, the idea of the god’s ba has changed in important respects, as Jan Assmann has persuasively argued. In the hymn of Ramesses III to Amun-Re, god materializes in the world through life-giving elements. Amun is a cosmic god whose body is the world, whose ba is the vital principle, and who gives life to the cosmos in the same way that the human ba gives life to the individual. By way of this ‘aspect change inherent in the concept of ba’, Amun is referred to as ‘the ba with secret faces, who hides his name and conceals his image’. Hence, the divine ba concept indicates not a specific power, but the notion of absolute power, responsible for the totality of effects, whose visible manifestation is the entire cosmos. Solar theology extended these ideas by regarding not only the primordial light but also the total energies that perform life-giving functions in the world as proofs of power, that is, manifestations, of the many bau of Amun. Assmann proposes that, in this great solar hymn, the ten bau of Amun are divided into two pentads; the first five are life-giving elements (solar time, lunar time, air, water and light); the second five are the essences (?) of five classes of living creatures (humans, quadrupeds, birds, wateranimals and land-animals.)52 In his analysis of the various groups of gods centered around specific localities and associated with specific cults and theogonies, Zabkar concludes that the collective god-bau ‘indicate the same thing, that is, the divinized dead kings of the ancient cities … [They] reside in those famous religious centers but are at the same time present at all important events in the pharaoh’s life as guarantors of the divine kingly office and as protectors of their successor, the living Horus, who at death joins their company and becomes one of the divinized members of the ancestral corporations of dead kings.’53 In the Pyramid Texts, aside from the god’s ba, only the king is described as having or being a ba. In these passages it is clearly evident that the ba signifies either the manifestation of the power or distinction of a king or god or denotes the king or god in a state in which his power is manifest: ‘The ba possessed by the king and the ba which he is or becomes are very close in meaning. It may be that the idea of the king being or becoming a ba was the basis for the process of the personification of the ba in the direction of its meaning as the alter ego of the deceased.’ Zabkar cautions that one should not jump to conclusions about what these passages indicate about the king’s living ba: ‘the king acquired, was united with, or became a ba either at or after death’. The relevant texts are concerned with the king’s unearthly life and do not directly and univocally indicate whether the king had or became a ba while in his earthly life. In sum, it is not possible to determine whether or not the living kings of ancient Egypt were thought to have bau.54 51 Zabkar

1968 pp. 12–15. 1995 pp. 144–7; Assmann also comments that Zabkar seems to be completely oblivious of these Ramesside solar texts, p. 143 note 46. 53 Zabkar 1968 p. 35; on collectives of deities, see Goedicke 1970 pp. 26–8; Zivie-Coche 2004 pp. 83–9. 54 Zabkar 1968 pp. 54, 58, 61, 66–7; Silverman in Shafer 1991 pp. 58–70. 52 Assmann

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However, Zabkar also draws a more positive finding when he carefully distinguishes between becoming ba as an entity and having ba as a power: ‘The ba which a king is or becomes signifies the king in a state in which his power is manifest, while the ba which a king possesses is the manifestation of his power. This ba which the king possesses in some cases appears to be a quality, a kingly attribute, while in others it seems to be an entity … approaching in meaning the personified ba of the Middle and New Kingdom mortuary texts.’ Zabkar cites several passages which indicate that the ba in a prepositional clause ‘may describe the fullness of royal and divine power or distinction hovering, as it were, above the king or encircling him, permeating him, and emanating from him when he appears among the gods, thus manifesting him as their equal and even as their ruler for all eternity’.55 The key idea here is that the ba can be both an entity and a casual power, an idea we shall return to at the end of this section. Goedicke draws a different lesson from ba references in the Pyramid Texts; he says that ‘the ba is not connected with the institution of kingship or the king as mediator between the mundane and the divine spheres.’ Instead, he argues, the ba is ‘a spiritual power immanent’ in human nature, at the same time that it is formed (or generated) by human nature. It does not have a ‘transcendent origin’56 and is not then placed in a human, but originates within him: ‘It is formed – or better, gathered – during the mundane life but in that stage is not separate from man. It is rather the self with which man stands in a continuous interaction, simultaneously being source and product. By the projection of a self, man displays that individuality which separates him from the animal-like man, and as such the ba is the element of individualism.’ Against Zabkar he claims that the human ba is ‘a formative constituent’ during a human’s earthly life: ‘the non-material properties of man are not annihilated in the physical end of man as living total, but are dissolved into components. Thus upon death the ba, until then only an immanent potential, becomes manifest.’57 In the Middle Kingdom-era Coffin Texts, the idea of the ba in relation to an ordinary person is most clearly developed. Here each individual has his or her own ba, ‘personified as one of the modes in which he continues to exist after death. Although not a physical being, the ba was credited with many human characteristics. It was able to eat, drink, speak and move. The capacity for free and unrestricted movement was in fact the single most important characteristic which the ba possessed; it was the means by which the dead were empowered to leave the tomb and to travel.’58 In these texts the scribe attempts to answer the question about the origin of the ba and its destiny in the underworld. The texts repeatedly promise that the deceased will have power over his entire body, especially over his legs for walking about: ‘Not only the body but also the Ba and cognate entities (Ka, Akh, Shadow) are endowed with physical vitality.’ The written testimony that through all of these forms the dead person ‘acts and lives as a full individual, points to a 55 Zabkar

1968 pp. 72–3. Goedicke’s otherwise salutary discussion, he employs the words ‘immanent’ for ‘natural’ (or ‘intrinsic’) and ‘transcendent’ for ‘supernatural’ (or ‘extrinsic’). 57 Goedicke 1970 p. 29; see also Assmann in Baumgarten 1998 pp. 384–95. 58 Taylor 2001 p. 20; in exact agreement with this, see Hornung 1992 p. 182. 56 Throughout

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monistic concept of man … Even though the Ka and some of these other entities coexisted with the individual during his lifetime, they were, each one of them, considered to be full physical entities and not “spiritual” components of a human composite.’59 Zabkar is quite definite in rejecting the idea that the ba can be equated with the soul; it is neither an internal organic component, nor an external spiritual component. The dualistic view that is often associated with Greek thought about human nature is alien to the Egyptian view: ‘Thus the Ba is not a part nor an element of a man but is one of the forms in which he fully lives after his death; the Ba is the man himself, his personified alter ego.’60 Derchain argues that the ba is ‘more a function than an aspect’ – though he does not make it clear what other ‘complex’ component it is a function of. ‘This function’, he goes on, ‘may be defined as what joins the two faces of being, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the night and the day, the gods and men, and the hereafter and this world, and thus gives a person his continuity.’61 No doubt these five paired terms do indeed characterize the broad dimensions of human psychical and physical life on this earth, but one would be hard pressed to cogently explain either that each of the several pairs are functions of another third set of things, or that the five pairs collectively are functions of some other one thing. Derchain seems to have lost track of the principal premise that the ba is itself an entity since it can exist independently of the person whose ba it is, and hence cannot be identified or reduced to a function. For example, in Plato’s triplex scheme, reason, passion and spirit are forms or powers (dunameis) of the psyche¯, and inward reflection or contemplation is a function of reason (logismos), a function exercised by the psyche¯ when it turns to look at the truth. However, Derchain makes a valuable point about the importance of remembrance in maintaining the dead person’s survival in the underworld: It is quite understandable that this liaison between the real and the imaginary (this continuity) would be essential to man who, once dead, must have a means to maintain a contact with the living who will assure his worship … The permanence of memory is the only guarantee one has of not dying to posterity definitively; the memory that one preserves within oneself is the sum of one’s past, and losing it or forgetting it signifies a diminution of the personality, as sometimes happens to the aged. The ba memory will always return to places that it knew; it is also the ba who will show to a despairing man, who feels excluded from the world by the events that he witnesses, the contact that he may still have with those around him.62

Taylor observes that doubtless on account of its association with mobility, the form chosen for the representation of the ba was that of a bird with a human head, and often with human hands and arms as well.63 Sources from the New Kingdom onward

59 Zabkar

1968 p. 97. Zabkar 1968 p. 113, see also pp. 130, 146; for another interpretation of this vitalist monism, see Finnestad in Boreas 20, 1989 pp. 31–2. 61 Derchain 1992 p. 222. 62 Derchain 1992 p. 222. 63 Taylor 2001 p. 21; illus in D’Auria 1988 pp. 137, 154, 188, 194, and so forth. 60

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graphically depict the individual ba’s behavior; it has the ability to separate from the body at death, so that while the corpse was immobile in the tomb, the ba could fly upward to visit the world of the living, or ascend to the sky to travel with the sun god. Other images show the ba-bird perched on the tomb façade, and stelae from the Late Period sometimes show a small ba figure at the top.64 During its absence from the tomb the ba could partake of food and drink, but each night it had to return to the corpse in order to be reunited with its physical ‘anchor’. Several spells in the Book of the Dead are concerned with insuring the reunion of ba and corpse, since, as Taylor says, ‘without this periodic contact the deceased would perish’.65 This happened presumably through its second death, namely by voiding the criteria under which it could become an akh. One outstanding funerary papyrus contains a unique scene in which the ba is shown flying down the tomb shaft to the burial chamber where the mummy lies: ‘This union of ba and corpse produced resurrection, just as the uniting of the sun god and Osiris in the underworld each night. On account of this doctrine, it was essential that the corpse should be transformed through mummification into an eternal, perfect body which could be reunited with the ba.’66 The final (and perhaps the strangest) component of human nature is the mysterious entity known as the akh, symbolized by the glyph for a crested ibis bird. (The current standard translation is ‘transfigured one’ but we will have to resist this equation.) Derchain says that the akh designates all kinds of supernatural beings, such as phantoms and demons, and ‘thus belongs exclusively to the imaginary world that populates the unknown. The akh is the form of the deceased that possesses a superior power, which one may invoke in times of need, but which is also capable of manifesting itself simultaneously in a way that may be disagreeable to the living. It is, in short, the expression of the fear felt in the presence of the dead, a fear which would have left no traces in Egypt if one had to rely only on the traditional expressions of the funerary cult.’67 Well, this is not a good short version of the nature and status of the akh, nor does its meaning reside alone in the subjective feelings of the survivors. The Egyptians devoted exceptional attention to the preparation of the deceased’s body and other soul-like aspects, with the explicit aim in view that, having passed the tribunal’s judgment in the underworld, the individual could attain the status of akh, and hence live with the gods forever. Through the achievement of akh-status the individual acquired greater power or effectiveness, as well as other god-like qualities; although he was not the gods’ equal he could be counted in their company. Through akh-ification the gods endowed the newly dead human with a creative energy similar to that employed in the creation of the world. This energy gave them the means to arise from the inertia of death to a new life, just as the primordial chaotic state was transformed into the ordered, life-filled cosmos. According to the 64 ‘The stele is the symbolic gate that permits passage from the real world to the imaginary world’, according to Derchain 1992 p. 235. 65 On the interdependence of the ba and corpse, see the details in Zabkar 1968 pp. 106–11, 149–56; and Goedicke 1970 pp. 19–20, 31–2. 66 Taylor 2001 p. 23. 67 Derchain 1992 p. 223.

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scant remains of Egyptian cosmogony,68 the world’s creation began with the production of light, and the word akh is from the same root as the word for ‘light’. Taylor says that ‘to be akh, then, was to be an effective spirit, enjoying the qualities and prerogatives of the gods, having the capacity for eternal life and being capable of influencing others’. Unlike the ka, the ba and other aspects of the individual’s nature, the akh is a state (or entity) which can be achieved only after death, and only after having passed through many tests and dangers. Not every dead person could expect to become an akh, for those judged deficient were denied this privilege and were condemned to die a second death.69 For those who failed the heart-weighing examination a less than salutary ‘road’ lay ahead. They would become mut, the ‘evil dead’, or at least the ‘dangerous dead’. As Pinch points out, although the second death for failures was supposed to mean complete annihilation of the individual, it was believed that some aspect of these condemned ‘spirits’ survived to trouble the living. Pinch endorses the view, more fully expressed earlier by Zabkar and Zandee, that there were conditions under which the deceased would not achieve an akh state and instead be relegated to the mut state. Either the individual had died a violent death, or too young, or had been denied a proper burial or funeral rites. As such, the dead mut could be counted, not among the gods, but amongst the demons that inhabited the underworld.70 Taylor says that ‘whereas the akhu are said to have adored the sun god, the mut are equated with his foes (the forces of chaos who threaten the continuation of the cosmic order). They are condemned to a series of horrifying torments, including decapitation and burning in furnaces, images somewhat reminiscent for us of early Christian notions of hell. These tortures resulted in the total extinction of these negative entities, to whom the afterlife was forever denied.’71 There was a whole class of magical spells designed to protect the living from the noisome visits of the restless dead. One could propose here (with the utmost caution) an early version of the distinction between, on one hand, the basically good akh and the basically bad mut, and on the other hand, the ancient Greek psyche¯-double and the daimo¯n. As our previous analyses (HCM pp. 20–21) showed, the Homeric idea of the dead hero’s psyche¯ was that of a simulacrum or ephemeral double of the living person, one whose only role was to convey advice or issue warning to the bereaved.72 In contrast, from Homer onwards, the word daimo¯n is ‘used mainly in the sense of operator of more or less unexpected, and intrusive, events in human life … daimo¯n appears to correspond to supernatural power in its unpredictable, anonymous, and often 68 See inter alia, Derchain 1992 pp. 217–18, Frankfort 1978 pp. 24–35; Lesko in Shafer 1991 pp. 88–122. 69 Taylor 2001 pp. 31–2; in brief, Segal 2004 pp. 53–4; on the afterlife, Taylor in RAW pp. 471–7. 70 Pinch 1994 p. 148; Taylor 2001 p. 44; Zandee 1960 pp. 58–63. 71 Taylor 2001 p. 38. 72 This idea may underlie Derchain’s reference to the akh as a ‘ghost’ (1992, p. 236), but with the careful proviso that restricts the idea of a ghost to a simulacrum or eidolon. The Akkadian word etemmu has a similar translation problem, as the next section will show.

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frightening manifestations’. Hesiod introduced the notion that daimo¯nes can function as guardians or protectors (phulakes); hence, that each person had his or her own guardian spirit who could bring good or bad luck. Plato introduced yet another notion (Phaedrus 107d, Republic 617d) when he said that a human’s daimo¯n functioned as a personal advocate; by extension, the personal daimo¯n became identified with the divine mind that humans received from the gods. Plato also claimed (Symp. 202d–203a) that daimo¯nes were intermediate between gods and humans; an idea taken up by the Stoics and Neo-Platonists. The early Church Fathers ‘gratefully adopted’ all three interpretations, making the angels beneficent intermediaries from the eudaimo¯nes, the demons maleficent entities from the kakadaimo¯nes.73 The Swedish scholar Gertie Englund has carried out a meticulous investigation of the evolution of the concept of akh from the Old Kingdom to the New Empire; her findings about the human akh are summarized here. In the Pyramid Texts, akh appears connected only with the king’s unearthly life; in this royal privilege it has a restriction similar to the earliest appearance of the ba-complex. In the divine realm, the quality of akh appears above all with the gods who are involved in the repetition of creation. The notion of akh presents two aspects: the virtual akh and the manifest akh. The creator gods are said to be akh in phases of the daily cycle of night and day; in a virtual state when they are ‘dead’ through lack of efficacy, and in a manifest state when they are reborn in their efficacy. The word akh is also predicated of the deceased king insofar as the king is identified with the gods who are akh, though the gods attained their akh state by ‘the voice of the magic of analogies’. The magic that works here (even for the gods) is founded on a world-concept as ‘a network of forces where everything is connected by correspondence and analogy’. However, in the private tombs of the same epoch, the deceased affirm that they have attained an akh state through ‘knowledge of secret things’, knowledge that guarantees their future state. The notion of akh is intimately tied in with the idea of resurrection and here the two aspects become more clear. Following the divine prototype, the deceased king is an akh, due to the fact that he can rightfully expect to attain that hoped-for state – a state of new life, freedom of movement and power, one that can be arrived at through magical assistance. The manifest akh denotes an activity or movement by the person; in this way, its sense is borrowed from or takes part in the ‘nature’ and activity of light. The personal akh manifests itself in a manner akin to the stars; it can be characterized as indestructible, permanent, stable and other qualities of divine power. Thus the akh has both dynamic and static aspects which are ‘in constant and necessary play for the continuation of the created world’.74 Examples in the Coffin Texts are clear enough to permit the conclusion that the deceased in the tomb is called akh from the exemplum of Osiris called akh in the inertia of death. And yet after these utterances, there is a large difference between the deceased’s akh and the akh’s power and freedom of movement. This is one of the reasons that there seems to be an evolution in the akh-state; it inclines one to 73 OCD 3rd edn 1996 p. 426; LSJ 9th rev. edn 1968 pp. 365–6; see esp. J. Z. Smith, ANRW vol. 16.1 (1978) pp. 425–39; F. E. Brenk, ANRW vol. 16.3 (1986) pp. 2125–45. 74 Englund 1978 pp. 61–3.

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think that the virtual akh becomes an akh manifest also at this level. The importance of the funerary sphere as the milieu of the akh is more considerable in these texts. The akh does not have to stay in one place, but does have to leave and enter its future in the underworld where all its routes and all its travels are an image. In the earlier texts, this travel does not take multiple ordeals, but is an almost direct ascent, for example, on a bird’s flight, an insect, incense fumes, the wing of a god, or as a divine eye or climbing a ladder. There is then a becoming in parting from the primordial state and in parting from death. The two are parallel and can be considered homologous, since the primordial state is also the state of death, a state of inertia where it assumes a structural form. The question then is whether the deceased’s akh does not hope to find, by the grace of analogical magic, the energy, freedom and other properties of an autonomous power. Or whether it takes part in a primordial state and a divine energy by a ‘spark’, that is, an akh in a virtual state, that same power which helps it to pass through the inertial state and, in its free leaving, become a manifest akh.75 In the Books of the Dead, there is one difference in usage of akh in contrast with earlier texts; most of these examples concern the akh as the designation for an individual, and not for its state, but for some it seems to refer to the deceased’s akh. Another difference is that the earlier texts describe the location and circumstances of the akh in the other-world, above all its state and, in certain cases, its proper activity, whereas the latest examples mainly concern the akh as an object of rites. When it pertains to amulets placed on the corpse, it is provisioned, rendered perfect; when texts are recited over him, an image is manipulated, flaming candles are offered, and so forth. In certain cases the context mentions the effect of these rites on the deceased: it leaves, it descends with the gods, it leaves or sails in the barque of Re. There are very few examples where the akh is the subject, that is, cases that attribute an activity proper to the akh. Still other examples relate to the akh as the personification of a god or entity; the akh is luminous as the sun-disc and knows not its name, the akh-entities who announce Atum as he leaves the akhu, a guardian of the Janus-head gate, and an akh who with an anonymous god takes the road of the deceased.76 Diachronic studies by Taylor, Zabkar and Englund (amongst others) of the texts and images associated with the ka, the ba and the akh have indeed clearly shown that these Egyptian ‘complexes’ went through various types of alteration, not all of which could be called an ‘evolution’. But whatever their specific trajectories, all these ideas, at all stages, stabilize around the central platform of vitalist monism. Karl Luckert attempts to synopsize this view of human nature in these words: The Entire [Egyptian] theological system can be visualized as a flow of creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows farther from its source. Along its outer periphery this plethora of divine emanation becomes fragmented into what begins to appear as the light and shadow realm of our material world … Along its outer periphery the plethora of divine existence, of generation, of emanation, of being, and of life – the divine current of ka radiation – becomes visible as a multitude of ba apparitions. Along that outer periphery it meets with nonbeing, is stunned by nonbeing, and as a result 75 Englund 76 Englund

1978 pp. 136–7. 1978 pp. 173–4.

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curls inward on itself. Individualized and estranged ka units, that is, ka sparks in ba manifestations confronting nonbeing, may swirl for a while about, along that outer periphery of divinity, as ghostly apparitions in lostness and confusion. But these ka souls may also be meaningfully reoriented to again travel homeward to the source of their being, the godhead.77

Luckert continues in this vein: While the sole and hidden deity has thus been generating and giving birth to its selfemanations, in external visibility as if it were an ongoing process of ‘exhaling’, this same sole divine source has also continually been ‘reinhaling’ its own life essences. Along the outer edge of human ontology and epistemology these essences, perceived as finite manifestations, have been stunned by the kiss of death and nonbeing. They are thereby purified, turned around, or ‘resurrected’ with the help of religious funerary rites. Divine generation and emanation from the godhead, and the nostalgic return of estranged individual life-souls to their former source, therefore happens along a busy two-way dimension. The creative descending emanation ends in the cul-de-sac of life made manifest, as if being caught up in the curve of a U-turn. The entire road of creation leads hither from God to finitude; the road of resurrection and salvation leads home again toward the heart of God.78

If one abstains from the heavy and patent Plotinian purview in Luckert’s synopsis then there are some valuable insights in these comments. Thus, ka units estranged or detached from the cosmic life-force appear in the earthly domain as individual bau, that is, one ba for each human person. However, each of these individuated forms, when taken or considered only in its ka-unit aspect is an apparition, an unearthly simulacrum of the human person. Egyptian mortuary texts definitely depict the duration (or ‘perdurance’, following Luckert’s Bergsonian overtones) of human life, both before and after death, as a road or path, leading the dead person, in the form of its akh, to its original source amongst other divine beings. In his opening remarks on the evolution of the concept of ba from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom, Zabkar makes an unusual claim, one that does not accord with the standard interpretation of Aristotelian ontological categories, such as substance, property and relation. He declares that ‘the Egyptians conceived of the Ka, the Akh, and the Ba not only as qualities which a being possesses but also as entities which a being is or becomes. Thus we often find the term Ba, sometimes qualified by an appositive or an epithet, used as an equivalent for a god, indicating that the god is in a state in which his power is manifest.’79 In a later context, he says that ‘the ba which the king possesses in some cases appears to be a quality, a kingly attribute, while in others it seems to be an entity’.80 The idea that the ba is a median between an entity and a power, or perhaps a ‘complexive’ union of both entity and power, is striking similar to Herbert Granger’s statement about the pre-Socratics’ concept of the psychai of living things: ‘They are entities in their own right, and they are not the qualities or properties of an object that provides them with a subject and 77 Luckert

1991 pp. 45–6. 1991 p. 46. 79 Zabkar 1968 p. 8. 80 Zabkar 1968 p. 73; Hornung hints at the same idea, 1992 p. 183. 78 Luckert

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the basis of their existence. Nonetheless, they were not typically thought to exist independently or in isolation from other contrary qualities and the objects they compose. Quality-things in their thing-like nature also exercise causal agency upon one another.’81 In the pre-Socratic fragments, the soul is sometimes referred to as a thing or a substance with a nature or essence, whose functions are explained in terms of the predominance of one element, or the outgrowth of a mixture of elements with a predominant ‘profile’. At other times, psychical powers seem to be the properties of one specific element which, when combined in a highly determinate manner, produces a living thing manifesting such underlying functions (or properties). In conclusion, these are the aspects of human nature according to the ancient Egyptian ‘complex’: the whole person in his earthly life comprises (1) an animate body which contains the heart and the four main organs (except the brain), (2) his name and (3) his shadow. The heart and the four main organs are the loci of powers and exercise functions determined by (or dependent on) the whole person manifest in the earthly physical realm. The name and the shadow are functions of the whole, dependent in their ‘nature’ on the person whose name and shadow they are, but independent in their meaning of their bearer’s being embodied. The whole person also comprises (4) the ka and (5) the ba whose seat is the whole person and whose functions are manifest in the person’s bodily states, but whose ‘natures’ are independent of the person in his earthly life. (6) After death the person can be transmuted into a divine form, the akh. After bodily death, in the transition to an unearthly life, the heart and the four main organs cease to exercise their physical functions but are preserved in (or near) the mummy by means of embalming. The continued existence of the whole person is dependent on (at least) the presence of these five physical entities, which no longer act as organs but as vessels or ‘anchors’ for their unearthly simulacra. These organ simulacra are the unearthly doubles of those organs whose functions are now dependent, not on their former host’s body, but on the proper care exercised over them by the person’s ka. Insofar as the person’s ka receives sufficient nourishment by means of prayers and images, the person’s ba is able to maintain unity and integrate all of the person’s basic mental functions, especially memory. Insofar as the person’s previous earthly life has been judged to be of good merit according to the edicts of maat,82 his ‘nature’ is transmuted into an akh which lives eternally in a changeless state in the underworld. Every akh in its eternal changeless state is netjer (divine), like the gods and demons who have always existed in the underworld. The most important idea underlying the Egyptian ‘complex’ of human nature is that there is only one life for all created, finite beings. Hornung states this idea clearly: ‘Of crucial importance to the Egyptians is that no part, physical or spiritual, of a human being ever completely disappears. What death temporarily separates must be reunited in the afterlife, since only a whole, intact human being can experience reawakening.’83 This life is manifest (kheperu) in the earthly realm in the form of an animate, bodily entity, and is manifest in the unearthly life, after the first death, by way of the mummy and 81 Granger

Aristotle’s Idea of the Soul, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1996 pp. 149–50. maat, see esp. Hornung 1992 pp. 131–45. 83 Hornung 1992 p. 107. 82 On

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associated practices, in the person’s akh. On one hand, a human’s akh is a consequence of its previous host in his earthly life having a specific bodily vessel; hence that person’s ka and ba are confined to that vessel during its earthly life. In contrast, a non-human akh (god or demon) is not in any way consequent on its having a specific bodily vessel; rather, a god or demon can assume any bodily form it wills to become manifest in. Hence, a god or a demon’s ka and ba exist independently of any form its power assumes. Nevertheless, all akhu, whatever their origin and previous manifestation, are divine, and hence human beings can be said to achieve a god-like status through death and judgment. (2) Life, death and the soul in ancient Mesopotamia The resources for our attempted reconstruction of the Egyptian picture of human nature consisted mainly of mortuary texts, such as the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts and the various Books of the Dead. Other works of a literary or pseudo-literary character84 were of subsidiary importance and played a lesser role in building up this picture. The situation for an attempted reconstruction of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) picture is nearly the reverse. Inscriptions from tombs and temples associated with the deceased offer only scanty hints about the other world; the bulk of pertinent texts comes from the great Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian stories and myths. Our investigation then will have to focus on those passages about the genesis and/or character of humans in such works as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis the Supersage, Adapa and the South Wind, Enuma Elish, The Descent of Ishtar and others. In order to properly situate our examination of ANE ideas about the human mind, soul and body, it will be helpful to provide a succinct overview of these texts’ historical-cultural contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the longest and most famous ANE narrative; in many episodes it recounts the story of a quest for fame and immortality. Gilgamesh is a hero with ‘an enormous capacity for friendship, for endurance and adventure, for joy and sorrow, a man of strength and weakness, who loses a unique opportunity through a moment’s carelessness’.85 The historical Gilgamesh probably lived about 2800–2500 BCE, but the earliest Sumerian group of tales about him date from c.2150. Old Babylonian tablets, written in Akkadian c.1800, diverge widely in some places from the Sumerian versions, but in other places are the same. During a statesponsored surge of literary collection and invention in the Kassite period (c.1500) many widely scattered tablets were sorted and inventoried. The longest, most complete version of the epic dates from the reign of Assurbanipal in the seventh century and was found at Nineveh.86 The Myth of Atrahasis, ‘the super-sage’ (or ‘ultra-wise’), concerns a figure of immense prestige and antiquity; known by various names and epithets, his fame spread through many lands and languages. In Sumerian he appears as Ziusudra at the dawn of recorded history; in Gilgamesh he appears as Utnapishtim (‘he found life’), the only human, with his wife, ever granted 84 The exact literary status of such texts is hotly debated by scholars; but whatever their character, for our purposes they can at least be clearly distinguished from mortuary texts. 85 Dalley 2000 p. 39; Foster 1987 pp. 21–3; George 1999 xvi–xxii; Segal 2004 pp. 83–95. 86 Dalley 2000 pp. 41–7; George 1999 pp. xxvii–xxx.

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immortality by the gods. He and his wife survived the great flood and hence he can be equivalent to the Greek Deucalion and the Hebrew Noah. The text of Atrahasis in Old Babylonian dates from c.1700 and is one of the rare cases where an author’s name is known – he is Nur Aya, the compiler of still earlier material.87 The Enuma Elish (so named for its opening words, ‘when skies above’) or Epic of Creation is a very well-preserved and lengthy narrative, inscribed on seven tablets, whose composition had been very difficult to date; it could be anytime between 1900 and 1100 BCE. It records in fine detail the assembly of the gods, the creation of the human species, strife among divine factions, and a series of violent struggles for supremacy. Its discovery and translation in the late nineteenth century occasioned a great deal of scholarly excitement about the obvious parallels with Biblical Genesis.88 In stark contrast, the text of Adapa and the South Wind is overly brief and incomplete, since it lacks the final scene(s). It is written in Akkadian and was found in Tell-Amarna in Egypt and Assur on the Tigris River; it dates from c.1400–1300 BCE. It tells an enigmatic story about Adapa (aka Oannes), one of the seven sages (apkallu) in remote antiquity. Adapa was sent by the wise god Ea (later named Enki) to bring civilized arts to his home city of Eridu. The short text recounts how Adapa, while sailing on the sea, offended the gods by stilling the winds. Summoned by Anu the chief god, Adapa ascends to heaven where Anu seems to promise him the reward of eternal life. Ea offers Adapa his help in obtaining this, but then appears to deceive him through ambiguous advice. In any case, Adapa fails to obtain his ambition to live forever, and instead, in the missing ending, he was probably banished to the sea where he had to live as a fish.89 In our present study we will first consider the divine creation of human according to various anthropogonic accounts, then the structure and function of the principal constituents of the human soul, and finally the post-mortem status of the soul in light of ANE cults of the dead. One of the most comprehensive accounts of the divine creation of human being occurs towards the end of the first tablet of Atrahasis. The wise god Ea proposes (in Jean Bottero’s synopsis) the creation of a new being whose clay will be made soft and malleable with the blood of a god, slain for that purpose. As a result, not only will it have both the aspect of the gods and of man, but the divine victim will be chosen to materialize with precision the model that Ea had conceived in his wise mind: the name and the definition of that god … will control the constitution itself of mankind. As the god answered to the name wê-ilu (wêgod), man will be awîlu, a term that in Akkadian means ‘man’. And as he had te¯mu, i.e. a certain aspect of intelligence and of psyche, this wê together with te¯mu will produce in man the (w)etemmu, the ghost, this untouchable and fantastic image of all of us that survives after death and that allows us to participate from afar in the divine privilege, certainly not of immortality, but that of longevity. These features show to what degree the project of Ea was wise, complex subtle, and precise.90

In his recent interpretation of this central genesis text from Atrahasis, Abusch offers 87 Dalley

2000 pp. 1–4. Heidel 1963 Chapter 1, for the history of modern scholarship on the Enuma Elish. 89 Dalley 2000 pp. 182–3; Segal 2004 pp. 74–6. 90 Bottero 1992 p. 241; Bottero 1982 pp. 24–32. 88 See

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an analysis of the key ideas which augment our understanding of these sparse lines. The flesh of the dead god is the source of the human ghost, whether the ‘ghost’ was the dead god’s own ghost, or whether the human ghost came into existence afterward. Abusch says that ‘the creation of the human being from a slain god imparts not only mortality or divinity to man, but also mortality. Mortality is inherited with the flesh itself.’ Since the gods do not die by their nature but only through an act of violence, the chosen god must be killed by his peers. In ANE stories about the prehistoric deluge, the human species comes to acquire the natural tendency toward death. Abusch insists that the god’s te¯mu is his intelligence or understanding, and that in combination with the god’s blood and the utterance of his name, humans come to acquire intellect, which ‘survives after death in the form of that ghost … [it] unites the two periods of human existence, for it is exercised during life in daily actions and is present after death phonetically as part of etemmu’.91 In other words, since te¯mu is part of the word etemmu, a god-like intellect is part of the human’s spirit. In addition, the dead god’s flesh and blood are mixed with clay; but Abusch claims that either clay or blood is superfluous, since other anthropogonic texts speak only of two ingredients. The original text’s stipulation of three ingredients is significant because, although the ghost adheres to the human body, it is meant to be immaterial or spiritual. The conflation of two originally separate accounts serves a purpose, however, for ‘while the clay retains the older function of matter, the god’s blood and flesh represent the divine sources from which, respectively, the life-force and nature of man, on the one side, and the body and ghost, on the other are created’. There seems to be some conceptual slippage in this inference by Abusch, since it equates flesh with body (without any clear reference to body in the text) and identifies mind with ghost. Despite this, he says that this passage ‘expresses the notion that the mind and body derive from the god’. Since the next line mentions the heartbeat, the structure of the whole account is: ‘Mind: inner, heart, blood, intelligence. Body: outer, body, flesh, ghost. The blood is the dynamic quality of intelligence, and the flesh is the form of the body that is imposed on the clay.’ The dead god’s te¯mu reflects the blood, the etemmu the body; the blood transmits human life and intellect, the flesh provides the bodily form, which is itself preserved and continued by the ghost. When natural death occurs, the blood is gone, but the form remains and continues in the hereafter.92 Abusch’s exegesis of the first tablet of Atrahasis leads to the following hypothesis: while the clay represents the material form of man and serves as a base, the blood and flesh transmit respectively the life and kinship of the god. That is to say, the blood serves as the force which preserves and imparts to the living the characteristic quality ‘god who had a plan’, and thereby provides the life principle and intelligence, while the flesh brings forth both the mortal and immortal ghost, the ghost of man and the memorial to the god who had been slain. From the god’s blood comes the person, the self; from the god’s body, the ghost.93 91 Abusch 1998 pp. 367–9, where he acknowledges the textual ambiguities; see also his earlier article, Abusch 1995 p. 588. 92 Abusch 1998 pp. 369–71. 93 Abusch 1998 pp. 380–81.

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The imparting of life-force takes care of the chief god’s injunction to bring about balatu (lifespan) in this creature, and the memorial to the dead god takes care of the notion that the creature’s etemmu should not forget its origin. However, one cannot help but puzzle at the equivocation in the notion of an immortal and mortal ghost; if the latter refers to the human mind, then it is not the same thing as the former. In any case, Abusch concludes by stating that in these passages, ‘the flesh defines physical identity, the body, and therewith the ghost, and places human being in relationship to the past, while the blood, and therewith the intelligence, defines the personality or living identity, and continues into the future through the blood (seed). Thus the personal god and the ghost may be drawn together for purposes of understanding the Mesopotamian construction of human nature.’94 Several comments on this interpretation are called for: first, a thing can have a body without having flesh, that is, when it is a non-living, inorganic thing. Flesh is not some other thing added to a body, but the manifestation of life-force in the body. Hence, the more plausible construal of this text is that clay comprises the human body which, with the admixture of the god’s blood confers life-force, and hence the body appears as human flesh. Whatever the character of the god’s body, its immortal blood confers life on humans through its quasi-immortal flesh. Its flesh is quasiimmortal in that through the god’s violent death his flesh loses its immortal property and renders its recipient, the human creature, intelligent and limited. The human thus ‘inherits’ the dead god’s flesh in the only way in which it can contain or include it in its nature, as the likeness or sign of an entity not bound by death, but still deceased – its etemmu. The human etemmu is as passive after its host’s death as the god had been active, as ignorant in the underworld as the god had been cognizant in the heavens. In addition, Abusch’s interpretation leaves out one of the single most important ingredients in the creation of human being, according to this same passage in Atrahasis: divine spit. Since this text is central to the ANE ‘complex’ of human nature it is quoted here in full; our discussion and interpretation follow. When the younger gods complain of their heavy workload for the elder gods, the divine counsel decides to take action. They summon the goddess Mami (also known as Nintu) who, with the crafty god Ea’s help, devises a plan to make a creature, ‘a primordial human’ (lullû amelu), that will bear the yoke of the gods. Ea says that he will purify himself by washing. ‘Let one god be killed’, he says, ‘so that all the gods may be purified by cleansing. From his flesh and blood, let Nintu mix it with clay. Then a god and a human will be mixed together in clay, so that we will hear the drumbeat forever. Let there be (or become) a spirit (etemmu) from the god’s flesh (shīru). Let it proclaim a living [thing] as its sign, and so that this is not forgotten [there is] a spirit.’95 The divine assembly agrees to her plan, make their purifying 94 Abusch 1998 p. 383; on the notion of personal god, see Jacobsen 1976 pp. 155–64; and Schmidt 1996 pp. 70–72, 123–5, 211–14; on parallels (and even contamination) from Atrahasis to Greek epic, see Burkert 2004 pp. 34–41. 95 An ambiguous and perplexing couplet: Dalley translates this, ‘let her proclaim it as his living sign, and let the ghost exist so as not to forget (the slain god)’, Dalley 2000 p. 15; she quotes Moran who translates this as ‘Let her inform him while alive of his token, and so that there be no forgetting, the ghost shall remain’, in Dalley 2000 p. 36 note 12; Abusch translates

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ablutions, and have the chosen god killed: ‘Then Nintu mixed his flesh and blood with clay, and for the rest of time [they would hear the drumbeat]’.96 She summoned all the gods and then she ‘cast spit upon the clay’ (ru’-tam id-du-ú e-lu ti-it-ti); only after that does she say that she has completed the task they had set her. All the gods applaud her and give her the epithet Be¯let-ilī, ‘mother of the gods’. Ea and Mami enter the house of destiny, where all things are assigned their purposes or ends, and she recites an incantation, prompted by the wise Ea. With the birth-goddesses (midwives) in attendance, Ea stamped on the clay,97 Mami nipped off fourteen pieces, and from seven males and seven females she produced the human race. Let us take note of some salient features of this account: 1 Like all the other gods, the slain god had been purified by washing; bathing and washing rituals appear in cultic and magical settings in order to remove outer and inner impurities.98 2 Twice the slain god is said to have te¯mu, and from him humans are granted etemmu; there is clearly some connection between the two words; if the former refers to ‘personality’ or ‘person’, the connection between ghost or spirit is not straightforward. 3 It is the flesh of a dead god used in the mixture, and whatever one might say of a living god’s flesh, viz. that it is immortal, cannot be said unequivocally of a dead god. 4 It seems more likely, as Abusch argues,99 that the god had intelligence or intellect and that a human’s etemmu is its mind, the agency or power of forming plans. 5 The human etemmu is the sign for this creature in its life or life-span (ba-alta), not in its life-force (naphistu); there is a subtle distinction between the two words. 6 In ANE thought a graphic or pictorial ‘sign’ (ittu) is causally and really linked with what it denotes.100 Hence the human etemmu is a real, causal part of the creature in the same way as a sign is a real part of that which it signifies. 7 The gods would hear the heart’s drumbeat ‘forever’, not because a human is immortal, but because the human race would multiply and continue indefinitely.

this as ‘to the living creature, let it make known its sign, that there be no forgetting let there be a ghost’, Abusch 1998 p. 365; and Lambert & Millard: ‘Let it proclaim living (man) as its sign, so that this be not forgotten let there be a spirit’, 1969 p. 59. 96 Lambert & Millard were baffled by the use of uppu (drum) in this context, 1969 p. 152 note 214; Dalley, Abusch and others plausibly surmised that this refers to the heartbeat, see Abusch 1998 p. 366 note 9 for detailed analysis. 97 Dalley speculates that this refers to the practice of brick–making as the sign of civilized life, 2000 p. 37 note 15; contra Lambert & Millard who thought it had something to do with the birth–stool. 98 Von Soden 1994 pp. 197–8. 99 Abusch 1998 p. 378; in agreement with Bottero on this, 1992 p. 242. 100 See, for example, Izr’eel 2001 pp. 131–5.

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8 The mother goddess’ task is complete only after she has spit upon the clay, blood and flesh mixture; spit is one of the crucial ingredients for the human creature; this is the only human genesis text that mentions spit.101 9 In Egyptian, Archaic Greek and ANE thought, spit was considered to have ‘magical’, strength-endowing properties; it was also employed to ward off evil forces.102 10 The mother goddess nips off fourteen pieces of clay mixture and fashions them as figures or models of humans; here is an archetypal idea behind the phrase ‘the spitting image’, that is, the exact replica of someone made by mysterious or magical means. The important role of divine spit in the creation of humans does not have many instances, though the idea of life-giving power in spittle is attested more often. The generative power of divine spit is attested in a Hittite cosmogonic myth which has clear parallels with the Babylonian pantheon.103 Alalu the First God was usurped by Anu the Father God and Alalu went down to Dark Earth, the Underworld. Anu’s reign as King of the gods is contested by Kumarbi (first equated with Enlil) and they engage in several running battles. Kumarbi bites off and swallows Anu’s penis which ‘unites with his insides like bronze’. Anu declares that Kumarbi has been impregnated with three new gods:104 Teshub the Storm God, the Tigris River, and the noble Tasmisu. Anu then flees to the skies to hide from Kumarbi’s wrath. Kumarbi (secondly identified with Marduk) ‘spits out from his mouth spittle mixed with semen’. The text is badly broken here but Kumarbi seems to spit this mixture into the earth at or near Mt. Kanzura. He then goes to Nippur in Babylon where he waits for seven (or nine) months, the standard gestation period. At this point each of the three embryonic deities discusses with Kumarbi which of the bodily openings they shall emerge from, that is, which orifice is ‘the good place’. One god, now named in Sumerian AGILIM (= Marduk?) effects his delivery, claiming seven (or more) virtues from various divine agencies. Without any prior mention, the god Ea now appears in his role as divine counselor. Ea speaks with Kumarbi’s insides, offering advice about ‘the good place’ for the next god to be born from. Instead of (or in addition to) the Tigris River, the valiant king KAZAL (‘lust’) is born from his skull, and then (although the text is again broken) the third being, Teshub the Storm God, is born. 101 Tigay drew attention to the omission of spittle from the closely parallel text in Gilgamesh, but does not make any inference about the meaning or function of spit, 1982 p. 195 note 10; see several related genesis texts side by side in Heidel 1963 pp. 61–81. 102 See W. Crooke, s.v. ‘saliva’ in ERE vol. XI pp. 100–4; English ‘spit’, ‘spew’ is from Latin spuo, sputum, itself from Greek ptuo¯ LSJ rev. edn 1968 p. 1549; Latin saliva is perhaps related to an earlier root from which salveo, salvus, etc. meaning ‘preserve’, ‘good health’. 103 Güterbock 1948 and 1961 in his 1997 pp. 40–42, 55–56; and Hoffner 1990 pp. 40–43; on Hittite religion in general, Wright in RAW pp. 189–96; on the Kumarbi cycle, Wright in RAW pp. 191–2. 104 There may be two groups of three gods, as Güterbock points out: the first group are Teshub, Tigris and Tamisu (who is not mentioned again); the second group are the giants Agilim, Kazal and Mt. Kanzura.

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Kumarbi demands that Ea give him his child and says that he will eat Teshub when he is born. Kumarbi tries to eat some rock, but it hurts his teeth. Next, Teshub is delivered and the fate goddesses close up the good place (an orifice) ‘like they would mend a garment’. The midwives prepare Kumarbi for the birth of Mt. Kanzura, after which Ea (perhaps) makes a prophecy, like Anu before him, that Teshub will overthrow Kumarbi. The next column abruptly alters the setting and characters, but it appears that Wagon’s penis (instead of Kumarbi’s) has been ingested by the Earth; the goddess Earth then sets out for Apzuwa (= Babylonian Apsu) and asks for Ea’s advice. After ten months she gives birth to two sons whom Ea approves and installs with royal garments. Güterbock remarks that the final birth scene, which may or may not provide a euhemeristic ancestry for the line of mortal kings, follows from Kumarbi spitting out Anu’s ingested seed into fertile ground.105 Obvious parallels have been drawn between this myth and Hesiod’s Theogony: where Anu = Ouranos, Kumarbi = Kronos, Teshub = Zeus, and the three giants = the Titans. According to Hesiod’s version, Kronos castrates Ouranos, Kronos warns that his son will overthrow him, Kronos devours his children (except Zeus), the mother of Zeus deceives Kronos by substituting a rock which Kronos spits out, and the rock becomes an object of cult worship.106 The Hittite cosmogony in the Kumarbi myth is pertinent to our discussion for several reasons: the emphasis that it places on the generative power of divine spit; the internal ‘location’ of divine powers in the cosmic body, and the light it casts on the complexive functions manifest in the Hittite royal funerary custom. Aside from these brief and isolated lemmas, some sense of the relevance of spit to the human genesis account can be teased out through a careful analysis of the episodes in the Assyrian Creation Story (Enuma Elish) when compared side by side with the sequence in Atarhasis. The table below presents the relevant events in the Atrahasis account (on the left side) in their original sequence; the events from the Enuma Elish are listed according to the order in which they appear (on the right side) with prefixed numbers which refer to the correspondent elements in the Atrahasis account. Atrahasis, Tablet I 1. The gods summon Mami107 (or Nintu) I.192 2. They instruct her to create human 3. So that the gods can be released from toil 4. Nintu asks for Ea’s help I.201–3 105 Güterbock

Enuma-Elish, Tablets IV–VI Marduk kills Tiamat IV. M. defeats Qingu, one of the rebellious gods IV. M. retrieves destiny-tablets IV. (20) Tiamat’s spittle108 [does something] V.32

(1948) in 1997 p. 41; but he is more cautious later (1961) in 1997 p. 56. Güterbock (1948) in 1997 pp. 45–6; West 1997 pp. 285–305; Beckman in RAW pp. 336–9. 107 Mami in Akkadian means ‘matrix’, matter in its guise as mater and hence materia. 108 The additional tablet is badly damaged; but it appears that Marduk uses all of Tiamat’s bodily parts to ‘create’ earthly features, for example, rivers, springs, winds, rain, and so forth, even heaven and earth. Hence, one can infer that her spittle must have been used to create something, perhaps the human species. 106

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5. Ea offers his plan to the assembly I.204–5 6. that one of the gods should be killed 7. Ea has a purifying wash I.207 8. Nintu will mix clay with 9. the dead god’s blood and flesh I.210–11 10. so that god and human will be mixed I.212–13 11. so that a heartbeat will be heard I.214 12. so that a ghost will come from god’s flesh I.215 13. it is his living sign (?) I.216 14. a ghost is a memorial to dead god I.217 15. Ilawela takes purifying wash I.222 16. the gods slaughter Ilawela I.224 17. Nintu mixes his flesh with blood & clay I.225–6 18. [Reprise as fact of the plan in I.210-5] I.227–30 19. Nintu summons the gods I.232–3 20. Nintu casts spit on clay mixture I.234 21. gods give her epithet Mother-of-allgods I.247 22. the gods enter the house of destiny I.249 23. Ea treads on clay (= makes bricks) I.252 24. Ea and Nintu chant spell I.253–4 25. Nintu nips off clay pieces109 I.256 26. She assists in delivery of first humans I.260

M. presents destiny-tablets to Anu (or Ea) V.54–5 M. makes images of Tiamat’s creatures V.60 As signs (=statues) that will not be forgotten V.61 (4) M. offers his plan to Ea VI.4 (8+9) to mix blood & make bones (10) to produce primeval human VI.5–7 (5) Ea tells Marduk his plan VI.12 (6) that a god should be killed, so that (12) humans can be created (from him) VI.14 (19) Marduk assembles the gods VI.17 (16) the gods kill Qingu VI.32 (18) Ea creates humans from Qingu’s blood VI.33 (3) humans release the gods from toil VI.34 (22) Marduk assigns decrees to Anu VI.41 (23) the gods make bricks to build city VI.60 [Among the many epithets given to Marduk:] (14) cults & shrines are reminders of him VI.114 (13) created humans, life-form that breathes VI.130 (12) His name is the protective spirit VI.150 He is the god who gives life VI.152 Who restores damaged gods (i.e. their statues) as if they were his own creation. VI.153 (24) Who revives dead gods with pure spells VI.154 (7) He is the pure god who purifies our path VI.157

Some of the central elements of the story of human genesis in Atrahasis appear in the first tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh,110 though they are subsidiary to the 109 These clay pieces are the husks or shells for the human ‘ghost’, that is, animated statues. 110 Andrew George’s superb new edition includes several recently discovered tablets, as well as exact translations (with apparatus) of some otherwise hard to find Sumerian and OB fragments.

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principal narrative, which tells of the initial encounter between the prototypes of civilized and uncivilized humans.111 According to Elena Cassin’s recent study, the name awîlum signifies an elaborate form of the simple human creature called lullû. The difference which the creation myth offers between the two creatures is instructive. Lullû is a living being; above the social plan, the stature of lullû is that of an urmensch, whereas awîlum is the city-dweller, a freeman of the superior classes of society. In certain cases, awīlum may designate the chief of a state or a village – a king. This antinomy between two categories of humans expresses itself in a mythic form through the two principals, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Their original settings are described as quite different – the mountain and the desert. The desert is the habitat of demons and is opposed to cultivated and irrigated territory. This is the main reason why the village is enclosed by walls. The way of life of lullû Enkidu is very different from the way of life of awīlum. Enkidu does not know how to bend his knee,112 or how to sleep in a bed. The bed in this context has multiple connotations: it is an important element of urban civilization; it signifies the conjugal bond, it means that one can trace legitimate descent, that is, the stock or family. The way Enkidu feeds himself is diametrically opposed to those who live in the village. He feeds on herbs and grasses by grazing on them like the beasts; he sucks milk from the gazelles’ breasts. He does not know meat as food nor the cooking of foods. All this and more is in sharp contrast to Gilgamesh, the prototype of civilized human; where Enkidu is a creature of nocturnal silence, Gilgamesh is described as an articulate, luminous creature.113 Enkidu, a hybrid being, comes from the union of two beasts who express savage nature; it seems that he is a type of perfect savage. It is in the desert that he becomes a hunter. His appearance is alarming: a strange being, half-human, half-beast, who befriends savage beasts which he then captures and kills. A village prostitute seduces Enkidu and they copulate for six days and seven nights. The first stage of his passage from lullû state to awīlum state is overcome by ordinary copulation. Afterwards, he ‘sets his face’ toward the gazelles who then run away; he loses his hairiness as well as his ability to run fast. He has acquired knowledge and become wise; the prostitute says that, in gaining knowledge, ‘he has become like a god’.114 The second stage of his passage occurs when he accepts the prostitute’s invitation to come to the village. Having entered their houses, he eats bread and drinks beer. Tasting these two foods allows him to take part in sedentary civilization since bread and beer are synonymous with cerealist culture. After this he sings and his features brighten: the song, in contrast with noise, is discourse according to norms. By successive stages Enkidu leaves the somber zone where he used to live. He is no more a creature of nocturnal silence, and has become a creature of song and light, like Gilgamesh.115 In the final section Gilgamesh attempts to secure the plant of 111 George

1999 pp. xxxii–xxv; Segal 2004 pp. 83–9. remarks that this phrase may mean either that he is ignorant of plowing or that he does not know any type of submission, 1982 p. 201 note 10. 113 Cassin 1987 pp. 36–8; see also Tigay 1982 pp. 198–205; Foster 1987 pp. 23–7. 114 On this phrase, see Tigay’s comments, 1982 p. 212 note 57; and in Hittite ritual, van den Hout in Bremmer 1994 pp. 46, 56. 115 Cassin 1987 pp. 37–40; Tigay 1982 pp. 205–13; see also Bottero 1992 pp. 193–4. 112 Tigay

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rebirth (or healing), but fails to do so.116 The Legend of Adapa presents some unusual problems for our attempted reconstruction, not least because the surviving texts do not include the final episode. But the very message of the story has baffled scholars: depending on how one interprets the god Ea’s words to Adapa it is either a deliberate deception or a regrettable misunderstanding. Adapa, one of the seven apkallu or great sages, offends the gods when he charms with potent words the forces of the winds – he breaks the South Wind’s wing. Adapa is called before the chief god Anu in heaven where he is offered food, water, a garment and ointment. Food and water are internal elements and signs of hospitality, whereas garment and ointment are external elements, as well as signs of mourning. Where food and water represent ordinary life matters, things shared with animals, clothing and ointment represent civilization, things that distinguish humans from animals.117 The crafty god Ea has already advised Adapa that when he is offered these things he should refuse them. When he arrives in heaven the two gatekeepers are surprised at his appearance, as though he were in mourning for the dead. Does his appearance as a mourner signify that he has made a transition from one world to the other? When he is brought into the audience hall Anu does indeed offer Adapa bread and water, which he refuses, and a garment and ointment, which he accepts. Anu is amazed that Adapa has turned down the chance to become immortal, and sends him back to earth. But this brief synopsis obscures many ambiguities. Did Ea deliberately deceive Adapa so that he would be cheated of what he desired? Or did Adapa offend Anu by refusing the god’s hospitality (bread and water) so that Anu punished him by denying him immortality? Further, when Ea mentions ‘bread and water’ is it the same bread and water that Anu later offers? In her notes to the text, Dalley says that an Akkadian pun on the word ‘heaven’ changes ‘bread of heaven’ into ‘bread of death’. She also speculates that ‘Ea appears to be advising Adapa to accept the rites of a dead man, but they can also be seen as the first tokens of hospitality. Thus Ea may trick Adapa with a double entendre into accepting from Anu the fate of mortality.’118 In other words, it may be symbolic death for an ordinary human to eat and drink in heaven since he might be confined there and not permitted to return to earth.119 In a comprehensive monograph on the text, Izreel argues that the gods have already recompensed Adapa for lacking immortality by giving him wisdom or intelligence, a god-like property that separates him from the animal world. The most telling sign of Adapa’s intelligence is his power of speech; it was through words of power that he was able to intervene with nature and it is this violation that annoys Anu: ‘Ea is the one who made Adapa what he is. Ea gave Adapa wisdom, which was his own signature attribute … Ea’s wisdom was realized in material knowledge and craftiness. In addition, Ea was renowned for his skill in finding clever solutions to

116 See M. L. West’s provocative parallels with the Iliad, 1997 pp. 336–47; Burkert 2004 pp. 21–7, 41–6. 117 Izr’eel 2001 pp. 121–2. 118 Dalley 2000 p. 188 notes 9 and 10. 119 Izr’eel 2001 p. 138; in brief, Segal 2004 pp. 74–6.

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mischief, whether gods’ or humans’ – in many instances through trickery.’120 On this interpretation, Ea outwits Adapa’s overweening ambitions by resorting to ambiguous speech, allowing Adapa to use that very skill to thwart Anu’s plan to punish Adapa by giving him what he wants. The final text in which we will examine the ANE concept of human soul is The Descent of Ishtar, an Akkadian myth from c.1500–1800; the Sumerian version, The Descent of Inanna is attested much earlier.121 In the corpus of Assyrian prophetic texts from Nineveh in the seventh century one can discern the lineaments of a concept of the immortal soul associated with an ecstatic mystery cult; some of the central symbolism for this cult appears in the myth of The Descent of Ishtar. The Finnish scholar Simo Parpola has laid out a striking and controversial set of claims based on twenty-five years of study of these and related texts. Here it is only possible to summarize the main points of his theory. 1 The Assyrian prophecies are integral parts of a larger religious structure, the ecstatic cult of Ishtar, an esoteric mystery cult which promised its devotees salvation and eternal life. 2 This cult had a sophisticated cosmogony, theosophy, soteriology and theory of the soul which were hidden from the uninitiated by a veil of symbols, metaphors and riddles. 3 The cornerstone of the cult’s doctrine of salvation was the myth of Ishtar’s descent to the underworld in which the goddess plays the role of the NeoPlatonic cosmic soul. 4 One central component of this doctrine was the concept of the heavenly perfect man sent for the redemption of mankind and materialized in the institution of earthly kingship. 5 The idea of perfection embodied in the king implied total purity from sin, implicit in the soul’s divine origin and personified in the figure of the goddess Mullissu, queen of heaven, the Assyrian equivalent of the Christian Holy Spirit. 6 The king’s perfection in the likeness of god made him a god in human form and guaranteed his resurrection after bodily death; he was a Christ-like figure loaded with messianic expectations. 7 The central symbol of the cult was the cosmic tree connecting heaven and earth, which contained the secret key to the psychic structure of the perfect man and thus to eternal life. 8 In addition to meditation on the main symbols, the worship of the goddess involved extreme asceticism and mortification, which when combined with other ecstatic techniques could result in altered states, visions and inspired prophecy. 9 The cult of Ishtar, whose roots are in the much earlier Sumerian cult of Inanna, has close parallels with the Canaanite cult of Asherah, the Phrygian cult of Cybele and the Egyptian cult of Isis. 10 These cults have clear affinities with Hellenistic, Graeco-Roman and Gnostic ‘systems of thought’, that is, esoteric teachings and/or myths, which are 120 Izr’eel 121 Dalley

2001 pp. 126, 131. 2000 pp. 154–62; Segal 2004 pp. 80–82.

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derived from earlier ANE traditions: ‘It is likely that all of them had been significantly influenced by Assyrian imperial doctrines and ideology which … continued to dominate the eastern Mediterranean world down to the end of classical antiquity.’122 These are very strong assertions: Parpola begins his analysis of the evidence for the Ishtar cult in the Assyrian prophetic corpus by stating that the multiplicity of ANE gods and goddesses in the texts is largely illusory. He argues that the pantheon of separately named deities conceals the real state of affairs: there is only one universal god (Asshur), the totality of all the gods, whose plural manifestations emanate from one source; these emanations were hypostatized as individual deities. The principal ANE divine scheme was Father-Mother-Son; the goddess Ishtar is Asshur in his mother aspect. In the seventh-century Assyrian prophecies, however, Ishtar is ‘at the same time also an entity distinct from Asshur: a divine power working in man [the prophet] and thus bridging the gulf between man and god’. The goddess is also distinct from the prophet as well, but through her action she makes him an agent of god, and for a fleeting moment, makes him one with god: ‘The goddess has to be understood concretely in terms of her human manifestation: she is the emotion (libbu) moving the prophet, the breath (sha¯ru) issuing from his or her ‘heart’, and the voice (rigmu) and words (dibbī) emerging from his or her mouth.’ Her place in the divine body is correlated with her momentary human manifestation since in both cases she occupies the heart. Hence, Ishtar can be identified with the spirit or breath of Asshur who inspires the prophet and speaks for the one god through his lips, much like the spirit of Yahweh.123 The main lines of the Assyrian cult of Ishtar can be reconstructed from the extant texts: The overall goal of the cult was the purification of the soul so that it would regain its original unity with god. The goal was encoded in the Assyrian sacred tree … [its trunk] symbolized Ishtar as the power bridging the gap between heaven and the material world … For a spiritually pure person, union with god was believed to be possible not only in death but in life as well … To achieve this union, one had to emulate the goddess, particularly in her sufferings and agony, which provided the starting point for her salvation. One way of doing this was self-inflicted bodily pain, whipping oneself to the point of fainting, stinging oneself with pointed spindles, cutting oneself with swords and flint knives, and even turning oneself into a eunuch in a frenzied act of self-mutilation … [The purpose] was to turn the devotee into a living image of Ishtar: an androgynous person totally beyond the passions of the flesh.124

The myth of The Descent of Ishtar has nothing to do with rituals of fertility or seasonal growth and decay, Parpola declares. Rather, like the goddess Hekate Soteira in the Chaldean Oracles and the Neo-Platonic cosmic soul, the myth of Ishtar’s descent is addressed to ‘the question of human salvation from the bondage of matter’. The Ishtar story also prefigures the narrative in the Gnostic tract, The Exegesis of the 122 Parpola

1997 pp. xv–xvi. 1997 p. xxvi; support for this thesis, notes on pp. lxxx–lxxxiii. 124 Parpola 1997 p. xxxiv; on Ishtar as trunk of the cosmic tree, p. xcv note 133; on the cult’s sexual asceticism and androgyny, pp. xcvi–xcvii notes 138–40. 123 Parpola

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Soul (NHC II.6) which describes the descent to earth of Sophia, the virgin soul, captured in the material world and polluted in her body. In The Descent of Ishtar the first half of the myth presents the soul’s heavenly origin and defilement in the material world; the latter half outlines the soul’s way to salvation. The goddess is a two-faced entity, ‘descending, she is the holy spirit entering the prison of the body; ascending, she is the penitent soul returning to her celestial home’. In sum, ‘it seems certain that the Descent of Ishtar contained the basic tenets of an ecstatic mystery cult promising its followers absolution from sins, spiritual rebirth, and resurrection from the dead. These rewards were in store for those who were ready to follow the path of the goddess from prostitution and suffering to the wedding in heaven.’125 Having examined the many ways in which human and divine souls appear in mythic texts, let us look more closely at the principal components of human nature according to ANE patterns of thought. In addition to the various meanings associated with the posthumous etemmu, there are several important terms associated with the living human being. One of the principal components, napishtu, has already been mentioned in our discussion of humans’ mortal status, but here one needs to lay out the specific nuances of the ANE use of this term. Seabass observes that the Akkadian usage of the verb and the noun ‘turns out to be extraordinarily similar to that of [Old Testament] nepesh, even though their range of meanings is greater. The similarity is all the more striking in that the sumero- and akkadogram for napishtu in Hittite represents totally different notions.’126 The Hittite language employed extant Sumerian and/or Akkadian cuneiform signs to stand for different syllables with their own meanings. Seabass isolates the similarity in both verb and noun usage: the Akkadian verb napa¯ shu, ‘to breath freely, to relax, to expand, to become abundant’, comprises a range of meanings greater than the Hebrew verb. The Akkadian noun naphistu comprises a range of meanings that one could associate with concrete and general object-classes, such as sustenance and provisions. Van den Hout offers some insight about this concept in his analysis of the Hittite royal funeral: At the point of death body and soul diverge: the body either decays or is cremated, but the soul, after having entered the body at birth, leaves. The ‘soul’, as it is traditionally rendered, is the means through which communication between those left behind and the dead remains possible … The ZI is any individual’s, whether dead or alive, seat of emotional and rational thoughts. GIDIM is the ‘(ghost of the) dead’, that may be invoked after death and through which contact can be established. Their relation may be compared to that of soul and body before death, that is, the GIDIM may have been conceived of as more ‘corporeal’ than the soul, as some immaterial but potentially visible body. In this respect, one could recall the encounters of Odysseus and Aeneas in the underworld with their mother and father respectively. Seeing them, talking to them, they both want to embrace their parent, but grab with their arms empty space.127 125 Parpola 1996 pp. xxxi, xxxiii; he says that Sarah Johnston’s analysis (1990) of the Hekate Soteira cult clearly shows that she ‘directly translates Mesopotamian Ishtar’, p. xc, note 105; for the ANE idea of three grades of soul, he cites Pausanias (32.4) who said that ‘the Chaldeans and Indian sages were the first to say that the human soul is immortal’, p. xc note 106. 126 Seabass in TDOT vol. IX p. 499. 127 Van den Hout, in Bremmer 1994 p. 44; van den Hout in RAW pp. 483–5; on parallels in

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According to the entry in the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), the principal meanings of napishtu break down as follows.128 (1) It signifies ‘life, vigor, vitality, or good health’; the instances cited indicate it is the principle of life, that is, the lifeforce. This further signifies ‘the granting or bestowing of life’; there are numerous instances which refer to gods or goddesses who bestow life on humans, but there are as many cases where it is an authority (often the king) who grants life by not killing someone. It can be used in the privative to mean specifically the ending of earthly life, usually in conjunction with some conditional event, for example, starving, evil magic, execution, and so on. (2) It can be used to signify an abundance or surplus of life-force in the first sense; hence, it is most commonly translated ‘good health’. (3) It is used as a mass-noun for all living beings, though only in New Babylonian is this extended to include animals. (4) It can be used to mean ‘someone’, or in the privative sense, ‘no one’, and the latter is found (again) especially in cases where someone has been killed (one rare instance predicates this of an unborn child). (5) It can be used as a count-noun, that is, in the same way that Hebrew nepesh or Greek psyche¯ can mean numerable living things. (6) Naphistu was often used for the firstperson intensive, that is, periphrastic for oneself, for example, the injunction to guard someone’s life as you would your self (= your own life). (7) It has the concrete meaning derived from the verb-form napa¯shu for breath, that is, as the main indication or manifestation of the life-force within. (8) In an externalized general sense it means that which provides one with vitality and good health, viz. provisions or sustenance. (9) In an internalized concrete sense it means the throat or neck as the conduit for breath and food. And closely related to ‘throat’, it can mean (10) an opening or air-hole of any kind. Seabass remarks that neither the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary nor von Soden’s Handbook cite the meaning ‘soul’; despite its close association with Hebrew nepesh, ‘Akkadian does not yield an anthrop[ic] term, as can be seen from the rarity with which the word is used in the sense of “self’’’ and above all from the meanings for concrete objects.129 In addition to napishtu as life-force, Akkadian also employed a range of meanings associated with libbu, the heart; according to the entry in the CAD the principal meanings of libbu break down as follows.130 (1) It can mean the ‘heart, abdomen, entrails or womb’; the large number of instances cited cluster around the thorax, that is, that which holds or contains the heart-organ, or the abdomen, that is, that which holds or contains the intestines. Hence, it can be used equally well and equally often for an animal’s stomach or an inner organ, especially where it is removed as an offering. (2) It can be used in an externalized general sense to signify the inside or inner part of an area or building or region (this use parallels that of napishtu in no. 8 above). (3) It has an abstract internal sense that varies over several ‘complexive’ ideas: ‘mind, thought, intention, courage, wish, desire, choice or preference’. Amongst the large number of instances cited here definite trends can be detected: the Royal Ancestor cult in Mari, see Malamat 1989 pp. 96–107; Schmidt does not find evidence in Mari texts that the ancestral cult of the dead supported their benign powers, 1996 pp. 41–6; on evidence of ancestor cults in the ANE, van der Toorn in RAW pp. 424–7. 128 CAD vol. N pp. 296–304. 129 Seabass in TDOT vol. IX p. 501. 130 CAD vol. L pp. 164–76.

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that outward actions or words can belie inward intentions; that the heart is the locus of reflection and deliberation; and that it is also the seat of the emotions. In the last case, a common phrase that means ‘it pleases me’ is written as ‘according to my heart’ or ‘it is my heart’s wish’. When this same sort of phrase is negated, that is, ‘not according to (or with) my heart’, it means bad luck, especially with regard to the gods’ wishes or desires, hence, ‘it is against the god’s heart’. The third principal component of human nature is etemmu; this term has been discussed above in connection with a group of related human genesis myths. Within the whole corpus of the CAD entries for etemmu,131 it is never associated with a living human, though the gods and demons each have (or are) etemmu. (1) The gods can become the form of an animal as its etemmu, that is, the god can assume the appearance of an animal: ‘The etemmu of Enlil is a wild ass, the etemmu of Anu is a wolf, Be¯l made them roam the steppe, his (Anu’s) daughters are gazelles … the etemmu of Tiamat is a camel.’132 Whereas Egyptian gods’ bau sometimes appear in animal forms von Soden points out133 that ANE deities were always depicted with a human form, only demons had animal heads. Despite their not being represented with an animal form, the ANE gods’ etemmu is still more similar to the Egyptian divine bau than to their akhu. (2) Demons are only ever etemmu, or perhaps one should say that they are always etemmu-like entities. The CAD lists various demontypes such as utukku, she¯du, ra¯bisu, lillu, lamassu, and so forth, whose company the dead human etemmu can join. (3) The gods, demons and human etemmu are the objects of rituals and prayers; the etemmu are offered food and drink; they are said to eat, drink and move about.134 (4) They can sometimes be seen or heard, especially at night and/or in dreams; they can be summoned or called forth, by the mushêlu or ‘spirit-callers’, magicians who would later be called necromancers. (5) The etemmu are often said to cry out and trouble the living, either in an unspecified manner, that is, by making someone unhappy or depressed, or in a very specific manner, for example, when its ‘hand seizes someone’.135 ANE medical therapy even attempted a diagnosis of seizure symptoms: when the epigastrium is hot, the intestines are inflamed, and the neck (or temple) is painful.136 In sum, unlike the divine etemmu, the human etemmu after death is more like the Egyptian akh than the ba, since neither the etemmu nor the akh appears to play any role in humans’ ordinary existence. However, there are definite differences: (a) the ba and the ka are present in the earthly and the unearthly life, (b) there are no posthumous roles for naphistu or for libbu as there is for the ba and ka, and (c) the 131 CAD

vol. E pp. 397–401. vol. E p. 400. 133 Von Soden 1994 p. 175. 134 For details of ANE festivals for the dead, demon–types, and protective magic, see esp. J. A. Scurlock, ‘Baby–snatching Demons, Restless Souls, and the Dangers of Childbirth’, in Incognita 2 1991 pp. 137–85; J. A. Scurlock, ‘Magic Uses of Ancient Mesopotamian Festivals of the Dead’, in Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995 pp. 93–107; and G. Castellino, ‘Rituals and Prayers against “Appearing Ghosts’’’, in Orientalia 24 1955 pp. 316–32; and Segal 2004 pp. 98–103. 135 According to Abusch, an Assyrian scholar conjectured that this ‘syndrome’ indicates epilepsy, Abusch 1998 pp. 380–81 note 41. 136 CAD vol. E pp. 400–1 sec. 2; on ANE medicine, Abusch in RAW pp. 456–8. 132 CAD

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ba provides the ‘mechanism’ that allows for the akh to eat, drink and move about, whereas nothing seems to play this role for the etemmu. The principal constituents of human being, aside from the body’s flesh and bones, are the organic life-force, the emotive and deliberative heart, and the divinely endowed spirit. Given the implication in the Adapa myth, that humans are denied immortality because they already have intelligence, it remains to be seen what kind of posthumous existence dead souls are accorded in ANE cults of the dead. The ANE concept of human mortality excludes the idea that the worthy dead will achieve an eternal condition like an Egyptian akh, which is a transfigured, light-like being. As The Legend of Adapa explicitly states, the archetypal human had striven for an immortal condition but had been denied this by the gods. Nevertheless, the principal ANE texts concerned with humans’ post-mortem status have much to say about the underworld, the realm of the gods and demons. According to Bottero, Even after his death man did not escape control and seizure by the gods. What remained of him was, besides a body that returned in stages to its first state of ‘clay’, a type of duplicate that was shady, volatile, and airy, a ‘phantom’ (etemmu) that entered its new abode through an aperture in the tomb, and rejoined the enormous group of its predecessors on earth in the Netherworld, an immense, dark, silent, and sad cavern where all had to lead a gloomy and torpid existence together.137

Insofar as all the dead entered the underworld, the ANE picture is similar to the Egyptian view; but it is dissimilar in describing their condition as the inverse of their earthly life. Although there are no CAD entries for the etemmu of human beings this does not contradict the Atrahasis statement that humans were formed from the etemmu. In the Atrahasis anthropogony the creative goddess uses the etemmu of a dead god in the creation of human being. Perhaps the English word closest to etemmu is not ‘ghost’ or ‘intellect’ but rather ‘spirit’, along the lines of the New Testament use of pneuma (or spiritus), but with the strong proviso that the etemmu did not have a chance at a ‘second life’. Despite their relegation to the underworld Bottero says that this did not prevent [the dead], however, from returning once in a while to scare and to torment the forgetful survivors who did not provide them with support for their sorry existence in the form of libations and small food offerings. But if they had changed in shape, they had not changed in condition: although they were passive and useless, they were still the subjects of the ruling gods in their Anti-heaven where everything that was positive on earth in some way assumed a negative aspect.138

Bottero links the ANE concept of life-force to the idea of ‘breath’, according to one of the letters from the Royal Archive of Mari. This letter refers to slaughtering an ox ‘by making him blow out his last breath’, that is, breath given to organic beings during their life, but at death the breath left forever. Despite the centrality of breath as a condition for their life on earth, the ancient Mesopotamians were reluctant to

137 Bottero 138 Bottero

1992 p. 230; on the ANE ideas about the afterlife, see Katz in RAW pp. 477–9. 1992 p. 230.

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consider that bodily death brought about ‘the definitive and total disappearance of the dead’. They would have observed that someone who died continued to exist as a person. But what remained of him, since clearly the visible and tangible parts of his being, the body (zumru, pagru) became a corpse (shalamtu) and disintegrated relatively fast by the disappearance [or dissolution] of the flesh (shîru)? What remained was first of all what they considered to be the framework and the support of a live person: the bones (esemtu). From this idea derives the extreme respect for tombs, evidenced especially by the funerary inscriptions. One had to leave in peace (nâlu, pashâhu) what still constituted the dead person, who was as if asleep (salâlu) when death overtook him. This is why the remains of ancestors were taken along when one left the country.139

Bottero offers his expert interpretation of the ANE term etemmu Something else remained that represented the dead more immediately and undoubtedly more essentially: his phantom, his ghost, his soul, his spirit … what was usually called his etemmu … [These] are more or less vague silhouettes, imprecise and phantom-like, but still recognizable and poorly distinguished from the material and actual objects of vision and real perceptions. They have given the idea of the ‘survival’ of the dead in an airy, impalpable form that resembles the person, represents him, and substitutes for him (ardanân mîti).

The ANE idea that the posthumous ‘form’ of a living person was a simulacrum of that person’s corporeal ‘nature’ and that, in its apparent shape, was hard to distinguish from sensible objects is remarkably similar to the character of the Homeric psyche¯ of dead heroes. Homer’s archaic use of eidolon (image) and phasma (phantom) offers the key to understanding an ambiguity in two senses of psyche¯, as life-force and as double. The dead Patroklos’ psyche¯ and the dead Antikleia’s psyche¯ are exact replicas or simulacra of the living person’s corporeal appearance. The psychai of the dead heroes share the same characteristics as these phantoms, replicas and simulacra; they are not the actual psychai of living beings, but the mere similitude of the being who had been ensouled. There is no survival of the human soul after the individual’s bodily death, no other form of human life beyond or after the extinction of humans’ life-force.140 In some ANE divinatory texts the titular god of dreams is called ‘Light-Breath’ (ziqîqu), a word also used to indicate the immaterial quality of a ghost, ‘a kind of double, evanescent, untouchable, and disincarnate, to which people are reduced after death’. In the treatise on the accidents of daily life the dead ghosts are also called ‘the dead as if they were alive’ (mitu kima balti); ‘one saw them, they frightened, they cried out, they stood at the end of the bed, they entered and left, etc’.141 Jean-Pierre Vernant expresses the distinction between psyche¯ as life-force and psyche¯ as double in clear terms, allowing one to see that two classes of entities were involved: 139 Bottero

1992 p. 271. of HCM pp. 20–22; see also Bremmer in Bremmer 1994 pp. 91–101. 141 Bottero 1992 p. 108. 140 Summary

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History of the Concept of Mind, Volume 2 The ‘double’ or ‘shade’ does not have the ontological status of an autonomous, selffounding being, the human individual’s soul minus its host’s body. A double is a wholly different thing from an image. It is not a ‘natural’ object, but it is also not a product of the imagination: neither an imitation of a real object, nor an illusion of the mind, nor a creation of thought. The double is a reality external to the subject and is inscribed in the visible world. Yet even in its conformity with what it simulates, its unusual character ensures its substantial difference from familiar objects and the ordinary setting of daily life. The double plays on two contrasting levels at the same time: at the moment when it shows itself to be present, it also reveals itself as not being of this world but rather as belonging to an inaccessible elsewhere.142

The ANE word etemmu has its own peculiar ambiguity as well, since it relates this kind of double to the world of demons. The Sumerian cuneiform sign for gedim, which became the Akkadian etemmu, is hard to distinguish from the Sumerian sign udug ‘demon’, which became the Akkadian utukku. On some occasions both the double and the demon are given the epithet ilu ‘god’ or ‘divine one’, much like the Egyptians could refer to gods, demons and human akhu with the word for ‘divine’, netjer. According to Bottero, whatever the hypothetical relation between the living person and its etemmu, two things remained after death: ‘one was plainly material, numb and paralyzed and then subject to gradual erosion – his skeleton; the other formal, airy, a shady and volatile image of what he was during life, but permanent – his ghost, his phantom, his spirit, his etemmu – active and mobile in its own way … The relations between the two remains were certain and very close, because it still involved the same person who still bore the same proper name after death.’143 One can perhaps regret the author twice using the clause ‘his phantom, his ghost, his soul, his spirit’ to render the idea of etemmu, since stringing together three or four distinct terms as the semantic extension of one word indicates that more than one concept is involved.144 In contrast with an over-determined concept etemmu is an under-determined ‘complex’: either the complexive idea embraces all of the predicate terms collectively as the sum of their parts or the idea can be expressed equally well by any one of these terms as parts. Some indication of how ANE thought viewed the nature of human beings can be gleaned from Mesopotamian texts that describe the conditions of the dead in the underworld. The underworld was characterized in terms diametrically opposite to the ordinary world: darkness replaced lightness, immobility and silence replaced noise and movement, things that are clean and bright by dust and filth. When the goddess Ishtar descends to the underworld, she goes to ‘the house where those who arrive are deprived of light, | where mould is their food, dust their bread | they dwell in darkness, they never see light. | They are dressed like birds, with feathers | while over the doors and bolts dust has settled.’145 Bottero points out that ‘even the gods who lived in this enormous, dirty and dark cavern had something oppressive, severe, and morose about them … They were not “dead”, however, and they laid claim as 142 Vernant

1991 p. 187; for Bremmer’s interpretation, see his 1994 pp. 100–6. 1992 p. 272. 144 Elena Cassin glosses etemmu as ‘l’esprit du mort, le revenant ou le spectre. L’imagerie de l’etemmu n’est pas fixée une fois pour toutes, mais peut varier’ 1987 p. 238 note 12. 145 Dalley 2000 p. 155; a clear echo of this in a Hittite lament, in Hoffner 1990 p. 33. 143 Bottero

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much as their celestial counterparts to respect and to the opulent life free of worries.’146 This comment is significant in two respects: first, unlike the Egyptian deceased who joined the ranks of gods and demons by becoming netjer like them, the Mesopotamian deceased did not partake in the divine ‘life’ of the gods. Second, it is the living gods in the underworld who are said to enjoy good health, mobility and appetite; in the Atrahasis genesis account, humans are created from a dead god’s flesh. Having entered the underworld, the deceased are informed that they are under the laws of that infernal domain. There has been much debate on whether or not there is any evidence that the dead are then subject to some sort of judgment (as the Egyptian dead were). Bottero claims that arguments in favor of this claim are ‘doubtful and false’, although the Annunaki, the senior group of gods, were indeed presented as judges in numerous texts and temple monuments. However, in the Mesopotamian context, rendering verdicts and delivering judgments ‘covered a semantic field that is broader than the simple exercise of judicial power’. In contrast with a judicial decision, the divine posthumous judgment assigned or imposed a destiny on the dead without necessarily taking into account the merits and demerits of each individual. Hence, there is nothing like the Egyptian dead becoming an akh, semi-divine, perfect and whole; all dead humans in ANE terms became etemmu, confined forever to the underworld: ‘The etemmu were thought to have an existence in their new kingdom that was nothing but dull and negative; asleep, powerless, immobile, and cadaverous, they were similar to the nocturnal birds that live in “holes” and caverns. They had nothing but mud to sink their teeth into, and as drink only the foul water of low-lying grounds – conditions entirely opposite to those of living people on earth.’147 Our conjecture about what accounts for the radically different status between the Egyptian dead and the Mesopotamian dead is that the former ‘complex’ of human nature included the ka and the ba, psychic agents or powers which made possible the dead person’s continuance as a whole being. Despite the fact that the recently deceased could be expected to have only a privative existence, the family survivors were obliged to do more than just mourn the dear departed. It should be pointed out here that there is no ANE parallel to Egyptian mortuary practices, especially to the essential custom of embalming the corpse and preserving the main organs, though there are clear parallels in their funerary practices and ancestral cults.148 Proper burial was required, whether in the grounds of the cemetery, near the temples, or in the family home. It was considered a severe punishment for the dead to be left unburied, a penalty reserved for criminals and outcasts.149 The newly dead were provisioned with furniture, vessels, ornaments, tools and magical seals; traces of food and drink have also been found. Bottero makes a curious comment on these funerary items: not only was it thought that the dead person was still ‘attached’ to these things, but these things would be ‘useful to him in his new existence’. Given the dead person’s entirely immobile, silent and 146 Bottero

1992 p. 277. 1992 p. 278. 148 Where the corpse could not be preserved, in Hittite practice an effigy took its place, van den Hout in Bremmer 1994 pp. 45–6, 63–4; van den Hout in RAW pp. 483–5. 149 See inter alia Abusch 1995 pp. 589–90; Segal 2004 pp. 101–3. 147 Bottero

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deprived state, it is hard to understand what they thought would be useful about these goods. The survivors had yet other duties, all of which involved protecting the dead person’s ‘survival’ in the underworld. First, they had to ‘pronounce his name here on earth so that he would not sink into oblivion’. This meant that, ‘in the land where a name was the same as a substance, one called upon his person, and conferred reality, presence, and existence upon him. It is in the same spirit that one always had to treat him with respect, with honor, with regard.’150 Second, the survivors were charged with supplying food and drink for the dead; a special pipe has been found in tombs for pouring liquids inside. Third, there were family ceremonies, often held at the end of each month, the central element of which was a communal meal to which the deceased were invited. Bottero says that this is how their survivors regularly provided the etemmu with the goods that were considered to be indispensable for maintaining them in their feeble existence. Those who were neglected by their descendants were pitied, even if they had been properly buried, and also those who had no one to prevent them from sinking into oblivion and who would therefore lead a very miserable ‘life’ in the Netherworld. They were pitied, and they were feared, as were all the dissatisfied in the Hereafter.151

Although some ANE experts may disagree about some of the details of these funerary artifacts and ancestral practices, two outstanding problems are posed by the inferences above. First, given the explicit characterization of etemmu as lacking by their very nature in mobility, appetite, and so on, what was the function of the specific offerings of food, drink, and tools? Second, in what way is the existence (or survival) of the dead, at least those that are properly buried, dependent on these offerings, given the presumption that all human dead, by their very nature, entered the underworld and became etemmu? What was the purpose of making offerings when the dead would be just as they are anyway? Again, in contrast, the Egyptian picture seems to be more coherent: the dead were thought to enjoy or take part in the unearthly ‘double’ or analogue of earthly pleasures and pursuits, so the simulacra of food and drink were indeed nourishment for them as ‘doubles’ of their earthly selves. Just as the living could seemingly act upon the dead souls’ existence through offerings, so also the dead souls could seemingly act for or against the living. ANE folklore is replete with stories about the dead souls’ visits to the living, where the dead appear like phantoms, where they make noise, move about, and cause fear and anxiety: ‘In spite of their belief that death indicated the definitive transfer to another universe, the ancient Mesopotamians … could not resist the fantastic imaginings that these experiences aroused.’ The souls of the dead could act among the living either for or against their favor. The dead souls’ helpful attitude had its basis in supportive family relations and the gratitude the dead would feel towards their carers. But the etemmu were also assimilated with the demonic infernal realm and hence were endowed with some supernatural powers to accomplish the missions the 150 Bottero 151 Bottero

1992 p. 281. 1992 p. 282.

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gods assigned to them.152 Etemmu were thought to be able to intercede with the infernal judges on behalf of the livings’ petitions for health and wealth. The dead were also thought to have more extensive and insightful knowledge than the living, especially with regard to the future. Skilled exorcists (mushêlu or ‘recallers’) could make the etemmu re-ascend from the underworld in order to be consulted about their privileged information.153 But the dead souls’ actions in this world could also be harmful to the living. The etemmu could appear at night, in dreams or otherwise, and terrify ordinary folk, inflicting mental and physical torment. ANE magical texts are full of spells to counter or annul the bad effects of evil etemmu (lemnu) whose numbers seemed to be much greater than the good ones (damqu). Nasty spirits were also called foreign (akhû), that is, those without family ties, those who had been improperly buried or never buried; those who had been executed were prone to becoming like this. They were vagrant spirits, wandering about, ‘looking for trouble’. The means and circumstances by which the dead returned to the land of the living are never explained, but its occurrence implies that the gods permitted it. There is an unresolved paradox at the heart of the ANE concept of the underworld and its denizens: ‘Even though it was called the Land-of-no-return [the ways] were filled with a perpetual coming and going of the dead.’ On the obverse side, it was a realm of forces hostile to humankind; on the reverse, it was a caricature or shadow of earthly activity, where action is replaced by inaction, happiness by melancholy, and light by darkness.154 In conclusion, any hope of resolving some of the difficulties brought out above by an appeal to conceptual analyses of the terms involved is likely to be frustrated. An adequate understanding of the way in which the ANE texts use words like naphistu, libbu, etemmu, and so forth, must take account of cognitive ‘complexes’ not concepts. Human nature cannot be ascribed either immortality or mortality as though these opposed ideas were polarized over the presence or absence of one property or condition, for example, being death-bound. Although it is certain that a human’s earthly life was bound by death, it is not true that life as such was bound by death. The fact that the archaic idea of death signified a transition between one state and another does not imply that some aspect of human being was free from termination, that it was separable from the host’s body at death. Although it may seem incongruous from our modern point of view, the archaic ‘complex’ was more or less upside-down. The true or real being of all living things was manifested in various forms, one of which was an individual’s earthly form qua organic being; hence, an individual’s existence in that form was bound to its earthly life, and not to its death.

152 The ranks of the underworld also comprised ‘dead gods’, that is, those defeated in divine power struggles, according to Schmidt 1996 pp. 212–16. 153 Bottero 1992 p. 283; on controllers of the dead in the pre–Exilic prophets, see Schmidt 1996 pp. 15–54. 154 Bottero 1992 pp. 284–5; cf. Abusch 1995 col. 593.

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(3) Life, death and the soul in the Zoroastrian religion The only extant documents in the Avestan language are the Avestan Scriptures, the sacred writings of the Zoroastrian religion. One set of central texts, the Ga¯tha¯s or ‘Songs’, are considerably older than other texts in these Scriptures. There are numerous lexical parallels between the Avesta and the Rig-Veda, the earliest work of Indian religion, composed in the middle second millennium. The grammar and syntax of the Ga¯tha¯s is decidedly archaic even by the standards of Old Persian and the Indo-Iranian languages, circa the sixth century BCE. Until quite recently standard, uncritical entries in non-specialized reference works routinely stated that Zoroaster’s dates were the early to mid-seventh century BCE.155 As great an IndoIranian scholar as Richard Zaehner perpetuates this legendary date-ascription when he passes along without comment the dates given by Theodore bar Konai156 (seventh century CE) that Zoroaster died 628 years before Christ, or in another version, that Zarathustra lived 258 years before the death of Alexander the Great.157 Another important anchor date is provided by the twentieth-century scholarly identification of two quasi-historical figures, Vistaspa and Hystaspes. In the Ga¯tha¯s, Zarathustra himself identifies his patron as King Vistaspa; Herodotus says that the great King Darius’ father was Hystaspes (Hist I.209); the equation of these two names has become an accepted scholarly premise. Despite Herodotus’ remarkable accuracy158 in recording many historical events, characters and customs, some of them already remote even in his day, he never once mentions Zoroaster.159 However, enormous advances in linguistic reconstruction and textual interpretation of the Ga¯tha¯s in the last half-century have permitted a better warranted date, one which is supported by a wide variety of archaeological discoveries. 155 For example, Ninian Smart says that he lived either in the tenth or ninth century, or in the sixth or fifth century, EEP 1967 vol. 8 p. 380; twenty years later, Gnoli says ‘probably in the beginning of the first millenium’, EER 1987 vol. 15 p. 579; sadly, Alan Segal declares for the eighth century in his most recent book, 2004 p. 176. Most recently, Alan Williams says the Ga¯tha¯s are dated c.1200–1000, REP 1999 vol. 9 p. 872; see also his much longer article in Companion Encyclopedia to Asian Philosophies, B. Carr and I. Mahalingam (eds), London: Routledge 1997 pp. 24–45. 156 This obscure text was excerpted by J. Bidet & F. Cumont, Le mages hellénisées, Paris, 1938 vol. II pp. 104–7; and again by Zaehner 1955 pp. 441–2; analyzed in detail by Benveniste, Monde Orientale, 26 (nd) pp. 170–215. 157 This traditional ascription was examined in great detail (and rejected) by Peter Kingsley, ‘The Greek origin of the Sixth Century dating of Zoroaster’, in BSOAS 53 (1990), pp. 245–65; and again, Kingsley in JRAS series 3, vol. 5 (1995) pp. 182–6, 191–5. 158 Herodotus’ reputation as a conscientious observer and reporter has swung back and forth over the past century; there is a long–running scholarly debate about this issue, one which cannot be broached here. But against the once-prevalent view that he was an inventive and colorful liar, archaeological discoveries in the last two decades in Central Asia, the Trans–Caucasus, the BMAC, and others have substantiated his (often unique) accounts; see the recent impartial comments by Sulimirski and Taylor in CAH vol. III Part 2 new edn, 1991 pp. 547–90; Christian 1998 pp. 123, 134, 141; Vogelsang in CAH vol. I 1987 p. 94; and an overview by John Gould in OCD 3rd edn 1996 pp. 696–8. 159 On Herodotus not mentioning Zoroaster see Boyce 1982 pp. 41–2, 68–9; Kingsley 1995 pp. 182–6; and Gershevitch’s 1967 Preface to AHM pp. 15–22.

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J. Varenne says that ‘philological comparison shows that the dialect of the Ga¯tha¯s is of the same linguistic stratum as that of the Veda, estimated to have been composed about 1500 BCE, if not several centuries earlier’.160 Varenne also says that it can be plausibly assumed that Zarathustra lived in Chorasmia (Khorezm), south of the Aral Sea, or in Sogdiana, the upper basin of the Amu Darya River, whose language during the period 1400–1000 BCE would have been similar to the Ga¯thic language. Sancisi-Weederbug, one of the great Achaemenid scholars, organizer and foundereditor of the Achaemenid History Project, states that the traditional mid-seventh century date must now be rejected, and that the best evidence now supports an approximate date for Zarathustra’s florit of c.1000 BCE.161 In the first edition of the first volume of her monumental History of Zoroastrianism (1975), Mary Boyce quite confidently asserted that the Rig-Veda was composed around 1700 BCE and that the archaic language and social context of the Ga¯tha¯s indicate that Zarathustra could not have lived later than about 1000 BCE.162 But in the corrected second impression (1989) she added two pages of changes; here she says that the Rig-Veda date should be 1500 BCE and Zarathustra’s dates are before 1200 BCE. In the second volume of her history (1982) she reaffirms the latter date: ‘One fact seems certain, which is that Zarathustra must have lived before the time of the great migrations, when wave after wave of Iranians … moved southward off the steppes to conquer and settle in the land now called Iran; probably, that is, before 1200 BC.’163 In his recent thorough assessment of Soviet-era and post-Soviet excavations in Central Asia, David Christian underscores the distinctive elements of early Iranian religious rituals, evidence for which has been found in the BactriaMargiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) and Oxus Civilization in the period 2000–1700 BCE. Some of these discoveries bear striking similarities with the rituals and context of archaic Zoroastrian texts; ‘there may have been a direct link between the religious traditions of Margiana in the second millennium and the reformed religion of Zoroaster.’164 Viktor Sarianidi, one of the great Russian archaeologists of Central Asia, especially the BMAC, argues that the extensive evidence for fire rituals, libations and animal sacrifices strongly support the view that the socialreligious context for the emergence of Zoroaster’s reforms is in this region in the mid-second millenium.165 One of the most important developments in the last twenty years in our understanding of early Iranian religion and Zarathustra’s time and place are the significant discoveries in Central Asia and the BMAC. Central Asia is bounded on the west by the Caspian Sea, on the south by the Kopet Dag Mountains, on the north by the Aral Sea and the Kazakh steppes, and on the east by the plains and valleys that rise toward the Pamir Mountains. The BMAC is located within this area, its sites clustered around oases at or near river deltas. According to H. P. Francfort, the Bronze Age civilization of the western region of Central Asia emerged after 2500 160 Varenne

1992 p. 104. 3rd edn 1996 pp. 1639–40. 162 Boyce 1975 pp. 3, 190; 2nd imp., 1989 pp. 348–9. 163 Boyce 1982 p. 3. 164 Christian 1998 p. 114; see also pp. 138–9. 165 Sarianidi 1994 p. 397; Francfort argues that Zoroasters dates cannot be earlier than 1500 BCE, 1994 p. 416. 161 OCD

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from the indigenous cultures, assimilating elements from Turkmenia, the Indus River, early Iran and early Central Asian cultures. The BMAC flourished in Central Asia in the Oxus Basin 2300–1800 BCE; the Oxus culture itself is notably different from the better-known ANE complexes found in Mesopotamia, the Indus River and Avestan culture, but it is certainly related to Iranian-Elamite elements and deeply rooted in the BMAC: ‘The symbolic system of the Oxus Civilization is an original expression of a more general Eurasian mythological universe of very ancient origin, which can be termed shamanistic.’166 Until the early 1990s Soviet archaeologists had worked in this region for decades in near-complete isolation from the worldwide scholarly community.167 Frank Hiebert was one of the first (if not the first) Western archaeologists, ably assisted by his Russian colleagues, to explore the BMAC region. In his first major report, he said that specific elements of BMAC images appear in later icons and myths of Iran, South Asia and even the eastern Mediterranean (the Mitanni). This group of symbols is associated with a shared Indo-Iranian mythology reflected in both Vedic-Indian myths and Avestan-Persian myths: BCE

In the BMAC, other iconographic precursors of later Indo-Iranian mythology and Persian religion (Zoroastrism) are found. These include narrative scenes of power and domination, images of narcotic plants, and the use of amulets on bullae. BMAC artifacts include black/white (steatite/alabaster) symbolism evoking the structural dichotomy of good/evil and purity/pollution that emerges in later Zoroastrian ideology.168

For several decades Viktor Sarianidi was one of the foremost Soviet archaeologists in this region. In one of his recent articles he summarizes some of the finds pertinent to our present investigation. In the Gonur Depe shrine his team found a small round structure filled with white ash, tokens of a fire ritual. In another room coated in white gypsum, three ceramic vessels were found to contain traces of ephedra and hemp (cannabis); ‘these plants’, he said, ‘were used in the preparation of the haoma/soma type hallucinogenic beverages for use in libations.’ During the next building phase the shrine increased in overall size and new rooms were added, rooms whose purpose remains unclear. However, another gypsum-coated basin was found, containing the remains of a large amount of hemp. At several places in the Togolok sites, small shrines were discovered with similar hemp-laden vessels, firecenters, drainage for animal sacrifice, and white rooms. Sarianidi infers that the firecenters, the white rooms, the ceramic drug-vessels and blood-drainage channels are all evidence of a specific set of cultic rites:169 ‘Iranian shrines of fire originat[ed] in the Margiana temples of the late Bronze Age … These rituals were later included in the reformed view of the new prophet, Zoroaster, and his religious doctrine … Only

166 Francfort

1994 p. 406. As had the Chinese archaeologists in Xinjiang Province in the Northwest, the Autonomous Uyghur Region; Victor Mair was the first western scholar to be permitted to enter and study the Xinjiang finds. 168 Hiebert 1994 p. 139; on the past set of images he cites J. Chosky, Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrism, University of Texas Press, 1989. 169 Sarianidi 1994 pp. 389–93; next quote pp. 396–7. 167

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this area may claim the role of the motherland of the most ancient world religion, Zoroastrism.’ In addition to the distinctive early Iranian beliefs about human beings in this and the next life, there are important elements of ritual practice. Although it would take our investigation too far afield to consider the details of animal sacrifice and fire worship, one crucial element of Iranian orthopraxy reveals much about their attitude toward the human soul: the haoma ritual. Herodotus has already testified to the Persian custom of hemp-seed sauna, and recent discoveries in the BMAC confirm the ritual use of hemp and ephedra in the ‘white rooms’. The Ga¯tha¯s twice make reference to some activity connected to ritual consumption of haoma and there are many texts from the Achaemenid period onward (including one entire hymn) which discuss this ritual in detail. There is some consensus that the haoma ritual was the focal point of the Iranian domestic cult and that, together with animal sacrifice, it captured and repeated the original creation of living things. Boyce summarizes what can be gleaned about the haoma plant from the Avestan texts: it was green, with pliant shoots, fragrant, fleshy or milky; when crushed it yielded an exhilarating drink. It seems to have been distinguished from other ordinary intoxicants which caused drunkenness and the warrior’s frenzy (Avestan ae¯shma, Latin furor), something that the prophet condemned. However, in the ‘Hymn to Haoma’, it is entreated as a divine being to whom one prays for extra strength, health and victory over one’s enemies. It seems that there may have been two ingredients in the haoma preparation: at least one of which needed to be ground, crushed or pulverized. In the Persepolis Treasury from the early fifth century BCE nearly one hundred pestles and mortars have been uncovered, apparently votive objects, inscribed with cultic formulae.170 There has been a great deal of speculation about the actual plant(s) used in the original haoma-soma ritual and whether or not Zarathustra condemned its cult or turned a blind eye. In addition, it also seems quite clear that, after the Zoroastrian faithful moved west (perhaps from late Achaemenid, but certainly from the Parthian period onward), some portion of the ritual preparation was altered; in many cases only ephedra was used. Aside from the Greek references to hemp and/or poppy seeds, the key ingredient seems to have been an hallucinogenic compound – and ephedra is a strong stimulant, but not psychotropic. In the Xinjiang province ephedra is called ‘yellow hemp’ (although it is dark green when growing); recent excavations in that region’s graves have shown that almost every body was buried with clumps of ephedra.171 R. G. Wasson, in his landmark 1968 work, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, collected an enormous amount of evidence mainly from Indian texts, customs and artifacts, and argued strongly for the fly-agaric mushroom. One of main problems with this hypothesis is that mushrooms are not pounded or crushed, nor do they fit well with the various references to twigs. But the whole ancient drug scene changed dramatically in 1989 with the publication of Flattery and Schwartz’s Haoma and Harmaline.172 After an exhaustive analysis of the botany, medicine, 170 Boyce

1975 pp. 158–60; see Zaehner 1961 pp. 85–90; Varenne 1992 pp. 109–10. W. Barber, The Mummies of Urümchi, London: Macmillan, 1999 pp. 159–62. 172 D. S. Flattery & M. Schwartz, Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical Identity of the Indo–Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen ‘Soma’… Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 171 E.

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linguistics and ritual legacies, the authors identified a plant called harmaline, a very potent hallucinogen, which grows abundantly in north-east Iran, but not in the western areas and not in northern India. Hence, the authors proposed that there were two drugs in the haoma ritual, the hallucinogenic harmaline and the stimulant ephedra. Harmaline inspires severe hallucinations (as well as some painful sideeffects), the source of the experience of extra-somatic projection and ecstatic insight, and without the benefit of ephedra would render the officiant unconscious. When these early Indo-Iranians moved away from this area, they could not find any harmaline, and substituted an innocuous ‘look-alike’ plant. Nevertheless, as Gignoux has insisted in numerous articles, the original haoma ritual clearly indicates the influence of shamanistic beliefs and practices which filtered down from the northern Altaic regions in earlier migrations. Zaehner rightly underscores the intimate connection between the haoma ritual and eschatological doctrines when he quotes from the Pahlavi liturgy that haoma makes the human soul immortal and a portion of the animal sacrifice makes the human body immortal: ‘The fine-grown haoma in its pure metal [container] is the glorious earthly haoma blessed by Zoroaster, the symbol of that white haoma called go¯karen from which [springs] the immortality [that sets in] at the final restoration.’ The earthly sacrifice performed by the priests is the representation and repetition of the eternal sacrifice of haoma as the hyperstasis of wholeness and immortality: ‘The Haoma sacrifice and sacrament, then, is in every sense one of communion. The plant is identical with the son of god; he is bruised and mangled in the mortar so that the life-giving fluid that proceeds from his body may give new life in body and soul to the worshipper.’173 With regard to the prophet’s supposed contempt for the haoma ritual (Y48.10, 32.14), it seems more likely, as Boyce explains, that he only objected to non-ritual intoxication. She quotes from the Young Avestan text (Yasht 5.104) where Zarathustra is shown making the required observances: ‘with haoma, with corn (*yava), with flesh, with beresman (twigs), with skilled tongue … with offerings (zaothra), with well-uttered words.’ She agrees with Zaehner that it would be completely contrary to the evidence that ‘a cult denounced by a religious founder should have been adopted by his earliest disciples’.174 The Ga¯tha¯s or ‘Songs’ comprise the oldest, central portions of the Avestan Scriptures; they are contained in sections 28–34 and 43–53. Sandwiched between them is another group of texts, the so-called ‘Seven Sections’ (Haptanha¯iti), generally considered to have been written not long after the death of the prophet.175 Together these twenty-six sections, each designated yasna, comprise the liturgy of the Zoroastrian religion. From the Achaemenid Period onward (522–331 BCE), Zoroastrian priests added twenty-one hymns (yashts) to various deities, of whom the principal seven are known as the Amesha Spentas, ‘Bounteous Immortals’. These hymns are of unequal length and significance; some of the most important for the present study are the following:176 The ‘Hymn to Haoma’, the god of ecstasy; to the 173 Zaehner

1961 pp. 90–91. 1975 pp. 216–88, citing Zaehner 1961 p. 85. 175 See the chapter on them in Zaehner 1961 pp. 62–78; and also Boyce 1975 pp. 263–6. 176 On their sacred texts and liturgy, see Windfuhr in RAW pp. 360–62; Segal 2004 pp. 182–7. 174 Boyce

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Fravashis, the heroic spirits; to Haurvata¯t, that is, wholeness or good health; to Asha, that is, truth or rightness; to Aredvī Su¯ra¯, goddess of waters; to Vayu, the god of wind; to Sraosha, the redeemer or savior (contained in Yasna 57); to Khwarenah, the glory of the Iranian nation; and, perhaps the most famous and best studied, the ‘Hymn to Mithras’, god of war. After four decades of important investigations into the origins and central ideas of Zarathustra’s ‘true religion’, the great Indo-Iranian scholar H. Lommel had this to say about the complex links between the Avestan divinities and their creations: ‘For us [today] Good Purpose and the tending of cattle are admittedly two wholly different things. But must it always have been so? Could not at a certain epoch abstract and concrete have appeared to the human spirit as of unified being, the abstract and inner reality of the concrete? So that, for instance, Pious Devotion and the Earth were the spiritual and material aspects of the same thing.’177 In the chapter on the ‘Bounteous Immortals’ in her comprehensive history of the early period of Zoroastrian religion, Mary Boyce attempts to arbitrate between two Avestan ‘concepts’: the divine ‘persons’ in their individual characters and actual, material manifestations of these powers on earth. The Bounteous Immortals, she says, are ‘personifications of what was spiritual and desirable and yet at the same time guardians of the physical world in all its solidity’. The prophet himself was responsible for expressing this insight: ‘Zoroaster wove together abstract and concrete, spiritual and material, seeing mortality in the physical, and apprehending in all beneficent and wholesome things a striving, whether conscious or unconscious, towards the one ultimate goal – the recreation of the [original] harmonious and happy state of being.’178 Zaehner drew a very similar conclusion about Zoroaster’s appropriation and transmutation of the traditional pantheon of Indo-Iranian gods which, he says, the prophet made into ‘abstract concepts’.179 When Zoroaster turned his attention to the Bounteous Immortals, ‘he conceived of [them] not simply as abstract notions but as part of the divine personality itself, as mediating functions between god and man, and as qualities which sanctified man can himself acquire through the Good Mind with which god illuminates him.’180 The Neo-Platonist Plotinus’ metaphysical hypostases are well known, that is, the substantive transformation of abstract timeless ideals (One, Mind and Soul) into something like divine entities. In contrast with this term, one might better refer to Zarathustra’s hyperstases, the substantive transformation of divine entities (the Indo-Iranian gods) into abstract timeless ideals, for example, the Good Spirit, the Evil Spirit, Obedience, Sovereignty, and so on. 177 H. Lommel in Zarathustra: Wege der Forschung. B. Schlerath (ed.), Darmstadt, 1970 pp. 31–2; emphasis added; on Ahura Mazda and the Amesta Spentas, see Boyd & Kotwal in RAW pp. 339–40. 178 Boyce 1975 pp. 220–21; in her discussion of scholarly interpretations of the fravashi of the just dead souls, Boyce shows that Lommel and Soderblom could not sort out what they thought were entirely incompatible concepts; in their words, the ideas involved in this Iranian doctrine are ‘incomprehensible’, ‘inconceivable’ and ‘contradictory’, pp. 128–9. 179 In the section on Zoroastrian religion below this process is called hyperstasis, to contrast it with the more familiar (albeit esoteric and difficult to understand) Neo–Platonic hypostasis, whereby an abstract eternal concept, for example, the One, Soul and Mind, become like gods. 180 Zaehner 1961 p. 71.

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Mary Boyce says that the general character of these various hymns, and their place in Zoroastrian worship, show that the lesser divinities were praised because they had been honored in the original liturgy by Ahura Mazda himself. The yashts are ‘hymns chanted by private individuals or their family priests, but had no place in the “inner” worship of the pari, “pure place”’.181 The yashts contain inconsistencies and interpolated elements, showing the efforts by Persian Zoroastrian priests and exegetes to reconcile the archaic Ga¯thic declarations and prayers with the reintroduction of some rites and epithets either partially or wholly abjured by the prophet himself. Zaehner expresses the contrast between the yasnaliturgy and the yasht-hymns in rather dramatic words: whereas the bulk of the Yasna consists of monotonous invocation of every conceivable divine being, the Yashts are hymns … addressed to various deities singly. They are hymns of praise devoted to the reinstated gods. Most of these gods … belonged to the ahura class of deity before the Zoroastrian reform: few of them had ever been dae¯vas [false gods who became demons]. Like Mithra they were those deities which Zoroaster ignored, without attacking them.182

Zaehner says that the reinstatement of old Indo-Iranian gods through the yashthymns ‘did not do extreme violence’ to the prophet’s own views in the Ga¯tha¯s. He likens the hymnic, private ritual celebration of the other lesser yazatas to the agreeable acceptance by Muslims of their own religion’s saints and martyrs. Another important text, of very mixed character and reputation, is the work known as the Vide¯vda¯t (later corrupted to Vendidad), whose original title in Avestan was presumably Vi.dae¯va.da¯ta, ‘the law against demons’. Unlike the Ga¯tha¯s and the Hymns, this text, in Zaehner’s words, exhibits ‘gross grammatical blunders’ and ‘appalling grammatical confusion’.183 The Vide¯vda¯t is largely absorbed in meticulous regulations to guard against various types of impurity. The Zoroastrian priests of that period compiled ‘dreary prescriptions concerning ritual purity and … impossible punishments for ludicrous crimes’. It seems that ‘the authors are not only writing in a language that is not their own, but are doing so in one the rudiments of whose grammar they had quite failed to master’. Even so, these writers fare better in scholarly repute than the Pahlavi, that is, Middle Persian, authors or editors who, in Zaehner’s scathing words, understood nothing at all [of the Ga¯tha¯s] and did not hesitate to set down a meaningless concatenation of words which was supposed to render the thoughts of their Prophet … Even in the Sassanian period the clergy themselves no longer understood the liturgy they recited; for they freely admitted that the language in which it was written, and which their opponents described as ‘unknown and cryptic, passed all comprehension’.184

Zaehner does not refrain from pronouncing judgment on the aesthetic and edifying character of these three sets of texts: the Ga¯tha¯s have ‘a direct and urgent message 181 Boyce

1975 p. 270. 1961 p. 80; on the ahuras and dae¯vas, Vedic asuras and devas, see pp. 37–40. 183 Zaehner 1961 p. 162. 184 Zaehner 1961 p. 27. 182 Zaehner

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to convey: they are spiritually alive. The later Avesta, and particularly the Yashts, has its moments of freshness and beauty, but it neither fascinates nor awes; while the Vide¯vda¯t … shows no spiritual life at all, only a futile legalistic dualism which, if it had ever been put into practice, would have tried the patience of even the most credulous.’185 In contrast with Zaehner’s rather abrupt dismissal, Boyce deals at length with one of the most important and best-preserved stories in the Vendidad, the legend of Yima, the first human being (like the Vedic Yama and the OT Adam).186 This story contains crucial pieces of the puzzle for reconstructing an early (if not the earliest) version of the creation of the human species, the spiritual versus the material worldstate, and the Avestan attitude toward earthly death and the unearthly afterlife. In addition, the Vendidad records the geographical layout and emblematic status of seventeen lands created by Ahura Mazda, lands headed by Airyanem Vae¯jah, the Aryan (=Iranian) homeland, and its relations with its neighbors. With a more generous gesture, Boyce describes the Vendidad as ‘a collection of miscellaneous pieces of varying antiquity, put together at some relatively late date to form a night office celebrated to smite the powers of darkness’.187 In her own inimitable scholarly style, Boyce has captured the concentric layout of these many separate texts in a near-perfect image. She says that the Seven Chapters came to be enclosed by the Ga¯tha¯s, the most sacred utterances, set around the liturgy to provide it with complete security: And the Ga¯tha¯s themselves were in time enclosed in their turn by the other texts of the yasna, so that the liturgy grew to be like a fortress with many curtain walls, each helping to give protection and greater strength to what lay at the center. It was of the greatest importance that such walls should be strong, that is, that the mathras [sacred utterances] should be properly conceived and spoken, so that the rituals which they accompanied should be fully effective.

She employs another (and cognate) metaphor when she described the formation of the liturgy around the mathras of Zarathustra as something like the development of a pearl; accretions of beliefs around the original seed of truth.188 The Ga¯tha¯s proper, composed presumably between 1200 and 1000 BCE, pose enormous problems for translators, and hence for any interpreters of early Zoroastrian doctrine. These problems are primarily the result of the fact that they constitute the only linguistic corpus for the archaic Avestan language. First, the texts contain some unique words (hapax legomena) which occur only in the Ga¯tha¯s and whose meanings remain elusive.189 Semantic clues are sometimes found in cognate Central Asian languages, such as Sogdian, Khotanese, and so forth,190 but these are 185 Zaehner

1961 p. 171. 1975 pp. 93–6; Zaehner on Yama/Yima 1961 pp. 132–41. 187 Boyce 1975 p. 274. 188 Boyce 1975: for the ‘fortress’ image, p. 165; and for the ‘pearl’ image, p. 24. 189 For some details of these problems, see Insler’s Introduction to the Ga ¯ tha¯s 1975 pp. 5–17. 190 For the literature in these Central Asian languages see the relevant chapters in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.) Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 part 2 1983: on Sogdian, Dresden, pp. 1216–29; on Khotanese, Bailey, pp. 1230–43; on Khwarazmian, Mackenzie, pp. 1244–9; on 186 Boyce

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themselves often tentative. Second, some grammatical constructions are underdetermined, leaving the exact word-order unspecified. Third, syntactical rules are not completely understood, sometimes permitting whole lines to be read in more than one way.191 Despite these deeply entrenched difficulties, in this context we must make an effort to discern the earliest lineaments of the Zoroastrian concept of the human soul by avoiding as much as possible the temptation to fill in the blanks, or read between the lines, by recourse to texts composed five hundred years later. The archaic elements of the Bundahishn, for example, appear compatible with the Ga¯tha¯s only insofar as, at those places where ideas and praxis are parallel, they are in accord and not in discord – but that is surely begging the question as to what constitutes the genuine Zoroastrian view. One must also resist the temptation to elucidate aporiae and lacunae in any reconstructed Avestan doctrine or practice by recourse to near-contemporary testaments from the Rig-Veda, although the two cultures did indeed have a common ancestry. At some time in the mid to late third millennium, the Indo-Aryan peoples separated into two or more large groups, one moving east and south to eventually settle in the north-west of India, the Iranians moving west and north, separating into smaller nations (or tribes). In the early to mid-second millennium, these two large groups still shared many customs, language and social structures. An enormous amount of research has been devoted to examining their respective pantheons, mythologies and ritual practices. But the emergent circumstances of their new lifeways also brought divergences in these same areas; differences arose in response to their new situations. To explain or illustrate gaps in the early Iranian or Avestan picture by analogy with Indian material is to fall into an etiological trap. Insofar as substantial parallels have been demonstrated, this is taken to be sufficient grounds for gap-filling and supplementing the more meager Avestan texts. But then there are occasions where incongruities appear (for example, burial practices, water rituals, and so on); attempts to sort out the places of poor fit make appeal to otherwise similar patterns and then extrapolate anistropic conditions to explain the lack of congruence. But this line of argument could only work if one presupposes exactly what it has set out to explain, namely, that parallel congruous myths or rituals are expressions of similar beliefs and practices. However, at least to some degree these specific expressions, for example, that fire is the most sacred ‘element’, are bound to either the Indian or Iranian culture itself shaped by those circumstantial factors which support their separate, and not parallel, formation. With these cautions in mind let us turn our attention to the opening song in the Ga¯tha¯s. Yasna Y28 is a series of entreaties addressed to Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, and his two most effective forces, truth and good thinking. Zarathustra supplicates the Lord for power, strength and care for himself and his supporters, whose purpose is to defeat the forces of deceit in this world, and thus bring about the ‘foremost existence’, the best world-state. Here, Zarathustra says that the Lord Bactrian, Gershevitch, pp. 1250–60; for an overview of recent research, see N. Sims–Williams, ‘The Iranian Languages’, in A. G. Ramat (ed.) The Indo–European Languages, London: Routledge, 1998 Chapter 5. 191 For some striking examples of the last, see Gershevitch’s notes on variant translations in AHM 1967 pp. 160–2, 166–70, 188–91, 202–3, 206–7, and so forth.

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in granting his request satisfies the demands of good thinking (xratu¯ m mananho¯) and the soul of the cow (geushca¯ urvanem). The divine cow is Zarathustra’s image for a perfect world governed by the Lord’s virtue-powers. The next song (Y29) has been subjected to the most intense scholarly scrutiny; several characters speak and play roles in a dramatic scenario. Zarathustra alone understands the woeful condition the world has fallen into under the forces of deceit; he alone realizes that help for humans can come only through the intercession of the Wise Lord. The cow asks the Lord(s) why she has been created if she is to remain in oppression under these cruel and violent forces. The virtuous spirit appeals to truth to answer this entreaty, for truth knows that the proper judgment would be that the cow’s creators should provide a protector for the cow. Zarathustra is the one best suited to this task, and he also wishes to spread the good repute of these ahura forces amongst his fellows. He promises the Wise Lord that if the ahuras intercede on the cow’s behalf then all humans will give the Lord piety (a¯rmaitish) and obedience (seraosho¯). The cow is an important icon in the Ga¯tha¯s; in one respect, Zarathustra seems to draw an analogy between cattle guided by the herdsman (pastor) and humans guided by the Wise Lord. In another respect, the cow is a good thing in itself, a creature which provides nourishment in the form of milk and butter.192 The prophet uses cow and herd imagery throughout the Ga¯ tha¯s; horses are rarely mentioned, and there is no mention at all of grains, cereal, plowing or harvest of any kind.193 G. G. Cameron argued that cattle were to the early Iranian pastoralists what sheep were to the early Christians: pacific, gentle creatures often harried by marauders; they represented the community of the righteous in the eyes of the Lord.194 The Ga¯thic cow-imagery is also connected with the oblique references to animal sacrifice and the oblation of animal fat (for which see below). Zarathustra condemns cruelty toward cattle, the laying waste of pastures, riotous slaughter, and driving off herds. These were ‘actual happenings of his own time and place, which also symbolize the sufferings of goodness everywhere’.195 The good person seeks the ‘luck-bringing cow’ and other forms of bounty, that is, healthful increase, the basic meaning of the key word spenta. Boyce remarks that the true believer’s attitude toward the cow symbolizes the Zoroastrian ethic: the herdsman (va¯ strya) cherishes, rather than destroys, and needs patience and self-discipline; he also needs courage to guard his charges against depredations. One of the most significant historical indications is the distinctive pastoralist setting, an era before the horse-riding nomads drove them out. In this context, Sarianidi mentions the studies of V. Livshits, ‘the preeminent scholar on the Avesta and the origins of Zarathustra’ [in Russian], who suggested that, in the Late Bronze Age, ‘nomadic cattle breeders gradually took up agriculture’; Sarianidi comments that ‘new archaeological data strongly imply a new approach to the problem of Zoroastrian origins’.196 192 Milk

and butter are signs of ‘wealth’ on this earth, e.g. in Y49.5, 49.10, 50.8, 51.1. As Boyce astutely points out, 1975 p. 14 and pp. 210–11; see also Insler 1975 pp. 136–46. 194 Cameron, ‘Zarathustra the Herdsman’, in Indo–Iranian Journal, 10, 1968 pp. 261–81. 195 Boyce 1975 p. 210; distinctive beliefs tied to their semi–nomadic lifestyle, 1975 pp. 154–7, something that Zaehner also argues for, 1961 p. 40. 196 Sarianidi, in the Preface to Hiebert 1994 p. xxiv. 193

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In the next song (Y30) Zarathustra posits two primordial ‘spirits’ (mainyu¯), the good spirit and the evil spirit. They are twins ‘in thought, in word, in action’; when they came together, ‘they created life and death’: they set positive and negative conditions to earthly existence. The evil spirit brought about the worst things and the good spirit the best things; the prophet says that the good spirit is ‘clothed in hardest stones’ – a descriptive phrase for the Old Iranian belief that the sky-god’s body is stone or metal-like stone. This statement resembles various Mesopotamian and Egyptian theological utterances about the stone-like composition of the divinecelestial body.197 Into the midst of this conflict between the forces of good and evil, the Wise Lord brought the rule of good thinking and truth. By means of our pious obedience to this rule, the Lord provides body (kerpem) and breath (anma¯) – the syntax here is unclear. The Avestan words kerpem and anma¯ are, of course, cognate with Latin corpus and anima. Although anma¯ occurs only once there is another case of kerpem in the Ga¯ tha¯s where Zarathustra praises one of his noble patrons who has ‘constantly shown the esteemed form [of piety] for the sake of good ideas’ (Y51.17); where dae¯do¯isht kerpem … (and so on) may simply mean ‘nobly embodied … those good ideas’.198 For those who follow the rule of truth there is an ‘easy access’ to another existence (and hence salvation), while for those who follow the false there is no access (and hence destruction). Insler points out199 that body and breath are asyndetic objects of ‘give’ (dada¯t) and the equivalent pair in other verses are astvant and ushta¯na, for example, ‘since you [Ahura Mazda] created body and breath’ (Y31.11), and it is ‘desirable for body and breath’ (Y34.14). Let us attempt to take stock of some of the central Avestan ideas about human nature without reviewing the context and purport of each song. It is the Wise Lord who gives body and breath to humans, who along with other animals have souls (urvān). The human soul is often linked with thinking (mananha) and reason or intellect (xratush). Though the human soul can be misled and follow the false, it can also have (or adhere to) good thoughts and piety through following the truth. The Avestan root-word for thought is manas (and its other cases, mainyush, mainyū, sometimes translated as ‘spirit’); it is the power or faculty of thinking and having ideas (dae¯na). Boyce argues that Avestan mathra (Vedic mantra) means simply thought-instrument, that is, an utterance, specifically a sacred utterance.200 In one case at least (Y43.3), the embodied or material life is contrasted with the mind – astvato¯ mananhasca¯ (in Insler’s translation) – and in another (Y46.18) Zarathustra says that every person must choose between the good and the evil; ‘this is the decision of my will (or reason) and my mind’ – tat mo¯i xrate¯ush mananhascā vicithem. But it is not through possession of, or in accordance with, mana¯ s that humans are differentiated from other beings, since the bounteous immortals 197 On the divine stone-like body, see Boyce 1975 pp. 207–8; in her second volume she says this sky–stone has been identified as a translucent rock-crystal, 1982 p. 3; contra Insler who thinks that this clause means that the faithful person’s adherence to truth is as enduring and hard as stone, 1975 p. 167. 198 Gershevitch prefers ‘shape’ for kerpem, for example, tanu.kerpa, ‘bodily shape’, AHM 1967 p. 181 note 25; but Zaehner says there is no distinction between tanu and kerpa, 1955 p. 131 note 2. 199 Insler 1975 pp. 169–70. 200 Boyce 1975 p. 8; see also AHM 1967 p. 284.

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(amesha spentash) are also sometimes called mainyu¯, for example, the good ‘spirit’ and the evil ‘spirit’. Insler comments that two other words are ‘equivalent’ to body and breath: astvant for kerpem and ushta¯na for anma¯.201 This seems to imply that they are strictly synonymous and there are some cases for the latter pair’s usage that support this assertion. However, astvant and ushta¯na also seem to have a wider semantic field: Zarathustra says that Ahura Mazda made ‘living (things) such that they have ideas, thoughts, [and] reasons, insofar as (or since) he gave them body and breath’ (Y31.11) – gae¯thasca¯ tasho¯ dae¯ nasca¯ thwa¯ mananha¯ xratu¯ shca¯ hyat astvantem dada ushtanem. Much depends on how one reads the prepositions thwa¯ and hyat; nevertheless, having body and breath are material conditions for the presence (or operations) of the antecedent powers. But another passage clearly shows an extension for the two terms which includes an abstraction: Zarathustra entreats Ahura Mazda that ‘truth may be embodied and strengthened with breath’ (Y43.16) – astvat ashem hyat ushta¯na¯ aojonghvat. And in yet another passage he says that the ‘prize’ of a second, better life is ‘desirable for body and breath’ (Y34.14) – vairim astvaite¯ ushta¯nai da¯ta¯ – and given that the second existence is not the replica of the first material existence, body and breath are here tropical extensions. Hence, let us propose that astvant and ushta¯na are the physical and psychical manifestations of the two orders (or states) of being, later called getig and menog202 (for which, see below under the Creation Account). Astvant and ushta¯na are manifest in a living human as its body (kerpem) and soul (urva¯n); it is in virtue of being ensouled that a human can think, have ideas, desires, and so forth. When the human soul is in accord with good thought and piety (Y33.9), he is (or becomes) a virtuous spirit, and this is evident in ‘his understanding, his words, his actions [and] his ideas’ (Y51.21) – hvo¯ cistī uxda¯ish shyaothana¯ dae¯na¯. Zarathustra repeatedly endorses both orthodoxy, ‘right words’, and orthopraxis,203 ‘right actions’; for example, ‘through a virtuous spirit and the best thinking, through both action and word befitting truth’ (Y47.1). Words (mathra) are manifestations of thoughts (manas), just as actions (shyaothana¯) are manifestations of the body in action. In another instance he says that a person brings to realization the best state of the Wise Lord’s good spirit ‘with his tongue, through words stemming from good thinking, and with his hands, through (every) pious action’ (Y47.2).204 In contrast, a person is deceitful and false insofar as bad words are matched with bad deeds. It is in virtue of having reason or intellect (xratush) that humans are able to understand (cistish). H.-P. Schmidt argues that xratush is the stimulating, active counterpart to dae¯na¯ (vision), ‘that intellectual quality which triggers one’s insight (dae¯na¯) or cognition (cistish)’. Insler agrees with much of Schmidt’s analysis but is convinced that xratush ‘signifies will, determination [or] intention far more than a truly intellectual capacity’.205 In the very first verse of the Ga¯tha¯ s (Y28.1) the two terms 201 Insler

1975 pp. 169–70. connection with this contention, see Boyce 1975 pp. 229–30; Zaehner 1961 p. 200. 203 Avestan asha, Vedic arta ‘truth’ in the sense of ‘in accord with order’, and hence similar to Greek orthos, LSJ 1968 p. 1249, and Latin ordo, OLD 1970 p. 1267, sec. 11, order in time and space, sec. 15, established method or practice. 204 See also further instances in yasnas 31.20, 33.2, 34.15, 43.5, 48.4. 205 Insler 1975 p. 327; Schmidt, Zarathustra’s Religion and his Pastoral Imagery, Leiden: 202 In

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complement each other, but have an especial significance for Zarathustra’s chosen purpose: ‘[his] conception has given him insight into the possibility of a perfect world, but he also requires the determination to bring this to realization, and this determination stems from his good thinking. Will and mind must work in concert … “this is the decision of my will and my mind”’ (Y46.18). Insler also comments that Schmidt did not mention xratush with respect to Ahura Mazda himself. The verse ‘to them does piety announce the judgments of your will which no one can deceive’ seems to concern the will of Ahura Mazda, and ‘not with his ultimate reason’. The Wise Lord is free to act as he wills, he has the right to act as his will moves him. Insler concludes, ‘Thus he can create truth according to his will because he wished to make the creatures happy … or he can impose a differing fate upon the truthful and deceitful person according to his will.’ The power of reason is not in the same conceptual order or domain as truth, good thinking, and the virtuous spirit: ‘the will of god, as that of man, stands in a domain apart from his intellectual capacities, and that, to a large extent, the latter values are under the control of the former’.206 The semantic field of the key Avestan word dae¯na¯ is even more complex (or rather, complexive) than urva¯ n or xratush. Boyce hints at this complexive formation when she says that with regard to the divergence in meanings between two apparently distinct but related words, ‘once again one has here the characteristic Old Iranian development of a thing [the human conscience] and a hypostasis or personification of this’.207 Boyce cites several scholars who argue that there are two common nouns dae¯na¯, both used in the Ga¯tha¯ s, that is, it is possible that they are differently accented derivatives from the same root-word di- ‘see’, similar to Vedic dhi-. However, Nyberg thought that there was only one word which he rendered as either ‘seeing sense’ or ‘seeing soul’, one for each person, but which taken together referred to the true religious community: ‘those who see’ the right path.208 Molé also thought that there was only one word which he rendered throughout his translation as ‘true religion’, that is, ‘the aggregate of rituals whose acceptance decided the posthumous fate of the soul … This dae¯na¯ is not individual … but corresponds to the model to which he has conformed during his life.’209 Duchesne-Guillemin quotes the Italian scholar Pagliaro (1954) who said that dae¯na¯ must be connected to the root-word da¯y- ‘to see’; that gae¯tha indicates the forms of material things, and that dae¯na¯ indicates the image, species or eidos; in other words, ‘the model, type, kind, genus, and finally nature or essence’.210 Insler, on the other hand, asserts that ‘dae¯na¯ constantly stands for *dayana¯ in the Ga¯tha¯ s and represents the reworking of Middle Iranian de¯n into the redaction of the text. The word signifies “vision”, “conception” and thus continues the value of its underlying stative root di- “view”, “consider”.’211 University of Leiden, 1975. 206 Insler 1975 pp. 328–30; these key terms are analyzed by Shaked 1994 pp. 135–41. 207 Boyce 1975 p. 239. 208 Nyberg 1938 pp. 114–20. 209 Molé quoted in Boyce 1975 page 238 note 39. 210 Quoted by Duchesne–Guillemin 1958 p. 64. 211 Insler 1975 p. 192; although classical philosophical conjecture linked the Greek noun dianoia, ‘thought’, with nous, there are several Greek words that begin with diano-; the verb diano-eo¯, ‘to think, to have in mind’, is divided after the basic verb diano-, LSJ 1968 p. 405.

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The main problem posed for the single-word thesis is the latter Young Avestan usage of dae¯na¯, for example, in the Fravard Yasht and the Pahlavi Hadho¯kht Nask, to refer to the ‘double’ who greets the dead person’s soul on the Bridge of the Judge. In the Ga¯tha¯ s, dae¯na¯ does not mark out the ‘object’ as a particular concrete thing, but rather an abstract idea or concept. This feature fits well with the ‘in-accord-withtruth’ principle leading to the true religion, that is, having an abstract idea in accord with truth can be realized in good words and actions. The internalized sense of this idea-in-accord-with-truth could then be called ‘conscience’ as witnessed by verses from the Seven Chapters: ‘we worship the souls (urvana) of the just, wherever born, men and women, whose better dae¯na¯s conquer or shall conquer or have conquered’ (Y39.2). The Seven Chapters also sees the first appearance of the Avestan word fravashi, which unequivocally means the ante-natal soul, that is, an ancestor spirit.212 Lommel suggested that dae¯na¯-double was coined by Zarathustra to replace the ancient notion of fravashi, which does not occur in the Ga¯tha¯ s at all,213 but Boyce remarks that ‘this interpretation hardly satisfies the various uses of the word in the Avesta’. The most reasonable solution, the one that makes the best sense of all uses of the word dae¯na¯ across the Old and Young Avestan texts, is that there are two concepts involved. Insofar as the various meanings of dae¯na¯ are unstable over two semantic ranges, there are two concepts which employ one word, and that word picks out a cognitive complex, not an ambiguous or under-determined concept. To a limited degree, a person’s dae¯na¯-concept and dae¯na¯-double are similar to Homeric psyche¯-life-force and psyche¯-double. They are similar except for these three factors with respect to the two dae¯na¯s: (a) in Avestan ‘life-force’ is signified by gaethra, not dae¯na¯; the Wise Lord gives (or grants) life to humans and animals; (b) the dead person can encounter its own double on the Bridge of Judgment, an occurrence never recorded for psyche¯; (c) the two dae¯na¯s are linked in a moral dimension, such that the dead person’s inner concept (conscience) is externalized as the epitome of its good or bad actions. It is possible that dae¯na¯1 and dae¯na¯ 2 are further segregated in the Yashts through their being correlated with the urvan of the living, for the former, and the fravashi of the just dead, for the latter. The souls of the wicked dead do indeed meet their own dae¯na¯ on the bridge, but then they are cast down and become demons (daevas). Thus, in the latter case, the daevas of dead humans are associated with immortal, supernatural daevas in the same way as the condemned human souls in ANE schemes become etemmu. Hence the ideas behind the fravashis divide them from the ideas behind the dae¯na¯s, specifically along a moral axis. The strongest linguistic evidence shows that, in their original usage, the words urvan and fravashi had distinct semantic fields. In the Seven Chapters, the worshippers revere their own souls and the souls of domestic animals that nourished them. It is possible that the souls of animals consecrated for sacrifice were thought to descend to the underworld like human souls. But the word fravashi has posed far greater problems, a word whose kernel is the meaning of the root-verb var, conjoined with the prefix fra. Söderblom suggested that the original archaic concept was ‘a terrestrial continuation of more or less the whole person surviving invisibly, 212 For

which, see Zaehner 1961 pp. 76, 146–8; Boyce 1975 p. 118; Shaked 1994 pp. 56–8. 1930 (1971) pp. 150–52, quoted in Boyce 1975 p. 238 note 41.

213 Lommel

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a being of some menace, to be propitiated with offerings’. Moulton basically agreed with this derivation, but also connected it with the fravashis’ role in the birth process; hence, he thought that it was ‘a special cult-title for the ancestor spirits as the powers that continue the race’. H. W. Bailey argued that the root-verb must have been *varti, ‘valor’, linking this concept to an early hero-cult where the spirits of powerful, warlike ancestors were worshipped by their descendants. Boyce says that ‘the fravashi appears to have been conceived as a winged and warlike female being, like the Valkyries, and an inhabitant of the air rather than one dwelling beneath the ground, who was swift to fly to the help of those who had satisfied it with prayers and offerings’. She also conjectures that, due to similarities between the special fravashi cult and the common urvan cult, the two rituals became intermingled and the underlying beliefs became compounded and hence confused.214 According to both the Fravashi Hymn and the Pahlavi Creation account, the fravashis have an ante-natal as well as a post-mortem status. According to Boyce, ‘the fravashi not only lives after the death of a person on earth, but has had a preexistence as a spirit before that person was born – that it is in fact as immortal as the gods’. They were present at the creation of the world, assisted the Wise Lord, serve the just and righteous against their enemies, and provide benefits to supplicants in peacetime. The fravashi doctrine – if one may call it that – seems to have grown out of priestly speculation in the Achaemenid period, or at least in the Young Avesta, and was not original to Zarathustra’s teaching. It appears to have evolved with the sevenfold creation account, and since the ante-natal souls shared immortality with the gods, their ‘lives’ stretched forward and backward in time. The later, mature doctrine is that each individual fravashi existed from the beginning in a purely spiritual (me¯no¯g) state; in due course it was born into this world, clad in a material body. After death, it lives once more in a purely spiritual state, and then is reunited with its body at the final Restoration. In Boyce’s considered view, in the second and third states the fravashi tended to be identified with the urvan and this led to the question about their relative status. The basic Zoroastrian view is that ‘the fravashis of the great men of the faith, whether already dead or not yet born, were the most powerful, but that otherwise the fravashis of the living were the strongest – a doctrine which seems to reflect the profound universal instinct that it is better to be alive in the flesh in the present familiar world than to exist in any other state’. It also appears that even the gods can be said to have fravashis, their own ancestral spirits, an assertion which replicates the spiritual state at yet another higher level. There are thus many levels in the steady growth (like a pearl in its shell) of Zoroastrian soul-doctrine, ‘a slow accretion of priestly dogma around a core of popular belief and custom’, as well as ‘an amalgamation of such beliefs, with the fusing of a general cult of the departed spirit, the urvan, with the worship of the heroic dead’.215 The result of such fusions and developments was ‘a tangle of curious anomalies’ which has baffled many scholars in their efforts to sort out a coherent soul-account. In her final analysis of these documents, Boyce uses the terms ‘amalgamation’, ‘anomalies’, ‘contradictions’ and ‘complexity’, clear indications

214 Synopsis 215 Boyce

of various interpretations by Boyce 1975 pp. 118–20. 1975 pp. 128–9; see also Gershevitch’s notes, AHM 1967 pp. 154–6.

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that what is involved at the fundamental doctrinal level are image-bound, overdetermined cognitive complexes, and not categorical concepts. Zarathustra is generally considered to have been a religious genius and profound thinker for several reasons.216 First, for moving far beyond the common IndoEuropean pantheon of gods and its polytheistic trappings toward a consistent and thorough monotheism, the worship of one god, the Wise Lord. Second, in his constant admonitions to think good thoughts, speak good words and carry out good deeds, to have instituted a universal and uniform set of moral principles. Third, in transmuting the common coeval Indo-Iranian gods, who appear in all their splendor in the near-contemporary Rig-Veda, into abstract ideals – but making them into abstractions makes them no less real. The original gods had personal traits and associated images (they could be pictured), whereas the abstract ideals in his new scheme gain essential properties, but lose those traits (they cannot be pictured, images are banished). Fourth – though there are surely more – in holding that there is a systematic interdependence between god the creator and humans his creatures. This last feature of his original teachings may in fact be unique in the history of world religions. The divine-human interdependence appears forcefully in the numerous passages where Zarathustra appeals to (or extols) the dual ‘spirits’ (that is, abstracta) of wholeness (haurva¯t) and immortality (amereta¯t).217 There is a two-way dependence between Ahura Mazda and his creatures: wholeness and immortality accrue to Ahura Mazda from humans through their piety and good thinking.218 In the other direction, wholeness and immortality accrue to humans from Ahura Mazda through their obedience to him and their alliance with truth.219 Two striking aspects of this interdependence thesis stand out: Ahura Mazda’s existence is maintained through humans’ good thoughts, words and actions, that is, he does not exist independently of these forms of reverence. And human souls are not immortal in their ‘nature’, but achieve it through their own free choice in following the Mazdaen precepts. In this respect, Zarathustra’s teachings are much more similar to the Christian New Testament than to Greek philosophical theories. Moreover, there are two kinds of prizes or rewards for humans consequent on their observance of these precepts. In this earthly life they can be granted wealth (or prosperity) and long life;220 material wealth includes, for example, ten mares, a horse, a camel, a cow, and so forth. In the next life, they are granted ‘a second, better existence’.221 The prophet issues numerous warnings about what will happen to those who deny his precepts and 216 See, for example, Zaehner’s references to Zarathustra’s ‘profound originality’, 1961 pp. 49–50; and comments by Malandra in RAW pp. 200–2. 217 Wholeness (haurva ¯ t) is closely connected to good health and freedom from disease (which comes from evil); immortality (amereta¯ t) is a privative formation negating mereta¯ t, ‘mortality’; similar to the formation of Latin mortus; hence in the Ga¯ tha¯ s humans are sometimes called mashya¯ (mortals) and divine spirits amesha (immortals); on the IE root *mer–, see Bruce Lincoln, Myth, Cosmos and History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986 p. 119. 218 The relevant texts are: Y31.21, 33.8, 34.1, 34.11, 45.10, 47.1. 219 The relevant texts are: Y43.5, 44.18, 45.5, 45.7, 51.7. 220 See Y43.1, 44.18, 46.19, 53.1, 53.4, 53.7. 221 See Y46.19, 49.9, 51.15.

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follow the lie – they will have woe, bad food and distress.222 The mention of bad food in the House of Deceit (the underworld) reminds one of the gloomy ANE description of dust, dryness and debris in the evil dead’s environs. But for those who affirm the precepts and whose souls are in accord with truth, they will have the best of all things, including sunlight, the ‘bright bull’ and glory. Zarathustra conjectures about the source or condition which renders (some) humans mortal, or prevents them from even trying to gain immortality. The daevas are the offspring of the Evil Spirit; ‘they spring from evil thinking, deceit and disrespect’. The worst mortals serve the daevas who have ‘deceived mankind out of the good way of life and immortality’ (Y32.5), which implies that the deavas use trickery and deceit to cheat humans of their chance for immortality. And later he says that during the present mixed epoch ‘hateful deceit has been taught by daevas and mortals for the sake of immortality’ (Y48.1), where ‘for the sake of’ signifies ‘at the expense of’. This oblique reference also reminds one of Gilgamesh and Etana who were cheated by the crafty god (Enki) into losing their chance to gain another life. In contrast with the good person who brings peace to his home and village, Zarathustra curses the liars: ‘Let that affliction, most strong with death’s bondage come to these, and let it come quickly’ (Y53.8). Where milk and butter are regularly extolled as signs of good words and actions, that is, the first ‘prize’ (Y49.5, 49.10, 50.8, 51.1), he indicts lack of health or wholeness for its evil signs: ‘poison adheres to them … they are in decline and darkness’ (Y53.9). The very idea of bodily health and wholeness is closely linked with attaining the best existence: one is saved (savo)223 from any affliction or disease by passing beyond the imperfect earthly realm into a perfect unearthly realm. However, it is no doubt true that in this earthly life, disease and violence did lead to bodily death. With regard to the Zoroastrian attitude toward the remains of dead humans, Varenne says that ‘for fear of soiling the elements that make up the universe, their bodies … are neither burned, submerged in water, nor buried, but are abandoned on boulders and cliffs where beasts of prey devour them’. The dead bodies are brought forth from the town and placed in the dakhma where they are torn apart by vultures. The practice of excarnation is in stark contrast to the Vedic practice of cremation, and the ANE practice of inhumation in the same period, that is, the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. But against this claim Boyce quite confidently asserts that it is now generally accepted that the old funeral practice of the Indo-Iranians was burial … Even the Zoroastrian word dakhma, used later for the place where corpses were exposed, comes it seems not (as used to be thought) from the base dag, ‘burn’, but through *dafma from the IE base *dhmbh ‘bury’. This ancient rite of burial appears to have been associated with an equally ancient concept of a home of the spirits of the dead beneath the earth.

Boyce draws attention to an anecdote in Herodotus where he tells a story about an aged Persian queen who buried fourteen children alive, ‘in a effort to propitiate on her own account the god who is said to dwell beneath the earth’ (Hist VII.114). Note 222 See Y45.3,

45.7, 49.11, 53.6. The word savoi is used repeatedly in the Ga¯ tha¯ s for healthful redemption and hence is akin to Latin salvus, esp. in the Vulgate text of the NT. 223

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well, however, as Boyce does here, that the belief in chthonic gods and their residence is in conflict with the view that the gods’ dwelling, and the soul’s eventual home, is in the sky above. The Vedic funerary practice of cremation accords with both the thesis that fire is sacred and that the human soul rises up after death.224 The contraposition of the Indian and Iranian gods, the daevas and ashuras, perhaps accounts for the reversal in imagery regarding the original and final resting place of human souls. Hence, in early Indian thought the paths that the gods traverse uniting the earth below with the heaven above are often distinguished from the paths below the earth, leading to the land of the dead. After the dead person’s flesh was consumed by fire, his bones were collected and buried (so-called ‘secondary’ burial). In contrast, the practice of cremation is rarely ever attested amongst the ancient Iranians, although like their Indian kindred, they shared a deep belief in and hope for an afterlife. It also appears likely that some noble Iranians had the privilege of embalming the corpse before its deposition in the tomb. Herodotus records (Hist. I.140) that the Persians interred the dead body after coating it with wax, but ‘it is not likely that this elaborate procedure was common throughout the community, or connected with the ordinary rite of inhumation’. Boyce also speculates that the custom of preserving and entombing the body was linked with ‘the hope that both spirit and flesh would in due course ascend to immortality above’. So there appears to be divergence in belief between some nobles, on one hand, and the general population, on the other. (That only the most meritorious individuals received the gift of another life, the criterion of merit being tied closely to royal birth, has already been encountered in the earliest Egyptian mortuary practices, as well as the special Hittite custom of royal funerary procession.) In support of this, Boyce says that ‘priests and nobles, while hoping for heaven for themselves, still believed in a general after-life beneath the earth, and were prepared on occasion to propitiate the ancient lord of darkness by sending him other humans to people his realm, whose bodies were laid in earth as the nearest gateway to his abode’.225 Heaven above, the soul’s ascent, and the pathway to blessedness are then in opposition to the prevalent testimonies for the death realm’s location beneath the earth. But if one separates the classes of the dead then Herodotus’ anecdote about the Persian queen makes sense. She sacrificed only the best Persian children by having them buried alive in order to help ensure her own eventual entry into heaven. The great Hungarian-British explorer Sir Aurel Stein discovered numerous postexcarnation burials in stone cairns and enclosures in Baluchistan and speculated that post-mortem exposure was a distinctively nomadic practice. Extensive burial grounds have been discovered in Central Asia and hence it seems that inhumation was the customary Iranian practice before the latter practice of excarnation. Whereas in India inhumation gave way to cremation, in the Iranian lands inhumation gave way to excarnation. Despite the obvious differences between these two customs, Boyce says that that ‘both seem linked with a common desire to release the soul swiftly and allow it to mount upwards, free from the body, instead of being shut down with the corpse beneath the earth’.226 224 Boyce

1975 pp. 109–10. 1975 p. 111 note 16. 226 Boyce 1975 p. 113. 225 Boyce

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In his recent survey of the relevant excavations, Azarpay distinguishes between surface burials in stone or timber tombs and post-exposure fractional burials (that is, secondary burial in an ossuary). The proto- and early Scythians buried their dead in underground niche and chamber graves; this practice sometimes exists in conjunction with surface burials. But the modern dakhma, an artificially constructed stone tower used for exposure is not found in any pre-Islamic context in Iran. The rite of post-exposure fractional burial is first attested in the (early?) first millennium in Transoxiana and northern Pakistan. Despite the fact that secondary burial was fostered by the Zoroastrian church, there are no such material remains in eastern Iran before the second century BCE; this period marks the change from cremation to exposure in Chorasmia. On the other hand, the rite of cremation was introduced from the lower Oxus River basin to more western areas in the fourth century BCE: ‘If exposure is identified as a nomadic practice of Central Asian origin, then its adoption by sedentary communities might explain its accommodation in preexisting forms of funerary architecture in agricultural and urban centers.’227 In sum, for both the Vedic Indians and the Avestan Iranians there was an apparent tension between their ancestors’ practices and their own new customs, as well as some incongruity between the privileges of the few and the rights of the many. Here then is another indication of the reforms that Zarathustra brought about the pagan Iranians had presumably held, as did the Vedic Indians, that almost immediately after each blessed soul ascended to Paradise it was there re-united with its resurrected body, to live a happy life of full sensation. But for Zarathustra complete happiness could come only with a return to the first ge¯tīg [corporeal] condition, with the reunion, that is, of soul with body in a physical world restored to a flawless state. For him it was this earth … which made wonderful again would be the true Kingdom of God … The redeemed will live in me¯no¯g [incorporeal] state during the rest of the time of Mixture, to be united with their resurrected bodies only after the Last Judgment, when the earth shall render these up.228

Later Zoroastrian expositors struggled to answer the question of how even God could reassemble the scattered components of individual bodies. In the later Pahlavi texts this resurrected body is called the ‘future body’, an item of doctrinal faith that distinguishes Zoroaster’s views from the earlier pagan views.229 Zaehner, in fact, insists on seeing certain Zoroastrian ideas as precursors to Christian and Judaic doctrines (a tendency that Boyce is highly critical of). He says that in later Zoroastrism there is both an individual post-mortem judgment and a universal ordeal by fire and molten metal at the end of time. Both ideas are hinted at in the Ga¯tha¯s, but their full doctrinal details only emerge in the Younger Avesta from the Achaemenid period. The bridge crossing mentioned above is the standard form of individual judgment, where rightness and good works are rewarded by entry into heaven, and their opposites are punished by casting down into hell. Zaehner says that heaven and hell ‘are variously described in the Ga¯tha¯s; they are the best 227 Azarpay

1990 pp. 12–21. 1975 p. 236; on resurrection, Segal 2004 pp. 190–92. 229 Boyce finds Zaehner’s definition of the Pahlavi ‘future body’ in 1961 p. 318 to be ‘extremely doubtful’. Shaked also admits that there are incongruous and incompatible beliefs at work here, 1994 pp. 39–42. 228 Boyce

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and the worst existences, and these quite unlocalized conceptions of the future life survive in the Persian language today: behesht, heaven, meaning originally simply “the best”, and du¯zakh meaning “a wretched existence”’.230 Contra Zaehner, aside from their paraphrases as House of the Good Mind, the House of the Worst Mind, and so on, these terms do not denote anything like a separate sphere or domain. The good souls will, however, attain to long life, blessed with ease and comfort, and achieve ‘wholeness’ and ‘immortality’ (depending on how one translates the Ga¯thic word amereta¯t, that is, the privative of mortality). Here Zaehner quotes from Yasna 31, verse 20: ‘Heavenliness shall be the future possession of him who shall come to a truthful person (now). But for a lifetime of darkness, foul food, the word woe – to such an existence shall your conception, along with its actions, lead you, ye deceitful ones.’231 Zaehner claims that the theory of direct Zoroastrian influence on post-exilic Judaism does explain the sudden abandonment by the Jews of the older idea of Sheol, ‘a shadowy and depersonalized existence’, the destination of all humans, and the adoption at the time when the Jews came into contact with the Medes and Persians of ‘the Iranian Prophet’s teaching concerning the afterlife. Thus it is Daniel, allegedly the minister of “Darius the Mede”, who first speaks clearly of everlasting life and eternal punishment … Thus from the moment that the Jews first made contact with the Iranians they took over the typical Zoroastrian doctrine of an individual afterlife in which rewards are to be enjoyed and punishments endured.’ In addition, the later Judaic and Christian notion of a divine savior is prefigured in the Zoroastrian doctrine of Saoshyans who, at the end of all things, will raise the bodies of the dead and unite them with their souls; that there will be a cosmic conflagration in which humans will have to wade through streams of molten metal; that the sins of the wicked will be purged through this ordeal and all things will return to their creator in their original perfect state. However, Zaehner admits that the idea of the savior does not appear in the Ga¯tha¯s and that Zarathustra saw himself as bringing about a renewal of human existence; further, that the later Zoroastrian system adheres only to the notion of an individual, and not universal judgment.232 It is beyond doubt that there was significant contact between the Achaemenid Zoroastrians and the Judaic religion during Cyrus’ reign. In an important article forty years ago, Morton Smith analyzed passages in Second Isaiah which make reference to the Persian king;233 this is the only place in the OT where someone other than Jesus Christ is called ‘savior’. Second Isaiah reported ‘startling original theological utterances’ by one of the Persian visitors – these utterances are unequivocally Zoroastrian doctrines. Smith argued that this showed clear evidence that Cyrus had a political agent in Jerusalem. One of the peculiar features of Second Isaiah is a series of rhetorical questions which correspond closely with Zarathustra’s queries to Ahura Mazda in the Ga¯tha¯s (Y44). 230 Zaehner

1961 p. 56. trans. 1975 p. 43. 232 Zaehner 1961 pp. 58–59. 233 Morton Smith, ‘II Isaiah and the Persians’, in JAOS 83 (1963) pp. 415–21; discussed by Boyce 1982 pp. 45–8; Peter Ackroyd examines the evidence for Persian presence in other OT books, esp. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zechariah 1–8, ‘Problems in Biblical and Related Sources …’, in AH III 1988 pp. 33–54. 231 Insler’s

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In the conclusion of his analysis of the original Avestan texts, Shaul Shaked is rather dubious about any attempt to find a coherent account of human nature. He says that ‘there is no Avestan text which gives a comprehensive enumeration of human faculties, powers, members of the body, and spiritual constituents of the person’ since each text has a specific didactic purpose: ‘These texts specify either some of the aspects of the material and earthly existence of man, or deal with the “soul” components of the person. Each text would thus tend to ignore notions that do not belong to its sphere of current interest and would, on the other hand, tend to use superfluous terms … in order to enforce its own particular point of view.’ Although this basic incoherence is also present in the Pahlavi texts (some of which preserve fifth century BCE doctrines) the situation there is even more complex. But the Bundahishn makes an effort to systematize its own version of the Iranian account: ‘there are five me¯no¯g things in human’, it states, ‘one is called ja¯n, one ruwa¯n, one axw, one bo¯y, and one frawahr’. Shaked offers these comments: each one of these me¯no¯g entities or aspects has its own domain to look after: bo¯y is concerned with intelligence, wisdom, and memory; frawahr with the assimilation and digestion of food and with the excretion of coarse matter; ruwa¯n deals with the saying and doing of good things, and with the prevention of bad things being said or done; ja¯n holds the body in proper order, and is in charge of various ‘powers’, taste, discernment (?), spirit, [non-motion, and motion]; axw gives constant advice to the body, to ruwân and to the other associates of the person.234

With regard to the two separate spheres of existence, the spiritual (me¯no¯g) and the material (ge¯tīg), each of the soul components has its own ‘place’. According to the De¯nkard, Book III: the soul is the most prominent spiritual element within the material, as it is the entity that maintains and directs the body. A higher layer of spiritual existence within the material is the presence of the ‘essential being’, called in Pahlavi ox, within the soul … Just as the soul is spiritual with regard to the material of the body, so ox is spiritual with regard to the relative material of the soul. Each one of the various spiritual entities within the [human] body has its own individual function: anima [or anma] gives it life, consciousness causes it to see, and the soul rules it. The soul has several powers, among which are intelligence, awareness, wisdom, and spirit.

With regard to the peculiar status of spirit (waxsh), ‘it is defined as being not an entity by itself, but attached to, or inherent in, an entity. At the same time it acts as “the power within the soul”.’235 Again, this vividly reminds one of our earlier conjectures,236 that for the pre-Socratic thinkers, the psyche¯ is both an agent and a causal power, both a substance and an essential property. On the Zoroastrian view, the powers of the soul seem to be the properties of one thing which, when suitably 234 Shaked

1994 pp. 141–3. Shaked 1994 pp. 143–4; Shaked excerpts and translates the relevant passages in Appendix E pp. 153–60; for the sake of clarity, me¯no¯g is replaced by ‘spiritual’ and ge¯tīg by ‘material’ in the quotation. 236 On the ‘quality-thing’ conjecture, see HCM pp. 33–5 235

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combined, produce a living thing that manifests the underlying functions associated with those powers. But, at the same time, they are entities in their own right which can become separated through death; as such, they are quality-things in their thinglike nature and exercise causal agency upon one another.

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Chapter 2

The Ancient and Medieval Horizon of the Shamanic Soul In the first volume of History of the Concept of Mind (HCM) we laid out some of the evidence for the supposition that some Greek thinkers in the period from about 700 to 550 BCE were aware of non-indigenous beliefs about the immortal status of the human soul.1 Some of the pre-Socratic thinkers make unusual claims about the powers of their own souls, as well as generalizing these experiences in terms of the basic nature of the human soul. In various dialogues, Plato describes Socrates’ encounter with these alien ideas and his efforts to accommodate them to his own evolving view of the human soul. This chapter fully explores the historical and religious background for this hypothesis. In the first section we will consider the literary (or documentary) evidence that Greek ideas in this period did indeed reflect – often in distorted forms – characteristic features of shamanistic practices and what the core elements of these practices were. The second section turns to the archaeological evidence from Central Asia and the Transcaucasus region to support the claim that shamanistic practices were present in that area from which these various Greek ideas were imported. The third section is devoted to an examination of the principal features of Central Asian shamanism derived from ethnographic research carried out (mainly) by Russian scholars since the late seventeenth century. Adventurous Greeks in the seventh century, such as Pherecydes, Pythagoras and Aristeas, were the first to import into popular culture the ‘foreign’, shamanistic ideas about an immortal soul, going-under, ecstatic foresight, and so forth.2 Aristotle referred to Pherecydes and the Magi (Iranian mystics)3 as ‘mixed theologians, those who do not say everything in mythical form’, as did Homer and Hesiod, for example, and who claimed that ‘the first generator is the best’ (Meta 1091b8). In the opening lines of the first chapter of The Presocratic Philosophers, the editors said that these transitional ideas were not concerned with pure mythology, ‘but with concepts which, although expressed in the language and through the personages of myth, are not mythopoeic in kind but are the result of direct, empirical, nonsymbolical ways of thinking’.4 To claim that the concepts of Birth, Night, Chaos, and so on, and the four roots or elements of all things are the result of ‘direct, empirical’ thought is strange indeed, though Thales and his successors’ attention to See HCM pp. 23–4, 40–41. On Pherecydes’ views about the soul, or at least views which can be derived from the testimonia, the fullest account is in Schibli 1990 pp. 104–27. 3 The gifts of the Magi are interpreted along cosmological lines by West 1971 pp. 213–42. 4 G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven & M. Schofield, eds, The Presocatic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 p. 7 [KRS]. 1 2

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water and fire could be said to be non-symbolic. Centuries later Pherecydes was routinely recognized by Latin writers as the first author to hold that the human soul was immortal.5 The one almost certain historical link between Greek speculative thinking and the remote lands of the Magi and shamans is the first-hand account made by Aristeas of Proconnesus (c. 630–20 BCE) of his travels to the land at the Back of the North Wind (Hyperborea), beyond the Black Sea, where he encountered the Scythians, the Arimaspi and other extraordinary peoples, returning many years later with an astonishing narrative,6 rehearsed by Herodotus. (Hist. iv.12–16) Bolton argued quite convincingly that many features of Aristeas’ account, filtered through Heraclides Ponticus’ reworkings, show up again in Empedocles’ writings and stories about his life. Aristeas’ own life attests to some sort of extra-somatic experience and he expressed sentiments closely connected to an immortal soul doctrine.7 In Empedocles of Acragas in Sicily in the early to mid-fifth century, several other principal features of the pre-Socratic account of soul began to take shape. In his one long poem in two parts (or, his two poems),8 Empedocles makes unambiguous references to an immortal soul, some of its basic functions, its physical composition and ritual operations to purify its bodily host. Near the start he refers to himself as ‘an immortal god, no longer mortal, honored among all’, an unusual assertion, to say the least, for no other figure ever claims to be a god in addition to being immortal. He was reputed to have been a skilled medical doctor, an ardent democrat, and to have leapt to his death (or fiery life) in the Mt. Etna volcano.9 Diogenes Laertius reported that Empedocles had claimed to be able to stop the winds, to bring rain when there was drought, and to lead forth from Hades the life-force of a dead man (DL 8.59). The Suda lexicon cited an anecdote to the effect that, after a woman had been without breath, food or water for thirty days, he had brought her back to life. These admittedly anecdotal details from his life and sayings have clear parallels with the sorts of shamanistic beliefs and rituals evident in Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Aristeas and others. In Epimenides the Cretan one finds further evidence of shamanistic incursions into Greek stories about wonder-workers and magicians.10 He was said to have slept for fifty-seven years in the cave of the Cretan mystery-god and to have subsisted entirely on a vegetarian mixture (like Pythagoras) which he stored in an ox’s hoof.11 5 See esp. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1.38; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 7.7.12; Augustine, Contra Acad. 3.37 and Letters 137.12; all testimonia and fragments excerpted by Schibli 1990 Appendix 2, pp. 140–75. 6 Bolton’s meticulous and ingenious reconstruction, 1962 pp. 74–118, has been confirmed at many points by recent archaeological investigations in Central Asia; see esp. Mallory & Mair 2000, Chapter 1, which retraces Aristeas’ route; also brought into Ginzburg’s thesis on the Eurasian origins, 1991 pp. 209, 212. 7 On indications in Aristeas about the ‘flight of the soul’ and his influence on Pythagorean doctrines, see Bolton 1962 pp. 146–57, 164–5; summary statement, pp. 172–5. 8 On this point see inter alia, KRS 1983 pp. 282–4; Kingsley 1995 pp. 363–70; see HCM pp. 31–3. 9 On the significance of his leap into fire, see Kingsley 1995 pp. 250–55. 10 The evidence for Epimenides’ shamanism was first laid out by Bouché-Leclercq in Divination, vol. II pp. 100–2; see also Johnston 1999 p. 106; Ogden 2002 pp. 15–16. 11 Dodds 1951 p. 142. On the significance of cave–cults, see Martin Nilsson, Minoan-

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His skin had tattoos and was used after his death (or murder) in some ritual fashion; he had the ability to ‘travel’ out of his body and to issue prophecies, and was credited with having been reborn, either in his own person or in other animals. The key detail about tattoos or skin-marks on its own is a decidedly non-Greek motif. The Thracian figure Zalmoxis had a tattoo on his forehead which later Greek writers explained by saying that he had been captured by pirates and branded for the slave market (Porph., Vita Pyth. 15). Herodotus mentions runaway slaves in an Upper Egyptian temple who were tattooed in order to show their dedication to the god (Hist. 2.113), Pliny says that tattoos were used by Sarmatians and Dacians in Asia Minor (NH 22.2), Strabo that tattoos were used by Illyrians and Thracians (Geo. 7.5.4), and Vergil that the Agathyrsi in Transylvania, whose tutelary god is Hyperborean Apollo as in Aristeas’ account, are tattooed (or painted) (Aen. IV.146).12 In Greek vase paintings tattoos mark out characters thought to be Thracian; some vases show Thracian maenads with fawn tattoos, others with snake tattoos.13 In contrast with these outsiders’ customs, the ordinary Greek view was that such marks on the skin were ‘shameful and disgraceful’ (Sextus, Outlines 3.202). E. R. Dodds suggests that ‘the tradition of psychic excursion’ may have been transferred from imagery in Aristeas’ journey to details of Epimenides’ life by Suidas, the same source as the attribution of tattoos to the latter figure.14 Whatever the literary source of these attributions, the details themselves point toward the magically inspired idea of an immortal soul.15 The so-called ‘Orientalizing Influence’ has long been recognized by Classical scholars, especially after the publication of Ancient Near Eastern texts in the 1950s, and the dissemination of the Russian research on shamanism about the time of Karl Meuli’s ground-breaking 1935 paper.16 The idea that the human soul is immortal was initially deeply interlinked with ecstatic foresight and magical practices. Plato’s dialogue Charmides exhibits some curious knowledge about shamanistic ideas through the retelling of the Zalmoxis story by an anonymous Thracian. The Zalmoxis tradition has been examined in great detail by Walter Burkert who showed its intimate connection with shamanism and its confusion with the Pythagorean legends.17 Since Burkert builds very strong arguments in favor of the signal Mycenaean Religion, 2nd edn Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1950 pp. 458–63; Burkert 1979 pp. 84–8, 90–93. 12 For tattoos amongst the ancient Balkan and Danubian tribes, see A. B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914–40, vol. II p. 123. 13 For example, T. H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece, London: Thames & Hudson, 1991 plates 139, 170; also Dodds 1951 pp. 163–4 note 44. 14 Dodds 1951 p. 163 note 42. 15 For more details, see Kingsley 1995 pp. 233–8, 251–9; Johnston discusses his involvement in the so-called Cylonian affair in some detail, 1999 pp. 279–85. 16 Karl Meuli, ‘Scythica’, in Hermes 70, 1935 pp. 121–76; E. R. Dodds lucidly and succinctly expressed this insight some time ago, 1951 pp. 146–7; recently, Jan Bremmer has attempted to rebut Meuli’s main arguments, 2002 pp. 29–36 – not very convincing in my view. 17 Burkert, 1972 pp. 157–65; on the state of Pythagorean studies after Burkert’s work, see Huffman, in A. A. Long (ed.), Cambridge Companion to the Presocratics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 pp. 66–87; for the Zalmoxis story, see also Eliade 1972 pp. 21–75.

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importance of the Zalmoxis story for an understanding of the evidence for an incursion of non-Greek soul-belief, it is worth recapping the story’s main points. The Zalmoxis legend is derived from Hellanicus’ Barbarian Customs, itself the source of the widely known account in Herodotus’ Histories (IV.94–6).18 Zalmoxis was the deified king of the Getae tribe, ‘those who live without death’, and he may have been a disciple of Pythagoras. Every four years the Getae send their god a message by sacrificing one of their warriors, one who has been entrusted with a petition for the tribe’s needs. Zalmoxis the King had built a banquet hall where he entertained his guests, and promised them that they and their descendants would not die, but would live forever enjoying all good things. He also built an underground chamber where he withdrew for three years and was mourned as dead; but in the fourth year he returned to the surface and was acclaimed for his conquest of death. Burkert considers it doubtful that this underground chamber really belongs to the Zalmoxis tradition; it is more likely that Zalmoxis dwelt in high places, where religious beliefs normally accord the holiest setting.19 Other features of the story also support the view that it has become amalgamated with the Pythagorean legends, especially his ‘going-under’ (katabasis). Both Zalmoxis and Pythagoras exhibit ritual techniques and issue sayings (acusmata) that pertain to shamanistic practices, ecstatic travel to other places, overcoming death, bringing back health to the sick, and conducting souls of the dead to their new home: ‘The significance of the idea of shamanism for the history of philosophy lies in the conjecture that the new conception of the soul, which was to become the dominant one through the influence of Plato, is to be traced to this source. The independence of the soul from the body is immediately experienced and depicted in the shaman’s ecstasy.’20 Perhaps the earliest written record of shamans and their practices occurs in Herodotus’ account of some strange Scythian customs (Hist. IV.64–75) Amongst other things, he reports that Scythian warriors flay dead enemies’ bodies and stretch their skins on frames; that these same warriors are known to take hemp-seed ‘baths’ (or saunas), which causes them to ‘howl with pleasure’. On the death of their king, Herodotus says, they execute his servants, stuff them with chaff, and bury them with the bodies of dead horses. Herodotus also offers his readers some intriguing clues about their priests: one group of priests, called the ‘enarees’, are androgynes (or transvestites21); they practice divination by casting willow-rods on the ground or winding lime-tree bark around their fingers. When the king (or some other noble) 18 Later account with other details in Strabo (7.3.5) where Zamolxis (sic) makes predictions from the stars, is addressed as a god, and spent his whole life in an underground place (kho¯rion abaton); Eliade comments on the main differences between Herodotus’ and Strabo’s accounts: ‘in short, for Strabo the cult of Zalmoxis is dominated by a high priest who lives alone at the top of a mountain, at the same time being associated with the king as his principal counselor, and this cult is Pythagorean because it forbids flesh food’, in his 1972 p. 61. 19 Burkert 1972 pp. 160–62; Eliade argues that Zalmoxis does not entirely fit the picture of a shaman but rather the deified human (or god) of a mystery cult, 1972 pp. 40–44. 20 Burkert 1972 p. 163; Eliade 1964 pp. 387–94. 21 Basilov explicitly connects Herodotus’ enarees with transvestite practices amongst the Central Asian shamans, in Dioszegi & Hoppal 1978 pp. 288–9; androgynous figures have been found on ritual objects from Sarmatian and Indo–Iranian sites, Neil Ascherson, Black Sea, New York: Hill and Wang, 1995 pp. 121–2.

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falls sick, they are called in to find the culprit; they are able to indicate guilt or innocence when evil magic has been detected. Other clues about shamans are scattered amongst his comments about the Thracians and the Scythians’ neighbors. The Neuri, for example, are said to ‘practice magic’, for the story (that is, rumor) is that ‘once a year every Neuri turns into a wolf for a few days and then turns back into a man again’ (IV.105). This rumor may obliquely refer to either the shaman’s alleged power to transform himself into an animal (but that would not connote ‘everyone’) or the ceremonial custom where celebrants dress in full-length animal skins.22 Eliade argues that this and other similar descriptions about humans in animal clothing (especially those of predators) indicates the common Eurasian association of young male warrior groups who work themselves into aggressive frenzies.23 The Scythian practice of hemp-seed saunas may lie behind Strabo’s reference to the Thracians as both ‘god-fearers’ (theosebeis) and ‘smoke-walkers’ (kapnobatai), those who walk through hemp smoke (Geo. 7.3.3; also Pomp. Mela 2.21). Strabo also mentions some Thracians who live apart from women, whom they call ktistas, a word translated as ‘founders’24 – which makes little sense in the context. Strabo confesses to being confused about the role of women and wifeless priests among the Thracians. He reports that all Thracians are promiscuous, regard life without sex as miserable, and yet consider a person pious and just who does without women. He says that this is contrary to their common belief, as well as to the fact that women are regarded as the ‘founders’ or organizers of religion (deisidaimonias arkhe¯gous); the first word means either good religious feelings or superstitious fears.25 To support this view he quotes the poet Menander whose character the woman-hater (misogune¯) declared: ‘we used to sacrifice five times a day, seven attendants (f.) beat the cymbals, and others ululated (o¯loluzon)’, that is, sang wordlessly. Here we have a strange group among the Thracians with a strange custom which Strabo struggles to describe. Among the promiscuous Thracians, there is a group of celibate males, dedicated to the gods, held in honor by the tribe, who live apart from women; they are called ‘god-fearers’ and ‘smoke-walkers’ and ktistas, which cannot mean ‘founders’, since the women are the founders. This group conducts sacrifices, attended by women beating cymbals, some of whom sing wordlessly. These wifeless males, set aside from the tribe as a whole, perform special rituals, which are directed toward the gods (or daimons). They are surely the same group that Herodotus called enarees four hundred years earlier, in other words, androgynous males who were shamans. One might (with caution) conjecture that ktistas may be a mangled form of (e)kstate¯s, ‘ecstatics’, those who went into trances. On the other hand, if Nyberg’s and Gignoux’s thesis is correct, and there was some sort of penetration of Iranian ritual ideas in the Roman East during the Augustan epoch, then ktistas may be an 22 Ginzburg suggests that the Neuri probably lived in Livonia, the homeland of werewolves, or were another proto-Baltic tribe, 1991 p. 157. 23 Eliade 1972 pp. 5–15, following the lead of Karl Meuli, Stig Wikander and Georges Dumezil; in contrast, Bremmer does not adduce all these details in his attempted rebuttal of the shamanist connection in Herodotus’ account, 2002 pp. 29–31. 24 See examples in LSJ 9th rev. edn 1968 p. 1003. 25 The word has both a positive and a negative sense according to LSJ 9th rev. edn 1968 p. 375.

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attempt to render in Greek the Iranian word chistish, ‘one who knows’, those with privileged knowledge in the Zoroastrian scheme.26 Whatever the meaning of these obscure Scythian words and the significance of the rituals in which reference is made to them, the Greek language had a basic simple word which meant ‘shaman’. Walter Burkert has recently argued that the preClassical and Classical usage of the Greek word goe¯s roughly approximates the shamanistic type which these early travelers brought with them into Greece from remote hinterlands. Sarah Johnston associates this alien influence with the goe¯s and not with shamanism as such: ‘there are good linguistic and historical reasons to suppose that [goe¯teia] entered Greece from elsewhere only during the archaic age. We should accept the Greeks’ association of goe¯teia with peoples who lived at the margins not only as an expression of its conceptual foreignness at the time that it was introduced, but also a valid reflection of its origins.’ She heartily endorses Burkert’s thesis, that ‘many new ritual techniques and beliefs were introduced during the orientalizing period by migratory practitioners as an excellent explanation of how many such things first reached Greece’.27 Burkert has assembled a great deal of textual evidence to support his claim that contemporary Greek writers were aware of shamanism and that they employed a distinctive Greek word (goe¯s) to name someone who carried out shamanistic activities (goe¯teia).28 It is certainly a strange irony that the modern word ‘magic’ is derived from the name of a Scythian priestly caste who were not sorcerers and who did not practice anything like ‘magic’ (in the standard, modern sense). The further irony is that those who were sorcerers and who did practice magic were called goe¯s, a word which became reserved for a bastard, inferior kind of trickery. Nevertheless, there is a certain discontent among Classical philologists with regard to immoderate efforts to explain Greek morphemes as coming from non-Greek concepts. There have recently been criticisms of the attempt to expand (or generalize) the concept of shamanism. In response to these critics there actually is an archaic Greek word which designates a realm of activity remarkably close in affinity to that of the shaman, and which has been used to describe both Pythagoras and Empedocles. When the original meaning of this word is investigated, the late antique classification must naturally be disregarded, in which goe¯tia, as low, crude, deceptive or even malicious magic is contrasted to the higher form of mageia.29 The word magos, which was to enjoy such success, came into currency in Greece as an Iranian loanword no earlier than 600 BCE. If one attempts to discover a more positive meaning and function of goe¯s in the oldest sources and testimonies, particular problems result, due to the peculiar nature of the literary tradition.30 The etymological history of a word like goe¯s leads back to the prehistory of the Greek spirit, to a state which it was the accomplishment of the Greeks to have 26 Of course, one should also mention that Ktesias was the name of a physician in the Achaemenid court who wrote a history of Persia, see esp. J. R. Gardiner-Garden, Ktesias on Early Central Asian History, Bloomington, IN: Papers on Inner Asia, 1987. 27 Johnston 1999 pp. 117, 119. 28 Burkert 1962 pp. 36–55; comments and notes by Thompson 1998. 29 Aug. Civ. Dei 10.9; Proclus Resp. 2.337; Hopfner in RE XIV cols. 373–75. 30 Burkert 1962 p. 38; Thompson 1998 p. 2; Johnston 1999 pp. 109–11.

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overcome. It is worth noting that goe¯s and sophiste¯ are often connected. Empedocles, who made his name as a magician, was the teacher of the sophist Gorgias. Is not the sophist an heir of sorts to the wandering wonder-worker? In place of the wailing lament, there is the persuasive speech. In place of magical formulae, there are rhetorical devices invented to have an effect upon an audience.31 In order to demonstrate the power of the logoi, Gorgias refers to enkeoi epo¯dai, which was to bring about delight instead of sadness through goe¯teia. The goe¯s gains power over the soul of another person: when Socrates brings his conversation partner to the point where he has forgotten what he believed he knew, and now no longer knows what to think, then Socrates falls under suspicion of being a goe¯s. Whoever uses magic songs, transformative techniques and illusions (deceptions) to fill people with delight and terror is said to be goe¯s.32 To the goe¯s belong the epo¯doi and the foundation of the Mysteries. Thus King Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae calls Dionysos goe¯s epo¯doi. It is this kind of ‘music magic’ which forms the bridge from the smithy’s work to this realm. However, epo¯do literally means the ‘magical song’, and therefore the Greek Mysteries were traced back to singers such as Orpheus, Musaios and Eumolpos.33 According to the testimony of Apollodorus, the sound of ringing brass especially belongs to the cult of the dead; the hierophant of Eleusis had a cymbal resound when Kore¯ was conjured up from the dead. According to Plato, summoning the dead (psychagogia) belongs to the arts of those who conjure with sacrifices, prayers and incantations. The activity of the goe¯s is closely associated with the cult forms of the Greek Mysteries; indeed according to Ephoros, they originated these devotions. Seen from this perspective, the position of the goe¯s shifts to the very center of Greek religion.34 For Plato goe¯s and mimete¯ belong together; the sophist who prides himself on knowing everything in reality only understands how to imitate everything, and instead of the truth, he produces mere illusions (eidolons). This kind of technique Plato ranks with the magic booths at fairgrounds; at best, one can tolerate them as mere jests. In common with the actor, the goe¯s performs in front of an audience, whom he tries to fool. The effect is seen on the one hand as phobos (fear) and ekple¯xei (consternation), and on the other hand as hedone¯ (pleasure). In the Republic, the Guardians must become resistant to the influences of delight and terror, which Plato designates as goe¯teia (Rep. 413b). Plato, Xenophon and Demosthenes use the word as a term of abuse (invective) for liars and deceivers. For Demosthenes, the true and the healthy are diametrically opposed to goe¯teia. Sorcery that wanted to be taken seriously used the term mageia. What was once a legitimate role in the society, inducing fear and delight, was degraded to a term of abuse. The enchanter became disenchanted and reduced to a charlatan and deceiver.35 The general translation of ‘sorcerer’ (Zauberer) for goe¯s can be more narrowly defined; he is someone who performs before a public. Neither drugs nor potions nor secret devices are decisive for his craft. What is decisive is the power of the Burkert 1962 p. 55; Thompson 1998 p. 7. Burkert 1962 p. 42; Thompson 1998 pp. 4–5. 33 On their magical songs, see esp. Johnston 1999 pp. 111–15. 34 Burkert 1962 p. 40; Thompson 1998 p. 3. 35 Burkert 1962 p. 42; Thompson 1998 p. 4; see also Johnston 1999 p. 103, footnote 51. 31 32

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sorcerer’s personality; the goe¯s conjures, it seems, from his own inner resources (goe¯teuei). The general explanation that the goe¯s takes his name from the ‘wailing’ or ‘howling’ sound of the conjurations (or exorcisms) he performs is no longer satisfactory. There is another, more essential interpretation: the goe¯s takes his name from the dirge because he conjures the dead. The goe¯s builds a bridge between the living and the dead – therefore the deceased is directly addressed in the dirge as a present ‘thou’. The proximity of this to the epo¯ dai, to the magical effect of song and music, is then immediately obvious. In this case the goe¯s was actually a shaman, one of whose primary functions is to lead the dead on ecstatic journeys along the dangerous path into the beyond. Ecstatic journeys are not directly referred to in connection with the goe¯s, though this is a characteristic of shamans. But if the ability to transform oneself is considered in a similar light, then the Greeks can speak in this regard of ekstasis also. Direct evidence for developed shamanistic practices are not to be found, alas, in the Greek tradition.36 Sarah Johnston argues that goe¯s ultimately derives from one of the archaic forms of lament for the dead: goo¯s is a spontaneous, emotional and sometimes excessive expression of grief; whereas thre¯nos is a more controlled, orderly expression. By the time of the tragedians, goo¯s had become a means of eliciting help from the living as well as a medium of complaint to the dead: ‘Rousing the living to action by complaining to the dead is but a short step away from asking the dead themselves to bring help as well.’37 The techniques for controlling the dead arose at about the same time when the lament was restricted by law; communicating with the dead was now the provenance of a specialist and not practicable by just anyone. Control of the dead, specifically when asked to perform the operator’s bidding, was the essence of goe¯teia, and was not connected with any other branch of magic. Ritual goetic practice was, however, connected with the emphasis that mystery cults placed on the afterlife: ‘the expert who knows enough about how the afterlife works to invoke and control the souls of the dead should also know how to ensure that a soul would get a good deal once it was down there, and especially how to protect a soul against the sort of postmortem intrusion it would otherwise suffer at the hands of the goe¯tes themselves.’38 The dual vocations of controller and initiator were combined by the goe¯s, since unhappy souls were dangerous when the living were undergoing initiation and when the newly dead soul was making its transition to the underworld. The goe¯s was an expert in the care and control of disembodied souls, whatever their status prior to his intercession. Johnston says that ‘the fact that the concept of mystery religions seems to have entered Greece at about the same time as the idea of magically manipulating the dead … supports this thesis beautifully’.39 However, she stops short of explicitly equating this concept of goe¯s with a shaman, for ‘such a figure would have been more likely to adopt a name cognate with thre¯nos, the song that praised and pleased the departing soul’. However, no separate threnodic word is attested in Greek descriptions of relevant magical practices associated with the cult of the dead. Burkert 1962 pp. 44–5; Thompson 1998 p. 5. Johnston 1999 p. 101. 38 Johnston 1999 pp. 105–6. 39 Johnston 1999 p. 108; and Burkert 1985 pp. 190–98. 36 37

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Matthew Dickie’s recent study goes a long way to help identify the sorts of people who were called goe¯s and magos in the ancient world. He acknowledges the thesis that goe¯tes were originally shamans who in an ecstatic state conveyed the spirits of the dead on their perilous journey to the other side. However, he says that, although some of those called goe¯tes undoubtedly did induce shamanic-like trances, ‘very little trace of the original meaning is to be found in the way in which the word was used in the literature of Classical Greece’. This dismissive statement seems to deliberately ignore the wealth of textual evidence advanced by Burkert and Johnston (amongst others) and fails to appreciate the significant development of the semantic field associated with the word goe¯s. Dickie also declares that ‘it does not follow that the practices of northern Asian shamans had made their way into the Greek world by means of the contacts that Greeks in the Black Sea had had with Scythian shamans. There is little secure evidence for the existence of shamans in northern Asia in antiquity and no evidence for the transfer of shamanistic practices from Asia to Greece.’40 A nugatory verdict based on ‘little secure evidence’ hardly does justice to the mass of data brought out in the last decade by archaeologists in the BMAC and Tarim Basin regions, as we shall see in detail below. Some scholars, especially Walter Burkert (again), have proposed that the mythical figure of Hercules can be interpreted in terms of an earlier shamanistic context. Burkert stresses that the hypothesis is not that Hercules himself was a shaman,41 but that the tales associated with him are built around the marks of a hunting ritual, and that these marks appear in both his own personal attributes and elements of the various stories. The foremost attribute of Hercules is that he is a master of animals; he slays the lion and the serpent; he captures other animals and brings them to humans for food; he hunts down the hind and the wild boar, and captures the birds of Stymphalos. He steals the man-eating horses from Diomedes the Thracian, from the island of Erytheia he rustles a herd of cattle which belonged to the three-headed roarer Geryonus. In one of the strangest stories he cleans out the stables of the sun’s cattle in order to obtain one-tenth of the herd from Augeias (‘sun-light’). There are numerous oriental motifs in these and other tales, many of which have clear parallels in Ancient Near Eastern myths pre-dating Hercules’ appearance in Greece in the eighth century by 2000 years or more.42 Magical gold plates, found in Crete, Thessaly and Thurii, were intended to accompany the dead soul into the underworld. The theme of the hero immortalized in his funeral pyre and his ascent to heaven appears in close association with legends of Empedocles in Sicily.43 Pindar’s ‘Second Olympian Ode’ refers to Herakles in its paean to the hero’s mystical passage to another birth and eventual liberation. However, Hercules is more than a master of animals since he is also a boundary crosser: between gods and humans, and between the living and the dead. Hercules Dickie 2001 p. 13. Burkert 1979 p. 96; see also Ginzburg 1991 pp. 237, 250, 259. 42 Burkert 1979 pp. 80–85; see also, J. M. Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972 pp. 22, 24, 44; and H. Seyrig, Syria 24, 1945 pp. 62–80; and M. L. West 1997 pp. 458–72. 43 Kingsley 1995 pp. 252–8, 273–7; and Marcel Detienne, ‘Heracles, hero pythagoricien’, in RHPR 158, 1960 pp. 19–53. 40 41

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brings Cerebrus, the hound of Hades, back from the underworld and in Hesiod’s catalogues Hercules penetrates Hades, overcomes an adversary who can assume any form, and retrieves the cattle. In Herodotus’ otherwise unique account of the Scythians’ origins, Hercules is said to have gone to Scythia with his cattle but lost his chariot’s horses; they were only returned when he agreed to copulate with a snake-woman in a cave, giving her three sons who became the progenitors of the three Scythian tribes. Burkert observes that ‘the core of the Hercules complex … is probably considerably older [from the third millennium]: the capture of edible animals points to the time of the hunter culture, and the relation of the world beyond with the cattle of the sun, a red island, and man-eaters probably belongs to shamanistic hunting magic … It is the shaman who is able to enter the land of the dead and the land of the gods.’44 Hercules’ name (Herakles) may be derived from Hera-kleos (‘glory of Hera’) an identification of the most masculine, virile and hirsute hero with a female goddess. Perhaps it is more plausible, as Kingsley argues, that his name is derived from the Akkadian Erragal (Sumerian Nergal), an underworld god of war and plague.45 In any case, at one cult center, sacrifice was made to Hercules by a priest in woman’s clothes and Hercules disguised himself in woman’s dress.46 Burkert conjectures that in the ANE ‘the transvestite musicians, kurgarru or assinnu, who bring back Inanna-Ishtar from the nether-world are clearly shamans; this should bring back shamanism at least to the third millennium BC’.47 Other Herculean story elements fit the shamanistic scenario: like other great heroes who cross boundaries, such as Gilgamesh, Adapa and Theseus, Hercules seeks immortality. The golden apples of the sun which he retrieves from the distant garden of the Hesperides are probably an immortalizing (or at least rejuvenating) fruit. One detail of the Cerynean hind story fits very well with the shamanic context: the female hind is said to have antlers (kerussa elaphos) and there is only one wellknown species where the female hind has antlers, the reindeer of the far North, home of the Hyperborean shamans.48 Yet another motif evinces its original shamanistic milieu: Hercules is often depicted wearing a full-length lionskin, draped from his head, across his back and arms, and down around his legs; the lion’s hide is like his second skin.49 Now this sort of dress is also characteristic of some Central Asian and Siberian shamans, indicating their identification with, or transformation into, an animal. The animal skin is also linked to Hercules’ strange death; he was poisoned by the blood-stained skin of a dead centaur and, in a fit of madness, threw himself into a funeral pyre. There is an inexplicable reversal of fortune here: a quasiimmortal hero, half-human and half-divine, suffers death by the instrument of a creature who is half-human and half-animal. Burkert comments that on other Burkert 1985 p. 209. Summary of evidence for this thesis, Kingsley 1995 pp. 275, 394; or the Akkadian Ninurta, acc. to M. L. West 1997 pp. 467–8. 46 Burkert 1985 p. 210. 47 Burkert 1979 p. 183 note 12. 48 Burkert 1979 p. 94; Karl Meuli 1935 adduced impressive parallels for this from Finland. 49 Coins from Tarsus in Syria portray Nergal (=Erragal) with lion, bow and club, Kingsley 1995 p. 394; and M. L. West 1997 pp. 461–2. 44 45

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occasions Hercules’ madness is similar to the shaman’s ecstatic trance. And in his final torment Hercules may yet have escaped the fate of ordinary mortals since vase paintings show him ascending through the flames on his chariot.50 The first section has traced several twisting paths in the ancient Greek world, from reports by and about Greek travelers in the Black Sea and Caucasus regions, shamanic associations with Greek magicians, and the boundary-crossing exploits of various gods and heroes. Despite unresolved questions about the origin of words such as goe¯s and magos, and the origin and meaning of Herakles’ ventures, there is more than sufficient evidence to establish that ideas about the human soul (and the other-world) were imported from outside mainland Greece in this era and that these ideas center around what Herodotus called the Scythian culture. In his recent book on magic and witchcraft in the Greek and Roman world, Daniel Ogden asserts the shamanistic character of these thinkers’ views in unambiguous terms: The earliest variety of indigenous male sorcerer attested for the Greek world is the ‘shaman’. This term is commonly applied to a linked series of figures in the Pythagorean and Orphic traditions. They flourished, supposedly, in the archaic period. The notices of Herodotus and the fragments of Empedocles demonstrate that the notion of the shamantype had at any rate already become established by the early classical period.51

Ogden admits that the very word ‘shaman’ is taken from the Central Asian name for these ‘magicians’, as they have been studied in the modern period. He briefly mentions characteristic powers of the Central Asian shaman: he detaches his soul from his body in an ecstatic trance; the detached soul then speaks with the gods in their own language. He cures sick people by retrieving their souls from the land of the dead or by defeating evil demons in battle, attracts animals to the hunt with his music, and defeats the gods that preside over animals with his soul. Ogden says that ‘the Greek shamans are similarly characterized by their ability to manipulate their own souls, be it detaching them temporarily from their bodies and sending them on voyages of discovery, suspending them from life, reincarnating them, or “bilocating” between two places’. The principal figures in this series are, according to his own estimate, as follows: Orpheus, Trophonius, Aristeas, Hermotimus, Epimenides, Pythagoras, Abaris, Zalmoxis and Empedocles. But there are still other shamanic themes that recur in stories about these Greek figures: extended retreats into underground chambers, where they undergo symbolic death and descent to the underworld, divination whereby they see further in space and time, control of the elements, association with the cult of Hyperborean Apollo, and dismissal of pollution and pestilence.52 The second section turns to the archaeological evidence to support the claim that shamanistic practices were present in the area from which these various Greek ideas were imported sometime during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. In the BMAC region (described in the section on Zoroaster), whose sites date from 2300–1800 BCE, archaeologists have recently made some startling discoveries, some of which almost certainly indicate the enactment of shamanistic rituals. Viktor Sarianidi, who Burkert 1985 p. 210; in support of his general thesis, see also West 1997 pp. 458–72. Ogden 2002 p. 9. 52 Ogden 2002 pp. 10–16. 50 51

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directed many of these excavations, describes several small shrines with hempencrusted vessels, fire-centers, drainage for animal sacrifice, and ‘white rooms’ for the preparation of the hallucinogenic haoma compound. Sarianidi infers that the fire-centers, the white rooms, the ceramic drug-vessels and blood-drainage channels are all evidence of a specific set of cultic rites.53 Perhaps the most striking find is an extraordinary cylinder seal depicting what is most likely to be some sort of shamanistic ceremony.54 Two humans with monkey heads (or masks) hold a tall pole over which another figure with a ridged spine (?) is poised; to their right an upright bovine being with four hooves stands (or dances?); kneeling on his right a third monkey-headed human holds a staff. A sixth figure sits beating on a large drum between his legs, over (or behind) which another figure holds two rattles (?), and over the head of the bovine figure is a real animal with a tail. Francfort says that ‘undoubtedly, this is a characteristic shamanic ceremony or initiation ritual’. It is conceivable that the figure above the main pole is not a leaping acrobat (note that this lateral figure is poised with his stomach over the sharp pole-end), but is instead a sacrificial victim. One of the bizarre stories that Herodotus records about the Thracian Getae55 tribe is their unique manner of contacting Zalmoxis in the otherworld (Hist. IV.94). The warriors select one of their number by lottery, give him their message for the god, and then throw him into the air so that he falls on their upturned spear-points56 – perhaps the cylinder seal depicts just such a sacrifice.

Whatever the exact interpretation of these images, this cylinder seal fits in quite nicely with the better-studied shamanistic aspects of the Oxus culture: the use of narcotic beverages, the great number of bird images, the multi-layered universe, the Sarianidi 1994 pp. 389–93; next quote pp. 396–7. Sarianidi 1994 p. 394; also reproduced and discussed by Francfort 1994 p. 425; Christian 1999 p. 415. 55 For more on the Getae tribe, see Mihailov in CAH vol. 3, part 2, pp. 597–9; on their connections with the Goths, Guti and Gushi tribes, see Mallory & Mair 2000 pp. 98–9. 56 Eliade argues that this bizarre Thracian ceremony is the re–actualization of the tribe’s original intimate connection with their tutelary deity: ‘The sacrifice and sending of the messenger in some sort constitute a symbolic (because ritual) repetition of the establishment of the cult; in other words, Zalmoxis’ epiphany after three years of occultation is reactualized with all that it implies, especially the assurance of the soul’s immortality and bliss’, 1972 pp. 48–50. But frankly this assertion is little more than redescription in other terms – the original sending of a message to the god is repeated in the sacrifice of a messenger to god. 53 54

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reciprocal metamorphosis between humans and animals, the division of space into four quarters, the pillar or tree as axis mundi, and so forth.57 Francfort concludes his overview of the BMAC evidence with some strong claims: that the ‘brilliant, eclectic Middle Eastern formal aspect of the Oxus Civilization is just the colorful blanket covering deeper structures of [an] “archaic” Eurasian type’; that ‘the survival of some [of these] elements in Avestan mythology is no more than a transmission and re-reading’ of their myths and icons. Further, he claims that ‘The symbolic system of the Oxus Civilization is an original expression of a more general Eurasian mythological universe of very ancient origin, which can be termed shamanistic.’58 Gignoux has insisted in numerous articles that the original haoma ritual clearly indicates the influence of shamanistic beliefs and practices which filtered down from the northern Altaic regions in earlier migrations. In his ground-breaking work on early Iranian religion,59 H. S. Nyberg argued that pre-Zoroastrian religion was dominated by communities of ecstatic warriors who performed shamanistic rituals and other-worldly journeys to the House of Song (heaven). Intoxicated with haoma, these warriors would reach a dangerous state of murderous furor (Avestan aeshma); Zoroaster’s reforms were directed against these male, warlike brotherhoods. Phillipe Gignoux and Gerhardo Gnoli have argued in several papers and books that the Iranian religion was based on a shamanistic ideology. According to Gnoli, the word maga in the Ga¯tha¯s refers to an ecstatic experience, a state of visionary union with the Bounteous Immortals (amesha spentas), and that the cisti means a state of special illumination, attained only by the priest.60 In contrast, Gignoux does not focus on the ritual use of drugs, but on the righteous (ashavan) condition of the priest, such that he alone can have a glimpse of the afterlife. These shamanistic ideas are clearly in the background of the Avestan references to the ‘bony soul’ (astvand ruva¯n).61 The notion of a bony soul records a trace of an essential shamanistic idea, that the shaman must be able to visualize his own skeleton, the result of an initiatory rite where a monster devoured his flesh and reduced him to his skeleton. Some strange archaeological evidence from Scythian-Sarmatian burials in this period supports this idea. Eileen Murphy has studied the remains from thousands of such burials; she discovered evidence for widespread deliberate defleshing of many dead bodies. She did not think that the Scythian community devoured their dead, but that they had solved the practical problem faced by all pastoral nomads: if their cemetery was centrally located, there was always the need to transport back their relatives who had died on the journey. Hence, the flesh was removed at or near the site where they died and then the bones alone were carried back to the permanent burial grounds: ‘The evidence of defleshing is primarily confined to those burials in which the skeleton is not in its correct anatomical position. One can easily imagine Francfort 1994 p. 415; next quote p. 416. Francfort 1994 p. 406. 59 H. S. Nyberg, Die Religionen des Alten Iran, trans. into German by H. H. Schaeder. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1938; Nyberg had absorbed the lessons of Meuli’s 1935 paper. 60 Gnoli 1965 pp. 105–17; as well as Boyce’s discussion of Gnoli’s thesis in her second volume, 1982. 61 Gignoux 1979 pp. 41–79. 57 58

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how this apparent butchery of corpses might be misinterpreted by a stranger unaccustomed to such practices.’62 One can also imagine how the idea that a dead person can be identified with their skeleton could have appeared amongst a nomadic culture in that period. The majority of the burials from the Tuva region in southern Siberia date from the Scythian period (seventh to second century BCE); those that show ritual disarticulation and evisceration indicate that they were cleaned and processed prior to their final internment. Examination of the Tuva graves showed that many individuals had been mummified: the brain was removed and the crania filled with soil, pine needles and larch cones. Attempts were made to reassemble the skeleton by fastening the parts together with twigs; this was followed by careful efforts to preserve the facial features (as in the Pazyryk tombs). A clay mask was made from the face and then attached to the skull, after which the mask was painted and the mock body dressed. In the first centuries CE, mummies were gradually replaced with mannequins which were stuffed with grass and then clothed and adorned. The head was made from leather and a death mask painted on the surface, after which the cremated remains were placed inside the mannequin. In some rare cases, where the soft tissue had not decomposed before the death mask was applied, complete impressions of the deceased faces were still apparent in the interior of the mask. Not all the dead were mummified and secondary burial (of the bones alone) is also common; Murphy comments that ‘the practice of secondary burial and mummification was common to all semi-nomadic tribes of the southern Siberian region, at least during the Scythian period.’63 One can hazard the guess, as Murphy does, that reassemblage of body parts, mummies and mannequins represented attempts to ensure that the deceased had some sort of body for its existence in the other-world and that some aspect of the soul was permanently associated with the body. One of the most famous discoveries in the Siberian region are the so-called ‘frozen tombs’ at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. They date from c.300–100 BCE and have been variously attributed to the Scythians, the Chinese Xiongnu, and even to the mythical Arimaspians. After ancient grave-robbers broke into the tombs, they filled with water and promptly froze in the very cold, high mountain climate, preserving much of the organic remains. Recovery of the mummified bodies revealed that they had been eviscerated and the brains removed; the corpses were then stuffed with straw and sewn back together. Evidence of tattoos was found on many bodies, and one of the bodies had an extensive tableau of mythical and real animals on both arms and one leg.64 They depicted a stylized gryphon, ibex and catfish, ‘probably an individual pictogram about his lineage, territory and cult’.65 The bodies had been stuffed with many of the herbs recorded by Herodotus in his account of Scythian burial practices: marsh-plants, frankincense, parsley and anise seed. In one corner of the frozen tomb a fur bag contained cannabis, and with it were bronze cauldrons filled with stones, and the frame of a small, four-foot-high tent, for Mallory & Mair 2000 p. 40; referring to Murphy in Davis–Kimball 2000 pp. 279–85. Murphy in Davis-Kimball 2000 p. 282. 64 Mallory & Mair 2000 pp. 203–4. 65 Ascherson 1995 p. 79. 62 63

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their marijuana-saunas. It is possible that evisceration and cavity-stuffing were used in order to preserve the corpse during the long winters, when the ground was too frozen for primary burial, but another suggestion is afforded by contemporary burials in the Tagar culture. In these burials, the facial features of the dead person were preserved in clay masks. The soft tissues were removed from the skeleton, an interior mannequin of grass was built, and a facial mask was sculpted. The grasswrapped bones were then fastened together to form a false body to which the masked head was then attached, followed by painting and dressing the mummy. While this is quite an elaborate production, ‘this is a far cry from the result achieved in natural or artificial mummification: it provides an effigy, not a fully preserved body’.66 One intriguing conjecture is that in such arid regions as those of the high mountain plateaus and deserts, dead bodies would often become naturally desiccated and mummified. Over many centuries, the very idea of bodily integrity after death was something that an elite found attractive and would have made into a funerary practice. Within the same cultural horizon of the Altai Mountians, the Russian archeologist Natalia Polosmak made an astonishing discovery on the Ukok Plateau. In a burial kurgan (mound), the mummified body of a woman in her twenties (dated c.400 BCE) was found in a wooden chamber where she had been interred with six sacrificed horses. She was enclosed in an enormous wooden coffin, fastened with large copper nails, the contents frozen solid in a block of ice. The coffin was oversized in order to have room for a three-foot-high headdress, an indication that she was a very important person. On her left arm, left shoulder and right hand were amazing tattoos: animals in ‘action poses’, but twisted oddly at 180-degree angles. Her brain and other vital organs had been removed; her body had been packed with fur, wool, peat and bark. Fifteen wooden bird figures were sewn on her huge headdress and she wore a necklace of linked wooden camels. A small dish in the tomb contained seeds, but instead of the more common cannabis found at other sites, they were coriander, possibly used to mask unpleasant odors. Inside a red pouch was an ornate hand mirror, though Polosmak did not think that it was used for checking out the way one’s face looked. She thought that the mirror was ‘linked to some sacred concept’: all the Pazyryk people had mirrors, carried at their side in a bag hung from the belt, and when they died the mirror was placed in the grave with them. Polosmak speculated that this woman may have been a shaman, that the animal motifs of her tattoos echoed their rock-art pictures of deer, and that her tattoos may have been designed to symbolically transform her into an animal.67 Another important discovery was made by Russian archaeologists working on the Kobiakov burial mounds, north-east of the city of Rostov on the Don River. In one of the kurgans they found the skeleton of a young woman from the Sarmatian culture who had died some time in the second century CE. Her head had been crowned with a diadem of gold-foil stags, birds and trees. As well as bracelets and a ring, she had a huge rigid collar around her neck, made of chiseled and pierced gold, decorated with a series of unknown magical creatures, such as dragons fighting with monkeys in armor. In the center of the collar was a superb small 66 67

Mallory & Mair 2000 pp. 204–5. Polosmak 1994 pp. 80–103; and 1998 NOVA documentary.

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carving of a serene, golden, cross-legged man, with a sword laid across his lap and a cup nursed in his two hands. It seems likely that the dead woman was a princess or queen, a woman from some great family with some of the attributes of a princess, since almost everything in the tomb had magical significance. The archaeologists noticed that not all of her bones were still there; some of the smallest phalanges, the most delicate finger-tips, were missing. Although it was possible that mice had gnawed off these small bones, the Russian who had discovered the tomb had another theory: ‘He preferred to think that the finger-tips had been ritually severed just after death, perhaps in some ceremony to exorcise the living from the touch of the dead. He could not bear the idea of mice.’68 The Scythian cultures mentioned by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE, ones in which Hercules’ stories may have originated, had already migrated westward from the Mongolian heartland to the steppe lands north of the Caspian Sea. These steppe cultures show strong Scythian influences, especially in their funerary practices and grave goods. In his recent examination of the archaeological evidence, David Christian concludes that ‘Herodotus was right in claiming that Scythic cultures spread westward from Central Asia’, c. 1000 BCE.69 Davis-Kimball has gathered much of the recently discovered data which points to a previously unknown pattern of migration from east to west during the Early Bronze Age (mid- third millennium). With continued pressure from the east, nomadic pastoralists moved from the BMAC region northwest around the Caspian Sea and settled in the Transcaucasus regions, as well as the area north of the Black Sea. Hence the Scythians Herodotus knew about in the fifth century were descendants of nomadic tribes from Central Asia and the western Mongolian steppes. These are precisely the same areas which Eliade and others have focused on in their investigations of shamanism. The Scythian ‘priests’ of Herodotus’ accounts are shamans with the same set of beliefs and practices which ethnographers record amongst the Buryat, the Evenki and the Tungus tribes. The third section is devoted to an examination of the principal features of Central Asian shamanism derived from ethnographic research carried out (mainly) by Russian scholars since the late seventeenth century. Ethnographic records are generally dated back three hundred years to the report by the exiled Russian priest Avvakum in which the word ‘shaman’ first entered the Russian language. Avvakum described how a Russian military officer compelled a Tunguz wizard to tell their fortune: In the evening that wizard … brought a live sheep and began to work magic over it; he rolled it to and fro for a long space, and then he twisted its head and flung it away. Then he began to jump and dance, and invoke devils, and giving great screams the while, he flung himself upon the earth, and foamed at the mouth; the devils were pressing him, and he asked them, ‘will the expedition prosper?’And the devils said, ‘it will return with much booty, having gained a great victory.’70

It is worth noting that it is the observer Avvakum who nominates those invoked as ‘devils’, and that because of the shaman’s supposed alliance with the devil himself, Ascherson 1995 pp. 123–4. Christian 1999 p. 130; Ginzburg also endorses this thesis, 1991 p. 208. 70 Quoted in Christian 1999 p. 59. 68 69

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the priest prayed that the expedition would be destroyed (in fact, all but one member were killed). However, he does mention some salient points: the frenetic dancing, spirit-invocation, a trance-like state and hidden knowledge of future events. It may seem like an enormous historical leap, from classical Greek sources such as Herodotus and Strabo, to the late seventeenth century in the Russian steppes. It might appear to be an untenable hypothesis that studies of Eurasian shamanism in the last three centuries could be legitimately compared with such scanty evidence almost two thousand years earlier. But between these extreme dates there are some rare glimpses of shamanistic practices, recorded by travelers and traders, sensitive to some unusual cultural nuances. Our review of historical testimony to shamanic activities highlights several important but little known texts: Zosimus the alchemist, Menander the Byzantine chronicler, Franciscan monks at the Mongol court and Christina of St. Trond (Belgium). Zosimus of Panopolis (Akhmin in Egypt) is generally credited with an important role in the earliest stages of the development of alchemy. His dates are disputed, but he appears to have been active in the late third or early fourth century CE; he was an eclectic thinker, with some knowledge of Platonism, Gnosticism, Judaism, the Hermetic Corpus and Zoroaster. He was preoccupied, as many others were at that time, with techniques for the soul’s release from the body and ascent to heaven. Some fragments of his personal quest have been preserved, including an account of a dream vision in which he encounters a god-like being who reveals hidden knowledge.71 Since this passage has not been brought into discussions of shamanism before it is quoted at some length. There are many specific parallels in this text with Eurasian shamanism, parallels which will be elucidated in the conclusion. In his dream Zosimus saw a set of steps leading up to a bowl-shaped altar where a priest stood, who spoke these words to Zosimus. The dream-imagery of dismemberment, being skinned alive, reduced to a skeleton, eventual rebirth, and so forth, are all taken from a distinctively shamanistic setting: I have accomplished the descent of these fifteen steps of darkness and the ascent of the steps of light, and he who sacrifices is himself the sacrificial victim. Casting away the coarse body, and consecrated as a priest by necessity, I am made perfect as a spirit … I have submitted myself to an unendurable torment. There came one in haste at early morning who overpowered me and pierced me through with a sword, and dismembered me in accordance with the rule of harmony. And he drew off the skin of my head with the sword which he was holding, and mingled the bones with the pieces of flesh, and caused them to be burned with the fire that he held in his hand [?], till I perceived by the transformation of the body that I had become spirit.72

In the fourth year of the reign of the Emperor Justin (568 CE) the Turkish king decided to cultivate good relations with the Roman Empire and requested that envoys be sent to his seat in Sogdia to discuss the silk trade. The nomadic Turks had recently conquered various Central Asian tribes between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers; Menander Protector (who probably accompanied the expedition) prefers to 71 A full translation of and commentary on Zosimus’ vision is offered by Carl Jung who interprets the dream entirely in psycho-alchemical terms, Jung 1967 pp. 57–108. 72 Quoted in Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986 p. 121.

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call the Turks, Sacae, Sogdians and others with the collective name ‘Scythians’. When they arrived at the Turkish court in Sogdia they were treated to a special ceremony, according to Menander: Exorcisers of ill-omened things … took all the baggage that they were carrying and placed it on the ground. Then they set fire to branches of the frankincense tree, chanted some barbarous words in their Scythian tongue, making noise with bells and drum, waved above the baggage the boughs as they crackled with flames, and, falling into frenzy and acting like madmen (gignomenoi manio¯deis kai embrimoumenoi), supposed that they were driving away evil spirits. For in this way some men were thought to be averters of and guardians against evil. When they had chased away the evil beings, as they supposed, and had led Zemarchus [the envoy] through the fire, they thought that by this means they had purified themselves also.73

Perhaps from the same sixth century-Central Asian milieu is a unique ‘rain-maker’s handbook’74 which describes some of the materials and techniques from a shaman’s trance experiences: [He acts as if] he is shaking with ague … It quickly heals and gets better … With this stone he knocks his opponent on the back without his noticing … Early in the morning before eating and talking … His words are fluent … his eyes burst and come out … poured down water … Paint the big space full of water and, on the back, down to the duck-weed, paint various kinds of na¯gas … The houses of the 12 constellations are to be painted over Mount Sumeru and also the 28 lunar mansions, and the 12 great and terrible hours, and all other zodiacal stars.75 [Take these ingredients] safflower … musk … pound drugs … sandalwood … pierce (or break up) the embers … [Call or use] the south wind, swift as thought … the living beings of the whole world … Great oath by the na¯gas, whenever all the preparations are complete, they will feel obliged to come there, together with the wind, in order to make … [Take or use] a sheep’s shoulder-blade76 … after boiling it … a drug [probably hellebore] … it is a poison.

There is enough of the text left to figure out that the shaman enters a frenzied state, that he is able to heal something quickly, that he engages in some sort of spiritual (?) combat, and emerges the victor. He paints a picture or map of the spirit world where he encounters supernatural beings, the na¯gas, and summons the force of the winds, so that the waters pour down. He has to observe various preparatory rules, as the result of which the na¯gas are compelled to come to his aid (or do his bidding). Various herbs and drugs are added to a wood-fire, either as part of the summons or as part of his ecstatic trance; he is then able to foretell or foresee something using a sheep’s shoulder-blade as a mantic tool.

73 Fr. 10.3 in R. C. Blockley (ed.), The History of Menander the Guardsman, Liverpool, 1985 p. 119; ‘the exorcists are clearly shamans’, p. 264 note 128. 74 The text is from Emile Benveniste, Mission Pelliot en Asie Centrale, Paris, 1940 vol. III; detailed comments, corrections and annotations by W. B. Henning, 1977 vol. II pp. 244–8. 75 Henning says that ‘our shamanist had to paint the circle of 12 animal figures that typify the double hours of the Chaldean nukhthe¯meron’. 76 Henning notes that this is ‘an object indispensable to the Central Asian magician’.

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The twelfth-century Islamic geographer Al-Marwazi offered this description of the Kirghiz shaman: Among them is a commoner, called faghinum, who is summoned on a fixed day every year; about him there gather singers and players, and so forth, who begin drinking and feasting. When the company is well away [intoxicated], this man faints and falls as if in a fit; he is asked about all the events that are going to happen in the coming year, and he gives information whether [the crops] will be plentiful or scarce, whether there will be rain or drought, and so forth, and they believe that what he says is true.77

Two Franciscan emissaries in the mid-thirteenth century provided the European world with the first accounts of Mongolian culture. Pope Innocent IV charged Giovanni da Piano Carpini (or John of Plano Carpini) with an embassy to contact the Great Khan to protest against the Mongols’ invasion of eastern Europe and to gain information about the ‘golden hordes’ and their plans. In 1245, Carpini and an associate began their two-year round-trip journey through the frozen wastes of the Ukraine, across the Urals north of the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, to the Mongol capital in Karakorum. Although Carpini was unsuccessful in enlisting the Great Khan’s aid, he made a detailed, accurate record of everything he observed, the Historia Mongolorum (or Tartarorum), much of which was incorporated into Vincent of Beauvais’ popular encyclopaedia, the Speculum Historiale. The second great mission to the East was given to the Franciscan monk William of Rubruck by King Louis IX of France. Rubruck made a similar journey under equally hazardous conditions in 1253–55; he and his companion spent seven months in the Great Khan’s camp, although Rubruck had to return to Europe on his own. His narrative, A Journey to the Eastern Parts of the World, is one of the masterpieces of medieval travel literature, replete with a great deal of information about the Mongols’ history, customs and religion, including several anecdotes about shamans and their ceremonies. Roger Bacon had access to both these reports when he composed his Opus Majus (1265–67); he says of the ‘Tartars’ that although they worship one all-powerful god, they venerate fire and house thresholds: ‘They cause all things to pass through fire; for this reason they cause all the effects of the dead and gifts and messengers to pass through flames and other things, that they may be purified. Their law declares that all things are purified by fire. Moreover, he who treads on the threshold of the house is condemned to death. In these two matters and in certain others they are quite barbarous.’78 Brother William witnessed a shamanic ceremony at the Mongolian court: Some of them appeal to devils and gather together by night those seeking an oracular answer from an evil spirit at their homes, where they place boiled meat in the middle of the house. The oracle (sham) intending to invoke the spirits begins his sorcery and frenziedly beats the ground with a drum. At last he begins to get wild and lets himself be bound. When the evil spirit comes in the dark, he gives it meat to eat, and utters the oracular answer.79 Boyle 1977 p. 180, quoted in Christian 1999 pp. 59–61. Opus Majus trans by R. B. Burke 1928 vol. 2 p. 790. 79 Quoted by Hoppal in Siikala & Hoppal 1998 p. 15. 77 78

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The mysterious figure of Christina of St. Trond (1150–1224), a Belgian ecstaticmystic, offers some tantalizing clues to the presence of a shaman-like tradition in northern Europe. The principal source for her life is the biography by Thomas de Cantimpré written within eight years of her death. Christina was born in a peasant family and assigned the task of herding the animals. In her solitude she devoted much time to prayer and inward contemplation, to such an excessive degree that at the age of thirty-two she died. According to her biographer’s witnesses, she came back to life during her own funeral mass, and gave an account of her post-mortem experience. She said that she had been instructed by the Lord to return to earth to gain the release of dead souls suffering in purgatory. She also said that she would perform some amazing feats. She began to behave in such an aberrant manner that her sisters had her bound in chains; when not restrained she fled into the wilderness, where she would perch on high buildings or in trees. She never appeared to eat anything and had the ability to walk through fire unharmed. In order to share in the torments of those in purgatory, she climbed into ovens and fires, stood under freezing waterfalls, submitted to the rack-torture, and ran into thorn-bushes. Her family appears to have believed her story when they saw oil flowing from her breasts, which healed the sores caused by the chains and thorns. She lived as a beggar on others’ charity, attended the dying to whom she told their ultimate fate, and exhibited prophetic knowledge about future events. She spent more and more time in a monastery where witnesses described her dancing and non-verbal singing, ‘like those of Muslim dervishes’. She retreated again into the wilderness, eating and sleeping very little, mourning constantly, until at the age of seventy-four she died again (or died for the last time).80 Margot King, in her introduction to the text of de Cantimpré’s biography, admits that many elements in Catherine’s life-story are perfectly congruent with then current medieval exempla of the saintly life extolled as an imitation of Christ.81 Her mortification of the flesh, poverty, asceticism, tending the sick and dying, constant prayer, and so forth are all standard features of the medieval Christian mystic. However, there are very odd elements in her career that cannot be explained in these terms, ones that are not part of the mystic’s common image. The Christian mystical properties form another layer over a more primitive, non-Christian background of pagan images and practices. First, she claimed to have been dead for several days – this alone is a very strange characteristic. Second, in her death-like state she went through (or at least witnessed) the physical torments of purgatory. Third, she was given a new body, one which permitted her to endure fire, ice and lacerations. Fourth, she was known to perch like a bird on trees and rooftops. Fifth, she danced like a dervish and sang without words. As we shall see below, all these powers and actions are ones reported by Eurasian shamans, according to Russian ethnographers. Margot King says that the strange story of Christina’s life ‘bears remarkable

Summary of the main text in de Cantimpré 1986 pp. 10–52. On Christian mystical imagery in Christina’s Life, see Brenda Bolton, Vitae Matrum, in Medieval Women, Derek Baker, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1978, pp. 253–73; Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 pp. 45–50. 80 81

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similarities to the experiences and behaviors of those shamans about whom Joseph Campbell has written so eloquently’.82 On the other side of the world at about the same date, the Indian historian Juzjani offers this description of the powers of Genghis Khan in the early thirteenth century: [He was] adept in magic and deception, and some of the devils were his friends. Every now and again he used to fall into a trance, and in that state of insensibility all sorts of things came from his tongue, and that state of trance used to be similar to that which had happened to him at the outset of his rise [to power], and the devils who had power over him foretold his victories. The tunic and clothes which he wore on the first occasion were placed in a trunk and he was wont to take them about with him. Whenever this inspiration came over him, every circumstance … anything that he might desire would be uttered by his tongue. A person used to take the whole down in writing and enclose it in a bag and place a seal on it, and when Genghis Khan came to his senses again, they used to read his utterances over to him one by one; and according to these he would act and, more or less, indeed, the whole used to come true.83

Although the Russian Avvakum’s report (from the 1690s) is usually credited with the first mention of the word ‘shamanism’, his report is predated by fifty years by another less well-known first-hand account. In 1648, the Italian bishop Marco Bandini visited Moldavia, east of the Carpathian mountains. He was highly contemptuous of their outrageous beliefs and rituals but offered this striking account of a shamanic trance: Sorcerers are highly esteemed by them as discerning and pious scholarly men are in Italy … Whenever a sorcerer wishes to learn about his future, he will mark out a certain place where he stands for a while muttering, with his head twisted, his eyes rolling, his mouth awry, his forehead and cheeks puckered, his countenance distorted, his arms and legs flailing around, and his entire body shaking. Then he throws himself down and remains there seemingly lifeless for three or four hours. When he finally regains consciousness, he is a horrible sight for onlookers: first, he slowly revives with trembling limbs, then as if possessed by infernal spirits, he stretches out all his limbs … Eventually, as though emerging from a dream, he relates this as the future. When somebody falls sick, or loses something, he will turn to a magician. If somebody sees his friend’s or benefactor’s spirit turning away from him, he will try to win it back by magic. And if they have some enemy, magic is regarded as the best way of taking revenge.84

The great folklore collector Jacob Grimm recognized shamanic elements in some stories associated with the wild hunt. Carlo Ginzburg says that, at the end of the section in his German Mythology (1835) devoted to cannibalistic witches, ‘this hypothesis was formulated in an especially dense, almost cryptic fashion’. With an abrupt leap of insight, Grimm connected this imagery with the idea that the soul can abandon a sleeping person’s body in the form of a butterfly or small insect. Paul the King in de Cantimpré 1986, p. 9. Boyle 1977 p. 181, quoted in Christian 1999 pp. 59–61. 84 Hoppal in Siikala & Hoppal 1998 p. 169; summary by Ginzburg 1991 p. 188, who also points out that this rarely cited text was written by an Italian bishop whose seat was Durostorum on the North Sea. 82 83

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Deacon (eighth century) recounts the story of King Guntram of Burgundy: while he was sleeping under a tree, watched over by his squire, a small animal, like a tiny serpent, suddenly came out of the king’s mouth. It moved toward a nearby brook which it tried in vain to cross; when the squire placed his sword across the banks the serpent-insect crossed over and disappeared behind a small hill. After a little while it retraced its route and crept back into the mouth of the sleeping king. When he awoke he said he had dreamed that he had crossed an iron bridge and then gone into a mountain where treasure was hidden – later the treasure was found. ‘In the flash of a fading bolt of lightning’, Ginzburg says, Grimm identified this motif with an unusual comment made two hundred years earlier by the prosecutor of witches Pierre de Lancre. He had noticed some striking resemblances between witches’ claims to fall into diabolical ecstasies and reports about Lapland ‘sorcerers’ (from Olaus Magnus’ History of the Northern Peoples) who were able to separate their souls from their bodies through a trance-like state. Grimm discerned that selfinduced ecstasy was the unifying element in these two sequences; the sorcerer’s soul exists in the guise of an insect or chicken or small serpent which emerges from and then returns to the body.85 Westward migration of nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppes into the Hungarian region86 brought rituals and beliefs in their train; one of the most distinctive sets of beliefs pertains to the taltos. This name, possibly of Turkish origin, designated sorcerers tried for witchcraft at the end of the sixteenth century. According to the detailed records that remain, the taltos are chiefly men, marked since birth by some physical deformity, such as being born with teeth or six fingers on one hand. When very young they are silent, melancholy, very strong, and greedy for milk. At the age of seven (or sometimes thirteen), they have an intense vision: an older taltos in the shape of an animal appears to them and a struggle ensues. If the youth succumbs, he becomes half-taltos, but if he triumphs he becomes a full taltos. The initiation is usually preceded by a long sleep that lasts three days; during this time the future taltos hides himself. Sometimes he dreams that he is being chopped into pieces or must strenuous tests. At periodic times he must assume an animal shape and fight with enemies, also in animal form. Before he changes into an animal, he is overcome by feelings of heat and babbles words, entering into contact with the spirit world. Often the combat between forces takes place in the clouds, in the midst of storms; whoever wins ensures a good harvest for his tribe. The taltos are also known to be able to discover hidden treasure, to heal those struck with evil spells and to identify other witches by banging a drum.87 Ginzburg has dissected similar accounts from the Friuli region of Italy and Ossetia in the Caucasus region; he asserts that the single element which all these series have in common is the shaman’s capacity to enter into periodic ecstasies. All of the main figures from these different regions and times enter through an ecstatic transport into magical combat for fertility of the fields. They are all marked out for their role by some physical sign or by some anomalous circumstance connected with Ginzburg 1991 pp. 138–9, notes pp. 150–52. There is an immense (and heated) debate about the date and scope of these migrations, a debate that cannot be entered into here. 87 Ginzburg 1991 pp. 161–2. 85 86

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their birth. The announcement of their special vocation is given by another, elder member of the elite, either in spirit or animal form. The ecstatic transport is accompanied by egress from the soul in the shape of a small animal, sometimes by being transformed into a larger animal. They travel through the air astride an animal or even an object, like a bench or scythe or broom. The ecstatic sleep coincides with calendar dates, such as the Ember weeks or the twelve days after Christmas, although their battles can be waged at less precise times. The supernatural strength possessed by these shamanic figures could obviously serve benign ends, such as ensuring the harvest, but communities also feared that their powers could be turned against their own people. Ginzburg concludes that the series … might be compared to an accumulation of energy distributed in an uneven manner, rather than to an object with well-defined contours. It is indeed true that every component of the series is characterized by the simultaneous presence of several distinctive elements or traits: (a) the periodic battles, (b) fought in ecstasy, (c) for the sake of fertility, (d) against male and female witches (or their stand-ins, the dead). Around this solid nucleus rotate other elements, whose presence is fluctuating [and] contingent: they are sometimes absent, sometimes present in an attenuated form. Their super-imposition and intersection impart to the figures constitutive of the series … a family likeness88

– the Eurasian shaman. The term ‘shamanism’ has undergone many interpretations in the past fifty years. It has been used to denominate certain kinds of healers, magicians and soul-guides in North America, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South-east Asia. But there is a much more restricted meaning for ‘shaman’, one whose original is found in Central Asia, Siberia, and the Transcaucasus regions. Most reputable scholars who write about shamanism make a conceptual distinction between a general loose sense and a strict sense. Mircea Eliade in his ground-breaking 1951 work (first translated into English in 1964) went to great lengths to identify the specific features of shamanism in this strict sense – our discussion is confined to this domain. Åke Hultkranz nicely summarizes the main points of shamanism; he says that the central idea is to establish means of contact with the supernatural world by the ecstatic experience of a professional intermediary – the shaman: ‘There are thus four important constituents of shamanism: the ideological premise, or the super-natural world and the contacts with it; the shaman as the actor on behalf of a human group; the inspiration granted him by his helping spirits; and the extraordinary, ecstatic experiences of the shaman.’89 The role of the shaman in these cultures is bestowed either through hereditary transmission or through hearing a personal call (vocation). This vocation is almost invariably revealed to an individual through a serious illness, an epileptic seizure, a psychotic (or schizoid) episode, or a similar severe psycho-physical disorder.90 Eliade says that these ‘sicknesses, dreams, and ecstasies in themselves constitute an initiation, that is, they transform the profane, pre-choice individual into a technician of the sacred’. These sorts of experiences follow the traditional scheme of an Ginzburg 1991 pp. 165–6. Hultkranz in Dioszegi & Hoppal 1978 p. 30. 90 Eliade 1964 pp. 23–32. 88 89

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initiation ceremony: suffering, death and then resurrection. The content of the shaman’s ecstatic experiences reveals a cluster of determinate elements: ‘dismemberment of the body, followed by a renewal of the internal organs and viscera; ascent to the sky and dialogue with the gods or spirits; descent to the underworld and conversations with spirits and the souls of dead shamans; various revelations, both religious and shamanic (secrets of the profession)’.91 Eliade argues forcefully that one of the essential characteristics of Siberian-Central Asian shamanism is the shaman’s ability, during his ecstatic initiation into the dreamworld, to visualize himself as a skeleton.92 Principal characteristics of Central Asian and Siberian shamanism, according to Eliade’s sources: (1) Amongst the Eskimos, the master extracts the disciple’s soul from his body, after which the disciple is able to do so for himself. The initiate becomes filled with an ‘inner light’ or ‘luminous fire’ which enables him to see in the dark; thus he is able to look into the future, to perceive events hidden from others. (2) Amongst the Buryat, the shaman’s career begins with a message from an ancestral shaman who takes his soul into the sky to teach him; they visit deities that are peculiar to shamans, to whom only shamans make offerings. (3) In all tribes, in the initial shamanic trance, the shaman’s body is reduced to bones, sometimes the body is dismembered, and then a new body is rebuilt; the soft tissues are a garment that can be shed. (4) The future shaman’s vocation can be signaled by a chance encounter with a semi-divine being, an ancestral soul or an animal figure, or as the result of an extraordinary event, for example, being struck by lightning. (5) The souls of other dead shamans put the new shaman in contact with various kinds of spirits. ‘Seeing spirits’, Eliade says, ‘in dream or awake is the determining sign of the shamanic vocation, whether spontaneous or voluntary. For, in a manner, having contact with the souls of the dead signifies being dead oneself.’93 (6) The souls of the dead play a crucial role in the shaman’s access to hidden knowledge; ‘even when it is the spirit of a dead man that directly grants the revelation, the latter implies either the initiatory rite of the killing of the candidate followed by his rebirth, or ecstatic journeys to the sky, a peculiarly shamanic theme in which the ancestral spirit plays the role of psychopomp … helping him to become a “spirit” too’.94 (7) There are familiar, helping spirits and another kind, the tutelary (or master) spirits; these are distinct from the divine beings whom the shaman summons during his trances.95 Familiar spirits often take the form of animals; the shaman takes control of some of them by becoming an animal himself.96 (8) The shaman has a special gift to speak animal language (especially that of birds) and hence to converse with the familiar spirits, conveying his instructions to them.97 Our present study benefits from Laurence Delaby’s meticulous comparison and analyses of Siberian soul-words, from which we can extract the following Eliade 1964 pp. 33–4. Eliade 1964 pp. 62–4, 158–65. 93 Eliade 1964 p. 84. 94 Eliade 1964 p. 85. 95 Details of the names and powers of the master spirits in Delaby 1993 pp. 346–50. 96 Eliade 1964 pp. 88–93. 97 Eliade 1964 pp. 96–9. 91 92

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summary.98 According to the western Tungus, humans have two souls: the been is a corporeal soul which descends to the world of the dead, and the omi is the permanent collective life-force which can assume another body in another life. After death, while the been retires along the river to the underworld, the omi flies into the upper world and perches on the mythical tree with other omi-souls. In a few years, it descends back to earth, enters a tent through a smoke-hole, and penetrates the womb of a pregnant woman. According to one variant, the xanjan is not a real soulcomponent but only the shadow or reflection of an individual. According to another variant, there is a third soul, the maïn conceived of as a thread that stretches from an individual’s head to the upper world’s master spirit. When an evil spirit cuts the thread the human dies. But the maïn then leads an existence of its own as a hunter in the fields of the upper-world. The been-soul, having descended to the underworld, does not satisfy the master spirit there, who desires the individual’s whole soul. In this version the xanjan is the name of the soul while the human lives and becomes omi after his death. The master spirit pursues the xanjan and when he catches it the xanjan transforms into a bird and becomes an omi-soul again. According to the Tungus of the Amur Basin, the omi-soul becomes embodied in a newborn child and when the child is one year old it takes the name ergeni (probably from their word for breath, erga). When the individual dies the ergeni becomes fanja (cognate with xanjan). The fanja then descends to the world of the dead and later becomes an omi-soul again, reincarnated in another body. The Oroch tribe posits a unique kind of human soul which traverses the underworld before ascending to the upper-world from which it then later can be reincarnated. This interim period takes many years during which this unnamed soul takes on many various forms, some inanimate. The Manchurian Tungus believe that when it is still in the mother’s womb, the infant is given its omi-soul, and when it is born it receives the breath (erga), the life-force. To protect the infant’s soul, which is always ready to take flight from its body, it is placed in a human-shaped wooden cradle called anjan. When the infant has grown and its life assured, they say that its omi-soul is stabilized and now possesses the susi-soul. This soul is composed of three parts, ‘unified like the nail, the skin, and the bone of a finger’, as an informant put it. The first part is fanjanga, linked to (or the same as) consciousness, which causes death by its departure. The second part, after death, descends into the world of the dead and its final destiny is somewhat confused. The third part returns after death to the upper-world and waits to descend again into another fetal body. Delaby stresses that in all these versions what is important is not the number or names of the various souls, but the very idea of the soul voyage, where some soul-element continues to be reincarnated from the upper-world to the earth in the middle and then passes through the lower-world.99 The cosmic, anthropic and social schemes of the Buryats of western Mongolia have been studied in great detail by L. Krader.100 In his succinct summary Krader says that, according to the Buryats’ triple division, human nature is composed of Summary of Delaby 1993 pp. 342–3. Delaby 1993 pp. 342–3; see the similar list of soul–names among the Nanai tribe by A. V. Smoljak in Dioszegi & Hoppal 1978 p. 446. 100 Summary by L. Krader in Dioszegi & Hoppal 1978 pp. 192–3. 98 99

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three parts: beje (body), the physical organism; amin, the principle of breath and life; and hünchen, the human soul, which is also divided into three – an upper, middle, and lower soul. The lowest soul is housed in the human body, especially in the skeleton; it is the ‘invisible copy’ of the skeleton; if the bones are injured then that soul is harmed. Animals have just such a boney-soul, and after animal sacrifice the bones are protected from further damage; if the bones are injured the sacrifice might be rejected by the god to whom it was offered. The second soul in humans can leave the body, transformed into a living thing, like a wasp or a bee, and can carry out actions unknown to its owner. When it is resident within a human it is human-shaped and resides in one of the main organs, for example, the heart, liver, or lungs. This soul is the most labile (as one would say today); easily alarmed, it must be tempted back into its owner. This is the soul which is invoked, projected and manipulated during shamanic rituals. The third, highest soul leaves the host’s body only at death to journey to the other-world. The chief soul has the personal and moral character of its owner; if the human was a good person its chief soul may intercede on behalf of its living relatives; if the human was evil then the chief soul may cause sickness and strife amongst the living, and must be propitiated. We are now in a position to draw some parallels between concepts associated with psychical powers in various cultures influenced by Central Asian shamanism; some of these parallels exhibit cognate words across a well-defined semantic field. Concept life-force mind body shadow

Greek anemos (wind) menos101 so¯ma phan-

Latin anima mens corpus [phan-]102

‘double’

psuche¯

–

orgas103 (or orge¯) whole person – breath

–

Iranian anma¯ manas kerpem ja¯n (or fanjan) axw (or aksu¯) ? erga

Tungus omi main ? xanjan

ergeni

Nanai omia – ? fanja (or panja) uksuki (or oksai) erga

–

tanu

tyn

tin

uksuki

Aside from the tribe-specific details of names and customs, one can summarize the essential properties of the Central Asian-Siberian shaman: 1 2 3 4

Novice shamans suffer mental and/or physical trauma. They transit to their vocation in solitude, outside their community. The initiatory ecstasy is guided by an ancestral shaman. During their first ecstatic trance the novice’s body is devoured by a monster and reduced to bones.

101 Greek menos: after fifth century BCE, menos-properties are assimilated with either psyche ¯ or nous. 102 Greek phan-: root used in phantasma, etc., adopted in Latin loan-words. 103 Greek orgas: ‘to swell with lust, to be excited’, glossed with epithume ¯ tikos, LSJ p. 1246; Greek orge¯ : anger, wrath, etc. manifest in heavy breathing; Homer used thumos, LSJ p. 1246.

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After which he regains a new body in order to perceive hidden things. Familiar or helping spirits assume animal shapes. Tutelary or master spirits preside over ‘natural’ domains. The shaman communicates with dead humans by becoming dead himself. He guides dead humans to the underworld. He can ascend into the heavens to communicate with the master spirit(s). Through extra-somatic projection he can ‘travel’ over great distances. He can assume an animal shape in order to control familiar spirits.

All of the above accords very well with Daniel Ogden’s assertion about the shamanistic character of powers ascribed to certain archaic Greek soul-voyagers: ‘The earliest variety of indigenous male sorcerer attested for the Greek world is the ‘shaman’. This term is commonly applied to a linked series of figures in the Pythagorean and Orphic traditions. They flourished, supposedly, in the archaic period. The notices of Herodotus and the fragments of Empedocles demonstrate that the notion of the shamantype had at any rate already become established by the early classical period.

Ogden admits that the very word ‘shaman’ is taken from the Central Asian name for these ‘magicians’, as they have been studied in the modern period. He briefly mentions characteristic powers of the Central Asian shaman: he detaches his soul from his body in an ecstatic trance, the detached soul then speaks with the gods in their own language. He cures sick persons by retrieving their souls from the land of the dead or by defeating evil demons in battle, attracts animals to the hunt with his music, and defeats the gods that preside over animals with his soul. Ogden says that, ‘the Greek shamans are similarly characterized by their ability to manipulate their own souls, be it detaching them temporarily from their bodies and sending them on voyages of discovery, suspending them from life, reincarnating them, or “bilocating” between two places’. Other shamanic themes that recur in stories about these Greek figures are extended retreats into underground chambers, where they undergo symbolic death and descent to the underworld, divination whereby they see further in space and time, control of the elements, association with the cult of Hyperborean Apollo, and dismissal of pollution and pestilence.104

104

Ogden 2002 p. 9.

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Chapter 3

Secret Teachings about the Soul in the Post-Classical World (1) Secret teachings about the soul in the Hermetica The Hermetic Corpus is a collection of teaching discourses, probably composed and sorted together in the late second or early third century CE, though some scholars have conjectured an earlier date in the first century for the discourses’ archetype. These discourses (logoi) are alleged to have been delivered by Hermes the ThriceGreat, a god-like being (or deified human) to his disciples, Asclepius, Tat (=Thoth) and Ammon. They transmit secret doctrines about several principal concerns of that epoch: the creation of the world, the making of humankind, and the role of forces and demons in human affairs. The special concern of some central texts is to instruct the disciple about the proper moral and spiritual attitude whereby the reverent soul can save itself from the bonds of fate and the body’s vices. In these Roman-period Greek texts, Hermes Trismegistos was accorded a venerable antiquity, an original epiphany that made him contemporary with Moses, Orpheus and Zoroaster, amongst other well-known sages. In their discussion and criticism of the prevalent Gnostic and pagan sects the Church Fathers, such as Origen and Clement, were well aware of Hermetic influences and provide some important quotations and commentaries on Hermetic texts known at that time; the Hermetica flowed underground far into the Middle Ages. Hermes’ remote ancestry was reinforced and promulgated by Marsilio Ficino in his edition of the Hermetica in the late fifteeth century.1 The renowned classical scholar Isaac Casaubon exploded this ancient legend in an ingenious textual critique in 1614. In the Greek text of the ‘Poimandres’ (CH I), Casaubon detected Biblical, Jewish and Christian imagery, Greek diction too abstract for such an early date, and fanciful puns impossible to translate from Egyptian. But the learned scholar’s exposé was not enough to prevent many otherwise sound thinkers from clinging to the Egyptian sage’s pristine wisdom: ‘the Hermetic engine sputtered on through the 17th century, slowly losing momentum’.2 Modern scholarly study of the Hermetica properly begins with the wide-ranging investigations by the polymath Richard Reitzenstein between 1904 and 1926. Against the then-prevalent view that the conceptual milieu behind the Hermetic was mainly (or entirely Greek), Reitzenstein argued for an Egyptian setting; in later works he factored in some Iranian variables. In the 1920s, the British scholar Walter Scott attempted to establish the Greek and Latin texts for the Corpus, as well as a 1 On 2

Ficino’s and the Hermetica, see Copenhaver 1992 pp. xlvii–xlix; see HCM pp. 217–18. Copenhaver 1992 p. l; on the scholarly background, see Fowden 1986 pp. 11–25. 93

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complete translation and exhaustive commentary. Three volumes of Scott’s work had appeared by 1926, but his death left the enormous project incomplete; the fourth volume by Scott’s colleague A. S. Ferguson did not appear until 1936. Scott’s peers were harsh in their verdict of Scott’s work: the Greek texts were a hodge-podge of adjustments, deletions and insertions, and the translation was sometimes garbled. However, the Stobaeus Excerpts, the Testimonies, and the massive collection of notes remain today an invaluable source of information if used with caution. About the same time as Scott’s edition, the Oxford scholar A. D. Nock and the French scholar A.-J. Festugiere began their ground-breaking collaboration to produce an exact set of original texts and better translation; the four volumes appeared between 1945 and 1954. Almost completely overwhelming the GreekLatin-French edition itself, Festugiere published his own four-volume monumental study of the sources and parallels for the Hermetic Corpus, La Révélation d’Hermes Trismégiste (1950–54). Under the weight of his enormous erudition these works established the fundamental notion that Greek philosophical ideas are the core of the Hermetica, and that Egyptian names and motifs appear only as embellishments, ‘touches of local color’. Festugiere also mounted a strong campaign to exclude the so-called ‘technical’ works – the spells, charms and hymns of the Greek Magical Papyri – in favor of the ‘theoretical’ works which he considered better fitted the serious, speculative character of Greek thought. Hermetic studies might well have been suppressed and discussion stifled due to Festugiere’s magisterial and autocratic tutelage, as Garth Fowden says,3 if not for some unexpected discoveries and the novel approaches they inspired. The Coptic text of part of the Asclepius (from the Nag Hammadi Library), the Hor Archive from Saqqara, and the Russian (and then French) edition of the Armenian Definitions began to change the historical picture. J.-P. Mahé’s work on the Armenian and Coptic texts, in two large volumes, appeared in 1978–82; his edition of the Armenian Definitions, dated to the sixth century CE, comprises the second volume. Mahé’s basic thesis is that the kernel of the Hermetic Corpus are sentences derived from Egyptian Instruction Literature and are the basis for the gnomic form of many key Hermetic doctrines. As the treatises evolved over time, each text accreted smaller or larger amounts of commentary, thus becoming more or less fluent as the original gnomic statements faded into the background.4 About the same time as Mahé’s Hermès en Haute-Egypte, J. D. Ray published his edition, translation and commentary on the Hor Archive from Saqqara which contains several references to Hermes Trismegistos and can be precisely dated to 174–166 BCE.5 In a landmark work in 1986, Garth Fowden drew on every conceivable source to reconstruct an authentic picture of the original Hermetic milieu in Upper Egypt in the second and third century CE. Fowden points out that the overall atmosphere of the divine revelations is distinctly Egyptian, not Greek, though the texts were obviously written by Hellenized Egyptians who wanted to express their most significant ideas in the Ptolemaic koin¯e. He also underlines the Fowden 1986 p. xiv. See Mahé’s summary in EER 1987 vol. 6 pp. 287–93; and Copenhaver 1992 pp. lvi–lvii. 5 Ray 1979 pp. 62, 65, 70–71, 77–88, 80–81, 89, 95, 159–60; summary in Copenhaver 1992 pp. xiii–xvi. 3 4

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fact that the aretalogy of Imouthes-Asclepius emanated from an Egyptian religious milieu very similar to the Hermetica, that Chaeremon’s description (in Porphyry) of Egyptian temple life at that period matches the (meager) evidence in the Hermetica, and that the catalogue of sacred books in the temple of Horus at Edfu (140–124 BCE) could quite well describe the traditional arrangement of Hermetic discourses.6 Fowden criticizes Mahé for the latter’s insistence that Egyptian Wisdom Literature forms the original stratum of Hermetic doctrine, and instead attempts to build a third way between the totally Egyptian and the totally Greek extremes. He says that ‘we are dealing with a syncretistic culture whose elements, especially by the Roman period, were not easily separable’. The Hellenized Egyptians ‘held captive’ the very Greek culture that had captured them, utilizing Jewish theology, Babylonian astrology and Egyptian mythical and symbolic expressions. Fowden also argues convincingly that the putative categories ‘technical’, ‘philosophical’ and ‘spiritual’ would have been alien to these people, even if they were familiar to those educated in Greek philosophy. He also addresses a long-standing problem internal to the Hermetic discourses, one which caused earlier scholars to fabricate various ‘schools’, that some key ideas in some texts are incompatible with other ideas in other texts. Fowden proposes instead that some doctrines appear in discourses suitable to (or even written for) beginners in the Hermetic discipline, and other more advanced doctrines were suitable for initiates who had gained a higher level of knowledge.7 The recent discovery of the Demotic Book of Thoth, dating from the second, or even the first century CE, gives the attribution of an Egyptian source to the Hermetica an even firmer purchase. The text’s editors highlight some ‘striking similarities’ between the two: (1) they are both dialogues between a god and a human who wants to know. (2) Both works ‘portray an agreeable familiarity’ between god and human, a loving relation. (3) The Egyptian disciple has shgyg (longing) to know equivalent to the Hermetic disciple’s epithumia and pothos. (4) Imhotep is an important figure in the Book of Thoth as is his counterpart Asclepius in the Hermetica. (5) The most striking parallel is the epithet of Thoth, ‘great, great, great’ (as in the Hor Archive) which in Greek appears as Hermes megistou megistou kai megalou.8 In his commentary on the preliminary report Mahé endorses these five parallels and adds two further instances: (6) the Egyptian disciple’s exclamation that Thoth has caused him to become young again ‘reminds one’ of the Hermetic doctrine of rebirth (in CH XIII and The ‘Eighth Reveals the Ninth’). (7) The Book of Thoth was designed to be staged at the festival of Imhotep which would have made it ‘easily accessible’ to Hellenized Egyptians; they could be ‘tempted to translate it into Greek or to write an imitation’.9 Jasnow and Zauzich issue a caution in their preliminary report, however, about trying to draw too close a connection between the Book of Thoth and the Hermetica. In view of the ‘strong admixture’ of Platonic and Stoic elements in the Hermetica, they would ‘be much surprised to find any extensive verbal parallel’. It is precisely 6 7 8 9

Fowden 1986 pp. 32, 50–52, 54–5, 57–9. Fowden 1986 pp. 72–4, 89–90, 97–9, 116–18. These five points according to Jasnow & Zauzich 1995 p. 617. Mahé 1996 pp. 359, 361.

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this admixture which characterizes the Hermetic texts; hence, ‘even if the Book of Thoth is not the father of any of our known Hermetic works, it may be one of the grandfathers’.10 Mahé underscores an important dissimilarity between the two: the Hermetic path to immortality leads upwards ‘and this ascensional orientation of Greek Hermetism sounds quite different from the Book of Thoth, which describes the arrival of the deceased in the underworld, the voyage of the Bark of Re, a goddess who is possibly a guardian of one of the underworld gates, infernal darkness, the Fields of Thoth, etc.’ Mahé reprises his long-running argument that the Hermetica are the descendants of Egyptian Wisdom Literature, but admits that the Book of Thoth is ‘thus far the closest Egyptian document to the Greek philosophical Hermetica’, and hence it is pre-Hermetic, not one of the immediate ancestors.11 Erik Hornung is definitely unequivocal when he states that ‘there was certainly no Hermetism per se in ancient Egypt, but from at least the New Kingdom on, there prevailed an intellectual climate that was favorable to the rise of Hermetic lore’ – and this is very similar to the tone of Fowden’s thesis. Jan Assmann has pursued this ‘climatic theme’ even further and claims to have discerned precursors to Hermetic doctrines in hymns to the hidden, distant god in the Ramesses period (1279–1153 BCE), where the foundations were laid for Hellenistic ideas about the nature of soul and its release from the bonds of fate.12 Whatever the merits of the competing theories about the origins of the Hermetica the texts with which one has to work can be usefully broken down under the following headings: ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

The Corpus Hermeticum tractates I – XVIII [CH] The Latin Asclepius, usually appended to CH [Asc.] Excerpts from Stobaeus’ Anthology [SH] The ‘Eighth Reveals the Ninth’, ‘Prayer of Thanks’, ‘Scribal Note’, and parts of the Coptic ‘Asclepius’ from the Nag Hammadi Library [NHC VI.6–9] The Armenian Definitions [AD] The Demotic Book of Thoth [DBT]13 Various spells from the Greek Magical Papyri [PGM]

One of the most important questions to consider in broaching the topic of the nature and function of the human soul in the Hermetica is what kind of two-ness humans have in terms of the overall framework in which humans have their place. The Latin Asclepius makes an unequivocal statement clearly separating two worlds, that is, the intelligible and the sensible. Hermes declares to Asclepius, ‘know that the intelligible world, discernible only by the mind, is incorporeal and that nothing corporeal can be combined with its nature, nothing discernible by quality, quantity and number, for there is no such thing in it’ (Asc. 34). The speaker talks about an intelligible world (mundus) which can be known by the mind alone (mentis solo), excludes the corporeal, and hence all those properties associated with or predicable 10 11 12 13

For details, see Jasnow & Zauzich 2005 pp. 65–71. Mahé 1996 pp. 355, 361. Hornung 2002 p. 17; Assmann 1997 pp. 265–7. Now available in a consecutive translation, Jasnow & Zauzich 2005 pp. 441–71.

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of bodies.14 Hermes continues: ‘the world called sensible is the receptacle of all the sensible forms or qualities of bodies, none of which can be invigorated without god (sine deo vegetari) … If you consider the whole, you will learn that the sensible world itself and all it contains are in truth covered over (contecta) by that higher world as if by a garment (vestimento)’ (Asc. 34; see also SH IX). The Armenian Definitions offers an abbreviated digest of this thought: ‘Dieu: monde intelligible: monde. Dieu sensible: homme: monde destructible. Dieu: monde immobile; ciel; monde mobile; homme: monde raisonnable’ (AD I.1), and then asserts that these are the three worlds, which the editor Mahé connects with CH X.14. But in that Greek text the relation between the three terms is one of dependence: ‘god the father and the good; the cosmos; and the human. God holds the cosmos, but the cosmos holds the human.’ The next Armenian Definition reiterates the same cosmic triadism: ‘Il y a donc trois mondes en tout. Deux unités (constituent) le sensible, et une (est) l’intelligible; une (est) à l’image, tandis que las troisième (est) selon la plenitude’ (AD I.2, I.4). This cosmic three-ness, in fact, is characteristic of the period’s tendency to posit an intermediate domain, bridging or linking the entirely intelligible with the entirely sensible.15 The Hermetic reference to the receptacle, of course, reminds one of the famous image in the Timaeus cosmogony where the receptacle (or receiver) is the nurse or mother of all sensible things (49a, 50b, 53a). The Hermetic author(s) also rely on this model for the generation and mixing of the four elements. God is the father, the receiver the mother; god is the source and the receiver is the shaper. Scott proposed two readings of the second sentence: either ‘the hul¯e [matter] which is the substratum of the aisth¯etos kosmos is “clothed” with visible forms which are copies of the no¯eta eid¯e’; or ‘the aisth¯etos kosmos is “woven out of” the visible forms which are copies of the no¯eta eid¯e, i.e., it is wholly made up of those forms’.16 As we shall see below, the idea that the intelligible world is a garment or wrapping for the sensible world is replicated on the smallest scale by the idea that the human body is a garment for the soul. There is another reference to cosmic dualism in very similar terms in Asclepius’ definitions to King Ammon: ‘Just as the intelligible cosmos that encompasses the sensible cosmos fills it by making it solid with changing and omniform appearances, so also the sun that encompasses all things in the cosmos strengthens and makes solid things that come-to-be and pass-away’ (CH XVI.12).17 This grand analogy hinges on two pivots: that the intelligible cosmos surrounds or encompasses the sensible cosmos, and that the sun makes visible or illuminates material things. The latter doctrine is clearly derived from Plato’s potent image in the Republic 14 Scott asserts that the intelligible world is identical with the no¯ etos kosmos and draws Platonic parallels to this text, Scott III pp. 105–7. 15 On ‘rampant triadism’ in the first centuries, see Johnston 1991 pp. 15–16; J. M. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977 pp. 130–32; and R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism, London: Duckworth, 1972 pp. 35–7. 16 Scott III p. 124, where he also cites Philo twice on the notion of the sensible world as a garment; and Ferguson cites Hippolytus’ comment on Nature (Isis) wrapping the world in a heavenly garment, in Scott IV p. 409; see also CH VIII.3, ‘god surrounds matter with immortality’. 17 Scott relates this statement to an unspecified ‘Platonic dogma’, Scott II p. 449.

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(507d–8d), also taken up and extended by Aristotle in De Anima (407–13).18 The sun’s light activates the human capacity for vision, as well as making what is potentially visible actually visible. Hence the analogy with the two worlds is that, through god’s light, the intelligible cosmos ‘casts a shadow’ on matter and the shadow reveals or discloses the sensible properties of things. Another expression common to both Plato and the Hermetica for this inter-cosmic relation is that of an image (appearance) to its original (reality). Hermes says to Asclepius (CH VI.4) that ‘all things that are subject to eye-sight are as phantoms and shadowy illusions (hupopitonta eid¯ola … kai skiagraphiai)’.19 Hermes says to Tat concerning the perfect (god) and the imperfect (the world): ‘The one ever is, the other passes; the one is real, the other is shadowed by phantasies (hupo phantasias skiazetai)’ (SH I.1). And in the next discourse, ‘all things on earth are unreal, but some of them … are copies of reality. The rest are illusion and deceit (pseudos kai planos), for they consist of mere appearance (phantasias). When the illusion flows in from above, it becomes an imitation of reality’ (SH IIA.3–4)20 Scott asserts that this doctrine is Platonic ‘not only in the leading thought … but in the details of the argument by which this thesis is supported’ and quotes a lengthy speech from Plutarch’s On the Ei at Delphi (16.17) in support of this contention.21 The ‘Poimandres’ (CH I) explains the origination of the four elements from the mind of god by way of the creation of a second god, and the origination of the primal human from an imitation. According to Poimandres, by god’s counsel (boul¯e) he brought into being an elemental cosmos, and by speech (logos) he gave birth to a second god, the demiurge.22 In union with the divine word23 (as its template, so to speak), the demiurge whirled the cosmic elements around in circles – perhaps like a centrifuge. The heavier elements (earth and water) which weigh downward lost their union with the divine word and brought forth living things without reason (CH I.8–11). Mind, the father, ‘who is light and life, gave birth to a human (anthr¯opos) like himself, whom he loved as his own child’. The primal human24 was made in god’s image and endowed with some of his creative powers; he also wanted to make things. The primal human entered the demiurge’s domain (the material world), thus displaying to Nature his beautiful form, his shape upon the waters and his shadow upon the earth. When he saw his form reflected in Nature he loved it and wanted to inhabit it; Nature (as the matrix) embraced him as her lover and they merged. This double account, both cosmogony and anthropogony, has more detailed recensions, in the Bitys Tablet synopsized by Zosimus,25 and in the Phos-Aug¯e For analyses of both their arguments on the visible, see HCM pp. 66–8. On uses of skiaz¯o, ‘to shade or darken’, but also ‘to cover’, see LSJ 1968 p. 1610. 20 See the trans. & notes by Nock & Festugiere III p. 5. 21 Scott III pp. 306–8. 22 On the Platonic model of the demiurge, see Copenhaver, 1992 pp. 104–5; Ferguson in Scott IV p. 354. 23 See Copenhaver’s notes on the divine word in the Hermetica, 1992 pp. 100, 102, 104. 24 On which, see Copenhaver 1992 pp. 106–7; Fowden 1986 pp. 120–26; Scott I pp. 36–7; Ferguson discusses seven different sources for this anthropic myth, in Scott IV pp. 354–6. 25 For which see Fowden’s synopsis, 1986 pp. 120–26; and H. M. Jackson’s edition of Zosimus’ text, On the Letter Omega, Scholars Press, 1978. 18 19

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creation account.26 Poimandres implies that individual humans are the works produced by the union of primal human and ‘mother’-nature; ‘because of this, unlike any other living thing on earth, human kind is twofold: in the body mortal, but immortal in the essential human (ousi¯odes). Even though he is immortal and has authority over all things, human kind is affected by mortality because he is subject to fate (heimarmen¯e); thus, although human is above the cosmic framework, he became a slave within it’ (CH I.15). The specific term ousi¯odes is an unusual word, but is used by the Hermetica several times in similar contexts.27 The author (or translator) of the Asclepius considers the term important enough to leave it in Greek. The essential-form follows immediately from the assertion of humans’ twofold nature: ‘Human kind is the only living thing that is twofold (duplex): one part of him is simple, what the Greeks call ousi¯odes, what we call a form of divine likeness (divinae similitudines formam). What the Greeks call hulikos and we call earthly is fourfold (quadruplex). From it is made the body that covers over what we have already termed divine in human kind’ (Asc. 7; also AD II.1). These two crucial references to humans’ twofold nature can be construed in various ways, not all of which are compatible. First, in both cases, it is in terms of a basic life that humans are different from other things, that is, one part does not ‘take part’ in the death-bound life of other (living) things, not that it is in having life that humans differ from other non-living things. Second, it is in his essential, not his accidental or contingent, nature that humans have (or are) this part, and this part consists in an image of the divine nature.28 Since the divine nature is bodiless and eternal, this inner image is incorporeal and immortal. Third, the primal human merged with the material world and through the four elements brought into being ordinary humans as ensouled bodies. Insofar as humans’ material bodies are subject to forces of decay and dissolution their lives are like that of animals, and hence under the sway of fate. Reitzenstein connected these two Hermetic passages with Zosimus’ texts and with Iamblichus (de Myst, 8.5.267) and argued for a doctrine of two souls.29 Through one soul humans were subject to inexorable fate, through the other soul humans were able to escape from fate; this notion seems to be echoed in Asclepius section 22. Scott is ambivalent about the meaning of ousi¯odes, since on his interpretation of Platonic dualism, ousia means ‘true being’ and hence is incorporeal, whereas on his construal of Stoic materialism, ousia means ‘corporeal substance’, and hence is substantial. He also quotes Plutarch’s account of the Stoic notion to monimon kai ousi¯odes, earth and water, compared to two lighter elements.30 The Asclepius continues its account of the demiurge’s making of humans – not the first god’s creation of humans – stressing the role of the human body as an instrument or means for dealing with material things. It employs the standard ‘scientific’ notion that a material nature (phusis) is defined as the proper ratio of an elemental mixture: ‘After GMPT 1986 pp. 177–8, 185–6. CH II.5, IX.1, IX.5, XIII.14, Asc. 7, Asc. 19; see the notes by Copenhaver 1992 pp. 109, 221. 28 As Scott argues, III p. 45. 29 According to Copenhaver 1992 pp. 110, 236. 30 Scott III p. 44. 26 27

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god had made human ousi¯odes, and noticed that he could not take care of everything unless he was covered over with a material wrapping (mundano integimento), god covered him with a bodily dwelling (corporea domo) and commanded that all humans be like this, mingling and combining two natures into one in their just proportion’ (Asc. 8). The Asclepius, as well as the Kor¯e Kosmou, stipulate an important formative role for nature (phusis), the hypostasis of the cosmic womb or matrix: ‘God prepared matter as a receptacle for omniform forms, but nature imaging matter with forms by means of the four elements causes all things to reach as far as heaven so that they will be pleasing in god’s sight’ (Asc.3). This passage clearly indicates that the elements are instruments for Nature to produce forms (=kinds), according to god’s will. The cosmos itself is sometimes said to be an intelligent being, the world-soul (anima mundi)31 with sensation and understanding, which makes and unmakes things. It is ‘an instrument of god’s will. In truth, god made the instrument to make all things actively in itself, taking under its protection the seeds (sperma) it has received from god’ (CH IX.6). The claim that the cosmos has accepted the divine gift of seeds for natural generation is reiterated in other texts (SH IX.1, XV.2). The key germinal factor of sperma can be found in the Timaeus (86c, 91b) where seeds enter an account of the generation of specific bodily organs. It is also central to the Stoic concept of ‘seminal reason’32 (spermatikos logos), Epicurus and Lucretius’ materialist scheme,33 and Plotinus’ complex synthesis in his account of soulformation.34 The Hermetic authors seem to share with these thinkers the idea that seeds are the smallest bodies or material particles that contain the correct elemental ratio for the production of the individual according to its kind (genos). In the words of one rather puzzling statement (Asc. 4), the kind is a totality or entirety (soliditas) of which the form (species) is a smaller ‘part’. Scott argued at length that the Latin species corresponds with the Greek eid¯os (translated either as ‘form’ or ‘kind’), but that it can also mean ‘individual’ in contrast with ‘class’ or ‘species’ in the modern sense.35 Copenhaver notes that ‘any consistent translation of species and genus in the Asclepius is impossible, but “form” and “kind” at least have the virtue of not implying a species-genus relation as in modern usage’.36 In any case, there are several ‘natural kinds’: gods, demons, humans and animals, each of which realizes its nature by ‘following after’ its original form. Each kind, in virtue of its form, has its own place in the grand scheme, though those that are ‘joined with’ the demiurge’s divine nature, that is, gods, demons and humans, can recognize and understand other kinds and hence change their form. (Asc. 5) In the ultimate transformation, as Hermes declares to Asclepius, ‘a human being is a great wonder … for he changes his nature into a god’s [nature], as if he were a god’ (Asc. 6).

31 32 33 34 35 36

On other comparable uses of ‘world-soul’ at this time, see Johnston 1991 Appendix. SVF 1.28, 2.102, 2.205, 2.314. Fr.250; Demos. 18.159; 25.48; Lucretius 3.124–9; Vergil Aen. 6.724–6. Enn. 3.1.7; 4.4.39; in general, see my previous discussion, HCM pp. 82–3. Scott III pp. 15–18. Copenhaver 1992 p. 217.

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The various authors of the Hermetic texts, often with different purposes and/or different audiences, offer a puzzling array of accounts of human nature, especially with regard to the soul and mind. There appear to be several different templates: (1) humans have two natures, or two main ‘parts’, or are the union of two substances; (2) the human body qua living thing is composed of four elements; (3) the human soul is composed of four ‘ingredients’, connected by means of pneuma or aether to the four elements; (4) the human soul has three forms (forma or eid¯e), conceived of as ‘drives’; (5) the human mind has four powers or faculties, and (6) it is in virtue of having a mind that a human is immortal. Across the wide range of Hermetic sources – the Greek-Egyptian treatises, the Latin Asclepius, the Armenian Definitions, Stobaeus’ Excerpts – there does not appear to be complete agreement on all these templates, nor does it seem feasible that all these templates could be accommodated into one overall account. There are numerous references to humans’ dual nature (CH I.15; Asc. 7, 8, 22; and so on). An Armenian Definition says that a human has (or is) two natures at one time, mortal and immortal, but then immediately declares that a human is three substances at once: the intellect, the breath, and material37 (AD VI.1). According to Hermes, there are only two kinds of entities (duo ont¯on t¯on ont¯on), corporeal and incorporeal, corresponding to mortal and divine (CH IV.6). This same assertion seems to be expanded in Stobaeus, where Hermes refers to three kinds of incorporeals (tria eid¯e as¯omat¯on) that are ‘in’ humans.38 The first is intellect (no¯eton), which is without color, without figure, without body, and issues from the primary intellectual substance. The second receives the intellect and is partly moved by that substance with a certain degree of reason, and passes into an image of the demiurge’s thought. The third is the body’s set of properties: place, time, motion, figure, surface, power and form. But these properties are of two sorts: one pertains to the attributes of the self (idi¯os), the other to the body. The former are named as property ‘types’, for example, ‘the figure’, whereas the latter are named as instances of the type, for example, ‘the figured figure’. The use of the word eid¯os in this text, here translated as ‘kind’ is also the word translated elsewhere as ‘form’; this equivocation should alert the attentive reader to the triform psychic scheme outlined below. The human body in its animal condition is a compound (a type of mixture or krasis) of the four material elements. After his account of the union of the primal human and mother nature, Poimandres describes the birth of the seven ‘governors’: ‘ was the female, water did the fertilizing, fire was the maturing force. Nature took spirit from the aether and brought forth bodies in the shape of humans. From life and light the human became soul and mind; from life came soul, from light came mind’39 (CH I.17). Aside from the first three standard elements, nature is 37 This definition does not mean the same thing as the text Mahé cites (1982 p. 375, note 4) in support of his interpretation, that the soul carries three ‘things’: mind in the reason, reason in the soul, and soul in the spirit (CH X.13). 38 Scott’s translation of this excerpt is a real mess, vol. I pp. 421–3; but see N+F III pp. 47–8; note also that s¯omatos is translated ‘bodily’ and as¯omatos is translated ‘incorporeal’, instead of ‘bodiless’. 39 For alternate versions, see CH III.1–3; SH XV.1–3; AD XI.1–6; the pair ‘light and life’ is

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said to employ pneuma extracted from the aether40 (hence a specific kind of pneuma) for the generation of bodies. Life (zo¯es) is equated with soul (psych¯e) along the lines of the standard Greek notion of ‘life-force’, and light (ph¯otos) is equated with mind (nous). Hence the ensouled life of animate beings results from earth, fire, water and spirit; whereas the distinctly human (and demonic) nature results from the inclusion of an immaterial, non-elemental light. The four elements that nourish human bodies, according to Stobaeus’ sources, are earth, fire, water and air (aeros), which holds together the frame (sunekhei to sk¯enos)41 (SH V.4). According to another text, fire dried some of the water and earth came into being; when earth and water were being dried vapor (atmos) arose, and hence air (aer) came into being.42 These four elements combined according to a harmonious reason (sun¯elthe kata ton t¯es harmonias logon); from their combination arose spirit and seed analogous to the surrounding spirits (periekhonto pneumati) (SH XV.3). This is an exceptionally important statement43 for three reasons: (a) pneuma (sing.) and pneumati (pl.) are distinguished, the former is similar to the latter, but not the same thing; (b) pneuma is not one of the four elements, but is taken from the celestial aether, and hence is connected with the eternal stars; and (c) the fourth element (air) is the result of a previous mixture that produced atmos or vapor which envelopes the earth. Several Hermetic texts isolate the idea that pneuma is intimately connected with both the air outside and the ensouled life inside. Isis tells her son Horus that humans have specific properties that result from the ratio of things combined in the living body. When Horus asks wherein this combination consists, she says it is a mixture of the four elements and from this is emitted or exhaled a vapor (atmos) which envelopes the soul (perieleitai men t¯e psuch¯e), diffused through the body and imparting some of its properties (SH XXVI.13). Isis then proceeds to describe the development of the four basic temperaments (ethoi). She had said that the spirit (pneuma) is drawn from the air (aeros) and is a sign placed in living things by nature which indicates a source in their origin above44 (SH XXVI.12). The Asclepius speculates that this ‘ingredient’, joined to the other four elements and from which specifically human properties emerge, is a fifth part and comes from the aether45 (Asc. 6). In conclusion, the breath (pneuma) is inhaled from the air, the air is connate with god’s breath and derived from the surrounding immortal atmos. This air pervades the human body and ‘inspires’ the properties of an organic living discussed by Dodd, 1935 pp. 133–6; Iversen suggests a parallel with the Egyptian concepts of ba and ankh, 1984 p. 31. 40 N+F render aether ‘le souffle vita’, N+F I p. 12; on god’s life-giving breath, see also GMPT p. 70. 41 N+F translate ‘maintient l’enveloppe’, N+F III p. 31; see also SH XXIV.9; CH IX.7; Asc. 10. 42 For this meaning of atmos, atmiz¯ o, see LSJ 1968 p. 271; Lucretius also distinguishes between vapor and air, 3.220–30; and in general, Kingsley 1995 pp. 24–35; HCM pp. 83–4. 43 Unfortunately badly mangled in Scott’s translation, Scott I p. 439; where N+F render pneuma (sing.) and pneumati (pl.) in both cases by ‘souffle’ (sing.), N+F III p. 66. 44 See esp. the trans by N+F IV p. 84; parallel statements in SH XXIX; CH IX.8; see the comments by Copenhaver 1992 pp. 100–1; N+F I p. 104; and Scott II p. 220. 45 AD XI.6 mentions Aristotle’s hypothesis of a fifth element (aether).

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thing, that is, it makes those properties into the actual characteristics of a living being. The four basic elements are the nourishment for the human soul-body composite. This key idea is subtended by the etymology of Latin elementum, a slightly altered spelling of alimentum, and hence ‘root’ in the sense of basic component, and ‘root’ in the sense of source of life.46 According to Stobaeus’ sources, through feeding, material is distributed to suitable bodily organs: water to blood, earth to bones and marrow,47 air to the nerves, and fire to the eyes (SH V.7). Hermes asserts that the human soul is carried in this manner: mind is in the reason, reason is in the soul, the soul is in the spirit, and it is spirit (pneuma) which, in passing through the bloodstream, moves the living thing, and bears it up, so to speak (tropon tina bastazei). Again, this clearly indicates the function of spirit as the hinge between the immaterial, divine ‘part’ and the material, mundane ‘part’ (see CH X.13). But Hermes disabuses his pupil of thinking that the soul (and hence the life-force) is in the blood. Rather, it is spirit which must be drawn into the soul, and here one understands that he means drawn from the outer air, changed by god’s act into vivifying breath. Hermes devotes several sections to an intricate, multi-layered explanation of the fourfold composition of human being (Asc. 11–18). Ferguson worked through these sections with great precision and summarized the main features of Hermes’ account.48 It is indeed a theory of the complex interrelations between the human microcosm and the universal macrocosm ‘in a peculiar Hermetic setting’, as he says. There are four sets of four terms: (a) lower elements: earth, fire, water and air; (b) higher elements: soul (anima), conscious (sensus), spirit (spiritus) and reason (ratio); (c) bodily parts: hands and feet and other bodily members and (d) mental parts: mind (animus49), conscious (sensus), memory (memoria) and foresight (providentia). Copenhaver’s editorial decision to translate sensus as ‘consciousness’ makes sense (sic). As something distinctive to humans alone, sensus means more than a being who senses, a thing with sense organs. It indicates that humans are sensemaking and sense-giving beings; insofar as a person can ‘make sense’ of things he is said to understand those things. Through the use of speech – which the Hermetica says is a power of mind, not reason – a person can give sense to his thoughts by means of words. In group (b), Ferguson says that sensus must be identified with nous, and anima with psych¯e; but in group (d), sensus is aisth¯esis and anima is 46 The Latin elementum, which renders the Greek stoicheia, is closely related to the Latin alimen-, meaning ‘nourishment’; it is similar to IE *al-am, Skt. al-akm, ‘nourish’; in Cicero and Quintillian, elementa was used to translate Aristotle’s ‘categories’; it also means ‘alphabet’, and hence parallels the secondary Greek meaning ‘letters’, see OLD s.v. elementum. 47 In connection with this, see the magical spell about breath, bones and marrow, GMPT p. 67. 48 Ferguson in Scott IV pp. 402–3. 49 Animus here is surely equivalent to mens (and hence nous) and not, as Copenhaver says (1992 pp. 217, 224), to ‘thought’, which is the exercise of the mind, that is, the results of its operations. The Latin author presumably used animus (m.) to distinguish it from anima (f.); see my discussion in HCM pp. 80–82.

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thumos. The contrast, he argues, is the result of (b) referring to the ousia of humans’ two parts, which are opposed in nature and function, whereas (d) refers to the functions of the human mind in relation to the cosmos. Ferguson’s fourth group of mental parts, therefore, directs our attention to the triform scheme, as well as to Hermes’ exhortations to the pupil to be reverent. In addition to the quaternary of higher elements and the quaternary of lower elements, the Hermetic author(s) also make occasional (less obvious) reference to 50a triform psychical scheme of drives. Like Plato in the Phaedrus and the Republic, Hermes alternates between biform terms (reason and unreason) and triform terms (reason, desire and ‘spirit’), where desire (thumos) and ‘spirit’ (epithumia) are aspects of unreason (alogon). When asked about the soul’s ascent (anodos), Poimandres says that when the human’s material body is released in death the form (eidos) one used to have vanishes. One gives over to the demon one’s ethos, the bodily senses rise up and flow back to their source, becoming separate parts (mer¯e).51 Where the mind in reason ascends, desire (thumos) and ‘spirit’ (epithumia)52 merge with irrational nature (alogon phusin), that is, they perish along with all other animal properties. In one of Stobaeus’ sources (SH IVA.7), Hermes is unequivocal in his tripartite vocabulary: there are three universal forms of soul: divine, human and irrational. The human soul ‘takes part in’ the divine soul in one part (reason), but joined to reason are two irrational parts, desire and ‘spirit’, forces connected with the mortal body. When the divine part enters into the mortal body, desire and ‘spirit’ become contra-rational tendencies, and it is through their presence that the whole soul becomes evil.53 In another source (SH IIB.6), Hermes discusses the internal struggle amongst the soul parts (mer¯e), when death permits one part to travel the road back to god. Although he does not name the other two parts, they clearly fill the roles assigned to them in the Platonic scheme. According to yet another excerpt (SH XVII), desire and ‘spirit’ come to resemble the material constituents in the body which houses them. Desire is a disposition according to the soul’s thought (psych¯es no¯ema) and becomes courage when not distracted by cowardice. ‘Spirit’ is a disposition according to the soul’s reason (psych¯es logismon) and becomes temperance (sophrosun¯e) when not moved by pleasure. When desire and ‘spirit’ agree together they give rise to a well-balanced disposition, in accord with the soul’s reason. The function of reason then is to redress the excess in desire and compensate for the lack in ‘spirit’.54 This Hermetic author follows the Phaedrus archetype of For summary of this scheme, see HCM pp. 46–50. In those passages which discuss this triple division, the author(s) commonly use the word ‘part’ (meros) a term which Plato usually avoided in this context, see HCM pp. 47–8. 52 Copenhaver translated thumos ‘feeling’ and epithumia ‘longing’, 1992 p. 6; he quotes an old article by Zielinski (1905) who ‘identifies the sequence … as a reflection of the tripartite psychology of faculties in Plato’, 1992 p. 115; Scott does not draw this parallel, Scott II pp. 57–60. 53 See Scott’s notes on this text, III pp. 350–52; N+F translate the two terms ‘irascible’ and ‘concupiscible’ III pp. 18, 76; Scott, rather misleadingly, translates them as ‘repugnance’ and ‘desire’, I p. 393 note 1. 54 This interpretation relies on the N+F translation, III p. 76. 50 51

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reason ruling over the other two ‘drives’ and canalizing their forces toward virtuous ends. In addition to the human soul’s analysis in terms of four higher and four lower elements, the human mind is also further analyzed in terms of the powers (dunameis) which result from the relative dispositions of the four higher elements. It is with respect to the distinction between mind and reason that the Hermetica stand out from many other contemporary theories. Through the making of the primal human, Hermes says to his pupil, god shared reason among all people, but not mind, though he begrudged it to no one. To begrudge this does not come from on high (god himself) but forms below in the souls of those who do not have mind (CH IV.3). Scott remarks that in this text logos can mean speech or reason55 and then distinguishes between higher nous, which only the few possess, and lower nous, which accompanies speech.56 Although Scott’s bifurcation of nous is both unnecessary and confusing, he is surely correct in saying that nous is something for humans to strive for; in attaining it they become perfect. Nock and Festugiere also remark that logos has the double sense of reason and speech, but further that logos is opposed to nous as discursive reason is to intellectual intuition.57 Mind then is a freely bestowed gift from god which, when used rightly, permits gnosis, genuine knowledge of god as source and symbol. Hermes continues with an important lesson from his grand myth about the cosmic mixing-bowl,58 describing this important psychic separation. All humans, he says, immerse themselves in the bowl but only those who recognize god as its source receive mind; those who do not have reason without understanding. The mindless rational beings ‘do not know the purpose or the agents of their coming-to-be’. They have sensations like unreasoning animals, are driven by desire and anger (thum¯e kai org¯e), do not admire what should be, and believe that humans were made to pursue bodily pleasures (CH IV.5). This is an important Hermetic thesis: only through an understanding of the true ‘reasons’ for their being, that is, the purpose for which they were made, can humans transform mere reason into mind (see also CH IV.1; V.6). One could say that humans’ power of reason is the essence (ousia) of their kind and that it demarcates humans from animals. But it is only through the exercise of this capacity that (some) humans can attain gnosis; all other humans live their life as if they were unreasoning animals. When Hermes enjoins Asclepius to ‘use his mind’, the very discourse he has just uttered will seem true, but if he does not use his mind then he will not know the truth.59 ‘To understand is to believe’, Hermes says, ‘and not to believe is not to understand. Reason does get to the truth, but mind is powerful and when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to reach truth.’ When the mind carefully considers these words, it discovers that they are in accord with reason, and through this accord it reaches rest (CH IX.10). Copenhaver comments Scott II p. 139; but in contrast, Ferguson in Scott IV p. 367. AD VIII.4 seems to say that there are two intellects. 57 N+F I p. 53, note 6; as well, Copenhaver 1992 p. 133. 58 On the cosmic krater see Scott III pp. 140–42, citing much background material. 59 This statement supports Fowden’s claim that some discourses are geared to higher levels of initiation in the Hermetic mysteries, 1986 pp. 72–4. 55 56

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that in this passage to ‘understand’ (no¯esai) stands in opposition to ‘reason’ (or ‘discourse’) in that it is equated with belief.60 E. R. Dodds argued that the equation of understanding with belief (or faith) was a profound departure from the pagan attitude, since for a person with a philosophical education pistis was a lower state of mind, insofar as it is assent without rational conviction.61 An individual’s knowledge of this special revelation is appropriate to gnosis, and since gnosis is in communication with the unseen it is precisely faith (see Asc. 29). The mind’s intellectual power was often conceived on the model of human vision, a powerful and long-lasting analogy. An individual understands when he ‘sees’ the truth, the soul is illuminated by god’s light, and in the light it comes to the truth. In keeping with this ensemble of visual-intellectual images, the Hermetica often speak of mental insight as ‘piercing’ or ‘penetrating’ the layers of illusion (the sensible world) to the depth of the real (the intelligible world). Also, in keeping with the late Judaic and Egyptian view62 (but less so the Hellenistic view), the Hermetica locate the mental powers in the heart, not the head. Hence one comes across the unusual locution ‘the heart’s eyes’ with reference to mental insight. Thus, for example, when Hermes adjures Tat to contemplate god’s image, he says that ‘if your vision is sharp and you think it (no¯eseis) with your heart’s eyes (kardias opthalmois) … you shall discover the road that leads above, or rather the image shows the way (eik¯en hod¯eg¯esei)’ (CH IV.11). Of course, the more common locution, ‘to see with the mind’s eye’, is merely metonymical for genuine rational insight. Later, when Tat has been so dazzled by Hermes’ revelations that he cannot keep track of the many new teachings, Tat says that his guide has deranged his phren¯es63 that Hermes’ speech has made him speech-less (aphasion), and hence bereft of what was in his phren¯es (CH XIII.4, 5). An anonymous injunction exhorts the auditors to look up with the heart’s eyes (opthalmois t¯es kardias) and the next section connects the pursuit of knowledge with the divine light above. Only those who are sober can gaze with the heart’s eyes toward the one who is not seen nor heard64 (CH VII.1, 2). The Kor¯e Kosmou is even more exact in situating the vision of truth in the heart: when the first-made souls contemplated their appointed places in the material world they lamented being condemned to darkness, away from god’s light. Their eyes will be dimmed when confined in the human body and the souls’ home (oikos) will be in the heart65 (SH XXIII.36). Isis likens the world to the human body: just as the ancestral homeland is in the middle of the earth, so also the middle of the human body is the heart, and the heart is the control center (horm¯et¯erion) of the soul66 (SH XXIV.13). Copenhaver 1992 p. 154. E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, New York: Norton, 1977 pp. 120–23; contra Fowden’s claim 1986 p. 101; see also N+F I p. 105 note 35. 62 For Hebrew ideas, see TDNT vol. III pp. 606–13; for the Egyptian, see Mahé 1982 pp. 297–8. 63 The thoracic cage, or perhaps the lungs; Copenhaver translates this word, as well as kardia, by ‘heart’. 64 N+F cite several NT and Patristic parallels, N+ F I p. 82 note 5. 65 Scott likens this situation to the Stoic h¯ egemonikon, Scott III p. 531. 66 N+F remark, at IV p. 63 note 42, that this text might be the source of Tertullian’s image of the heart as psychic controller in De An. 15.5, as well as Horapollo Aegyptii I. 36. 60 61

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The most exact Hermetic epitome for mind-reason-soul-spirit is the text of CH X.13, already quoted: mind is in reason, reason is in soul, soul is in spirit, and the spirit moves the living thing. Each form is nested within the next form, where the enclosing form is a garment for the enclosed. After bodily death, ‘the soul rises up to itself (?), the spirit is drawn into the blood, the soul into the spirit, but the mind, since it is divine by nature, becomes purified by its garments (endumai) and takes on a fiery body’67 (CH X.16). More than one envelope is required because the naked mind cannot reside alone in a material body. The mind takes the soul as a shroud (a funerary garment) and the soul uses the spirit as its servant. One should note well that separate garment images attach to the body as a tomb, in contrast with the body as a prison. In any case, when the soul separates from the body and the mind from the soul, the mind puts on a fiery tunic (chiton), an envelope it could not have worn when it was in the soul (and hence in the body). This fiery tunic is the posthumous human’s demonic body (CHX. 21–3).68 Copenhaver, in agreement with Nock and Festugiere on this issue,69 discerns two currents in the Hermetic treatment of post-mortem soul separation, currents that are not entirely compatible. In sections 13–19 the human being is a hierarchy of enveloping substances – body, spirit, soul, reason, mind – of which mind, ontologically the highest, is the inmost. At death when this composite dissolves, mind is liberated to take on the fiery, demonic body that it had to abandon before entering a human body. The reward of the reverent soul is to become pure mind, but the irreverent soul is punished with the burden of vices that it must carry when it enters another human body.

In contrast, in the next part, sections 21–25, ‘mind itself is a daim¯on, either a helping spirit sent by divine justice to guide the reverent soul to gnosis, or an avenging spirit that leads the irreverent soul to greater sin’.70 In this astute interpretation, three crucial factors in the Hermetic concept of human immortality are presented: the dissolution of the soul-body composite, the role of demons and the reward for the reverent. When the first god changed bodiless matter into bounded material bodies, he imposed an order on what was disordered; he surrounded the body of the world with the world-soul so that the now-ordered matter would not dissolve. Where the stars never lose their order, and hence never dissolve, earthly things become disordered through bodily changes. But their dissolution affects only the bodily nature of the composite whole, and not the nonbodily, ensouled nature.71 When Mind speaks to Hermes he says that death is not the destruction of the elements combined but the dissolution of their union. The apparent destruction of an individual is no more than its basic constituents becoming invisible and hence concealed; but every ‘swirling’ of released elements is a return to their original state, and every concealment is a renewal (CH XI.15). In the loose See N+F I p. 131 notes 56–8. On this demonic body, see SH XXIV.10; Ch. Oracles fr.129; and for analyses, Copenhaver 1992 pp. 162–3; Scott II pp. 275–7; N+F I pp. 138–40. 69 See N+F I pp. 133–4, 138–40; and also Scott II pp. 275–7. 70 Copenhaver 1992 p. 163, emphasis added. 71 According to CH VIII.3–4; XIII.13–14; XVI.9. 67 68

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sense of ‘life’, since none of the primordial mixture is ever destroyed, everything that exists lives, everything is an actual part of the world-body (CH XII.15; Asc. 29). Only the composition of composite bodies dissolves, hence dissolution is not real (or true) death, but the break-up of an alloy (CH XII.16). In the strict sense of ‘life’, only those composite things that exhibit self-willed motion are living, and in losing life they lose the motion internal to their organized (and organic) body. Given the fact that the Hermetica does not offer a quasi-scientific account of the technical aspects of mixture, their thesis about dissolution at this level is little different than other then-current accounts; it is an amalgam of Stoic, Middle Platonic and late antique medical theories. What does distinguish the Hermeticists’ view of worldly death and other-worldly ‘life’ are the claims about the ante-natal and post-mortem conjunction of the human mind with a demon and the emphasis on reverence (or piety) as a condition for humans achieving an immortal status. The key to understanding the role that demons play in this scheme is the Hermetic notion of energy; it is energy that binds together the soul-body composite and it is energy that dissolves the composite. ‘Death has nothing to do with this’, says the divine guide (CH VIII.1); the word ‘death’ (thanatos) comes from the word ‘immortal’ (athanatos), and hence what is not immortal is taken to be death-bound (that is, mortal, from Latin mortus).72 All real (or true) things are without death, that is, annihilation or destruction, but that does not make worldly beings composed of those deathless things immortal. If all material worldly things are mere illusions, pale copies of bright originals, then their loss of ‘life’ is an illusion; the ordered arrangement of their parts loses its apparent order.73 However, in virtue of the perfect immaterial simplicity of minds they are not real constituents in the elemental mixture, and the dissolution of the soul-body composite which houses them allows them to return to their ‘proper place’ (SH XXV.4–5). According to the most comprehensive version of the Hermetic cosmogony, the basic forces (energeia) are the tools that god used in blending the elements into their basic kinds (CH XII.21–2). These forces are at work in soulless as well as ensouled things. In living things they are forces which hold together the soul-body composite; when the soul separates from the body at death, these forces continue working. But without the soul’s ruling action, the forces decompose the body’s parts (SH III.7); hence the composite loses the flesh and exposes the bones. Although the basic forces work in bodies, they are themselves unbodied and hence immortal. Despite their simplicity and perfection they are dependent in their workings (erga) on the bodies they use as tools or media (SH III.6). Although they work through souls on bodies, they cannot connect with a bodiless soul; it is through some body that a force becomes manifest. In addition, it seems that there are different kinds of forces: universal, natural, specific, and so forth. Hermes informs Tat that the Decans (the thirty-six gods of the zodiac) sowed the earth with seeds of certain forces, the evil variety of which are called demons. These demons do not possess bodies made of special material, nor are they moved within by soul (SH VI.10). Like all basic forces

72 73

An important point developed in one of the main conclusions in HCM p. 359. SH XX.1; Scott III pp. 456–7; for a different text and translation, see N+F III p. 86.

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they must employ bodies in order to bring about their works, and in the case of humans after death, this is a fire-like body which accretes around the soul. The Hermetic discussion of demons is in accord with the then-current notion that demons are intermediate entities, partaking of the divine intelligible realm in being deathless and bodiless, and partaking of the human sensible realm in having bodies and passions. After death, Poimandres declares, your body decays, your form disappears, and your ethos is transferred to a demon. Your immortal ‘nature’ ascends through the cosmic frame, and at each of seven levels it surrenders specific energies, that is, those basic human impulses that drove an individual’s worldly existence. Once stripped of all these features, the individual enters the eighth region (the ogdoad) where he gains his own proper power (idian dunamin)74 (CH I.25–26). Along with other blessed beings, the soul then sings hymns to the father and hears certain powers that exist in the next, highest region (the ennead).75 The seven cosmic regions are without doubt equivalent to the seven governors made by the second god, that is, the seven planets.76 Another tract explicitly situates troops of demons under the regimen of the stars, good and evil according to their energies, where these energies comprise a demon’s essence (CH XVI.10–15). One is compelled to infer from the previous passages about post-mortem ascent, the dissolution of ensouled living bodies, and the life-force present in soul that it is the human mind alone that transcends the death-bound sensible world. As Hermes repeatedly insists, reason is the special power of humans alone as a natural kind, but mind is given only to some humans. Hence, only those who use their mind in the proper manner, that is, according to the Hermetic discipline, are able to attain immortality: ‘Among all living things god recognized humankind by the unique reason and learning through which humans could banish and spurn the body’s vices, and he made them reach for immortality as their hope and ambition’ (Asc. 22). When the human mind conceives good things it receives seeds from god, and when it conceives evil things the seeds come from a demon. No part of the cosmos is without a demon that steals into the mind to sow the seeds of its own energy; these lead to shameful and irreverent actions. The seeds from god are potent, beautiful and good; these thoughts lead to virtuous and reverent actions (CH IX.3; see also CH X.21). God saves those who in their essence (their inner being) are surrounded by good,77 but the good words and deeds these humans make are the result of their own use of available forces (CH IX.5), under the guidance of wisdom and providence. The Hermetic author(s) repeatedly commend piety (eusebia, sometimes translated ‘reverence’) as the right attitude for an aspiring initiate to attain immortality. Copenhaver astutely observes that ‘reverence’ better renders eusebia as an attitude toward the gods, while ‘piety’ more strongly implies a virtue possessed by an individual.78 Garth Fowden calls attention to the many Hermetic exhortations 74 Reitzenstein claimed to discern clear evidence for Iranian ideas here, especially for the idea of the soul-voyage by way of Mithraism, according to Copenhaver 1992 p. 115. 75 The secret teaching about this is contained in the treatise ‘The Eighth Reveals the Ninth’, NHC VI.6. 76 For numerous references supporting this equation, see Copenhaver 1992 p. 116. 77 On the Hermetic doctrine of salvation, see esp. Georg Luck 2001 pp. 191–202. 78 Copenhaver 1992 p. 114; see also Burkert 1985 pp. 273–5.

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to eusebia; it is ‘the natural function of man, and especially of the philosopher who aspires to gnosis’.79 For Hermes, scorning the body’s needs, turning away from the material world, is the consequence of seeing the good and turning towards it: ‘those who take part in the gift from god [mind] are immortal rather than mortal if one compares their deeds’ (CH IV.5). The divine seeds which engender virtue bring eusebia: ‘knowledge of god, and one who has come to know god, filled with all good things, has thoughts that are divine and not like those of the multitude’ (CH IX.4). Hence, it is not just by his words or speech that a pious human distinguishes himself from others, but also by his actions or deeds. This dual emphasis on good words and good deeds as the genuine expression of the right attitude is exactly what one finds in the Zoroastrian segregation of those who will be saved from those who will be damned. This is in contrast to those who express evil words and evil deeds: ‘for those whose seeds engender vices, their souls are shaken by bodily passions, souls that are slaves to vile and monstrous bodies. For them the body is a burden; the soul is ruled by the body instead of ruling it.’ They have failed to realize (and hence make true) that ‘the virtue of soul is knowledge, for one who knows is good and reverent and already divine’ (CH X.9). When Tat asks Hermes how to live his life rightly, Hermes replies that he must be pious, and in seeking to be pious he must study philosophy. Through philosophy one learns what things are, how they are ordered, by whom and to what end. He will give thanks to the demiurge as a good father, a kind nourisher, and a faithful guardian80 (SH IIB.2). Even the demons have their intermediary (and apparently neutral) function in the contrary impulses within humans between doing good and doing evil. However, in this scheme there is nothing like fundamental ethical dualism: there is no struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. The gods work through cosmic forces and bring about the good (or goods); only in turning away from the gods, by denying their freely bestowed gift, do humans incline toward evil, that is, evils they bring about solely through their words and deeds. As indeed Asclepius declares to King Ammon: ‘Irreverence is mankind’s greatest wrong against the gods; to do good is the gods’ affair; to be reverent is mankind’s; and the demons’ is to assist. Whatever else humans dare to do – out of error or daring or compulsion or ignorance – all these the gods hold guiltless. Irreverence alone is subject to judgment’ (CH XVI.11). The demons presumably assist the gods in their good business and assist humans either in their reverent or irreverent actions. All of the exculpatory factors mentioned by Asclepius are ‘passions’ in the sense of passive undergoings, whereas irreverence is an active assertion against the gods. Whether irreverence is expressed in their words or their deeds, after death an irreverent individual is subject to the gods’ judgment. The Asclepius is quite explicit about this post-mortem verdict when it states that the chief demon weighs and judges the soul’s merits and demerits. If the chief demon finds the soul pious and just (piam iustamque) he lets it stay in places suitable to it. But if he sees the soul stained with wrongs and dirtied with vice, he sends it tumbling down into the depths below. The wicked soul’s eternal punishment is to be swept back and forth in the 79 80

Fowden 1986 p. 107. For comment on this apothegm see N+F III p. 13 & p. 15 note 3.

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streams of matter (mundanis fluctibus). According to NHC VI.8, the evil soul is handed over for torment by strangler demons who scourge it and then cast it into the celestial sea where fire and ice are massed together. The proposition that human souls are subject to post-mortem judgment by a god or demon would seem to match quite well with contemporary Egyptian beliefs. But the further detail about casting bad souls into the abyss is not Egyptian (let alone Greek); it is not comparable to good souls elevated to akhu and bad souls relegated to being ghostly vagrants. For the Hermeticist, the dead soul is never said to eat and drink or enjoy any other pleasures associated with an embodied existence, a central feature of Egyptian belief. According to one (and only one81) tractate (CH XIII), rebirth or birth-again is attendant on the good soul’s passing-beyond, into god’s domain. Tat asks Hermes several times to reveal the secret teaching about rebirth: Hermes responds with oblique words and riddles. He reprises the stages of the soul’s ascent through the seven spheres; at each stage a divine power expels one of the bodily appetites; there are twelve in total, driven out by ten powers. Hermes says that through these means the soul is ‘divinized by this birth’ and that through mercy a godly birth has been attained (CH XIII.10). Despite Hermes averring that Poimandres has not transmitted to him (Hermes) more than has been written in these discourses, he does not here declare the content of this new vision – but Tat seems to understand anyway. What it is that the pupil so readily understood, without hearing the actual teaching, has been the subject of much scholarly debate. No longer privileged to such an intuitive insight, modern readers must exercise great ingenuity. With regard to the doctrine of rebirth, C. H. Dodd discerned striking parallels with the New Testament and listed twenty-two correspondent passages.82 J.-P. Mahé proposed more Egyptian than Christian parallels to rebirth, especially similarities between CH XIII and ‘The Eighth Reveals the Ninth’.83 E. R. Dodds called the notion of Hermetic rebirth ‘an actual change of identity, the substitution of a divine for a human personality … either by a magical ritual or by an act of divine grace or by some combination’.84 Festugiere devoted two chapters in his monumental Révélation d’ Hermes Trismégiste to themes of regeneration in this treatise and noted the significance of initiatory magic in the Greek Magical Papyri in the so-called ‘Mithras Liturgy’.85 Filoramo says that regeneration is ‘a reformation of the divine logos in the interiority of the initiate or, more precisely, the acquisition of a body of immortality, which is invisible to physical sight’.86 81 The word palingenesia occurs eleven times in CH XIII and only once in the other Greek treatises (CH III.3), as Copenhaver points out, 1992 p. 181. 82 C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953 pp. 44–53. 83 Mahé 1978 Tome I pp. 41–4, 53–4. 84 E.R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, New York: W. W. Norton and Co. 1970 p. 76. 85 PGM IV.475–732. 86 Filoramo in J. Assmann & G. Stroumsa, eds, Transformation of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, Leiden: Brill 1999 p. 143; and in the same vein, see Georg Luck on regeneration in the Poimandres text, Luck 2001 p. 198.

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No matter what specific parallels are drawn with other esoteric texts, Copenhaver calls attention to an internal inconsistency in the Hermetic texts. Treatise XIII and other passages (CH IV.5; Asc. 41; NHC VI.6.1–32) ‘assume that rebirth can happen to a living mortal, but other passages (CH I.24–6; IX.6; SH VI.18) describe an experience accessible only after the death of the body’.87 It is possible that the former group of texts can be more properly associated with some sort of shamanistic ecstasy (otherwise rarely mentioned)88 and the latter group with being born again in the strict sense. The central role in the ecstatic experience is played by a purely intellectual vision, and this vision, according to Filoramo, ‘coincides with an interior journey through the chain of being, arriving at the root which is his root. In this sense, the vision enables the disciple to be assimilated by what he has seen, that is, the eternal generation of the superior world.’89 In any case, by the very terms of the Hermetic path, when a human ascends into heaven he has not attained only an immortal condition, but rather has become a god. ‘The human on earth is a mortal god [and] god in heaven is an immortal human’ (CH X.25) – a distinctive and powerful declaration. In conclusion, one can hardly postpone dealing with the problem posed by recent Hermetic scholars about the intellectual orientation and cultural milieu of the Hermetic author(s). Several scholars in the past few decades have forcefully argued that the cultural milieu, doctrinal background, and overall purport of the Hermetic texts are distinctively Egyptian, albeit late period Hellenized Egyptian. This position, taking account of recent discoveries of Hieratic and Coptic texts (amongst other things), was quite consciously mounted against a very strong set of arguments in the mid-twentieth century, that the Hermetica were basically inspired by and articulated in terms of an amalgam of Greek philosophical ideas, with Egyptian details added for polemical effect, ‘touches of local color’, to give these teachings an aura of great antiquity. Our detailed analyses of the key features of the Hermetic account of the human mind and soul has shown that there is very little of distinctly Egyptian thought behind it.90 In brief summary, the aspects of human nature according to the ancient Egyptian ‘complex’ comprise: (1) an animate body which contains the heart and four main organs, (2) the person’s name, (3) the person’s shadow, (4) the ka as an anonymous life-force and (5) the ba whose seat is the whole person and whose functions are manifest in the person’s bodily states. After death the person can be transformed into a divine being (6) the akh, a shining light-like entity, equal in stature to the gods and demons. Insofar as the person’s ka receives sufficient nourishment by means of prayers and images, the person’s ba is able to maintain unity or integrate all of the person’s basic mental functions, especially memory. If the person’s life has been of good merit his ‘nature’ is transformed into an akh which Copenhaver 1992 p. 183. But see the extraordinary statement by Zosimus quoted by Fowden 1986 p. 121. 89 Filoramo, in Assmann & Stroumsa 1999 p. 145. 90 This conclusion about the basic sources of the Hermetic account of soul is reached despite the fact that, with regard to the most general themes and settings, the arguments of Mahé, Fowden, Copenhaver and others is more convincing than those of Nock and Festugiere, as well as those of Walter Scott. 87 88

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lives eternally in a changeless state in the underworld. Every akh in its eternal changeless state is netjer (divine), like the gods and demons who have always existed in the underworld. With regard to this model, there are no Hermetic equivalents of the ka, the name, and the shadow,91 and especially nothing like the akh. Even the most central and well-attested Egyptian ‘ingredient’, the ba, although closest to Greek psych¯e, plays an unusual role in the overall scheme.92 On the Egyptian view, each human’s body is an intrinsic part of the whole individual; hence, the elaborate preparations to preserve the body after death. This is in stark contrast to the Hermetic view, which accords with Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas, that the human body is a contingent (and even unfortunate) shell (or prison) for the individual only during their earthly life. There is no Egyptian counterpart to the Hermeticists’ repeated attempts, like the Stoics and NeoPlatonists, to explain the elemental composition of all living beings, and hence by extension, the supra-elemental ‘nature’ of the human soul. Erik Hornung has reviewed some of the attempts to extrapolate an elemental theory in Egyptian texts and concludes that, ‘there is in fact no clear indication’ of this: ‘For example, in the hymn to the creator god in the Instruction for Merikar¯e, sky, earth, water, and breath are mentioned in succession, but the element of fire is conspicuously absent. Other supposed attestations are similarly incomplete.’93 The Egyptian and the Hermetic accounts of post-mortem judgment do indeed have similarities: humans are not immortal in their nature, but rather some humans earn an immortal status by reason of good merit in their earthly life. However, the Hermeticists emphasize that this good merit is attendant on having gained mind, that is, by way of knowledge (gnosis) of the true way; there is nothing like such an epistemic credential in the Egyptian scheme. The Hermetic citation of post-mortem judgment by the chief demon would seem to match quite well with contemporary Egyptian beliefs, but casting bad souls into the abyss is not Egyptian (let alone Greek). This expulsion is not comparable to good souls elevated to akhu and bad souls relegated to being ghostly vagrants. The chief demon’s otherworldly status and his principal function are not Egyptian either, but more like the Zoroastrian demon on the judgment bridge, passing his verdicts on the daenas who attempt to cross over. The most important idea underlying the Egyptian ‘complex’ of human nature is that there is only one life for all created, finite beings: this life is manifest (kheperu) in the earthly realm in the form of an animate, bodily entity, and is manifest in the unearthly life, after the first death, by way of the mummy and associated simulacra, in the person’s akh. Again, in the Hermetic account there is nothing like this core idea of one life before and after bodily death for each individual; rather, the only life for humans resides in the soul as life-force, extinguished through elemental dissolution. For the Hermeticist, the dead soul is never ascribed any of the bodily, life-like characteristics associated with its earthly existence. Aside from the one unique spell to control one’s own shadow, GMPT p. 34. Although Iversen does try to identify Hermetic ‘light and life’ with ba and ankh (not akh), 1984 p. 31; Mahé says of NHC VI.8 that Hermes’ refusal to call statues the truly living gods fashioned by humans calls to mind the Egyptian belief in bau as the souls of idols, Mahé in EER 1987 vol. 6 p. 290. 93 Hornung 2002 p. 40. 91 92

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Finally, as Mahé observed,94 the Hermetic path to immortality leads upward, it is an ascent of the soul to its original ‘home’ with god above, whereas the setting of all Egyptian post-mortem stories is the underworld, in which the dead person witnesses the journey of the solar barque and takes his place in the field of reeds where his new ‘life’ unfolds. Although the Demotic Book of Thoth may indeed invite comparison with the more conceptually remote Hermetic discourses, it too places the deceased soul in the underworld. Erik Hornung has summarized some of the key texts for the Egyptian mysteries, texts which reflect a common attitude (at least after the Amarna Period c. 1350) that every individual could share in the hope of another ‘life’ in the other-world. But there is an important distinction between the Greek and Roman view about what this other life amounted to: in ancient Egypt, this was a matter of a constantly renewed regeneration; in Hellenism, however, it was a release from the forces of fate and mortality, freedom from imprisonment in this world … In the Hellenistic mysteries, initiates entered into the solar course and gazed upon the ‘sun at midnight’, the deepest of mysteries. In ancient Egypt, this glimpse was available to everyone, immediately upon crossing the threshold of death, for participation in the course of the sun meant ongoing regeneration for themselves as well as for the heavenly body.95

Unlike the Hermetic model of the mentor imparting his secret teaching to the pupil, the Egyptian scheme is much more democratic, even egalitarian. Nowhere does one find circles of initiates, for the priests are public officials who perform their duties in temples (even though their other magical activities might have been conducted in private). The secret knowledge attached to the cult of the dead and to their postmortem existence was the result of the simple fact that no living individual was privy to the details of the other life. In the final analysis, initiation into the mysteries was indeed a rite of passage, the ultimate passage into the other-world, and for every initiate, in his own death, it was an encounter with a great mystery, one known only to the gods. (2) Gnostic secret teachings about the soul The available collections of Gnostic texts offer a bewildering variety of points of view on many central theological and philosophical questions. There are various ways of picturing these heterogeneous collections of texts, depending on how one construes the very concept of ‘gnosticism’.96 The four principal ways are as follows: (1) There is a core set of Gnostic doctrines, distinct from other schools or sects in the Early Christian Era; incongruities amongst texts are relatively minor and stem from particular socio-cultural settings and/or the agendas of particular teachers or 94 Mahé 1996 p. 355; an opinion also formed regarding the end of NHC VI.8 which is essentially ‘an adaptation of Platonic myths giving Hades an aerial location. This has some similarities to Jewish apocalyptic, while the Egyptian element is practically non-existent’, Mahé in EER 1987 vol. 6 p. 291. 95 Hornung 2002 pp. 14–15. 96 In general, Rudolph 1987 pp. 53–9; Filoramo 1990 pp. 1–19; Logan 1996 pp. 1–23.

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proponents. (2) Gnostic doctrine is eclectic ‘all the way down’, that is, in its very ‘essence’; a collection of texts is a patchwork product which resulted from individual pieces being selected and trimmed to fit into an overall pattern, where the ‘fitters’ are the Gnostic teachers themselves. Patches from Christian, Neo-platonic, Hermetic and Judaic teachings are stitched together in such a way that only the total pattern can be designated as Gnostic. (3) The label ‘Gnosticism’ is a post-hoc product of critics of heresy who were most concerned to denounce a broad swathe of false ways of knowing God. Aside from being incompatible with canonical Christian doctrine – which itself was only being shaped at this time – individual Gnostic authors, sects and schools had nothing in common. (4) It designates something like a cluster of symptoms which are subject to a form of diagnosis; each specific ‘symptom’, that is, doctrine or thesis, is thus under-determined. Let us imagine that there are seven central doctrines: if five out of these seven are present in text or school then one can correctly infer that some specific Gnostic condition is the cause. It is not the case that any given symptom must be present, nor that all seven symptoms are a necessary indicator. Michael Williams, for example, argues very forcibly for the third option, but this does not exclude the fourth option, one which we will adopt in our discussion. One can identify a handful of key ideas which, when given a characteristic slant in terms of the main concerns in the Early Christian Era, are present in so-called Gnostic texts, but which occur according to this algorithmic distinction. Moreover, each ‘symptom’ is deeply bivalent, or labile in psychoanalytic jargon, that is, not one extreme over the other, but one of either extreme.97 For example, the Gnostics do not embrace asceticism to the exclusion of libertinism, but rather they overvalue the body’s good or evil ethos, either of which can lead to an extreme view of the body again. They do not endorse inverse exegesis of Sacred Scripture as against canonical exegesis, but rather seek the restoration of an original order, an interpretive pursuit which can lead to either extreme. Michael Williams begins his demolition of the concept of Gnosticism by examining four emblematic sets of texts: the Apocryphon of John, Ptolemy the Valentinian, Justin the Gnostic and Marcion of Sinope. He elicits three features which might be labeled Gnostic. (a) There is a distinction between a transcendent deity and the world-creator(s), only the latter is identified with the Biblical God. (b) The texts include a message sent from the higher realm intended to make humans aware that there is more than just this world, a place that offers the hope of eventual salvation. (c) Their account of human nature teaches that all humans have a divine spark which has come from the higher realm and which permits their return.98 But Williams points out that if these key diagnostic factors are applied to these four sets of texts they do not match very well. The sources do not in fact share some of the important features that are usually treated as indicating Gnosticism. It would be better, he argues, to examine the origins, not of Gnostic religious phenomena, but of the category or label ‘Gnosticism’. First, there is no word for ‘gnostic’ or ‘gnosticism’ at the time when the texts were composed. Second, not one so-called 97 Williams argues persuasively that Gnostic texts do not merely assign negative values to elements in the Genesis narrative which canonical authors assigned positive values, but that they reverse the standard values, whether positive or negative, 1996 pp. 60-63. 98 Williams 1996 pp. 26–7; in similar terms, Rudolph 1987 pp. 88–91.

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Gnostic writer ever refers to himself as gnostikos. Third, the designation ‘Gnostic’ as a false way of knowing God originates with Irenaeus of Lyons in the late second century in his massive Exposure and Refutation of Heresies. In the first volume Irenaeus catalogs all the contemporary heresies and in the next four volumes he organizes their arguments around theological topics, rather than ‘schools’. Not long after Irenaeus, Hippolytus composed his Refutation of all Heresies (c.230); there is very little correlation between Hippolytus’ taxonomy and the modern scholarly category of ‘Gnosticism’. Williams comments that Hippolytus asserts that gnostikos is a self-designating word in only one or two groups, that he applies the word to only a few groups, and to some who are certainly not Gnostic. The third major catalog is Epiphanius’ Panarion or Medicine Chest (c.370) Epiphanius goes beyond his predecessors in portraying widespread use of Gnostic as a self-designation, but without attempting to justify their alleged use of this term in comparison with other groups, who are clearly Gnostic, who do not. In sum, Epiphanius provides much valuable information but ‘his testimony is ambiguous and contradictory, and of questionable reliability’.99 Williams summarizes his examination of ‘Gnosticism’ as a category based on self-definition: (1) The self-designation ‘gnostic’ is so far not attested in any of the surviving original writings ordinarily classified as ‘gnostic’. (2) Though there is reason to believe heresiological reports that some persons did indeed employ this self-designation, this does not seem to have been the case for all groups in the modern ‘gnosticism’ category, and it may well have been true of only a few. (3) To the extent that ‘gnostic’ was employed as self-designation, it ordinarily or perhaps always denoted a quality rather than a sectarian or social-traditional identity. (4) Therefore, ‘gnostic’ as it is attested as a self-designation in the ancient sources does not provide a good justification for the modern category ‘gnosticism’.100 The majority of modern scholars of Gnosticism perpetuate the early heresiologists’ over-inclusive and misleading categorization. The eminent scholar and translator of The Gnostic Scriptures, Bentley Layton, makes a rough distinction between the wide and the narrow sense of Gnostic: the former would denote a loose group of difficult-to-define religious phenomena in this epoch; the latter is the ‘self-given name of an ancient Christian sect’ and provides the basis for the texts Layton translates. Williams is quite blunt in his criticisms of this wide vs. narrow distinction: none of the nine Coptic documents given as sources name themselves as gnostics; at least one text (Thunder NHL 295–303; GS 77–85) is not considered gnostic even in the loose sense; the one group whom Irenaeus gave as self-named gnostics, the followers of Marcellina, is not included: ‘Thus Layton’s “classic gnostics” constitute a grouping for which the criterion is not in actuality the self-designation “gnostic” but rather the hypothesis of socio-historical continuity Williams 1996 pp. 39–40; see also Rudolph 1987 pp. 10–20. Williams 1996 pp. 41–2.

99 100

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based primarily on supposed theological similarity.’101 Not even the heresiologists made the kind of mistake that modern scholars are prone to commit: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and company did not construct a single category. Rather – and this is one of Williams’ prime insights – the most one could say about this motley collection is what Irenaeus declared in his compendium’s title: they are all false ways of knowing God, and that is not an essential attribute of any class. Williams then turns to a meticulous and cautious analysis of all the essential traits which have been predicated of the Gnostic category. He does admit that specific heretical schools, such as Valentinus, Sethian, Ophite, and so on, do exhibit family resemblances within their own teachings. These family traits can be useful in tracing the continuity of tradition-historical motifs, as well as for formulating a more simple and less ambiguous typology of Gnostic doctrines. His principal suggestion is to focus on the notion of Biblical demiurgical themes: the cosmological axiom that the world was created by a second subordinate deity or power, a theme which adapts ideas from avowedly Judaic and Christian contexts. Further, this hypothesis allows the modern scholar to jettison a whole array of clichés which have become ‘deeply rooted generalizations’ about what one expects to find in Gnostic sources. These clichés obscure the underlying ambivalence in genuine Gnostic thought. For instance, they were not anti-cosmic pessimists, completely isolated from society, but rather those who attempted to reduce the cultural distance or tension between themselves and the dominant culture.102 Gnostic writers have been referred to as parasites or even a virus, riding piggy-back on host religions which they raided for good ideas.103 But some Gnostic teachers were innovators whose new myths and rituals can only be seen as successful over time, not from the vantage of their initial borrowing.104 Their much-remarked hatred of their bodies is better seen as efforts to perfect the human form through ‘somatic house-cleaning’, and thus come to more closely resemble the divine likeness in which they were made.105 The isolation of the Biblical demiurgical theme is certainly a proposal which should be seriously considered. One should not too readily equate the Gnostic demiurge with the Platonic demiurge from the Timaeus. Over five centuries and more a profound change had taken place in the concept of the demiurge; though he retained the same name, the divine crafter exercised a new craft and those who emulated him worked on a new model. Where for Plato a human artist replicated the work of the divine crafter in adorning the sensible world with his own ‘creations’, the god-like worker or theurgist practiced the hieratic arts by perfecting the hidden god within. Anton says that ‘the place of the artist as demiurge, as performer and revealer of cosmic beauty, was gradually taken over by the theurgist, as performer of divine works’. Where Plato had seen a cultural challenge between art and 101 Williams 1996 pp. 42–3; on the other hand, Pearson argues that Gnostic self-definition should be seen in terms of the words ‘elect’, ‘perfect’, ‘children’, and so forth, and hence they are best self-described as ‘no longer Jews’, 1990 pp. 130–35. 102 Williams 1996 pp. 107–15. 103 As ‘parasite’, Rudolph 1987 pp. 54–5; Pearson 1990 pp. 7–8; as ‘virus’, Stroumsa 1992 pp. 171–6. 104 Williams 1996 pp. 80–95. 105 Williams 1996 pp. 116–38.

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philosophy, Plotinus discerned a new quarrel between theurgy and philosophy. The creative demiurge as prototype assumed the status of an ontological principle in the quest for personal salvation and was assigned a new value in the pursuit of a spiritual life. Hand-in-hand with this revaluation of the demiurge came a reassessment of the function of human reason; it was no longer the essential condition for attaining gnosis: ‘It was the Gnostics who had openly given primacy to magic, evocation, purifications, accepted the study of the Chaldean Oracles, and believed in the efficacy of the hieratic arts.’106 Where Plato’s demiurge in the Timaeus created a world of superb harmony and order, the Gnostic demiurge, for the most part, made a world totally unfit for the spiritual nature of human beings: ‘it served only as the stage for the drama of salvation, but was otherwise dispensable and condemnable’.107 The Gospel of Philip is quite blunt on this point: ‘the world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal; he fell short of attaining his desire’ (NHC II.3.75). In his examination of the milieu of the Hermetic corpus, Fowden sounds a warning about overuse of the categories of monism and dualism: ‘It is a fatal mistake to imagine, with most scholars this century, that treatises of monist and dualist tendency should be consigned to independent parallel categories. Such doctrinal variations … in fact reflect an intention that different successive levels (or steps) of spiritual enlightenment should provide access to different successive levels of truth about Man, the World and God.’ As we have seen in the section on the Hermetica, Fowden argues that the seeming incompatibility of various Hermetic texts disguises the fact that some texts were designed for novices at the start of their spiritual discipline and others were for initiates at higher levels of gnosis. Hence, ‘we find monist treatises that convey epist¯em¯e and say little or nothing about the spiritual life; and dualist texts that impart gnosis and describe the actual experience of contemplation’. Fowden ponders the question about the relations between what he calls the ‘pagan’, that is non-Christian, version of Gnosticism ‘with its strongly intellectualist, philosophical tinge’, and the much more radical dualist, mythologized doctrines of Christian Gnostic writers, such as Basilides and Valentinus: ‘Thanks to its esotericism and consequent lack of formal restraints, all gnosticism tended to be anarchically speculative; and Christian gnosticism was worst of all, a many-headed hydra … likely to devour and regurgitate, often in virtually unrecognizable form, any idea that came into view.’108 There are passages in the Hermetica which suggest ‘a real intellectual kinship’ with some varieties of Gnostic doctrine, but such ideas were not exclusive to any one sect or school at that time anyway: In the restraint and (relative) philosophicality of its approach Hermetism is more Hellenic and earlier, at least in its origins, than Christian gnosticism, in which much smaller elements of Greek philosophical thought than are to be found in the books of Hermes have become heavily overlaid by exotic oriental, especially Jewish imagery. It would be a Anton in Wallis & Bregman 1992 pp. 12–14. Anton in Wallis & Bregman 1992 p. 15. 108 Fowden 1986 p. 113; he cites Rudolph 1987 pp. 59–63 at this point, but Rudolph is not quite so derisive, and does not use vomit-like terms. 106 107

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mistake, then, to imagine that Christian gnosticism either substantially influenced Hermetism, or can be used to illuminate it, except by way of general analogy. What can be asserted is that Hermetism represents the sort of pagan intellectual milieu with which Christian gnostics could feel that they had something in common.’109

In Irenaeus’ sketch of Saturninus’ Gnostic system three main motifs appear: (1) the appearance of the luminous heavenly image, (2) the reaction of the angels and (3) their creation of a deficient human in the form of a golem. Hans Jonas claims to have detected a reflection of the Gnostic-Saturnine replication of the divine image in the window of the Hermetic Poimandres. This replication unfolds in three ways: (1) darkness falls in love with the light and gets possession of it; (2) light falls in love with darkness and sinks into it, and (3) an image or reflection of the light is projected onto the darkness below and held fast there. Jonas finds the first motif in Manichean doctrines, the second is from Macrobius’ commentary on Scipio’s dream, and the third is from certain Gnostic sects, for example, the Sethians, the Peratae, Plotinus’ Gnostics, and Basilides’ barbarians.110 The third version alone allows for the presence of light in some form in the midst of darkness without having to concede a genuine fall. The divine light can be projected like a ray or it can issue as an image in a dark medium. Logan argues that Saturninus has not resolved the dilemma and paradox at the heart of the Gnostic picture of human nature: all human beings need the divine spark to be fully human, but only the elect acquire it through faith, and it is for them a lifelong possession. This reconstruction of Gnostic human nature exhibits three important themes: (1) The divine spark descends to animate Adam, created by angels in the image of a heavenly being reflected in the waters of chaos. (2) At the beginning it was the angels, perhaps divided into good and bad cohorts, who created two human types or races, one evil (the Cainites), the other good (the Sethians). (3) Instead of two original primeval principles, there are three, corresponding to three substances and three races of humans.111 In our discussion of the principal elements of human nature in Gnostic texts we will follow a sequence of explanatory stages in the presentation of the relevant ideas; not all texts exhibit all of the major stages. They are cosmogony, cosmology, anthropogony, anthropology and soteriology. In terms of cosmogony, the entire body of Gnostic texts present an immensely complex, baroque and sometimes inconsistent picture of successive epochs in the birth of the cosmos. It employs godlike figures with strange names for which there are little or no parallels; the dramatis personae varies from school to school. In their cosmology, the Gnostics account for the main features and structures of the cosmos; such an account is always twotiered, an intelligible world over a sensible world.112 In their anthropogony, they attempt to explain the generation of the earthly human species by way of the 109 Fowden 1986 p. 114; he cites C. H. Dodds The Bible and the Greeks, London, 1935, pp. 204–9 for the overlay of Jewish imagery. 110 Hans Jonas cited by Logan 1996 p. 168. 111 Logan 1996 p. 169. 112 On the impacted issue of Gnostic dualism see amongst others Culianu 1992 pp. 45–56; Rudolph 1987 pp. 60–66; Filoramo 1990 pp. 54–6; Armstrong in Wallis & Bregman 1992 pp. 43–52.

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institution of Primal Human as an archetype, whose image and likeness are replicated in material forms. In those rare sections of texts not concerned with Primal Human and the dispersal of its progeny there is some attempt to account for the basic elements and structures of ordinary humans. And in closing we, like the Gnostic elect themselves, will turn our attention to the consequent ideas about the soul’s immortal status, techniques for the soul’s post-mortem ascent, and humans’ eventual salvation and resurrection. In tracing this sequence of stages it is not feasible to examine more than a few emblematic Gnostic texts: our attention will be focused on the Apocryphon of John, the Origin of the World, the Hypostasis of the Archons, Pistis Sophia and the Tripartite Tractate. The notion of light-like projection emerges prominently in the Apocryphon of John where the earthly human is made externally in the likeness of god, but internally in the image of the archons. In this myth, Adamas113 is associated with light as the archetype and the archons’ motive in creating him is to gain control of the light. In the Origin of the World the archons hope that the heavenly archetype will fall in love with the earthly copy and thereby be captured or neutralized. This picture paints the demiurge and his archons as negative demonic figures, but it does imply that the divine element in human is not yet present in the earthly copy. The text stresses the overall divine initiative and separates the later descent and inbreathing of the spirit from the active contribution of the second god. In contrast, the Apocryphon of John gives a much more positive ‘spin’ to the image-reflection motif, interpreted not in terms of capture but of illumination. The demiurge in this secret book is the vehicle of the divine power which he withholds from his offspring. The Hypostasis of the Archons presents yet another variation on this theme, a divagation whose turning-point is the inverse weight assigned to the second god. Here the seven archons hold a council and declare that they will make a human of dust (chous) from the earth. Human is then formed (plassein) from dust according to the body (s¯oma) of the archons and according to the likeness of god which appeared to them in the waters. ‘Their motive’, as Logan says, ‘is then made explicit: to trap the heavenly image in their molded form (plasma), the co-image, which is thus to act as a visual lure.’114 The demiurge then breathes into earthly human’s face so that he becomes ensouled (psychikos), but he is still a golem115 whom the archons cannot raise upright because of their weakness (astheneia). It is only after the Spirit sees the psychic human and comes forth from earth and descends upon him that human is formed as Adam. The three-stage progress of Adam’s creation, according to Logan again, is a conflation of pieces from the two Genesis stories (1:26; 2:7), and the imagereflection motif. First, human is molded as earthly (or choic) by the archons in their image and in likeness of the divine being; second, he is ensouled by the demiurge’s 113 Adam, Adamas, and Geradamas are probably names for the same character, but there is some evidence that the different names indicate a distinction between the earthly and the heavenly Adam; see Logan’s precis of the evidence, 1996 pp. 101–3; and H. M. Jackson, ‘Geradamas, the Celestial Stranger’, NTS vol. 27 (1980) pp. 385–94. 114 Logan 1996 pp. 186–7; see also Pearson 1990 pp. 29–33. 115 For Pearson this clearly indicates these texts as Rabbinic midrash, 1990 p. 36; see also, G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, New York: Schocken, 1965 pp. 161–5.

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breath, and third, he is erected as pneumatic by the Holy Spirit. The Apocryphon of John presents a much more complex account which attempts to reconcile the two Genesis texts, but also commingles them with the Poimandres, Zosimus’ theurgy, and certain Christian apocrypha.116 In his systematic efforts to account for the divergence in the two Genesis texts Philo offers an ingenious hypothesis: The first text states that ‘God said “Let us make human in our image and likeness”… and God created human in his own image’ (Gen. 1:26). This statement expresses the creation of the ideal archetype of human, one who is both male and female, perfect in every way. The second text states that ‘The Lord God then formed human from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils a life-giving breath, and human became a living creature’ (Gen 2:7). This statement, according to Philo, refers to the production, not creation, of the ordinary human species from material constituents. Philo also interpreted the plural pronoun, ‘let us make … in our image’, to refer to the angels as heavenly co-workers with God in his creative activities.117 In the Apocryphon of John (NHL 104–23; GS 23–51), the account of human creation focuses attention on the correspondence between parts of the soul or body and the various stars or other astral entities. The goddess Sophia acknowledges that evil things have ensued from the defection of Ialdabaoth, the Demiurgic Second God, from the First God’s scheme. In her shame she hides in the darkness of ignorance and is subject to chaotic movement. She weeps when she sees the impious works of her son the world-maker, who notices her distress but ignores all that exists beyond her. Sophia’s consort (syzygos) hears her complaint and, with the compliance of the invisible (aoraton) spirit, he descends in order to clear up the confusion. A celestial voice announces to Sophia the descent of the aeons First Human and his Son, whose image (eik¯on) is reflected in the waters below. The seven archons descry this image and declare that they will make a human in the image of god and in his (or our) resemblance. They fashion a shape (plasma) in imitation (mim¯esis) of the watery image which is thus an imperfect imitation of the Perfect Human. This thing is called Adam and each of the seven powers (exousiai) builds a soul (psych¯e) for him, leaving room for the angels to fashion a spiritual body. Kindness (or the Perfect Parent) builds the bony soul, Forethought the connective tissue (nerves), Divinity the soul of flesh (sarx), Lordship the soul of marrow, Kingship the soul of blood, Zeal the skin soul, and Intelligence the hairy soul. The arrangement of anatomical delegation corresponds very closely in both content and sequence to the list of bodily parts in the Timaeus (73b–76e). In Plato’s myth the construction of primal human moves from the most inward part to the extremities: marrow, bones, sinew, flesh, skin, hair and nails.118 116 Logan 1996 pp. 190–92; he says that the parallels with Zosimus’ Omega section 11 are striking. 117 Philo Op. Mundi 72–5, Conf. Ling. 168–75; De Fuga 68–70; discussed in detail by Pearson 1990 pp. 34–8; Elaine Pagels examines the Genesis stories in five NHC texts in Hedrick & Hodgson 1986 pp. 257–78. 118 Williams sorts out the various lists in the several recensions, in Wallis & Bregman 1992, pp. 490–92; these correspond with anatomical parts in Zoroastrian texts, according to R. C. Zaehner, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955 p. 162; to the Manichaean Kephalaia section 42; and to Macrobius, On Scipio’s Dream I.6.79; see Logan 1996 pp. 139–42.

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From the original archontic plan the angels (each named with great exactitude) fashion the limbs of heavenly Adam, from the crown of his head to the tip of his toes according to astral-anatomic correspondences. Thirty other named powers are responsible for the activation of anatomic sectors of the human body, and five more with the inner senses (on a basic Stoic scheme): perception, reception, imagination, the communal sense and impulse. The source of bodily demons is divided into four zones – heat, cold, wetness and dryness – and the mother of them all is matter (hul¯e). The four chief demons are charged with pleasure, desire, grief and fear; from these four emerge the manifold variety of passions. Filoramo stresses the importance of this passage: The demonization of the body could not be more radical or total. In the particular microcosm that man represents, the error and the horror of the formation of the macrocosm are repeated. A hierarchy of demons, servile and ready, is continually at work in everyone’s body, transformed into a remorseless inferno in miniature. Far from being a passive, secondary element vis-à-vis the spiritual, the demonic represents an active power, charged with negative energy. Over and above the cosmos, humanity has become the true place where the battle is fought, decisive for every individual, between the forces of good and evil.119

Despite the enormous amount of cooperative effort the creature remains inert and unable to stand until Sophia intercedes with the Supreme Father to send a messenger to the Demiurge to teach him the secret of animation (life-giving). The archon must blow in Adam’s face some of the spirit (pneuma) inherited from his mother. When Adam is now able to stand he is superior to the powers that fashioned him and even to Ialdabaoth himself. The archons are aware of this new threat and hence they exile Adam to the material realm opposite the celestial home from which he originated. From pity for Adam’s fallen state, the Father sends an aid (bo¯ethos), his own breath, the thought of light, called Zo¯e-Life. When this spark begins to glow in Adam, the archons recognize his superior power and decide to make him a permanent prisoner of matter by building him a physical body made from the four material elements (fire, earth, water and wind), mixed with darkness, longing and the counterfeit spirit (antimimon pneuma). This last ingredient is unique to Gnostic anthropogonic imagery and is defined as the essence of the evil astral powers. Culianu describes it as ‘the astral genetic information that accompanies every soul coming into the world. The relation of a person to his or her antimimon pneuma determines the result of the soul’s trial after physical death.’120 This particular treatise rejects the notion of reincarnation in new bodies; according to John, all souls will take part in salvation, including those which have been led astray by the counterfeit spirit. Only sacrilegious blasphemy by living individuals against the Holy Spirit will bring about eternal punishment. In other texts, the counterfeit spirit is identified with the tree of evil, the essence of the bonds of astral fate, that is, the single most important factor in determining 119 Filoramo 1990 p. 92; the phrase ‘the true place where the battle is fought’ is, of course, an echo of our reference to Crouzel’s motto, that the soul is ‘the scene and the stake’, HCM pp. 353–4. 120 Culianu 1992 p. 103.

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personal destiny. Culianu says that these astral bonds are similar to the appendages (prosart¯emata) in Basilides, that is, planetary accretions that lure and push the soul toward evil. Clement of Alexandria quotes the title of a lost work by Isidorus the Basilidean, called peri prosphyous psych¯es, ‘on the appended soul’, in which the author opposes the idea that astral fate may hinder the free will of human reason. One can state that the gnostic doctrine of the counterfeit spirit reflects a constant anti-astrological polemic, which is at the core of both the Gnostic and Manichaean message. In the Pistis Sophia the counterfeit spirit derives from the archons’ vices and pushes the human soul toward the fulfillment of the same vicious impulses. It is this fake spirit which is responsible for humans seeking out evil things and committing evil deeds. After earthly death, the soul whose fake spirit is strong will be sent back into the cycle of bodily rebirth, and thus perpetuate its sins. The vagabond soul will not be able to escape this cycle until it has reached the last stage. The soul whose fake spirit is weak, on the other hand, will lose its counterfeit on its upward passage through the spheres. For its reunion with the treasure of light, the Pistis Sophia proposes two principal techniques: the purifying fire of baptism which loosens the seals of sin and living humans’ prayers for dead souls.121 The passages in the Pistis Sophia concerned with the counterfeit spirit are ‘an impressive parody’ of Plato’s Timaeus (from 41d). The five archons of astral fate send into the world pre-existent souls whom they have given drink from the seed of evil and from longing in the cup of oblivion, which seems to be the same as the constellation of the krater or chalice.122 This lethal drink becomes a sort of body in which the soul is wrapped; it is said to be a vesture of the soul. In other cases, the archons make new souls from the sweat, tears and bad breath of their celestial colleagues. This stuff contains planetary and demonic fragments; it is combined, squeezed, rolled out like dough, and then cut like bread into little pieces, each of which is an individual soul. This version of fake spirit fabrication may derive some of its imagery from Ancient Near Eastern anthropogonic accounts, such as the Enuma Elish analyzed in detail in Chapter 1, Section 2. In any case, the new souls do not have the strength to stand and hence they cannot animate their bodies, so the seven planetary archons blow their breath over the souls, from which sparks of spirit penetrate the earthly souls, enabling them to search for the eternal light. The counterfeit spirit is attached to the soul with the rulers’ seals123 (sphragides); the spirit compels the soul to immerse itself in all the passions (path¯e) and iniquities (anomiai) and holds the soul under its power during transference into new bodies. When the souls have been prepared in this fashion they are transmitted by the rulers to the 365 ministers (leitourgoi) of their aeons. These functionaries build a countermold (antitypos) capable of receiving each individual ‘package’, as Culianu phrases it. The individual package is then dispatched to the archons of the middle region (Earth) who install its destiny (moira), an internal plan which maps out its own life and death. Every individual human is thus composed of destiny, mixture, soul, spirit and counterfeit spirit. This complete package is divided into two portions; one half Culianu 1992 p. 104. On the perennial significance of the Orphic krater, see Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 pp. 133–41. 123 For examples of archontic seals, see Rudolph 1987 pp. 172–5. 121 122

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is placed in a man, the other half in a woman. Each one, of course, must always be in search of its complement; this Gnostic concept of a perfectly paired entity owes much to one of the main myths in the Symposium. The individual human’s ontogeny is also described in Pistis Sophia, according to a simple Stoic embryonic account. At the moment of conception, the ministers penetrate the woman’s womb, reunite the two halves, feed them on the mother’s blood, and begin to shape the limbs. They distribute the counterfeit spirit, the soul, the mixture and its destiny, and in the culmination of their work mark the new body with their seals. Each date during fetal development when a specific limb or organ was formed is marked by the ministers; the last mark is stamped on the forehead to indicate the years that soul will be embodied. The ministers then entrust their seals to the archons who distribute punishments (kolaseis) and tribulations (kriseis). The archontic afflictors pass the poor infant onto the collectors (paral¯emptai) whose function is to separate the soul from the body when the individual dies according to its preset destiny.124 One finds much of the same imagery again, with slight variations, in the Origin of the World where the dark powers under the leadership of the first begetter (archigenetor) begin the creation of human being. When the other powers see the Adam of Light they mock the demiurge since he has made a being that will undo their own actions. The first begetter then announces that together they will form a human out of the earth (not out of light), ‘after the image of our body and after the likeness of the Adam-of-Light’. Their hope is that the primal human will serve the powers when, through desire for the light-like being, they will bring forth servants: ‘Now all this came to pass according to the forethought (pronoia) of Faith in order that human should appear after his likeness and should condemn them (the powers) because of their modeled form; and their form became an enclosure of light’ (NHC II.5.113). However, despite the dark powers’ nefarious plan, Sophia, the second god’s daughter, knew that they were blind; they were ignorant of the fact that their creature would in the end destroy them: ‘The reason that she anticipated them and made her own human was in order that he might instruct their modeled form how to despise them and thus to escape from them.’ Sophia has the intention to plant a seed of revolt in those humans who will see through the evil powers’ dark designs and resist the archons’ efforts to lead them away from the light. The production of the instructor proceeded from a drop of light (a spark) from Sophia which flowed onto the water and a human appeared, a human both male and female. The first begetter issues a decree about the human creature and ‘each of the powers casts its seed upon the midst of the earth’s navel. From then the seven archons formed human, his body like their body, but his appearance like the light-human who had shown himself to them.’ The human prototype came into being by way of the parts of each of the archons, but the chief archon formed the marrow and the brain.125 Adam was created as an ensouled human, after which the chief archon placed a vessel in him because he was shaped like an abortion, that is, with no spirit (pneuma). When he thought of the word of faith he was afraid lest the true human might come into his creature and 124 125

Culianu 1992 p. 105. For references to the brain in other texts see ‘New Gnostic Texts’, in Marcovitch 1989.

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become master of it. He left his creature forty days without a soul but Sophia sent her breath into Adam and he began to move upon the earth. When the seven archons saw him wriggling on the ground unable to stand upright they rejoiced, took him away, established him in paradise, and returned to the heavens. There then follows an intricate account in three stages of the awakening of Adam from his supine condition. In the first act, Eve the life-aspect of Sophia, transforms herself into the tree of knowledge and becomes mother of Adam’s offspring who each have a dual nature. In the second act, the serpent, in a positive role, gives instruction to Adam about his role and duties in the new order.126 The wisest of all creatures, called Beast, says to Eve, ‘do not be afraid. In death you shall not die. For he (god) knows that when you eat from it, your intellect (nous) will become sober and you will come to be like gods, recognizing the difference between evil humans and good ones.’ Eve ate the fruit of the tree and gave some to Adam who also ate it: ‘then their intellect became open. For when they had eaten the light of knowledge had shone upon them. When they clothed themselves with shame they knew they were naked of knowledge. When they became sober they saw that they were naked and loved each other.’ (Again desire for the other enters the picture.) ‘But when they saw that the ones who had modeled them (the archons) had the form of beasts, they loathed them; they were very aware’ (NHC II.5 119). Seven archons were cast down onto earth, made angels, who were numerous and demonic. The latter instructed humans in many kinds of error and magic, potions and idolworship, spilling of blood and altars and temples and sacrifices and libations to the spirits (NHC II.5.123). An ingenious reconstruction has been proposed for the archetype of the Biblical demiurge myth which consists of ten stages:127 (1) The appearance of the Demiurge, (2) his description, (3) his boast about his power, (4) commentary on this boast, (5) rebuttal from the voice on high, (6) explanation of the rebuttal, (7) the Demiurge’s provocation to his mother to reveal what is above him, (8) the appearance of the divine image or light, (9) the proposal to create humankind and (10) the fabrication of humans. Since the order of these episodes does not correspond with the order in the Biblical Genesis it has been conjectured that (some) Gnostics were attempting to reconstruct the true, hidden Genesis, one which was falsified in the Biblical creation account. Culianu remarks that this reconstruction shows that ‘the sequences of gnostic myth are transformations of another myth, that is, the myth of creation according to the Book of Genesis’. However, Culianu also wants to temper the categorical claim by some scholars that the Gnostics employed an ‘inverse exegesis’ in their interpretation of the Biblical texts. He says that from our point of view this sort of narrative appears to be reversed, but from the gnostics’ point of view it is a restored narrative: ‘They proceed towards this operation of restoration from a single rule that produces an illimitable number of solutions: the god of Genesis is not the supreme God of the Platonic tradition.128

126 Pearson points out the word-play in the various Hebrew words for ‘serpent’, ‘live’, and ‘instruct’, 1990 pp. 45–6, showing the Jewish source of this sequence. 127 N. A. Dahl, in Layton 1980 pp. 689–712. 128 Culianu 1992 p. 121.

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There has been some debate about the originator of the soul-vehicle doctrine. Culianu has argued back and forth for one or another neo-Platonic source, each of whom has something in his favor. But, on balance, this leaves us with the gnostics as authors of the doctrine of the passage of the soul through the spheres. However, this seems improbable for the reason that gnostics would commonly react through semantic inversion to some Platonic theory originally presented in a positive key. In other words, it is easier to understand why such a theory would first be produced in Middle Platonic circles steeped in Hermetic astrology, out of desire to understand how the planets communicate their qualities to human souls. It could then have been reinterpreted by gnostics in a negative key rather than the opposite. We know for sure that gnostics dealt with the passage of the soul through the spheres before Numenius, which means that an early second century or even a late first century origin of the theory is more probable.129

In Gnostic thought human being is at the center of cosmic history; human is ‘the scene and the stake’, as Henri Crouzel said, in a vast drama played out by opposing forces.130 The entire cosmos is polarized between good and evil, higher and lower, material and spiritual, and these polarities are exhibited in human nature in a special degree.131 The material (or earthly) realm is the product of the demiurge, the second god, and through his material endowment human is subject to negative influences. But through his taking part in the spiritual realm, human has another constituent, variously called the spirit (pneuma), mind (nous) or spark (spinth¯er); through the spirit he can attain to the good by means of which he can be reunited with his creative source. Human also has life-force or soul (psych¯e) which makes him an intermediate entity, in a middle state between the higher and the lower forms. Irenaeus informs us that the Valentinians systematized this tripartite scheme for three kinds of human being; on this view, an individual’s membership in a kind was determined by whichever constituent predominated in his general makeup: They suggest that there are three types (of human), the pneumatic, the psychical, and the earthly just as there came to be Cain, Abel, and Seth, and from these (the three natures), no longer in one individual, but divided by type. Now the earthly type goes to corruption. The psychical type, if it chooses the better things, rests in the place of the middle; if it chooses the inferior things, it will go to the things like the inferior. But they teach that the pneumatic elements, which down to the present time Achamoth sows into righteous souls, having undergone here education and nourishment … are given as brides to the angels of the savior, since their souls by necessity must rest in the middle with the demiurge until the end. And they say that the psychicals again are subdivided into those that are good by nature, and those that are evil by nature. The good, they say, are those who become capable of receiving the seed (spermatos), while those who are evil by nature never receive the seed. (Adv. Haer. 1.7.5)

What is striking about this passage is the notion that not all humans in their nature are good or open to rebirth; those who achieve the highest state are worthy of this 129 130 131

Culianu 1992 p. 139 note 81. Again, see HCM pp. 353–4. Rudolph 1987 p. 88.

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reward due to their growth, education and receptivity. Valentinus holds out the opportunity of development, from the good psychical type worthy of receiving the seed to the pneumatic type who have received the seed and hence can attain perfection.132 According to the Gnostic elect, ordinary Christians were the psychical type, poised between forces which would lead them to earthly corruption and forces which would lead them toward heavenly salvation. The author of the Tripartite Tractate also describes the division of earthly humans into three essential types: the spiritual, the psychic and the material. These types ‘conform to the triple disposition of the Logos’. Each of the three essential types is known by its ‘fruit’, that is, in the literal sense by the offspring of its genus, and in the metaphorical sense by the issue of its words and deeds. The spiritual type is ‘like light from light and like spirit from spirit’ (NHC I.5.118); when the head of its prototype appeared it ran toward the Savior and became ‘a body of its head’ and received knowledge of the revelation. The verb ‘ran toward’ signifies the strong desire133 (sometimes eros) that characterizes every image for its original; the whole body assumes the virtue of its chief part. Second, the psychic type is ‘like light from fire’ since it hesitated to run toward the Savior and to accept knowledge of him. Unlike the spiritual human’s intimate union the psychic must be instructed by means of the Savior’s voice. Third, the material type is ‘alien in every way’, it does not share in the same nature as the divine; ‘since it is dark it shuns the shining light because its appearance destroys it’ (NHC I.5.119). The three types have their own distinctive routes to salvation: the spiritual will receive salvation in every way. The material will receive destruction in every way, but the psychic has a double destiny, ‘according to its determination for both good and evil’, that is, one destiny if good, another if evil. This thesis, of course, recalls St. Paul’s claim that those who have received the Holy Spirit’s gift will live forever after bodily death and those who have not will die a second death ‘in the spirit’, that is, both their body and soul will be condemned. Our final theme is the eventual salvation of good souls through their return to the original source of their being in heaven. The human soul’s ascent after earthly death is an imitation (like so much else in Gnosticism) of the Redeemer’s ascent after his death on the cross; though for Christ his death, like his earthly life, occurred ‘in appearance only’.134 Sometimes the soul’s ascent is accomplished by means of the correct preparatory techniques of prayer; according to other texts, magical spells, signs and symbols may be needed in order to placate the archons who guard the stations on the high road to the last heaven.135 Origen’s tract against the pagan Celsus reproduces some of these spells, as do the two Books of Jeu in the Berlin Gnostic Papyrus: ‘when you come forth from the body and reach the first aeon and the archons of that aeon appear before you, seal your self with these seals …’ (2 Jeu ch.52). Irenaeus also describes the soul’s ascent using secret agencies in an actual Williams 1996 p. 200. Filoramo underlines the ‘lustful desire and greed’ of image for original, 1990 pp. 90–92. 134 On the Gnostic Christ’s docetism, see Rudolph 1987 pp. 167–8; Filoramo 1990 pp. 125–6. 135 See the editors’ comments in ACM 1995 pp. 59–62, and Gnostic spells nos. 38–42, 70–71. 132 133

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ceremony for the dead specifically organized for that purpose (Adv. Haer. I.21.5). The Apocalypse of James contains a passage with echoes of this secret ceremony; the initiate is instructed about what to say to each of the archons on its heavenly journey. The initiate knows the correct names and words of power, he appeals to the ‘imperishable knowledge of Sophia’, but this is midway between prayer and spell (NHC V.3.33-35). The fate of good and bad souls depends on their having taken part in gnosis. The Book of Thomas the Contender states that the unbeliever will be ‘handed over to the archon above who rules over all the powers … and he will seize the human and cast him down from heaven into the abyss and he will be confined in a cramped dark place’. The dreadful text goes on to describe with some relish the great depth of this abyss, the soul’s grievous torments, stung with whips of fire. But for those who have maintained the strength of spirit, they will come forth from their body’s suffering and travail and find rest with the good and reign with the king (NHC II.7.143). This Gnostic idea follows a pattern established by the scheme that there are two types of human, the good and the bad. But other Gnostic ideas about the soul’s fate follow the scheme of three races or types, as in Irenaeus’ account of the Valentinians. On this view the earthly or hylic human will perish along with all material things; the psychic human will enter the demiurge’s realm where the good will find rest in the middle and the bad will share the fate of the earthly type; the spiritual human takes his place in the middle, from where at the world’s end he will be drawn into ‘the bridal chamber’ of the totality (Adv. Haer. I.6.1–7.1). The soul’s ascension through the various heavenly spheres is made possible by its possession of an invisible spiritual body, as the Authoritative Teaching informs us (NHC VI.3.32). The same text offers a graphic picture of the soul’s activities when it has reached the bridal chamber, that is, in its marriage or union with god: ‘She (the soul) came to rest in the one who is rest … she ate the meal for which she had hungered; she partook of immortal food. She found what she had looked for. She received rest from her labors, while the light that shines over her does not sink’ (NHC VI.3.35). There is a congeries of images in these texts which hang together with some key ideas from Egyptian post-mortem beliefs: the dead soul armed with spells to placate the otherworld deities, the abysmal depths of the place for the wicked, the dead soul finding rest and consuming food under the never-setting sun. The Gnostics’ view of the resurrection of all things at the world’s end draws on these beliefs about the post-mortem state of good and bad souls. Rudolph says that the soul’s eventual resurrection is … understood by Gnosis in a twofold manner: for one thing as a resuscitation of the spark of light from forgetfulness and ignorance … through the call of the redeemer and through self-knowledge; and secondly as an ascent of the spark of light to the pleroma … Both aspects often merge with one another because the liberating knowledge can already signify an anticipation of the end and its realization is already achieved in time.136

This idea is clearly expressed in the Exegesis of the Soul: ‘the soul received the divine nature from the father for her rejuvenation, so that she might be restored to 136

Rudolph 1987 p. 190.

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the place where she originally had been. This is the resurrection from the dead, this is the ransom from captivity; this is the rising up to heaven; this is the way of ascent to the father’ (NHC II.6.134). The famous Naassene Hymn echoes this idea when it refers to the spiritual human before resurrection as a corpse ‘since he is buried in the body as if in a tomb or sepulchre’. One of the Nag Hammadi texts is specifically devoted to the Gnostic conception of the resurrection: the firm belief in the soul’s release and eventual rebirth is based on the thesis that the savior ‘swallowed death’ through his transformation into an incorruptible aeon: ‘If we are manifest in this world as people who bear him (the redeemer) in themselves; we are his beams and we are embraced by him until our setting, that is, our death in this life. We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly’ (NHC I.4.45). In his recent book Hidden Wisdom, Stroumsa offers us a way to understand the baffling profusion of characters, speeches and ideas in at least one dimension of Gnostic scriptures. He points out that the esoteric character of Gnostic mythology has so far elicited little scholarly attention, but reveals something quite distinct about the Gnostics’ approach to knowledge and truth. The Gnostics carried forward pagan ideas about hidden, secret teachings, but transformed them into mythic stories – concepts dressed up as narratives. Where myths about the gods and mortals were exoteric and accessible to all, the core rituals of mystery cults were esoteric and accessible only to initiates. But there were only a rare few secret myths, for example, Dionysus Zagreus; the scholarly consensus now is that there was no esoteric theology behind such secret rituals. With the emergence and establishment of the Christian religion, however, myths and riddles disappeared, replaced by the Christian mystery. The practice of interpretation of myths was replaced by Biblical exegesis of texts; Holy Scriptures were revealed teachings, perfect expressions of the whole truth. Stroumsa says that ‘It was a matter of pride that the deepest truths of the Gospels had been redacted in a simple, popular language, thus being available, like redemption itself, to all, and not only to a thin layer of the educated class.’137 What is striking about Gnostic texts is their presentation of a complex battery of new myths whose character often appears artificial or contrived. Stroumsa says that one can see ‘mythology in the making’ in Gnostic literature, myth-making which oddly enough seems belated: ‘The fact that it was created as a remythologization process, in a religious and intellectual world dominated by the two great reactions to archaic mythologies, Hebrew prophecy and Greek philosophy. Hence the selfconscious hybrid character of Gnostic mythology.’ The Gnostic myths were not invented from nothing, however, but were ‘built from stones reassembled from the debris of previous monuments’.138 In addition, Gnostic myths are not mere revisions of monotheistic doctrines in the OT and Judaism, they are mutations or transformations into a type of dualist mythology where the cosmos is demonized and the forces of evil take center stage. Stroumsa poses the question of what Stroumsa 1996 p. 52. Stroumsa 1996 p. 53; Culianu also talks about Gnostic transformation of myths by reassembly of ‘logical bricks’, 1992 p. 129. 137 138

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happens to a culture (or sub-culture) where the mythic mode becomes selfconscious: ‘All signs point to gnostic origins as a hermeneutical revolt against Jewish and Christian [worldviews] and the creation of an alternative mythology, offering a provocative reinterpretation of cosmology and of salvation history.’ The success of the Christian message in the late second century helped to terminate both pagan mythology and esoteric traditions, but it also witnessed the development of an esoteric mythology in Gnostic scriptures. One can distinguish between esoteric teachings – such as one finds in Basilides’ texts, the Apocalypse of Adam, the Gospel of Mary, and the Acts of Thomas – and esoteric myths, such as Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora, the Book of Baruch and Thunder Perfect Mind. It seems that both sorts of esoteric texts express the revelation of divine secrets, addressed to the initiated alone, those who are thought suited to receive ideas which cannot be committed to writing. The latter texts of esoteric myths exhibit a level of abstract complexity which make them difficult to understand, let alone communicate to others. Stroumsa conjectures that this secretive dimension is a symptom of their inability to survive in new, alien settings. ‘An esoteric myth cannot be interpreted’, whereas esoteric teachings are the subject of intense exegetical efforts. ‘Gnosticism offered a new kind of doctrine, in which myth was the highest level of truth. The secrets were revealed in myths; the nature of truth itself was mythical.’ The Platonic concept of truth (aletheia) is one of taking-the-veil-away or uncovering that which is hidden, say, by the sensible, derivative properties of things. And for Plato, when argumentative techniques do not avail in leading one directly to the truth, then hearing a myth may serve as a guide. But what is uncovered cannot itself turn out to be yet another, deeper station on the way to the truth.139 ‘The fact that there was no possibility of an interpretation of myth entailed the need to find new ways of representing myth, of telling it without revealing it completely, even within the Gnostic community. It is this “esoteric urge”, this need to protect the myth, as it were, to present it as the highest level of truth, that brought to hiding it under the cloak of enigmas.’ But the teaching format of enigmas or riddles had been devised for an earlier stratum of hiding the truth from the masses: ‘This esoteric character of gnostic myth again, reflects its innate weakness, and its inability to be transformed [or] reinterpreted, a constant and imperative need for religious messages if they want to survive cognitive dissonances … Gnosticism lost in the grand spiritual battle of the first Christian centuries because it tried to revive old patterns of thought in a changing world.’140 This crucial insight about Gnostic myths’ lack of amenability to conceptual unpacking is a strong indicator of the reason why their account of human nature is over-determined, what makes it a metastable compound. It embraces an archaic set of terms from an HomericHesiodic mentality of god-like powers welded onto a formal-abstract scheme, mainly derived from Middle and Neo-Platonic vocabulary. This comment is similar to Fowden’s reference to Gnostic books ‘heavily overlaid by exotic oriental, especially Jewish imagery’.141 The result of such a marriage is a philosophicalStroumsa 1996 pp. 55–60. Stroumsa 1996 pp. 61–2. 141 Fowden 1986 pp. 113–15; Pearson argues for Jewish Rabbinic and Haggadic origins for some of the Gnostic tracts, 1990 pp. 19–28, 39–51, and that many Gnostics were Jewish 139 140

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theological monster, much like Abrasax himself, a solar god pictured as an armored snake-footed beast with the head of a cock.142 In conclusion, our investigations of various Gnostic ideas about the origin, composition and destination of human beings, drawn from some of the most important, emblematic Gnostic texts does not support Williams’ main thesis that the so-called Gnostics did not share some core doctrines. Despite the bewildering plethora of Gnostic schemes they share a set of common ideas about human nature. Human being is a composite of heterogeneous elements, light and dark, good and evil, spirit and matter – and salvation is the goal achieved by unscrambling this mixture. The variety of Gnostic schemes is like the variety of anthropic constituents; various devices are employed to explain an underlying dilemma: ‘to allow for the fact that humanity is the creation of – and under the sway of – cosmic forces hostile to the unknown father, the ultimate origin of man’s divine spark, yet to try to delimit as far as possible the extent of that sway and preserve the divine [element] uncontaminated’.143 The Gnostics’ view of the human-divine relation as image-tooriginal is orthogonal (turned at 90 degrees) to both Platonic and Christian ideas. The human form as an image of God is not divine in itself, but an inferior copy made by lower powers ignorant of or hostile to God, as Logan puts it; the soul is no more divine than that derivative status allows. The only genuinely divine element is the spirit, seed or spark, a constituent that is not natural to human ‘nature’, but an alien endowment present in, or attainable by, the elect alone. Having argued back and forth about the various schemes involved in the humanto-divine orientation, Logan concludes in a manner that effectively rebuts the view that the ‘Gnostic’ category lacks conceptual coherence: ‘Both the heavenly true man Adamas of the original Barbelo-gnostic myth, and Man and Son of Man of the “Ophite” version originate in Christian Gnostic systems; appeal to pagan Anthropos figures or myths or to Philo’s celestial Man and double creation account and Jewish Adam legends do not really account for them, whatever contribution such sources may have made to their subsequent development and coloring.’ It is crucial then to understand that Gnostic anthropology is schizophrenic because it ‘descends’ from a stemma that is itself twofold: for every central pre-creation figure there is a created counterpart: Adamas represents the characteristic Gnostic back projection of the Adam figure as heavenly archetype for the earthly version, the protological counterpart of Christ, the Pauline second or eschatological Adam, the true perfect man, while Man and Son of Man derive from Gnostic speculations based on the figure of Christ and his title in the Gospels and on the sources used by early Christians (the Psalms in particular) to construct their distinctive theology and Christology.’144

Although it is not possible to enter fully into this complex issue here, let us sketch out this superordinate conception. In most Gnostic myths that devote attention to the generation and structure of the cosmos the headline actors are duplicated: intellectuals in revolt against their own traditions, pp. 124–35. 142 For Abrasax or Abraxas definition and various citations, see GMPT 1986 p. 331. 143 Logan 1996 p. 168. 144 Logan 1996 pp. 182–3; Stroumsa also agrees 1996 p. 52–5.

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Adam-of-light and Adam-of-earth, spiritual Eve and carnal Eve, Primal Human and Son-of-Human, Sophia-as-wisdom and Sophia-as-life, and so forth. When Gnostic myths devote attention to the production and function of humans, some of these original cosmogonic figures reappear as the ‘seeds’ of divine creative activity, on the microcosmic scale, within each human as a member of the human species, itself the replication of Primal Human as an archetype. The material matrix of the human body is itself sometimes referred to as an antitype into which the demiurgic power places counterfeit spirit. From the first god to the second god, from the archons to the demons and angels, from Primal Human to earthly humans, the process of generation is one of twofold imitation: in the image of its power and in the likeness of its nature. In the human world the developments and chain of events in the pleromatic world are replicated. The role of the savior figure is to move from the divine realm into the human realm, bringing the means for each human who possesses gnosis to recapitulate the process in reverse, after death, through the soul’s ascent: ‘A single entity of light, variously named, enters upon the scene of history, with a single task: to recover the spiritual substance dispersed in matter. For this it is ready to run risks and undertake adventures, from time to time assuming the guise of different characters, but never quite managing to conceal her own features successfully.’145 Since human beings have such a central role in the Gnostic scheme, this idea has been dubbed the doctrine of the god-human or the anthropos myth. There is an intimate relation between the higher god and the inner human, a relation of copy and original. Rudolph says that this very complicated doctrine can be reduced to two basic versions.146 In one, the highest being himself is the first or primal human, who through his appearance to the creator powers, gives them a pattern for the creation of the earthly, second human. In the second version, the highest god first produces a heavenly human in his likeness, who is then the direct prototype of the earthly, and hence third human. This second version includes the idea that the second primal human allows himself to be seduced into taking up residence in the earthly human; he is then regarded as an inner human, at the same time as he represents the divine substance (pneuma) in human nature: ‘The rich language of gnostic imagery does not always clearly distinguish which human is in view; the divine attributes can be applied both to the heavenly and also to the earthly human who is by nature united with him … The idea of the fall of a heavenly being and his dispersal in the earthly world is one of the basic conceptions of Gnosis and received its most sublime and clearest formulation in Manicheism.’ Rudolph argues that behind this distinctive idea about the birth of the god-human, there is ‘an entirely new conception of anthropology’. As the consequence of the particular endowment of the god-human, and his replication in the form of ordinary humans, there is a higher estimate of human being in comparison with the demiurge. This is true because the earthly human, although the product of the demiurge’s actions, comprises a substance and a relation to the first transcendent god. Hans Jonas said that

145 146

Filoramo 1990 p. 95; in concord with Logan’s conclusion, 1996 pp. 195–6. Rudolph 1987 pp. 92–3; see Petrement 1990 pp. 105–7.

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… this exaltation of ‘man’ into a supra-mundane god who – if not the first – is at any rate earlier and more exalted than the Demiurge, is one of the most important aspects of gnostic mythology in the general history of religions. It unites speculations so widely separated as those of the Poimandres and Mani; it indicates a new metaphysical status of man in the order of existence, and it is instruction on this theme which assigns the creator and ruler of nature to his proper place.147

In addition to the primal human as prototype and the superior status of the godhuman, Rudolph also mentions a third distinctive feature of Gnostic human nature: the interdependence of god and human. The Gospel of Philip expresses this belief in a limpid statement: ‘God created humans and humans created God. So it is also in the world, since humans created gods and worship them as their creations. It would be fitting that the gods should worship humans’ (NHC II.3.71-72). Rudolph comments that the earliest known gnostics, like Simon Magus, Menander and Epiphanes, allowed themselves to be worshipped as gods. The idea of divine-human interdependence showed up in our examination of Zoroastrian doctrines in the G¯ath¯as. There is a two-way dependence between Ahura Mazda and his creatures: wholeness and immortality accrue to Ahura Mazda from humans through their piety and good thinking. In the other direction, wholeness and immortality accrue to humans from Ahura Mazda through their obedience to him and their alliance with truth. Ahura Mazda’s existence is maintained through humans’ good thoughts, words and actions, that is, he does not exist independently of these forms of reverence. This two-way dependence may be thought of as a movement in two directions, as Rudolph says: ‘The Greek conception of the sea as the place of origin of gods and men is interpreted in the Naassene homily in the sense that the flow from the heavenly to the earthly ocean signifies the coming into being of men, while the route in the opposite direction is that of the gods.’148 The concept of divine spark plays a central role in Gnostic accounts of human nature; this point was emphasized in the ground-setting proposal of the Messina Congress: The Gnosticism of the second-century sects involves a coherent series of characteristics that can be summarized in the idea of a divine spark in man, deriving from the divine realm, fallen into this world of fate, birth and death, and needing to be awakened by the divine counterpart of the self in order to be fully reintegrated … This idea is based ontologically on the conception of a downward movement of the divine whose periphery (often called Sophia or Ennoia) had to submit to the fate of entering into a crisis and producing, even if only directly, this world, upon which it cannot turn its back, since it is necessary for it to recover the pneuma, a dualistic conception on a monistic background, expressed in a double movement of devolution and reintegration.149

Only humans have a divine spark (spinth¯er)150 a spark is emitted by a fire, thrown Rudolph 1987 p. 93, citing Jonas 1964 p. 383. Rudolph 1987 p. 93. 149 Ugo Bianchi, quoted in Filoramo 1990 p. 143. 150 For contemporary usage, see the entry in Lampe PGL p. 1249; Michel Tardieu traces the evolution of this idea from Plato to Eckhart, Tardieu 1975 pp. 225–55. 147 148

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out onto the soil, where it may cause another fire. To contain one spark of life is enough, since it can ignite anything which can burn; an inner fire can spread through the entire body. But there is nothing explicitly fire-like about the Gnostic creatorgod; perhaps it is not a spark of divine fire in the human vessel, but a spark of divine light. Even a tiny point of light can be seen in the darkness; perhaps the droplet of light with which Sophia molds the human form is a spark. In the Gnostic division of humans into three classes one can trace its presence: the divine spark is extinguished in the material race or type, its capture by dark matter is enough to quench its light, though not its heat, which provides the creature’s life-force. In the psychic type the spark’s light is present but has not spread; it can be amplified by the proper discipline, or diminished by lustful pursuits. In the pneumatic type the spark’s light illuminates the whole human being; by its means the Gnostic can perceive the true path, follow it, and reunite with the divine source of light and heat. The divine lightspark seems to play a role in the Gnostics’ puzzling account of the individual resurrection body. According to the Gospel of Philip, although fleshly things, that is, living bodies, will not inherit the kingdom of god, there is something in the flesh (spirit and light) which can assume an immaterial body-like form and be awakened from the deep sleep of death. The remote event of the world’s end was held close in the heart of all Gnostics through an intimate knowledge of the salvific event that transformed their own lives. (3) Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness The prophet and teacher Mani was born near Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris River in Mesopotamia, in 216 CE. Although he was later given the epithet ‘the Babylonian’ his parents were of Iranian origin; his father was a native of the Hamadan region and his mother was a member of a noble family related to the ruling house of Persia, the Arsacids. His name may be of Semitic origin and his followers are called Manichaeans, from the Greek version of an Aramaic phrase, Mani Khayy¯a, ‘Mani the Living’ (Parthian M¯ani’¯a-Xaios). His father was a convert to a Judaic-Christian sect, the Elchasaites, named after their mysterious founder, Elchasai, who had been active in the mid and late second century. Mani’s radical teachings as an adult were articulated against the background of this strange sect.151 According to Hippolytus,152 Elchasai had been reputed to possess a book of secret teachings revealed to him by a gigantic angel, the Son of God, and his female consort, the Holy Spirit (Ref. Haer. 9.13.1-4). In contrast with the Zurvanite interpretation of Zoroastrism, Elchasai apparently claimed that the principle of fire, identified with light, led to error and the principle of water, identified with darkness, lead to the truth. Hence, the Elchasaites avoided fire in their rituals and instead emphasized water as the source of purity and goodness. The sect was said to have invoked seven elements during their baptismal ritual: heaven, water, the holy spirit, the angels of prayer, oil, salt and the earth; altogether these constituted ‘the 151 See ‘Elkesaites’, in EEC 1992 vol. I, p. 269; A. F. Klijn & G. J. Reinink, ‘Elchasai and Mani’, in Vigliae Christianae 28 (1974) pp. 277–89; and Lieu 1992 pp. 35–50. 152 Extract in Welburn 1998 pp. 249–55.

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astonishing, ineffable and great mysteries’ (Ref. Haer. 9.15.2). Very little is known of their other beliefs, aside from an interest in astrology, some magical practices, and the view that the true prophet appeared in many bodies (persons) over the ages. According to Epiphanius, the Elchasaites were neither Jews, nor Christians, nor pagans, but kept to the middle way between competing sects (Panarion 53.1.1). According to Eusebius the church historian, Origen wrote a vigorous polemic in the 240s against Elchesai and his teachings, showing that the sect was still alive.153 At the age of twelve (April 228), Mani received his first divine revelation through the appearance of his angel ‘twin’ (Greek syzygos) who ordered him to forsake the baptist community, but to delay doing so until he was older. At the age of twentyfour (April 240), Mani received an angelic command to appear in public and preach the true doctrine. According to his own account the angel instructed him in secret knowledge: these mysteries included the meaning of the deep and the high, light and darkness, the great war stirred up by darkness, the merging of light and dark, and the creation of the world from their mixture. Mani had little success with this message in his own circle and left with his father and two others to fulfill his mission to provide salvation and hope for the whole of suffering humanity. The only purity that counted, on his view, was not achieved by baptisms or ablutions but by the separation of light from darkness, life from death, both within the self and in the world at large: Mani conceived the grand plan of creating a church founded on a universalistic and prophetic doctrine, in conscious and irreducible contrast to the particularistic traditions … [which] were the result of aberrant interpretations of the original messages of the great prophets of the past – the Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus – all of whom proclaimed the truth, each in a single part of the world and in one language, while he, Mani, the Seal of the Prophets, had proclaimed it for the whole world, and the voice of his preaching would be understood in all languages.154

In his universalist aspirations Mani became one of the great linguistic and cultural innovators. He reformed the difficult writing systems of several languages by replacing ideographic systems with the Syriac alphabet, and his disciples made intense efforts to translate and adapt the prophet’s message in whatever foreign land their missions brought them to. His first efforts to spread the word took him to the Indo-Iranian borderlands, into north-west India and the Kushan realm at that time under Sassanian suzerainty. In his two-year mission Mani managed to convert the Buddhist King T¯ur¯an and other significant dignitaries. On his return to Persia in 250, Mani was presented to the new King Shapur I as the ‘physician from Babylon’; his audience was crowned with success when Shapur granted permission for Mani to preach his gospel throughout the empire. During the next ten years Mani accompanied the king on various campaigns and converted large numbers of people. In about 260 Mani settled down in a town on the Tigris River and devoted himself to the organization of his now rapidly expanding church (though he still made personal forays into far-flung regions). The death of Shapur in 272 and the one-year reign of his successor 153 154

Fox 1986 p. 564. Gnoli 1987 p. 159.

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Hormizd marked a serious turn in fortune for the ‘official’ religion of light. The next king, Bahram I, was persuaded by high-ranking Zoroastrian priests under the guidance of the conniving mastermind Kerd¯er, to arrest and imprison Mani. According to Manichean tradition, the prophet was interrogated for twenty-six days (his suffering was likened to Christ’s passion) and was then executed. In the wake of his martyrdom, Manicheans were violently persecuted and driven from their homes; many of them fled east and settled in Sogdiana. Ten years later, Mani’s successor, Sisinus, was crucified on orders from the high priest Kerd¯er. On the famous rock-face inscription at Naqshi Rustam, Kerd¯er declared the Iranian religion of Ohrmazd to be supreme, and that Jews, Buddhists, Christians, and Manicheans had been smitten by the Persians and driven from their lands.155 Robin Fox says that ‘Mani’s death gave his world religion the added appeal of a theology of martyrdom. It did not die with him: rather, his death helped it to grow. Unlike any of the great heretics of the second century Mani founded a church which was to survive as long as the Roman Empire and in the East would last for very much longer.’156 Mani and his disciples made outstanding use of the freedom of movement across the East Roman and Persian Empires, spreading his gospel beyond the Iranian plateau into Central Asia, Northwest India and far-flung reaches of China:157 ‘Of all the sub-Christian religious systems, “Manichaeism” has proved to be the most persistent and the most widely persecuted.’ Its main principles were espoused by the Bogomils in the Balkan region in the tenth to twelfth centuries, during the Byzantine Comnenan epoch, and by the much-maligned Cathars in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The most famous convert to Manichaeism – albeit short-lived – is, of course, Augustine himself. After reading Cicero’s (now lost) Hortensius, the young Augustine (c. 373) was excited by the vision of philosophy’s privileged access to wisdom (sophia) and mind (nous). He turned to various resident Manicheans, whose lectures and seminars he followed for many years, but left their company deeply dissatisfied with internal doctrinal problems and their inability to answer his questions.158 He returned to his home town to teach rhetoric, but within two years he was back in Carthage looking for a better-informed Manichean teacher, whom he thought he had found in Faustus of Milevis. At that time, Manichaeism was considered an eccentric and repugnant heresy; Augustine’s devoutly religious mother Monica was horrified by his choice, but allowed her son to work through its challenges on his own. He was disillusioned by the static religious character of Manichean teachings and its overly optimistic view of human nature; the complexities of doubt, ignorance and deep-rooted tensions within the concept of the will were, in his opinion, deliberately avoided by the Manicheans. Amongst his voluminous works were several tracts devoted to detailed criticisms of Manichean doctrines. These include Contra Epistulam Fundamenti, Contra Festus, Contra 155 On Mani’s life and times: Widengren 1983 pp. 965–72; Gnoli 1987 pp. 158–60; Stoyanov 1994 pp. 87–92; texts in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 201–21; and Welburn 1998 pp. 71–5, 88–103. 156 Fox 1986 pp. 562–3. 157 On Christians and Manicheans in Central Asia, see esp. Gillman & Klimkeit 1999 pp. 205–62. 158 See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967 pp. 40–45.

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Faustus, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae, and others.159 Augustine preserves some important passages from Manichean texts and lectures, though often subjected to scathing sarcasm. Other contemporary sources, outside the Manichean community, also provide valuable testimony to their doctrines and rituals as well as the sect’s flourishing in some areas and their persecution in others. The Acts of Archelaus composed before 377 by an otherwise unknown writer named Hegemonius contains a fictitious account of two meetings between Mani himself and Bishop Archelaus of Kashkar.160 Another important Syrian writer and heresy-hunter is Ephrem the Syrian, who 161 composed Prose Refutations against Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan in the 370s. Theodore bar-Konai is another valuable source for his testimony to contemporary interpretations of Biblical texts.162 The most important Muslim source is Ibn alNad¯ım who devoted one long chapter in his Fihrist (c.990) to the Manichean sect.163 Another later Arabic doxographer who provides important information is alShahrast¯ani in the Kit¯ab al-milal.164 However, like the discovery of original Gnostic documents only sixty years ago, our current knowledge of Manichaeism has been vastly increased due to several outstanding discoveries. In the early 1900s, an exploratory expedition from the University of Berlin announced a large group of finds in Central Asia, around the Turfan region. The so-called Turfan texts are written in three different scripts (Estrangelo, Sogdian and Runic) in seven languages (Parthian, Middle Persian, New Persian, Sogdian, Tokharian, Bactrian and Uighur).165 These Manichean documents comprise hymns, prayers, poetry, treatises, sermons, parables, liturgies, calendars, letters, glossaries and painted miniatures. One of the greatest challenges the earliest editors faced was the decipherment, transcription and translation of some previously unknown languages; F. W. K. Müller deciphered and published texts from Sogdian and Tokharian; W. B. Henning and F. C. Andreas texts in Iranian languages; Mary Boyce and Jes Asmussen the Middle Persian and Parthian texts; Werner Sundermann and Peter Zieme have continued the publication of major texts up till the present. Shortly after the German expedition’s finds were announced, British and French expeditions found Chinese and Turkish texts in East Central Asia, at Tun-huang. The French scholars Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot pioneered the efforts to examine Chinese documents that recorded Manichean passages. The third major 159 Six short tracts are collected and translated by R. Jolivet & M. Jourjon (Paris: de Brouwer, 1961) and in The Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 7, 1887, reprint Eerdmans, 1979. 160 In Latin translation, Acta Archelai, ed. by C. H. Beeson, Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906, and in The Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6, Eerdmans, 1987; extracts in Welburn 1998 pp. 82–7. 161 Prose Refutations against Mani, Marcion, and Bardaisan, Trans. by C. W. Mitchell, London, 1912. 162 Selections in A. V. W. Jackson, Researches in Manichaeism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. 163 The Fihrist of al-Nad¯ım, ed. & trans. by Bayard Dodge, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 773–806. 164 Kit¯ ab al-milal: Les dissedence de l’Islam, trans. by J.-C. Vadet, Paris: Geuthner, 1984. 165 For illustrations and descriptions of these scripts, see J. P. Mallory & Victor Mair, The Tarim Mummies. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000 pp. 102–17.

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discovery in the Manicheans ‘emerging from darkness’ was made in 1929 in the Fayyum district of Egypt, the Medinet Madi Library, written in Coptic, which contained seven major works: the Psalm Book, the Homilies, the Chapters (Kephalaia), the Readings (Synaxeis), the Letters, and the History (the last two vanished after 1945). Substantial progress was made on editing these texts, but almost all work ceased at the outbreak of war and was not resumed until the 1980s. Perhaps the most startling discovery was not publicized until the 1960s: a tiny little book in Greek, acquired by the University of Cologne, and hence known as the Cologne Mani Codex, appears to be an account of Mani’s own life and mission, perhaps written by Mani himself.166 In the late 1990s, an Australian-Canadian expedition uncovered a new cache of Manichean texts at the Dakleh Oasis (ancient Kellis) in Egypt; there appears to have been an active Manichean community in the oasis, one of whose main texts is the Tebessa Codex.167 The most fundamental structural feature of the Manichean community was its division into two classes of adherent: the elect and the auditor. In all of the major languages in which Manichean texts were written there are two sets of terms for the two classes.168 Mani himself declared that he had ‘chosen the elect and shown a path to the height to those who ascend according to this truth’. He saw a vision of the church which he was destined to establish, a church ‘prepared and perfected with its teachers and bishops, the elect and the catechumens’. The Latin Tebessa Codex describes the two orders: ‘these two grades, established upon one faith in the same church, support each other, and whoever has an abundance of anything shares it with the other: the elect with the auditors from their heavenly store … and the auditors with the elect [from their earthly wealth]’. In one of the Turkish texts the two groups respond in different ways to Mani’s original summons: ‘You [Mani] deigned to command them to recite praises and hymns, to repent evil deeds, and to assemble and bring about “collection”. Mortals with confused minds, hearing this command of yours caused seas and rivers of virtue to flow, and were born again in the land of the Buddhas. Other simple minds walked on pure roads and brought about “collection”. They were born again in the palace of immortality.’ BeDuhn comments that ‘collection’ refers to their ritual alms-service and special meal complex, two rituals devoted to the collection of scattered light particles. This twofold injunction seems to indicate that those who have not achieved complete clarity of thought are stirred to good deeds and are reborn into a more fruitful existence. Those who have acquired a clear mind enter upon a life of purity and attain an immortal status.169 The separate codes of practice for the two groups follow their observance of two kinds of rituals. The behavior of both the Elect and auditors must be appropriate to their functions as agents in operations geared toward salvation: ‘The elect were required to meet more stringent criteria so that their bodies could be not only agents in salvational rituals, but also the instruments and arenas of such rituals. In the same way that modern western discourse sometimes refers to the ideal products of 166 The Cologne Mani Codex: German trans. by L. Koenen & C. Römer, Opladen: ARWAW, 1988; English trans. by R. Cameron & A. J. Dewey, Missoula, MT: SBL, 1979. 167 In summary, Klimkeit 1993 pp. xvii–xix; BeDuhn 2000 pp. 2–4. 168 The sets of terms in all major languages are discussed by BeDuhn 2000 pp. 26–8. 169 BeDuhn 2000 p. 29.

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military training as “fighting machines”, Manichean disciplinary practices were designed to construct “ritual machines”.’170 The elect were expected to observe the three seals (mouth, hand and heart) and the five commandments; they are severe vegetarians, ascetics and encratics, and live a life of abstinence and overachievement.171 The auditors fast once a week, offer prayers and give alms; their rituals, actions and daily grind make possible the elect’s attention to personal salvation. Where the elect can expect to attain an immortal existence after their earthly sojourn, the auditors can expect to be reborn in another body and have another chance at becoming elect. The three seals are described by Augustine in his critical exposition of their customs and are attested in all Manichean languages in virtually all their communities. Augustine had first-hand knowledge of the beliefs and practices within a North African ‘church’ and his testimony is the most detailed information about these super-ordinate principles.172 He says that these seals (signacula) are the mouth (os), the hand (manus) and the breast (sinus); they signify that a human should be pure and innocent in mouth, hand and breast. The mouth refers to all the senses in the head, especially eating and drinking, the hand to all human actions, and the breast to human lust. The Muslim writer al-Nad¯ım refers to the three seals in these oblique words: ‘If he finds that he can subdue lust and envy [=breast-seal], refrain from eating meats, drinking wine [=mouth-seal], as well as from marriage [=breast-seal], and if he can also avoid injury to water, fire, trees, and living things [=hand-seal], then let him enter the religion [become an elect].’173 The Coptic Psalm Book associates the three seals with the Christian trinity: the seal of the mouth for the father, the rest of the hands for the son, the purity of virginity for the Holy Spirit. In the Coptic Kephalaia (sec. 80), Mani himself instructs his disciples: ‘Know and understand that … the truly righteous [entails three things] that he embraces chastity and purity; that he also acquires for himself the rest [of the] hands, so that he will restrain his hands from the Cross of Light; and the third is the purity of the mouth, so that he will purify his mouth from all flesh and blood, and he does not taste wine or liquor at all.’ The three seals are also well attested in Parthian, Sogdian and Turkish texts. Julien Ries has argued that the three seals constitute the essentials of Manichean morality; the large portion of the Kephalaia devoted to the three seals is a virtual compendium of Gnostic ethics.174 For the elect, the type of perpetual fasting enjoined by the seal of the mouth ‘reduces alimentation to strict necessity and orients it toward cosmic salvation’. According to H. C. Puech, the purpose of the fasting rule was to ‘reduce the existence of the “perfect” to an absolute and permanent fast’. Julien Ries insists that fasting, prayers and alms-giving benefited the auditors as well: fasting overpowers the body’s archons, hence the breast-seal; prayers to the luminaries entails the mouth-seal, and alms-giving justifies their actions, and hence entails the hand-seal.175 BeDuhn 2000 p. 31. In Robin Fox’s nicely chosen words, 1986 p. 568. 172 Augustine on the three seals, in De moribus manichaeorum, sec. 19–39. 173 Ries and Puech quoted in BeDuhn 2000 p. 34. 174 On the character and content of the Kephalaia, see Funk in Mirecki & BeDuhn 1997 pp. 143–59. 175 Quoted in BeDuhn 2000 pp. 38–9; texts in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 139–42. 170 171

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The five commandments are high-level ethical precepts that pertain to the elect alone. They have been attested in similar wording and similar order in Coptic, Middle Persian, Sogdian and Turkish; there are oblique references to them in alNad¯ım’s Arabic and the Chinese Hymn-Scroll. Unlike the ten commandments for the auditors, which are expressed as prohibitions against wrong actions, the five commandments are expressed as positive injunctions for right actions (non-lying can be expressed as truth-telling, but non-injury does not seem to have an entirely positive format). The essential elements of these five rules can be listed as follows: (1) not to lie, that is, to be truthful; (2) not to injure, that is, not commit evil deeds; (3) to be pure in body, especially no sex; (4) to be pure in mouth, especially not to eat meat or drink wine; and (5) to be poor, that is, to not covet. The ‘Hymn to Mani’ in the Turkish Pothi Book states this in clear words: They guarded with minds free from neglect the commands that you issued … Their compassionate minds increased and guarded (1) the commandment to be without sin. They escaped from the hell which is ever aflame … They guarded (2) the true commandment to not commit dirty evil deeds. They thought about the transitoriness of the body and left house and home … They carried out (3) the commandment to be pure in body. They exerted themselves in the pure doctrines by which one escapes from dangerous places and, in order to be born again in the palace of immortality, they guarded (4) the commandment to be pure in mouth. They all asked for divine blessing. In order to walk along the blessed road, through escape from the terrible samsara, they carried out (5) the commandment to be the blessed poor. They recognized the transitory doctrines and, in fear of the three evil ways, in order to be born again in the highest place, they carried out the three seals.176

In the Sogdian Bema Handbook177 the confessional exposition of the five commandments is followed by the five gifts, positive dispositions the elect receive as a sacred trust. The Elect are expected to regulate, not only external actions, but also inner attitudes that pertain to right thoughts: I am also sinful [against] the five gifts which are bound for the main body of the religion if I have not accepted them in my five divisions (ptywdn), namely, glory (frn), thought (sy’), sense (m’n), consideration (sm’r’), and reason (ptbydyh) … If I have not had love, if hate treads in its place; if in the place of faith, unfaith; (if in the place) of striving for perfection, imperfection; (if in the place) of patience, violence; (if in the place) of wisdom, folly; and if I have not rejected from myself the fivefold internal passion, so that it intrudes upon me decrease in many respects; if through me the holy spirit should have been irritated; therein am I a death-deserving sinner!178

Another fivefold regulation concerns control of the senses, the gateways of harmful stimuli: In the closing of the five gates I was not perfect … Thus, if I (have left open) my eyes to sight, my ears to sound, my nose to smell, my mouth to improper food and ugly speech, and my hands to improper contact and touch; and the demonic Az (Lust), who has built 176 177 178

Quoted in BeDuhn 2000 p. 42; texts in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 139–42. The Bema Ritual celebrated Mani’s death and ascension, Klimkeit 1993 pp. 133–4. Quoted in BeDuhn 2000 p. 49.

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this body and enclosed herself within it, produces indeed through these five gates constant strife; she brings the inner demons together with the outer ones, between which a portion is destroyed daily; if I thus have kept my gates open and Az (Lust) should have provoked all of the desire-affected spiritual demons, so that the soul-treasure (rw’nyh gr’myy), the living self (gryw jywndg), goes astray from me: for all these things, forgiveness!179

Hans Schaeder sums up the Manichean ethos in these words: ‘This ascetic demand, if carried out with full severity, means the renunciation of life altogether. Mani for that reason finds a way out, which is consistent with the thought of his system and yet brings an irreparable break in his ethic. Only the restricted number of the “Perfect” undertake the ascetic demand in its whole severity.’ Jason BeDuhn hastens to point out that this redemptive-oriented asceticism and renunciation is different from that extolled by many (if not all) Gnostic regimens. The Manichean Elect, in undertaking such rigorous self-control and denial, do not attempt to liberate their inner nature by means of such constraint. Rather, Manichean discipline imposes constraints, reins in behavior, and molds the body to an imposed model that will make it truly functional for the first time. This constantly regulated life is the Manichean road to ‘liberation’, although the modern reader may find it perverse to see in such a life any kind of freedom. But the discipline of the Manichean Elect is not intended as an end in itself; it is, rather, the prerequisite for a liberation yet to be attained.180

In whatever language they are written, Manichean accounts explain and justify their disciplinary regimens by appeal to their distinctive understanding of the worldwhole. The explicit rationales for their disciplines are predicated on an axiomatic principle, which Jes Asmussen called their most fundamental concept, that all worldly things have a share in the Living Soul.181 In Middle Persian this is gr¯ıv zindag, in Coptic t.psych¯e etanh, in Greek psych¯e zo¯es, in Augustine’s Latin anima vivans; it also appears in various texts as the Cross of Light, the Five Elements, the Youth and the Suffering Jesus. Jason BeDuhn argues that little is to be gained by attempting to harmonize the many versions of Manichean cosmogony, across many different cultures and epochs, aside from recognizing that this world, the earth humans inhabit, exists in an interim stage, between the First and the Third Epoch, and in an interim condition, a mixture of light and dark. The goal of Manichean education toward gnosis is to learn the true relations humans have to these forces, their role in the ongoing conflict, and how to interact with their environment in order to achieve redemption.182 The elemental forces are unleashed by the Prince of Darkness, the Evil Demiurge, as al-Nad¯ım makes clear: The Primordial Devil repaired to his five principles, which are the smoke (samm), flame (hariq), obscurity (duhan), pestilential wind (samum), and clouds (dabab), arming himself 179 180 181 182

Quoted in BeDuhn 2000 p. 50. BeDuhn 2000 p. 53; and quotes Schaeder’s summary. ‘Hymns to the Living Soul’, Klimkeit 1993 pp. 43–54. BeDuhn 2000 pp. 72–3.

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with them and making them a protection for him. Upon his coming into contact with the Primordial Human, they joined in battle for a long time. The Primordial Devil mastered the Primordial Human and took a swallow from his light, which he surrounded with his principles and ingredients.

Ephrem of Syria underscores the material character of the dark principles, when he says, quoting Mani’s words, that ‘the primitive darkness not only seized that primitive light, but also “felt, touched, ate, sucked, tasted and swallowed it” … The primal darkness … on account of its hunger, harmed the light which it “passionately desired and ate, and sucked in, and swallowed, and imprisoned in its midst, and mixed in its limbs”.’183 BeDuhn notes that consumption of good by evil is depicted as a stratagem on the part of good, since Ephrem quotes Mani as saying that ‘the primordial human cast his five bright ones (ziwane) into the mouth of the sons of darkness, in order that as a hunter he might catch them in his net’. In concord with this view, Theodore bar Konai says that ‘the primordial human with his five sons gave himself to the five sons of darkness as food, just as a man who has an enemy mixes a deadly poison in a kitchen and gives it to him’.184 In any case, the result of this extra-terrestrial contact at the world’s dawn is a mixture of two opposite substances from which everything that exists derives. The five luminous entities become entangled in matter such that everything that lives contains some portion of their divine light. This cosmological postulate is the basis for the Manichean Elect’s repudiation of most foods, especially meat, but also many vegetables. Theodore bar Konai says that ‘when they had consumed them, the light gods lost their reason. Through the poison of the sons of darkness they became like unto a man who has been bitten by a mad dog or snake.’ Al-Nad¯ım quotes Mani to the effect that the five dark ingredients mixed with the five light ingredients and generated five benefits and five detriments to living things. Hence, smoke mixed with wind, from which both delight and disease were produced; flame mixed with fire, from whence both perdition-corruption and illumination; light mixed with dark, from whence dense bodies such as the metals and purity-beauty; the ill wind mixed with the good wind from whence usefulness and grief-injury, and clouds mixed with water, from whence there comes pure, sweet water, and suffocation-strangling.185 In a justly famous image, Hans-Charles Puech described the entire Manichean world as ‘a machine for producing and safeguarding redemption. Every cog in the cosmic mechanism, every episode in the history of the world has a bearing on redemption.’ When the Father of Greatness sends the third envoy, the Suffering Jesus, to redeem humans from their fallen condition, the envoy ‘redeems the world by organizing it into a machine … for gathering, refining, and sublimating the buried light’. Mani apparently conceived this vast cosmic mechanism as a network of buckets, pulleys and chains, stretched across the heavens, where three wheels move the seven spheres. As the heavens turn through the zodiacal stations, twelve buckets descend to earth and ‘draw forth the luminous souls of the dead and form them into a pillar of light, whose mystical cargo is borne on the ships of the sun and 183 184 185

BeDuhn 2000 p. 74. BeDuhn 2000 p. 293 note 12. Quoted in BeDuhn 2000 p. 75.

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moon to the glittering paradise of its origin’.186 Despite their soul-retrieval role in the cosmic machine, the five planets (aside from the sun and moon) and the twelve signs of the zodiac are associated with the powers of darkness, as Culianu argues.187 He points out that the Kephalaia (sec. 69) places the twelve zodiacal signs and the five archons under the supervision of an apait¯et¯es, an overseer or tax-collector, whose function is pretty much the same as the paral¯empt¯es in the Pistis Sophia. The five planetary archons rule over the five dark elements. The text is quite unambiguous on this issue: ‘All that occurs in the world, above and below, wars, confusion, deportation, famine, avarice, and property, all this increases and decreases according to the action of the leaders (archons). They set in motion all creation.’ The Manichean generation of the cosmos (cosmogony) is mirrored on a smaller scale by the generation of the human species (anthropogony); the structure and functions of the cosmos (cosmology) is mirrored on a smaller scale by the structure and functions of human nature (anthropology). The Father of Greatness, in order to defend the realm of light against darkness sends forth an emanation, the Great or Holy Spirit, who in turn projects the First Human. The First Human ascends to the border with his five sons (the elements), where he is defeated by the dark force, and his sons are devoured by demons. The First Human decides to sacrifice his soul to the darkness and matter’s lust is satisfied; but the life-force in soul is a food not suitable to matter and the divine soul poisons the demons. The Father must redeem his prototype and so he calls forth the second creation, the friends of light, who themselves call forth the Demiurge, and the Demiurge calls forth the Living Spirit. With his (its) five sons the Living Spirit rescues the First Human from darkness, but he leaves behind the five luminous elements of his armament. Puech says that ‘the First Human is not only a hero who annuls death, defeats his enemies and reveals the paradise of light, he is primarily the prototype of the redeemed creature, of the redeemer who redeems himself.’ This primal redemption consists in the awakening of consciousness, forgetful and ignorant while trapped in matter, to its true nature and, in the end, it culminates in his being made god again: ‘This spiritual resurrection is the work of the Nous … which becomes flesh and blood in the First Human, while his “armament”, which remains imprisoned in darkness, represents the element that must be saved: the psyche.’ One is meant to understand by this that it is the presence of mind in humans which makes possible the salvation of their soul, that is, in another, second life after death: ‘The awakening of the Nous is brought about or symbolized by the intervention of the Living Spirit which … brings to the soul “the Power of Life”, the pneuma with its five gifts (life, force, luminosity, beauty, fragrance), and these in turn enable the divine substance to recognize itself and to be reborn.’188 With the support of his five sons (or limbs) the Demiurge passed judgment on the demonic archons; they are flayed and the heavens are made from their skins, the earth from their flesh; they are crucified on the starry constellations. That portion of matter which has been sullied by darkness is the subject of the third creation; the Puech 1968 pp. 248, 276, 281. Culianu 1992 pp. 174–6; texts on the zodiac in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 230–32. 188 Puech 1968 p. 273; cosmogonic texts in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 226–28; Welburn 1998 pp. 176–80. 186 187

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third envoy189 organizes the material world into a machine to recover the lost particles of light. He appears to the male demons as a pure virgin of light and to the female demons as a naked youth. The demons copulate with the male-female envoy and their seed falls to earth where it becomes vegetation; the female demons give birth to abortions who consume the filthy flora. Overcome with lust these monsters interbreed and give birth to a swarm of lesser demons who in their turn become animals. The appearance of the third envoy has caused matter to fear that its prisoner, the living soul, might escape, so it generates its own anti-creation. Matter produces two super-demons, male and female, who devour as much as they can in order to ingest a maximum of light, then they copulate and produce the first two earthly humans, Adam and Eve:190 ‘Thus the human race owes its origins to a series of revolting acts of cannibalism and sexuality. And it has retained the stigma in its body which preserves the bestial form of the archons and in the libido, which drives man himself to copulate and procreate, that is, to further the plan of matter to hold the luminous substance in captivity forever.’191 Culianu echoes the dreadful sentiment at the denouement of the story: horrendous episodes of unheard-of debauchery are multiplied according to the overall logic of Manichaeism, which consists of rejecting sexuality as the archontic activity par excellence … The repetition of tremendous obscenities is made to display the extent to which humankind is fallen and the sin accumulated upon it mighty … To the extent that humankind originates from a series of incredible abominations and multiplies in lamentable ignorance of the most elementary taboos of incest, its situation must be truly desperate.192

Franz Cumont drew what he thought was an inescapable inference: ‘Thus all parts of the nature surrounding us originate from the unclean corpses of the powers of evil. Pessimism has only seldom found a more appropriate image.’ Hans Jonas echoes this view: ‘Manichean pessimism has here devised the extreme imaginative expression of a negative view of the world; all the parts of nature that surround us come from the impure cadavers of the powers of evil.’193 We now turn to the derivation, composition and structure of the human soul according to Manichean doctrine. In an important hymn, first written in Aramaic but preserved only in Sogdian and Parthian, Mani praises Jesus the Savior.194 The savior brings salvation through many forms: redeemer of our souls in the midst of the dead, through our upper (or upturned) eyes and ears, through our right hand and breath of life. Salvation is received by (or in) our unified nous (b¯am) and our true mind (manohm¯ed), our whole intellect (ush), our ardent thought (and¯eshishn), and our understanding (parm¯anag). In another fragmentary Parthian hymn195 (also from an Texts on the third envoy in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 228–30; Welburn 1998 pp. 194–8. Texts on the creation of Adam and Eve in Klimkeit 1993 pp. 232–3; Welburn 1998 pp. 199–202. 191 Puech 1968 pp. 275–77. 192 Culianu 1992 p. 171. 193 Jonas 1963 p. 224, citing Franz Cumont. 194 Klimkeit 1993 pp. 63–4. 195 Klimkeit 1993 p. 31. 189 190

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Aramaic original), Mani declaims to the Father: ‘we lift up our eyes to you, our souls (gy¯an¯an) sing before you’. In some missing verses he probably addressed the first three ‘limbs’ of the soul (reason, mind and intellect) and then the preserved lines speak of ‘your great thought’ and ‘your great understanding’, from which all beneficial thoughts have arisen. The Sogdian text on the Old Man and the New Man196 reprises the same faculties: the substance and self of the soul are life, power, light, beauty and fragrance. The five gifts (or virtues) of religion are love, faith, perfection, patience and wisdom. When the texts speak of the Living Soul tout court the words gr¯ıv zindag are usually used, and when the texts speak of Az (the demon of greed) and other deities, it is usually just gr¯ıv. But when the Primal Human is formed its soul, both in its good and bad versions, is called gy¯an. The Sixth Huyadagm¯an Hymn Cycle seems to distinguish between humans’ spirit (gy¯an) and soul (gr¯ıv). The Parthian texts which provides the largest context for description of the psychic faculties is the first cycle 197 of the Angad R¯oshn¯an, preserved in fragments, with the first verses missing. Here thought (and¯eshishn) is located in the heart; it sees all the […], it is shaken by this sight, and hides inside the soul (gr¯ıv). The speaker is so disturbed that his intellect (ush) can no longer make plans; the strong emotion disables his understanding (parm¯anag) and his mind (manohm¯ed). He complains that when he saw the dark, the strength of his ‘limbs’ was broken, his soul moaned in all its forms (or kinds), and his spirit (gy¯an) was tortured. But when the speaker turns his eyes upward to the savior, light fills his mind, raising his soul from deep affliction. The savior addresses the speaker’s spirit, telling him to fear not: ‘I am your mind’, he says, ‘and you are my body, the garment that had been oppressed by the powers of darkness.’198 More than that, ‘I am your light, radiant and primeval, your great mind and consummate hope.’ The savior promises the poor human to release him from every prison and torment in his earthly life, to cleanse him of filth and corrosion through which he has passed. ‘You are buried treasure’, he continues, ‘the pearl which is the beauty of all the gods.’ By these words the divine figure means that the human spirit is enclosed within the deepest layer of human nature; like a pearl which forms by accretions through slow metabolic processes around a seed. The savior is the mind’s gladness within the soul’s frame: ‘the light of your whole form, the soul above and the base of life’. It is surely the human spirit which is said to be deficient when it does not have (or see) the knowledge it has acquired through many previous births. If the spirit does not see the advantage from recognizing timeless, eternal and unmixed goodness, then it needs a guide to show it the way to redemption from evil and to the soul’s blessed state.199 Mani’s comment on this dictum is that knowledge gained by means of the senses alone would make (or show) all humans to be equal and similar. But this is surely not the case since the amount of knowledge the spirit has determines its degree of mixture in mortality, that is, its share of death-bound nature. Klimkeit 196 197 198

Klimkeit 1993 p. 78. Klimkeit 1993 p. 112. Boyce’s translation is ‘which brought dismay to the powers’, Klimkeit 1993 p. 120 note

82. 199

Klimkeit 1993 p. 251.

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observes that this text seems to reflect the Pauline trichotomy of body (Gr. s¯oma, MP tan), soul (Gr. psych¯e, MP m¯en¯og), and spirit (Gr. pneuma, MP gy¯an). The soul as life-force is bound up with the human body and can neither be redeemed nor reborn, whereas the spirit is the divine portion, one which can be redeemed and reborn. The relevant Sogdian text states that the soul is of the same nature as the body. The bodily or corporal thing (tan¯ıgird¯ıh) and the soulful thing (m¯en¯og¯ıh) are both dark, ignorant and harmful.200 The nature of the divine soul or spirit (gy¯an) is one of a different substance (jud¯eg¯ohr), but mixed with the bodily nature. Klimkeit quotes Mary Boyce’s comment that the term ‘of the same nature (h¯amchihrag) refers to that part of the Living Self which was not liable to “corruption”, and will therefore be redeemed’.201 The Old Turkish (Uighur) texts from Central Asia are fewer and sketchier than the Sogdian and Parthian texts. Nevertheless, the same list of five faculties and five benefits appears several times. In the gods and virtues of the first days, the five limbs of the new man are correlated with the five benefits and five elements.202 From reason (qut) love arises and clothes the aether; from intellect (köngül) faith arises and clothes wind; from mind (ög) zeal arises and clothes light; from thought (saqinch) patience arises and clothes the water; and from understanding (tuymaq) wisdom arises and clothes fire. In contrast with the light-like powers within the new man, the dark powers of the old man are inverse properties. From the dark mind demons arise and fight with the new man; he becomes impatient and contentious when he loses his mind and intellect. From the dark understanding demons arise and fight with the new man; his wisdom vanishes and he acts foolishly. But if the new man wins the struggle then – amongst other things not named – the power of the fivefold god ascends; thought becomes alert and careful. The Turkish writers differentiate soul or self (öz) by specifying ‘first self’ (ilki öz) from ‘this self’ (bo öz) or ‘second self’ (ikinti öz). J. P. Asmussen says that ilki öz is ‘an expression of the unprepared viva anima given to all people from birth, which by the acceptance and the understanding of gnosis brought to maturity becomes bo öz, the condition of final salvation.’203 The Coptic Kephalaia (sec. 38) proffers the same list of limbs and virtues in the new man: that is, mind-love, thought-faith, insight-perfection, intellect-patience and reasoning-wisdom. These five powers are further correlated with five sites in the body, in an order from inner to outer: bone, nerve, artery, tissue and skin.204 Theodore bar Konai’s Syriac list is perhaps the closest to Mani’s original linguistic classification; there are five dwellings (sh’kinas): mind (haun¯a), thinking (mad’¯a), thought (re’yan¯a), imagination (that is, understanding) (mahshabth¯a), and counsel (tar’itha). Welburn comments that haun¯a means reason as opposed to unreason, sense as opposed to nonsense; mad’¯a is the highest faculty in humans, the main activity of the spirit; re’yan¯a is the ordinary 200 Pahlavi texts on the human soul, according to Shaked, frequently employ bodily terms to refer to the various ‘souls’ bound with parts of the human body; see texts from the D¯enkard in his 1994 pp. 153–60. 201 Klimkeit 1993 p. 256 note 18. 202 Klimkeit 1993 p. 332. 203 Asmussen Khuastv¯ an¯ıft 1965 p. 218, quoted in Klimkeit 1993 p. 336 note 46. 204 BeDuhn 2000 pp. 92–4, 100–1.

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faculty of thinking; mahshabth¯a is the shaping, active power of the mind, and tar’itha means internal counsel.205 Five-fold scheme of psychic powers in original Manichean language texts Faculty reason intellect mind thought understanding

Greek logismos enthum¯esis nous ennoia phron¯esis

Parthian b¯am ush manohm¯ed and¯eshisn parm¯anag

Turkish qut köngül ög saqinch tuymaq

Syriac haun¯a tar’ith¯a mad’¯a re’yan¯a mahshabth¯a

limb mind thought insight intellect reasoning

site bone nerve artery tissue207 skin

element aether wind light water fire

virtue love faith zeal patience wisdom

‘vice’206 – – impudence bitterness wrath

With regard to Manichean teachings about human salvation, Jason BeDuhn has presented a strong case that there are three phases or dimensions of the elect soul’s liberation from the body: separation, self-formation and ascent. The follower of the true religion comes to perfection by attaining conformity with his or her original nature. According to the Kephalaia the true self emerges in the same form as light; the Chinese Compendium says that this nature will be separated from the light-less and its name will be ‘one form’. The Chinese Hymnscroll says that, in its ultimate state, every one of them looks the same and that all natures and forms are equal: ‘This unification and homogenization of the self corrects the condition of “mixture” in which ordinary humans find themselves … Contrary to interpretations [for which see below] that see in Manichaeism a form of spirit-matter dualism, the sources actually show a sweeping materialism in Manichean discourse.’ Four light-like elements and four dark elements have been imbued in the making of the human body; good and evil drives in human nature operate by means of additional fifth elements. These good and evil drives are routinely portrayed as internal agencies, spirits and demons, which activate and control various organic functions and desires.208 However, despite humans’ basically homogenous nature, individuals do not have self-contained identities: ‘the contingency and impermanence of the body shows

Welburn 1998 p. 121. ‘vice’, an impure accretion, acc. to the fragment of Kephalaia sec. 94. 207 This key term is often rendered ‘flesh’, but to keep it distinct from ‘skin’, it is rendered ‘soft tissue’, since it is clearly set off against hard bone. 208 BeDuhn 2000 pp. 222–3. 205 206

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that it is not “a real existence”, but a temporary conglomeration of incongruous substances’, as BeDuhn says. Their status as temporary aggregates does not imply that, after bodily death, individual souls transmigrate to other bodies and are then born again as the same individuals. Rather, the original separate divine elements, dispersed at the body’s demise, are reprocessed into new forms through transfusion (metagismos). BeDuhn argues that all of the available evidence shows that the Manicheans adhered to the traducian theory of the soul, in other words, each soul is constituted by the transmission of soul-like constituents from its parents’ souls. This is the essential meaning of the pivotal Manichean idea of collection; after death, each individual must collect its soul’s limbs in order to assemble it into a complete self: ‘The Manichean “soul” or self does not possess an eternal or immutable identity; it is made by the processes of the faith, crafted in the metabolic fires, and forged as a unity from dispersed fragments of life … The soul is a byproduct – or rather the essential product – of metabolic processes.’209 With regard to the internal dimension of self-formation, BeDuhn says that the human soul has the potential to hold itself together and continue along a process of ever-increasing reunification. If it fails to maintain that continuity or to find the ‘open gate’ through which it can manage its ascent, the soul will fly apart at death: ‘It needs to find a form, a permanent cohesiveness that survives mortality, a “body” divested of the pollutants that undermine its unity and clarity … Salvation comes by means of establishing an integrity for the self, an identity beyond contingency.’ The difficulty that all earthly humans face is that their bodies are subject to demonic forces; the ‘damaged vessel’ scatters the mind, since the body is filled with spirits which draw it ‘hither and thither’. In order for the whole person to be saved the individual must train his body until it becomes a fully functioning instrument in the salvific mechanism:210 ‘The soul or self is formed by the gnosis of separation, the practical knowledge of discerning and marking apart a self amid the flood of passions and drives of the human body. The Manichean ethos is a technique for investing the body with a self, a self whose Manichean identity puts it in effective relation with the salvational processes of the universe.’ The true self emerges in an embodied form from both internal disciplines of thought and external disciplines of right action.211 In its third dimension Mani himself clearly expressed the view that the elect’s soul would ascend to heaven after its death on earth. Manichean texts are filled with references to gates, doors and paths; there are paths which one must follow through ascetic and encratic discipline, and then there is the path that the soul takes when released from its labors. In the Kephalaia Mani identifies the five mentalities of the internal realm with the five points of transmission for the liberated light in the outer cosmos: ‘Just as the rebellion of evil rises through these five mentalities if unchecked, so the successful processing of the Living Self in the protected bodies of the Elect passes through these mentalities, and emerges to pass through the corresponding stages of the macrocosm. These stages mark out the path “for the

209 210 211

BeDuhn 2000 pp. 223–4. BeDuhn 2000 p. 224. BeDuhn 2000 p. 227.

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souls that ascend”.’ BeDuhn, in his meticulous analysis of the ritual meal, stresses that eventual liberation from the body’s fetters is not entirely the result of meditative discipline on right knowledge, but also embodied discipline through right action: ‘Recognizing one’s true identity as a spark of the divine light does not in itself accomplish liberation … The salutary effects of Manichean disciplines not only perfect the individual Elect body and keep it from harming the Living Self, but also set the stage for the obligatory work of the religion to redeem the Living Self from the entire world.’212 In summary, there are five bivalent elements arrayed on two axes, light and dark. In the divine creation of Primal Human the five light elements comprise his five limbs or segments; through the dark principle’s counter-action the five dark elements imprison Primal Human in material fetters. In the demiurgic generation of the human species the five light elements constitute the five gifts or benefits, which, if used rightly in thought, word and action, give rise to the five virtues. In ordinary human nature the five dark elements comprise demonic agencies which cause organic disorders and provoke an array of counter-virtues (vices). It seems to me that Andrew Welburn has captured the basic character of the five-fold types and antitypes. According to al-Shahrastani, there are five species of light: four of them are bodies (or body-like) and the fifth is their spirit. The kinds of bodies are fire, light, wind and water, and their spirit is ether; it is the fifth element which moves them and causes them to live. But as al-Nad¯ım has informed us, the five dark elements are the polar opposites of the five light ones: hence there are smoke, gloom, bad-water, bad-wind and bad-fire. Welburn says that ‘all the light-bodies are various embodiments of the ethereal energy [the fifth element] which moves in them; all the physical features of the elements are greater or lesser elaborations of the smoke, or darkening, densifying component … Mani’s scheme reveals a view of the elements as living ethereal essences, but existing in various states of darkening or opacity.’213 The key idea behind this hypothesis is some sort of scalar dualism, that is, the two ‘realms’ of light and dark represent two extremes on a scale of intensity, not two worlds of intelligible and sensible forms. They are organized from dense, heavy matter, full of darkness, to light, airy non-matter, full of light. This interpretation of the Manichean scheme shows that ‘the darkest of the forms, i.e. gloom, although it is the most fallen and “smoky”, is a reflection of the highest element, the essential nature of the light itself. Fire, in which, as we might say, matter passes over into energy, is for Mani the point where matter passes over into its “ethereal state”.’ The archetypes of the various elements are divine, living beings of light, and the earthly elements are reflections – as opposed to pale copies – of those archetypes. But, in addition, the five elements are also the external dimension of the spiritual qualities that underline them, as set out in the table below.214

212 213 214

BeDuhn 2000 pp. 232–3. Welburn 1998 p. 119, emphasis added. Welburn 1998 p. 120.

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Ether

Mind Light Water Wind Fire Fire Wind Water Gloom

Smoke

thought intellect insight reasoning skin tissue arteries nerves Bone

Hence, the five-fold archetypes are inverted from light to dark by means of an intensification of the material admixture, and comprise a light-like domain within human nature itself. In numerous Manichean texts devoted to the production of the human soul-body type, the elemental battery is assigned specific functions at various anatomical sites; these, of course, correspond with the five psychical faculties. The body is constructed in its five limbs by the dark principle, and the soul is bound to the body by the five sons of god, at five points: mind to bone, thought to nerves, insight to veins, intellect to flesh (or rather, soft tissue), and reasoning to skin.215 Welburn comments on this: ‘The dark counters each God-substance of mind with its own alien counter-part, just as the smoke darkened the substances which would otherwise express the living essence of the ether.’ Again, as with the fundamental cosmic arrangement, the scheme delineates a scalar continuum from one extreme in one dimension to the opposite extreme in the other (anti-type) dimension: The highest faculty is bound in the most dense and most deeply hidden element in the body, the bone. With bone we reach the transition to solid mineral substance, just as, at the other end of the scale, we pass from the manifestations of mind to its abstract essence. The lower faculties of mind, on the other hand, are reflected in the more outwardly visible form of man, the skin, for instance. The analogy with the pattern of underlying polarity in the scheme of the elements is therefore complete.216

Of course, the mind is not located in the bone … no more than reasoning is located in the skin! The five ‘spiritual’ strata are inversely reflected or encapsulated in the five bodily strata. When the cognitive power is increased through gnosis the adherent reaches deeper within. It is also true that bones ‘survive’ bodily death, that is, the release of life-force within, where, at the other extreme, the skin is the first to decompose. But the more appropriate analogy for the multiple ‘souls’ within the body is the naos-shrine, where an image of the deity is located in the innermost part of an inner chamber of a temple. The development of Manichean ideas about the human soul in light and darkness in these Central Asian documents is not the end of the story. Beyond the western frontiers of the Byzantine Empire, Manichean teachings undergo a mutation into 215 See the texts in BeDuhn 2000 pp. 92–103; the list of sites differs slightly from Welburn’s source. 216 Welburn 1998 p. 122.

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strange and wonderful forms. One of the greatest crises to face the Byzantine Empire began with the emergence of the Bulgarian Empire in the early 800s, under their masterful Khan Krum. The ‘new Sennacherib’, as he was called, attacked Byzantine forces for more than a decade and nearly overthrew the Byzantine capital itself. Through the concerted efforts of Bulgarian military and political forces, Byzantium lost large parts of its Balkan territories to the pagan Khans: ‘The original religious policy of the Bulgar Khans was certainly tolerant, allowing for coexistence between paganism and Christianity, whether orthodox or heretical … In the pagan Bulgarian Empire the meeting and syncretism of diverse religious traditions was still alive, maintaining a religious climate of complexity and eclecticism.’217 The early history of the Bulgarian nation and its culture is still rather shadowy; one can only have glimpses of its religion, rituals and customs from some rare documents and its now almost vanished monuments.218 What can be discerned is that the Bulgarian arena offered perfect conditions for the revival of pagan cults which had been suppressed under Byzantine control. The Bulgars introduced religious ideas from Central Asia and the Eurasian steppes; their mythical and magical beliefs mingled freely with various pagan remnants from antiquity, for example, in Thracian, Orphic and Dionysian mystery cults. The Byzantines made a policy of transplanting colonists from the Empire’s eastern provinces to the Thracian-Bulgarian region and thus ‘further entangled the volatile religious climate of the Balkans’. The papal administration in Rome and the Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople sent successive missions to the Bulgarian throne, turning the Khan’s court into a theological battleground. Pressure from the western and eastern Christian fronts, coupled with various pagan rebellions, made the Balkan region sway from one allegiance to another. This constant religious tugof-war fermented the heretical material within Bulgarian culture and allowed the emergence of one of the most distinct and long-lasting Christian heresies – Bogomilism.219 It is not feasible, within the scope of this book, to trace all of the many tendrils of semi-pagan, heretical ideas which filtered into the Balkan region on the wagon-homes of Armenian, Syrian and Anatolian nomads. The first definite reference to the Bogomils is in a letter (c.940–50) from the Patriarch Theophylact to Tsar Peter of Bulgaria, who had written to the Orthodox leader to complain about a new and growing heresy. Theophylact did not live long enough to seriously address this problem, but he did characterize it as ‘a serpent-like and many headed hydra of impiety’. It is to the credit of one Bulgarian presbyter, Cosmas, that the identity of the heresy’s founder and some of his teachings were recorded. In his Sermon against the Heretics220 (c.967–72) Cosmas tells his hearers about the Bogomil preachers whose appearance and demeanor were those of Christian holy persons, but which concealed ‘voracious wolves’ beneath. The Byzantine sources are richer in detail than these tenth-century documents and provide some important details about their beliefs regarding the creation and Stoyanov 1994 pp. 115–17. On Iranian style fire-temples in Bulgaria, see Stoyanov pp. 112–13. 219 Stoyanov 1994 pp. 120–23; summary in Barber 2000 pp. 6–21; Fichtenau 1998 pp. 70–78. 220 Hamilton(s) 1998 p. 27, text no. 15, pp. 114–34. 217 218

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structure of the cosmos, and the creation and structure of human beings. In a long letter (c.1045) the monk Euthymius of the Periblepton monastery described some of their main tenets.221 The Emperor Alexius Comnenus became quite concerned at the appearance of this insidious heresy and managed to trap one of its main proponents into giving a long recital of Bogomil principles. The emperor’s daughter, Anna Comnena, was a witness to Basil the Bogomil’s lecture and describes its reception in her history of the Comnenan period.222 The emperor had Basil arrested and interrogated by one of his adjutants, Euthymius Zigabenus, whose treatise on Bogomil theology is the most extensive and accurate account of their beliefs.223 One can detect in Bogomil accounts something similar to what Michael Williams, in his analysis of Gnostic principles, described as the Biblical demiurgic model. Cosmas the presbyter ascribes to the Devil the creation, not the mere production, of the sky, the sun, the stars, the earth and human beings; Euthymius Periblepton states that the Devil is the creator of the visible world except for the sun and humans. In Psellus’ On the Operation of Demons, the Father governs the zone above the cosmos, the younger son (Christ) the zone of heaven, and the older son (Satan) the world itself.224 Euthymius Zigabenus identifies the Devil with the Old Testament God, who makes for himself a second heaven and a second earth, and hence parallel to, or other than, the visible world. There is some disagreement in the sources about the relative status of Satan and Christ; some texts claim Christ as the elder son and Satan as the younger, other texts reverse their positions.225 In the Bogomil account of the generation of the human species, according to the Interrogation of John, Satan fabricates human in his own image from mud and orders some of the angels to enter the new body. Satan made paradise and placed the original human couple there; in the tree of knowledge he secreted the fluid snake extruded from his own spit. The Evil One entered the snake and seduced Eve who gave birth to an entire race of satanic creatures; new souls are generated from their parents’ copulation. Euthymius Periblepton offers an alternate version of this myth: the archon of our world made Adam’s body in which he installed one of the souls stolen from God’s realm. But as soon as the soul entered the mouth it left through the other end, leaving Adam’s body soulless for three centuries. The world-ruler has the brilliant idea of infusing Adam’s body with life-force: he eats unclean animals, such as the snake and scorpion, and spews this awful mixture into Adam. After plugging up Adam’s bottom the ruler blows into his mouth; ‘due to its disgusting wrapping the soul stays in the body’. Culianu remarks that this part of the myth is rather puzzling until one recognizes a garbled version of the doctrine of antimimon pneuma. It is ‘a popular and negative version of the clean, intellectual, Neoplatonic ochem¯a, or vehicle of the soul, and ultimately of the Aristotelian pr¯oton organon, the astral body that wraps the soul before it can be introduced into the Hamilton(s) 1998 p. 32, text no. 19, pp. 142–64. Hamilton(s) 1998 pp. 37–8, text no. 24, pp. 175–80. 223 Hamilton(s) 1998 pp. 38–40, text no. 25, pp. 180–206. 224 On the connection of Psellus (or pseudo-Psellus) text with the Bogomils and Euchites, see Stoyanov 1994 pp. 140–42; Greenfield 1988 pp. 171–3. 225 Culianu 1992 p. 201; on the astral bodies of stoikheia (demons) Greenfield 1988 pp. 190–95. 221 222

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body’.226 Euthymius Zigabenus’ version is simpler: Satan attempts to animate Adam’s body with his own spirit but it escapes from the right big toe, leaving a moist trail which becomes the snake. Satan has to implore God to send him some of his divine spirit in order to make Adam stand upright. On the latter view, the human soul is angelic in its nature since God promised Samael (Satan) that the purpose of ensouling the human race was to fill the places left vacant by the fall of some angels. But Samael is jealous of God’s creative power and spoils the divine plan for an angelic human species by copulating with Eve and mixing her progeny with his evil properties, that is, lust, greed and anger. This world will last as long as the number of good souls admitted to heaven remains lower than the number of seats left vacant by the fallen angels. The Bogomils’ perverse (let alone inverse) reading of the Genesis story of world creation and human generation plays out in many of their doctrinal beliefs as well. They repudiated baptism, the cult of the cross, the cult of virgin birth, saints, icons and relics, as well as the Church hierarchy, liturgy and form of prayers. They held that Christ never had a material, fleshy body, but only an immaterial body during his earthly ‘life’ which he abandoned on his ascension. They thought that even church buildings were Satan’s resorts and that money, property and authority were contemptible. There are many anecdotes about their willingness to pretend to believe in Orthodox dogma and rituals, something that, for the heresy-hunters of the period, made them even more despicable. Culianu offers this summary assessment of Bogomil dualism in comparison with other heretical and/or Gnostic belief systems: Bogomilism appears to be original and not dualistic [in the cosmic sense]. Yet when it comes to the human body, Satan displays effective creative powers. Although the clay is not created by the Devil, the body is entirely fabricated by him and in his image, from moist matter containing much water (the most inferior element) and related to the fluid shape of the Snake – quite an original expression of antisomatism. This notwithstanding, the Bogomils show less horror for matter than many early Church Fathers. Culianu also measures Bogomil doctrine against the standard of human fittedness to the created world: ‘Since the essence of the human being is an angelic soul that is divine although fallen, Bogomilism denies the anthropic principle that requires the world to be for humans and humans for the world. Only the body is of this world, the soul is not. Yet the Bogomil denial is not the same as the Gnostic or Manichean denial: humanity is not superior to the Demiurge, the Devil, for the Devil is likewise an angel.’ Also contrary to Gnostic and Manichean optimism about human nature and ‘last things’ – though this optimism is often occluded behind rather bleak words – Bogomil beliefs are pessimistic: ‘The innocent angel has been the dupe of the cunning one and cannot evade the accursed condition of his race other than by renouncing concupiscence and the other works of the Archon, that is, the beliefs and practices of the evil Romans.’227 Until recently some scholars have thought that Culianu 1992 pp. 202–3; Greenfield 1988 pp. 171–3. Culianu 1992 p. 211; Greenfield says that ‘there is here a basic disagreement with Gnostic ideas, for the soul is no longer seen as a part of God and thus there is no question of 226 227

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Bogomilism was little more than a bizarre and curious offshoot of Balkanized Manichaeism, an infection spread by displaced persons, forced to leave their homes in the Byzantine eastern regions. But important recent studies by Ioan Culianu, Bernard Hamilton and Yuri Stoyanov, amongst others, have given us a better picture of their distinctive worldview. After examining the archaeological and documentary evidence for the beginnings of the Bogomil church in the Balkan-Thracian region, Stoyanov declares that ‘Bogomilism emerged in the tenth century as a distinct and indigenous dualist movement, with its independent teachings and purposes’.228 Sometime in the mid-twelfth century, Bogomilism mutated into new forms and split into two branches or ‘churches’. Heretical teachers like Henry the Monk and Peter Bruis spread their radical ideas in France, inflaming towns and cities to outright revolt against the established church. An outraged prior wrote to the eminent cleric Bernard of Clairvaux about a strange group of heretics in Cologne who abstained from eating meat and from sexual intercourse, as well as rejecting certain church doctrines. Although their origins are shrouded in obscurity, these are the first clues to the appearance of the Cathars. In its earliest attested documents the Cathars seem to have held to moderate or monarchian dualism, according to which there was only one primal principle of goodness (God), the evil principle (Satan) was created by and subordinate to God. During the grand Cathar Council in 1166 (or 1176) an influential Cathar bishop, Papa Nicetas, introduced absolute or duarchian dualism, according to which there were two cosmic principles, of good and evil, of equal power and sovereignty. Papa Nicetas also instituted an order of twelve churches, five in the Balkan-Byzantine region and seven in the Near East.229 The Cathar heresy put down strong roots in Northern Italy, Lombardy and Languedoc, where it would survive, against terrible oppression and persecution, until the early fourteenth century. Bogomil agitation, associated with Gregory Palamas in the Hesychast controversy, continued to cause unrest in the Mount Athos monasteries during the same period.230 In the moderately dualist form the Cathars believed that the Devil was the maker of the human body in which he imprisoned by force an angel of light. The Devil is identified with the OT God, though he is not the equal of the true God, the Father of the cosmos. The true God is the creator of primordial matter, whereas the Devil is an organizer, the factor of the visible world. One testator said that, on this view, the devil is not the creator but the crafter, since he modeled pre-existent matter (the elements) as a potter models clay. The Devil is not a rootless principle, for he was created by God and sinned out of free will. Some of the moderate Cathars thought that the human soul was transmitted from the parents to the child, while others thought that each soul was drawn from a reservoir of pre-existent souls. However, the heresy-hunters discerned some innovations in moderate Cathar beliefs with regard to what they knew of Bogomil doctrines. These innovations include the myth God’s self-liberation, instead the aim of the cosmic drama is to fill the places left by the angels’, 1988 p. 172 note 529. 228 Stoynaov 1994 p. 131. 229 Stoyanov 1994 pp. 163–9; Barber 2000 pp. 21–33; text in Hamilton(s) 1998 no. 37 pp. 250–53; Fichtenau 1998 pp. 78–87. 230 Greenfield 1988 pp. 169–70 note 522; Hamilton(s) 1998 nos. 48–50 pp. 278–88.

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of the Evil Spirit at the bottom of the universe; the myth of the sun and moon’s fornication; the dogma that Christ’s body was flesh and blood, and the idea of preexistent human souls. Ioan Culianu concludes that ‘moderate Catharism is Bogomilism in a pure state, drawn into a process of blending with the radical doctrine, whose origin is completely different’.231 In contrast with this rather derivative transformation of Bogomil cosmic dualism the other churches which embraced Nicetas’ reforms evince an absolute or radical dualism. They believe in two gods, one entirely good, the other entirely evil, each of them creators of angels. Lucifer is the son of the Lord of Darkness, who transfigures himself into an angel of light in order to ascend into the good god’s heaven. The good god, Lord of Light, adopts the stranger and makes him the steward of his kingdom. Lucifer seduces the good god’s angels and provokes civil war in heaven. God is compelled to evict the Devil, along with a third of his angels, those who sided with the Devil in his rebellion. All angels are made of body, soul and spirit; the fallen angels’ bodies and spirits remain in heaven, but their souls are imprisoned in human bodies. Thus, humans have angelic souls but devilish spirits; after many rebirths human souls which have sincerely repented may recover their heavenly spirits and bodies. In another version, angelic spirits come down to earth in search of their lost souls, entreating them to return home.232 According to the late Cathar author Pierre Authié (or Autier), the fallen spirits are clothed with garments of skin and forget what they had been in heaven.233 The Cathars divided their followers into three classes: the elect (or perfecti), the listeners and the believers. Like the Manichean elect the Cathar elect carry out the important prayers and devotions needed to ensure that all pure ones eventually are reunited with their angelic sponsors in heaven. The Cathar listener attains the status of election through the ceremony of consolamentum234 in which each human soul receives its own protective (guardian) spirit. There is no resurrection after the second coming of Christ, for this world has no end, the final judgment has already taken place, and hellfire is found in this world already. According to the Book of Two Principles, there are two coexistent worlds, one created by the good god, the other by the Father of the Devil. The good god runs ‘a parallel universe, invisible and incorruptible’; all of the evil things in that world are the creation of the Devil and occurs without God’s will or permission. The good god created heaven and earth out of matter different from the changing and irrational elements in our world; he is thus not the creator of this world, which is weak and barren. John of Lugio, the most likely author of the Book of Two Principles, was ‘the most original Cathar thinker’, in Culianu’s words.235 God is not omnipotent, for he has neither the power of doing evil nor the power of self-destruction nor the power of duplicating himself. The good god actually performed all that the Old Testament attributes to him; yet all those events took place not in our world but in another world. On John’s view the whole Bible is a reliable historical document, but it is one 231 232 233 234 235

Culianu 1992 pp. 217–21; Barber 2000 pp. 81–8; see Fichtenau 1998 pp. 163–8. Culianu 1992 pp. 221–2. On the Authié (or Autier) revival of Catharism, see esp. Barber 2000 pp. 176–90. On the details of the consolamentum ritual, see Barber 2000 pp. 76–81. Culianu 1992 p. 224; on John of Lugio, see Barber 2000 pp. 86–9.

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which refers to the history of a parallel universe. It was in the other universe that Christ was born, suffered, died and was resurrected; human souls migrate from one animate body to another until they are saved. John of Lugio ‘activated one of the least probable options of reversed exegesis, namely, the reversal of the reversal. The Bible is absolutely false for this world … but is absolutely and literally true in another world … to which the perfectly historical narratives of the Old and New Testaments apply. From a systemic viewpoint, this is the most original contribution of Catharism to the working out of the system,’236 that is, of dualist oppositions. Catharism was violently stamped out in a series of crusades and pogroms; it was no longer a living force in the Latin West after the mid-fourteenth century. Nevertheless, as Malcolm Barber argues, it was not a minor deviation from orthodoxy, since it presented itself as the only genuine Christian community in a corrupt world dominated by a mendacious Catholic Church. Catharism had a continuous and wide-ranging impact on the Latin West for more than two centuries and, ever since the Middle Ages, has been attractive to various people for various reasons: Among these have been Protestants seeking a provenance with which to counter the Catholic charge of innovation; southern patriots railing against north French domination; romantics lamenting the loss of a cultured civilization; and commercial interests from local maires to exploitative publishers and authors who see the opportunity to profit from the religion of anti-materialism. Even more than more historical subjects, the Cathars are viewed today through the many-layered filters of the more recent past.237

(4) Oracles, ritual and theurgy in the soul’s ascent In order to follow the track of another line of secret teachings about the soul we have to return to the second and third centuries, the same time-frame, and roughly the same cultural milieu, that saw the emergence of the Hermetic and Gnostic scriptures. Searchers for wisdom and religious sectarians, all those attracted to an ‘inside track’ to special knowledge, were especially delighted with the appearance of a new anthology of god-like sayings. The Chaldean Oracles were a collection of hexameter verses allegedly uttered by a god in response to questions about the nature of the cosmos, the human soul and salvation. The Oracles’ putative ‘authors’ were a father and son team, both named Julian, who appeared in the retinue of Marcus Aurelius when he was on a military campaign. The two Julians were said to have brought about a rain miracle that saved the Roman legions in a battle with the Marcomani (173 CE). However, the earliest account of this rain miracle does not mention the Julians, and even by the late fourth century only unnamed Chaldeans are mentioned. Julian the theurgist is referred to by name in Sozomen’s history and the Emperor Julian’s letter to Priscus (350 CE). Rowland Smith says that ‘even if the historicity of [these sources] is granted, there is nothing to disprove the idea that they were at best obscure magicians and that the attribution of the Oracles to 236 237

Cuilanu 1992 p. 235. Barber 2000 p. 5.

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the Theurgist is as fanciful as the retrospective attribution to him of the rainmiracle’.238 In his recent book, Julian’s Gods, Smith nicely summarizes four proposals about the double authorship of the Oracles. (1) The ingenious idea first put forth by E. R. Dodds239 that the oracles were the product of an entranced medium, uttered by one Julian and recorded by the other. This construes the composition of the Chaldean Oracles in the same way as the composition of the Oracles of Apollo at Claros, verses spoken by the prophet and recorded by the thespode.240 (2) The Neo-Platonic tradition of two authors signals ‘an attempt to account for the presence of two distinct elements in the Oracles: on one hand, instructions treating of theurgic rituals; on the other, a revelation of cosmological and soteriological doctrine’. (3) On the assumption that the author(s) wanted the oracles to be taken as utterances of an ancient Chaldean, anonymity had the benefit of imbuing the text with a patina of venerable antiquity (as for example, with the Hermetica). (4) Since an alternate tradition assigned their origin to the reign of the Emperor Trajan, one hundred years earlier, a retrojected father figure (Julian Senior) made sense of both versions of the Oracles’ history.241 Concrete evidence in favor of the first proposal has been advanced based on recent archaeological discoveries in the region of Roman Apamea, the home of the Middle Platonist philosopher Numenius. Some of the oracular texts appear in Numenius’ works and, more than that, it appears that there might have been some sort of ‘two-way’ traffic between Numenius and the Julians, that is, mutual influence.242 In any case, a second-century tablet inscribed ‘KLDY’ has been found in nearby Palmyra; it is assumed to refer to a local priestly caste, the Chaldeans, associated with the cult of Bel (‘Lord’), an epithet of the Babylonian storm god Adad, himself a figure in the Oracles. The Chaldeans were ‘a caste of hereditary priests [who] continued the Palaeo-Babylonian tradition of enthusiastic divination, through which the oracles of the Apamean Bel enjoyed such high credence in the Roman Empire, until one priest by the name of Julian seems to have produced a revelation in the theological idiom of the region and of the times and yet firmly rooted in the millennial Babylonian tradition’. There is a crucial piece of evidence that links the Apamean cult with the Chaldean Oracles: an inscription on an altar in Vaison-la-Romaine, made by someone named Sextus, dedicated to Belus, the ruler of good fortune in memory of the Apamean oracles. On this view, as Athanassiadi points out, the word ‘Chaldean’ does not appear anywhere in the Oracles because it was a name given only by outsiders to what insiders called the Apamean oracles.243 In the contention between various schools and sects, early Christians had an invaluable advantage in their possession of a sacred text. It seems that some NeoPlatonists considered the Chaldean Oracles a comparable divinely inspired sacred writing. E. R. Dodds did not spare the sarcasm in his view of the Oracles: ‘their 238 239 240 241 242 243

R. Smith 1995 p. 93. Dodds 1951 p. 284. In detail, see Fox 1986 pp. 172–80. R. Smith 1995 pp. 93–6. See Dillon 1977 pp. 361–6, 393–6; Frede in ANRW 36.2 pp. 1034–40. Athanassiadi 1999 pp. 154–5.

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diction is so bizarre and bombastic, their thought so obscure and incoherent, as to suggest the trance utterances of modern “spirit guides” than the deliberate efforts of a forger’.244 This opinion is echoed by R. T. Wallis when he calls them ‘a collection of turgid and obscure hexameter oracles … originating in the revelations of an ecstatic prophet or prophetess’.245 Robin Lane Fox has little patience with what he calls this ‘influential fraud’; they were supposed to be a record of some anonymous wisdom teachings and, as time passed, ‘these obscure, high-flown texts gained a growing authority. Nobody knew their precise origin; nobody could fully understand them, and Platonist philosophers struggled to write an explanatory commentary.’ An aspiring philosopher could make his reputation by tackling these deliberately obfuscated pronouncements. The arena of commentary on the Oracles became ‘a jousting ground for the hyper-intelligent’. At least one factor in their runaway success was that ‘like the best type of fake, they closely resembled their genuine relations’.246 The Chaldean Oracles were regarded by the Neo-Platonists as the equivalent of Sacred Scripture, that is, the words of god recorded by a human scribe. The Oracles have an obvious Middle Platonic milieu which has affinities with the Gnostics, the Hermetica, and the works of Numenius of Apamea. John Dillon labeled this confluence of thought patterns in late antiquity the ‘underworld of Platonism’ (not the ‘Platonic underworld’). The denizens of this underworld exhibited some rather murky qualities, such as (a) elaborate and often exasperating metaphysical constructions, (b) an extreme derogation of material existence, (c) a dualist picture of human nature where the rational soul (or mind) is a divine spark, (d) a method of salvation or enlightenment that generally involves a spiritual and/or ritual ascent of the soul, and (e) a mythologizing tendency that hypostasizes various abstractions into quasi-mythical beings.247 In underworld Platonism, ‘abstract philosophical speculation gives way at this point to mythic formulations and a complex proliferation of cosmic entities is introduced, with a dominant female principle, in each case, operating at all levels and directly responsible for material creation as we know it’. In some of the Gnostic systems this female principle is called Ennoia or Sophia, in the Chaldean system she is Dynamis or Hecate, and in the Hermetica she is Life or Nature.248 Speculation about this wisdom figure becomes part of the myth revealed to initiates, and hence knowledge of the myth’s secrets becomes an important condition for individual salvation. The individual soul’s status in the Chaldean system is a consequence of its place in the overall cosmic scheme. The First or Highest God ‘exists outside’ his productions; he is the Paternal Intellect, the Monad, or even the One. The Second God or Demiurge has the task of fashioning the intelligible world on the model of the First God’s ideas (frs. 33, 37). As Second Intellect, the Demiurge is dyadic in nature, turned both toward the intelligible and toward the sensible worlds. The Demiurge projects the divine ideas into the womb of the world-soul (or primal 244 245 246 247 248

Dodds 1951 p. 284. Wallis 1972 p. 105. Fox 1986 p. 197. Dillon 1977 p. 384–96; Majercik 1989 p. 4. Majercik 1989 p. 4.

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matter) like Zeus hurling thunder-bolts from the heavens (frs. 35, 37). The process of cosmic division entails the existence of a Third God, a female generative entity, sometimes described as Dynamis (Power), sometimes conflated with the goddess Hecate as the Platonic world-soul (frs. 51, 52, 53, 56). She is located on the border between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. As the goddess Hecate she is ‘a girdling membrane’ (fr. 6) through whom divine influences travel from one level to another; particular souls issue from her right hip (fr. 51). The Paternal Intellect is the Father’s hypostasis and represents his creative powers; from him spring the basic seeds of the material world in the form of noetic thunder-bolts. The divine ideas enter the hollows (kolpoi) of the worlds, where they become less distinct, more muddied by contact with the lower, hylic strata of the universe. From the cosmic womb the ‘all’ (panta) stretches forth toward the place beneath the wondrous rays of the creator. Hecate receives the noetic forms or ideas and brings them forth again for the production of the physical world:249 Realization that the complete materialization of the Ideas in the Hylic World requires three entities in Chaldean doctrine – an emitter, a transmitter, and a final receptive ‘molder’ – is important for understanding a series of other fragments which discuss triads … At the time of the Oracles’ composition, overuse of the principle [of triadization] was not yet rampant; indeed, the presence of triads in the Chaldean system, so greatly reverenced by the Neoplatonists, probably encouraged later uncontrolled triadization.250

The triad that measures or divides also holds together or retains (fr. 23): like the Platonic Cosmic Soul, the Chaldean World Soul divides and links the intelligible world and the sensible world. The Latin epithet bifrons and the Greek epithet amphipha¯es (or amphistomos) express Hecate’s ability to interact with two different realms. Although the goddess herself is described with triple adjectives (trigl¯enos and trioditis) in terms of her own powers, the dual adjectives characterize her having ‘two faces’ since she views two realms between which she acts as world-soul.251 In conclusion, Johnston claims: The triad’s middle entity, Hekate/Soul, stands between the two other members – the Paternal Intellect or emitter of the Ideas and the Demiurgical Second Intellect who uses those Ideas to create the physical world. She is in fact the ‘bond’ (d¯ema) of the triad mentioned in fr. 31, joining together its other members. Hekate, within her womb, performs the important role of ‘nurturing’ the basic Ideas and then sending them forth altered to the Demiurge for his creative use. One of the ways in which she nurtures and alters the Ideas is to measure or divide them. In doing this, she helps to provide the delineation, boundaries and structures from which the physical world is built.

Johnston points out that the epithet of Hekate as ‘girdling membrane’ is very apt since ‘a membrane, although it separates, is usually thin, pliable and diaphanous; it Johnston 1990 p. 51; Lewy 1978 pp. 120–23. Johnston 1991 p. 54; Wallis synopsizes a variety of triadic schemes, 1972 pp. 130–34; in connection with Gnostic texts, see Turner in Wallis 1992 pp. 439–45. 251 Johnston 1991 p. 60; on the triple-powered figure in Gnostic texts and the Hermetica, see Majercik 1989 pp. 7–8 for numerous examples. 249 250

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divides, yet it allows some contact between the two substances it divides’.252 Hans Lewy noted that statues of Hecate often show her with a girdle (z¯ost¯er) wrapped around the hips.253 In addition to the principal triad of hypostatic beings, there is a complex chain of lesser beings that fill the space extending all the way to the material realm. The most important of these intermediary beings are the Iynxes (iung¯es), the Connectors (sunokheis) and the Teletarchs (teletarkhai), though angels and demons also appear in various anonymous roles: ‘A similar “filling up” of divine space is also an important feature of Gnosticism and Hermeticism as well, where numerous quasimythic, quasi-abstract entities serve to separate the Highest God from the contamination of material existence. In the Chaldean system, these various entities, for the most part, apparently function as diverse aspects of the world of ideas.’254 The Greek word iynx originally meant a certain bird, the wryneck, which was bound to a wheel by a sorcerer (go¯es) and spun round to attract an unfaithful lover. This idea is generalized in the Oracles and other Hellenistic magical texts to signify ‘binding force’; so the Iynxes are identified as the Father’s thoughts (fr. 77), the couriers between the Father and matter (fr. 78), and equated with the magic wheels used in theurgic rites (fr. 206). Majercik and Johnston assimilate the Iynxes with some voces magicae, as found, for example, in the Greek Magical Papyri.255 The so-called ‘Mithras Liturgy’ in the Greek Magical Papyri also helps makes sense of some oblique references to breathing techniques that may be involved in the induction of a trance state. Fr. 124 informs us that ‘driving out the soul, those who inhale (anapnooi) are free (eulutoi)’, that is, the theurgist does not just take in the breath of life or spirit (as in fr. 123), but can free the soul from the body through breathing.256 Fr. 123 says that the soul ‘grows light with warm spirits’ which causes ‘a rising upward in an anagogic life’. Hence, one may think that through this action (or technique) the rational soul (‘the mind’s flower’) disengages from the sensible realm. This seems to be paralleled with part of the spell in the ‘Mithras Liturgy’ which states: ‘Draw in breath from the rays, drawing up three times as much as you can, and you will see yourself being lifted up and ascending to the height, so that you seem to be in midair.’257 Fr. 118 may also hint at a trance state when it says that ‘the seed within may be increased’ either through instruction (didakton) or by augmenting their strength (alk¯es) while they are sleeping (hupn¯oontas)’, although this could also signify special knowledge gained in a dream. In further support of the medium-trance thesis one might construe ‘receiver’ (dokh¯eos) in fr. 211 and ‘receiver’ and ‘caller’ (kl¯et¯or) in Proclus (Comm. in Crat. 100.21) to refer to two operators usually involved in Babylonian animation of statues and prophetic inquiries.258 Johnston 1991 pp. 57–8; Lewy 1978 pp. 109–12. Lewy 1978 p. 93. 254 Majercik 1989 p. 9. 255 Majercik 1989 pp. 9–10; Johnston 1991 pp. 90–95. 256 As Majercik notes, 1989 p. 188 ad loc. 257 PGM IV.540–42, in GMPT p. 63; see also Ch. Or. Fr. 130 which enjoins the operator to draw in the sun’s rays; Lewy thought that elevation on the sun’s rays was the ‘central sacrament’ of the ascension ritual, 1978 pp. 204–7. 258 Majercik suggests this, 1989 p. 28; caller and receiver are roles found in the Greek 252 253

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The Connectors are said to issue from the Father, like the Iynxes, but their chief purpose is to harmonize and protect the various parts of the cosmos. According to Hans Lewy, this Middle Platonic interpretation of one function of the divine ideas first occurs in Philo, where the Ideas are referred to as ‘invisible powers’ which hold together the universe.259 The Connectors not only establish the harmonious bonds in the cosmos, ‘they also preserve this concord by felicitously watching over it as guardians’.260 They also have a theurgic function, since the human soul makes its initial ascent on the sun’s connective rays. Beneath the Iynxes and the Connectors are the Teletarchs, ‘masters of initiation’, divine beings who are assimilated to the cosmic rulers of the three worlds. The Teletarchs are associated with the virtues of Faith, Truth and Love: Faith is the principal faculty of the Material Teletarch, Truth the Ethereal Teletarch, and Love the Empyrean Teletarch.261 They are also associated with the various levels of the sun: the Material with the moon and the sublunar zone, the Ethereal with Helios, the mundane sun, and the Empyrean with Aion the transmundane sun.262 All things take part in the divine realm, according to Iamblichus’ commentary on the oracles, and certain earthly things are especially suited to receiving the gods. These sorts of things serve as receptacles because they preserve an intimate relation with the gods and bear their ‘signatures’ or tokens (sunth¯emeta).263 For human souls suffering ‘a specific imbalance within the administration of a divine being’, Shaw explains, ‘these objects become homeopathic antidotes if handled in a ritually appropriate manner.’ Through the proper theurgic manipulation of the divine ‘signatures’ the soul could awaken in itself the power of their corresponding symbols: ‘This realigned the soul with the manifesting energies of a deity and freed it from servitude to the daimons who watched over its physical expression.’264 The theurgist’s ritual practice consisted in working upon the gods by means of divinely instituted connections between the occult properties of certain stones, herbs and animals, the sympathetic harmony in the magic–wheel, and the cultivation of an ecstatic, trance-like state. The contemporary sources mention three kinds of theurgical operations: (1) telestika concerned with the consecration and animation of magical statues of the gods, (2) ecstatica concerned with the induction of a trance in the receiver; and (3) the invocation by ritual words and actions of the god’s epiphany. The primary purpose of all these operations, as Johnston argues, was to obtain secret information Magical Papyri; Chris Walker’s meticulous reconstruction of the Babylonian cult statue ritual gives prominent roles to these two officiants, C. Walker, ‘The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in M. B. Dick (ed.) Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999, pp. 55–121. 259 Lewy 1978 pp. 345–6; compare with Dillon on Philo’s ideas and powers, 1977 pp. 158–63. 260 On the Connectors’ powers, Majercik 1989 p. 10. 261 Lewy advances numerous parallels with these three virtues, 1978 pp. 144–8, 291–95. 262 Lewy devotes much attention to sorting out the three realms, 1978 pp. 137–57. 263 These tokens are very similar to the set of seals (sphragides) indicated in Sethian Gnostic texts, esp. Marsanes (NHC X.2), Majercik 1989 pp. 44–5; Finamore in Turner & Majercik 2000 pp. 244–9. 264 Shaw 1995 p. 48.

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from the god, specifically about yet more refined words and actions that would lead to the purification and release of the soul. Every form of contact between the theurgist and the god could be called sustasis, the specific form of connection maintained by sympathetic means.265 The central element (or pivot) in the whole system was the iynx, both magical wheel and semi-divine entity, ‘The daemones of the Symposium still traveled in and out of man’s world, but now, as iynges, their passage could be set in motion by knowledgeable men [theurgists] whirling the proper tool, the iynx-top, and thus making the proper sounds. Philosophical theory was given mystical justification and practical application; sympathetic magic was validated by Platonic cosmology.’266 The system of the Chaldean Oracles placed the iynxes under the control of Hecate as world soul, herself a hybrid of principle and goddess: the iynx-demons spring forth from her revolutions (like a cosmic wheel) in the heavens, and the iynx-wheel whirls with a sound and a motion that symbolizes and strengthens the underlying sympathy: Establishment or utilization of cosmic sympathy depends on replicating appropriate elements of the larger divine world within the smaller human one. Such replication involves crossing the cosmic boundary represented by Soul in two ways: (1) the ideas/symbola or iynges first must be sent by the Paternal Intellect from the noetic sphere into man’s world via Soul who disperses them; (2) once received, the symbola must be manipulated correctly to erect a bridge joining the theurgist to the divine. As mistress of the iynges, Hekate can help men utilize cosmic sympathy and thus take their first steps toward the theurgical ascent of the soul.’267

Sarah Johnston offers this definition of theurgy as it appears in the Chaldean Oracles: Chaldean theurgy shared certain methodologies with go¯eteia – e.g. the use of symbola, the invocation of gods and daemones, the animation of tetestic statues – but warned against others, such as artificial means of divination. Its primary goal – the ascent of the soul and its unification with the divine – definitely differed from the carnal and greedy goals usually associated with the go¯etes … as did Chaldean theurgy’s insistence on a spiritual or mental, as well as a ritual, component. Actions alone were insufficient for theurgical success: the soul or mind had to be ‘turned upwards’. Finally, the gods or daemones cooperated with men. At least in the context of Iamblichus and the Chaldean Oracles, ‘theurgy’ is not to be translated as ‘working upon the gods’ but rather ‘being worked upon by the gods’.268

In conclusion, we can now state that theurgy is god-work carried out by an operator in order to transform his soul’s relation with god. There appears to be two modes of theurgical work described as either higher and lower, contemplative and practical, or better still vertical and horizontal.269 It is work in that the operator’s mental 265 On sustasis as ‘conjunction’ by magical means, Majercik 1989 p. 25; animation of statues, pp. 26–7; binding and loosing through spells, pp. 27–9. 266 Johnston 1991 p. 110. 267 Johnston 1991 p. 110. 268 Johnston 1991 p. 87; compare Lewy’s definition 1978 pp. 461–6; and Wallis 1972 p. 107. 269 Higher and lower theurgy, A. Smith 1974 pp. 90–95; Majercik agrees with this

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activities (energeia) activate forces both within and without. It is work on the godlike part of the human soul; it is work through operations on symbols and tokens installed by the gods, and it is work for the human soul’s reunion with its divine source. It is not work exercised directly on the gods, but indirectly on god-given signs of the gods. Although Plotinus himself ignored the Chaldean Oracles and ridiculed magical operations, many of his followers thought the oracles and theurgy had philosophical significance. Plotinus’ biographer and the editor of the Enneads, Porphyry (232–305?) was born in Tyre in Phoenicia, a Greek thinker from Asia Minor who lived much of his life in or near Rome. For some years he studied philosophy in Athens under Longinus, a teacher to whom he owed his wide-ranging erudition and critical acumen. He arrived in Rome about 262 to pursue his studies with Plotinus; for the next six years or more Porphyry stayed close to his master, acting something like a personal assistant. Porphyry later remarked that his master had the uncanny ability to ‘read’ a person’s soul, and Porphyry himself must have been stunned when Plotinus told him that he (Porphyry) must not think of suicide, but instead go on a long holiday. Porphyry’s holiday brought him for a long rest cure to Sicily, and it was there two years later that he learned of Plotinus’ death. As Plotinus’ foremost expositor Porphyry was entrusted with the task of sorting out his master’s various treatises and bringing them to publication. He rearranged all of Plotinus’ texts under six main headings, each containing nine tracts (hence the name given to the whole work, the Enneads). After this it seems that Porphyry visited Tyre again, as well as Carthage, though he spent much of his later life in Sicily. In his old age, he married a widow named Marcella, to whom he addressed a long letter, still extant.270 Porphyry’s various works are usually allotted to one of the three main periods in his life: before his stay with Plotinus, his six years with Plotinus, and the thirty or more years after Plotinus’ death. In an approximate order his main works include the following: the ‘Sentences’, a collection of aphorisms derived from the Enneads; ‘On Abstinence’ a tract renouncing meat as food; ‘Miscellaneous Inquiries’ (Symmikta Z¯et¯emata), preserved only in extracts from the works of Nemesius and Priscianus; ‘On the Cave of the Nymphs’, an interpretation of the Homeric myth. From an uncertain but later date are two texts, ‘The Philosophy from Oracles’ and ‘On the Soul’s Return’,271 both preserved in extracts from Augustine’s City of God. Other tracts include, ‘Against the Christians’ (fragments only); an ‘Introduction’ to Aristotle’s works; the ‘Life of Plotinus’, prefixed to his edition of the Enneads, and (perhaps) the ‘Commentary on the Parmenides’, though the consensus today is that it is not by Porphyry.272 In sum, ‘Porphyry’s immense learning and indefatigable distinction, 1989 pp. 40–42; vertical and horizontal, Johnston 1991 pp. 15–20. 270 A. Smith 1987 pp. 719–22; Wallis 1972 pp. 95–100; A. C. Lloyd in CHLGEMP pp. 283–7. 271 J. O’Meara once argued that these were two names for the same work by Porphyry, but that argument is no longer accepted, A. Smith 1987 pp. 732–5. 272 On the scholarly argument about the authorship of the ‘Commentary on the Parmenides’, see esp. Kevin Corrigan in J. D. Turner & R. Majercik 2000 pp. 141–77, and Turner’s response, pp. 198–205.

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curiosity have ensured that his lifework was deeply influenced in many different ways by other thinkers and traditions.’273 In the ‘Sentences’, Porphyry says that soul is not present in a body by way of hypostasis nor by way of ousia, but by the projection of a certain dunamis that can be related to a body. He needs to account for the presence of soul in body while preserving the essential nature (ousia) of soul as an incorporeal (as¯omatos) entity. The soul’s presence in body does not destroy the unity (h¯en¯osis) which exists between all individual souls and the hypostasis Soul. The soul itself is not split into parts when embodied in an individual. Hence, the soul is not present in (or by) its nature, but in (or by) its activities (energeiai). This view leads Porphyry to conceive of a duality within the soul (though not a double soul): soul in itself and soul’s power in relation to body. He also refers to this dual dimension when he speaks of two lives (or two sense of ‘life’, zo¯e): The life-giving activities, by accepting the arrangement of the different activities into parts which is imposed upon them by their acceptance of the enharmonising power of soul, have added the possession of parts even to the soul. And perhaps soul is to be thought of and to have life in two ways, its own life and life in relation: the parts exist in the related life … Thus in the sowing the parts exist, along with soul which remains indivisible.274

With regard to the material, sensible world, only a body can have a place, an incorporeal entity cannot have a place. Hence, according to ‘a piece of Neoplatonic juggling’ (in Andrew Smith’s words), one might say that the body is in the soul. The soul’s presence is shown in the body by way of its activities; the soul moulds, forms and directs the body. When Porphyry speaks of a twofold life one thinks of Plotinus’ notion of twofold activity: the lower external activity is derived from a higher internal activity. For Porphyry, the lower external activity of soul is connected with the enforming of matter into a given body. Porphyry seems to agree with Plotinus that the One produces an unlimited and formless entity which then turns back on the One to contemplate it and thus becomes enformed by the vision of the One (Enn. II.4.5). The unlimited, formless entity Plotinus calls spiritual matter, which then serves as the substrate for the next stage. Each level of reality acts as matter or substrate to the level above it. According to this scheme, the product of soul will not be the lower soul, but rather the matter in which the lower soul is present, and which molds and forms particular bodies. Hence, earthly matter is totally lifeless and inert, whereas spiritual matter is full of life and power: ‘This means that the chief external activity of soul will be enforming, rather than production, as in the case of the One, of a substrate which helps to enform itself. This will help to show the connection between the double energeia theory and the use of the concept of form and matter in Plotinus’ system.’275 Porphyry’s thesis is that pneuma is a semi-corporeal substrate which permits the inherence and combination of irrational soul and material body. The soul exists midway between nous and body, A. Smith 1987 p. 747 Trans. by A. Smith 1974 p. 3, note 7; on the union of soul and body, Wallis 1972 pp. 111–12. 275 A. Smith 1974 pp. 9–10; and Wallis 1972 pp. 112–13. 273 274

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and it partakes of both extremes; Porphyry sometimes expresses this view by stating that soul exists on two levels. Where Numenius claimed that there are two separate souls, both Plotinus and Porphyry resisted this desperate maneuver. Although the two lives (or powers) of the soul do not establish an ontological separation, the higher soul can function independently of the body to whose lower soul it is intimately joined. Without the Plotinian notion of spiritual matter it would seem that there is an intractable opposition between spirit and matter. But the sort of conceptual separation Porphyry is concerned with signifies a distinct stage on the road toward the soul’s eventual union with the intelligible realm. The common, traditional notion that the individual soul separates from its host’s body only through death is one that Plotinus and Porphyry sought to overcome. On the new view, the properly trained soul can separate itself from its host’s body before the body has separated itself from soul. Moreover, since the soul’s substrate is semi-incorporeal pneuma, even normal, ‘natural’ death does not entail that the soul is completely or permanently released from its body. For those less than virtuous persons who are sentenced to a series of further rebirths, their souls remain appended or attached to a gloomy cloud of pneuma.276 When the soul contemplates intelligible things its tight relation with the body is relaxed; bodily functions, except breathing and heartbeat, obviously diminish during sleep. Smith argues277 that Porphyry considered contemplation to be something more than a trance-like state, that an adept could live a noetic life (in pure thought) while living a sensible life (in practice). Plotinus had claimed that it was not relevant to this bifurcation of function that the lower self could be unaware of the noetic activities of the higher self (Enn. I.4.10). In one form or another, there is a paradox at the heart of the Neo-platonic dual-soul account: on one hand, the soul must have two natures, one which dwells in the intelligible realm, the other in the sensible realm. But on the other, the soul has one nature and two activities, the first in the intelligible realm and the second through the presence of the first in the sensible realm. And this leads Plotinus and Porphyry to the thesis of a twofold fall: the first fall from the intelligible realm is the soul’s descent to this world and its embodied state; the second fall occurs when the individual chooses wicked actions and hence, after its natural death, it is re-embodied in successive rebirths (Enn. IV.8.5). Porphyry seems to hold that genuine enslavement for humans is not due merely to being bound to one’s body but to apathy (perhaps more precisely, akrasia), the lack of will to raise oneself from moral turpitude. According to Augustine, Porphyry also said that god had put the soul into the world in order that it might realize the evils of the material world and hasten back to the Father. Augustine commends Porphyry for refuting the Platonic idea that human souls would return to the sensible world in animal bodies and, even further, that purified souls, once they attained a blessed state through forgetting their earthly lives, would not desire to return to their previous condition: It follows that the supreme felicity will be the cause of misery, the perfection of wisdom the cause of folly, and perfect cleansing the cause of uncleanness. And the happiness of 276 277

A. Smith 1974 pp. 22–3. A. Smith 1974 pp. 24–30.

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the soul will not be based on truth, however long it is to continue, in a state where it must be deceived, if it is to be happy. For it will not be happy without a sense of security; and to have a sense of security it must believe that its happiness will be everlasting, which is false belief, since in time it will come to misery. How can it then rejoice in truth, when its joy depends on a false belief? [Civ. Dei. X.30]

This Porphyrean idea reappears in Synesius’ On Dreams, where Synesius states that, in its first life the soul descends to earth as a servant obeying the laws of necessity and performs a service (leitourgia) to nature, but by an act of will can make itself into a slave to a body. Smith says that, in countering Plotinus’ thesis that the first fall was partly willed by the soul, Porphyry clarifies ‘the human adventure by giving it a fixed starting point and goal. Since the first descent into body is not self-willed the ultimate withdrawal from genesis cannot be revoked by an act of self-assertion leading to a new descent.’ The two realms ‘are brought together again in two ways: (1) by the identification of each successive spiritual level with a corresponding ontological entity or level; (2) by the visible and historic world change which, in its ultimate form, results in the withdrawal of the lower soul from the cycle of individual embodiment as a consequence of perfection in the inner life’.278 Porphyry also appears to agree with Plotinus in his bifurcation of the two modes of ‘turning’: first, the turning-toward a hypostasis takes with regard to its prior stage, and second, the turning-toward an individual soul takes in its union with nous. In other words, the place of soul in the metaphysical structure is not the same as its orientation in the spiritual ascent to its purified state. For both thinkers the scheme of spiritual ascent works with the idea of a ‘floating ego’, a vague subject that chooses to make its own any of the levels which together form its soul.279 First, the perceptive faculty must be turned inwards in order to receive the ph¯on¯e (‘call’ or ‘summons’) from above. Second, the soul is illuminated by nous which lies above it (the intellectual faculty). Third, Porphyry holds that it is the intellectual soul that unites with, that is, is consubstantial with, Nous itself. Fourth, where Plotinus identifies the individual’s nous with the higher self, Porphyry seems to assert the union (henot¯es) of soul with the One, that is, the essential human in the rational soul through the sundromos with the One:280 ‘Salvation is achieved not only through the unity of soul and nous but by the reflection in the logical soul of no¯esis in the form of ennoiai.’ Both Plotinus and Porphyry are compelled to distinguish between an ontological and a spiritual sphere: when they examine the highest level of spiritual ascent they abandon the directional concept and instead bring into play an independent sphere where the ‘floating ego’ determines the stage reached: In the transition to the level of nous, however, where Plotinus’ expression depends on personal experience, Porphyry finds himself confined within the limits of the Neoplatonic metaphysical structure. This marks the beginning of a process in which that structure begins to dominate and stifle the reality of experience, a tendency which finds its A. Smith 1974 pp. 69–70; cf. Wallis 1972 pp. 110–15 A. Smith 1974 p. 43, in reference to Plotinus, Enn. V.3.9. 280 Although Smith admits this idea is not entirely clear, 1974 pp. 51–3; on this concept of One-Being, see esp. Wallis 1972 pp. 114–18. 278 279

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culminating point in Proclus’ dry and lifeless exposition of probably genuine religious and mystical experience.281

Porphyry held the unusual view that the philosopher’s soul will permanently escape the cycle of birth and rebirth dictated by cosmic law. All lesser mortals are sentenced to periodic incarnations in other human bodies, though it is unclear whether he thought that human souls could be reborn in animals.282 Porphyry also endorsed a three-tiered scheme for the habitation of post-mortem souls; in this he concurred with both Plotinus and the Chaldean Oracles. Plotinus mentioned the noetic realm, the heavens and the sensible realm; the Chaldeans divided them into the empyrean, the aetherial and the material.283 Porphyry allocated the region below the moon (earth) to embodied souls, the region beyond the moon (the stars) to post-mortem souls, and the intelligible realm (beyond the stars) to the higher part of the soul, a realm attained in theurgic contemplation. There may also be an additional layer below the earth (Hades) for less perfect souls; in contrast, the heavens are the highest reaches of the super-lunary sphere, not the same as the noetic realm. Porphyry argued that after death the soul vehicle (okh¯ema) and the irrational soul remain, and yet are dissolved, that is, they subsist as substrates, but not as individuals. After death the individual soul recapitulates in reverse the two ways in which it has fallen – thus in two ways the soul ascends: ‘If a human “returns” or becomes “whole” internally or spiritually he will attain, after death, an equal wholeness in the ontological order when his lower powers no longer are directed towards an individual body but towards the cosmos as a whole.’284 A. C. Lloyd concludes his brief encyclopedia entry on Porphyry with these words: Porphyry was a man of wide learning and wide interests. He studied many of the religious beliefs and practices with which he came into contact, and though generally sympathetic to them as various if inferior ways to salvation, he was renowned for centuries as the author of a detailed work against the Christians. But this and ventures of a more or less occultist nature … have mostly survived only in statements from controversial sources; and while respectable as philosophy in their day, they are of small philosophical interest in the modern sense.285

In sharp contrast, Andrew Smith declares that Porphyry ‘stands at the end of the final creative phase of Greek thought which culminates in Plotinus and at the beginning of that, at times brilliant but relatively unoriginal, period of later Neoplatonism whose main distinction seems to many to have been the sacrifice of genuine Greek rationalism to occult magico-religious practices which were meant to secure the salvation of the soul.’286 It seems to be more than ‘small philosophical interest’ that the thinker who abandons the high road of Greek rationalism did so in A. Smith 1974 pp. 54–5. Wallis 1972 p. 113; A. Smith 1987 pp. 725–6; and his article in Rheinisches Museum vol. 127 (1984) pp. 276–84. 283 In summary, Majercik 1989 pp. 17–19. 284 A. Smith 1974 p. 67. 285 A. C. Lloyd in EEP 1967 vol. 6 p. 412. 286 A. Smith 1974 p. xi. 281 282

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order to better assist those who were unable to save themselves without the benefit of irrational accoutrements. In the years leading up to Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, Iamblichus (c.240–325) changed the course of Platonic philosophy. Iamblichus offered a new synthesis of religious cult and philosophical speculation. He was the first leader of 287 a Platonic school to function at the same time as a hierophant of a sacred cult. What little is known about his life is derived from ambiguous references in contemporary documents and scraps of information mixed with wondrous anecdotes from Eunapius’ Lives of the Sophists. He was born in Chalcis, a town in northern Syria, near the Orontes River valley, whose cities also included Emesa, Apamea and Antioch. Iamblichus then was from the same milieu as Porphyry, the Chaldean Oracles, and Numenius. Unlike Porphyry, whose original Semitic name was Malchos, Iamblichus did not Hellenize his name (ya-mliku, ‘El the King’), preferring instead to retain his name’s connection with a Syrian noble family. Dillon argues that by the 270s, he was a student of Anatolius (later Bishop of Laodicea) in Caesarea; others have argued that he was a student in Alexandria. It also seems likely that by the 280s he had moved on to study with Porphyry in Rome, where he stayed until his master’s death in 305. Eunapius reports a number of hardly credible anecdotes about his life after returning to Syria, though it is likely that he set up his school in Daphne (near Antioch), and not in his native Chalcis. By the 320s he was a revered figure in the Platonic tradition, one who had attracted a number of enthusiastic disciples and defenders.288 Iamblichus’ extant works include ‘On the Mysteries of Egypt’ , which is a reply to Porphyry’s ‘Letter to Anebo’; ‘On the Soul’, large fragments preserved in Stobaeus’ Anthology; a commentary on the Chaldean Oracles; ‘On the Gods’, a treatise which inspired Sallustius’ ‘On the Gods and the World’, as well as Julian’s Fourth and Fifth Orations; a commentary on Plato’s mystical works; a commentary on Aristotle’s ‘Categories’, and nineteen letters, which are also preserved by Stobaeus.289 Like Porphyry and others, Iamblichus did not attempt to imitate Plotinus’ remarkable method of presenting philosophical ideas, but instead returned to the standard business of exegesis on exemplary texts, which remained the interpreters’ guiding light. In contrast with Middle Platonism, according to Dillon, in later Neo-Platonism ‘a far greater freedom of symbolic interpretation is immediately apparent, together with a concern to make Plato agree, not just with Aristotle or Pythagoras, but with Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and the “Chaldean Oracles”. It becomes absolutely necessary that Plato be consistent both with all these inspired authorities, and also with himself.’ This last task had always been of great importance to Platonist teachers, ‘but it becomes a much more strenuous problem now, when the whole of each dialogue becomes infused with a higher significance, and especially when, on the authority of Iamblichus, a single consistent skopos [theme] is established for each dialogue, to which even the introductory and apparently casual portions must conform’.290 As a teacher and as an exegete, 287 288 289 290

Shaw 1995 p. 6. Dillon 1987 pp. 863–70; Finamore & Dillon in Iamblichus 2002 pp. 1–6. Dillon 1987 pp. 875–6; Finamore & Dillon in Iamblichus 2002 pp. 6–10. Dillon 1987 p. 879.

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Iamblichus’ interests were focused on texts composed by ‘inspired’ thinkers, those who had been infused by manteia, a divine gift of insight.291 He thought that he had found a philosophical theory and a practical technique to bring about such mantic insight through the god-working operations of theurgy. In the introduction to ‘On the Mysteries of Egypt’, Iamblichus sounds the theurgic theme in ringing tones: ‘The Egyptians, imitating the nature of the universe and the creative energy of the gods, produced images of mystical insights – hidden and invisible – by means of symbols, just as nature symbolically reveals invisible measures through visible shapes and the creative energy of the gods outlines the truth of the forms through visible images’ (DM pp. 249-50). Iamblichus wrote under the pseudonym Abbamon (Abba-Amon, theopater, or ‘father-god’) in response to Porphyry’s ‘Letter to Anebo’, the name of another allegedly Egyptian priest. For Iamblichus, the Egyptians mysteries ‘represented the highest possible appropriation of the divine in mortal life, and he looked to their rites as a model for the religious rituals he introduced to the Platonic tradition under the name of theurgia’.292 Iamblichus was distressed at what he perceived to be Greek philosophy’s obsession with discursive arguments and empty abstractions. Like the Egyptian cults he admired, theurgy imitated god-like activity, and the fact that ‘every theurgic observance was a ritualized cosmology that endowed souls – regardless of their station in life – with the divine responsibility of creating and preserving the cosmos. From a theurgic perspective, embodiment itself became a divine service, a way of manifesting the will and beauty of the gods.’293 In the second century Numenius had introduced the idea of three divine principles and correlated the second and third with two distinct levels of mental activity.294 Although Numenius had not placed his first god beyond Intelligence (as would Plotinus), Porphyry said that Plotinus’ pupils had been obliged to write a defense of their master against the charge of plagiarizing Numenius’ doctrine. Numenius had also laid claim to a universal metaphysical principle that ‘all was in all, but each according to its nature’. On this view, accepted by Plotinus, the whole intelligible world was present within each individual soul. In De Anima, Iamblichus rejected the idea that there was no basic difference between various classes of soul, and no ultimate distinction between universal soul and intelligence. On the other hand, he was reluctant to allow absolute distinctions between the hypostases and hence to ‘telescope’ them into one another.295 Wallis argues that the root of Iamblichus’ problem was the inherent dilemma in Plato’s equivocal attitude toward the sensible world: ‘On one hand the Timaeus had treated the soul as an intermediary between intelligible and sensible worlds and as responsible for the organization of the latter; on the other, the more dualistically inclined Phaedo had exhorted her [the soul] to shun the body and virtually admitted her to full membership of the intelligible order.’296 291 292 293 294 295 296

On Iamblichus’ views of manteia see A. Smith 1974 pp. 89–92. Shaw 1995 p. 23; see A. Smith 1974 pp. 125–7, 139–41. Shaw 1995 p. 23. Dillon 1977 pp. 366–72. Lloyd 1970 p. 295; see the notes by Finamore & Dillon 2002 pp. 218–20. Wallis 1972 p. 111.

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Iamblichus also struggled with Plato’s twofold and threefold division of the individual soul, as Gregory Shaw explains: Iamblichus was reluctant to separate the rational from the irrational parts of the soul, the logismos from the thumos and epithumia … [He] says that the soul is a simple essence (ousia) with several powers (dunameis), and when it incarnates it does so as an integral whole. According to Iamblichus, Plato spoke of the soul ambivalently, sometimes defining it as ‘essentially tripartite’ and sometimes as an ‘undivided essence of life having many powers and properties in one identity’. Although Plato’s terms varied from one dialogue to another, Iamblichus believed Plato understood the soul to be a simple unity with three powers, and the discrepancy with Aristotle on this issue was merely semantic. Iamblichus says: ‘in short, part differs from power in that part (meros) presents to our mind an otherness of essence (ousia heterot¯es) while power (dunamis) suggests a creative or productive distinction in the same subject.’ For Iamblichus, the soul’s thumos, epithumia, and logismos belonged to one immortal subject, but in embodiment they all verged to the mortal body and were rejoined with the gods only by theurgy.297

Against his predecessors, Iamblichus insisted that Soul is a separate, self-subsistent hypostasis, dependent on and inferior to Intelligence. The soul is neither a defective version of the latter nor a full member of the intelligible order.298 Not only does the universal soul reflect the whole intelligible cosmos, but each individual soul contains all the logoi operative in universal soul. Iamblichus and Proclus rejected Plotinus’ description of human being as an intelligible micro-cosmos for two reasons. First, since soul is distinct from Intelligence, the principles the soul contemplates are only logoi, not the transcendent forms themselves. Second, there are important distinctions between different orders of soul such that the human soul is not of the same nature (sumphut¯es) with divine soul. The divine souls are each dependent on a transcendent Intelligence that enjoys eternal contemplation of the Forms; human souls are not of this sort since their powers function only intermittently.299 It became Neo-Platonic dogma that the human soul is completely ‘fallen’ into the material world; hence, they rejected Plotinus’ doctrine of an unfallen part of the soul. They also rejected Plotinus’ acceptance of the notion that human souls after death migrated into animals, and interpreted Plato’s references to metempsychosis in a metaphorical way, that is, that an evil human could acquire a beast-like character.300 Against Plotinus’ pessimistic denigration of the human soul’s embodiment, the Chaldean Oracles had posed a dramatic alternative. In his Fifth Oration, Julian said that ‘through the holy rites [theurgy] not only the soul, but even the body is thought worthy of much help and salvation’; as the oracle declared, ‘save also the mortal covering of bitter matter’ (s¯ozete kai to pikras hul¯es peribl¯ema 297 Shaw 1995 p. 106; see the comments by Finamore & Dillon 2002 pp. 159–63. The crucial distinction in Plato’s scheme between part (meros) and form (eidos) was emphasized in HCM pp. 46–9. 298 In late Neo-Platonism, it became standard to distinguish between ‘intelligible’ (no¯ eton) and ‘intellectual’ (no¯eris), ‘intellection’ (no¯esis) and ‘cognition’ (gnosis), and so forth, Gersh 1978 pp. 106–10. 299 Dillon 1987 pp. 893–5. 300 Wallis 1972 pp. 119–20; Dillon 1987 pp. 896–7; Blumenthal 1993 VIII pp. 80–81.

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broteion).301 Iamblichus subscribed to a soul-vehicle doctrine that posited a pure, subtle body intermediate between the bodiless soul and the material body. He seems to have believed that the soul’s ethereal vehicle was created whole by the gods, but also that, in the soul’s descent to earth, it acquired additional pneumatic accretions. The soul vehicle is not composed of mixtures from heavenly bodies but is created from aether as a whole. The vehicle is an ethereal body created by the gods to house the human soul: ‘The vehicle, then, is a single, non-compounded ethereal body that exists eternally. The rational soul is housed in it in its descent and can detach itself from it after its re-ascent to the vehicle of the soul’s own leader-god. The ethereal vehicle remains with the god’s ethereal vehicle; the rational soul can ascend even higher into the Intelligible realm and beyond.’302 In his discussion of the divine-human interrelation, Iamblichus virtually reversed the common symbolic language of his age. Becoming god-like through theurgic practice was not possible through an intellectual ascent of the soul alone, but required some sort of ritual use of matter. Shaw speculates that Plato’s doctrine of recollection (Phaedo 75e, Meno 81d) which describes the soul’s reawakening by means of sensible prods (that is, perceptual stimuli), may have been the model for Iamblichus’ strange opinion: ‘Theurgy should be seen as the development and translation of this epistemological theory into a ritual praxis where the prods of sensate experience were carefully controlled in rites designed to awaken the soul to the Forms.’303 By positing a series of middle terms between one extreme (the Intellect) and the other (the human soul) Iamblichus allowed mediation by means of emanation and participation:304 ‘In the existential situation of embodied souls [his] introduction of theurgic rituals provided a mediation between man’s experience of matter as an oppressive weight, separating him from the divine, and his innate awareness of matter as the vehicle that joined him with the gods.’305 It is true that the goal of theurgy is to release the soul from the bonds of matter (DM p. 215), but those bonds were not the mere connection of soul with material stuff – for this, Iamblichus blamed daimons (DM p. 67). Theurgic practice was designed to overcome the daimonic powers of nature which fettered the soul in its prison. In his work On the Mysteries of Egypt, demons were portrayed both as agents of the Demiurge and as powers that defiled the soul by tieing it to matter. Their ambivalent status was due to ‘their centrifugal activity: in being agents of the Demiurge in the “procession” of the gods, it was their task to exteriorize specific aspects of the divine, and in disseminating the divine presence into matter daimons also led the attention of particular souls into a centrifugal and extroverted attitude. This was what bound them to their bodies and caused them to suffer.’306 Despite Iamblichus’ and later Neo-Platonists’ often pejorative descriptions of the material world, human embodiment had a positive connotation when considered in 301 Ch. Or. Fr. 129; Majercik notes that although for Julian, s¯ omata may refer to the fleshly body, peribl¯ema must surely refer to the soul’s vehicle (okh¯ema), Majercik 1989 p. 190 ad loc. 302 Finamore & Dillon 2002 pp. 183–6; and in more detail, Finamore 1985 pp. 11–27. 303 Shaw 1995 p. 24. 304 Lloyd 1970 pp. 298–301. 305 Shaw 1995 p. 25; see Dillon 1987 pp. 898–9. 306 Shaw 1995 p. 40.

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terms of the larger process of which it was an integral part. In Trouillard’s lucid words, ‘the body that the soul animates and through which it is placed in the cosmos is not an extrinsic addition but the circuit that it travels in order to be united with itself’.307 By way of continuous mediation through the cosmic levels the body was of the same nature as the soul, the soul with the intellect, and the intellect with god. The physical body was simply the point of condensation in a long process that followed the material function of creative dispersion. Iamblichus believed that ‘the soul’s fall into a body followed a divine impulse, a cosmogonic law, and that this same impulse, leading souls into bodies through daimonic urges, could be rerouted and transformed by theurgic rites. Theurgy limited and redirected the soul’s daimonic attractions, transforming these intermediary beings into the soul’s receptacle of salvation.’308 Stanislas Breton’s analysis of the role of matter in the Chaldean Oracles could just as well be applied here to Iamblichus’ ideas: ‘Matter and body are subject to a twofold interpretation according to whether one descends or ascends the degrees of an ontological and divine hierarchy.’ The daimons’ negative gravity ‘is equilibrated and compensated by an inverse pressure which makes matter, in its “very fury”, a homeopathic remedy for the degradation that it provokes. This is the profound meaning of theurgy which, relying on the continuity and connaturality of which we have spoken, discovers and exploits the quasi-sacramental virtues of little things as useless as stones.’309 Shaw comments that even the densest aspects of matter were potential medicines for a soul that was diseased with its body, and that the cure for this somatic fixation was a dose of daimonic energy. On Iamblichus’ bipolar view of Plato’s teachings on the soul, the problem of embodiment for individual souls was resolved when the soul imitated the activities of the Demiurge in the Timaeus by means of theurgic practices. Shaw declares that ‘the meaning of theurgy in the history of Platonism becomes clear if it is seen as the praxis that allowed souls to move from the experience of embodiment as an isolated prison to a participation in the World Soul, where its particularity was re-established in the unity of the whole’.310 In his mortal aspect the theurgist became the recipient of god-like beauty, while in his mediation with the gods the theurgist became his own demiurge. The theurgist’s lifelong labor was to build a divine body for himself; matter was the mirror that reflected the condition of his soul. Iamblichus said that matter is the index of divine presence, and ‘the intensity of the soul’s contact with the gods was in direct proportion to its receptive capacity’. In his imitation of divine beings the theurgist’s body became a vehicle through which the gods appeared in the sensible world and hence received their communion. ‘If I had it in my power, out of all ancient books I would allow to be current only the Chaldean Oracles and Plato’s Timaeus; the rest I would cause to vanish from today’s world, because certain persons suffer actual injury from their undirected and 307 J. Trouillard, La Mystagoie de Proclus, Paris: Belles Lettres, 1982 p. 251; quoted in Shaw 1995 p. 46. 308 Shaw 1995 p. 46. 309 S. Breton, ‘L’homme et l’âme humaine dans les Oracles Chaldaïques’, in Diotima vol. 8 (1980) p. 22; quoted in Shaw 1995 p. 46–7. 310 Shaw 1995 p. 55.

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uncritical reading.’ This severely censorious pronouncement is the opinion of Proclus (412–85), often considered the last of the significant Neo-Platonists. Proclus has been described as ‘a philosophaster sleep-walking in a utopian world’ and as ‘an apologist who nowhere seeks to promote the knowledge of truth, a compiler without spiritual independence’. In sharp contrast, other scholars have said that he was ‘not only a great systematizer but also a deep-going original thinker’ and that his historical significance is second only to that of Plotinus.311 E. R. Dodds himself, one of Proclus’ foremost expositors, admits that he is not a creative thinker in his own right, but ‘a great systematizer who carried to its utmost limits the ideal of the one comprehensive philosophy that should embrace all the garnered wisdom of the ancient world’.312 Dodds detects in much of Proclus’ work ‘a critical acumen and a systematic grasp’ equaled only by Plotinus. Critics of Proclus’ superstition and verbosity are ‘inclined to forget that Proclus’ qualities were all but unique in an age when his defects were all but universal’. He stood on the desert frontier between two worlds – the best of Greek rationalism and the emerging magical irrationalism – he is a pathetic, rather than a heroic figure.313 Born into a prosperous family in Constantinople, Proclus’ father wanted his son to pursue a legal profession and sent him to study with a prominent sophist in Alexandria. At some time around 430, the governor of Egypt sent Proclus back to Constantinople where he began to study philosophy, but he promptly returned to Alexandria and enrolled in lectures with the Aristotelian Olympiodorus. Dissatisfied with this teacher, the next year Proclus moved to Athens where he attached himself to the Platonic School of Syrianus and the elderly Plutarch; although Plutarch had retired from public teaching he read through Plato’s Phaedo and Aristotle’s De Anima with the young student.314 Two years later, after the death of Plutarch, Proclus moved into Syrianus’ household where over the next few years he patiently studied nearly the entire corpus of both Plato and Aristotle. By the age of twenty-five Proclus had assumed the leadership of the Platonic School in Athens, a position he held for the next fifty years. Although he was often active in public affairs he found time to give a prodigious number of lectures, as well as writing every single day. His devout religious life compelled him to stay up half the night composing hymns and prayers. Proclus’ voluminous works comprise the early texts of Elements of Physics, Elements of Theology and a series of massive commentaries on Plato’s dialogues, for example, on the Alcibiades, Timaeus, Republic and Parmenides. He also wrote several monographs on specific topics; those that survive include Problems Concerning Providence, On Providence and Fate, On the Existence of Evil and a fragment of a lost work, On the Hieratic Art. His last great work, The Platonic Theology, synopsizes and extends many of the key ideas in his Platonic commentaries.315 311 Scholarly opinions 1880–1920, quoted by E. R. Dodds in his Preface to Proclus 1963 pp. xx–xxi. 312 Dodds 1963 p. xxv. 313 Dodds 1963 p. xxvi. 314 On the influence of Plutarch’s reading of the De Anima on Proclus’ psychology, see esp. Blumenthal 1993 XII pp. 123–47. 315 On his life and work, Dillon, in his notes to Prochus 1987 pp. xi–xiv; Wallis 1972 pp. 138–46.

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The Elements of Theology may be thought of as an attempt to establish the comprehensive scheme of reality envisaged by Plato in the Republic Book Seven; to exhibit all forms of true being as necessary consequences derived in conformity with certain general laws from a single arkh¯e (in Dodds’ words). However, this work is not a complete epitome of Neo-Platonist metaphysics, for the constitution of the changing world of earth belongs to physiology ‘account of nature’, and not theology ‘account of gods’. The first half of the book introduces general metaphysical antitheses, such as unity and plurality, cause and effect, procession and reversion, eternity and time, substance and reflection, and so forth. The second half employs these basic antitheses in order to explain the relations that obtain within each of the three great orders of spiritual substances: gods (or henads), intelligences and souls. The style and method of the Elements of Theology are in strict conformity with its systematic purpose and hence differ from Proclus’ other works. Dodds remarks that ‘the vast prolixities of exposition that uncoil their opulence in the bulky and shapeless sentences that fill most of the 1100 pages of the Timaeus commentary, and riot unchecked in the jungle of the Platonic Theology, are here pruned to a brevity which leaves no room for parenthetic digression or rhetorical ornament’.316 Proclus here does not make the constant appeal to authorities that characterize his other main works, but instead presents the argument according to the geometric method of axiom, definition and postulate. Dodds says that, although no authorities are directly quoted, ‘its pages are haunted by the ghosts of authorities. Genuinely “free” thought was no more possible to a pagan writer in the fifth century after Christ than it was to his Christian contemporaries.’ Much like the early Church Fathers, Proclus too had his sacred scriptures; these were primarily the works of Plato, the supreme master, whom Proclus considered to be divinely inspired, and the Chaldean Oracles, uttered by Julian the theurgist, ‘whom it is not lawful to disbelieve’ (in Proclus’ own words). There are some salient differences between the succinct Elements of Theology and the much more compendious Platonic Theology, according to Dodds’ summary. First, some ‘secondary elaborations’ in the Platonic Theology are not present in the Elements of Theology: (a) the interposition of an intermediate class of gods between the intelligible gods and the intellectual gods, (b) the subdivision of the supramundane order of gods into arkhikoi and apolutoi theoi, and (c) the subdivision into subordinate triads of the basic triad Being-Life-Intelligence. Second, some of the late Neo-Platonic doctrines have ‘an insecure place’ or are carelessly combined with Plotinian ideas, such as the twofold usage of nous, once for the Plotinian hypostasis, and again for the lowest member of the triad. Third, all direct reference either to personal mysticism or to ritual theurgy is absent from the Elements of Theology. One might speculate that any appeal to extra-logical experience would have been out of keeping with the text’s synthetic format.317 E. R. Dodds thinks that the style and terms of the two manuals are so close that they should be considered complementary texts. They reflect the most mature point of a speculative movement of thought that began five centuries earlier, a movement whose direction was shaped by two impulses, one theoretical and the other practical. 316 317

Dodds 1963 p. xi. Dodds 1963 pp. xvi–xvii.

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The theoretical dimension reflects the desire to create a single Greek philosophy that would supersede and leave behind the strife between various philosophical sects; its ideal would build in the best of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and the Stoics. The practical dimension reflects the continuous efforts by thinkers, in one tradition or another, ‘to meet the supreme religious need of the later Hellenistic period’, that is, to bridge the gulf between god and the human soul. The challenge was to construct ‘within the framework of traditional Greek rationalism a scheme of salvation capable of comparison and rivalry with those offered by the mystery religions’.318 Dillon says that, ‘despite its appearance of Byzantine stratification and complexity, Proclus’ philosophy is a dynamic system, a system postulating continuous intellectual motion’.319 The basic problem that he and other NeoPlatonists had to contend with was how multiple levels of being could derive from a transcendent and simple One. Plotinus had posited the One as an inexhaustible spring, a supreme principle that creates without being effected by its creation. For Iamblichus and Proclus, this led to a progressive multiplication of entities as moments within each Plotinian hypostasis. Proclus said that ‘the processions of real beings, far more than the positions of physical bodies in space, leave no vacuum, but everywhere there are mean terms between extremities, which provide for them a mutual linkage’ (De Prov. 4.20). Proclus reworked the Plotinian model of hypostatic emanation into a model of henadic320 illumination, where the lower levels are illuminated by the higher levels. Proclus said that ‘every cause both operates prior to its consequent and gives rise to a greater number of posterior terms’. Dillon says that the idea here is that ‘the efficacy of the higher causes is not limited to their immediate products … but extends down through the products of those products, and actually beyond, to entities not caused by its own immediate products’. This novel doctrine entails that matter is dependent on the One alone, while Nous is the cause of being for inanimate entities, to which Soul does not extend.321 Without an over-arching principle of unity nothing could exist and it is through the henads present within the human soul that union with the One can be attained. This unity within the human soul had been called the flower of intellect (anthos nou) by the Chaldean Oracles, as well as the flower of the whole soul (anthos pas¯es psych¯es). It is through this principle, properly located within the ‘inner human’, that an ordinary mortal can unify his mind with the divine mind.322 From the theurgists’ point of view, this interior illumination and unification could be achieved by ritual actions and magical symbols.323 But for other Neo-Platonists contemplation was the proper form of inner conduct, one that drew upon the virtues of faith, truth and love. However, Proclus’ account of love was in conflict with those who distinguished Dodds 1963 p. xviii. Dillon in his notes to Proclus 1987 p. xvi. 320 The word ‘henad’ can be used in two different senses, as Wallis puts it; either it means the self-subsistent gods or it means their irradiations, that is, the unities present in lower beings, Wallis 1972 p. 153; Dillon attributes a henadic doctrine to Iamblichus, prior to Proclus’ overt usage, 1997 XVIII pp. 48–54. 321 Dillon in his notes to Proclus 1987 p. xvii. 322 Smith argues that the anthos nou is the token of the One within the soul, 1974 p. 120; Majercik agrees with this, 1989 pp. 41–2. 323 On Proclus’ view of theurgy, see A. Smith 1974 pp. 111–21. 318 319

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between Platonic eros and Christian agap¯e. The Platonic form was one of ascent, motivating lower principles to aspire toward the superior principles, whereas the other form was one of descent, prompting superior principles to care for their products. Plato had not described the Demiurge’s motives as love for his creation and Plotinus had rejected any idea that the One has a need to create and that this deficiency should be matched with care. Hence, the Neo-Platonists placed an increased stress on divine grace and advanced the un-Platonic doctrine of faith as superior to rational cognition; faith alone leads to union with god. For Proclus, ‘faith seems to have the function of emboldening the mystic to leave the solidity of conceptual thought and launch himself into divine darkness’.324 The Athenian School of Neo-Platonism made several innovations, according to Wallis. The first is that, since a being’s power derives from the same source as does its existence, the higher principles must be responsible not merely for their own immediate products, but for all the latter’s effects. The second, more radical innovation is that the causal efficacy of higher principles extends further down the scale of being than that of lower ones. It was basic to their scheme that the higher members of the cosmic hierarchy have greater power and must be the causes of more effects than their products. It is then clear that the power of Being extends further than Life and Nous, since all material objects must possess form and being, whereas plants have life and a crude nous. A human being exists as a body before it exhibits life and it exhibits life before it acquires intellect; close to death the three principles disappear in reverse order: ‘It is clear why complication increases toward the centre of the metaphysical hierarchy, reaching its maximum in the rational soul, since principles at the centre of that hierarchy are the product of more causes than those toward either extreme.’325 Another innovation in Proclus’ scheme is his thesis that the soul has two vehicles, one immortal and the other perishable.326 This view compromises the standard idea that the irrational soul is death-bound, since on Proclus’ account the immortal vehicle is the seat of the roots of irrational life. The human soul always retains these roots and they provide the initial stimulus for the soul’s descent into this world. By this means he resolved the awkward problem about how irrational movements can arise in a soul out of its body. On the whole Proclus has a positive view of the soul’s descent from the intelligible realm and at least once claims that this descent imitates divine providential love. Yet another significant element in Proclus’ scheme (if not exactly an innovation) is connected with his thesis about causal procession and reversion; that is, the divine power is present in equal measure on all levels of reality. In contrast with Plotinus’ view of divine immanence, Proclus advanced an argument that was congenial to Christian thinkers and paved the way for the great early Christian mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius. The contemplative dimension of Christian Neo-Platonism will be taken up and pursued in a later chapter on the

Wallis 1972 pp. 154–5. Wallis 1972 pp. 156–8. 326 Blumenthal argues that in Proclus’ commentary on the Timaeus there are three vehicles, but the third vehicle has no function distinct from an ordinary body, and hence merely completes another triad of bodies, 1993 XVII pp. 174–6. 324 325

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emergence of Christian mystical ideas. The practical-theurgic dimension will be taken up and pursued in a later chapter on the rehabilitation of occult and magical ideas in the Early Middle Ages.

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Chapter 4

Byzantine Doctrines of Mind, Soul and Spirit On first glance there might not seem to be any domain which could be named ‘Byzantine philosophy’, let alone something like Byzantine accounts of human nature (anthropology). The scholarly domain of Byzantine philosophy was first marked out by Basil Tatakis (1949) in a supplement1 to the first volume of Emile Bréhier’s Histoire de la Philosophie; twenty years later Tatakis turned his attention to the earlier Byzantine period of the Greek Fathers in an entry (1969) for the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade. On Tatakis’ view, Byzantium is the only place where students of ancient and medieval philosophy can follow step by step, without abrupt interruptions, the transformation of paganism into Christianity, especially of Greek philosophy in its own language. Eight years later, G. Podskalsky, in his Theologie und Philosophie in Byzanz (1977), focused mainly on the conflict over theological method during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; he claimed that, because eastern theology never became a science with its own epistemology and methods, the borders between theology and philosophy were never clearly defined, and philosophy always preserved its autonomy. K. Oehler recently argued that philosophical thinking in Byzantium arrived at original solutions to real problems, even though it was always developed in close association with theology. He said, ‘today we know that only through a precise analysis of the development of thought in its procession from Plato to Aristotle, and thence to mid- and neo-Platonism and later Byzantine philosophy, shall we obtain a full picture of the course of Greek philosophy in antiquity and the Middle Ages’.2 Linos Benakis offers this summary of his own researches over the past ten years (2002): the complexity of Byzantine philosophy can be better appreciated if one keeps in mind that philosophical theorizing in Byzantium was the medieval phase of Greek philosophy, distinct from the final phase of ancient Greek thought by the theology of the Greek Fathers: ‘In contrast with the West where philosophy is the ancilla theologiae, and despite the influence of the Patristic tradition on Byzantine thinkers, there is no instance in which we sense that philosophy in Byzantium was the handmaiden of theology.’ Since the ground-breaking work of Basil Tatakis fifty years ago, it is now more clear that

1 The recent English translation (2003) has the advantage of including some small amendments to the text from the Modern Greek translation (1969), as well as a massive bibliography of primary and secondary sources up to the year 1998. 2 Prècis by Benakis in Ierodiakonou 2002 pp. 285–6.

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Byzantine philosophy refers to the autonomous philosophical activity of the Byzantines in the teaching of philosophy and the writing of commentaries on ancient philosophical texts (chiefly concerning logic and physics), as much as in their treatises on more general subjects, for instance on Nature and on Human, which aimed at rebutting ancient doctrines and at advancing new arguments in the light of the new [worldview].

Benakis’ considered view is that history of Byzantine philosophy extends from the ninth century, with Arethas and Photios, to the fall of the Empire in the fifteenth century, with Plethon and Scholarios.3 Our present investigation concurs with this view of the inception of a fully fledged Byzantine philosophy in that epoch and hence will not concern itself with the Greek Fathers of the Church, that is, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom.4 In her introduction to a recent collection of essays, Katerina Ierodiakonou arrives at a conclusion fully in keeping with that of Benakis. She says that the general tendency among modern scholars is to believe that philosophy in Byzantium did manage to preserve its autonomy, that the borders between philosophy and theology were reasonably clearly defined, and that the view expressed by some Church Fathers (e.g. Clement, Origen) that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology … was not the dominant position in Byzantium, as it was in the medieval West.

She enumerates some of the main concerns of Byzantine philosophers, ones which were very much the same as those found in the western tradition: ‘the creation or origin of the world, the existence of God, the character of the perceptible world, the problem of evil and human free will, the relation between soul and body, the ontological status of universals, the connection between faith and reason, the sceptical challenge to knowledge, logical fallacies, the necessary requirements for a good life, [and] the possibility of a just state’.5 In broad outline, Byzantine intellectual culture was shaped by several major factors: (1) Its use of the Greek language and hence its ready familiarity with major texts of Greek philosophy, especially Plato, Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists. (2) Its allegiance to the Eastern Orthodox interpretation of controversial Christian doctrines, especially on the nature, person and will of Christ. (3) The fact that it had direct contact on its eastern borders with several heretical and non-Christian systems of belief, for example, Zoroastrianism, Manicheaism and the Nestorian Church, which only reached the Latin West much later and often in a mangled guise. (4) ‘Habituated to directives and funding from above, [Byzantine theologians] developed a mindset that precluded the establishment of autonomous institutions for the creation and dissemination of ideas independent of imperial policy.’6 (5) ‘In defining themselves in terms of the Attic Greek canon, elite writers also privileged the least innovative aspect of the classical tradition: the veneration of past models Benakis ibid 2002 p. 287; see also his short article in REP 1998 vol. 2 pp. 160–65. The worldview of the Cappadocian Fathers, the first three figures, is covered quite well by Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 pp. 432–56; see also our previous analysis of Gregory of Nyssa on human nature in HCM pp. 140–43. 5 Ierodiakonou 2002 p. 2. 6 Colish 1997 pp. 113–16. 3 4

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and the belief that they could not be improved on or criticized.’7 (6) However, there was a lack of interplay among the vernacular languages within the empire; the small minority who could read and write Attic Greek had no interest in making it a living language, as Latin had in the West; a literary gulf opened between undiluted and demotic Greek. (7) The eastern monastic tradition accented austerity and social withdrawal; they praised monks who scorned book-learning as irrelevant: ‘the charismatic, the ascetic, the mystic, and the holy fool were seen as better exemplars of the monastic ideal than the scholar monk of the west.’ The Orthodox Church first became limited on its eastern fringe as the consequence of the Monophysite and Nestorian schisms during the fifth and sixth centuries. The Monophysite doctrine holds that there was only one (monos) nature (phusis) in the person of the Incarnate Christ. On their view, this nature was entirely divine, as against the canonical view that there were two natures, divine and human, in one person after the incarnation. In contrast to both versions, Bishop Nestorius held that there were two separate persons in the Incarnate Christ: the human person and the divine person. Nestorius agreed with Athanasius that the use of the epithet theotokos (‘god-bearer’) for the Virgin Mother was heretical since it impugned the idea that Christ in his person was fully human. This brought about a long and often violent controversy which eventually ended with the condemnation of Nestorius and his allies through sentence of anathema.8 The Council of Chalcedon (451) declared that Nestorian and Eutychite heresies were formally repudiated, specifically with regard to the Monophysite error, that is, that Christ was one person with one nature; instead it formally accepted the doctrine that Christ is one person with two natures, which are united without confusion, unchangeable, indivisible, and inseparable.9 From the ninth century onwards the estrangement between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople increased, due mainly to the agitation caused by Patriarch Photius.10 The final breach between the two churches is usually assigned to serious theological problems in the mid-eleventh century under the direction of Michael Cerularius. As the Chief Patriarch, Cerularius was an efficient, if not outright brutal administrator, who was resolved to exercise his authority against the Roman Pope whom he condemned for sinful, heretical and even Judaic practices. When the Roman Pope attempted to blackmail the Emperor into removing the Patriarch, Cerularius was enraged and lashed out at the papal legates; they responded by issuing a formal declaration of excommunication against him, whereupon Cerularius excommunicated them.11 The chief doctrinal points at issue between the two churches were the papal claims to ecclesiastical supremacy and the so-called ‘filioque’ clause in the liturgy. According to the western interpretation, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the son, support for which (it is argued) can be found in several NT passages; it was endorsed by the First Council of Nicaea, and hence is a key part of the Nicene Creed. According to the eastern interpretation, this clause is a later interpolation, enforced by various councils, and should be rejected; Colish 1997 pp. 113–16; Wilson 1996 pp. 4–7. For details, see ODCC 1990 pp. 962–3. 9 ODCC 1990 pp. 262–3. 10 ODCC 1990 pp. 1087–8. 11 Norwich vol. 2, 1993, pp. 314–22. 7 8

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the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. Photius made this one of the main points of contention with the Roman Church12; in fact, acceptance of the clause was made a condition for church union at the Councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439).13 The deep schism between the two churches was gradual over many centuries; it produced an uneven rift whose jagged edges were formed by these very issues. But some of these issues were generated as much by conflicting political agendas as by theological controversies. Over many centuries the Orthodox Church’s dominion became bounded, first on the eastern side and then on the western side; hence, it began to expand northward into the nearest barbarian domains. In the mid-ninth century, a concerted missionary advance was made by St. Cyril and St. Methodius, who brought their understanding of Christianity to Bulgaria, Serbia and eventually Russia. In due course each of these Slavic countries acquired national churches of their own, independent of the oversight of Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks (1453) the Church of Russia has become the largest and most influential member of the Orthodox communion. It is, however, a decisive characteristic of the Orthodox Church that there is complete equality between all Episcopal offices. In the Greek East most bishops became administrative heads of several eucharistic communities, and bishops of major cities acquired privileges of leadership over their fellow bishops. The Orthodox Church does not recognize that any person or institution can be infallible ex sese (from itself).14 The Orthodox faith is based on the dogmatic principles of the Seven Ecumenical Councils; hence, the Orthodox Church does not recognize as ecumenical any council held after the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. The highest authority is the Ecumenical Council which recognizes the Roman Pope but only as the first among equals in the Episcopal College. The Orthodox Church acknowledges the seven sacraments or mysteries, although no rigid distinction is made between these mysteries and other sacramental actions, such as the monastic profession, the great blessing of the waters, burial of the dead, anointing the monarch, and so forth. With regard to ritual the Orthodox have their own ceremonies: baptism is performed by immersion instead of by laving; chrismation (or confirmation) is given by the priest immediately after baptism, instead of after years of education in the catechism; children are taken to communion from infancy. The bread and wine in the Eucharist are considered to become the true and real body and blood of Christ, that is, the divine nature of Christ the son of god; the sacramental bread is leavened rather than unleavened. The veneration of holy icons plays an important part in worship, both private and public. In response to the depredations of the Iconoclasts in the early ninth century, the Orthodox established the importance of images in the worship of God. Through the incarnation Christ became human and the visible image of Christ, as seen by the Apostles, testifies to the reality of his human nature. The same transfigured humanity can also be contemplated through the images of saints, who in their lives have restored the fallen image to its former beauty, and hence becomes an 12 13 14

Norwich vol. 2 1993 pp. 68–71, 85–6. ODCC 1990 pp. 512–13; Norwich vol. 3 1996 pp. 232–5, 411–12. Meyendorff 2003 vol. 3 p. 862.

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affirmation of the potential for human deification. The Orthodox believe in the bodily assumption of Mary the mother of god and usually deny the Roman Catholic doctrine about her Immaculate Conception. The Orthodox Church denies the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, an intermediate domain where dead souls are tormented but still have a chance to enter heaven, but they do emphasize the effect of prayer for intercession on behalf of dead souls. The eastern monastic tradition has played an important role in the Church, since bishops have been usually drawn from the ranks of the monastic clergy. Since the Church has never insisted on celibacy for the clergy, parish priests are usually married.15 In his major work on Byzantine Humanism, Paul Lemerle locates the origin of the Byzantine paradigm of a perfect image as a perfect likeness in the iconoclast controversy in the ninth century The brief period of official Byzantine hostility toward images was born in the interior provinces of Asia Minor; it represented a concession to the religious mentality of those regions, a concession imposed by political and military circumstances: It was doubtless a concession necessary for the time being, but it had its risks. For these were the issues: the Asiatic East makes the divinity transcendent and condemns matter; the Greco-Latin West is determined neither to conceive of a divinity which is totally unknowable, incomprehensible, and impossible to circumscribe and represent, nor to proceed to a final condemnation of matter. Christianity believes in a God who was at the same time a Human. The fundamental … unique dogma of this religion of salvation and redemption is the dogma of the incarnation [of Christ]. The whole theology of the image turns on the fullness of human nature united to, but not confused with, the fullness of the divine nature in Christ. The iconodules were aligned with ‘humanist’ Christianity, influenced by the Greco-Roman tradition; the iconoclasts … were aligned with Semitic and Asiatic Christianity.16

The decline and disappearance of iconoclasm coincided with the emergence of a humanist type of renaissance, one whose champions begin to speak in clear voices by the tenth and eleventh centuries, in the figures of Leo the Philosopher, the Patriarch Photius, Arethas of Patras and of course the polymath Michael Psellus. According to John Meyendorff’s recent summary, for the eastern Patristic tradition the human being is not an autonomous entity; its very existence implies communion with its creator, since it was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Since God alone has immortality in his nature, humans live their life, on earth and in heaven, only by sharing in God’s life. In contrast with the western Patristic view, the Orthodox view is that there is no definite opposition between nature and grace, since human nature implies participation in God, and hence in grace. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s sin did not consist in an evil that required retribution, rather their rebellion resulted in fallen human nature becoming mortal, bound to death. There is ‘a new cosmic situation in which the serpent has usurped God’s power and human beings no longer enjoy full freedom, but have become dependent upon the requirements of a constant struggle for survival … Fallen humanity is an enslaved, rather than a guilty humanity; in conditions of fallenness, however, sin 15 16

ODCC 1990 pp. 1012–14. Lemerle 1986 p. 120; see also Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 pp. 506–17.

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becomes inevitable.’17 The Orthodox interpretation of Christ’s nature informs their view of human nature: in being assumed by the Logos the humanity of Jesus becomes more human, not less. Indeed, it is the separation from God that constitutes fallenness and dehumanization, whereas Jesus, being the Son of God, is also the ‘new Adam’, the true human. The Chalcedonian formula affirms that ‘the characteristic properties’ of humanity were preserved in Jesus, and later Orthodox theology is specific in affirming that those properties include the condition of fallenness, particularly corruptibility and mortality.

The union of divine and human nature in Jesus’ person is played out in his death on the cross: Christ died on the cross in the fallen, corruptible nature that he had assumed as human. But because this death was the freely chosen action of the son of God, it was followed by resurrection in a renewed and glorified human nature, comparable to that of Adam before his fall. In the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, the renewed humanity of Christ is made accessible to those who believe. The Eucharistic Canon of John Chrysostom commemorates the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as his second coming, as if these events were already accomplished: ‘all that is to come for us: the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and the second and glorious coming’. This dimension of realized eschatology, says Meyendorff, is very much the foundation of what one might call the Orthodox spiritual experience.18 The Hesychast controversy in the fourteenth century illuminated another dimension of Orthodox spiritual ideas; the notion of deification (the¯osis) served to designate the participation of human beings in the divine life of Christ. According to the Hesychasts, the possibility of knowing or seeing God was understood as the goal of the true Christian life.19 The vision of God within the heart in the form of an inner light was identified with the light seen by the Apostles on the Mount after Christ’s death (Matt. 17:1–8). This was defined as a genuine experience of God and not as a symbol or image. Gregory Palamas affirmed the distinction in God between the invisible and unattainable divine essence and the divine energies which make possible the deification of creatures and their communion with God. Such an understanding of humans’ potential for becoming god through communion is best appreciated through an understanding of the Orthodox view of the Holy Trinity. According to Athanasius, although human salvation occurs through the death of Christ, the appropriation of this experience occurs when each human person receives in his or her heart the Holy Spirit. It is through the action of the Holy Spirit that Christ’s body ceases to be limited to one historical individual and is united with every one of those who believe. In the eastern Patristic tradition, the restoration of communion between God and human implies cooperation (synergeia) between divine grace and human freedom, and the most specific functions of the Holy Spirit consist in meeting the personal human response to grace. To describe the three divine persons in one God, the Greek Fathers used the term hypostasis; there is thus 17 18 19

Meyendorff 2003 vol. 3 p. 862. Meyendorff 2003 vol. 3 p. 863. On Gregory of Palamas and the Hesychasts, see Tatakis 2003 pp. 217–34.

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a common essence (ousia) amongst the three persons, affirming the divine unity, by way of co-inherence (perich¯or¯esis) of the three persons in one being; hence, a perfect unity of action without mixture. It is because God is perfect love that the three hypostases are indeed one God, whereas multiple created hypostases, for example, individual humans, are multiply distinct beings, although they too can become one in God.20 The Orthodox also make use of a specific understanding of the concept of divine creation in their expression of what Genesis says about the creation of human being. Creation is an act of god’s free will, an act proper to god as a person, and hence a determination of his thought. When Genesis has God reflect ‘let us make human in our image, after our likeness’, God’s thought immediately becomes his work. John of Damascus says ‘God contemplated all things before their existence, forming them in his mind, and each being received its existence at a particular moment according to his eternal thought and will, which is a predestination (proörismos), an image (eik¯on), and a model (paradeigma).’21 In the eastern conception, divine ideas are not the eternal reasons for created things contained in god’s being, they are not determinations of the divine essence to which created things refer as their exemplar, as in the thought of St. Augustine. Rather, according to the Greek Patristic conception, divine ideas are more dynamic, they have an intentional scope. God’s ideas have their place in the divine scheme by way of God’s energies and hence are identified with God’s plural wills (thel¯emata). They are termed ‘willed thoughts’ (thel¯e¯ tik¯e ennoia) and determine the different modes according to which created beings participate in the creative energies. As Vladimir Lossky says, ‘the created universe is thus not seen, as in Platonic or Platonizing thought, under the pale and attenuated aspect of a poor replica of the Godhead; rather it appears as an entirely new being, as creation fresh from the hands of the God of Genesis “who saw that it was good”, a created universe willed by God and the joy of his wisdom, “a harmonious ordinance”’.22 Lossky contrasts this view with the received view of Neo-Platonic cosmology which posited two realms: the sensible cosmos and the intelligible cosmos.23 The attempt to bring the timeless ideas into the inner being of God necessarily gives an ideal content to the divine essence and places the Platonic kosmos no¯etos in it. The consequence of this view of divine economy leaves two alternatives: either the created world will be disparaged and deprived of its original character as the work of creative wisdom, or the created world will be introduced into the inner life of the Godhead with its roots in the Holy Trinity itself. St. Augustine’s view expresses the first alternative whereby the divine ideas remain static, the unmoving perfections of God; the Greek Patristic view expresses the second whereby the divine essence becomes dynamic. The rare exception to this East–West divide is John Scotus Eriugena, who considers the divine ideas as creatures, the first created principles, by means of which God creates the universe. In harmony with the eastern conception of the divine nature as dynamic, their theory of matter is also dynamic, such that 20 21 22 23

Meyendorff 2003 vol. 3 p. 864. PG vol. 90 col. 837A. Lossky 1975 p. 95. Lossky 1975 pp. 97–102; see also Tatakis 2003 pp. 111–25.

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they can conceive of different degrees of materiality. According to Gregory of Nyssa, the nature of matter is the result of the union of simple qualities, intelligible in themselves, but whose concrete aggregation produces the substratum of sensible things. ‘No one thing in the body’, Gregory said, ‘neither its shape nor its size not its bulk not its weight nor its color … are the body; they are in themselves simply intelligibles; never the less, their concourse (syndrom¯e) does make the body.’24 Hence, bodies are material to a greater or lesser degree; the basic material elements can pass from one body to another. According to Gregory, all things exist in each other, and all things mutually support each other. At the primordial cosmic level, there is a power of transmutation which, by a rotational movement, causes the earthly elements to pass from one thing to another and gathers them again at the point from which they started: ‘And thus in this process nothing becomes greater or less but everything remains within its primordial limits.’25 Each element of the body is guarded as if by a sentinel, that is, by the intellectual faculty of the soul upon whose character it is imprinted, for the soul knows its own body even when its constituents are dispersed in the world: Thus in the condition of mortality which is the consequence of the coming of sin, the spiritual nature of the soul maintains a certain link with the disunited elements of the body, a link which it will find again at the moment of resurrection in order that the parts may be transformed in ‘a spiritual body’ [as St. Paul said], which is indeed our true body, different from the grossness of those we now have, the ‘garments of skin’ which God made for Adam and Eve after their sin.26

Isaac the Syrian stated that there is a mysterious scale of difference in creation, that is, a scale of different modes of the divine activity. With regard to living creatures their creation was by divine ordinance to earthly elements; but with regard to humans their creation was by divine counsel, through the word. For God said, let us make human in our image, after our likeness, and this was not said of other living things. Hence, God has arranged the divine economy such that all things, except angels and humans, are parts of the whole; but humans and angels since they are persons cannot be parts of a greater whole. Since humans are also bodily beings, they are richer and more complex than angels. Humans are situated at the intersection of the intelligible and the sensible realms; human being unites these two worlds in their inner nature. Maximus Confessor said that ‘all things which have been created by God, in their diverse natures, are brought together in human as in a melting-pot and form in him one unique perfection, a harmony composed of many different notes’.27 It was the divinely appointed function of the first human to unite in himself the whole of created being and at the same time to reach perfect union28 with God and bring about the condition of deification for all future human beings. Aineias of Gaza (c.450–534), teacher of rhetoric, magistrate and an ardent Platonist, was the chief figure in philosophy in the school of Gaza. His most 24 25 26 27 28

PG vol. 46 col. 124C. PG vol. 46 col. 104C. Lossky 1975 p. 104; see also HCM pp. 140–42. Quoted in Lossky 1975 p. 108. Lossky 1975 pp. 108–10.

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important work, Theophrastus, or On the Immortality of the Soul, has the format and structure of a Platonic dialogue; Aineias was ‘a felicitous imitator of the mystique and character of Platonism’, in Tatakis’ words. He adheres to the Platonic format in assigning to one personage, Euxitheos, all of the main ideas; Theophrastus asks the questions and agrees with the answers, the Egyptian serves only to listen to them. Euxitheos comes from Syria, the source of the new light of knowledge, and is on his way to Athens to study philosophy. When he meets Theophrastus the Athenian, Euxitheos pretends he wants to be instructed, but, in fact, he ‘does not seek to discover truth – he has found it, he has kept it securely, and he delights in disseminating and dictating it to others’. For the lover of truth to claim in advance to be in possession of the truth is not in keeping with Socrates, who made his ignorance the first step on the road to truth. Where Plato might have ended the dialogue with reference to a mythical account, Aineias informs his readers about some recent miracles which attest to the views expressed by his speaker. Both Plato and the Stoics are brought in to help explain the Christian view about the soul’s immortality and its eventual resurrection. Plato’s doctrine about the soul’s pre-existence leads to the doctrine of re-embodiment and implies the descent of the soul from a higher to a lower plane. Aineias poses some difficult questions: how is it that the embodied soul recalls only the good and not the bad; how can even the most intelligent person not remember their previous bodily existence, and so forth. The total number of finite souls must diminish since, when the good souls are sent to the Elysian Fields and the bad souls to Hades, there will be a time when there are no more unembodied souls to be embodied. In contrast, Aineias argues that the soul is born at the same time as its body and its immortal status is due to the fact that it is a rational substance. God the creator confers immortality on all rational beings whose number is infinite; their immaterial nature means that they will never limit or determine other things in any way. The first and greatest gift that God bestows on human souls is free will; it is the pre-eminent sign of humans’ immortality and that which can make human god-like. Christians must strive to achieve goodness as their goal or end-state; if they were good to begin with (in their nature) their virtue would have no merit. Basil Tatakis says that with this dialogue, ‘a new anthropology emerges; the soul is not divine, it is not preexistent, but it is immortal. Man creates his own history using his free will, which should be preoccupied only with the good. And in addition, something that would be scandalous to the pagans: the body itself will be resurrected on a day preordained by God.’ It is through God’s grace that each human soul will find its own proper body, and hence enter the path to immortality: ‘In this way, matter itself will become immortal. Moreover, since the physical world strives toward perfection on its own, the soul for its part implants within the body a portion of its own immortality much in the manner of a seed, that is, with the aid of Divine Providence, strong enough to engender the reassembling of the separated elements of the body’, after the second coming.29 Further, in conflict with the pagan idea of an eternal realm of preexistent immortal souls, Christian thought introduces an earthly realm and a kind of soul which has a beginning in time by God’s creative

29

Tatakis 2003 pp. 20–21.

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edict. In sum, Aineias’ philosophy, like other early Christian efforts, is Greek thought in its form and method, but Christian in its aspirations and principles.30 Leontios of Byzantium (c.475–543), first allied himself with the Nestorian heresy, but became a staunch supporter of the Chalcedon formulae, a monk who joined the New Lavra in Jerusalem and joined forces with St. Sabas, against the Origenists, but who later left their company. Leontios brought exceptional logical rigor and argumentative precision to the contemporary discussion of the nature and destiny of the human soul. He refined and stabilized the definitions of person, nature and substance, and clarified the logical relations between universal, particular and individual.31 His analysis of the person and nature of human being follows from his analysis of the person(s) and nature(s) within the Holy Trinity. The three persons (hypostases) of the Holy Trinity are one in nature (phusis) and the two natures of Jesus Christ are one person, per the Duophysite thesis. In order to make the whole picture more coherent, Leontios introduces a new term, enhypostasis, which he defines as a nature that is not a hypostasis itself, but exists within a hypostasis. In his metaphysical scheme the enhypostatic finds itself between the anhypostatic (the accidental) and the hypostatic (the essential). The difference between the two extremes is the same as the difference between substance and the substantive, where hypostasis denotes the individual and enhypostasis denotes substance.32 The substances united in this way into an hypostasis are complete substances and, when they are considered apart from their union, they constitute separate hypostases, like the soul and the body. There are entities that are united by species (or nature) and divisible by hypostasis, for example, the Holy Trinity, and there are other entities which are divisible in species (or nature) and united in hypostasis, such as, a human’s soul and body. There is no natural bond between soul and body, but rather a union imposed by God’s power; the soul and body each have their own nature and reason. The soul and body considered in themselves are perfect beings, but imperfect with respect to human since they are proper parts of him. The union of soul and body occurs without confusion, for the soul does not lose its invisible and immortal character. The soul can be affected and can suffer in its own nature; as a passive substance its affections are determined either by the body’s internal states or by the circumstances of its place. In Leontios’ Platonic scheme, the affections of the soul’s own nature include the epithum¯etikon, ‘the appetitive’, full of the love of God; these work with the thumoeides, ‘the will’ or ‘the desiderative’, and the logistikon, ‘the deliberative’, illuminated by the unity of thought. When the soul sullies its capabilities it sinks into evil and ignorance and hence it alone, and not the material body, is the cause of a human’s degradation.33 In sum, Tatakis says that

Tatakis 2003 pp. 22–3. Cross says in this context, ‘an individual nature is a universal nature considered along with a (unique) collection of universal accidents’; and notes that ‘a universal nature and a particular nature that is an instance of it are not exactly the same thing. The particular nature is distinct from the universal by at least one property: the particular nature is the universal nature + the property of particularity or unrepeatability’, Cross 2002 p. 252 note 17. 32 See esp. Cross 2002 pp. 261–2. 33 Prècis from Tatakis 2003 p. 51. 30 31

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Leontios’ thorough, concise, and bold style, and his subtle arguments – often very difficult to follow – demonstrate his synthesizing and profound spirit. With considerable profundity, finesse, and clarity he analyzes the concepts he has received from the [Greek] Fathers and masterfully refutes the arguments of his adversaries. His is an astute dialectic, which he manipulates with rigor and flexibility … And above all, he creates, from borrowed as well as his own materials, a unified treatise, coherent, systematic, and free from contradictions.34

Eustratius, presbyter of Constantinople (fl.583–602), wrote a lengthy and learned apology, On the State of Souls after Death, which has been studied in some detail by Nicholas Constas. Eustratius’ apology was endorsed in the ninth century by the Patriarch Photius, who praised its arguments’ clarity, although he criticized what he considered to be its vulgar literary style. The nature of the soul, its relation to the body, and its fate after death were all subjects which were hotly contested during the late antique–early medieval period, but which had not been authoritatively defined or systematically organized. One can find any number of different accounts about the soul’s status after death, ‘strewn about somewhat carelessly across the late antique religious landscape’. Christian thinkers turned to the rites and traditions of their communities as a source of ideas; there was a critical intervention of religious practice into theological theory. The ritual care of the dead, along with the cult of saints and relics, demanded a specific set of theological commitments about human nature and the soul’s fate after death. As Constas says, ‘from these devotional first principles, several corollaries were deduced: the soul’s survival after its separation from the body at death; its susceptibility to the influence of the church’s prayers; the ability of the souls of dead saints to involve themselves in the affairs of the living; and the intimate and abiding unity of such souls with the scattered fragments of their bodies.’35 Other Christian groups with alternate traditions about the care of the dead and alternate cults of the saints produced schools of thought in opposition to these views, as Constas explains: Based on a more unitive, materialist notion of the human person as irreducibly embodied, critical voices denied that the souls of the dead could involve themselves in the affairs of the living, or intercede on their behalf in heaven, or be affected by the intentions and activities of the church on earth. On the contrary, with the death and dissolution of their corporeal frames, the souls of the dead (sainted or otherwise) were said to be largely inert, having lapsed into a state of lethargy and oblivion. Still others argued more radically for the outright death of the soul which was said to perish with the body, although not without the hope of being called back into existence together with the body on the day of resurrection.

These rival views about human nature and post-mortem existence eliminated the need for intercessionary prayers and memorials, but at the same time nullified the orthodox cult of saints and relics, ‘effectively debasing the church’s agency in the earthly economy of the afterlife’.36 34 35 36

Tatakis 2003 pp. 52–3. Constas 2002 p. 270, in summary of an earlier paper, Constas 2001. Constas 2002 p. 271.

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Alternate views on these crucial issues continued to be expressed alongside the official church view until Eustratius’ thorough refutation. According to Eustratius himself, his opponents37 held that human souls, after their departure from their bodies, are inactive and can in no way appear to the living in their own substance or existence. Instead, there is a divine power (dunamis) which simulates these individuals’ form and appears as the souls of various saints in states of activity (energousas). The souls themselves are secreted away in a certain place (topos) and are not able to appear on earth since they are deprived of their material bodies. Even the souls of living saints are circumscribed in space and thus do not actually appear in dreams to distant sleepers; rather, dreamers behold a certain divine grace appearing in the form of the saint (something like the ancient Greek idea of the psych¯e-double, not an autonomous entity like a ghost, but a simulacrum (eidolon)). But of course it differs from a double or a demon in having its principle (arch¯e) for being in a divine act of will. In response, Eustratius attempts to confute the central claim that the souls of the dead are incapable of activity. He asserts that human souls are at all times simple, intelligible, noetic, incorporeal and ever-moving; these intrinsic qualities enable the soul to exist independent of the host body, and to remain active after death. He also holds that the souls of saints are even more active after death than they were in life, since they have transcended the spatial and temporal restrictions on their bodies. Nevertheless, the apparent activities of saintly souls are not natural phenomena, but instead occur only within and through the greater reality and activity of God. As events these apparitions are always exceptional;38 their subjects were only exceptional persons, who appeared for exceptional reasons, according to God’s purposes. Eustratius thus affirms a distinct position on post-mortem existence which one might call ‘psychic epiplasis’:39 the souls of saints are active after death only in virtue of divine synergy which co-opts their forms and maintains their appearance by specific acts of will. The bilateral synergy at work here is one which makes use of the saint’s specially active human soul in union with god’s divine energy, focused within the sensible realm, and held in being by god’s power. It seems that Eustratius was specially concerned to counter and stamp out a set of heretical views associated with the idea that dead souls were incapable of activity. One extreme version of this belief was identified in Arabia (and/or Asia Minor) by Origen, Eusebius and John of Damascus40 as the mortal soul, that is, that the human soul was bound by death along with its host’s body. However, of greater interest for our project in recording the vast array of beliefs in post-mortem existence is the mention of the peculiar, even bizarre, belief in the soul’s dormition. (This might 37 It has proved to be very difficult to reconstruct these proto-empirical, rationalist theories due to the paucity of original texts. 38 William Dalrymple records with some amazement how, during his travels through eastern Turkey, Syria and the West Bank in the 1990s, Christian monks in the desert report that, even today, saints appear in their vicinity, ordinary unremarkable events in their solitary lives, From the Holy Mountain, London: Harper-Collins, 1998 pp. 170–75, 290–94. 39 An extrapolated form of the word plasma, LSJ 1968 p. 1412 s.v. plass¯ o, ‘to form or mould an image’; metaphorical for ‘counterfeit’, p. 651 s.v. epiplasis. 40 Origen, Dialogue with Heracleides 76–110; Origen, De Princ. 3.4.2; Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 6.37; John of Damascus, Heresies 90; cited in Constas 2002 p. 278 note 27.

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better be called psychic catalepsy41 in keeping with the Greek tenor of the belief.) Writers in the Syriac Christian tradition, such as Aphrahat (died c.345), Ephrem (died 373), and Narsai (died 502), held that the soul of the dead person was confined to the grave along with the body.42 The souls of the dead are largely inert, having lapsed into sleep, in which they can only dream of their future reward in heaven or punishment in hell.43 The Syriac doctrine here accorded with the Nestorian Church’s position and provided a counter-weight against what the Syriac Christians thought was an over-Hellenized view of the afterlife.44 St. Ephrem expresses a remarkable analogy of the human soul and body to the sense of a written text, the power of speech is an image of the divine, which is made manifest through our words: The written document is the image of the composite body, just as also the free tongue is the likeness of the free mind. For the body cannot add or subtract anything from the measure of its stature, nor can a document add to or subtract from the measure of its writing. But a word-of-mouth discourse can be within the measure or without the measure. For the Deity gave us Speech that is free like Itself, in order that free Speech might serve our independent Freewill. And by Speech, too, we are the likeness of the Giver of it, inasmuch as by means of it we have impulse and thought for good things; and not only for good things, but we learn also of God, the fountain of good things, by means of Speech (which is) a gift from Him. For by means of this (faculty) which is like God we are clothed with the likeness of God. For divine teaching is the seal of minds, by means of which men who learn are sealed that they may be an image for Him who knows all.45

In other words, the written text is an image the way the human body is an image, whereas speech is a likeness the way the human mind is a likeness. The written text stands in a one-to-one relation to what has been said; as a copy it is a specific actualization of an intention. In contrast, the faculty of speech resembles the divine mind – by way of its product, the human mind – in being able to freely generate new intentions, in word and deed. It is the power (or potential) to produce these things; through good words and good actions the human mind comes to resemble more closely God’s goodness. St. Ephrem continues: For if by Freewill Adam was the image of God, it is a most praiseworthy thing when, by true knowledge, and by true conduct, a man becomes the image of God. For that independence exists in these also. For animals cannot form in themselves pure thoughts about God, because they have, not Speech, that which forms in us the image of the Truth. We have received the gift of Speech that we may not be as speechless animals in our conduct, but that we may in our actions resemble God, the giver of Speech. How great is Speech, a gift which came to make those who receive it like its Giver. And because 41 Catalepsy in its original sense, LSJ 1968 p. 898 s.v. katal¯ epsis, ‘seizure, possession’; later, a trance-like state, for example, Galen 8.485; it is more than an ordinary sleep, rather more like katokhos, ‘holding down, binding’, as used in magical spells (defixiones) LSJ 1968 p. 930 s.v. katokhos. 42 See Frank Gavin 1920 pp. 103–20; Paul Kruger 1959 pp. 193–210. 43 Also preserved in one of Photius’ book summaries, Bibliotheca no. 74. 44 Prècis by Constas 2002 pp. 278–9. 45 St. Ephraim, in Mitchell 1912, vol. I, section 1.

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animals have not Speech they cannot be the likeness of our minds. But because the mind has Speech, it is a great disgrace to it when it is not clothed with the likeness of God; it is a still more grievous shame when animals resemble men, and men do not resemble God. But threefold is the torture doubled when this intermediate (party between God and animals) forsakes the Good above him and degrades himself from his natural rank to put on the likeness of animals in his conduct.

Maximus the Confessor (580–662) had an extensive humanist education in the capital, his family belonged to the inner circle of confidants and civil servants who made up the intellectual elite in Byzantium. He served as proto-secretary to the Emperor but resigned over theological disagreements, an instance of an oppositional stance which he maintained throughout his life. He played a pivotal role in making the works of Dionysius the Areopagite acceptable to Orthodox spirituality, as well as endorsing their Apostolic provenance. Jaroslav Pelikan says that ‘what Maximus achieved was nothing less than the restoration of the balance between NeoPlatonism and Christian orthodoxy in a Christocentric piety whose roots lie deep in the Cappadocian tradition of Basil and the two Gregories’.46 Maximus opposed the various monotypic interpretations – one nature, one will, one energy – and carried forward the polemical argument that these ideas contradicted the authority of both the Greek Fathers and Holy Scripture. Maximus also championed Dionysius’ apophatic theology which stressed the transcendence and otherness of God, a divine nature that surpassed the reach of all human concepts, and which could only be described in terms of what it is not. Maximus said that ‘the perfect mind is the one that through genuine faith knows in supreme ignorance the supremely unknowable, and in gazing on the universe of his handiwork has received from God comprehensive knowledge of his providence and judgment in it, as far as is allowed to humans’.47 Maximus offered the hope of deification for all worthy human beings; the future contours of humanity could be discerned in the incarnate Logos and his resurrection. Through Christ’s resurrection the divine life triumphed over human fleshly corruption, at the same time that it was an image of future deification by grace. This was both a gift of divine grace and an act of human free will: ‘there is no power inherent in human nature which is able to deify human, and yet God becomes human insofar as human has deified himself’.48 In his brief treatise On the Soul, Maximus argues that the soul can only be understood by its acts, and this occurs not by means of the senses but by the intellect. Since the body is neither moved from without, like inanimate things, nor moved from within by its own nature, like fire, it must be moved by means of the soul which is its life-force.49 The soul is a substance identical with itself and it can receive contraries without losing its self-identity. The soul in its own nature is incorporeal, non-spatial, nurtured by reason, and without perceptible qualities. Since it is simple the soul is immortal, and in no way can any exterior thing cause its demise. Since the soul is self-moved, it cannot at any moment cease to be, for to 46 47 48 49

Pelikan, Introduction to Maximus Confessor 1985 p. 6. Maximus Confessor 1985 p. 75. Quoted by Pelikan in Maximus Confessor 1985 p. 11. PG vol. 91 col. 356BC.

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be self-moved is to be in eternal motion.50 He borrows the Stoic thesis that sensation is a proper organ of the soul whose function is to receive external impressions; ‘sensation is the irrational part that stamps us with the image of the beast’. Intelligence comprises the rational aspect of the soul, its purest part, created to contemplate being and that which is prior to 51being, whereas spirit is still an unformed substance that precedes all movement. Maximus divides the soul along standard Neo-Platonic lines:52logistik¯e, ‘the rational’, epithum¯etik¯e, ‘the optative’, and thumik¯e, ‘the reflective’. These three are faculties or activities of one substantive principle, the rational human soul. Each of these faculties can turn to multiple activities: one is rational when thinking employs logical arguments to achieve understanding; one is intuitive (no¯etikos) when one approaches truth through the primary movement of the intellect, and so forth. Maximus contrasts mind (nous) with the soul (psych¯e): the mind designates the summit at which the soul is said to touch God and hence unite with him; the soul designates both reason and sensation. Tatakis comments that this contrast is analogous to the Platonic opposition of body and soul, where reason designates the intellectual and rational aspect of human, and sensation the irrational and sensory aspect. With regard to the soul’s origin, Maximus rejects the doctrine of pre-existence before embodiment, as well as the doctrine of postnatal animation. He affirms a version of elemental creation, according to which all elemental constituents of human nature come into being at the same time and are united in essence from the first moment of conception. In this manner, Maximus follows the views of the Greek Fathers on human nature, supplemented with some recent sixthcentury medical advances.53 Maximus also discusses the core Biblical idea of image and likeness in the creation of human being. The phrase ‘made in our image’ (eikon) denotes human’s intellect and free will, as well as the primordial gifts God bestowed on humans, immortality and quietude. The phrase ‘in our likeness’ (homoios54) means the moral order, the practice of virtue which humans pursue in following the right path. If all humans are, in their nature, an image of God via intellect and free will, it follows that only those who become good and wise will be in God’s likeness. Maximus takes this to mean that every human is enjoined to return to his original condition, that is, to realize within him or herself his or her own proper nature. This teaching is directly connected to the Orthodox notion of deification, as Tatakis points out: If God assimilates human nature, humans must assimilate divine nature. Thus human, created in the perfect image of God and in God’s partial resemblance, can elevate the

PG vol. 91 col. 357AD. PG vol. 91 cols. 360CD–361AB. 52 The English translator (Moutafakis) of Tatakis’ text decided to translate epithum¯ etik¯e ‘the optative’, as in hope, rather than ‘noble desire’, and thumik¯e ‘the reflective’, instead of ‘appetite’; this is rather unusual, even aberrant, but it is preserved here. 53 Prècis of Tatakis 2003 pp. 56–7; note that in his discussion of the Platonic threefold scheme, Tatakis does not distinguish between part-like and aspectual terms. 54 For various uses of homoios, see LSJ 1968 pp. 1224–5; and compare Lampe PGL s.v. homoios. 50 51

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partial resemblance to a perfect resemblance. It follows then that human will never discover God within himself; there he will only find his own nature in its original integrity and the spiritual instincts for the acquisition of godliness. This godliness, the effect of a prolonged asceticism, comes to be in an ineffable and mystical manner.55

This crucial distinction between image and likeness is very important for Byzantine thought, as we will see later in our exposition of isotypic parallels in Psellus’ picture of human nature. In the Four Hundred Chapters, Maximus recites a fairly standard picture of the three powers within human being;56 they are predicated on three forms of soul: Of all creatures, some are rational and intelligent and admit of opposites such as virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance. Others are various bodies composed of opposites such as earth, air, fire, and water. And there are some completely without body or matter, though some of these are united to bodies, and others have their makeup only from matter and form. All bodies are by nature without movement. They are moved by a soul, whether rational, irrational, or sensitive. The soul’s powers are for nourishment and growth, for imagination and appetite, for reason and understanding. Impurity of mind means first to have false knowledge; next to be ignorant of any of the universals … third in having passionate thoughts, and fourth in consenting to sin. Impurity of soul means not acting according to nature, for from this are begotten passionate thoughts in the mind. Now it acts in accord with nature when its sensitive drives, i.e. anger and concupiscence, remain free of passion under the assault of material things and the ideas they bring.57

But in The Church’s Mystagogy, Maximus presents more remarkable imagery about the human being as a church and the soul’s figure in the word. The holy church is like a human because for the soul it has the sanctuary, for the mind it has the divine altar, and for the body it has the nave. It is thus the image and likeness of human who is created in the image and likeness of God. By means of the nave (for the body) it proposes moral wisdom, while by means of the sanctuary (for the soul) it spiritually interprets natural contemplation, and by means of the mind (for the divine altar) it manifests mystical theology. Conversely, human is a mystical church, because through the nave of his body he brightens by virtue the ascetic force of the soul by observance of the commandments in moral wisdom. Through the sanctuary of his soul he conveys to God in natural contemplation through reason the principles of sense purely in spirit cut off from matter. Finally, through the altar of the mind he summons the silence abounding in song in the innermost recesses of the unseen and unknown utterance of divinity by another silence, rich in speech and tone. And as far as human is capable, he dwells familiarly within mystical theology and becomes one such as is fitting for one made worthy of his indwelling, and he is marked with his dazzling splendor.58 These significant church-soul analogies, as well as the stepwise scheme toward deification by union, will be explored in a later section on early Christian mysticism. Tatakis 2003 pp. 59, 61. Cavarnos 1979 traces the Platonic threefold schema in Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius, Maximus, John of Damascus, Symeon and Gregory Palamas, amongst others. 57 Maximus Confessor 1985 pp. 65–6. 58 Maximus Confessor 1985 pp. 189–91. 55 56

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The mystical works of Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus Confessor were of decisive importance in the formation of the European tradition of Christian mysticism through their translation into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena (c.810–870?). As we shall see in detail in a later section, Eriugena was very significant in having at this time an unusual (if not unique) knowledge of Greek and a deep understanding of the mystical theology of these major Byzantine figures, bringing their arguments into play centuries before the arrival in the Latin West of Greek philosophical texts.59 As well as the texts of Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena translated Maximus’ Ambigua and Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio; ‘thus he became fortuitously acquainted with three of the most characteristic and important documents of the Greek Christian Platonism. [T]he effect of their influence upon him was to bring him as wholly into the Greek tradition as if he had been a Byzantine writing in Greek, and to make of him the agent through whom the western world came into this valuable inheritance.’60 Michael Psellus (1018–96) was born into a family with a modest station, but he received an outstanding education, and made his career in civil administration. He was one of a group of energetic intellectuals who had hopes of exercising genuine power under Emperor Constantine IX. Psellus was forced to resign in 1054 and took the monastic tonsure, but soon returned to the capital where he lived as court philosopher under a succession of Emperors. As counsel to the basileus he was in a very privileged position, both to observe significant persons and events, as well as to influence some policy decisions. Anna Comnena archly informs her readers that Psellus owed his success to his mother’s constant prayers to the Virgin Mother to intercede for her son (Alexiad 5.8 p. 175). His career went through many swings and roundabouts, though it looks likely that he fell out of favor after 1078 and may have died impoverished and forgotten twenty years later. He was a polymath whose enormous oeuvre encompasses philosophical, historical, rhetorical, theological and legal texts, as well as a collection of letters. In his philosophical works Psellus emphasized the role of nature (phusis) which functions according to its own immanent laws, leaving a limited place for the actions of god. This view even shows up in his wonderfully evocative Chronography, where he presents events as ‘the result of strong personal conflicts, emotions and intrigues, leaving no room for divine Providence … Consistently individualistic in his approach, he viewed the61 world from his own vantage point, sometimes seriously, sometimes ironically.’ John Duffy describes him as ‘without question one of the most intellectually flamboyant and intriguing figures of the Middle Ages’, and ‘a complex and almost protean scholar who is hard to pin down’.62 Aside from the Chronography, which is readily available in English and French translation, some of Psellus’ most important texts have only been established and published in the past ten to fifteen years: two volumes of his philosophical works and two volumes of his theological works have recently appeared.63 EEP 1967 vol. 3 pp. 44–5. Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 p. 520. 61 ODB 1991 vol. 3 pp. 1754–5. 62 Duffy in Ierodiakonou 2002 p. 145; N. G. Wilson has a less commendable opinion, 1996 pp. 156–66. 63 Philosophica Minora vol. I, J. M. Duffy, ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1992; vol. II, D. J. 59 60

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In an autobiographical passage in his Chronography, Psellus recalls his initial engagement with philosophical studies. At the age of twenty-five, he says, his efforts were concentrated on two tasks: to train his tongue in rhetoric and to refine his mind by the study of philosophy. The study of rhetoric permitted him to distinguish the central theme of an argument and logically connect its main points; the study of philosophy itself leads to knowledge of the fundamental principles of natural science. Psellus is not hesitant in giving himself a lot of credit for reviving philosophy from its sorry state when he found it; it was ‘moribund as far as its professors were concerned’ and despite all his efforts he found ‘not a germ of philosophy in either Greece or the barbarian world’. In looking for a proper tutor he was passed from one expert to another, the lesser to the greater, until he was recommended to Plato and Aristotle. From them he ‘passed downward’ to Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus, and then, in continuing his voyage of discovery, he put in at the ‘mighty harbor’ of Proclus,64 ‘eagerly picking up there his doctrine of perception, both in its broad principles and in its exact interpretation’ (Chron. VI.36–38). From Proclus’ wonderfully complex Neo-Platonic system Psellus says that he planned to move onto more advanced studies in metaphysics, especially with regard to ‘abstract concepts in the so-called mathematics, which hold a position midway between the science of corporeal nature, with the external apprehension of these bodies, and the ideas themselves, the objects of pure thought’. By this route he hoped to be able ‘to apprehend something that was beyond the reach of mind, something that was not subject to the limitations of substance’. With these puzzling words Psellus seems to be hinting at some sort of prisca sapientia, an esoteric or at least recondite form of privileged access to eternal truths. He admits that he has heard rumors about a form of knowledge that is ‘beyond all demonstration, graspable only by the intellect of a wise man in moments of inspiration’. He then claims that he read some of the ‘mystic books’ and succeeded in grasping their meaning, at least as far as his finite intellect would allow. In contrast with literary exercises, which only seek to ‘embellish words’, genuine philosophy seeks to ‘explore the nature of the universe, to unravel its secrets. Its lofty dictums are not even confined to the visible world, for with great subtlety it praises the glory of that realm, whatever it is, that lies beyond the heavens’ (Chron. VI.41). It seems quite likely that in these passages Psellus is making oblique reference to his highly unorthodox study of magical and theurgical texts. He is often thought to be the author of an important treatise On the Operation of Demons, though Paul Gautier has argued strongly that this is a false attribution.65 J. M. Duffy spells out the O’Meara, ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1989; Theologica vol. I, P. Gautier, ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1989; vol. II, L. G. Westerink & J. M. Duffy, eds. Leipzig: Teubner, 2003; these four volumes replace the previous edition Scripta Minora, ed. E. Kurtz & F. Drexl, Milan, 1936. 64 Duffy says that Proclus was ‘a suspect resident alien in a Greek Christian world whom Psellos, in the interest of keeping him as a friend, was obliged to beat over the head from time to time with the big stick of orthodoxy’, Duffy in Ierodiakonou 2002 p. 154. 65 Gautier’s French translation & commentary 1980; Greenfield provides long extracts and interpretation, 1988 pp. 153–217, and summarizes the pros and cons about Psellus as author, p. 156 note 456. See also Karel Svoboda, La demonologie de Michael Psellos. Brno, 1927

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details behind Psellus’ assertions about his more arcane studies: in response to a letter from an old friend about his (Psellus) being named ‘consul of philosophers’ to the Emperor, Psellus lays out his achievements. He has won ‘a hard-earned and unsurpassed knowledge in all branches of learning extending from rhetoric, through the arts and sciences, all the way to hieratics (hieratik¯e) and theology’. He also wrote for his students a short treatise on the subject of the ventriloquist (engastrimuthos) in the Biblical story of the witch of Endor.66 Here Psellus plunges into an excursus on demons, the Chaldean oracles and Hermetic texts,67 sources of information for the unfettered pursuit of wisdom which he staunchly defends. With regard to Psellus’ character as teacher of philosophy, Duffy says that he was ‘no weakling either as an intellectual or as a defender of philosophy … What cannot be doubted is the zeal of his efforts to promote philosophy in all its ramifications; and it was probably a lonely mission to judge by [his words] … “I am a lone philosopher in an age without philosophy” … He was a rare bird and Byzantium did not see the likes of him either before or after his time.’68 Tatakis has very high praise for his vast learning: ‘he contributed more than anyone else to the literary renaissance of the Comnenoi epoch. His numerous writings attest to the richness of his temperament, his extraordinarily active mind, and his phenomenal erudition.’69 When scholars review the available documents about Psellus’ view of occult and magical ideas they are presented with a paradox: on one hand, he overtly declared his distaste for doctrines which he thought were inimical to a healthy mind and were antagonistic to Christian principles; on the other hand, he never flinched at looking for the sources of wisdom in even the most sordid of places. In his exposition of the Chaldean Oracles he remarks that even the great Plato follows ‘Egyptian’ soulimagery when he talks about horses, chariots and wings; when Plato thinks in the most Greek spirit he offers formal proofs. On some occasions, Psellus rejects popular superstitions about unusual phenomena and tenders more rational explanations. In his review of some ceremonies associated with the Chaldeans, Tatakis says, ‘every species of aberration, every form of magical practice and divination disgusts him. He dislikes those views which subjugate and denigrate the human intellect; he sees human perfection in the natural flowering of all intellectual faculties – hence his scathing criticism of Chaldaism. In spite of this, however, he is also an enthusiastic expert in Chaldaism.’70 John Duffy has diagnosed the same ambivalence in Psellus’ entertainment of occult ideas. Psellus displays two seemingly contradictory reactions: ‘one is the expected, typical repudiation of pagan (unexamined); and extracts of alchemical tracts in Joseph Bidez (ed.) Catalogue de manuscrits alchimiques grecs, 8 vols, Brussels: Maurice Lamertin, 1924–32, vol. 6 pp. 55–64. 66 Ventriloquism also appears in the treatise On the Operation of Demons, Greenfield 1988 pp. 128–30. 67 Psellus’ scholia on the Hermetic corpus include a long argument about Hermes’ familiarity with the Genesis account, but condemns him as a wizard (go¯es) misled by Poimandres into a perverse reading of Holy Scripture, N+F I pp. xlix–li; Scott IV pp. 244–6. 68 Duffy in Ierodiakonou 2002 pp. 151–2; see also Duffy in Maguire 1995 pp. 83–90. 69 Tatakis 2003 p. 155. 70 Tatakis 2003 p. 137.

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nonsense which, in the normal course of events, need be seen as little more than a device to forestall charges of impiety … Less expected … is evidence from several quarters of a genuine interest in and openness on his part to the content of the collection’ of Chaldean oracles. Duffy speculates that one motive for Psellus’ high regard for this is his immense respect for the philosophers who embraced these works.71 By the Palaeologan period it was often hard to segregate orthodox and unorthodox use of prayers, rituals and spells. As well as the ever-popular amulets, ‘relics and other holy objects could fulfill exactly the same functions as the concoctions found in non-Christian amulets, and holy inscriptions could replace magical symbols and names. Practices like exorcism, blessing, or even the major sacraments could be viewed and used on the popular level in precisely the same way as the magical operations designed to manipulate the material conditions of human life.’ Further, a wide range of techniques for divination (manteia) were ethically labile; they were thought to work their effects either through the intervention of angelic, spiritual powers or through demonic, unchristian powers.72 Byzantine magicians also carried forward practices more exactly associated with late antique theurgy; ‘the practitioner of the more complicated arts laid out in The Magic Treatise actually visualizes himself as working in the name of God through angelic, spiritual powers, which he uses to control and command the evil ones’.73 Greenfield says that in most cases, no distinction was made between mageia and go¯eteia, though pseudoPsellus and one other writer use go¯eteia to mean practices using material, unclean demons, whereas mageia means practices using immaterial spirits and/or natural occult powers.74 In contrast with these thinly disguised allusions to pagan esoteric teachings, Psellus is quite explicit in his commendation of the mysteries of Christian religion as a new kind of philosophy. ‘This mystery too has a dual aspect, in nature (human and divine) and in time (finite and infinite)’, as well as a dualism in the ways in which these ideas come to be known: by way of rational proof and by way of divinely inspired faith. Although he considers his capacity for understanding such things to be quite small, his efforts to reveal them were great – he is the first to admit that. Since the sources of this wisdom were all choked up, and the waters could not flow freely, he had to be satisfied with studying their images, that is, their reproductions in manuscripts which preserved the ‘outward form’, so to speak, of the original insight (much in keeping with St. Ephrem’s view above). At this point, the author describes the course of his own outward development of these inner springs. He does so by making a general statement about the isotypic parallelism of inner and outer virtue; this idea is distinctive in the Byzantine account of human nature with regard to the relation of mind and body:

Duffy in Maguire 1995 p. 86. When Coleridge refers to the dreadful spirit which plagues the Ancient Mariner, he says that this spirit is ‘one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels’, about whom Michael Psellus should be consulted. 73 Greenfield in Maguire 1995 p. 149. 74 Greenfield in Maguire 1995 p. 120 note 4. 71 72

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At the time of our birth, we are endowed with certain natural virtues or their opposites … Just as some bodies, from the moment of birth, are endowed with beauty, while on others Nature from their very beginning bestows blemishes and wrinkles, so too with souls some are distinguished at once with extreme grace and attractiveness, while others leave a trail of somber and deep gloom. As time goes on, the innate graces of the first sort become more and more apparent, but in the second sort everything goes wrong and even reason functions poorly (Chron. VI.44).

Psellus’ detailed, emotion-charged account of events offers many good examples of this thesis: the natural nobility of Basil II (I.36), Romanus III’s basic piety (III.15), Michael IV’s harmonious nature (IV.7), the Empress Zoe and her sister (VI.64–65), the Emperor Constantine (VI.74), General Maniaces (VI.77), the Emperor Constantine again (VI.125–26), and others. Anna Comnena frequently resorts to exactly these sorts of descriptive epithets, all couched in terms of isotypic characteristics: in her description of Robert Guiscard (1.10 p. 54), Alexius and Irene (3.3 pp. 109–10); her grandmother (3.8 pp. 120–22), Basil the Bogomil heretic (15.8 pp. 496–98), and others. W. B. Yeats was fascinated with Byzantine artifice; in his strange testament A Vision (1925) he wistfully yearns for a chance to live in Byzantium in the early 500s, before Julian closed the Academy. There, he says, he might find ‘in some little wine-shop a philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even, for the pride of his delicate skill would make what was an instrument of power to princes and clerics a murderous madness in the mob, show as a lovely flexible presence like that of a perfect human body’. Here we encounter, in Michael Psellus and Anna Comnena’s first-hand assessments, the Byzantine idea that a perfect soul is housed in a perfect body; the perfection they commend is one of good (kalos) as a non-moral value. This seems to depend on the Orthodox view of the difference between human in the image and human in the likeness of God, in contrast with an alternate view of the difference in the Latin West. Where beauty is equated with good, beauty can be thought of as just proportion or harmony in its parts, that is, the degree of fittedness of the parts to their function. To become godlike (theosis) means to achieve the same standards as the archetype of innate divine qualities. This idea is borne out by a striking, even gruesome, characteristic of Byzantine imperial history: in order for the strongest claimant to the imperial throne to ensure that other contenders were ineligible he would sometimes have their faces mutilated. The long history of struggles for the throne is replete with instances of lesser candidates having their noses cut off, their tongues slit or their eyes blinded (ritual blinding came to be the preferred method after centuries of nose-slitting). Norwich comments in passing75 that the simple rationale behind this appalling practice was that only a perfect human being could be emperor; ‘its purpose was to invalidate the victim’s claim to the throne since an Emperor … must be free of all obvious physical imperfections’. Mutilation of the nose and eyes both show on the face; it is not possible to hide them; but, as well, blinding means that it shows that he cannot see, and hence cannot know. The emperor’s perfect inner nature had to be matched with a perfect outer appearance.76 75 76

Norwich 1988 vol. I p. 313 note; see also pp. 308, 322. John Duffy said to me that this was a striking, yet plausible parallel.

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The study of philosophy, Psellus declared, is ‘the perfection of the soul, its reduction and its ascension, its return to the supreme good’. His funeral oration for John Xiphilinos gave him the opportunity to outline his view about the post-mortem ascent of the good soul. He says that ‘as an entity, the soul begins by contemplating intelligible life, which allows it to know the good without the exercise of reason; from here, leaving behind property and operation, it moves on to the perfection of its life, the unity of its nature, which will in turn allow it to unite with the One and to become spirit, intelligence and God’.77 Here and elsewhere Psellus reaffirms the distinction between reason and intellect that we highlighted earlier in the discourses of Maximus Confessor. Understanding through reason is limited due either to the inaccessibility of its object or to the incapacity of the faculty of reason. The task of reason, in seeking for explanations for phenomena, will achieve its goal if its operations are based on readily accepted principles. But above the reach of reason, human intellect can yet aspire; its task is to embrace its ‘objects’ in an immediate manner, without need of inference or proof. Intellect operates only in those persons who have achieved the highest degree of purity and gnosis, in other words, intellect is the perfection of the human soul.78 In this passage, Psellus draws our attention to the importance of moral purity in attaining the highest degree of individual development. The dual conditions of moral purity and superior knowledge are necessary for the individual’s deification. One can come to resemble God in four ways, Psellus tells us: first, by means of political virtues, in human society, which produce an obscure resemblance; second, by means of purifying virtues which produce a clearer resemblance; third, by means of contemplative virtues which make the resemblance more brilliant, and fourth, by theurgic virtues which allow one to act like god. Psellus himself admits that he is content to achieve a position mid-way in this scheme; it is for others, with a greater measure of purity and gnosis, to attain to the highest level.79 Psellus himself clearly thought that the study of philosophy, without being made subservient to Orthodox theology, produced its own intellectual virtue. The career of John Italus (1025?–82?) provides an obvious bridge between the ambivalent pseudo-paganism of Psellus and the outright paganism of Plethon three centuries later. Anna Comnena found ‘the Italian’ a fascinating character, though she was distressed at the ‘disturbing influence’ he had on others. She tells us that as a young boy he and his father fled from Sicily to Lombardy from whence he made his way to the capital. There he became a student of the celebrated Psellus, though Italus was unable ‘with his barbaric, stupid temperament to grasp the profound truths of philosophy’. Italus struck out on his own, holding disputations in public, and causing ‘daily commotions’. He was, however, protected by the patronage of Emperor Michael Dukas who held him in high regard. When Psellus withdrew to a monastery in 1055, Italus was appointed his successor as consul of the philosophers and professor of philosophy in the university (Alexiad 5.8-9 pp. 174-80). Anna Comnena admits his great proficiency in philosophical studies, but says that his language was ‘devoid of harmony and polish; his style was austere … his 77 78 79

Tatakis 2003 pp. 134, 141. Tatakis 2003 p. 142. Tatakis 2003 p. 145.

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writings wore a frown and reeked of bitterness’. He was considered an unbeatable arguer: ‘he dug a pit on both sides of a question and cast the speakers into a well of difficulties’. He gave lectures at the university on Plato, Proclus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Aristotle’s technical treatises. Some clues to his own philosophical opinions are gleaned when Anna says that she heard some of his pupils propounding theories on soul-migration and other ‘monstrous ideas’. Italus seems to have had little sense of moderation and by 1076 his heretical, even anti-Christian doctrines brought him before a tribunal headed by the emperor’s brother, Isaac Dukas. It seems that Italus persisted in his ‘ridiculous and boorish’ opinions, even after he was ordered to desist. He managed to keep out of serious trouble until 1082 when he was again arraigned before the court. This time his teachings were subject to anathema, he was excommunicated from the church, and disappeared from the historical record (Alexiad 5.8–9 pp. 174–80). John Italus’ surviving writings include ninety-three quodlibetal questions posed by various persons, commentaries on some of Aristotle’s shorter texts, a short treatise on dialectic, another on rhetoric, various chapters on logic, and others on genus and species. When Tatakis wrote his fine history fifty years ago he said that most of Italus’ writings were unpublished; only one edition of his other works by a Georgian scholar had appeared in 1924–26. That edition includes manuscripts which would be important for our current project: On the Passage in the Odyssey Concerning Dreams, the Resurrection of the Corporeal Body, and On the Immortality of the Soul,80 as well as four other shorter works on analogous subjects. Tatakis points out that the sentence of anathema in 1082 preserves enough information for us to get some notion of his heretical beliefs: (1) he attempted to explain the incarnation and the hypostatic union on purely rational grounds; (2) he resurrected the errors of the pagan philosophers concerning the human soul, the sky, the earth and all creatures; (4) he professed the eternity of matter and the ideas; (5) he valued Greek philosophers and other heretics more highly than the Church Fathers and the saints; (6) he denied the miracles of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints; (7) he considered literary works as not merely educational but a genuine repository of the truth; (8) he admitted Neo-Platonic ideas, advocated that matter was self-subsistent, and that matter took on forms which reflected the eternal ideas, and (9) he taught that humans will be resurrected with bodies other than those they had in their earthly life.81 Tatakis concludes his brief overview of Italus’ achievements with these words: Until the time of Italos, we sought philosophical thought within theology. Italos is the first to give philosophy its autonomy within a purely rationalistic movement of thought, one which seeks clear solutions to questions concerning human destiny and the higher mysteries of Christianity such as the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. Italos attempts to establish philosophical problems upon a philosophical basis, for the time had come for theology to become dependent upon philosophy, which had not become the depository of truth. He seems to lack any sense of the mystical.82 On John Italus’ views on this topic, see Stephanou 1933 pp. 413–28. Summary of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, section on John Italus’ anathema, in Tatakis 2003 p. 172. 82 Tatakis 2003 p. 173; also in brief review, Wilson 1996 pp. 153–6. 80 81

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George Gemistos Plethon (1360–1452) was one of the greatest Byzantine thinkers, an outstanding teacher and counselor; he was exiled to Mistra in the Peloponnese about 1410 under suspicion of heresy and paganism. His writings are vast and eclectic: he compiled a Greek grammar, corrected Strabo’s Geography and Ptolemy’s Cosmography, wrote lecture notes on Homer, musical theory and the liberal arts; he devised a new calendar system, a textbook on logic for schools, a disputation on the differences between Aristotle and Plato, various public addresses to leaders, and his final massive summation the Book of Laws.83 After Plethon’s death, his arch-rival Scholarios sought to identify the pernicious and heretical influences on Plethon’s thinking. It seems that Plethon had spent some time as a youth with a Jewish teacher, Elissaeus, who was cognizant of Persian and Arabic interpretations of Aristotle. Scholarios also correctly indicted Proclus as one of the main influences on Plethon’s thought about the triune nature of god, but overrated Zoroaster’s role in this cosmic scheme. Plethon knew little about Zoroaster beyond late antique digests of his doctrines.84 However, Plethon would have agreed with Zoroaster in his abhorrence of asceticism; he endorsed ‘a theological repudiation which ran counter to the veneration of ascetics and other “holy men” in the Orthodox Church’. Woodhouse says that Plethon’s philosophy could be described in Zaehner’s words for Zoroastrianism: ‘it is neither this-worldly nor other-worldly (but) both-worldly … Any withdrawal from the world is a betrayal of god; for man was created for the work he has to do, not vice versa.’85 It was one of Plethon’s habits to present some of his exotic doctrines under the nominal aegis of great sages from remote antiquity. At one time or another he attributed certain ideas to Orpheus, Zoroaster or Moses, amongst others. Plethon was the first person in the western tradition to associate the second-century Chaldean Oracles with Zoroaster, thus retrojecting these oracular dicta into a pristine wisdom; in this he was followed by Marsilio Ficino in Florence less than one hundred years later.86 In the eleventh century the Chaldean Oracles had been studied by that omnivorous doxographer, Michael Psellus, as well as the Patriarch Michael Cerularius, attracted by the Neo-Platonist trappings of the Oracles. Although Proclus and Psellus had both written commentaries on the Oracles, and Plethon knew and read their work, Plethon’s studies stand as an independent work. Plethon’s reputation as an unchristian pagan was not groundless slander by his enemies; George of Trebizond heard him declare in Florence that in the near future people everywhere would embrace a new universalist religion, neither Christian nor Moslem. In contrast with Psellus, who found in pagan theistic philosophy some support for Christian doctrine, Plethon considered Christian doctrine ‘a decadence of thought’ and called upon Platonic philosophy to assist in the return to the original sources of wisdom, and hence to bring his new religion closer to the truth.87 ODB 1991 vol. 3 p. 1685; Tatakis 2003 pp. 234–43. Woodhouse 1986 pp. 22–4. 85 Woodhouse 1986 p. 64, citing R. C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961 pp. 279, 283. 86 On Plethon’s study of the Chaldean Oracles, see esp. Athanassiadi in Ierodiakonou 2002 pp. 237–52. 87 Tatakis 2003 pp. 236–7; on his influence in fifteenth-century theological debates in Italy, 83 84

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Plethon’s commentary on the Oracles begins with a general account of the Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation of souls through the cycles of death and rebirth; he incorrectly ascribes this doctrine to Zoroaster. There are places in the other world, some light, some dark and some intermediate, for the soul to visit between descents into its proper human form. If the soul has been good on earth it returns to a light place, if not it returns to a dark place. The Greek idea of fate is introduced by the words ‘the sevenfold steps’ which refers to the seven planets’ influence on human destiny. The moral then follows in the text: ‘do not try to achieve what is beyond your fate’. Nothing imperfect comes from the paternal sovereignty of god, who is referred to throughout as the father, though he is not the only god. The oracles’ mention of the father’s power and the paternal intellect signify the second god, the demiurge. The second god is the creator of the human soul, but ‘he does not allow the will of the soul to enter until it has shaken off the forgetfulness which it has suffered through connection with the human body’.88 The ‘light and rays of the father’ mean the place from which the soul descends to earth; this is also called paradise. It is the soul’s duty to hasten back to the light, those who do not will suffer for their sins, as will their children. It is the task of reason to divert the soul from iniquity and so release it from oblivion. Where the oracle speaks of ‘the source of virtue in the left flanks of the couch’ Plethon says that this means that virtue resides in the soul’s left side, which is passive and virgin, not the right side which is active and corruptible. Since the human soul is immortal it clings to god and is intoxicated with divinity. Although it is united with a material body it rejoices in this union and is not ashamed of its embodied nature. The human soul has been endowed by the second god with intellect, and it is this which makes the soul divine and immortal. We are masters of what cannot be taken away from us, and that includes our immortality. The soul has many places in the universe, places that correspond with its just desserts.89 The oracles adjure each person ‘do not pollute the spirit, do not depress the surface’, which Plethon suggests refers to the connection between the immaterial spirit and the material body. He agrees with the Platonists that the soul is neither wholly separate from the body nor wholly inseparable; it is potentially separable but actually inseparable. He also asserts that they postulate three kinds of forms (eid¯e): one entirely separate from matter, which consists of the supra-celestial minds; one dependent on matter and not self-subsistent, which is dissolved in its proximate matter and is thus wholly irrational; and another form between these two, which is the rational form of the soul. The rational soul differs from pure mind in that it is always linked with matter, and differs from the irrational form in that it is independent of matter as such, but has some matter which is dependent on it.90 The human soul has its own essence: it is indivisible and indestructible, produces effects like pure minds, and is capable of knowledge about reality, including cognition of the supreme god. This soul uses a heavenly ‘body’ as its vehicle and see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967 pp. 244–8. 88 Woodhouse 1986 pp. 54–5. 89 Woodhouse 1986 p. 55. 90 Woodhouse 1986 pp. 55–6.

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that vehicle itself possesses an irrational form of soul, called the ‘image’ of the rational soul, which is equipped with imagination, as well as perception. Through the power of imagination the rational soul is permanently united with its heavenly ‘body’, and through this latter ‘body’ the human soul is united with its earthly, mortal body. In contrast, the souls of daemons have superior, immortal vehicles, and the souls of stars even more superior vehicles. By the phrase ‘image of the soul’ the oracles mean the irrational part of the whole human soul which is joined to the rational part and depends on it as its vehicle. The oracles’ ‘dung of matter’ is the earthly body which must be cared for and not neglected while humans live so that it remains healthy, pure and in harmony with the immortal soul. It follows that one must not ‘make away with the soul from the body’, for this would mean the soul making away with itself, contrary to the laws of nature. The divine intellect should be extended through the exercise of piety by means of religious worship, since this will preserve the mortal body and make it more healthy. The oracles state that nature is ‘most daring’, but Plethon interprets this as saying that human being is ‘a contrivance of all-prevailing nature because of humans’ capacity for daring ventures’.91 Plethon continued to promulgate Neo-Platonic, especially Proclean ideas in his public addresses, lectures and writings. Scholarios said that Plethon took ‘almost everything’ from Proclus’ works, whose sole theme is ‘the multiplicity of gods, [that is], generation, order, difference, and activity in the universe and human souls’. To Proclus he also owed the idea of the great chain of being, humans’ intermediate status, the emanation of the universe from the One, the soul’s partition into rational and irrational, the soul’s return to the place of light, the identification of matter with evil (or non-being), and the transformation of the perfect forms first into divine ideas and then into created minds.92 Woodhouse concludes that Plethon was ‘not a Christian Neoplatonist, as Pseudo-Dionysius had been, but a reactionary antiChristian Neoplatonist, as much a pagan at heart as Proclus. He did not wish to reconcile Christianity with Neoplatonism in Olympian draperies … His real significance was that he gave [Neoplatonic ideas] a new and powerful impetus in Western Europe.’93 In the extant portions of the Book of Laws,94 Plethon returns to his favorite theme of revived Greek paganism in the service of Byzantine philosophy. There are three orders of gods: the first order consists of Zeus alone, uncreated, eternal, and the absolute good; the second-order gods are born from Zeus, some legit who live on Olympus, others illegit, like the Giants who live in Tartarus and can produce only mortal beings; the third-order gods are the offspring of Poseidon and his brothers, the Olympians. This last order is divided into the legit who are the celestial bodies, and the illegit who are the chthonian demons. In Zeus, essence and action are identical, whereas in the mind, essence and action are distinct, though action is continuous. In the soul, essence and action are again distinct, but action is not Woodhouse 1986 pp. 56–8. Woodhouse 1986 pp. 73–4. 93 Woodhouse 1986 p. 78. 94 French translation, Traité des Lois, Charles Alexandre (ed.) Paris, 1858; Reprinted, Amsterdam, 1966. 91 92

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continuous; in the body, essence is divided into form and matter, where matter is subject to movement, change, division and dissolution. The remainder of Book Two was supposed to be full of heretical ideas; it included chapters on souls, stars and demons, as well as the immortality of the soul. According to Scholarios, in one chapter Plethon argued in favor of the Pythagorean doctrine of soul-migration and claimed that human souls never ascend to the heavenly place.95 In Plethon’s cosmic scheme he adumbrates an intricate chain of models and images. First Zeus made a single creature in his own image, the noblest and best of all created beings, then he makes an image of that image, then an image of the image of the image, and so forth. Species are the images of genera, as well as of other species in the same genera; the less perfect species are images of the more perfect. The temporal is an image of the eternal, mortal nature of immortal, irrational of rational, and so forth. Zeus is both the creative cause of all things in their being, and the generative cause of each stage of created being, as father to child to grandchild. Human souls receive their attributes from the intermediate divine beings, but are not created by them. They are produced from the same source as divine souls since they are also immortal. Poseidon, the first offspring of Zeus, is an archetypal form, not a specific form, that is, he is the genus that contains all species. Hera is the image of Poseidon and hence less powerful; where Poseidon is the producer of the forms of all things, Hera is the producer of primary matter. Through progressive generations these two produce lesser gods as well as all living mortal things, including humans. The human mind receives ideas of perfect forms but only in a tenuous shape, as shadows and phantoms of the divine forms; still, these ideas are sufficient for the work of humans in their own ‘creations’.96 In one of the surviving chapters on daily prayers, Plethon gives a summary of an earlier missing discussion of the place of human mind and soul in the cosmic scheme. Zeus divided the form of the rational soul into three; the stars, demons and humans; Poseidon divided the material universe into the four elements from which bodies are shaped as vehicles for souls. Fire is the vehicle for the souls of stars and the planets assisted Poseidon in the creation of mortal beings by attaching the specific souls to their bodies. Here Plethon carried forward the Gnostic and theurgical model of the seven planets as governors and archons. In the three-tiered frame of the cosmos, humans are partly mortal and partly immortal; our intermediate nature serves as a bridge between the celestial and the earthly. Humans behave in some respects like gods and in other respects like animals; like a god when he contemplates the harmonious good of Zeus’ creation, like an animal when he pursues bodily pleasures. Plethon argues that the union of mortal and immortal natures in human cannot be permanent since in that case an individual would not let go its deathless part and hence would never die. If the union were only momentary then at each individual’s death the universal harmony would be dissolved. Therefore, the union of mortal and immortal must be partial only, but constantly renewed; every time the body is destroyed the two parts go their separate ways, and the process is repeated through all eternity.97 95 96 97

Woodhouse 1986 pp. 328, 332; Tatakis 2003 pp. 251–2. Woodhouse 1986 pp. 339–41. Woodhouse 1986 pp. 349, 355; Tatakis 2003 pp. 252–3.

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Although Scholarios had nothing but contempt for Plethon’s conviction about soul-migration, his famous pupil Cardinal Bessarion used exactly this image in praise of his great teacher’s ideas. In a letter of consolation to Plethon’s sons after their father’s death, Bessarion said that he would not hesitate to state that the soul of Plato himself had chosen to dwell in Plethon’s body. Marsilio Ficino described him as ‘a second Plato’ and Platina also called him ‘the second after Plato’. In the closing paragraph of C. M. Woodhouse’s superb biography he says that Plethon remains difficult to place in the cultural history of Europe. He has been called the last of the Byzantines and first of the Neo-Hellenes … A more accurate description of Plethon might be the last of the ancient Hellenes and first of the modern Greeks. He remains, however, strangely unknown in the western world, which he helped indirectly to shape, by teaching the humanists not to be content with reading and translating Plato’s poetic and perennially fascinating dialogues as exercises in literature, but also to study and understand Platonism.98

98

Woodhouse 1986 pp. 364, 379.

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Chapter 5

Christian Mystical Ideas About the Soul’s Ascent (1) The emergence of mystical ideas from Neo-Platonism and Esotericism Our investigation of the emergence of Christian mystical ideas will focus on the introduction of various ‘new’ ideas, or (at least) the transformation of various ‘old’ ideas, ones taken from the Greek philosophical tradition and the Christian and Judaic milieu. For our purposes in describing the development of Christian mystical ideas about human nature and the soul’s ascent we will emphasize and follow several important themes: the direct rapport of human with God, the integration of the Holy Trinity in the psychic scheme, the interiority of human being, the unspeakable mystery of God, and God’s love as over-abundance. Christian thought in the fifth century witnessed the transformation of the Neo-Platonic worldview in which God relates to humans through intermediate causes into one in which there is a more direct rapport. Instead of a hierarchy of internally multiple principles there is a theophany of a single God who is multiplied through his own act of creation. The Neo-Platonic scheme situated intellect as the third stage of triadic emanation; this is superseded by a scheme where intellect is the basis of the process as a whole. The main reason for this change was the need, expressed most forcefully by Augustine, to integrate the Holy Trinity into the system. Augustine also articulated an entirely new concept of the human person: rather than the secrecy of a special revelation given to a privileged seer, Augustine recognized the secrets hidden in the depth of the human heart. On his view the real secrets are no longer those of God, but those of each individual, hidden in the ‘interior human’. This idea is echoed in a crucial thesis of Pseudo-Dionysius’ thought: what is inside is also what is hidden from the eyes, what cannot be seen or expressed in words. The mystery in Christian mysticism is no longer, as in the Greek ‘mystery religions’, something that should not be spoken about, it is something that cannot be entirely described in words, precisely because of its newness. The unspeakable, unsayable nature of God is the focus of the first great works of Christian mysticism, the texts ascribed to Pseudo-Dionysius. In inventing the idea of negative or apophatic theology, he laid out the terms according to which one could describe all that which God is not; however, the mystical way to God was not one that was hidden, at least not to those who sought it. The Christian Neo-Platonist Origen, in claiming that the Biblical ‘Song of Songs’ reveals God’s message about Christ’s love for the fallen soul, sounds another crucial theme in the emergence of Christian mystical imagery. He is perhaps the first to argue that erotic language is the most appropriate way of using speech to describe the positive experience of intimate rapport with God. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, God’s love for his creation is 207

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ecstatic love; eros signifies divine love whereby God is drawn out of himself and centers his being on the objects of his love. Dionysius adapted the Hellenistic idea of eros to the Christian demand that God love all things: from the Greek notion of eros as needy for the other, wanting in the other what it lacks in itself, the Christian mystics express the notion of love as an overflow of goodness, giving what one has to the other out of abundance.1 Stephen Gersh outlines some of the principal connections between Neo-Platonist thought and early Christian ideas in terms of the triadic scheme of remaining, procession and reversion: The later pagan Neoplatonists understand the structure of reality as a continuous series of causes and effects in which each term is related dynamically to the previous one: it ‘remains’ in its prior (manifests an element of identity with it), it ‘proceeds’ (manifests an element of difference), and it ‘reverts’ (strives to reestablish the identity). This relatively simple scheme is, however, not adequate to account for the Neoplatonists’ total view of reality, and it is therefore essential to consider a group of doctrines which derive from it. These derivative doctrines state that an effect may revert not only upon its cause but also upon itself, that causes can exhibit both an internal and an external activity, and that those principles which revert upon themselves have a semi-independence from their priors.

Although these theories are obscure, they are important for understanding the absorption of the pagan Neo-Platonic traditions by Christianity, for the gradual abandonment or modification of these characteristic doctrines of Syrianus and Proclus, in particular by Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor, reflects more clearly than anything else the transformation of the world-view in which God relates to man through a hierarchy of intermediate causes into one in which there is a more direct rapport. This evolution reaches its climax in the philosophy of Eriugena.2

The conception of reality as a whole in Pseudo-Dionysius’ system, according to Gersh again, is one where Christian Neoplatonists preserve the derivation of plurality from unity as a fundamental structural principle within their revised conception of the spiritual world, and in PseudoDionysius at least the two related notions of plurality ‘by remission’ and plurality ‘by procession’ continue to figure prominently. In Christian Neoplatonism, however, it is necessary to take account of a more complex overall picture in which plurality evolves through two interdependent spheres: that of divine attributes and that of the angelic world. In the former case, a monadic Being (the attribute of the Thearchy) is placed at the head of a co-ordinate plurality of beings within Life, Wisdom, and so on, and this constitutes a state of remission.3

The most important modification to the traditional Neo-Platonic structure of reality made by adherents of the school who also embraced Christianity is undoubtedly the 1 On these themes see McGinn 1991 pp. 119–27; Crouzel 1989 pp. 121–30; Nygren 1953 pp. 368–92. 2 Gersh 1978 p. 125; McGinn 1991 pp. 44–61; Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP pp. 457–72. 3 Gersh 1978 p. 175.

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reinterpretation of that scheme in terms of the distinct relational contexts: God as transcendent, God as immanent, and God as transcendent and immanent. The emphasis upon the second of these contexts in particular allows reality to be understood not as a hierarchy of self-determining and therefore internally multiplicative principles but as the theophany of a single self-determining God who is multiplied through his own act of creation. Of course, since the second context cannot be understood completely in isolation from the others, there is no question of replacing the original polytheism with a simple pantheism – but a crucial step has been taken away from the viewpoint where the First Principle remains immutably transcending all lower orders of being towards a position where it enters constructively into the creative process.4 The metaphor of emanation widely employed by pagan Neo-Platonists as an expression of causality is gradually replaced by images of blending or mixture. The main reason for the increased interest in the mixture imagery is the need to rationalize the central theological problem of divine-human incarnation. Further, the emanation picture of the causal process in terms of remaining, procession and reversion is superseded in Christian Neo-Platonism: it is no longer necessary to counter-balance the transcendence of a cause over an effect by diffusion or irradiation since transcendence is now viewed as only one aspect of a complex relation with immanence. Further, the interplay between these contexts means that the alternation of potency and act, and associated terms, can no longer be divorced from space and time. On the subjective side, the pagan scheme which located intellect as the third stage of triadic emanation is superseded by a scheme where intellect is the basis of the process as a whole. The main reason for this change is the need to integrate orthodox Trinitarian speculation into the system for, when the Christ-Logos is identified with the totality of forms pre-embraced in intellect, the latter can no longer be placed in a subordinate position. The interplay between the transcendent and immanent contexts with regard to concepts of mind leads to further innovations, for it is now possible to admit that intellect is dependent upon space and time for its cognitive activities. Among the Christian Neo-Platonic writers this difficult issue is lessened by their acceptance of the interplay between the three contexts in which a continuum from transcendence through space-time is established. This whole scheme is worked out by Eriugena who furnishes an interesting anticipation of the profoundest insights of Kant.5 Early Christian thinkers reworked the triadic scheme in order to accommodate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the triune nature of God, but in addition these same thinkers had to overcome an inherent esoteric dimension. G. G. Stroumsa describes this absorption and overcoming as follows: ‘After the disappearance of the early esoteric traditions, their vocabulary served as building blocks for the emerging mystical doctrines within Eastern and then Western Christianity … The birth of Christian mysticism is directly related to the contemporary development of a new conception of the person, a new approach to subjectivity and the inner man, in other words, to the birth of a Christian anthropology.’ This occurred at the same time as

4 5

Gersh 1978 p. 283. Gersh 1978 pp. 284–7.

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the disappearance of Christian esotericism and the defeat of dualist and mythologizing trends in early Christianity: Esotericism has a language of its own, which cultivates paradox, allusions, images, metaphors. This language is meant to reveal without revealing, to hide while at the same time hinting at or insinuating. Esotericism itself is paradoxical: the best way to keep a secret is to avoid making any allusions to it, or at least not to multiply them. With the disappearance of esoteric doctrines, we witness the transformation of Christian religious language and of its reference. The new imaginaire born in late antiquity was to dominate ways of expression and patterns of thought at least until the end of the Middle Ages. From the hidden nature of God alluded to in esoteric traditions, early Christian mysticism moved to emphasize mystical darkness. Darkness and shadow not only protect the hidden nature of God … they also emphasize and broaden the radical dichotomy between God and the world.6

Early Christian thinkers showed an attitude that did not accord with the view that the secrets to be learned were secrets of nature; rather, they were secrets of God, written in the Holy Scriptures. The decoding of the written word of God was, therefore, a task for interpretation and literary exegesis. Although this is similar to the view of contemporary Judaic ideas, the specific religious structure of Christianity provided some new elements. One of these was the notion that divine revelation had come in stages, not all at once: Jesus Christ had completed the OT revelation given to the prophets, and thus explained what until then had been an enigma. Irenaeus of Lyon said: ‘Every prophecy, before its accomplishment, is an enigma and contradiction. But when the moment came that the prediction was accomplished, it found its correct interpretation. That is why the law, when read by the Jews in our times, is similar to a myth since they do not possess what is the explanation of it all, namely, the coming of the son of a god as a human.’7 Stroumsa comments: in this striking text, Biblical prophecy is seemingly identified to Greek mantis and called an enigma, an ambiguous expression of divine will. By referring to the Jewish reading of the Bible as similar to that of pagan mythology, Irenaeus does not mean, of course, that it is false, but that it does not possess within itself the criterion of its own truth … Irenaeus conceives of the coming of Christ – and hence of the text of the NT – as the key to the proper understanding of the Hebrew Bible. This key is the very opposite of esotericism, since it is offered to all. But those who refuse it are unable to open the treasures of divine revelation, which remain sealed for them even when they read the OT.8

Two important things follow from this attitude: first, the very idea of sacred history results from the view that divine revelation has its own chronological unfolding. The sometimes baffling and/or obscure statements in the OT have their clear expression in the NT; as St. Paul said, ‘For we now see through a glass darkly, but then face to face’ (1Cor. 13:12). Second, the language of this revelation has a simple, even mean Stroumsa 1996 pp. 6–7. Irenaeus. Adv. Haer. IV.26.1; McGinn 1991 pp. 100–1; Louis Bouyer in Leclercq 1968 pp. 224–36. 8 Stroumsa 1996 pp. 94–5. 6 7

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style (euteleia), accessible to all hearers, in contrast to the elite style of Greek philosophy. In his Commentary on the Psalms, Origen states that the ‘darkness’ of the Holy Scriptures resembles many locked rooms in a single house. Each door has its own key but they are scattered about; it is hard work to find each door’s key. The keys, Origen says, are like seeds of truth, from which human knowledge grows.9 Bernard McGinn stresses Origen’s role in the emergence of genuine mystical thinking;10 all of his metaphors about the soul’s return to God are ‘subservient to the unifying symbol of the pascha, the passage achieved by and in Christ … There can be no doubt that his emphasis on itinerary had great influence on many later mystics.’ The Greek Fathers used the word mystikos not to describe their own experience or language, but rather to characterize the language of Scripture, as well as those Christian rituals in which the divine word is objectively present. The difficult journey by which the soul returns to God begins with the clear ‘bread’ of scriptural language, but can only advance through imbibing the ‘wine’ of its obscure and poetic speech, which intoxicates and draws upwards. When Origen interprets the Biblical reference to ecstasy (Num. 33:27) he describes it as ‘contemplation of amazement … when the mind is struck with amazement by the knowledge of great and marvelous things’.11 Origen claims that the Song of Songs is the central text where Scripture reveals the message about the love of the descending Christ for the fallen soul in words and images that are distinctly erotic. Origen stands ‘at the head of those Christian mystics who have argued that of all the positive or cataphatic modes of speaking available to the mystic, erotic language is the most appropriate way of using speech to surpass itself’.12 One of Stroumsa’s main arguments is that early Christian thought inherited various esoteric traditions from Judaism, and not from Hellenistic mystery religions. These Judaic traditions are reflected in three different ways: esoteric texts, secret oral traditions and esoteric Biblical exegesis. In the first Christian centuries, the boundaries within the communities were redefined in terms of supererogation rather than as special knowledge of an elite group. Rather than the recipients of a private revelation, theologians and monks defined themselves and were perceived as virtuosi able to reach even deeper levels of faith. Rather than the secrecy of a special revelation, one came to recognize the secrets hidden in the depth of the heart. Humility became the new virtue necessary in order to enhance such hidden dimensions. The change of attitude toward esoteric traditions reflects the process of interiorization typical of late antiquity.13

It is possible to trace the intellectual and practical transition from esoteric doctrines, as outlined, for example in our discussion of Gnostic teachings, to the emergence of mystical patterns of thought. In this process, Stroumsa argues, the very meaning of Stroumsa 1996 p. 108; Crouzel 1989 pp. 69–78. McGinn 1991 pp. 116–18; see also Louis Bouyer in Leclercq 1968 pp. 283–302. Three of the four sections in this long chapter could not have been put together without reference to the monumental achievement of Bernard McGinn in his multi-volume The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, New York: Crossroads, 1991–2005. 11 Origen, Homilies on Numbers 27:12. 12 McGinn 1991 p. 118; Crouzel 1989 pp. 121–30. 13 Stroumsa 1996 p. 108. 9

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‘inner beliefs’, an individual’s private thoughts and desires, was transformed: ‘The secret traditions were thoroughly interiorized, and the two-tiered teaching, directed to two levels of understanding among two distinct classes of believers, became spiritualized in a gradual way, according to the ability and powers of each individual, but in which the highest levels were, at least in principle, open to all.’14 Scholars have long recognized that there is an esoteric element in Christ’s teachings; according to one view, this esoteric tradition can be traced to the influence of Greek mystery cults; according to another, it developed under the influence of Jewish mystical thought, especially the hekhalot literature.15 Stroumsa argues that it is also important to distinguish between esoteric cultic practices and esoteric teachings: ‘The conjunction of these two trends, i.e. the occultation of the Jewish dimension of early Christian esotericism together with the focus on cultic attitudes rather than on the intellectual content of doctrines, had serious consequences.’ Most recent scholarly studies have paid attention to the cultic area at the expense of ignoring, or at least minimizing, the effects of esoteric teachings. In his catechism, Cyril of Jerusalem expresses the importance of esoteric teachings quite clearly: ‘To hear the Gospel is not permitted to all; but the glory of the Gospel is reserved for Christ’s true children only. Therefore, the Lord spoke in parables to those who could not hear; but to the disciples he explained the parables in private.’ Cyril unequivocally segregates those who are true believers, to whom the mysteries will be explained, and those who are not believers, to whom things are said in a veiled way. Basil the Great also makes the same segregation, along a divide between oral and written teachings: ‘Among the doctrines and messages kept in the church, some were received from written teachings, and some were transmitted secretly from the apostolic tradition.’ In his Miscellanies, Clement of Alexandria repeatedly stresses the importance of Christian secret teachings: in order to protect the truth from those who are unable to grasp it the message must be hidden. Stroumsa declares that ‘esoteric trends did exist in early Christianity, and that their direct roots are to be found more in the Jewish heritage of Christianity than in the broader pagan and Hellenic religious milieu’.16 The inherent paradox in this point of view is that Christian salvation is meant to be available to everyone, a democratic universal redemption in sharp contrast to the elitism of Greek mystery cults. Stroumsa says that what is involved in the early centuries of the Christian Church is nothing less than a complete remodeling of the human person: Man had been created in God’s image, the Son of God had been incarnated, and [he] had been resurrected from the dead. These three central tenets of Christian theology entailed the attribution of a new nobility to the human body. In some ways, this transformation encouraged the perception of body and soul as a single unit, more clearly than had been 14 Stroumsa 1996 p. 109; ‘two levels of teaching’ is similar to Hermetic and Gnostic pedagogy. 15 Brief summary in McGinn 1991 pp. 20–22, citing the primary works of Gershom Scholem, Joseph Dan and Louis Jacobs, and now Moshe Idel. 16 Stroumsa 1996 pp. 151–6; on Clement’s significant contribution to the emergence of Christian mystical ideas, esp. the use of ‘divine spark’, ‘vision of god’ and ‘apathy’, see McGinn 1991 pp. 101–8.

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the case in Greek thought. The new stature of the human person fostered the development of a refined sensitivity to the individual subject, capable at once of damning sin and of saving faith. The ‘interior man’ mentioned in Paul’s letters had achieved a new religious importance in the writings of Church Fathers. Thus did early Christian thought foster the interiorization of religious attitudes. Feelings became more concrete than ever before.17

The single most important figure in this process is Augustine: for him, the real secrets are no longer those of God, but those of each individual, hidden in the depths of the heart: ‘Hence, a new vocabulary is developed, one of the “interior senses”, through which one can experience the divinity, in particular through spiritual visions. The significance of such metaphors of “interiorization” … lies in the fact that they are parallel to those of esotericism: what is inside is also what is hidden from the eyes, what cannot be seen, or expressed in words, be it invisible or unspeakable.’18 The NT itself abounds in references to ‘mysterious’ teachings, though much scholarly debate centers around the extent to which these texts should be read in the context of Jewish esotericism. To the twelve apostles Christ said, ‘to you the mystery of the kingdom of God has been given; but to those who are outside, everything comes by way of parables, so that they may look and look, but see nothing; they may hear and hear, but understand nothing; otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven’ (Mark 4:10–12). And St. Paul famously said that ‘we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God’ (1Cor. 2:7). It seems quite clear in these and other passages that there is one set of doctrines given to an inner, secret group, and another set given to everyone else.19 One of the most interesting documents about the earliest post-NT uses of ‘mystery’ occurs in the context of Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Ephesians (early second century) when he mentions Mary’s virginity: ‘her giving birth was hidden from the Prince of this world [Satan], as was also the death of the Lord. Three mysteries of a cry (tria musteria krauges) were wrought in the stillness of God.’20 Stroumsa comments on this that ‘‘‘mystery” is here used in a highly idiosyncratic way since the term refers to events which are not kept secret. On the contrary, they represent the apex of God’s new revelation to mankind. Hence, these events are highly visible although, through cunning of sorts, they remain hidden from Satan. The latter hopes to prolong his reign upon earth by preventing the salvation.’

17 Stroumsa 1996 p. 159; on the Pauline concept of the ‘inner human’, see esp. Hans Dieter Betz, ‘The Concept of the “Inner Human Being” in the Anthropology of Paul’, in New Test Studies, 46 (2000), pp. 315–41; Walter Burkert, ‘Towards Plato and Paul: The “Inner” Human Being’, in A. Y. Collins (ed.) Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998. 18 Stroumsa 1996 pp. 159–60; and Stroumsa 1993 pp. 168–82; on the immense influence of Augustine’s ideas on mystical theology and the soul’s ascent see McGinn 1991 pp. 228–62; Louis Bouyer in Leclercq 1968 pp. 467–94. 19 On the word mysterion in the NT see esp. G. Bornkamm in TDNT vol. 4 pp. 802–28; D. H. Wiens in ANRW 23.2 (1980) pp. 1248–83. 20 On Ignatius of Antioch, McGinn 1991 pp. 80–82; Louis Bouyer in Leclercq 1968 pp. 194–204.

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This strange interpretation of the events surrounding Christ’s descent to earth and ascent to heaven also appears in some Gnostic cosmogonic myths. In the ‘Apocalypse of Adam’, for example, in his eventual descent to our earth, the Savior must hide himself in order to escape the evil intentions of archons who guard the gates of the many-leveled heavens.21 For Ignatius, the mystery of the savior’s appearance is the consequence of the way he was manifest in our world: ‘A star shone in heaven beyond all the stars, and its light was unspeakable (aneklal¯eton) and its newness caused astonishment … And there was perplexity about whence came this new thing, so unlike them.’ In limpid words Stroumsa states what marks out the radical change in the concept of mystery between the Judaic (and Hellenic) context and the early Christian context: ‘The “mystery” is not any more something that should not be spoken about, it is something that cannot be entirely described in words, precisely because of its newness.’22 The unspeakable, unsayable nature of God is the focus of the first great works of Christian mysticism, the texts ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite. When he invented the idea of negative or apophatic theology, this ‘mysterious’ author laid out the terms according to which one could describe all that which God is not, but the mystical way to God was one that was not hidden, at least not to those who sought it. In the early fifth century there appeared one of the first and most influential of all Christian mystical thinkers, one who has never had anything but a false name – Pseudo-Dionysius.23 The author purported to be the first-century convert of St. Paul on the Areopagus in Athens, according to the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 17:34). Although he had never been mentioned by any writer during the previous four centuries, when his works were first referred to in the Church Colloquy in 532, and by Maximus the Confessor not long after, his self-attribution of first-century apostolic authority was accepted. Not only has his identity remained unknown for 1500 years – despite repeated scholarly efforts to resolve the mystery – his writings are also baffling and mysterious. The extant (and complete) Dionysian texts include the Celestial Hierarchy, the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, the Divine Names, the very brief Mystical Theology and ten Letters. McGinn says that they are ‘written in an idiosyncratic, almost incantatory style filled with neologisms [that are] difficult to grasp and controversial’.24 In the Renaissance, humanists such as Valla and Erasmus had begun to doubt these texts’ quasi-apostolic status and first-century setting. Martin Luther attacked the ‘false’ Dionysius when he declared that ‘Dionysius is most pernicious; he Platonizes more than he Christianizes’. In contrast Vladimir Lossky states that he is ‘a Christian thinker disguised as a Neo-Platonist, a theologian very much aware of his task, which was to conquer the ground held by Neo-Platonism by becoming master of its philosophical method’.25 Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the greatest modern interpreters of Dionysius, says that ‘his NHL VI.5, 1970 pp. 277–86; see Stroumsa 1984 pp. 82–88. Stroumsa 1996 p. 162; see also Karl Prümm in NCE vol. X pp. 153–64. 23 For the background and setting of Pseudo-Dionysius’ work see Gersh in Marenbon 1998 pp. 120–32; Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 pp. 457–72; Louth 1989 pp. 1–17; McGinn 1991 pp. 157–65. 24 McGinn 1991 p. 158. 25 Lossky 1963 p. 100. 21 22

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Christianizing of the Neo-Platonic milieu [is] a side-effect of his own properly theological endeavor [which is] the clear, realized synthesis of truth and beauty, of theology and aesthetics’.26 Bernard McGinn and Andrew Louth stress that an adequate understanding of Dionysius’ mystical teachings must be based in the liturgical setting of these texts. The soul’s ascent that returns each human to union with God is not a solo flight, but part of a process involving three essential aspects of the Christian church: ‘(1) the proper understanding of the “holy oracles” (the Bible), (2) in and through the action of the sacred rituals, (3) performed or received according to one’s place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Evagrius had insisted, “if you are a theologian then you pray”, understanding prayer primarily as an individual contemplative exercise. Dionysius would claim that to be a true theologian is to pray liturgically: “the whole theology of the Areopagite is for him a single, sacred liturgical act”.’27 Dionysius’ triadic scheme assigns a new meaning to anag¯og¯e (uplifting), making it more than just a metaphor for a spiritual process. ‘Given [his] conception of the whole created hierarchy as an ordered manifestation of thearchy, one does not really ascend to God by passing through various levels of reality as much as one appropriates the significance of the levels as a means of attaining inner union with their source, the hidden God.’28 Augustine had insisted that for the soul to go above or beyond was in truth for the soul to go deep within. Dionysius would claim that the soul’s uplifting was more like what G. M. Hopkins called ‘instressing’: this connotes the soul’s spiritual energy caused by and in cooperation with God’s creative activity: ‘To instress the mind is to spiritualize a sensory image, turning a simple apprehension into a judgment.’29 There is more to Dionysius’ advocacy of mystical union than the liturgical setting of prayers and rituals; one dimension of the soul’s progress to the dark cloud of unknowing is indeed experiential. In this respect, Dionysius agrees with Philo Judaeus and Gregory of Nyssa in considering Moses’ experience on Mt. Sinai to be an exemplum of mystical encounter. Moses first undergoes purification (katharsis), then attains contemplation (the¯oria), and finally union (hen¯osis) with God. Dionysius states that ‘here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive, wrapped entirely in the intangible and invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything. Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united by a completely unknowing inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing’ (MT I.3). However, McGinn cautions that his use of ‘this triple pattern of purification, illumination, and perfection or union, must be viewed according to his understanding of the operation of the diverse modes of theology in the life of the believer’. Letter IX to Titus the Bishop clearly states this opinion: ‘Theological tradition has a dual aspect, the ineffable and mysterious on the one hand, the open and more evident on the other. The one resorts to symbolism and Von Balthasar 1984 vol. II pp. 148–9. McGinn 1991 p. 170; Louth 1989 pp. 25–30. 28 McGinn 1991 p. 171. 29 McGinn’s happy choice of Hopkins’ poetic idea, 1991 p. 171, p. 392 note 201; quote from Chris Devlin, The Sermons and Devotional Writings of G. M. Hopkins, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 283–4. 26 27

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involves initiation; the other is philosophical and employs the method of demonstration … The one uses persuasion and imposes the truth of what is asserted; the other acts and by means of a mystery which cannot be taught, it puts the soul firmly in the presence of God.’30 The same letter expresses important ideas about the relation of images of soul and images of body in terms of an elaborate scheme the author calls ‘symbolic theology’. He says that the OT supplies a great variety of sacred symbols used to reveal God, but ‘if one looks at them from the outside they seem filled with an incredible and contrived fantasy’ (1104c). These symbols are used, Dionysius argues, so that ‘multiple shapes and forms [may] be given to what has neither shape nor form … To enable the one capable of seeing the beauty hidden within these images to find that they are truly mysterious, appropriate to God, and filled with great theological light’ (1105b). The scheme of divine symbols prevents outsiders from usurping privileged knowledge, but once the correct interpretive methods are known, the initiates will be able to grasp these symbols and then discern the hidden truth. God has used these symbols, Dionysius says, so that ‘the most sacred things are not easily handled by the profane but are revealed instead to the real lovers of holiness’ (1105c). All things in God’s plan have their own purpose, especially the Bible’s use of dissimilar similarities (137d). The author explains the meaning of this paradoxical notion thus: there are two reasons for creating types for the typeless, for giving shape to what is actually without shape. First, we lack the ability to be directly raised up to conceptual contemplations. We need our own upliftings that come naturally to us and which can raise before us the permitted forms of the marvelous and unformed sights. Second, it is most fitting to the mysterious passages of scripture that the sacred and hidden truth about the celestial intelligences be concealed through the inexpressible and the sacred, and hence be inaccessible to the masses (140a).

The divine symbols have a double rationale, according to Paul Rorem: to reveal and to conceal, to accommodate revelation to the capacities of the receivers and to keep it secret from the outsiders. In using perceptible symbols, revelation is accommodated to the cognitive abilities of the faithful, who are restricted to the perceptible dimensions of space and time as the starting points for spiritual knowledge. To the initiated, the symbols serve as the very guide or way in, or up, to their interpretation. But to the uninitiated, the absurd exterior of the symbolic blocks their entrance to the inner meanings. They may find the absurd symbols laughable, which means that the perceptible exterior has accomplished its task of concealment. Thus the need for ‘scriptural imagery’ and ‘humble forms to represent the divine and holy ranks’ is not only for accommodation to the faithful but also for concealment from the profane.31

Hence, one must learn how to interpret the dissimilar similarities, that is, how to transfer attributes such as anger or desire from the lower sensible realm to the higher intelligible realm. Without this transfer, attributes such as ignorance would be completely inappropriate to heavenly beings and would be nonsense from the 30 31

Quoted in Rorem 1993 p. 25. Rorem 1993 p. 54.

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reader’s point of view. Once the adjustment has been made then ignorance can be properly understood and show something about angels. Dionysius says that in animals lack of intelligence and perception is in fact a deficiency of reason. But in regard to immaterial, intelligent beings one can say that they are ignorant, since they far surpass our discursive and bodily reason (144b). It is true of both the heavenly and the human hierarchies that God bestows the light of truth passed down the serried ranks in order to uplift them all to the imitation of God, and hence to union with God: ‘The goal of hierarchy then is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with him … Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God’ (165a). For every rank and member, ‘perfection consists in this, that it is uplifted to imitate God as far as possible’ (165b). This concept of hierarchy, which Dionysius invented, assumes that God’s attributes and activities are imitated by all members of the hierarchy, each in its own manner of being. The author presents this doctrine in terms of three powers: ‘Therefore, when the hierarchic order lays it on some to be purified and on others to do the purifying, on some to receive illumination and on others to cause illumination, on some to be perfected and on others to bring about perfection, each will actually imitate God in the way suitable to whatever role it has’ (165c). In contrast with the Neo-Platonic hierarchies, Sheldon-Williams says, Dionysian hierarchies are not potent in their own right but are the agents of the potency of God, who is not only the sole Efficient, but also the sole Final Cause, conditioning a return which is the same for all levels of beings, the sensible world, men, and angels. They are part of the material of the Symbolic Theology, the last and most similar of the symbols to be rejected before the soul goes out of herself and enters the Divine Dark in ecstasy.32

At this point the author introduces one of the most long-lasting schemes of mystical ascent in the Christian tradition: the three stages of purification (or purgation), illumination (or contemplation), and perfection (or union). Unlike the mystery cults and Neo-Platonic discipline, these three stages are not a matriculation in moral cleansing; rather, all three powers concern spiritual knowledge or understanding. ‘The three activities of purifying, illuminating and perfecting are primarily God’s activities’, Rorem informs us. ‘The divinity first purifies, then illuminates, then perfects … God does these things by means of the hierarchies, and they correspondingly perform their purification, illumination, and perfection in imitation of the divine, indeed as an extension of the divine activity … A hierarchy is both similar to and dissimilar to God, similar in that it shares this trio of powers, dissimilar to God in that as an effect it falls incomparably short of its cause.’33 It is the triadic structure of the hierarchies that administer the threefold movement that purifies, illumines and leads to union. In each triadic rank, the lowest order is purificatory or stands in need of purification; the middle order illumines or stands in need of illumination; the highest order leads to perfection or is led to perfection: The point of this structure seems threefold. First of all, the movement to union with God has three moments: purification is the foundation; this leads to illumination, which itself 32 33

Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 pp. 471–2. Rorem 1993 p. 58.

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culminates in union or perfection. Secondly, purification, illumination and union are operations that happen to us: we are purified, we are illuminated, we are perfected. Third, we do not achieve this movement toward God ourselves, by our own efforts; we depend on God’s gracious movement towards us. [His] understanding of hierarchy is an expression of his deep sense of God’s active search for mankind and gentle persuasion of fallen men.34

God creates the world out of his goodness and hence God’s love is essentially ecstatic, that is, the one who loves is drawn out of himself and centers his being on the object of love. ‘Love’, he says, ‘is a power that unites and binds and effects an indissoluble fusion in the beautiful and good’ (709c). The notion of divine providential love is found in Proclus, but not the idea of God’s ecstatic love. John Rist says that ‘the first person to combine the Neoplatonic idea about God as Eros with the notion of God’s ecstasy is Pseudo-Dionysius, and it would seem merely perverse to deny that Dionysius’ Christianity is the direct cause of this adaptation. Dionysius has in fact adapted Eros to the Christian demand that God love all things, and he is the first person to do so’.35 Louth sums up the change of meaning nicely: from the Greek notion of eros as needy for the other, lacking what the other has and wanting it, it changes to the notion of love as an overflow of goodness, giving what one has to the other out of abundance.36 The last chapter of the Divine Names leads the reader back to the One, the source and goal of all things, whose love overflows in creative activity; it also leads the reader to the synoptic statement of the Mystical Theology. In the Divine Names, Dionysius’ principal concern is to show the many ways in which properties ascribed to God, such as ‘good’, ‘wise’, ‘life’, and so forth, are manifest in the levels of the hierarchy of beings. The three-stage Neo-Platonic process of procession, remaining and return is applied to the cosmic triad of being, life and mind and elicits characteristic features of both intelligible beings (angels) and ensouled beings (humans). He compares the surpassing of beings by the infinity beyond beings, and the surpassing of intelligences by the oneness that is beyond intelligence with the soul’s cognitive capacities. He says that the senses can neither grasp nor perceive the things of the mind, just as idea and shape cannot take in the simple and shapeless, just as corporeal form cannot lay hold of the intangible and incorporeal. The inscrutable one is beyond the reach of every rational process, nor can any words reach that which cannot be expressed (588b). However, the divine goodness does reach down, granting enlightenment proportionate to each being, and thereby draws ‘sacred minds’ (that is, the righteous souls) upward to contemplation, participation and becoming like god (588d). The divine enlightenment the author extols is in accord with ‘initiation in the hidden tradition of our inspired teachers’. Our best efforts to understand these truths must contend with them ‘wrapped in sacred veils’ (that is, theological symbols) with which scripture and liturgy ‘cover the truths of the mind with things derived from the realm of the senses’ (592a). These theological symbols are analogies by means of which we are raised upward toward the truth of the mind’s vision – analogia leads to anagog¯e and then to 34 35 36

Louth 1989 pp. 40–41; Spearritt 1975 pp. 51–60. Rist 1966 p. 238. Louth 1989 pp. 94– 5.

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theoria. In doing so we abandon all our human-shaped ideas about the divine, and suspend our mental activity. Through this movement we approach the divine nature wherein pre-exist the goals of all knowledge; these goals can be grasped neither by intellect nor by speech nor by contemplation. It contains within itself the bounds of every natural knowledge and energy; it is beyond even the celestial minds (angels). If all knowledge is about that which is, that is, limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge (592d). The unity beyond being surpasses not only the union of corporeal things, but also the union of souls and even minds. In a pure manner, minds possess god-like lights, but they come to achieve enlightenment through proportional participation in the divine, that is, proportionate to their kind in the divine hierarchy (641c). Everything revealed to human souls is known only by way of whatever share in those truths is granted to humans. When humans call God by the names ‘life’, ‘being’, ‘light’, and ‘word’, our minds grasp nothing other than certain activities apparent to us, activities which make-like-god, cause being, bear life and give wisdom. When we reflect on God’s hidden nature and struggle to break free of our minds’ workings, we witness no deifying, no life, no being, which bears any real likeness to the absolute transcendent cause of all things (654a–b). Dionysius seems to admit an exception to his otherwise rigorous delimitation of the stepwise ascent through the various level of not-knowing. He says that his teacher Hierotheus (who may or may not be a disguise for Proclus), in addition to what he learned through laborious study of the Scriptures, came to know things through ‘a more mysterious inspiration, not only learning but also experiencing the divine things’. His teacher had a ‘sympathy’ with such things (very much a term in Proclus’ account of theurgy), and was ‘perfected in a mysterious union with them and in a faith in them which was independent of any education’ (648b). Later, he ranks his teacher with the apostles James and Peter; ‘he was so caught up, so taken out of himself, experiencing communion with the things praised’37 (684a). The very phrase ‘caught up’ indicates the rapture or transport of ecstatic ascent initiated by God, not the mystic-seeker. Under the name ‘good’, God is like the sun, since the sun exercises no rational process, no act of choice, yet its existence gives light to all things. The good exists far above the sun, an archetype superior to its dull image, sending rays to all things with the capacity to receive them (693b). The divine rays are responsible for all intelligible and intelligent beings, for every power and activity.38 Further down the hierarchy, human souls also derive their being from the transcendent good. Souls have intelligence, immortality and existence; as such they can strive toward angelic life. With angels as their leaders, souls can be uplifted to the source of all good things, each according to his measure (696c). God as good is the light of the mind because it illumines the mind of every super-celestial being, and because it drives ignorance and error from human souls. It clears away the fog of ignorance from the 37 The editor identifies ‘communion experience’ with the Eucharistic ceremony and hence suggests that this statement indicates a liturgical setting, Complete Works 1987 p. 70 note 131. 38 The idea of divine ‘rays’ is vigorously taken up in the Middle Ages by Roger Bacon and Grosseteste.

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mind’s eye and stirs and unwraps those covered over by the burden of darkness. God as good deals out light in ever-increasing amounts as the soul’s longing for enlightenment increases: ‘It gathers together and supremely anticipates in itself the authority of all illuminative power, being indeed the source of light’ (701a). The movement of divine intelligent beings traces three paths: first, they move in a circle while they are one with the illuminations which emerge from the good. Second, they move in a straight line when they come to offer guidance to all those below them. And finally, they move in a spiral insofar as they continue to remain as they are while turning around the good. The human soul has its own type of movement as well: first, in a circle when it turns within itself and away from what is outside, and thus there occurs an inner concentration of its intellectual powers. Its fixed revolution causes it to return from the multiplicity of external things to gather in upon itself and then to join those who are in a more powerful union with higher things. The centrifugal movement coupled with the centripetal movement brings the soul to the good and beautiful, which itself is beyond all things. But when the soul receives knowledge by way of discursive reasoning, in mixed and changeable activities, it moves in a spiral fashion. When the soul proceeds to the things around it and is uplifted from them to a simple and united vision it moves in a straight line (705a–b). Letters, symbols and words are used in coming to understand divine things because at that stage the soul makes use of sensory images. When our souls are moved by intelligent energies in the direction of intellectual things, then the senses are no longer needed. The intelligent powers in turn are abandoned when the soul becomes divinized; these powers ‘concentrate sightlessly and through an unknowing union on the rays of unapproachable light’39 (708d). Although angels are entirely mind, they are not the only beings with mind: the human mind, in its capacity to think, looks upon conceptual things, and in its unity it is joined to things beyond itself (865c). Through their possession of reason human souls circle in discourse around the truth of things. But their cognitive activities are fragmented and varied since their ‘objects’ are not multiple instances of unified things; angels’ cognitive activities are more unified because their ‘objects’ are unities. However, through the use of reason human minds are able to concentrate the many into one, and hence in their own fashion they are worthy of ideas like those of the angels (868b–c). Human sense perception, Dionysius suggests, can be described as ‘echoes of wisdom’; earlier he had said that from God as Life, every living thing has life ‘down to the last echo’ (856b). This is a curious choice of words, quite distinct from the ‘light’ imagery; an echo endures even when the sound-source is no longer present; an echo might proceed from the word of God, or God as ‘word’. In addition, an echo might be thought of as a response to a ‘call’ or ‘summons’: when he speaks of humans’ composite nature, he says that God as Life has granted to humans whatever angelic life they are able to absorb: ‘Overflowing with love for human kind, it returns to us and calls us back to itself after we have strayed and …

39 This passage appears to support the interpretation that the three types of soul-movement are analogous to three forms of theology: symbolical, mystical and discursive, Complete Works 1987 p. 78 note 146; my thanks to Father Placid Spearritt for his guidance in coming to understand these difficult ideas.

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has promised us that it will transform what we are … and will bring us to perfect life and immortality’40 (856d). Dionysius’ views about the human soul and its place in the hierarchical scheme are inextricably intertwined with his negative theology, as the references to the human soul’s reaching through ignorance and darkness indicate. Jan Vanneste has shown the crucial importance of three terms for understanding Dionysius’ apophatic approach – aphairesis, agn¯osia and hen¯osis.41 The first two terms pertain to apophatic theology in the proper sense, whereas the third term belongs to mystical theology as its goal, that is, what lies beyond both affirmation and negation. The first term aphairesis is best defined as ‘clearing aside’ or ‘negative abstraction’, that is, the conceptual analogue to the employment of dissimilar symbols found through consciously stripping away all definite predicates from God, since none of them does justice to his transcendent perfection. This ‘stripping away’ leads to the second term agn¯osia, ‘unknowing’, but this is not something that has a definite content. Rather, it is more like a state of mind (or an attunement), it is the subjective correlate of the objective state of affairs in which God cannot be known. It can only be spoken about through paradoxical assertions of contraries; unknowing is the only true knowledge one can have of God. As Dionysius himself says, ‘and this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known’ (Letter I). Bernard McGinn succinctly states the relation between darkness and unknowing: From the world of symbolic discourse Dionysius takes the language of darkness (skotos, gnophos), cloud (nephel¯e), and silence (sig¯e) drawn from the account of Moses’ ascent to meet God on Sinai (Ex 19:16-20) to provide metaphorical descriptions of attaining the hidden God. Moses is the model of one who, breaking free of all seeing, ‘plunges into the truly mystical darkness of unknowing’ … We should note that the mysticism of darkness is not found among pagan Neoplatonists. Indeed, we may even surmise that this distinctively Biblical apophaticism serves as critique of late antique pagan theology with its heavy use of light imagery. Although the Areopagite did not invent the theme of divine darkness, and although he uses it in a primarily objective sense to signify God’s utter unknowability, the fact that this unknowability indicates that we attain him only through unknowing (agn¯osia) means that later, more subjective uses of the Dionysian language … are not necessarily illegitimate.42

Mystical union with God should not be construed as something separate from the liturgical context within which Dionysius insists that the believer achieves his goal. He says that ‘every sacredly initiating operation draws our fragmented lives together in a one-like divinization. It forges a divine unity out of the divisions among us. It grants us communion and union with the one’ (EH 3.1). When he applies this sort of language to Moses’ encounter with Jehovah, Dionysius speaks of being ‘supremely united by a completely unknowable inactivity of all knowledge’ (MT 40 Dionysius discusses various views of post-mortem existence in EH Chapter VII, 553c–d, 565b. 41 Jan Vanneste, Le mystère de Dieu. Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959 pp. 218–24. 42 McGinn 1991 p. 175, following the suggestion of H.-C. Puech, ‘La ténèbre mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys l’Areopagite’, En quete de la Gnose, Paris: Gallimard, 1978 p. 140.

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1.3). Although he does not offer any details on the character of this mystical union he does hold that union should be thought of in terms of theosis: ‘this consists of being as much as possible like and in union with God’ (EH 1.3). Hence, divinization is the gift that God bestows on beings endowed with reason and intelligence through their participation in the hierarchies: ‘we see our human hierarchy … pluralized in a great variety of perceptible symbols lifting us upward in a hierarchical way until we are brought as far as can be into the unity of divinization’ (EH 1.2).43 Dionysius’ vocabulary is quite unusual when he describes God as ‘the thearchy of those being divinized’ (DN 1.3), but his doctrine agrees with his Christian predecessors on a crucial issue separating Christian mystical theory from its pagan contemporaries: whether the soul is naturally divine. Even in Origen and Evagrius … there is a crucial, if not always well-articulated, distinction between real divinity and loaned divinization. Dionysius … has no place for a prior creation. Thus, his view of the relation of thearchy and the soul as a part of hierarchy is both greater and less than the predialectical Christian mystics; the soul is divine only as a manifestation and is unified and divinized only by God’s uplifting eros. Divinization is a gift, not a birthright.44

The most significant achievement of this mysterious author is that for the first time Christian theology became explicitly mystical; he created the vocabulary that enabled later Christian mystics to describe their experience of God’s presence. Despite the overwhelming influence of Dionysian ideas on writers such as Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing and many others, there has never been anything like Dionysian theology. McGinn says that this is because from the start his writings were treated much like the Bible itself – as a divine message filled with inner life and mysterious meaning which could never be exhausted, but which needed to be reread in each generation and reinterpreted in the light of new issues. He himself, however, would probably have not been unhappy with this hermeneutical flexibility, since no one knew better the limits of words in the face of the true mystery: ‘what is to be said of it remains unsayable; what is to be understood of it remains unknowable’.45

In the mid-sixth century, Maximus the Confessor was one of the most important figures to establish the sub-apostolic legitimacy of the Areopagite’s works. According to Maximus,46 the Holy Church is also an image and figure of the soul considered in itself. The soul in general consists of an intellectual and a vital faculty, the former moved freely by the will, the latter without choice according to its nature. The contemplative power belongs to the intellect and is called the mind, the active power belongs to the vital faculty and is called the reason; where the mind moves the former, reason moves the latter. The mind is properly called wisdom when it directs its movements toward God, the reason is called prudence when it unites to McGinn 1991 p. 178. And again McGinn 1991 p. 178. 45 McGinn 1991 p. 182. 46 This section continues the discussion in the first section of the chapter on Byzantine ideas; in general, see I. H. Dalmais in DSA vol. 10 cols. 836–42. 43 44

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the mind the activities of the vital faculty; in doing so ‘it shows that it [reason] is not different from it [mind] but bears the same divine image by virtue as does the mind’. This reminds one of the distinctive way in which both Zurvanite and Hermetic doctrine separate the powers of mind and reason, assigning them different properties in the divine scheme, something not characteristic of late Greek thought which denominates reason as the proper power of soul. ‘This image’, he continues, is naturally shared by both mind and reason as the soul was previously proven to consist of mind and reason, because it is intellectual and rational, and the vital faculty is equally evident in both mind and reason … and thus shared by both. By means of it [the divine image?] the mind … increasing in the habit of contemplation in the ineffable silence and knowledge, is led to the truth by enduring and incomprehensible knowledge. [SW pp. 188–89]

The editor here notes that this paradoxical expression signifies that mystical gnosis is beyond the conceptual realm: ‘For its part, the reason … ends up at the good by means of faith in the active engagement of its body in virtue. In both these things consist the true science of divine and human natures, the truly secure knowledge and term of all divine wisdom according to Christians.’ Maximus apportions the most characteristic properties of mind and reason as follows: ‘to the soul belongs, through its intellectual aspect (mind), wisdom, contemplation, knowledge, and enduring knowledge, all directed at the truth; through its rational reason belongs reasoning, prudence, action, virtue, and faith, all directed toward the good’. In conclusion he asserts that these five pairs are understood in the single pair (truth and goodness) that signifies God; when the soul is moved by them to make progress it becomes united to God by imitating what is immutable and beneficent in his essence and activity. The five pairs are like ten strings on the spiritual lyre of the soul when reason resounds in harmony with the spirit (SW pp. 190–91). Each of these five pairs is also a step on the path toward union with the divine and the achieved science of divine things is manifest in the Holy Church: ‘Whoever has been fortunate enough to have been spiritually and wisely initiated into what is accomplished in church has rendered his soul divine and a veritable church of God.’ Maximus also employs the standard Greek analogy that the whole world is a human in large scale and a human body-soul composite is a world in small scale. The soul displays the place of intelligible things, and the body displays the place of sensible things. Intelligible things are the soul of sensible things, and sensible things are the body of intelligible things. The soul is in the body as the intelligible realm is in the sensible realm, the sensible is sustained by the intelligible as the body is sustained by the soul. At the second coming of Christ, humans will have attained the condition of non-corruption; the body will become like the soul, sensible things like intelligible things in their dignity and glory, ‘for the unique divine power will manifest itself in all things in a vivid and active presence proper to each one, and will by itself preserve unbroken for endless ages the bond of unity’ (SW pp. 195–97). The radical model of divine hierarchies, the soul’s centrifugal motion, and the darkness of God in unknowing reaches its greatest expression three centuries later in the work of John Scotus Eriugena (c.810–70). Eriugena developed an

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extraordinary speculative system which made constructive use of the Church Fathers, Christian Neo-Platonism, and the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, extended into what one could call negative anthropology. Dermot Moran says that Eriugena’s astonishing philosophical work is ‘a daring and innovative synthesis of Latin logical procedure with the mystical outlook of the Greek Christian Platonists’.47 Eriugena played a significant role in the ninth-century renaissance of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charles the Great; Charles the Bald was ‘a young and shrewd monarch who was an enthusiastic promoter of learning in his kingdom, under whose direction the Carolingian renaissance reached its zenith’. Eriugena often attended Charles’ court where he mingled with influential writers, musicians and teachers. Along with his contemporary Gottschalk, he was the first to use Boethius’ Sacred Works to develop theological argument based on grammatical analyses, made important advances in the pedagogy of the liberal arts, promoted musical theory and argued for a model of planetary motion which might have anticipated that of Tycho Brahe 700 years later. Amongst his many specific tracts and translations, by far his most ambitious and complex work is the Periphyseon; it is the central panel of a triptych, one wing of which is his commentary on Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy, the other wing his Homily and Commentary on John’s Gospel. The most important of Eriugena’s contributions to western philosophy was his introduction to the Latin West of late Greek Platonism and Dionysius the Areopagite. In doing so he made adroit use of the works of Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, two original thinkers in their own right, whose distinctive arguments might not have been recovered in such full form without Eriugena’s efforts. Moran says that Maximus’ account of human nature was used by Eriugena as ‘a basis for a new articulation of the place of human nature in the cosmos, in a manner which celebrated the centrality of human being in the revelation of all being, and expressed a view of the absoluteness of human freedom and intellectual insight, so as to make man the equal of God himself’. Moran claims that, with respect to the degree of glory accorded to human in his own being, Eriugena’s views are close to those of Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino in the fifteenth century.48 Through his Latin translation of these Greek Patristic texts, Eriugena ‘became fortuitously acquainted with three of the most characteristic and important documents of Greek Christian Platonism; the effect of their influence upon him was to bring him as wholly into the Greek tradition as if he had been a Byzantine writing in Greek, and to make of him the agent through whom the western world came into this valuable inheritance’.49 Eriugena appreciated Augustine’s insistence on the place of the ‘inner human’ in an adequate account of human being’s relation to God, but wanted to go even further. Eriugena conceived of the inner human as a world unto itself and the mind exercised god-like creative power within it. Moran advances a complex argument to demonstrate that Eriugena conceived of the mind as the creative agent of an ideal world. For this ninth-century innovator 47 48 49

Moran 1989 pp. x–xi. Moran 1989 pp. xi–xii; see McGinn 1994 pp. 105–7. Sheldon-Williams in CHLGEMP 1970 p. 250.

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everything is a product of mind – material reality, spatio-temporal existence, the body itself … Matter is a commingling of incorporeal qualities which the mind mistakenly takes to be corporeal; spatio-temporal reality is a consequence of the seduction of the mind by the senses, which is the true Fall of Adam; the body itself is an externalization of the secret desires of the mind. But more than that, the true being of all things is their being in the mind. Eriugena takes this to be a consequence of the scriptural revelation that the human mind is an image of the divine mind, and that the divine mind contains in itself the ideal exemplars of all things.50

The Periphyseon itself is ‘a single massive experiment in expressing the inexpressible, that is, in using language as a form of self-consuming artefact, whose limitations are more important than its advantages in the task of attaining’.51 The standard distinction between substance dualism and monism about the human soul and body is inappropriate when discussing Eriugena’s view about the composition of human being. He does devote much attention to describing two states of humans, before and after the fall, but these two are not distinct entities or types, rather they comprise two points of view on human being. Perfect human nature, as described in the Genesis story about paradise, is nothing but possibility; it lies in the future as something humans can realize. Fallen human nature, as it is understood in its earthly condition, is nothing more than an illusion. These two points of view are states of mind and result from multiple theories or perspectives on the one ideal world. In fact, as Moran argues, one cannot even speak of an ideal reality, since the unique character of Eriugena’s system resides in his concept of an ideal non-reality or nothingness, which is the ground of all being. In his later Homilies he declares that there are three worlds: the material, the spiritual, and the conjoint material-spiritual world. Insofar as he represents the median between matter and spirit, human belongs to the conjoint world: In gathering all things together, human nature participates in the unfolding and enfolding of the cosmos. Its wholeness, universality, and integrity are absolutely real in the timeless, cosmic sense, but from the point of view of time, this human nature appears as dispersed, scattered, and purely immanent in the material world. Eriugena sets out to show that this temporal view is not a full understanding of the essence of human nature.52

When he discusses perfect human nature he says that ‘the limits of human nature are the limits of paradise’ (IV.825c). If humans had not left paradise they would have had the same kind of being as Christ himself. But more than that, he says that, in the literal sense, humans have never been in a place called paradise, rather it is a name for a future state – it is a human possibility. Paradise is a state actually enjoyed by Christ and a state desired by humans as the perfection of their nature. In claiming that perfect human nature has no place because it lies ahead, he argues that human nature consists of god-like fullness: it is immaterial, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and transcendent to all created being, while remaining immanent in all being. He 50 51 52

Moran 1989 p. xiii; see McGinn 1994 pp. 107–10. McGinn 1994 p. 98. Moran 1989 p. 154.

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also holds to an extension of the Dionysian thesis about hyper-real properties; that is, that in its future possibility, human nature moves to a state beyond being and nonbeing. One of his initial premises is that human nature is contained neither by space nor by time, nor by any other categories that would limit human existence. Just as God transcends all categorical predicates, so also does human being: ‘thus, just as divine essence is infinite, so human substituent (subsitutio) made in its image is bounded by no definite limit’ (IV.772a). Eriugena’s neologism poses some problems of interpretation: some scholars take this strange word to be an error for substantia; Sheldon-Williams accepts the word subsitutio and translates it as ‘replica’. Eriugena had used the word on other occasions as the Latin term for the Greek hyparchis, which Jeauneau claims, means ‘the act by which God leads creatures into being’. And Moran offers the view that the author wanted a more active term than substantia (‘standing-under’) and devised a word that would mean ‘placing-under’. By doing so he tries to convey the metaphysical idea of a being which is given to things, that is, created being, and hence to indicate a being whose nature is created after (later than) and according to God.53 Human being is divine in an entirely new sense for Eriugena: God is himself in his essence, and human is God by participation in that essence. His formulation is quite radical, as Moran explains: not only is human a paradigm of God, but God is made into a paradigm of human. Human and God are mutually self-defining … Thus Eriugena states that just as God is incorporeal and spiritual, so also human nature is incorporeal and spiritual. Like God, human nature is an incorporeal essence (ousia), which can be identified with pure intellect (nous); and the human body is interpreted by Eriugena to be, in its essence, an incorporeal spirit. As such the human self is essentially neither male nor female but is, in fact, sexless. Eriugena sees this as the true meaning of Saint Paul’s teaching that in Christ ‘there is neither male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28).54

This amounts to an inversion of a common Gnostic image whereby primal human was thought to be both male and female. Eriugena then sets out to demonstrate that human being is omnipotent, omniscient and absolutely free. He says that ‘if human nature had not sinned and had clung without change to him who created it, it would certainly be omnipotent. Whatever in the universe it wished would necessarily be done, since it would not wish anything to be done except what its creator wished’ (IV.778b). The same idea is presented when the author ascribes omniscience to human: ‘there was then [in paradise] in human nature the potency of possessing the fullest knowledge of itself if it had not sinned … The fullest knowledge both of herself and her creator was planted in her as part of her nature before the fall’ (IV.777c). Since self-knowledge comprises understanding of the reasons and principles of all things, and since such seminal reasons are the explanation for the way things are, human knowledge extends to an understanding of all that there is. He also says that human being is omnipresent: he is present as whole in the whole of his being and whole in every part (IV.752a), and he is whole through all the parts of nature. Human being is also 53 54

Moran 1989 p. 161 note 16. Moran 1989 p. 162

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absolutely free in that he has no limits: ‘for if God is the plenitude of good things and human is an image of God, the image must resemble the primal exemplar in this respect also, that it is the plenitude of good … It is free from all necessity and is subject to no natural or material authority but possesses in itself a will that is capable of obtaining its desires’ (IV.796a). On this view, since human desires are naturally good, human being can be given the power to achieve everything he desires. ‘Eriugena’s claims are most radical’, Moran declares, ‘human nature is free of all necessity. It is not even limited by nature itself … This is the meaning of the anarchic nature of man. Just as God and the causes are without origin and obey no fixed law or order, so also human nature, when it contemplates God and the causes, need obey no fixed order or progression.’55 The causes and true principles of all things are ordered by the human mind which can contemplate them according to multiple perspectives (multiplex theoria). He says that ‘a devout and pure-minded philosopher may start from any one of them at will and let his mind’s eye, which is true reason, embrace the others in any order’ (III.624c). Moran says that ‘man can enjoy a free play of infinite contemplation, which in fact produces human selftranscendence in the¯osis. Its nature then is a kind of non-nature, a formlessness which transcends all form … Man is boundless, anarchic, self-transcending contemplation or subjectivity.’56 Eriugena maintains that perfect human nature resembles the divine in that it can be said to be uncreated. He came to this position as the result of applying negative theology to human nature. Human is better described as non-being rather than being; as such, human nature is part of the divine nothingness, which Meister Eckhart would later call the ‘desert’ or ‘wasteland’. God creates things by manifesting himself from nothing, and so humans can also be said to create by manifesting themselves. The human mind does so when its thoughts become manifest in words and signs, and also when it moves from intellect through reason to create an image of itself – the body is an image of the rational soul (II.585d). To be accurate, Eriugena also says that there is an uncreated part of the human soul, that is, it is possible to view the human soul under the aspect of its uncreated eternity in God:57 ‘Eriugena views the human mind as able to float freely through all of these divisions and to be placed in the category of that which is neither created nor creates, as well as in the category of that which is uncreated and creates.’58 Insofar as human nature shares in the divine nature, and divine nature comprises all things, so human nature itself takes part in all things. Eriugena found this idea in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus Confessor, for whom human is the officina omnium, the workshop of all things. Eriugena says, ‘for there is no creature, from the highest to the lowest, which is not found in human, and that is why he is rightly called the Moran 1989 p. 164. Moran 1989 pp. 165–6, where he cites Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, London: Burns and Oates, 1966 vol. 5 pp. 157–92. 57 Both the claim that the body is the idea the mind has of itself and the view that the mind (or soul) can be conceived under the aspect of an infinite divine attribute are, of course, views expressed by Spinoza; see HCM pp. 295–8. 58 Moran 1989 pp. 168; Meister Eckhart calls the uncreated essence in human the interior castle, the spark of the soul, and Nicholas of Cusa also said that human nature is self-created and creates its own world. 55 56

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workshop of all things’ (II.530d). Even though he fully subscribed to the view that human as image of the divine contains the reasons (or principles) of all things he never referred to human as microcosm, ‘little world’. In this he also follows Gregory of Nyssa who thought that the epithet ‘microcosm’ expressed human nature in inferior, diminished terms: ‘The concept of microcosm yields a horrendous monster, a human who is an unregulated mixture of all things.’ It also suggests that human is made of the four elements whose corporeal composition it shares with all material things.59 The second story that can be told about human nature follows the second Genesis account; it concerns fallen human nature. Perfect human nature is pure mind or spirit: Eriugena uses various terms to describe this sublime condition: mens, spiritus, animus and nous (IV.753c). Imperfect human nature is the consequence of the fall from paradise; this occurs through human free will, when it is distracted from spiritual goods to carnal goods, and from an excess of self-love (philautia) and pride. Hence, ‘the fall is a symbol of the descent of intellect into reason and sense, the descent of the soul into the body, the shift from a timeless world to a world governed by space and time and corporeality’. When human being resided with God it was a formless non-being, but when it appears in the world it becomes clothed in the ‘garments of skin’ (Gen. 3:21), the sensible and sensuous body. Further, in this world there is no instant unity of thought with its object; rather, thinking takes place through the medium of reason, calculation and deliberation. Here one finds another peculiar Neo-Platonic and Gnostic theme, that reason is relegated to a lesser status in the operations of sensible cognition, below the higher functions of mind.60 One of Eriugena’s most unusual and radical arguments concerns the status of body in relation to fallen human nature. Pure intellects in their timeless state possess spiritual bodies, whereas fallen humans possess bodies that appeared real and extended but which are in fact illusions generated by our sense faculties. When the perfect human mind descended to its earthly state it externalized itself in bodily form in order to accommodate the fact that perception and cognition could only take place over time. Insofar as the human body is an illusion produced by the mind it creates an image of an image, ‘But Eriugena can also speak of the human mind creating its external physical body in the sense that this body is its own selfmanifestation … and he defines creation in terms of self-manifestation. The mind expresses itself through the motions of the body, and thus the body is something the mind makes.’61 Eriugena describes this process by relating it to the divine creative activity of God: We do not doubt but that the trinity of our nature, which is not the image of God but is made in the image of God … is not only created out of nothing but also creates the senses which are subjoined to it, and the instruments of the senses, and whole of its body, this mortal body. For [the created trinity] is made from God in the image of God out of Moran 1989 p. 173. J. Pepin says, ‘Although it is difficult to find three English nouns to translate mens, animus, intellectus, their common distinction from ratio proves sufficiently that we are dealing here with the difference between intellectual intuition and discursive reason’, Pepin in McGinn & Otten 1994 p. 198 note 3. 61 Moran 1989 p. 176; this agrees with McGinn’s view 1994 pp. 106–7. 59 60

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nothing, but the body it creates [itself], though not out of nothing, but out of something. For, by the action of the soul … it creates for itself a body in which it may openly display its hidden actions (which) in themselves (are) invisible, and bring them forth into sensible knowledge. [II.580]

The soul creates the body by collecting immaterial qualities and adhering them to quantities, which act as a kind of substrate for the qualities (II.580b). Moran says that ‘this is a remarkable doctrine, developed from the account given by Gregory of Nyssa of the soul’s creation of the body, and unlike anything found in Latin authors. Eriugena blends Gregory’s account with the account of matter he found in Dionysius’ Divine Names IV.28.’ Eriugena invokes Dionysius’ theory that the categories are in fact incorporeal, and blends this with his view that the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) are also incorporeal and are really a combination of elemental qualities (hot, cold, dry and moist) which are also incorporeal and invisible. The human mind produces the sensible impressions of matter in bodily forms by mingling together the incorporeal qualities into which the four elements resolve.62 That humans have a material body is an illusion, but the fact that they will have a spiritual body when they return to their perfect nature is not an illusion, but reality. Human nature is a unified whole: ‘the human soul is simple and free from all linking of parts … All of it is everywhere present in it through the whole. As whole, it is life, intellect, reason, sense, and memory; as whole, it endows the body with life, nourishes it, holds it together, and causes it to grow; as whole, with all the senses it perceives the appearances of sensible things’ (IV.754b). In a surprising extension of this line of thought, he also claims that this wholeness includes the body. In his original condition, human had a spiritual body that was totally united with his soul, such that a whole person was simple and whole. ‘Human nature’, Eriugena declares, is whole in itself in its world, in its universe, in its visible and invisible parts, whole in its whole, and whole in its parts … Even in its lowest and meanest part, the body, according to its reasons, is whole in the whole human, since body insofar as it truly is body, subsists in its reasons, which were made at the first creation; and although human nature is such in itself, it exceeds its whole. It could not cling to its creator without exceeding both everything under it and itself. [IV.759b]

Eriugena offers the hopeful promise that fallen human nature will be reunited with perfect human nature on the return (reditus). Gersh says that the return of all things to God can be described as both a cancellation and a development of the procession out of the hidden ground. Gersh also distinguishes between two forms of horizontal approach, mainly dependent on Maximus Confessor, with a quasi-temporal character, and two kinds of vertical approach that are more quasi-spatial63 (though it is not feasible to go into their details here). The resolution of human nature into its most whole state takes place through several stages. (1) The body is resolved into the four elements of which it is composed upon earthly death. (2) The body is Moran 1989 p. 177. Gersh in Beierwaltes 1990 pp. 108–25; Otten 1991 pp. 399–421; McGinn 1994 pp. 112–18. 62 63

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restored at the general resurrection with its original elementary constitution. (3) The body is changed into a spiritual state in imitation of the model of the risen body of Christ. (4) The entire human nature returns to the primordial causes. And (5) ‘The universal creature will be unified with its creator and will be in him and with him as one’ (II.530–543). But at the end of Book Five he introduces a more complex version of the return according to three levels on a vertical path: the return of bodies to their causes, the general return of whole human nature into its original condition, and the special return of the elect persons by means of grace into oneness with God (V.1020a). Those who achieve the special return traverse a seven-step path: The first will be the transformation of the earthly body into vital motion; the second of vital motion into sensation; the third of sensation into reason; then of reason into mind (animus) … then this fivefold unification of the parts of our nature … in each case the lower nature becoming absorbed into the higher not so as to lose its existence but to become with that higher nature one, will be followed by three more stages of ascent: first, the transformation of the mind into knowledge of all things which come after God; second, of that knowledge into wisdom, i.e. into the innermost contemplation of the truth, insofar as that is possible to a creature; and third, the highest grade is the supernatural sunset of the most purified souls into God. [V.1020]

In his conclusion McGinn says that these variations on the theme of the soul’s return ‘are typical of the winding sinuousities of Eriugena’s voyage on the ocean of scripture. [But] the basic message remains clear: death, first Christ’s death and then our own, begins the process of restoration that will proceed throughout the course of salvation history by means of a spiritualizing unification which will, never the less, preserve all that was good in material diversity.’64 Moran teases out some of the extraordinary ideas in this argument: there are as many states of mind as there are human beings; each person will ascend on clouds of theories, and will attain the level of intellection that befits his moral stature. Each person will occupy a rung on the endless ladder of intellectual contemplation and will become one with the things they contemplate. Each person will have his or her own vision (phantasia), but the visions of the damned will be cruel and terrifying nightmares, while the visions of the blessed will be theophanies or divine revelations. Eriugena says that true hell is not a place of bodily torment but a state of mind, where the damned have phantasies of the things they most desire before their eyes, but know that they are empty and nothing. Human nature is equal with angelic nature in that both are the site of being itself, that is, being as unhidden and manifest. Eriugena ultimately resolves angelic and human nature into one nature: since it was as a human being that Christ appeared to both angels and humans, God has clearly given human nature an ontological privilege.65 Pseudo-Dionysius’ radical ideas about human nature and the unknowable reality of God reappear four centuries after Eriugena in the works of Robert Grosseteste.66 Grosseteste (1168–1253) came to the study of Greek rather late in his life (around McGinn 1994 p. 113 Moran 1989 pp. 182–4. 66 Grosseteste’s near contemporaries, William of Auvergne and Roger Bacon, will be dealt with in the later chapter on the development of the magical view of the soul. 64 65

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1230) and worked on his commentaries on the Corpus Areopagiticus between 1239 and 1243. He soon discovered a significant tension between the Neo-Platonism of Augustine (his own preference) and the more radical Neo-Platonism (via Proclus) behind Pseudo-Dionysius. According to a fairly standard view of Eastern Orthodox writers, usually and correctly attributed to Dionysius, human being cannot, under any circumstances, see God face to face. In contrast, according to the Western Latin tradition from Augustine onwards, human can attain to a direct knowledge of God, and this is often said to be an intellectual vision. Grosseteste decided that an entirely new edition of Dionysius’ works was needed and he produced a meticulous word-forword translation which is still considered an excellent example of literal transposition into another language. His Latin rendition of central mystical terms provides very good insights into his adroit efforts to resolve the difficulty between these two eminent authorities. Grosseteste exerted great influence on many fronts: he was one of the first chancellors of Oxford University, a famous teacher of the newly discovered works of Aristotle, translator and commentator of Greek texts into Latin, friend of the mendicant orders, and instigator of the English scientific revolution.67 Grosseteste often refers to mystical theology as a secret speech with God; here he makes the most of the fact that Dionysius does not himself offer anything like a definition of ‘mystical theology’. When Grosseteste gives an etymology of the Greek mustos (Latin misticum), he says that it is closed (claudo or constringo) to the quasi-universality of humans living in their present earthly condition. It is hidden (obscuro) from those not actually in the cloud of unknowing; it is learning hiddenly (disco occulta) and it is teaching hiddenly (doceo occulta). Carabine remarks that ‘In brief, mystical theology is for Grosseteste secret speech with God, which is the teaching of hidden things on the part of God and the learning of hidden things on the part of man. Nowhere in Dionysius is this idea to be found, for in the mystical ascent of the soul to God all categories relating to subject and object – including the faculties of speech and sight – have been abandoned, in the unknowing union with God.’68 Grosseteste also asserts that this secret speech with God does not take place through a mirror, that is, by any sort of mediation, through the images of creatures. He was able to find in Augustine’s works a clear statement to the effect that if the beatific nature of God cannot be known by angels still less can it be known by humans (Civ. Dei XX.29). He also teased out a peculiar statement by Dionysius, which appears to contradict his own view in other works, that the mystical summit of God is manifested without a veil (MT I.3). Carabine says that the crucial point to understand in his ingenious reconciliation of two opposed positions hinges on his interpretation of whether humans can be admitted to the direct vision of God in this life: The teaching which became generally accepted in the West was that man cannot see the essence of God while living as a man … However, the very framing in words of the 67 See A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, Oxford 1953; D. A. Callus (ed.) Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop, Oxford 1955; and Sharp 1930 pp. 101–24. 68 Carabine in McEvoy 1995 p. 173.

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general Western ‘solution’ to the problem of the vision of God did leave the way open for the notion of a direct vision of God attained through the mystical experience. This is precisely the position that Grosseteste adopts in his commentary … His one concession to the original teaching of Dionysius is the assertion that even though the light of God is perceptible by pure intelligence, this does not mean that human intelligence is capable of penetrating ipsam totalitatem quidditatis divine essentie, hoc enim est impossibile … For Grosseteste, mystical theology involves not only speech but also intellectual sight, for there, at the mystical summit, man ‘sees’ God without a veil, as he is and no longer through a mirror.69

Grosseteste goes on to state that the human mind transcends both itself and all things, and rests from the acts of all the powers that apprehend created things (mens transcendit omnes creaturas et se ipsam, et otiatur ab actibus omnium virium apprehensivarum cuiuscumque creati). For Dionysius, the practical aspect of the ascent to the mystical summits meant leaving behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, along with all the objects of those powers, since only by an absolute katharsis (that is, ecstasy) can one attain to the summit. The Biblical prototype for this mystical ascent was Moses’ climbing Mt. Sinai and his encounter with Jehovah. In the Mystical Theology three distinct stages can be traced in the ascent, the first of which occurs when Moses is purified of all sensible things. The second is concerned with the entry into intellectual things and their subsequent total abandonment. These include all divine things and anything which can be said or thought about God, anything, therefore, which can be regarded as being at the level of theophany. Dionysius says that divine things are contemplated through ‘a suggestive expression’ which shows forth God’s inconceivable presence.

In contrast with this view Grosseteste thinks that this stage of the ascent represents the level of anagogy: ad summitatem anagogicorum intellectuum; he agrees with Dionysius that at this level God is not yet seen without symbols, but through theophany: in vestigiis ipsius – this is the most divine vision and highest intellection. In Carabine’s admirable summary: The notion that the mind must transcend all things and even itself was not a problem for Grosseteste, in fact the ekstasis involved in the ascent had become an integral condition for receiving the vision of God. Where [he] differs from the Areopagite is in his understanding of what exactly it is that must be unknown, and this consists primarily, if not indeed totally in the unknowing of created being, a necessary condition for entry into the darkness.

The question that must be asked is whether he would extend this state of unknowing beyond the very essence (ousia) of God. Carabine suggests that there is one passage in his commentary where Grosseteste might be said to answer just this question. In discussing the mind’s rest from all cognitive acts of apprehension, he completes the train of thought with the words: ‘and moreover in ignorance of all divine things’. It seems clear that this ignorance (not-knowing) through the entry into a true mystical 69

Carabine in McEvoy 1995 pp. 175–6.

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state surpasses the anagogical uplifting, and still does not know God’s being. Carabine concludes this portion of her analysis by stating that Grosseteste did not understand fully the radical nature of Dionysian negation: it would have been unthinkable for Grosseteste to extend the meaning of agn¯osia to the ousia of God. In Augustinian terms, the whole focus of man’s life is directed towards knowledge of God, and Grosseteste’s theological training would have made anything less than that appear as a privation of knowledge and a denial of man’s ultimate purpose on earth.70

Dionysius refers to the ‘place’ where the true unknowable nature of God is encountered by the mind in its ascent as a cloud or darkness; Grosseteste interprets the Dionysian darkness in various ways. He takes it to mean the place where God is; God as the darkness that is brighter than light; the ignorance or unknowing of all things; and a preparation for the reception of divine light. He says that darkness can signify either the inaccessibility of the divine nature or the unknowing of all things, or both. In terms of darkness as a preparation, [he] may well have failed to grasp fully the truth that, for Dionysius, the moment of entry into the darkness is, at its highest level of understanding, an entry into the hiding place of God. [His] emphasis on darkness as a preparation recalls the rather Victorine dictum, that to know God one must unknow creatures.71

When Grosseteste defines intellectus as the spiritual eye (spiritualis oculus), this alone determines his basic idea of the mystical ascent as receiving the vision of God: According to Dionysius, all intellectual efforts whatsoever must be relinquished if the soul is to attain to unity with God … even the faculty of spiritual sight is inoperative at the height of the mystical summit. When Dionysius refers to the ‘eyeless minds’ who have ascended the summit, he uses ‘eyeless’ in order to emphasize the fact that the union is not attained so long as any duality remains. Grosseteste, however, interprets inoculatos in more Augustinian fashion, for he says that the intellects do not have eyes, simply because they have rested from every act of knowledge or vision of creatures; it is not because they lack the power to see spiritually.72

Carabine continues: Having established that man can attain to the vision of God through the operation of his spiritual eyes, Grosseteste explains how this takes place: how the activity of the celestial sphere is transferred to the realm of the mystical ascent. In the ascent beyond all ascents, that is, the ascent beyond the level of anagogy, the mind enters the vere misticam caliginem, where the ‘inner man’ sees the divine ray in truth. This ‘seeing’ is achieved through the operation of the intellect, which is stretched out as far as possible to its utmost limits, acting according to its highest possibility. The mind then ascends above the highest acts of the powers of knowledge, quantum possibile est intense.

70 71 72

Carabine in McEvoy 1995 pp. 178–9. On this central Victorine idea, see esp. McGinn 1994 pp. 400–10. Carabine in McEvoy 1995 pp. 183–4.

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But the intellect remains operative at the height of the mystical summit. The soul is not left waiting in darkness in order to be raised unknowingly to union with the unknowable God, rather, the soul is granted a vision of the glorious light of the divine nature. God himself dispels the cloud of ignorance and opens the spiritual eye, et implente intellectus inoculatos superpulcris claritatibus … In this state of mentis excessus, the reaching out of the mind beyond its highest powers in which it no longer knows anything of creatures, the mind is filled with the vision of God’s own light, and although the intellect waits unknowingly, it is still the vehicle for the manifestation of God, albeit on a superlative level.73

(2) The soul’s ecstatic accounts of the other world Christian mystical theories of the human soul’s ascent to its divine source have a distinct metaphysical frame, usually that of the Christian-Platonist type, coupled or overlaid with Dionysian apophatic vocabulary. These theories are related to, but not the same as, the conceptual scheme behind first-hand reports of an individual soul’s temporary release from and return to its body in medieval stories of soul-voyages. Mystical accounts of the soul’s ascent describe an interior process of coming to know God through successive stages of purgation, illumination and perfection. In contrast, voyage accounts of the soul’s escape describe an (allegedly) exterior traverse of other-worldly regions, where some of God’s secrets are revealed to the traveler. One of the earliest and best-known soul-voyages appears in the Ecclesiastical History (III.19), where St. Bede gives an account74 of the ecstatic revelation of the Irish saint Fursa (or Fursey) in the year 656. Noble in mind though not noble by birth, Fursa devoted all his energy to the study of sacred books and monastic discipline. On one occasion when he was very ill he was snatched from the body75 (raptus est ex corpore) and left it from evening to cock-crow; during that time he was privileged to gaze upon the angelic hosts and to listen to their blessed songs. He returned to his body and two days after was taken out of it again; this time he saw not only the joys of the blessed but also the fierce attacks of the evil spirits who, by their many accusations, sought to prevent his journey to heaven; they failed in this because he was protected by angels. With subtle deceit the demons were able to report on Fursa’s deeds, his idle words and his very thoughts, just as if they had written them down in a book. Fursa also learned joyful and sad things from the angels and from the just men who appeared to him in the company of angels. When Fursa had been taken to a great height the conducting angels told him to look back on the world. He saw a dark valley beneath him and four fires in the air, celestial arsons made to kindle and consume the world. He was told that one fire is mendacity, for when we do not fulfill our promise to renounce Carabine in McEvoy 1995 pp. 184–5. Collated Latin text established by Claude Carozzi 1994 ‘Annexe’ pp. 677–92; synopsis pp. 102–20; analysis pp. 120–38. Synopses of the following other-worldly journeys reproduce the same prosaic, flat–toned style in which they were written or published. 75 The word raptus here indicates the passive, involuntary character of his transport, much like that of St. Paul himself when he was ‘snatched up’ to the third heaven (2Cor. 12:2). 73 74

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Satan and all his works; another fire is for cupidity when we put the love of riches above that of heavenly things; the third for dissension when we do not fear to offend our neighbors, and the fourth for impiety when we think it nothing to despoil and defraud the weak (EH III.19 pp. 270–74).76 When these fires grew together and merged into one immense conflagration, Fursa was afraid and cried out to the angel near him. But the angel comforted him by saying ‘that which you did not kindle will not burn you’ (quod non incendisti non ardebit in te). Although the fire seems great and terrible it tests each one according to his merits; the evil desires of everyone will be burned away. Just as one burns with illicit pleasures when in the body, so also when one is free from the body one makes due penance by burning. One of the three angels then went forward and divided the flames, while the other two flew on each side to protect him. Fursa also saw demons flying through the flames and stirring up hostile fires against the just. There follows an account of the evil spirits’ accusations against Fursa, the good spirits’ defense, and a more detailed vision of the heavenly hosts, the saints of his own nation. When these spirits had finished speaking and returned to heaven with the angelic spirits, the three conducting angels remained to restore Fursa to his body. But when he came to the passage through the flames, the evil spirits seized a burning figure and hurled him at Fursa, hitting him and scorching his shoulder and jaw. Fursa recognized the dead man as someone whose clothing he had received after his death. The angel took the dead man and cast him back into the fire, at which an evil spirit said, ‘Do not reject him whom you once accepted, since you got the property of a sinner you ought to share his punishment.’ The angel stood against the enemy but advised Fursa that, since he had accepted a sinner’s property he had in fact been burned by the fire he had kindled. When Fursa was finally restored to his body he bore for the rest of his life the burn marks he suffered while a soul out of body. It is marvelous, Bede remarks, to think that what he suffered secretly as a soul out of body showed openly on his flesh (quid anima in occulto passa sit, caro palam praemonstrabat). Bede says that he heard this from an elderly monk who had heard this story from Fursa himself; he thinks it worth noting that when Fursa recounted his vision, although it was a harsh winter he was wearing only a thin garment and sweated as though it were mid-summer, ‘either because of the terror or else the joy that his memories aroused’.77 In Book Five, chapter 12, Bede recounts an even more famous case of an otherworldly journey (EH V.12 pp. 489–99). In order to arouse the living from spiritual death, a certain man already dead came back to life, and related many memorable things that he had seen. In Northumbria, a family man named Drythelm78 was stricken with a serious illness and died in the night. At dawn he came to life again and those who were sitting around the corpse were terrified and fled, except his wife who loved him very much. He said that he had indeed risen from death and vowed 76 Translation modified: ‘mendacity’ instead of ‘falsehood’ for mendacia; ‘cupidity’ instead of ‘covetousness’ for cupiditas; ‘dissension’ instead of ‘discord’ for dissensio; and ‘impiety’ instead of ‘injustice’ for impietas (iii. 19, p. 272). 77 Translation modified: ‘demons’ instead of ‘devils’ for daemones, and ‘soul’ instead of ‘spirit’ for anima; the translators use ‘spirit’ for anima and spiritus without distinction. 78 In order to increase the dramatic suspense St. Bede states Drythelm’s name only at the very end of his narrative.

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that he would now live his life in a new way. He gave away his possessions and retired to the monastery at Melrose where he lived in great penance of mind and body. In his desire to chastise his body he often immersed himself in the freezing river waters: ‘He would remain thus motionless, reciting prayers and psalms as long as he could endure it, while the water came up to his loins and sometimes to his neck. When he came out of the water he would never trouble to take off his cold, wet garments until his body warmth had dried them.’ When he was asked how he could stand such bitter cold and such a hard life, he replied that he had seen it colder and harder. When he was asked by an eminent monk about his post-mortem experience he offered this story. He said that, after he appeared to die, he was guided by a being with a shining countenance, wearing bright robes. They went in silence toward the place where the sun rises at the summer solstice. They came to a deep, broad valley: on one side was a terrible raging fire, while on the other side hail and snow were blowing everywhere. Both sides were full of the souls tossed from one side to the other as if by the tempest’s fury. An innumerable multitude of deformed spirits was being tortured by this miserable see-saw without any respite. Although he thought that he might now be in hell his guide answered his thoughts by saying that he should not believe that this was hell.79 Further into the valley it began to grow dimmer until darkness covered everything. As they went forward ‘through the shades of the lonely night’ there suddenly appeared globes of noisome flame, constantly rising and falling as if from a great pit. Just as suddenly his guide disappeared and left him in the midst of the darkness and the horrible scene. He saw that, as the fiery globes rose and fell, the tips of the flames ascended filled with human spirits which, like sparks flying upward with the smoke (qui instar favillarum cum fumo), were tossed on high and then, as the vaporous flames fell, were now sucked into the depths (nunc retractis ignium vaporibus relaberentur in profunda). An incomparable stench which rose up with these vapors filled all the abodes of darkness. After standing for some time in terror looking at this, he heard the sound of wild and miserable lamentation, at the same time as harsh laughter, as though a vulgar gang were insulting their captured enemies. As the noise became clearer he saw a crowd of evil spirits dragging five human souls (animas hominum), wailing and shrieking into the midst of the darkness. The evil spirits dragged them into the burning pit; as they descended even deeper the horrified onlooker was unable to distinguish human lamentation from demonic laughter. Meanwhile, some of the gloomy spirits rose from the flaming abyss and rushed at him, surrounding him with their flaming eyes and tormenting him with putrid fires from their mouths and noses. They also threatened to seize him with fiery forceps and though they terrified him they dared not touch him. He looked all round to see if there was any help and then there appeared on the road behind him something like a bright star in the shadows (quasi fulgor stellae micantis inter tenebras) which grew larger and came rapidly toward him. (He later says that he left the traveler in order to find out his future.) As it approached all the hostile spirits who were trying to seize him scattered and fled.80

79 80

Carozzi reconstructs the geography of Drythelm’s underworld, 1994 pp. 238–43. See Carozzi’s comments on the whole narrative, 1994 pp. 228–35.

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This was in fact his original guide who then, turning to the right, began to lead him in the direction of the rising of the winter sun. The guide brought them out of the darkness into a serene, light place. He saw a great wall in front of them which seemed to be endlessly long and high everywhere. Although there were no windows or gates, as they reached the wall suddenly by unknown means they were on top. He saw a broad and pleasant plain, full of sweet-smelling flowers which dispelled the fetid stink of the gloomy furnace. ‘So great was the light that flooded all this place that it seemed to be clearer than the brightness of daylight or the rays of the noon sun.’ In the meadow there were innumerable humans in white robes and companies of happy people sat around. When the visitor said that he thought this must be heaven the guide replied that this was not the kingdom of heaven as you imagine. When they had passed thought the abodes of the blessed spirits he saw in front of them an even more gracious light than before, and amidst it he heard the sweetest sound of people singing and smelled the most wonderful fragrance. When he expressed the hope that he might enter this place his guide stopped, turned around, and led him back the way they had come – instead of entering the pleasant place he gains knowledge. The guide explains that (1) the valley of fire and ice is the place where those souls will be sent, those who in life delayed in confessing and repenting their sins. But because they did confess and repent they will eventually come to the kingdom of heaven upon Judgment Day; those souls for whom the living offer prayers, alms and fasts may gain their freedom before Judgment Day. (2) The fiery, putrid pit is the mouth of hell (os gehennae) into which whoever once falls will never be released through all eternity. (3) The flowery place is where the souls are received of those who depart from the body practicing good works (animae eorum qui in bonis quidem operibus de corpore exeunt). Although they are not in such a state of perfection that they deserve to be received immediately into heaven, still on Judgment Day all of them will enter into Christ’s presence. In contrast, anyone who is perfect in every word and deed and thought (nam quicumque in omni verbo et opere et cogitatione perfecti sunt), as soon as they leave the body come to the kingdom of heaven. (4) This kingdom is near the place of sweet singing, wonderful fragrance and glorious light. The guide concludes his speech by saying that the traveler must now return to his body and live among humans again: ‘If you guard your actions with great care and keep your words with righteous, simplicitous study, then you too will receive a place after death among the joyous band of blessed spirits.’81 It is possible to hear in this recit distant echoes of shamanistic and/or Zoroastrian beliefs: that hell is filled with both fire and ice; heaven is filled with sweet singing, lovely scents, and so forth; souls like sparks fly upward with the smoke. The injunction to keep ‘good words, good deeds and good thoughts’ in one’s life reminds one of the Zoroastrian threefold precept; after the voyager’s initiation and rebirth he is immune to heat and cold, as well as the fact that he is taken through stages of knowledge by a mentor. In March of 678 or 679 the monk Barontus, of the monastery of St. Peter in Lonrey (later known as Saint Cyran) had a near-death experience, which he later

81

On penitence, punishment and purgation in this account, Carozzi 1994 pp. 243–53.

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reported to his fellow monks.82 The anonymous author produced an account of Barontus’ experience which would become a medieval ‘best-seller’ in the visionary genre: As the first free-standing account of a vision of the hereafter, the Visio Baronti has provided grist for many mills. Barontus and others concerned about the fate of their souls are said to represent clear expressions of individualism centuries before individualism is supposed to have emerged in European consciousness.’83 Their narratives provide sufficient detail to establish a geography of the hereafter and to plot how travelers navigate between that world and this one and what effects the journey has on their souls.84 John Contreni argues that the tale of Barontus is an elaborately and elegantly constructed narrative: ‘there may well have been an historical monk named Barontus who had a terrifying vision, but the complex, graphic, highly coherent, and literate text that we read today is the creation of the anonymous author and not a mere report of Barontus’ vision’.85 After matins had been sung, Barontus returned to his cell where he fell ill with a fever. The deacon tried to help him, but to no avail; the monk closed his eyes and lay there half-dead, unable to see anyone at all. Through the night teams of monks sang psalms, and at daybreak Barontus suddenly awoke and exclaimed ‘Glory to you, God.’ He then told the monks around his bedside that after he fell asleep the previous night two hideous demons attacked him; they tried to strangle and swallow him, intending to carry him off to hell. At the time when the monks began to sing psalms the angel Raphael appeared and ordered the demons away. When they refused, the demons and the angel argued at length until they finally agreed to let God decide his fate. Raphael touched the monk’s throat and drew Barontus’ soul from his body, ‘a soul as small as a hen’s chick when it comes from the egg’. Even though it was quite small and puny, the monk said that it had the aerial form of his body, complete with head, eyes and senses (sic mihi videbatur, similitudinem de parvitatem haberet ut pullus aviculae, quando de ovo egreditur). At this event, the demons and the angel engaged in a tug-of-war over his soul, with the demons trying to drag him down and Raphael trying to pull him upwards. In their struggle all four flew over the nearby monastery of Millebeccus where they could see the monks performing vespers and the abbot lying on his deathbed. The author here reports that the abbot claimed that Raphael had visited him and cured him. The two demons, the monk and the angel eventually came to the first gate of paradise; there Barontus saw several members of his own community, awaiting Judgment Day and the fullness of eternal joy. Although Barontus recognized these dead monks, they did not recognize him and were shocked to find him in the company of demons, for the devil had never been able to capture the soul of anyone in their monastery. Raphael assuaged their fear by telling them that he would restore Barontus’ soul to his body, so that the monk could mend his ways and avoid the devil’s clutches. As the monks prayed for his soul, Barontus and the angel passed through the second gate of paradise where they saw countless children clothed in white. As they made their way to the third gate they passed through an immense 82 83 84 85

English translation in Hillgarth 1986 pp. 195–204; not in Gardiner 1989. See Gurevich 1982 pp. 255–75. Contreni 2003 p. 674. Contreni 2003 p. 675; summary in Carrozi 1994 pp. 140–50.

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crowd of virgins, who began to cry out ‘there goes a soul to judgment’. When they arrived at the third gate, they saw even more saints, these wearing crowns, with shining faces, sitting on thrones in houses made of gold bricks. There were many more mansions under construction for future inhabitants still on earth; ‘for he builds mansions in heaven who does not cease to give bread to the hungry’. When they advanced to the fourth gate Barontus saw another member of his community, one whose job was to light all the churches of the world. Barontus was not permitted to enter further into paradise, so Raphael sent an angel to summon St. Peter who quickly appeared. When he asked the demons why they had seized the monk they replied with a list of Barontus’ sins, including the fact that he had had three wives and many adulterous affairs. When asked if these charges were true, Barontus replied that they were. St. Peter then said that ‘even if he has done some evil deeds, he has given alms, and alms free humans from death’. Further, he has confessed and done his penance, as well as donating to the monastery and giving up his possessions: ‘These good deeds far outweigh all the evil actions you recount.’ With this utterance St. Peter claimed the monk as one of the saved and chased the demons away. St. Peter then informed the monk that he must ransom (that is, redeem) himself. When Barontus replied that he had no money, St. Peter revealed a sin that the monk himself had forgotten; twelve gold coins that he had hidden when he entered the monastery. St. Peter gave Barontus elaborate instructions about how to get rid of the money. On the first of every month he must place one gold coin in a poor man’s hands; each coin was to be weighed and marked by a priest (presumably to prevent cheating). Peter warned Barontus that, if he failed in this injunction, then his fate after he died would be even worse than his experience so far. Peter asked two boys to escort Barontus back to the first gate where his brother monks would give him a tour of hell. When they reached hell, Barontus could not see through the dense fog and steam, but God permitted him to look inside. There he saw thousands of bound humans led around by demons, moaning and lamenting in a constant wail that sounded like a swarm of bees. Those confined to hell were arranged in groups according to the category of their sins: the proud with the proud, the lustful with their kind, perjurers with theirs, homicides with other murderers, deceivers with deceivers, and so forth. They groaned in pain, as St. Gregory said in his Dialogues: ‘they bound them in bundles to burn them (Matt. 13:30) and the rest which follows’. Moreover, ‘all those who were in the demons’ power and had done something good were offered manna from paradise … each day about the sixth hour. It was placed before their mouth and nose and they received refreshment (refrigerium). The rest who had not done anything good in this world, were not offered this but, closed their eyes and struck their breasts, crying out, “woe to us wretches, who did nothing good when we could have”.’ Among these miserable wretches Barontus saw some bishops and foolish virgins, as well as some of his own relatives. After the monks left hell they met some travelers walking to Poitiers to visit the shrine of St. Hilary and soon came to a pleasant place. Barontus’ companions left him with one young monk and the two returned to the monastery where they found the church doors open. While the young guide said his prayers, Barontus dragged himself along the ground until a gust of wind picked him up and blew him to his cell, where from the ceiling he could view his prostrate body on the

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bed, surrounded by his fellow monks. At that point, Barontus entered his own body through the mouth and woke up, crying ‘Glory to you, God’ – he had been restored in order to deliver an important lesson. John Contreni comments on the fact that Barontus’ soul left and returned to his body through his mouth and that his soul was like a young chick. This image may have been inspired by the experience of Abbot Spes, whose soul left his body through the mouth and flew up to heaven in the form of a dove. The aerial tug-ofwar between the demons and the archangel over Barontus’ soul recalls Gregory’s account of Stephen, who tripped on the bridge over the foul river spanning heaven and hell: ‘Evil spirits grabbed onto Stephen’s legs and tried to pull him down, while good spirits dressed in white tugged to hoist the priest back up. Once arrived in the afterlife, Barontus’ capacity to recognize people who did not know him and whom the historical Barontus probably did not know was established a century earlier in the Dialogues. Gregory assured Peter that the good see both the good and the evil in the afterlife by relating the story of Lazarus from the Gospel of Luke in which a rich man in hell recognizes Abraham from afar and calls out to him for relief from his torments.’86 Closer to their own times, ‘Gregory reminded Peter of “a certain religious man” who four years earlier called out to Jonas, Ezechiel, and Daniel as he lay dying to tell them that he was about to join them.’87 Carozzi says that ‘pour etre sauvé, il faut fair le monde et la cupidité du siecle qui endurcit les coeurs et les detourne de la voie droite’. The practice of good works permits them, after the soul exits the body, to be guided by the saints and angels towards the heavenly kingdom.88 The vision’s author and Gregory the Great offered the lesson that death in this world is not final and that the boundary between the present life and the afterlife is permeable and can be traversed, as Contreni states. The best proof that the boundary is porous came from those who had traveled to the other side and returned. In Gregory’s Dialogues the question arises whether it is by a mistake that some souls are taken from their bodies and then returned, since clearly they were not meant to be permanently taken away.89 The proper response is that such occurrences are meant as instructions for the living about the connection between good works in this life and the afterlife. Barontus’ description is much longer and more vivid than anything in Gregory’s Dialogues and offers sufficient information to construct an actual geography of the otherworld: ‘These vivid descriptions were not intended to make a literary impact but to impress upon medieval audiences the realization that Barontus’ heaven did not appear very different from their own earthly experiences. His heaven was a parallel monastic community complete with sights, sounds, candles, churches, liturgical hours, and waiting brethren.’ Medieval audiences were not much concerned about inconsistent, even contradictory details regarding the afterlife afforded by narratives of different visions, unlike modern scholars who are greatly exercised in sorting out just such problems. ‘Tales of visions are parabolic’, as Contreni phrases it; ‘whether they look out into the afterlife with Barontus or 86 87 88 89

On ideas of human nature in Gregory the Great, see McGinn 1994 pp. 40–47. Contreni 2003 p. 683. On sources and models, Carozzi 1996 pp. 150–55. On contemplation and the afterlife in Gregory, see McGinn 1994 pp. 55–74.

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across the ocean with Brendan, they curve back to audiences concerned about what visions reveal for the conduct of their earthly lives.’90 In another influential other-worldly journey, the Irish knight Tundale traveled to Regensburg in Bavaria, and had an ecstatic vision which was written in 1150.91 Tundale came from a noble family, well brought up and trained in the military arts. He was a friendly, agreeable fellow who loved a good time, and didn’t hesitate to admit that he had sinned long and often. While having a meal with one of his friends, Tundale had a sudden stroke and fell to the ground, exclaiming that he was dying. The narrative relates that ‘as far as the word has any meaning, his body sank to the ground, separated from his soul, and his spirit was no longer of any account there’. The author wants to give this incident some plausibility by invoking witnesses: ‘residents of the city of Cork, who were present there, may testify [to this], he lay dead for three days and three nights, and later he spoke bitterly of all that he had suffered during this period’ (p. 150). ‘The signs of death were present: his hair fell out, his forehead became hard, his eyes wandered, his nose became pointed, his lips grew pale, his mind failed, and his whole body grew rigid’ (p. 151). Despite these overt bodily changes indicating death, ‘those who tried diligently to coax his body back to life felt a little heat on his left side’. When they did decide to bury him ‘he regained his soul, and with a feeble breath, in almost a single hour he began to revive’. Those present marveled at this event and exclaimed, ‘Is this not the spirit going and returning?’ Perhaps here it is significant that the signs of death were taken to indicate that the soul had left his body, but having revived, it was thought that his spirit had temporarily vacated his body.92 It is equally ambiguous what ‘word’ the phrase ‘as far as the word has any meaning’ refers to: is it his body or his soul or death? In any case, Tundale said that ‘when his soul left his body, and he knew that he was dead, knowing that he was guilty he grew terrified, and he didn’t know what he might do. He feared something, but he did not know what he feared. He wished to return to his body, but he was unable to enter it. He even wished to proceed onward, but he was afraid on every side.’93 The dead sinner, fully aware of his guilt, was miserable, and stood there trembling and weeping. But then a crowd of unworldly spirits came forward and surrounded him, not consoling him at all, but saddening him with their words: ‘We sing this song of death, fitting for this miserable soul, since he is the child of death and food for fire, the friend of shadows, the enemy of light’ (p. 153). The woeful spirits gnashed their teeth at him and tore their own cheeks with their claws, wailing about the sins he had committed and his likely place in hell. The text says that he expected death without delay from these threatening spirits, which must signify, since he is already dead in the body, something like the ‘second death’ in the spirit for the damned. But merciful God had Contreni 2003 pp. 684–85; see also Carozzi’s comments 1996 pp. 155–60. Trans. in Gardiner 1989 chapter 10; text in Mearns (ed.) 1985; and Palmer (ed.) 1982; unprefixed citations are to Gardiner’s translation. 92 See Carrozi’s comments 1994 pp. 497–500, 597–604. 93 The knight Tundale knows that he is dead, knows that he is guilty of sinning, but does not know what he fears; so what are the criteria of knowledge for a dead person? What counts as justified true belief in the other world? 90 91

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not wished this sinner’s death and decided to offer him healing after death, thus tempering the misery of even this sinner. Just then an angel appeared, coming into view like a very bright star, causing Tundale to feel both fear and joy, thinking that God himself had come to take him. The angel said that he had followed Tundale since birth, and although he had never listened to his guardian’s counsel, he was here to help him now. ‘You ought to follow me’, the angel said, ‘and commit the route to memory because you will have to return to your body along this path.’ At this point, Tundale went toward the angel, ‘beyond the limit, leaving behind his own body, which he formerly stood over’. Hearing and seeing this, the evil spirits and demons became angry, complaining that God had not kept his promise: that the sinners’ souls will be damned and the just ones will be rewarded. Totally enraged, they started fighting with each other and then withdrew into ‘the rest of the great stench’. At the passing of the foul horde, Tundale agreed to follow the angel in his tour of the various levels of the underworld. From this point onward, the text no longer refers to the main character as ‘Tundale’ (the whole person) or ‘the miserable soul’, but always to ‘Tundale’s soul’, as though a being distinct from the transitional post-mortem soul is thereby marked off. An important question arises about what ‘limit’ has been crossed when the soul alone leaves behind the body it has stood over. Is this a spatial or quasispatial limit in the other world, or is it a temporal limit between the time of bodily death on earth and the just (or damned) soul’s movement towards its proper place? Does the interim state when the other-worldly soul transits from hovering over the body to moving away on its own have a parallel on earth (so to speak) in the curious heat in the body’s side, or does the body’s heat continue during the whole journey? As with the now-common itinerary of the human soul’s journey to the underworld, Tundale’s soul and his angelic guide come to a terrible, shadowy valley, covered by the fog of death. The text describes with great relish the dreadful punishments of various classes of sinners, such as murderers, traitors, the proud, the greedy, robbers and thieves, fornicators (an especially juicy section) before the two travelers descend into the deepest depth. At the lowest level, Tundale’s soul feels great cold; a stench and shadow appears around him, and he is seized by fear and anxiety. The very foundations of the earth seemed to tremble and then … the angelic guide disappears. Alone now amidst new dangers, he hears the cries and howls of a vast multitude, horrible thunder mixed with the cacophony. He sees a four-sided ditch like a cistern emitting a putrid column of smoke and flame. This column extends to the heavens and ‘in its fire he could see a large multitude of spirits and demons who ascended like ashes with the flames. When they were reduced to nothing in the smoke they fell with the demons into the furnace, down into the depths’ (p. 175). Stricken with grief and terror, Tundale’s soul asks aloud why he did not die before (in the spirit). Hearing these words of despair the demons surround him with instruments like forceps; ‘they encircled him just like bees, and they were inflamed just like fire in thorns, taunting him with images of what he has missed by not being saved. Just as the coal-black, scorpion-tailed, vulture-winged demons are about to carry him off to Lucifer, the spirit of light (his angelic guide) reappears, saying that he should be glad and rejoice, since he will obtain mercy and not justice.’ However, Tundale’s soul has not escaped seeing the very devil himself, an awesome raven-shaped monster, stooped over an iron wicker-work device. Here he

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tortures and dismembers the souls of the damned, each of whom is attached to parts of his grotesque body. The devil inhales and exhales their parts into the various regions of hell, chewing them up and spitting them out94 (pp. 177–80). Having seen the very worst at the very last level of the underworld the angel leads him upward and out into a beautiful, fragrant place, filled with happy people, where the sun never sets and where the fountain of everlasting life is found. The angel surprises the traveler by saying that this is not heaven or the kingdom of God, but the resting place of those who are not very good. These souls did not merit the company of the blessed saints and hence this cannot be heaven itself, although it might be called paradise (pp. 181–2). This description corresponds quite well with the Byzantine idea of an intermediate zone, parallel with heaven, where ordinary good souls wait to be reborn in the spiritual body after Judgment Day. The two travelers move from place to place, each enclosed by yet higher walls, each containing classes of just souls: the virtuously married, martyrs, virgins and saintly monks. In the last enclosure, having met the most revered and saintly bishops, the angel tells him that he must now return to his body. The angel instructs him to keep all that he has seen in his memory and to use his knowledge for the benefit of his friends and relatives. As soon as the angel has said this, the soul is changed (?): ‘he tried to move himself [how had the soul moved itself before?] and quickly he sensed his body weighing greatly on him. He did not feel any interval elapse, or moment of time intervene, but in the same instant he spoke to the angel, he felt himself clothed in the body. Then weak in the body he opened his eyes and sighed’ (pp. 194-5). And so concludes the ever-popular tale of the Irish sinner’s other-worldly voyage. The early thirteenth-century vision of Thurkill, an Essex peasant, survives in several redactions.95 The most detailed version divides the text into three sections: the anonymous editor’s preface, the external circumstances of the vision, and the narrative of the vision itself. The preface states the theological framework of the vision: it is a testimony and a warning, comparable to the words of the prophets and evangelists. The editor is convinced of the edifying character of Thurkill’s vision, at the same time as he admits that it has been received with skepticism in some places. According to his report, other visions of the afterlife were also treated with some doubt, such as the vision of the knight Tundale, St. Patrick’s vision, and the monk of Eynsham, which took place only ten years before Thurkill. The London Prior Peter of Cornwall, who collected hundreds of visions and miracles between 1200 and 1206, devoted forty-three pages of his Book of Revelations to the vision of the monk of Evesham (or Eynsham96), but began to doubt the credibility of the story: first he crossed it all out, and then later stated that the deletion should be ignored and the text restored. The principal redactor of Thurkill’s vision does not want his narrative to be treated in this ambivalent manner, and hence states at the outset that Thurkill’s purity and simplicity guarantees the truth of his story.97 On the evening of 27 October 1206, the peasant Thurkill was in the fields digging ditches to drain the water from the flooded field which he had just sown. A strange 94 95 96 97

Compare infernal images of consumption and digestion in Bynum 1995 pp. 192–9. Trans. in Gardiner 1989 chapter 12. Trans. in Gardiner 1989 chapter 11. Schmidt 1978 pp. 51–2.

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figure approached Thurkill and revealed himself to be St. Julian who then told him that he would take Thurkill on a journey the next night. Thurkill returned to his village where, on the Friday evening, he made preparations by washing himself from head to foot – a form of hygiene uncommon for a peasant. That night St. Julian arrived and took Thurkill’s soul away with him, leaving his body behind, rigid and motionless, scarcely even breathing. During the next two days his relatives tried to wake him but to no avail. On Sunday evening, as they were trying to force some water down his throat, he suddenly revived and spoke the word ‘Benedicite’, and complained about his journey being interrupted. He tried to tell his relatives and the village priest about his experiences but they came out garbled and disjointed. On the next night St. Julian appeared to him again and, with threats of severe punishment, instructed Thurkill to deliver a coherent and complete account of what he had seen. On the Feast of All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day, he did just that in the presence of the whole community and the lord of the manor. He confessed that he did not pay the full tenth of his harvest as tithes, and described the punishments which he suffered for this in the other world. He proffered information to all those assembled about the fate of their dead relatives and stated the number of prayers and masses still needed before they could be granted eternal peace. He spoke with uncharacteristic eloquence and fluency, giving such a moving and disquieting account that he was invited to tell his story to other churches and villages.98 The first stage of his journey took place at the basilica of St. Mary in the middle of the earth. There Thurkill gained another companion, St. Domninus, who together with St. Julian set out on the journey through purgatory and paradise. He watched the souls of the dead being weighed and learned the nature of their sins; he witnessed the damnation of a nobleman who had died without confession and the last rites during the first night of his vision. The nobleman had treated his subjects with cruelty and demanded dues from them to which he was not entitled. For this he has been tormented by the devil before being cast into the pit of hell. In another instance, when the soul of an unworthy priest is weighed, the scales sink down on the devil’s side because St. Peter does not have enough weights on his side. So St. Peter dipped an aspergillum in holy water and threw it on the scale with such force that the devil’s weights fell out. The devil cried out in pain when one of the falling weights injured his foot; he showed the list of the priest’s sins and claimed the soul for himself, but all in vain. Thurkill’s own failures were not spared either; he collapsed out of breath by a spring, where he coughed and spluttered to get his breath back. According to witnesses at his bedside, at that very moment his body coughed and heaved. From the spring a nasty stench emerged, a stink which only affected those who had withheld their tithes from the church. Every Saturday the devils went to the theatre99 and Thurkill sneaked in with the two saints’ help. One by one sinners were dragged onto the stage, forced to repeat their sins: the proud person, the adulterous couple, the slanderer, the dishonest Schmidt 1978 p. 53; on the soul during the voyage, Carozzi 1994 pp. 561–3. On the theatre in the underworld, Carozzi 1994 pp. 623–8; M. H. Marshall, ‘Theatre in the Middle Ages’, in Symposium vol. 4 (1950) pp. 1–39; M. Henshaw, ‘The Attitude of the Church toward the Stage at the End of Middle Ages’, in Med & Hum vol. 7 (1952) pp. 3–17; B. Roy, ‘Arnulf of Orelans and the Latin Comedy’, in Speculum vol. 49 (1974) pp. 258–66. 98 99

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miller, and the assistant who mistreated his master’s animals. As they acted out their sins again the devils pounced on them and tore them to shreds. Thurkill also met his former lord who was not allowed to enter the basilica because he withheld some money owed to laborers who worked on his estate. He also withheld from the canons of St. Ositha the annual dues to which they were entitled. He gave his son instructions through Thurkill about how to make good these obligations as quickly as possible so that he might enter heaven. Thurkill also encountered a monk from another nearby monastery whose sudden death had generated a lot of rumors. Thurkill’s father did penance in purgatory by crawling over sharp stones which cut his face. The angel declared that thirty masses must be said for him before he could be saved, but reduced this to ten masses in light of Thurkill’s poverty. The angel named other sinners including one who had to lie in a deep vessel full of cold salt water until three hundred masses had been said for him. In the final stages Thurkill arrived at paradise where he saw three saints: St. Catherine, St. Margaret and St. Ositha. As he stood in veneration of them, his relatives in this world tried to wake him by pouring water down his throat; in order to prevent him from choking St. Julian brought him back to life. At that moment Thurkill regained consciousness and exclaimed ‘Benedicite’. Schmidt says that between Thurkill’s vision and the moment when it is written down by the redactor there elapses a period of time, the extent of which is not known to us. During these weeks, months or even years, Thurkill’s account was open to all kinds of influences: he spoke with his relatives, the priest, the inhabitants of Stisted and their lord … and he traveled a good deal in order to tell of his revelations in churches and monasteries. Before he communicated his account to the redactor he had already discussed it with a large number of people. These will have come to him with quite definite expectations, and will have been interested – from various motives – in the fate of individual deceased persons.100

Schmidt infers that it is thus scarcely possible to distinguish with certainty between the original content of Thurkill’s vision and its final written form. Thurkill was not able to check the text himself … thereby discovering that whole chapters had been interpolated into his vision, parts of which incidentally seem to have been drawn from an apocalypse of Peter. Do the redactors then fall back on literary models and augment their texts with material from other visions?

Schmidt claims that one cannot argue in such a way as to dismiss as suspect all those passages where literary models can be demonstrated. He argues convincingly that Thurkill himself must have gone on a pilgrimage either to northern Italy or to southern Spain. Thurkill’s vision was also unusual (though not unique) in ascribing such an important story to an illiterate peasant. However, in later versions the depiction of his individual life is no longer preserved, and the local features disappear; the very fact that he was a peasant is obscured; such was their fate in much medieval literature.101 100 101

Schmidt 1978 pp. 55–6. Schmidt 1978 pp. 58–60, 64; Carozzi 1994 pp. 512–15.

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In her much-discussed recent book, C. W. Bynum advanced an ingenious series of arguments about changes in basic attitudes toward the ideas of heaven and hell as shown in the development of other-worldly journeys. In visions recounted by St. Bede and Gregory the Great, as well as some other later soul-voyages, heaven begins to harden – in the literal sense – and the visionary’s attention turns more and more toward hell. Although some early medieval visions retain a picture of heaven as a fertile and luxurious place, ‘the emphasis is increasingly on golden walls and jeweled barricades, on protection and stasis. Images of growth and fertility, of odors and tastes, are relegated to the outskirts of paradise.’ The visions of Tundale and Thurkhill situate golden chapels or fortresses at heaven’s center, surrounded by high thick walls. In contrast to the hardness and immutability of these buildings, the body-shaped soul in hell or purgatory becomes the victim of generation and corruption: ‘It is punished not only by dismemberment but also by perverted nutrition and fertility – horrid consumptions, digestions, impregnations, excretions, vomitings, and birthings.’ Bynum cites several vivid examples from her discussion in an earlier book: Guibert of Nogent recounts his mother’s vision of the dead ‘with the appearance of ghosts’, their hair ‘seemingly eaten by worms’. Thurchill sees several types of sinners … whose limbs are cut off and fried before they are reassembled for further torture … Mechtild of Magdeburg sees Satan as one who ‘makes himself of great size’ and swallows devils, Jews and heathens into his ‘paunch’ ‘body and soul’, eating Sodomites and ‘gnawing’ the greedy.

In the vision of Tundale, ‘the carefully organized tortures of hell or purgation seem to reflect the dreaded putrefaction of the grave, whose contents are devoured by the very worms to which they spontaneously (or so people thought) give birth’.102 In a few of these visions, a living person descends through an opening in the earth; but in the most common soul-voyage, the soul travels to the other world while its body is asleep or very sick. When the psychic traveler is described as a separated soul, some authors call attention to their decision to give it a body, though this is not often a human body. In early medieval visions, the body-shaped soul is sometimes depicted as a bird, a bubble, or a spark. But by the thirteenth century this had changed: ‘now souls almost invariably appear with highly individualized bodies in highly individualized raiment. Caesarius, for example, portrays a ghostly visitor from the afterlife with the prayers he had offered written on his boots.’103 In an important recent study, Peter Dinzelbacher has remarked on a basic change in the nature and structure of visionary literature about 1200. In the early Middle Ages, visions are more likely to involve travel outside the body and personal transformation; after the mid-thirteenth century, the visionaries (now usually women) seem more passive and their visions are more frequent and less transformative.104 ‘More is at stake in such cases’, Bynum argues, 102 103 104

Bynum 1995 pp. 292–3; on the popularity of Tundale’s vision see Wieck 1990. Bynum 1995 p. 294. See esp. Dinzelbacher 1981.

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than merely the visionary’s (and the author’s) need to express his insight in visible form. Caesarius suggests that we have to experience souls as bodies when we are in the body; once we are free of flesh, we will see them as spheres. Others suggest that souls need bodies not only to return to earth and warn the living … but also in order to experience torture or reward and to be fully particularized as selves. Guibert of Nogent recounts his mother’s vision of a spirit (her dead husband) who will not give his name; the suggestion is that without a body he lacks in some way his identity.105

Something similar happens to Dante when he fails to recognize a friar, whose body is still in the world, but whose soul freezes in hell (Inf. 33.130–32): ‘Although the passage certainly suggests that, without somatomorphic soul at the least, the person is unrecognizable. The poet also indicates through the incident that those in the world who trust in appearances may be misled; there are in fact persons so evil that their souls have already gone before them into hell leaving behind bodies occupied by demons.’106 And further: although authors sometimes called attention to somatomorphic souls as metaphors or images, they were far more apt to use ‘as if’ when representing souls as spheres or sparks. The soul’s body was increasingly treated as the conventional and obvious way of presenting its experience and individuality, its exact moral state and social status. Indeed, the soul’s body was sometimes seen as more real (in a moral and ontological sense) than the body of earth. In the early 13th century vision of Thurchill, for example, souls appeared to the voyager black, white or spotted, depending on their degree of guilt; their color in the afterlife thus reflected their true nature far more accurately than their color on earth.107

Hence, one must resist the idea that the author (or redactor) of the soul-voyage ascribed the character a body as a literary vehicle to make more vivid the traveler’s experiences. Rather, its other-worldly body was a psychical vehicle to give weight to the idea that after death the delights of heaven and the torments of hell were experienced as physical sensations, and not some spiritual analogue. Bynum further argues that by the early thirteenth century, ‘the Byzantine theme of resurrection as the vomiting up of parts in a context of cosmological renovation had faded from Western art to be replaced by the tradition … of resurrection as return from the grave under the watchful eye of Christ the judge. The tympana of the great cathedrals … subordinate resurrection to judgment by focusing attention not on disentombment but on the division into saved and damned.’108 These images invariably depict the resuscitated dead emerging whole from their tombs. Only a few vestiges of the earlier fear of post-mortem chewing and digestion survive into high medieval iconography: the continued prominence of Jonah swallowed by the whale, the standard treatment of hell as an immense mouth that swallows the damned, and the prominence of tortures allied with cooking and eating. With some exceptions, images and ideas about resurrection are no longer the regurgitation, reconstitution, or reclothing of dead bones. Yet, as Bynum astutely points out, the dead who rise whole 105 106 107 108

See Le Goff 1984 pp. 182–5; Zaleski 1987 pp. 45–55. Bynum 1995 p. 295. Zaleski 1987 pp. 51–3; Le Goff 1984 pp. 296–7. Bynum 1995 p. 307.

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from either coffin or earth are increasingly particularized by hair color, sex, age, and clothes that express details of worldly rank and power. The development of iconography thus parallels that of literature. It is another question whether the ghosts of the dead display their worldly status through their clothing or accessories.109 In the thirteenth century, images of resurrection as the reassemblage of bodyparts disappear from artworks, scholastic discourse and poetry. Fragmentation continues as an image of evil and pain, and wholeness as an image of paradise. But wholeness is no longer so much a victory over partition, a patching-together of dispersed bits, as a reflection of what human nature is. In Dante’s journey through the other world, he does not encounter anonymous martyrs, monks and virgins, but clearly recognizable friends, family and famous persons. What is important for Dante and other writers in this period is not some abstract argument about the continuity of material particles over time, but the psychical continuity of the whole person before and after death.110 Despite the enormous changes in ideas about what constituted ‘life’ in the afterlife, ‘deep anxieties about decay continued to lurk under the surface of theological discussion, miracle story and preaching. Decay was sometimes redeemed (and denied) in metaphors of fertility … more often it was redeemed (and denied) in images of reunion or incorruption of parts. Such images, in keeping with the intensely graphic and somatic quality of late medieval piety, came increasingly to be enacted in matter.’ The accounts of soul-voyages reflect this new emphasis, ascribing to the separated soul desires, anxieties, regrets and other normally embodied characteristics: ‘Although philosophical theory could account for identity of person without material continuity, body – as the locus of decay, of experience, and of encounter with the divine – was more important than ever before. It was divided and distributed in order to disperse its power; but in order to revere and protect that same power, it was declared whole even when mutilated and partitioned.’111 In an important paper published three years later, Bynum revised some of her earlier views. She says that she had connected the extreme literalism and materialism of twelfth-century notions of resurrection at the end of time with a prevalent fear of metempsychosis, that is, loss of self through loss of body. In other words, it is allied with ‘a pervasive conviction, underlying many genres and divergent discourses of the period, that the human person is a psycho-somatic unit whose survival necessitates bodily continuity’.112 Christian theologians who maintained an orthodox view attacked various heretics for what they perceived as some version of ‘body hopping, body exchange or body erasure’, which contradicted the NT doctrine that, at the Last Judgment, the souls of the dead would be resurrected in their original flesh. Scholastic and monastic discussion in this period thought of the embodied self as the locus of personal identity and associated this identity with triumph over change, that is, over the physical process of decay. Resurrection in the original flesh was conceived as both natural and supernatural: ‘it On this question see Schmitt 1998 pp. 201–5. Bynum 1995 pp. 307–9; and see our discussion of Dante’s soul-voyage, HCM pp. 197–202. 111 Bynum 1995 p. 317, continued on pp. 319, 322, 326. 112 Bynum 1998 p. 987, referring to her 1995 pp. 213–20. 109 110

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is natural for the human person to have a body, and survival of the soul alone is hence an aberration that cannot be perpetual.’ But it is also supernatural, ‘for in the natural order biological entities give birth only to like, but numerically separate, individuals.’113 On the other hand, this picture of orthodox resistance to the notion of psychical transmutation seems to run counter to one of the most remarked characteristics of this period: the sense of nature as labile, percolating and fertile, pregnant with new forms of things. The twelfth century also witnessed the revival of Ovid’s works, the collection of marvels, speculation about shape-shifting and body-borrowing, and the study of substantial change through alchemical means. It was ‘the era of green men and werewolves, stigmata and Eucharistic miracles, and dreams of turning copper into gold’.114 These sorts of discourses ‘contradict [her] earlier intuition that much of the religious and intellectual concern of the period was devoted to containing and countering a mutability seen as a dark threat to survival and identity’. The twelfthcentury fascination with Ovid’s Metamorphosis focused on the passages where he spoke vividly about bodies changed into new forms as the cosmos emerged, where he said that ‘all things change and nothing dies’, and especially in his dictum that ‘what we call birth is but a beginning to be other than what one was before’ (Meta. XV.164, 256). Bynum chooses as one of the pre-eminent expressions of this Ovidian sense of nature as deeply fertile with new forms the twelfth-century literary masterpiece, the Cosmography of Bernard Silvestris. In this strange work, the author describes ‘a universe that contains the seeds of its own continuity; ever-flowing silva (matter) lurks beneath … Although the whole person (totus homo) inhabits a body doomed to die, reabsorption of semen by the brain is, he writes, parallel to the return of the soul to heaven. The throbbing rhythm of the cosmos becomes, albeit somewhat ambiguously and inconsistently, a kind of immortality.’115 It is to Bernard Silvestris’ wonderful Cosmography that we now turn. (3) New ideas about the soul’s place in nature in the twelfth century One of the most distinctive philosophical-literary texts of the twelfth century is Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmography, an allegorical story of the creation of the universe (in Book I, ‘Megacosmos’) and the production of human being (in Book II, ‘Microcosmos’). The dramatic action of Bernard’s Cosmography begins when Natura complains to Nous about the chaotic state of the world, and Nous promises to do what she can to make it into a more harmonious order. Nature had never taken a prominent role in a medieval epic and it was an innovation to introduce her figure into Latin literature as an allegorical goddess presiding over the world’s creation.116 Bynum 1998 p. 988. Bynum 1998 p. 991, referring to M. D. Chenu’s classic study, La théologie au douzième siècle, Paris: Vrin, 1957. 115 Bynum 1998 p. 994–5, referring to Wetherbee (ed.) 1973 pp. 109–10. 116 See esp. Tullio Gregory, La filosofia della natura nel medioevo. Milan, 1966, pp. 27–65; for a brief but astute summary see E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953, pp. 108–13. 113 114

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Nature’s role is difficult to define but she transforms the Hermetic notion of nature as a mysterious goddess who disdains to reveal her secrets but clothes them in allegory. Instead of watching Nature’s actions unfold in the cosmic drama, the reader can follow Nature’s point of view, and thus become educated at the same time as Nature does. The third main figure is Silva, the mother (matrix) of material things; she embraces the primal elements of the universe (confusa primordia rerum). Nature asks Nous whether or not she has ‘the capacity to hammer out matter more softly and when what is old and worn out is put aside, to draw forth the image of a better form’ (I.1.8–9). The unruly elements plead to be allowed to proceed towards their better form: ‘the most ancient of things desires to be born again; matter desires to be circumscribed with figures from a new beginning’ (I.1.35). God is not jealous of this but ‘remakes (refert) everything in a better way as far as the substance of things allows’. By saying that God remakes the world, Bernard suggests the astrological idea that cosmic reform occurs at a definite time when, according to the stars and planets’ position, the order of the universe dissolves and is remade again from the elementary chaos.117 Nature pleads with Nous to inaugurate a new stage in the history of the world, a history which is cyclical and progressive, in which the elements of the former age will be used to build the new. In the following description, ‘Nature juxtaposes the Platonic mother-figure, holding the atomistic particles of matter in her lap, with the image of matter in the ordinary, unabstract sense of the term, as stuff which is malleable and can be beaten into a new shape.’ Nature says that ‘Silva [is] a stiff, formless chaos, a bellicose compound, the discolored face of being, a mass dissonant to itself. Being turbid, she desires tempering, being ugly beauty, being uncultivated refinement.’ In his thesis about the world’s progress through cycles, Bernard most likely drew on Macrobius’ model, as Stock explains: first, it attempted to reconcile the notion of the world’s eternity … with the idea of creation, as civilization, beginning at a single point in time and gradually progressing. Second, it proposed that civilization itself, or rather [their] rise and fall, were the consequences of natural events. Third, it suggested an optimistic view of human history as a whole. If technical progress was a recent phenomenon, then, by transferring the notion, his own age occupied an important place in history.118

But Bernard also draws on Firmicus Maternus’ efforts to integrate astrological prediction with a scientific theory of cosmic reform. Bernard drew heavily on two ideas in Firmicus’ work: ‘one, the relatively large role assigned to Natura in the cosmic process; and two, the view that a science of the heavens is not incompatible with free will’. And perhaps third, Firmicus had made a greater effort than Macrobius to treat human as a microcosm of the whole process.119 After Natura, the second main actor in the cosmographic drama is Nous,120 who provides the reason or plan of action by which theory is translated into practice. In Stock 1972 pp. 63–8; for making and remaking into elements, see Plato’s Timaeus 29e. Stock 1972 p. 80. 119 Stock 1972 p. 81. 120 The name in the text is spelled ‘Noys’, but just as the Greek psuch¯ e can be transcribed psyche, so also Greek nous, which functions much like the Neo-Platonic hypostasis Nous, can 117 118

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the second book, Nous brings order to the warring elements and unites the worldbody with the world-soul, and in the later part she provides a similar plan for the human microcosm. Nous has three major functions: first, she is God’s providence; second, she is God’s messenger, and third, she is God’s crafter, the world-maker. In her own monologue, Nous repeats some of Nature’s complaints about the longing of matter for form, that is, of disorder for order, and the idea that the world has arrived at the threshold of a new stage of cultural history. Here it seems likely that Bernard drew on an anonymous commentary on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy.121 In both texts the real world reflects the divine exemplar and Nous mediates by way of ideas this beneficent form from God. In Bernard’s view, worldly creation is a cooperative effort where the duties are divided among several goddess figures. For Bernard as well, the recreation of the cosmic order had to await the right moment in history, when according to Nous, the cultus and the facies (the face) of the world, could be reformed along rational lines, the causae ad ordinem concurrentes. For Bernard, the traditional figure of God’s providence is a rather complex literary allegory. Like his Natura, she is a composite idea, formed of many, not easily reconcilable, classical sources, and transformed in the poet’s highly original imagination.122

The third main player is Silva or Hyl¯e, whose appearance is ‘one of the most elusive parts of the work, making heavy demands on even the erudite reader who is fully acquainted with [his] sources’. One problem, as Stock explains, is that Bernard’s view of prime matter does not appear wholly consistent throughout the poem. Despite these ambiguities Silva-Hyl¯e carries three main themes: that matter is a selfreproducing substance; that matter is an allegorical mystery, relating God and the world, and that matter is really the stuff of both the world and human, directly related to what is visible and tangible. Despite the fact that Bernard seems to use these names as synonyms, Stock claims that there is a subtle distinction: Silva is the concrete chaos of the primitive elements, while hyl¯e is more abstract, an indefinable substratum. This distinction corresponds roughly to two views of matter held in the twelfth century. One, derived from Galen and other medical writers, asserted that matter was virtually identical to the four elements of which it was composed; the other held that matter was a substratum into which the elements inhered but remained separate from them: The difference between silva and hyl¯e, however, is more profound than this. Silva is much more involved than hyl¯e in the moral allegory through which a new and better universe is to be formed. In his descriptions, Bernard points out that silva is to be refined into a more cultivated visage for the world, while hyl¯e represents the eternal source of matter which reproduces itself … hyl¯e and silva are resonating, inter-dependent forms of the same reality. Just as the vetus globus, despite the continual warfare of the elements, remains

be rendered noys; however, the spelling ‘Noys’ may distract the reader and make him or her think that some other thing is meant. 121 See Stock 1972 pp. 91–2; Dronke 1978 pp. 18–20. 122 Stock 1972 p. 97.

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battered but intact, so hyl¯e is prevented from descending into complete chaos by the four elements that cling to her, as to silva, like roots.123

In the next sections of the Megacosmos, Bernard describes the resolution of chaos into an ordered whole and the descent of the world-soul. After the world-soul and world-body are united in marriage, the world’s contents unfold in elegiac verses. First, matter is organized according to physical principles, where fire, earth, air and water occupy positions relative to their densities. Fire rises to the top and forms a ring around the cosmos which is contiguous with the aplanos, the outermost circle. When the elements have been arranged in a harmonious order, the other components are laid out: the heavens and ranks of angels, the stars and planets, the four winds and divisions of the earth, mountains and rivers, and the many species of animals, birds and fishes – this will lead eventually to the creation of human being. Bernard then turns to the world-soul, which is to be reunited with the world-body: then the world-soul, from the origin of life or light, flowed down as if in a kind of emanation as the life-force and glory of the cosmos. In its descent, it appeared as an extended, contentful globe, but one which could not be seen with the eyes, only with the mind. Its quite clear substance presented the appearance of a liquid, flowing fountain … From its place this living fire seems to endure in such a manner that it cannot perish, since whole and unified it is being poured out separately in individual currents. [I.2.167–80]

The figure of Destiny (Heimarmen¯e) comes directly from the Hermetic milieu; it is the principle of temporal continuity, ‘a serial law’ in Etienne Gilson’s phrase, ensuring the orderly succession of growth and renewal in the universe. The figure of Endelechia issues from Nous by some sort of emanation, like the Biblical Wisdom, and is wedded to the world born of Silva, which she imbues in all its parts with her vitality. Her power resides in her ‘vivifying sparks’ (fomes vivificus), derived from the heavens, and it is through the sparks’ permixture with material that Nature becomes the mother of generation.124 The closing images of this theatrical scene are adapted from the Hermetic Asclepius. Nous, the consort of God, is made pregnant by the divine will; she gives birth to the exemplary images, showing World-Soul, Nature and Destiny, what most befits the world. The World-Soul supplies the substance for particular souls, Nature shapes bodies for those souls to dwell in, and Destiny orders everything that she embraces in the world below, weaving and unweaving it again. As Book II of the ‘Microcosmos’ opens, Nous presents the completed artifact to Natura to behold; Nous instructs Natura to look up at the heavens, now like an open book, in which many things are written in secret script. After declaiming about the wonderful design of the earth, Nous informs Natura that the creation of human being is needed to bring this design to its consummation. Natura then seeks out two collaborators for this project, Urania and Physis; she searches many areas of the Stock 1972 pp. 100–1. Wetherbee 1973 pp. 39–40; he notes that Bernard uses the term fomes for the world-soul, for the vivifying influence of the firmament, and the same influence in the sun; as such it participates in the same complex of associations that surround the vitalis calor of universal life and the igniculus which this kindles in the human soul, 1973 p. 139 note 151. 123 124

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heavens in vain, until she passes the tropic of Cancer.125 Here she sees a large crowd of souls, sad and mournful, about to descend from splendor into darkness, from heaven to the realm of Pluto, from eternity to the temporal. Nature then travels to the Aplanos, the outermost sphere, composed of the fifth essence, timeless and unchanging, the source of motion for all the spheres below. It is the all-forming place and its governor is the Oyarses called Pantomorphos; here the borrowing from the Hermetica is right on the surface: Oyarses is ousia-arches, and pantomorphos is the name for the regent in the Asclepius.126 Here Natura meets Urania, who states that the creation of human being is in keeping with God’s will. The human rational soul (the mind) will know the laws of fate, the turns of fortune and the powers of the stars and planets; when its body is cast aside it will be able to rejoin the stars as a new god. Urania and Natura then enter the region of pure light where the supreme and super-essential God resides. Celestial spirits surround the sanctuary on all sides, differing in nearness, rank and visionary power, but the true good (Tugaton127) flashes out as an inaccessible brightness. From this infinite and eternal splendor a second radiance extends or emanates, and from the second a third radiance. From this supernal splendor, the two goddesses descend through successive planetary zones, encountering their respective Oyarses (=usiarchs): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and then the Sun: ‘Among the usiarchs and genii of the heavens, whom eternal wisdom has appointed to adorn and govern the universe, the sun is pre-eminent in brilliance, foremost in power, supreme in majesty. It is the mind of the universe, the spark of perception in creatures, source of the stars’ power, eye of the universe; it penetrates all creation with an immensity of both radiance and warmth.’ A harmonious proportion unites souls to bodily members, so that a single bond of love links unlike natures, though the flesh is earthly and the mind ethereal; though the one is gross, the other volatile, one dull, the other keen: ‘It is thus that the simplicity of the soul enters the condition of otherness, and its single substance is divided among diverse kinds of life. But what is thus held by fetters, locked in the prison of the body and lies all but buried beneath its burden, will return to the glory of its birth, the kingdom of its father, if it is wise and does not submit to the tyranny of the flesh.’ Moreover, the divine voice continues See what is permitted to death, what is the cause of death, and who is its author, by what authority it draws down, in what whirlpool it engulfs everything that air, earth and water sustains. Yet if a mind which consorts with truth may inspire true understanding, death deprives a thing of its form, but does not steal away the essence of that thing. For the subject matter stays the same, though its form passes away, and a new form only gives this matter a new name. Form flows away, the essence of the thing remains; the power of death destroys nothing, but only disunites united parts.128 [II.8.end] 125 In Macrobius, the Tropic of Cancer is the gateway from heaven to earth, the Tropic of Capricorn, from earth to heaven. The new creature, human being, must be made in such a way that he can ascend to a place among the gods – at least after death. 126 Asclepius sec. 19; Brian Copenhaver (ed.) Hermetica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 pp. 77–8 notes pp. 231–2. 127 Tugaton or Tugathon, from Plato’s ta agathon, as in Macrobius, Somn Scipio I.2.14. 128 On parallels with this important passage, see Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus I.365–71, and Macrobius, Somn Scipio 2.12.13.

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In the next chapters, Urania and Natura descend through the lunar sphere and enter a region where the fluid elemental substance changes constantly. The two goddesses are horrified at this congenital inconstancy and attempt to reach an island of peace and calm. This pleasant place is called Gramision,129 named after the grasses of Elysium (graminum-elision). Of the self-fertilizing force of this place Bernard says ‘the hidden womb supplies for the various conveniences of humans whatever restores health, whatever arouses pleasant senses with desires … This place, in my opinion, is unique; although it has limited the particles, and while it takes nothing unto itself from the elements’ tension, it is fit to proclaim a full and consummate temperateness’ (II.9.19–25). Gramision is thus something like a healthy organism through whose senses a perfect harmony is maintained with the world: ‘Through his uses of both Neo-Platonic and Stoic metaphors’, as Stock says, ‘Bernard implies that this place is both the One at its stage of descent from the many and, at the same time, the union of the elements free from tension.’130 As Urania begins to pass out of her realm Natura resumes her role as guide. As they approach Gramision in search of Physis, the pleasant place appears to swell in anticipation, like an expectant mother and a blooming garden. This place is a kind of Neo-Platonic paradise, exhibiting true unity in diversity, and in a place of intense fertility, it unites the powers of sun, moon and elements, providing an appropriate cradle for the creation of human.131 It is in Gramision that Physis makes her first appearance, she is described as ‘clinging to her daughters, theory and practice’. In contrast to Natura who mediates life-forces from above, Physis’ powers are directly related to the human sciences. It is Physis who ‘had brought about the origin of all essential qualities, their properties, potencies, effects, and the entire list of Aristotle’s categories, the material for serious contemplation. For, taking her principles from the supreme divinity, she followed Natura and whatever comes under her name through genera, species, and individuals’ (II.9.55–60). ‘Physis may be seen as the completion of Bernard’s idea of mechanical, physical forces operating in the cosmos.’ As Stock says: ‘Bernard has not just employed the idea of natura artifex at the earthly level, he has adapted it to all levels including the resonance of life-forces with God. The way in which the upper levels of the cosmos redeploy life-forces is drawn on the analogy of Physis’ work lower down. At the earthly level, Bernard has merely made the notion more explicit by placing it in the context of the human sciences.’132 However, Physis does not merely reflect the powers she controls in a passive way, since, in attempting to relate theory to practice, she conducts what could only be called experiments. When the three goddesses have assembled, Nous appears and delivers a speech that outlines the design for human being, a design which she has brought down from God the creator. In his view, human is both a faithful image of the megacosmos, containing all the components of the universe, an officina or 129 ‘Gramision’ is the correct name, as Dronke demonstrates, 1978 pp. 171–7, and not ‘Granusion’, as Stock, Wetherbee and others have read it; Stock 1972 pp. 188–94, Wetherbee 1973 pp. 111–12: C. S. Lewis perpetuated this error, The Discarded Image, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964 pp. 59–60. 130 Stock 1972 p. 189. 131 Stock 1972 p. 192. 132 Stock 1972 p. 195.

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workshop (in Eriugena’s terms) in which the laws of the greater world are continually being reproduced.133 Nous’s speech is both the climax of the whole poem and a summary of his cosmological model: In order that the sensible universe, the image of an ideal model, may be full of full parts, human must be made, his form akin to the divine, a happy and blessed conclusion of my work … He will derive his mind from heaven, his body from the elements, so that his body inhabits the earth, his mind far above. Mind and body, though different, will be joined into one, that a sacred nexus produces a pleasing work. He will be godly and earthly, he will show his devotion to the world with his counsel, for the gods with his religion. Thus, he will be able to conform to his two natures and be fitted to the principles of his existence. He may cherish divine things and have charge of earthly life, and satisfy the demands of nature drawn to both, he will possess the gift of reason in common with higher powers; only a thin line will separate him from these powers. Brute beasts plainly reveal slow senses and bear their heads cast downward, their gaze fixed on earth. But human alone, his stature showing the majesty of his mind, lifts up his noble head to the stars, so that he may use the laws of stars and their unalterable courses as a pattern for his own life.134

In the next section the three goddesses begin the work of making human; his soul is formed by connecting the world-soul to the edifice of virtue and his body to the remnants of pre-existent matter. The concretion of both by Natura takes place according to an order already present in the heavens. Nous then assigns to each goddess a specific area of control over their product: to Urania the mirror of providence, to Natura the table of fate, and to Physis the book of memory. Bernard devotes a great deal of attention to explaining how the structure of the megacosmos is captured in the structure of the human microcosmos. The mirror of providence reflects the eternal ideas, ancient and future forms, the divine fire, the planets and stars, and even ‘friendship of the elements, the mediator entwined in itself’. The features which this mirror reveals are comparable to those attributed to Nous in Book I, chapter 4; their extension into human being is thus an aspect of the chain of continuity binding all forces in a great hierarchy.135 The table of fate represents destiny, the genius which carries out Natura’s wishes in time. Bernard sees in this not only the miraculum opificis in bringing order from chaos but also the history of the world from the first human. Physis (who did not appear in the first book) is given the book of memory (or records) which is like an object that takes events into itself. In judging the sense impressions recorded on this blank tablet, ‘the intellect often compels the memory by verifiable reason, more often than by probable guesses’ (II.11.86–89). This book is written not in ordinary letters but in signs and symbols, its contents brief and condensed. Here there appears much comprehensive and careful information regarding the creatures which are beheld in bodily form: ‘In the midst of a multitude of earthly natures, Physis discovered only by great effort the image of human, faintly inscribed at the very end of the last page.’ In this context Stock 1972 p. 197. Cosm. II.10; the translations by Wetherbee (1978 pp. 113–14) and Stock (1972 pp. 199–200) differ wildly in this section; the modified translation above tries to follow the text in a literal manner. 135 According to Stock 1972 p. 203 note 79. 133 134

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Wetherbee refers to Bernard’s underlying pessimism: in the three perspectives granted by providence, destiny and memory, human being is ‘a tentative almost shadowy presence; and the goddesses must search anxiously to determine his place in the scheme of things. Together the Mirror, Table and Book imply a deeply enigmatic questioning of the relations of physics, metaphysics, and human history.’136 In the final two sections, Physis completes the drama of human creation when she perceives a certain latent fault (macula) in the crowded mass of matter, the plastic stuff out of which the human body is to be shaped: ‘For these are evils which may normally be born with the body and Physis fears them.’ Human should be reformed to the extent of the physical limitations of matter and the conditions laid out by the stars; one will provide the constitution, and the other the makeup of the soul: Physis was mistrustful of the coarse substance of the elements and doubted that they would prove wholly adaptable, for she saw in them the stains from an ineradicable evil deed of Silva. The violent and teeming state of matter in its primordial confusion terrified the prospective artisan … It was her task to recall to order whatever through too much force had transgressed its bounds. The malignity of bodily nature might well make her fearful lest their instability should scorn all form and mock her discipline … The universe contains in its being the seeds of continuance, but mortal human is not so made, and hence its maker would have to construct it in a different fashion … This was a task for a keen intellect, for the fire of a keen mind, and a hand capable of edifying human so that he, who is not preserved by relations with external life, might survive through a power within himself.

Constrained by physical limits, ‘Physis undertook this great task, though two things made her blush: expelling the evil taint from Silva and containing the fluid matter within fixed bounds.’ Bernard then says in Physis’ voice: ‘The human race, since it is mortal is inhibited by its condition, must yet be so reformed that it may rise to dwell among the heavenly powers, and to subject to its laws whatever the starbearing sphere impels by its circling, and by all these means redeem the taint of its earthly beginnings and innate evil’ (II.13). God the creator had established places (or dwellings) for the individual elements and unbreakable bonds between forces in order to ensure peace and order. Despite this, ‘the rough necessity of ever-flowing Silva lurked close beneath the surface. The fluctuating mass harbored an evil tendency to injure or destroy the glory of the divine work. Physis was dismayed at the inconstant type of material she had to work with and then also realized that she did not have even the elements themselves but fragments, ‘scraps and leavings which she had found discarded after the universe’s completion’. In these she saw only the images of the elements, not their true nature. These were not the kind of things that could achieve perfection, but ‘the dregs of the elementary essences, gross remnants of their original simplicity’. Physis applied the elementary complexions to the human constitution in such a way that human’s basic nature would conform to their underlying principles, that is, the elemental ratios which comprise the four humors. Physis divided the bodily material into three portions: the head, the breast and the loins, which received the three principal 136

Wetherbee in Dronke 1988 p. 47; Wetherbee 1973 pp. 114–17; Dronke 1978 pp. 122–6.

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organs, the brain, the heart and the liver. In order that the soul should govern the whole it is placed in the head, the vital force in the breast, and the appetite in the lower parts. She raised the head to the position of temple or capitol of the whole body, making it stand out toward the heavens. She employed a soft, clear material in making the brain, so that sensible images might impress themselves thereon. In the front chamber of the skull she set the imagination, in the rear she set memory, and reason between these two in order to impose firm judgments. The work’s concluding section describes how ‘human was formed with masterly and prudent skill, the masterwork of powerful Nature’. There follows an elaborate and beautiful comparison of the various bodily organs and members as architectural symbols (capsules) of the world-whole. An unexpected and striking encomium on the superb function and marvelous character of the sexual organs is stated: The nature of the universe outlives itself, for it flows back into itself, and so survives and is nourished but by its very flowing away. For whatever is lost only merges again with the sum of things, and that it may die perpetually, never does wholly. But human, ever liable to affliction by forces far less harmonious, passes wholly out of existence with the failure of his body. Unable to sustain himself within himself, wanting nourishment from without, he exhausts his life, and one day reduces him to nothing. [II.14. 125–27]

The theme of the Cosmography, according to Wetherbee, illustrates perfectly the ambitions and resources of the Platonism of its day, and its literary form and character reflect one of the earliest significant confrontations between a modern European author and the classical tradition. Implicit in its allegory is a subtle critique of the sacramental, as well as the psychological and moral implications of the Platonist cosmology, and of the new sense of the autonomy and value of universal life which the twelfth century saw reflected in this cosmology.137

At the same time it is in a special sense an epic poetic work, a definitive and heroic characterization of human experience: ‘The Cosmography expresses that concern to expand the limits of rational speculation, to affirm both the dignity of man and the dignity of that natural order with which man’s nature, even in its fallen state, exhibits profound affinities, which is the essence of medieval humanism.’ The introduction of Christian Neo-Platonist texts in the twelfth century entailed, contact with an emanationist view of life for which the facts of formal order and continuity in nature are at best accidental phases in, and at worst obstacles to the participation of human life in the great movement of procession and return in which the true relationship of creation with God consists. Bernard’s late antique sources also exposed him to nonChristian Neoplatonism, for which life is an endless struggle between spirit and flesh, one seeking always to return to its divine source, the other tainted by the malignitas of materiality and posing the threat of dissolution.138

William of Conches said that ‘in the creation of things, divine power, wisdom and goodness are beheld’, and these three attributes, under various names, seemed 137 138

Wetherbee 1973 pp. 2–3. Wetherbee 1973 p. 5.

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to thinkers of widely diverse orientations manifest expression of the Holy Trinity: Equally important are the anthropological implications of these ideas … man himself is a universe, composed of the elements and subject to the physical laws of the cosmos at large, and endowed with a soul that reflects the divine wisdom and is by nature subject to a providential influence. To know nature is to know man, and hence an appreciation of the organicity and inner coherence of the universe could lead to a view of nature and natural law as a standard for the regulation of human society.139

But revived Platonism was not the only influence: ‘The continuity of human and cosmic life was also emphasized in the Stoic physics with which the cosmologists augmented their Platonism, drawing from Cicero and Seneca the idea of an ignis artifex, a vital force which sustains and renews universal life at all levels, from mere vegetable existence to the level of cognition and intelligence.140 In his treatise On the Same and the Diverse, Adelard of Bath states this last idea in lucid words: The creator of all things, supremely good, drawing all creatures into his own likeness, so far as nature allows, has endowed the soul with that mental power which the Greeks call nous. This power she freely enjoys while in her pure condition, untroubled by disturbance from without. She examines not only things in themselves but their causes as well, and the principles of these causes, and from things present has knowledge of the distant future. She understands what she is in herself, what the mind is by which she knows, and what the power of reason by which she seeks to know. Once bound by the earthly and vile fetters of the body she loses no small portion of her understanding, but that elemental dross cannot wholly obliterate this splendor.141

The so-called ‘scientific Platonism’ of this period coexists with a more or less mystical, hierarchical Neo-Platonism which reflects the attempt to come to terms with Greek Patristic thought, and whose two great sources were Dionysius the Areopagite and Eriugena’s summation: There were innumerable points of contact between these Platonisms, and in themselves they were not irrevocably opposed. Both were concerned with the higher significance of naturalia, with the ascent of the mind to the vision of truth, per creaturas ad creatorem, and with the relation of created multiplicity to the uncreated One, the idem, whether conceived as ‘Father of Lights’ (pater luminum) or as that ‘form of forms’ (forma formarum) … But the two kinds of Platonism differed significantly in their attitudes toward the actual works, as opposed to the methods, of the ancient auctores, and in their sense of the value of such wisdom as philosophy alone is capable of attaining.142

The tremendous authority assigned to Plato’s Timaeus was extended to those texts considered to be the work of his most faithful interpreters and adapters. In addition 139 Wetherbee, in Dronke 1988 p. 24–5; citing William of Conches, Glossae super Platonem (Paris, 1965) p. 60 and Tullio Gregory, Anima Mundi (Florence, 1955) pp. 123–74. 140 Stock 1972 pp. 138–62; Verbeke 1983 pp. 35–44; Michael Lapidge in Dronke 1988 p. 81–112. 141 On the Same and the Diverse IV.1 pp. 9–10. 142 Wetherbee in Dronke 1988 p. 29.

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to Boethius’ Consolation, these included the Hermetic Asclepius, ‘with its powerful and highly mythological view of the universe pervaded by the love of a bisexual cosmic deity’; Macrobius’ On The Dream of Scipio, which provides an explicit rationale for the use of myth in philosophical speculation, and the elaborate allegory On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology by Martianus Capella, ‘in which education and spiritual experience are intricately worked together and set off by Latinity charged with hints of the philosophical and religious implications of mythology’, in Wetherbee’s words.143 These works promised philosophical understanding through largely literary means; great works of literature were in themselves expressions of philosophical truths as Dante’s Divine Comedy would show. In Dante’s Paradise, the poet’s supreme guide is an elder clad in glory, one who will lead him to the Mother of God and the highest of created beings. This elder figure is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the pre-eminent champion of the twelfth-century vision of the perfect contemplative life, one in whom the pilgrim can see the image of Christ himself. McGinn says that ‘Dante was not alone among medieval writers in considering Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) the supreme guide to the heights of heavenly contemplation. This twelfth-century mystic, a many-talented man whom one can well imagine to have been capable of such alternate careers as crusader, courtly poet, or politician, was a figure larger than life, both to his contemporaries and to subsequent generations.’ Despite the enormous duties imposed by being abbot, counselor, preacher and so on, Bernard found the time to write some of the most elevated and elevating of all Christian mystical works: Among the Latin authors of the Middle Ages, Bernard may possibly have equals, but surely no superiors. The sumptuous elegance of his Latinity, his genius at alternating soaring passages of complex periodic sentences with terse epigrammatic formulations summarizing key points and, above all, the unmistakable personal tone he achieved throughout his work, mark him as the greatest stylist of an age of many distinguished Latinists. Though Bernard has always been seen as a superb writer and major spiritual authority, modern research … has increasingly vindicated his position as an important theologian, though one decidedly not in the scholastic mold.144

Bernard had an excellent literary education, though nothing like the formal theological training of some of his peers. In 1113, after some careful planning, he entered the fairly recent monastery of Citeaux, whose new model of monasticism had been developed not long before by Alberic and Stephen Harding. Within two years Bernard had been made abbot and the Cistercian movement grew with exceptional vigour. Bernard began writing in the 1120s with the treatise the Steps of Humility and Pride and his Apology, written to defend the Cistercians against the Cluniacs. During the next decade he acquired a solid knowledge of the Church Fathers, and composed his most important doctrinal work, On Grace and Free Choice, and his principal mystical treatise, On Loving God. About 1135, Bernard began his mystical masterpiece, the Sermons on the Song of Songs, some parts of which he preached to his fellow monks: ‘The eighty-six sermons that he left at his 143 144

Wetherbee in Dronke 1988 p. 34. McGinn 1994, pp. 162–3; in general, Leclercq et al. 1968 pp. 187–200.

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death are polished literary works, a highly developed and richly rhetorical treatment of the mystical life on the basis of a scriptural exegesis of the most profound (for Bernard) book of the OT, Solomon’s song of love.’145 Here the author displayed his familiarity with commentaries on the Song of Songs by Origen, Ambrose and Gregory; although his sermons are sometimes digressive and repetitious, they are very much Bernard’s own ideas. In his later years he chose to cast his most important thoughts in the sermon genre, including the lengthy series Sermons for the year and Sermons on diverse topics. He also wrote many letters and short treatises on specific topics, such as dispensation and consideration. He did not write anything like a systematic treatise on the soul or human nature, and hence any attempt to elicit one must involve a selective reconstruction.146 Bernard’s extraordinary powers were also sometimes turned to explicitly political ends; the passion which he brought to an exposition of the mystical aspects of Biblical texts he also brought to the promotion of a grand crusade against the Muslim occupiers of the Biblical lands. In 1145, when King Louis of France could not get enough nobles and prelates to motivate the populace for his cause he turned to St. Bernard, then at the height of his reputation. Steven Runciman captures this decisive moment in his brief sketch of Bernard: It is difficult now to look back across the centuries and appreciate the tremendous impact of his personality on all who knew him. The fire of his eloquence has been quenched in the written words that survive … From the day in 1115 when, at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed Abbot of Clairvaux, till his death nearly forty years later, he was the dominant influence in the religious and political life of Western Europe. It was he who gave the Cistercian Order its impetus; it was he who, almost single-handed, had rescued the papacy from the slough of the schism of Anacletus. The fervour and sincerity of his preaching combined with his courage, his vigour and the blamelessness of his life to bring victory to any cause that he supported, save only against the embittered Cathar Heretics of Languedoc. He had long been interested in the fate of eastern Christendom and had himself in 1128 helped in drawing up the Rule for the Order of the Temple. When the Pope and the King begged for his help in preaching the crusade, he eagerly complied.147

John Norwich gives a less than salutary portrait of Bernard at this time: St. Bernard, now fifty-five, was the most powerful spiritual force in Europe. To the 20th century observer, safely out of range of that astonishing personal magnetism with which he effortlessly dominated all those with whom he came into contact, he is not an attractive figure. Tall and haggard, his features clouded by the constant pain that resulted from a lifetime of exaggerated physical austerities, he was consumed by a blazing religious zeal that left no room for tolerance or moderation.

145 McGinn 1994 p. 164; an English translation in four volumes, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971–80. 146 On his life and works, see Evans 1983 pp. 25–49. 147 Steven Runciman, History of the Crusades, vol. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952 pp. 252–3.

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And again, after his resounding success in mobilizing the nobles and prelates, and the eventual failure of the totalizing crusader force, Norwich says of him: All his life Bernard had exemplified that fortunately rare phenomenon, the genuine ascetic who feels himself compelled to intervene in the political field; and since he saw the world with the eye of a fanatic, his interventions were almost invariably disastrous. His launching of the Second Crusade had certainly led to the most shameful Christian humiliation of the Middle Ages. Many might have believed him to be a great man; few would have called him a lovable one.148

His theological treatment of human in the abstract seems light-years away from his practical dealings in human affairs. His analysis of humans’ place in the scale of being situates the species on a hierarchy of four grades: animals, humans, angels and God. Only God is absolute spirit and thus has no need of any kind of body, whereas even angels require a tenuous body. He said that ‘the spirit of the human being which occupies the middle place between the highest and the lowest clearly has to have a body for two reasons: without it the soul is not able to advance on its own, nor can it be of any help to another’ (SCC 5.5). McGinn comments that, the law of our creation is that we can only have access to what can lead us to truth and happiness through the body and its senses, but this God-given condition, by which we were created to use our fleshly nature in order to reach the spiritual domain, has been perverted through the fall. Rather than using knowledge acquired through the senses to reach beyond them, humans became enslaved to materiality so that they can conceive of nothing beyond the flesh.149

In the form of the word (logos), God takes on human bondage to the fallen condition in order to free us from the earthly prison and restore the original human possibility of attaining spirit through our bodily nature: Christ’s activities while in the flesh are central to the economy of salvation, and thus all the physical descriptions of the body and the bodily activities of the [divine] groom in the Song of Songs are to be read in reference to these saving works and their appropriation by the soul. God, for example, can be now said to have feet that can be kissed not so much because the earth is his footstool (Isa. 66:1), as because the humanity of Jesus has revealed both his present mercy and his coming judgment, which we must embrace at the beginning of our conversion. Anthropomorphic language about God is now not only metaphorically but also literally true!

The essential basis of Bernard’s account of human nature150 is derived from Genesis’ double account of human creation in the image and likeness of God. In his work On 148 John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, London: Penguin Books, 1995, pp. 93, 107. 149 McGinn 1994 p. 167; next quote ibid. 150 On this subject, see Maur Standaert, ‘La doctrine de l’image chez Saint Bernard’, in Ephemerides Theologiae Lovanienses, 23 (1947) pp. 70–129; Endre von Ivanka, ‘La structure de l’ame selon S. Bernard’ in Saint Bernard Theologien pp. 202–8; Wilhelm Hiss, Die

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Grace and Free Choice, he claims that the image of God consists in humans’ inalienable freedom from necessity which itself is found in the faculty of free choice. It is due to liberum arbitrium that a human can assent to a course of action based on reasoned judgment. In contrast to the image of God, their likeness to God, lost through sin, is based on two factors: freedom from sin (free counsel) and freedom from misery (compliance). It is the latter that establishes the human will as oriented toward the good and makes it impossible for the will to be disturbed or unhappy. The freedom to sin, as opposed to the freedom from sin, is the result of the deformation of the divine image in humans. It is still called ‘freedom’ since it still represents what the subject wants to achieve, namely, to conform the world to its own deformed image, rather than to the rightness of the divine will. The way back from this miserable freedom Bernard describes in these words: ‘here below, we must learn from our freedom of counsel not to abuse free choice in order that one day we may be able fully to enjoy freedom of pleasure. Thus we are repairing God’s image in us, and the way is being paved by grace for retrieving that former glory which we forfeited by sin.’ However, another picture of the relation of humans to God through image and likeness appears in his Sermons on the Song of Songs (verses 80–82). Here Bernard’s emphasis is on St. Paul’s understanding of the soul’s formation according to the image and likeness to the word of God. In McGinn’s summary: the word is the Father’s image as veritas, sapientia and justitia; the human soul is capable of participating in these insofar as it possesses something of the greatness or dignity and uprightness of the word. Through sinning the soul loses uprightness, though it keeps something of its greatness. Only part, not the whole, of the original divine image remains in the human soul. The soul’s likeness to the word consists in three things: simplicity, that quality by which the soul’s nature is identical with the act of living; immortality, which follows from this, and freedom of choice. Although the soul’s simplicity and immortality can never be lost, its freedom of choice has been entrapped through sinning into voluntary servitude. Hence, in these sermons the soul’s likeness to God is not totally lost but it is partly concealed, just as the image is partly present in its greatness and partly lost in the vanished uprightness.151 Standaert has argued for an underlying consistency in Bernard’s treatments of the image and likeness theme. On his view, Bernard’s intent was not to advance any single definitive thesis but to present variations on a basic triple pattern: first, formation, that is, humans’ inalienable similarity to God; second, deformation, that is, the injury done to that likeness through sinning, and third, reformation, the possibility of progressive restoration of the original similarity through the soul’s bond with the human incarnation of God’s word in Jesus Christ.152 Anthropologie Bernards von Clairvaux, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964; Bernard McGinn, ‘Introduction’ to On Grace and Free Choice, pp. 3–50; and Michael Casey, Athirst for God: Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1988, Chapter 4. 151 McGinn 1994 p. 171. 152 Standaert 1947 pp. 118–21; discussion of humans’ image and likeness was very popular during the High Middle Ages; in general, see Charles Trinkhaus, In Our Image and Likeness, London: Constable, 1970, vol. I Introduction; and David Bell, The Image and Likeness, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984.

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One of Bernard’s favorite passages was from the Book of Wisdom (9:15) where it says that ‘the body that decays weighs down the soul’ (corpus enim quod corrumpitur aggravat animam). Although this might seem to intimate a pejorative view of the flesh and a dualist view of mind and body, Bernard takes a different tack. Though the body does weigh down the soul (‘aggravate’ seems a good translation), this is not through its nature but through its false love, the concupiscence that has affected the whole human as a result of its fall: ‘Indeed, the body is central to Bernard’s mysticism, since he insists that our journey toward God must begin on the carnal level and that our enjoyment of bliss will not be complete until our physical bodies are reunited with our souls at the general resurrection.’ Bernard uses the word ‘flesh’ or ‘fleshly’ (caro, carnalis) in two ways that are not always distinct: ‘first, to indicate the good material component of human nature as created by God; and second, to describe our fallen nature, in which the perversion of the proper relation between body and soul is most evident in the unruly bodily passions’.153 But the two senses of ‘flesh’ are quite clear in a passage from his sermon-treatise on conversion: ‘As long as we are in the body, we are in exile from God, not indeed that this is the body’s fault, but it is the fault of the fact that it is still a body of death, or rather, that the flesh is the body of sin in which good does not exist, but instead the law of sin’ (Conv. 17.30). Insofar as humans strive for self-knowledge they gain greater insight into their basic sinfulness, a condition that unfortunately predominates in our carnal lives. One result of this insight is the necessity for humility as the essential starting-place for our spiritual life. Despite our wretched condition, born into the flesh, every person can come to know that God creates our minds to participate in him and that therefore self-knowledge also brings hope for an eventual change in our condition. The humility and hope that humans experience through recognition are the workings of the divine word within each one; it comprises the first step in a lifelong process of conversion.154 The abbot had a dynamic view of the soul’s progress through stages of mystical knowledge. Although he certainly believed that salvation was afforded to all Christians, he thought it difficult if not impossible for those outside the monastic setting to attain the higher stages of mystical union. He also thought of the Christian way of life as a single continuum of love, from earthly carnal love to the heights of nuptial love with Christ. He often employed a ladder-like scheme of stages (or grades): in one text, there are twelve degrees of humility in the ascetical preparation for progress to mystical union. In the Sermons on the Song of Songs (18), he describes seven stages of grace that culminate in the fullness of love. The most common scheme, however, is rooted in Origen and Dionysius’ threefold division: ascetical purification, virtuous illumination and loving union. In another sermon he transposes this scheme into a new register: ‘the soul finds in God reverent confession by which it lowers itself in humility, ready devotion by which it renews and restores itself, and delightful contemplation where it rests in ecstasy’. Bernard also speaks of three groups (or types) of soul who will ascend to heaven: those who are pulled there, those who are led there, and those who are snatched away. He also suggests that all three types of soul coexist within every human soul: 153 154

McGinn 1994 p. 173. McGinn 1994 p. 173.

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they are psychical aspects which can be activated by observation of Christian virtues.155 William of St. Thierry (c.1085–1148) was a devoted friend and admirer of Bernard of Clairvaux and in his main works considered many of the same themes as his mentor, though William developed them in new directions. William showed a deep and broad knowledge of the Greek Fathers (although in Latin translation), especially Gregory of Nyssa and Origen, as well as the most important Latin writers such as Augustine and Gregory the Great. He also engaged in heated debate with contemporaries such as Abelard and William of Conches; here one can sense ‘a mind paradoxically both at odds with much of the speculative efforts of the schoolmen and yet also willing to engage in profound speculation within limits of his own choosing’.156 In the 1120s, William and his brother entered the monastery of St. Thierry, not far from the city of Reims. Here William composed his earliest works, On Contemplating God and On the Nature and Dignity of Love, both of which showed Augustine’s profound influence. Deeply impressed by the Cistercian achievement, William implored Bernard to permit him to enter their order; when at last he did so in 1135 he became a simple monk at Signy, also near Reims. The hard life there initially caused the elderly ex-abbot some trouble, but eventually he came to enjoy what he called their pingue otium (‘rich leisure’), something that enabled him to produce his most important works. Here he completed his Exposition on the Song of Songs (the favorite Cistercian Biblical text), the Golden Letter (often considered the best short work on the mystical life), and the Nature of the Body and Soul (also called the Physics of the Human Body and Soul). In McGinn’s pithy words, ‘while William lacks the rhetorical ingenuity and epigrammatic conciseness of Bernard, the Exposition and the three major mystical treatises … are written in a distinctive style – complex, often knotty, capable of passion and precision, though at times bordering on opacity’.157 In the opening of his Exposition on the Song of Songs William begins to ring the changes on the central Genesis theme that human was created in the image and likeness of God. He says that humans were created in this way in order to contemplate and enjoy God, ‘free from the slavery of corruption’ and hence through the power of love to serve God alone. It is love of God which makes humans like God ‘to the extent that we are drawn to him by that living perception by means of which whoever lives from the spirit of life has knowledge of you’. This combination of mystical ideas, image and likeness, contemplation and enjoyment, love and the Holy Spirit, is unique to the abbot of St. Thierry. On the Greek Patristic view, to be an image of anything means to participate in it, that is, to derive its reality from that original, but also to be distinct from it in some way. According to David Bell, William’s theology of the divine image and likeness involves two related but different types of participation: the image emphasizes the essential or original share in the divine nature that makes each human open to God, while the likeness concerns the perfective or participative activity by which humans resemble God in how they act. William teaches that both the image and the likeness have been damaged by sin 155 156 157

McGinn 1994 pp. 181–5. McGinn 1994 p. 226; Leclercq et al. 1968 pp. 200–5. McGinn 1994 p. 227.

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through the fall from grace, but the effect is far more injurious in the likeness.158 In the Mirror of Faith, William says that ‘by a kind of natural affinity, eternal and divine things seem to be joined to one mind created for eternity so that it might be open to it through understanding and participate in it through enjoyment. This happens to such an extent that even if the mind has become quite dull through vice, it never loses its appetite for these things.’ In the twelfth meditation he says that ‘the holy soul is reformed in the image of the trinity, to that image of him who created her [the soul] in the very manner of his beatitude. For a will that has been enlightened and “affected”, that means intellect, love, and the disposition for enjoyment, is in a certain way three personal “affections”, as is believed of God the Trinity.’ This is just one way that William expresses the idea that the threefold character of the divine image in humans is an originating participation.159 More often William employs the Augustinian triad of memory, intellect and love, and in an unusual manner he also uses the three virtues of faith, hope and charity as a template for the soul’s image status. Odo Brooke said that ‘whether we approach his thought from the angle of “image” or from the angle of theological stages with their spiritual and psychological roots, we always find that these themes converge in the central one of the impetus towards resemblance through experimental knowledge given by the Holy Ghost’.160 In this way, William insists on calling each individual soul to the task of knowing itself as an image and likeness of God: ‘But since the soul’s innermost nature is to be an imago trinitatis, the deepest form of self-knowledge, beyond the necessary initial recognition of our sinfulness and need for reform, is the gradual awareness of the mystery of our relation to the Trinity.’161 In the Golden Letter, the author analyzes the levels or stages of human resemblance to the divine, that is, the three activities through which the soul attains to perfecting participation. The first is the soul’s ubiquitous presence in giving life to every part of the body, the second consists in the virtuous life, and the third is a unity of spirit, when a person becomes one with God. In his Exposition, William refers to three kinds of souls, to three spiritual stages, and to three kinds of prayer. ‘It is clear’, he says, ‘that there are three states of those who pray or kinds of prayer: animal, rational and spiritual. Each person forms for himself or proposes his own Lord God according to his mode, because the God who is prayed to appears to each according to the quality of the one who prays.’ The Golden Letter expresses similar sentiments: ‘Just as star differs from star in brightness, so does cell from cell in the way of life of beginners, of the advanced and the perfect. The state of beginners is called animal, the state of advanced rational, and the state of perfect spiritual … Every religious way of life is made up of these three kinds of persons.’162 In the Golden Letter, William integrates the three stages of spiritual progress with his overall account of the human soul in a more detailed and systematic fashion. The animals correspond with external Christians (that is, in their outward show), ‘those 158 159 160 161 162

Bell 1984 pp. 96–8. In McGinn’s terms, 1994 pp. 230–32. Brooke 1980 p. 24. McGinn 1994 p. 231; Brooke 1980 pp. 14–17. The three stages and three types are from Origen, De Prin. 4.11.

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who are not guided by reason or drawn by affect, but are moved by authority, reminded by doctrine, and inspired by example to approve what is good where they find it’. The rationals have begun the movement toward an interior religion, where the soul as life-giving power is already on its way to becoming mind, that is, the rational soul that dwells within. In this type of soul the liberty to choose has begun to be transformed into the will to serve God, although it is still bound in some degree to sin. Bernard says that, although these persons have knowledge and appetite for the good, they do not yet have affect; when reason passes over into mental affect, they have begun the spiritual life. The spirituals are those who are fully enlightened by the Holy Spirit; because they have tasted (sapius) the good whose ‘affect’ draws them, they are called wise (sapientes). In McGinn’s summary, ‘the transition from anima through animus to the divinely bestowed spiritus that has its fruition in our unity of spirit with God (unitas spiritus) governs the whole structure and exposition of [his] most noted work … The transition from anima to animus is primarily (though not solely) understood as the work of the Incarnate Word, while the soul’s lifting up from animus to spiritus is ascribed to the indwelling Holy Spirit.’163 It is possible to discern an intimate relation between these three stages of spiritual progress and the triple formulae he uses to present the soul’s journey to God. The three virtues of faith, hope and charity have been invoked to express the way by which divine grace restores human’s lost likeness to God: ‘The Holy Trinity established this trinity in the faithful mind according to its image and likeness. By it we are renewed to the image of him who created us in our inner human. This is the “machine” of human salvation for whose construction and education in the hearts of the faithful every divinely revealed scripture has a concern.’ Hence, the three virtues are necessary in order that reason may be made just and perfect so that it can contemplate the vision of God. Anyone who seeks God the trinity must have this psychical trinity within his soul; the interdependence of all three virtues re-establishes the soul’s likeness to God.164 In the treatise explicitly devoted to an analysis of human nature, the Nature of Body and Soul, William begins by describing the four humors that comprise the operations of our body.165 There are three principal powers that share in directing the body’s operations; he defines power as ‘an operative habit residing in an organ which enables it to carry out its proper function’. There is a natural power in the liver, a spiritual power in the heart, and an animal power in the brain.166 What is ruled by the soul and nature together is called animate, and what is ruled by nature alone is called inanimate. The ‘nature’ (that is, essential attribute) of a power is known by its activities: (a) the natural power is exercised through desire, retention, digestion and elimination; (b) the animal power through feeling and motion, and (c) the spiritual power through inhaling and exhaling. The natural power is common to McGinn 1994 p. 235. McGinn 1994 pp. 236–7; and T. Tomasic, ‘Theological Virtues’, in RTAM vol. 38 (1971) pp. 89–120. 165 Unprefixed citations are to McGinn’s edition 1977. 166 Here William follows the standard tripartition found in Constantine Africanus’ Pantegni IV.1; Constabulinus’ Difference of Soul and Spirit; William of Conches’ ideas are similar, Phil. Mundi IV.22. 163 164

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plants, animals and humans; the spiritual power to animals and humans, and the animal power to some animals and not others. By the last he means such bodily (that is, brain) activities as imagination and memory (3TM p. 111). There are also three spirits, that is, three powers that rule and enliven.167 Where the natural power has its seat in the liver, the ‘spiritual spirit’ has its seat in the heart. Spirit is defined as ‘the power of the powers for performing their actions’. He states that ‘the spirit is a kind of force of the soul through which its powers perform their acts: the natural power in the liver, the spiritual power in the heart, and the animal in the brain’ (3TM p. 112). On this view the brain does some things by itself and some things by its functions.168 The rational function (reason) resides in the middle of the brain, imagination in the front and memory in the rear. These act through their own power, whereas sensation acts through the animal power by means of the five senses. Although animals obviously have the power of sensation and motion, they do not have imagination and memory; what one mistakes for these functions are rather more acute sensory powers. William says that ‘some philosophers called the spiritual spirit the spiritual soul, for they wanted the soul to be corporeal. But this is wrong. For the spiritual soul is a substance made in the image of God. It is like God, and so exists in its body in some way as God exists in the world; it exists everywhere in the body and is entire in each point.’ In this fashion William clearly implicates the notion of spirit in the broadest sense as ‘spirits’ (pneumata, spiriti), neural fluids that transmit messages through the body. He concludes by saying that no kind of power – natural or animal or spiritual – is the soul, but rather the instruments of the soul acting through the body (3TM pp. 114–15). In contrast with the various bodily powers, the human soul is a simple substance, a natural species, distinct from the body’s matter, and yet having the power of life.169 The soul is spiritual – though a kind of spirit in the sense above – created by God, life-giving, rational and immortal. In what follows, William’s use of ‘soul’ (anima), unless otherwise qualified, should be taken to mean rational soul (animus, ‘mind’). The way the soul gives life to the body is wonderful and ineffable. ‘The power of life’, he observes, ‘is not drawn uniformly from some one thing in us, but with the God-given soul as its source, nature breathes into many parts its life-giving influences and causes, making the whole necessary and almost inscrutable collection into one living being’ (3TM pp. 125–26). Through the efficient and orderly arrangement of the three bodily powers the rational soul shows its power to 167

McGinn says that his ‘sliding terminology’ of spirit can be confusing, 1977 p. 33 note

139. 168 In his tripartite description of the brain William employs ideas from Nemesius’ Premnon physicon XIII.6–7; Constabulinus’ Difference of Spirit and Soul II; and Constantine’s Pantegni IV.9; this division was popular with Chartrian authors as well: William of Conches Phil. Mundi IV.24; John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon IV.17; Adelard of Bath’s Quaes. Nat. 18; McGinn 1977 p. 32 note 136. 169 The major influences on William’s thought in these sections are Gregory of Nyssa’s De Hominis Opificio often in verbatim quotation; as well as Augustine’s De Quan. Animae; and Claudianus Mamertus; ‘Despite his willingness to make use of non-Christian medical and philosophical material in the creation of theological anthropology, the sense of theology as sapientia rather than as scientia, which led to his attacks on Abelard, is clearly present in this treatise’, McGinn 1977 p. 35.

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sustain life and promote natural growth: ‘The human soul alone is true and perfect, capable of every action.’ Unlike the sense-driven actions of animals, the reasondriven actions of humans show that reason rules and judges the ‘flowing stream’ of sense. Reason sits as a queen in the central castle of a city, surveying all that enters her demesne, admitting those things beneficial and barring those detrimental.170 However, lest the citadel image convey the wrong idea, it is not the case that the rational soul has its seat in any one organ. Here William expresses an idea about the unknowable nature of the rational soul (or mind) in a way that strongly echoes his idea about the unknowable nature of God. Indeed, because the rational soul does not ever attain perfect knowledge of itself, it is that much more an image of the divine incomprehensibility: The author of nature wishes the association and bond between the intellectual substance and the corporeal to be ineffable and beyond our comprehension, so that by the law of nature the incorporeal might neither exist within nor be held within the body, nor be encompassed by the body, nor be found outside it. For in some way beyond the understanding or reason the intellectual soul approaches nature and, fitted into it and about it, is considered insofar as possible to be placed neither within nor enclosed by nature, nor outside and enclosing nature. Rather, in a manner which cannot be expressed or understood, it is able to be completely permeated by nature and still effect its own operations. [3TM p. 130, see also p. 138]

The rational human soul was created in the image of the one who made it, such that there is one power that runs through all the bodily powers. The fact that humans stand erect indicates something more about their relation to God. Since his posture permits him to reach toward heaven and gaze upward this shows his ‘imperial and regal dignity’; it shows that he has ‘received from the Creator dominion over all the beings that look down, and that he has much in common with what is above if he maintains the dignity of his inborn likeness’ (3TM p. 133). The rational soul when it understands and preserves its special dignity and honor amongst creatures is thus something noble and lofty: ‘It is far removed by nature from rustic lowliness and degeneracy, since it is free and able to command all things and make them serve his wishes, governing them by its authority.’ The rational soul’s authority is also exercised over its own powers: just as the body consists in four life-giving elements, so too the rational soul has four quasi-elements or virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice. The soul’s rational character is formed from these four virtues. In addition, just as the soul uses four powers in administering organic life to the body’s parts, so also it administers a human’s life lived according to reason through four passions: hope, joy, fear and sadness. The life lived according to reason acts through three powers, which William calls rationality, positive appetite and negative appetite, along the lines of the Platonic threefold schema (3TM pp. 135–37). How is it possible, William asks, to study the soul since, by his own admission, it is invisible and incorporeal? Further, it is equally wonderful and marvelous how the 170 These regnal images are from Gregory of Nyssa’s De Hom. X; erect stature De Hom. VIII; rule of reason over desires, De Hom. XIV; variety of vices De Hom. XVIII; dominion over creatures, De Hom. II, VII.

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soul works its actions on the visible body.171 Is the soul, like God himself, absolutely outside those categories that are used to talk about bodies? It cannot be said what kind the soul is for it is incomparable, nor how great it is, for its greatness is not quantitative, nor what it may possess, for there is nothing that it cannot possess. Therefore, ‘the soul is in its body somewhat like God is in the world: everywhere and entire. It is entire in each sense, such that the entire soul senses in each [and] entire in each part.’ As little as the category of place applies to the soul so also the other categories are not applicable to it. Nevertheless, even while it administers the body and gives it sensation, if at any time it raises itself through the internal gaze of the mind to high and eternal truths, in a certain way it leaves the bodily senses and ceases to be localized by them … By a marvelous and in a way Godlike power, it is at the same time completely present in contemplating heavenly things by intellect, completely present in the sense or act by which it is acting … and completely present in the body which it is vivifying. [3TM pp. 141–42]

In the final sections of this treatise, William turns his attention to the steps or grades by which the soul in striving for perfection ascends to the author of its being.172 The first step is to give life to the earthly, mortal body; it gathers the body’s parts into one and holds it together. The second step shows that the soul acts according to its sensibility; in all its actions the soul approves and desires those things that accord with its body’s nature and rejects and flees from those contrary to it. The third step is proper to humans alone; the soul exercises its greater powers here through memory and imagination, especially well seen in the skillful production of buildings, music, language and other remarkable ‘signs’. At the fourth step moral goodness appears; the soul dares to put itself above its own body and worldly things; it withdraws from sordid pleasures and comes to delight more in following authority. ‘When the soul is free from corruption and washed from its stains’, William says, ‘then finally it most joyfully possesses itself in itself and fears absolutely nothing for itself, nor is anxious about anything for any reason of its own.’ This is the fifth step, where the soul attains and preserves its purity; with an incredible confidence it goes out to God, ‘to that highest and most secret reward for which it has worked so hard’. It might seem that, at this point, there are no further steps that one could ascend – but William’s scheme is more demanding than that. The sixth step is achieved in ‘the supreme gaze of the soul’ whereby the understanding grasps those things that are true and ultimate: ‘For it is one thing to cleanse the soul’s eye, lest it look in vain or look in an unworthy way, another to fasten a calm and direct gaze on that which is to be seen.’ The seventh and final step is the vision and contemplation of the truth; as such it is not a step but a permanent state: ‘He who enjoys it alone understands what are its joys, what is the fruition of the true and supreme good, what is the breath of peace’ (3TM pp. 147–50). Isaac of Stella (1100–c.1175), born in England, like many students of his age crossed to France to study at one of the cathedral schools where the new theology was beginning to flourish. He heard what St. Bernard said in his sermons on conversion and, sometime around 1140, he entered the Cistercian Order, probably at 171 172

In this section William is dependent on Claudius Mamertus’ De statu I.2.19–24. In this section William follows Augustine’s De Quan. Animae 33.70–76.

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the Abbey of Pontigny; within seven years he had been elected abbot of the small monastery of Stella near Poitiers. In later life he appears to have been exiled to a remote monastery on an Atlantic island where he composed some of his last sermons, but returned to the Stella Abbey where he lived his last years in repose and peace. Although his main ideas about human nature appear in the short Letter on the Soul they also weave in and out of his fifty-five surviving sermons. He shared many of the central ideas with his fellow Cistercian brothers, but he departs from them in (at least) four or five significant respects.173 First, he explicitly endorses the nowcommon way of treating human as the image and likeness of God, but at the same time underlines that the human body is the image of the world: ‘On the outside, you are an animal in the image of the world, so that a human is called a little world; within you are a human according to the image of God, so that you can be deified’ (Serm. 2.13). The image within the human soul takes part in the divine nature in virtue of the intellect, which comprises both the power to know and the power to love. Isaac says that ‘through the power of sensibility (sensus) to the image, through life to the likeness … knowing the true God is eternal life, but loving with whole heart is the true way; charity is the way, truth is the life, charity the likeness, truth the image’ (Serm. 16.16). Second, he pursued the investigation of the powers and functions of the soul in a systematic manner, that is, by an analysis of the virtues or attributes by means of which the soul may reach God: ‘The powers are able to receive the gifts which by habit become virtues.’ Third, unlike other Cistercian writers, Isaac was more interested in how the power of rationality takes part in the return to God than in analyzing the power of ‘affect’ and charity (See Serm. 17.10–13). Four, although the other white monks knew about Pseudo-Dionysius, Isaac alone makes extensive use of the Areopagite’s apophatic approach; he speaks of the ‘unapproachable light’, that ‘itself produces darkness’. He employs eminent properties formed from the prefix ‘super’, and the need for silence when one wishes to speak about the unspeakable. In addition, closely allied with the images of darkness, cloud and smoke, is the identification of the divine nature with the desert, as well as the desert as a spiritual place in which one enters ecstasy through meditation.174 Isaac’s Letter on the Soul ‘remains one of the most important witnesses to what might be called the symbolic understanding of the mystery of human in the twelfth century’.175 In this work Isaac brings real systematic insight to the problems of psychical classification: ‘[His] main interest is to show how human’s ability to know demonstrates both his distance from the divine nature and his ability to attain it. He does this by means of an adoption, extension, and integration of two divergent systems of classification of the power of knowledge.’ The first system, which McGinn prefers to call the temporal schema, consists of ingenium, the power that looks into the future, reason (ratio) the power that regards the present, and memory as that which contains the past. The arrangement and disposition of these cognitive McGinn 1994 pp. 287–90; see also G. Raciti in DSA vol. 7 cols. 2011–38. McGinn 1994 pp. 292–3; and in McGinn’s earlier work, ‘Pseudo-Dionysus and the Early Christians’, in B. Pennington (ed.), One Yet Two, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976 pp. 200–41. 175 McGinn 1977 p. 50. 173 174

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powers show that humans’ intellectual ability, which must proceed in time, is radically different than God’s ability to grasp all things at one time in one intuitive act.176 The second scheme consists of five steps: sensibility (sensus), imagination, reason, intellect and understanding (intelligentia):177 The Abbot of Stella enriches this classification, making it capable of carrying a variety of meanings in a manner that suggests its symbolic power as a manifestation of the golden chain of being. Thus, the five steps are here compared to the five hierarchically ordered material components of the universe … The anagogic significance of the whole is stressed by linking the five powers of knowledge to the four powers of desire … to produce a ninefold schema of ascent that betrays its Dionysian significance by being compared with the nine choirs of the angels.178

Isaac begins by asserting that there are three realities – the body, the soul and God – body cannot be very well known, the soul can be known better than body, and God can be known better than soul. This statement seems astonishing: ‘in this body which corrupts the soul and weighs upon it, where the earthly dwelling also presses the power of knowledge down into the depths … the body, which is by necessity darksome, is the first of these three realities that the soul encounters in its activities’. The soul is darkened by the body like smoke and cannot see clearly; but since intellect can rise above this, through the rational soul it can see God himself (3TM p. 156). In its nature the soul has rationality, positive appetite and negative appetite; in this sense, it comprises a trinity of attributes and yet remains a simple thing. The power of knowledge that arises from rationality has various names: it can be called insight (ratio), memory and ingenium, according to the temporal scheme: Ingenium brings what it has uncovered to reason, memory brings back what it has hidden, but reason is placed so to speak over present matters, and as if it were the mouth of the mind always either chews what the teeth of ingenium gather or ruminates on what the stomach of memory presents … The hidden word which is expressed exteriorly by the mouth is only gradually and piece by piece drawn out of memory and formed in the mouth of the mind. [3TM p. 161]

Isaac then turns his attention to the five powers, their functions, their association with branches of scientia, and their connection with the four material elements. Each of the stages of knowing can be specified in terms of the object to which it is directed, its degree of corporeality, and the branch of science it produces. Thus, sense knowledge is purely corporeal in having bodies as its objects, and founds the realm of natural science. The objects of imagination are phantasms, that is, the likeness of bodies, and it too grounds natural science. Reason perceives the incorporeal forms of corporeal things through abstraction and founds the discipline of mathematics. Intellect is an anomalous cognitive power whose objects are the incorporeal forms of incorporeal things such as angels. Understanding or intelligence (intelligentia, not to McGinn 1977 p. 54. Isaac’s five-step scheme is very similar to Boethius’ Cons. Phil. 5.4; Isaac’s fifth- power intelligentia may have been derived from Boethius as well, Isagoge Porph. Comm. I.1.3. 178 McGinn 1977 p. 55. 176 177

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be confused with intellectus179) founds the supreme science of theology and has as its object the pure and true being of God. Isaac makes an awkward attempt to correlate the five cognitive powers with the elemental structure of the world. The soul, he says, is like the diurnal motion of the sun, rising from the animation of the flesh into sensory awareness, and then stained by bodily phantasms into imaginary perceptions, until it shines forth in the purity of reason. Intellect surpasses reason both in rank and power, just as the heavens, completely free from the dullness of earth and water, surpass the lower atmosphere. Sensibility is dull and heavy, lying under reason and intellect, while imagination surrounds it like water. Reason can be compared to the thinness of air, encompassing and penetrating everything below it, through ‘the pendulum of abstraction’. Intellect has the solidity of the heavens and itself discerns the real state of spiritual natures, while understanding can be compared to the very fine, thin and fiery last heaven (3TM p. 170). The lower powers of the soul, Isaac insists, cannot ascend to the higher realms of knowing by themselves, but they are as it were subsumed by the soul as it ascends toward knowledge of God. Imagination is ‘the high point of the body’ where union with ‘the low point of the spirit’ takes place, an intimate union that guarantees the integrity of the human soul-body composite. His analogy for this unity is that form of personal union where the intelligence can conjoin with the divine nature of which it is an image. So, for Isaac, unlike the version of mystical insight gained through knowing that (propositional knowledge, so to speak), mystical union is an experience that cannot be spoken of, that is, knowing not what (propositional unknowledge, so to speak): ‘Mystical union for Isaac is the highest enactment of the central principle of his Platonic metaphysics, the law of concatenation which makes a harmony of the entire universe by joining together diverse natures at their points of greatest similarity.’ He found the perfect metaphor to express this core idea in the golden chain of being, which appears in the Bible as Jacob’s Ladder (Gen. 28:12). McGinn says that ‘Therefore, by this golden chain of the poet [Homer] the lowest realities hang down from the highest, or by the upright ladder of the prophet there is an ascent from the lowest to the highest.’180 Although Isaac does not expatiate on the character of mystical experience in this text, he does address it in some of his other letters. There he declares that, because the soul has been made in the image and likeness of total wisdom, it bears the likeness of all things in itself. But due to the injurious effects of original sin the soul’s true eyes have been blinded or occluded. The mystical restoration of sight is accomplished through participation in the vestiges of all things, illumination by God’s grace, and the influx of the Holy Spirit. Illumination is necessary for the highest mode of knowing, in order that ‘theophanies descend from above into the understanding’. It is in this context that Isaac, alone amongst the Cistercian monks, explicitly endorses Dionysius’ apophatic vocabulary. But he modifies the Dionysian ascription of mystical vision to the intelligence when he asserts that it is achieved in 179 An important technical distinction that originated with medieval Latin translators working with Arabic texts; see HCM pp. 164–5. 180 McGinn 1994 p. 290; in Homer, Iliad 8.18–27; also in Macrobius’ On the Dream of Scipio and William of Conches; background information can be found in McGinn’s earlier work, The Golden Chain, Washington, DC: Cistercian Publications, 1972 Chapter 2.

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the heart as the inner source of all spiritual dynamism; the heart needs to be purified in the ascent to the vision of the glorified Christ.180 When Isaac speaks about the ungraspable light and the ineffable silence he prefigures some of the main themes found in Meister Eckhart a hundred years later. (4) The summit of Christian mysticism in the Late Middle Ages The apophatic approach to the mystical nature of the Godhead, begun by PseudoDionysius and carried forward in new ways by Eriugena, reached its most pronounced medieval expression in the works of the German mystic Meister Eckhart (1260–1327). Eckhart was a Dominican friar and Master of Theology at the University of Paris, prior of the Erfurt convent, appointed first provincial of Saxony (1303) and vicar of Bohemia (1307). He founded three provincial houses of the Dominican order, and was elected provincial of Teutonia (1310); while in Cologne he carried out work on his monumental Three-part Work (never completed), the Work of Propositions and the Work of Questions, as well as an extensive Biblical theology and commentary. Appointed professor of theology in Strassburg (1313), he carried out the functions of administrator, teacher, counselor and preacher; as prior of the Strassburg convent, he began his preaching ministry among the most remarkable group of fourteenth-century mystics, ‘the contemplative sisters of the Dominican monasteries that surrounded Strassburg like the rim of a great wheel’.182 Sometime after 1322, Eckhart returned to Cologne where he became regent master of general studies, the same city where he labored as a youth forty years earlier. At the age of sixty-six, well-respected by his students and flock, well-trusted by his superiors, he was amazed and dismayed to be charged with heresy and summoned to the papal court (then at Avignon). Eckhart began his last journey by walking five hundred miles with several of his brothers to plead his case. Although he was convinced of his orthodoxy and expected an acquittal, Eckhart died shortly before his doctrines were condemned.183 In one of his sermons Eckhart succinctly expressed his main themes: ‘First, it is my wont to speak about detachment, and of how man should rid himself of self and all things. Second, that man should be informed back into the simple good which is God. Third, that we should remember the great nobility God has put into the soul, so that man may come by a miracle to God. Fourth, of the purity of the divine nature, for the splendor of God’s nature is unspeakable’ (W22 p. 177). Eckhart’s main themes – detachment from worldly things, transformation into God, the soul’s nobility and God’s utter simplicity – appear throughout a vast number of sermons, treatises and commentaries. Other prominent ideas which characterize Eckhart’s distinctive brand of mystical thinking are the soul as divine spark, the transcendent ground of the soul, the inner process of releasement (Gelassenheit), the nothingness of God and the soul, and the birth of the word in the soul. Richard Woods says that the whole of Eckhart’s spiritual teaching rests on three tenets: See esp. Aimé Solignac in DSA vol. 11 cols. 591–601. Woods 1986 p. 38; on the social setting of Eckhart’s life and work, see Colish 1997 pp. 239–42. 183 Woods 1986 pp. 40–42; on his life and work, McGinn 2005 pp. 94–107. 181 182

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the transcendent and ineffably unknowable unity of the Godhead, union with God as the origin and goal of human existence, and the dialectic of reconciliation, the reciprocal isness and nothingness of both God and creatures that provides the way towards ultimate integrity … Eckhart’s spiritual doctrine rises from this three-fold basis in successively higher levels in a kind of spiral which opens at last onto the infinite expanse of the Godhead ‘beyond God’.184

The first turn in this ascending spiral involved his elaboration of the Christian trinity as the basis for the utter oneness of God. He achieved this by an adroit use of the Neo-Platonic scheme of emanation, the emergence or effulgence of the three divine persons from the dynamic unity of the Godhead: ‘This overflowing wealth of life and energy expresses itself in creative activity, calling forth every being out of the sheer nothingness of what is not-God. Having become fully manifest in both image and likeness in humankind through the birth of the word in time and place, the indwelling triune God retracts the universe into itself through the birth of the soul back into God – Eckhart’s great theme of breakthrough.’185 Eckhart freely utilized several Neo-Platonic motifs in an articulation of the famous ‘boiling’ (ebullition) metaphor from Plotinus. Reiner Schürmann explains that the German word most often used in the emanation context is ursprunc, which means ‘primal springing’; another cognate word ursprinc connotes effervescence or efflorescence.186 The key idea is that the expansive dynamism of the Godhead, the unnameable divine reality, springs or bubbles forth as the three persons. Then, ‘in an untrammeled superabundance of being, love and goodness boils over into creation. This “external” manifestation of God’s life and power, which is realized out of pure nothingness … was thus for Eckhart a continuation of the expansiveness of the Godhead, not an arbitrary act of divine will.’187 His favorite verbal imagery for this twofold boilingover was that of a spring or fountain, as well as the growth and blossom of a flower. In one of his densest mystical passages he declares that ‘the tree of the Godhead blossoms in this ground [the soul] and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root. The flower that blossoms [delight] is the Holy Ghost. The soul too blossoms forth out of the Holy Ghost, who is the flower of the soul. And on that flower shall repose the spirit of the Lord. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit reposes on them as on its cause’ (W61 p. 108). Woods says that ‘Eckhart saw the Trinity of persons as a mutual and dynamic interaction of outgoing (uzganc) and ingoing (inganc), an eternal fluxion of subsistent thought and love with its reflection in human interiority and transcendence.’188 The basic model of human nature in Eckhart’s thought is a continual discourse on the extent and structure of human knowledge insofar as the cognitive efforts that humans make reflect God’s image. The process of human deification depends on human cooperation and this human striving is one that he attempts to capture not just in abstract speculation but in practical guidance, such as, for example, in his description of the six stages of spiritual development in his treatise Of the 184 185 186 187 188

Woods 1986 p. 43; on his main themes, Hollywood 1995 pp. 145–72. Woods 1986 p. 44; see esp. Fox 1980 pp. 302–12. Schürmann 1978 p. 119. Woods 1986 p. 90; McGinn 2005 pp. 125–7. Woods 1986 p. 91.

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Noblemen.189 Unlike the earlier Neo-Platonists, Eckhart did not elevate God’s oneness or unity above being and intellect. Instead, he emphasized God’s ‘is-ness’, for which he coined the German word Istikheit:190 ‘God alone is in the supreme sense; God is being, God knows nothing but being. He is conscious of nothing but being … God loves nothing but his being. He thinks of nothing but his being’ (W82 p. 244). He referred to this undifferentiated divine unity as Gottheit (‘Godhead’ or ‘Godness’) which is shared equally by the three divine persons:191 ‘Everything that is in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. God works, the Godhead does not work, there is nothing for it to do, there is no activity in it’ (W56 p. 81). These features of Eckhart’s thought are distinctly affirmative and express cataphatic theology in contrast to the negative statements found in many other mystical writers who express Pseudo-Dionysius’ apophatic theology. He said that in the mystical vision of God there is no darkness, no limitation: ‘In God there is light and being, and in creatures there is darkness and nothingness, since what is in God is light and being, and in creatures is darkness and nothingness’ (W84 p. 258). Some of Eckhart’s most radical ideas – those which provoked the indictment of heresy – pertain to the nothingness of both creatures and God.192 All created beings, he claims, are nothing in comparison with God, for their being consists in their presence [or proximity] to God. ‘God alone is’, he said, ‘for all things are in God and from him, since outside him and without him nothing truly is; all creatures are worthless and a mere nothing compared with God’ (W49 p. 39). On his view, any creature’s being is borrowed from God and never owned by an individual; hence, he was fond of saying that God is the word (verbum) and creatures are ‘adverbs’. In an even more radical step, he said that God is nothing, that is, no thing; God does not appear as an object among other objects, even as the supreme object. But, of course, Eckhart does not claim that God does not exist, but rather that he transcends all ontological categories: ‘If God is neither goodness nor being nor truth nor one, what then is he? He is pure nothing; he is neither this nor that. If you think of anything he might be, he is not that’ (W54 p. 72). And in a startling turn of phrase that employs the most extreme negative, apophatic expression, he said that ‘God is being-less being’ (W62 p. 115). Hence, he employed negative terms about humans’ comprehension of the Godhead: ‘the hidden darkness of the eternal light of the eternal Godhead is unknown and will never be known. And the light of the eternal father has eternally shone in this darkness and the darkness does not comprehend the light.’ Despite the misprision of his detractors, Eckhart did not hold the heretical position of pantheism, the idea that God is every thing. The more appropriate term for his position is ‘panentheism’, the idea that God is present in every thing, that is, that all things mediate God’s presence:193 ‘God is unseparated from all things, for God is in all things, and is more inwardly in them than they are in themselves’ (W49 p. 39). It is of special importance to him that God is present in the human soul; in 189 190 191 192 193

The original version of this is found in Augustine, On True Religion 26.49. Schürmann 1978 pp. 187–9, 221–3; Kelley 1977 pp. 151–60. See Fox 1980 pp. 193–8; Schürmann 1978 pp. 114–21, 157–68. See Fox 1980 pp. 192–8, 203–12; McGinn 2005 pp. 180–83; and esp. Caputo 1975. See Fox 1980 pp. 281–90; McGinn 2005 pp. 164–7.

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the inmost soul, in its summit, the soul’s highest part. Woods comments that this is evidence that he considered the ground, the abyss and the apex of the soul to be actually one and the same, the superior reason of Thomas Aquinas.194 Although separated by an abyss, God and the soul are so intimately co-present (as opposed to merely connected) that they share a common ground: ‘As surely as the father in his simple nature bears the son naturally, just as surely he hears him in the inmost recesses of the spirit, and this is the inner world. Here, God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground’ (W13 p. 117). Note well that, instead of the hermetic-occult model of human as a small world, the mystical picture makes reference to an inner world; it is interior to human being not through the replication of a great world, but as the interface between the divine intellect and the human mind. The transition from darkness to light, when the mind is illuminated from within, signifies the passage from ignorance to awareness of God’s constant presence, and this is the birth of the word in the soul.195 Also unlike the Neo-Platonist stream in Christian mystical thought, Eckhart also claimed that God was above all things mind (or intellect): ‘The Lord is living, essential, actual intellect which understands itself and is living itself and is the same.’ He commented on an allegedly Hermetic text that stated, ‘God is an intellect that lives solely by understanding itself’, where he said that ‘intellect is the temple of God; for God dwells nowhere more truly than in his temple, in intellect … God in his own knowing knows himself in himself’ (W67 p. 152). The highest part of the human soul is thus an image of God as intellect. He conceived the three powers of the human soul – understanding, memory and will – as the joint reflection of the three persons of God, but was prone to stress the intellect alone as the image of God. The Biblical foundation of his doctrine of the birth of the word in the soul was Genesis 1:26, about the creation of human in the image and likeness. God made the human soul ‘not merely like the image in himself, or like anything proceeding from himself that is predicated of him, but he has made her [the soul] like himself, in fact like every thing that he is; his nature, his essence and his emanating activity, and like the ground wherein he subsists in himself … it is like this outflowing, indwelling work that God has formed the soul’ (W14 p. 125). The privileged region of communion with God he referred to as the ground of the soul; in this ground God is ‘primordially but unrecognizably present’. To the degree that the soul detaches from its concerns for other things, and even other selves, the divine presence becomes more manifest, ‘ultimately becoming overwhelmingly evident in the mystical birth of the word’.196 At the beginning of this psychical ascent the soul does not have any immediate or direct knowledge of its communion with God, but stage by stage the soul’s true nature is recognized: ‘The soul, which has no nature in her ground, in that ground of love which is not yet called love – this soul must emerge from her nature, and then God lies in wait for her to lead her home into himself. Whatever is borne into this essence comes almost to share that essence’ (W61 p. 108). The soul’s consciousness of itself is ‘capitulated’ (from caput, ‘head’) in the soul-spark (seelen-fünklein or scintilla animae), sometimes named the peak 194 195 196

Woods 1986 p. 53 note 28. See esp. Kelley 1977 pp. 119–26, 139–41; McGinn 2005 pp. 170–78. Woods 1986 p. 58; and esp. Kertz 1959.

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or apex of the soul.197 The spark is, he said, ‘the highest peak of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or the body’ (W11 p. 97). According to Woods, it is clear that by this concept Eckhart means the human intellect or understanding, the highest psychical power, the superior mind turned toward God.198 Eckhart also said that it is ‘a light, imprinted from above, and an image of the divine nature, which is always striving against whatever is ungodly … The masters [of theology] say that this light is so natural that it is always striving, it is called synteresis, a turning toward [good] and a turning away from [evil]’ (W32 p. 238). The soul-spark is more than the highest part of the human mind, for it contains a trace of the divine intellect: ‘This spark is so akin to God that it is a single impartible [unpartable?] one, and it contains in itself the images of all creatures, imageless images and images above images’ (W53 p. 63). Reiner Schürmann solidly situates the place of soul-spark within the conceptual field of gemüte, an important German philosophical word that appears for the first time in Eckhart’s works.199 He points out that this word has been translated as ‘the totality of thoughts’, ‘deep-seated will’, and the ‘heart of the mind’, but its closest range of meanings aligns gemüte with Augustine’s use of mens. It is not another faculty, in addition to intellect and will, ‘but their common root insofar as it actuates man’s “return” upon the image of God in himself, which requires a certain conduct in life as well as reflection’. Eckhart’s use agrees with the later Rhenish mystics’ use: it is ‘a fundamental disposition to know and to love, and the spiritual vestige of the divine life in man’. The gemüte contains in itself the whole of humans’ spiritual activities, from the branchings buried in the sensible to the peak that touches the one. Eckhart distinguishes the ‘divaricate capillaries of the gemüte turned towards the multiple from its unified and unalloyed summit or core’. The idea that the intellect is what it is by virtue of becoming all things establishes the likeness between the spark and God: ‘The intellectual nature resembles as such God himself … The reason for this is that the intellect as such is open to become all things and not this or that specifically determined being … As Avicenna says, the perfection of the soul endowed with reason is to become the intellectual world and to have inscribed in it the form of all.’200 Hence, Eckhart recognizes an unlimited power of the human mind: ‘the intellect becomes the totality of the world, for the “form” of all things can be impressed on it. No thing is excluded from such potential appearance before the intellect.’ In conclusion, Schürmann says, what marks off Eckhart from his predecessors is the belief that, not only in eternal life, but in this present life, human possesses the totality of all forms in the ground of his mind, not virtually but actually.201 Human being as such is not divine, since human as a whole is not pure intellect. Still, in its limited and partial way, the human mind is god-like because the whole soul is created in God’s image and likeness.202 Like God’s nothingness, the higher 197 On the soul as spark, see Tobin 1986 pp. 126–40; Aimé Solignac ‘Nous et Mens’, in DSA vol. 11 cols. 459–69; Leonce Reypens, ‘âme (structure)’, in DSA vol. 1 cols. 433–69. 198 Woods 1986 p. 59; see also Kelley 1977 pp. 133–8; Fox 1980 pp. 108–13. 199 Schürmann 1978 pp. 144–8; McGinn 2005 pp. 251–64. 200 On Avicenna’s ideas about this, see HCM pp. 167–70. 201 Schürmann 1978 p. 142–3. 202 Schürmann 1978 pp. 98–103.

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intellect is nothing, that is, no thing, since it is subsistent activity, radically unlimited by the constraints of time and space: ‘There is a power in the soul which is the intellect. From the moment that it becomes aware of God and tastes him, it has five properties. The first is that it becomes detached from here and now; the second is that it is like nothing; the third is that it is pure and uncompounded; the fourth is that it is active and seeking in itself; and the fifth is that it is an image’ (W42 p. 296). Woods says that where the intellect is nothing, one is to understand that it is a power; ‘not merely the activity of a faculty, but the radiance of an immaterial dynamism, an ideal openness to all reality. “By virtue of being like nothing, this power is like God. Just as God is like nothing, so too this power is like nothing”.’203 Coming to know God requires a profound shift in thought, a reversal of the natural attitude, or even a conversion of attention: ‘Whoever would enter God’s ground, his inmost part, must first enter his own ground, his inmost part, for none can know God who does not first know himself. He must enter into his lowest and into God’s inmost part, and must enter into his first and his highest, for there every thing comes together that God can perform’ (W46 p. 21). Again one can clearly discern Eckhart’s attempts to render the notion of immediate experience, not just theoretical contemplation; it is an exercise of intuitive seeing of something present: ‘Knowledge and intellect unite the soul with God. Intellect penetrates into the pure essence, knowledge runs ahead, preceding and blazing a trail’ (W25 p. 197). He agrees with the Franciscan mystics who stressed the importance of love (diligence) in the soul’s striving for union with God, but only when it is coupled with understanding; hence, Eckhart is not one who advocates the simple, unmediated union with God as the goal of mystical ascent. Eckhart has (at least) one further surprise in claiming that there is one more stage (or one more cognitive twist to the spiral) beyond love and knowledge, and that is that knowing must become pure unknowing:204 ‘Knowledge breaks through truth and goodness and, striking on pure being, takes God bare, as he is, without name.’ Neither knowledge nor love unites the soul with God, for love takes God himself insofar as he is good, and understanding takes God as he is known, never grasping him in his depths. Above love and understanding there is mercy, for God works mercy in the highest and purest acts: ‘To know what the soul is requires supernatural understanding. When the powers go out from the soul into works, we know nothing of that, or at least only a tiny bit about it, for our knowledge is small. What the soul is in her ground, nobody knows. What we can know of it must be supernatural; it must be by grace. Therein God works his mercy’ (W72 p. 190). Eckhart was not alone in his new vision of mystical union; several women mystics from the Rhineland voiced similar ideas at this time. Bernard McGinn dubbed four significant mystical writers of the thirteenth century the ‘four female evangelists’, not only because of their importance in the development of medieval Christian mysticism, but because of the quasi-scriptural, authoritative status they claimed for their writings.205 In order to authenticate their teaching about the right path to God each of these mystics had to invent a form of divine authority of evangelical weight, 203 204 205

Woods 1986 p. 61; Kelley 1977 pp. 103–6; and see esp. Caputo 1975. See Kelley 1977 pp. 227–38; Schürmann 1978 pp. 137–40. McGinn 1998 pp. 141–2, 199–200; Petroff 1986 pp. 211–17.

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that is, they had to claim that their message came directly from God in a way similar to that of the New Testament itself. Among the four female evangelists of this period, Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) stands out, not only due to her Franciscan identity, but also due to the absence of courtly love ideas in her writings. The Book of the Blessed Angela was the result of an unusual collaborative effort between the ‘unlettered’ woman and a learned cleric who interviewed her after her ecstatic experiences. In 1292 Angela said that she had already gone through twenty stages in her spiritual journey and four years later said that she had completed ten more stages; the monk who transcribed these said he did not understand these final stages and condensed them into seven. In 1298, the text was submitted to the Cardinal of Colonna and eight Franciscans who gave it their approval; the editor revised it again and appended thirty-six instructions.206 The very idea of a spiritual itinerary comprised of so many stages is itself unusual, and it may help in understanding the whole scheme to consider a more succinct, threefold process: The first transformation is when the soul attempts to imitate the works of the suffering God-man because in them God’s will is and was manifest. The second is when the soul is united to God and has great feelings and delights from God which can still be conceived or expressed in words. The third is when the soul is transformed within God and God within the soul by a most perfect union. It feels and tastes the highest matters of God to such an extent that they cannot be conceived or expressed in words.207

According to McGinn, at least three important themes mark off Angela from the other Franciscan ecstatic-mystics: her understanding of the role of the Trinity, her appeal to negative theology, and her description of the soul and God as mutual abysses. The first supplementary stage (that is, the twenty-first on her overall reckoning) involved the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in which it addressed her as bride; then she heard Christ within her soul recounting his passion. The continual divine presence made her intensely conscious of her state of sin, at the same time as it gave her immense joy. This experience culminated when she saw St. Francis embraced by Christ in the stained glass of the Assisi basilica. She heard a voice saying that she was held closer than could be seen with eyes; she was filled with ‘an immense majesty which was the all-good’. For eight days Angela lived through such indescribable delight in God’s presence that she longed for death; her companions saw radiant light around her as she lay in an ecstatic trance. The next stage contained further signs of God’s love within her soul, after which, in the third stage, she announced personal identification with the abject Christ. The fourth stage lasted for an entire year, during which she had three unusual visions. The first vision occurred during the celebration of mass when God revealed his power to her in such a way that she cried out that the world was pregnant with God. The second vision was one of total immersion in Christ, more than she had ever experienced before, and in the third vision she was embraced by the crucified Christ. In the fifth stage, she underwent deeper feelings of Christ’s sufferings in both soul and body, to such an extent that on the day before Easter she was in an ecstasy with Christ himself in his tomb.208 206 207 208

Lachance, Introduction to Foligno 1993. McGinn 1998 p. 144. McGinn 1998 pp. 145–6.

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The sixth and seventh stages are the most complex and confusing, since Angela insisted that they occurred at the same time. In addition, the seventh stage marked the gradus that cannot be conceived or expressed in words and thus ‘can only be suggested by a variety of strategies of an original form of apophatic mysticism that transgresses the ordinary bounds of language’.209 The sixth step is what St. John of the Cross later called ‘the dark night of the soul’: afflicted with horrible torments and demonic temptations, she felt like ‘a person blindfolded with his hands bound behind him and hung by the neck from a rope, yet still alive on the gallows, without aid or any kind of support or rescue’. In this state she felt her old vices revive, anger spurred her to beat and punish her body, and she cried out (like Christ) to the Father not to abandon her. This stage lasted for more than two years and overlapped with the start of the seventh stage, a level of an indescribable encounter with God ‘in and with darkness’. She had only experienced this state three times, a rare transport wherein she was elevated beyond love and where she saw nothing and everything all at once. Angela invoked the image of an abyss to describe the relation between God and the soul, and sometimes described the soul itself as an abyss. In the deepest mystical state God ‘produces in the soul many divine operations with much greater grace and with so profound and ineffable an abyss that the presence of God alone, without any other gifts, is the good that the saints enjoy in heaven’. In this abysmal condition the soul, like God, is described as beyond comprehension: ‘my soul was then unable to comprehend itself, and so if the soul although it is created and finite and circumscribed, cannot understand itself, how much less can it comprehend the immense and infinite creator God?’ In her efforts to find some way to characterize the soul’s profound depth, Angela employed the sort of language one finds, with greater richness and complexity, in Meister Eckhart.210 Very little is known about Hadewijch of Antwerp (early thirteenth century); her knowledge of French courtly poetry shows that she came from a noble family and her letters show that she was the head of a beguine house. Her writings were not widely known and were not collected until the mid-fourteenth century; as McGinn points out, it is only in the last century that one of the greatest medieval mystics has begun to be appreciated: ‘Her literary mastery surpasses that of any other medieval woman mystic, not least because of the variety of genres in which she expressed her message.’211 The Poems in Stanzas is modeled on the songs of the French troubadours and ‘demonstrates a subtle transposition of the motifs and language of secular love poetry into the field of mystical discourse’. The Poems in Couplets are written in a more direct and didactic mode as letters in verse and her Book of Visions is the earliest vernacular collection of such revelations. Her earthy, almost sensual descriptions of her intimate encounters with Christ as the divine groom are extreme expressions of ecstatic union. In her view, this ecstatic joyful ‘melting’ in Christ’s arms is not the end of the mystical journey, but the beginning. Hadewijch’s all-embracing theme is the manifold meanings of love (in Dutch minne), something that she intended to explore in all of its moods and forms, rather 209 McGinn 1998 p. 147; Lachance 1984 pp. 370–85; Introduction to Foligno 1993 pp. 69–78. 210 McGinn 1998 pp. 148–9. 211 McGinn 1998 p. 200.

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than defined and categorized212 (CW pp. 160–62). The seven names she gives to love do not denominate seven stages on her itinerary, but rather her investigation of the various ways that love is manifest according to two ‘registers’, the first with four names, the second with three names. She coordinates these names to Biblical texts, just as Pseudo-Dionysius based his positive theology on the ‘divine names’ in Scripture. In the first group, she describes love as a bond or chain, both in the sense of feeling enchained by love and in the sense of the cosmic connection which founds the delights and torments of love. She compares the madness of both profane and sacred love: each one knows the other in the anguish or repose of love’s madness and wants to eat his flesh and drink his blood, that is, in the sacrament of Eucharist. Light is the second name of love and signifies the enlightened reason that is necessary to the proper understanding of how one should love the God-man in his Godhead and Manhood. Live coal is the third name and symbolizes love’s paradoxes in which all contradictory things are ‘set on fire and quenched by the madness of love’. Fire is love’s next name, for fire carries the fusing of opposites even further into a realm where contraries, such as love and hate, loss and gain, heaven and hell, have no meaning. The last three names of love in the second register articulate a deeper penetration into love’s mystery. Love as dew expresses the idea that, after love’s fire has burned every thing, gentle dew is the union between God and the soul, the kisses whereby the soul eats the flesh and drinks the blood of love. This name also signifies ‘the indivisible kiss which fully unites the three persons of the Trinity in one being’. The sixth name is the spring which signifies the flowing forth and the reflux of one into the other; love like a great river is ‘the sweet living life’ that flows out from God and draws all things back into the divine source. But the seventh name of love is terror; ‘there is nothing that love does not engulf and damn’, she says. ‘As hell turns every thing to ruin, in love nothing else is acquired but disquiet and torture without pity.’ Hence, one should not be surprised that the last name of love is the work of hell, ‘to be wholly devoured and engulfed … to founder unceasingly in heat and cold, in the depths of love, in high darkness’ (CW p. 83). McGinn comments that ‘perhaps even more powerfully than Angela of Foligno, Hadewijch taught that the mystical encounter with God in this life maintains, even heightens the sense of tremendum, the terror of those who are “lost in the storms of love” so deeply that they are totally “lovers lost in hell”’.213 Note also both the influx-reflux theme, which forms a central doctrine in Meister Eckhart, and the ecstatic state that comprises the intense experience of heat and cold, one found in Christina of St. Trond’s shamanic trance, as described in an earlier section on shamanism in the Middle Ages.214 In one of Hadewijch’s letters she lays out the requirements for the mystic in order to attain within the soul the unity of one being that occurs in the Trinity. Anyone who wishes to reach the Godhead must practice all the virtues which Christ had when on earth as a human. Through the desire for love under the guidance of reason, one lives the life of the Son of God; in the will for love and the exercise of virtue 212 McGinn 1998 p. 202–3; Petroff 1986 pp. 189–95; and esp. J. G. Milhaven, Hadewich and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993. 213 McGinn 1998 p. 205. 214 See also Petroff 1986 pp. 184–9.

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one lives in the Holy Spirit; as one strives to grow up as the loved one in every beloved one lives the unconquered power of the Father.215 Those who follow these demands all the way are ‘eventually gathered where the great light, the brilliant lightning, has flashed and the loud thunder has resounded’ (CW p. 258). In this text she employs imagery from Moses’ encounter with Jehovah on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 19:16–20) to symbolize the positive and negative aspects of experiential union with God. The bright lightning is the light of love which reveals who love really is, thunder is the fearful voice of reason which speaks of our failure and smallness. When the soul is drawn into union and becomes all that love is, the divine unity finally attains what it has demanded and the soul reaches fruition in the Holy Trinity. The author repeatedly makes use of the courtly theme of suffering for love (‘love’s wound’) in her teachings about love as the divine force whose being and acting demand so much. But love also grants understanding for the aspirant, the understanding that through the transformative fire of love the soul can indeed lay claim to what it is due. In order to fully belong to love, one must practice humility in ascribing all personal successes not to the self, but to love’s power. One must be prepared to choose the misfortunes that love brings to her followers, as McGinn says: ‘reason counsels patience and promises great rewards, but the lover knows that the brave must seek the “depths of love”. Just when we seem on the point of knowing minne, however, she hides in her groundless nature, so that Hadewijch reaches the final wisdom which the suffering of minne bestows – the paradox of giving up love for love’s sake.’216 The theme of transformative love also appears in Hadewijch’s ecstatic visions, in one of which she tells of her encounter with divine love as a six-winged seraph.217 She says that she was raised up in the spirit (her locution for rapture) and experienced an entirely new revelation of love in a new secret heaven, ‘closed to all those who were never God’s mother with perfect motherhood’ (CW p. 181). In this heaven the mystic sees the face of God (in Dutch anschijn van gode) with which he will satisfy all the saints for eternity, a face with six constantly beating wings. Whether a human being could ever see the face of God was the source of a great deal of controversy from the first centuries to the Middle Ages. Some authorities held that direct sight of God was restricted to those who were already in heaven, and not attainable by anyone in this life. But it is worth noticing this important early use of the word anschauen, the later philosophical word for ‘intuition’ as the direct acquaintance with some thing. McGinn says that her visual imagination is second to none among the medieval mystics, ‘though its very originality often makes it difficult to interpret’.218 In this vision, the six-winged divine face has ‘locks’, which are opened so that the seer can behold the three directions of love’s flight, and ‘seals’ which closed over the face and signify the divine attributes in which no one can share without living the life of Christ (CW p. 163). Her revelation centers on the opening of these six seals to reveal the true nature of divine love, an obvious parallel to the opening of the seven seals in McGinn 1998 p. 205. McGinn 1998 p. 207. 217 The six-winged seraph is one of the most enigmatic tropes in Isaac of Stella’s letters on mystical union. 218 McGinn 1998 p. 208. 215 216

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John’s Apocalypse. When they have been opened she sees a seat in the divine face upon which love is richly arrayed like a queen. The seer is given a seat opposite divine love and addressed as the mother of love, now higher than the seraphim – she has become the perfected soul of her long spiritual journey. The third great thirteenth-century female mystic was Mechthild of Magdeburg (1208–82) who began to receive her visions in the form of ‘divine greetings’ at the age of twelve. In her early twenties she became a beguine in Magdeburg where it appears she exercised some authority. Here she came under the influence of the Dominicans, one of whom encouraged her to compose an account of her experiences, The Flowing Light of the Godhead. This text comprises seven books with chapters of varying lengths in various genres: it is, McGinn says, ‘a miniature mystical and literary cosmos’, written over a period of thirty years. The original Middle Low German text was translated into Latin about 1290, making her book one of the first major vernacular texts to be published in the universal language. Mechthild thought of herself as a special instrument of God and defended herself against various complaints by declaring that it was God himself who commanded her to write what she did. The Flowing Light is especially concerned to reveal the Holy Trinity as the Gospels had done: the white parchment signifies the second person, the written words the Father, and the sound of his words the Holy Spirit. She thought of her book in close affinity with St. John’s Apocalypse, filled with visions of heaven, dialogues with Christ, and warnings about the end of the world. McGinn says that, to the best of his knowledge, ‘no medieval male mystic ever made quite the same claims for the divine authorization of their texts as we see advanced by the female evangelists of the thirteenth century … Each worked out her own strategies of authorization in the face of the common dilemma – ecclesiastical strictures against women taking on a public teaching role.’219 Nigel Palmer has pointed out that the Latin prologue introduces the text by an analysis of the four main headings – author, matter, mode and goal – that contemporary masters employed in their prefaces to Biblical exposition. This suggests that some friars were willing to accept (and teach from) the beguine’s work as similar to that of Biblical texts. The new status accorded to mystical visions in this period accords well with an essential feature of her style, ‘the way in which she fuses symbolization and conceptualization, personal mystical experience and the objective events of salvation history into a seamless whole’.220 She employs three basic strategies to convey her message: first, it is a theological reflection upon the meaning of her life as a guide for all Christians; second, the overt dialogue format in which God speaks directly to both the nun and the reader, and third, the use of poetic forms of expressions, poems which often have ‘a popular flavor, sometimes sounding like dances, spells, riddles, and the like’. Three important images in Mechthild’s writings help to convey the flavor of her ideas: flowing, courting and sinking. Although she often speaks of how the soul soars upward in its return to God, she also insists that this be understood in conjunction with the soul’s sinking movement, which itself is based on its taking part in the divine flowing. God himself flows within the three persons of the Holy 219 220

McGinn 1998 pp. 225–6; Hollywood 1995 pp. 57–67. Nigel Palmer quoted in McGinn 1998 pp. 226–7.

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Trinity, and God also flows down to create the world and to bestow his mystical greeting on the human soul. In response, the soul may soar upward for some time, but it must finally sink down and expend itself in order to reach the deepest union with God. Images and symbols of light, fire and spring occur often in her work, but her special interest was in how these terms were analogies for the ceaseless activity of the Holy Trinity.221 The Father describes himself as an ‘overflowing spring that no one can block, but a person can easily block up his heart with an idle thought, so that the never-resting Godhead that continually toils without toil cannot flow into his soul.’ The second person says that he is ‘concurrently recurring richness that no one can contain except the boundlessness that has always flowed and will ever flow from God.’ After the Holy Spirit says he is an insuperable power of truth, the whole Trinity declares that it is undivided in all eternity. The flowing of light into and out of a mirror offers a good example of how she understands the reciprocity between these figures. At the end of one vision she says that ‘a mirror was seen in heaven before the breast of each soul and body; in it shines the mirror of the Holy Trinity, giving truth and knowledge of all virtues which the body had practiced and all the gifts which the soul had received on earth. From here the glorious reflection of each and every person shines forth again into the sublime majesty from which it flowed forth.’ McGinn comments that in her view all human souls and even bodies flow from the depths of God as the image of the Holy Trinity; they have ‘as their high destiny a return to where they were created and, in deepest reality, always remain’.222 She states that it was part of the eternal divine plan that the second person become incarnated as a human being, and hence it was not solely the result of Adam’s original fall. Human being was fashioned by God’s hands with the complete nature of the Holy Trinity; ‘both body and soul have existed in the power of the creator from all eternity’.223 This is because ‘if the human person had a single nature, that is, a purely spiritual being like Lucifer, there would have been no possibility of restoration after sin. More significantly, since the divine nature itself through the incarnate word now includes “bone and flesh, body and soul”, the soul with its flesh gets to share the highest union with God, superior to that of the angels who remain pure spirit.’ Her view of ‘the precreational status and heavenly reward of the body lead her to a profoundly optimistic view of corporeal existence, despite the presence of some of the negative language about the body to be expected in any medieval religious author’. The author also conjoins to the Trinitarian scheme the image of God’s form as a sphere ‘without a lock and a door’: she says that ‘the lowest part of the sphere is a bottomless foundation beneath all the abysses; the highest part of the sphere is a height above which there is nothing; and the circumference of the sphere is an immeasurable circle’.224 The second theme is one of courtly love which she consider apropos because the human soul can only enjoy brief moments of ecstatic contact with God and also 221 She uses some unusual images for the Trinity, such as a crossbow, a chalice and a harmony, McGinn 1998 p. 431 note 172. 222 Summary of McGinn 1998 pp. 231–2; Hollywood 1995 pp. 67–72. 223 On her distinctive concepts of god and soul, see esp. Sonja Buholzer, Studien zur Gottesund Seelen konzeption im werk der Mechthild von Magdeburg, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988. 224 McGinn 1998 pp. 233–4; Hollywood 1995 pp. 75–86.

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because one should leave behind such ecstatic states in sinking down. (Perhaps this is something like the replete sadness after intercourse, post coitum omne animal triste.) The author is not adverse to some unabashed erotic descriptions of languor, for example, in her analogy with the soul as eager bride in Christ’s love-bed. One chapter presents an elaborate bedroom scenario in five acts, with numerous characters and lines of dialogue. The language that she uses here and elsewhere involve terms familiar from contemporary mystical literature, such as ‘jubilation’, ‘drunkenness’ and ‘drawing-out’.225 Her mastery of the language of courtly love ‘marks her out as one the premier voices in the history of erotic mysticism in Christianity. Her description of forms of ecstatic consciousness in which she “soars into God” provides ample testimony to the importance of ecstasy among thirteenth century women.’ But she did not consider this mystical-erotic union to be the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey: first there is tenderness, then intimacy, and then suffering. The nature of love is to flow in sweetness, then it becomes rich in knowledge, and then it desires rejection. In her peculiar paradox, the closest form of union with God in this life is attained through sinking-away into humility and even estrangement: ‘if you want to have love, you must leave love’. This sinking-away effects both body and soul, for ‘sinking and estrangement are embodied modes of finding God, experiences intimately connected with actual physical suffering, though not exhausted by it’. She says that God consoles her by allowing her to fall below the level of those suspended in purgatory and rejected in hell. She embraces her pain and misery, her love-sick soul sinks down under the pull of humility. She descends to the state of hell, trapped in hell, where her poor soul may feel no shame and no fear, but where the body quakes because it has not been transformed through death. She concludes her bizarre vision by saying that ‘both forms of experience are necessary for full holiness – ascent to the highest heights and descent to the deepest depths, the abyss of hell’.226 The fourth great female evangelist is Margaret Porette, whose death marks the first case of a recorded execution for mystical heresy in the Christian West. Little is known about Margaret’s early life and background, aside from scattered clues in her one major work, The Mirror of Simple Souls Brought to Nothing. The first version of this book was composed in the 1290s in northern France and when it reached the Bishop of Cambrai in the late 1290s or 1300s, it was condemned to be burnt. The author appealed to three well-respected theologians to attest the orthodoxy of her work, but despite their endorsement, she was arrested in 1308 and handed over to the Dominican Inquisitor in Paris. She refused to answer any of his questions during her interrogation and prosecution; two years later a commission of twenty-one theologians investigated a set of fifteen theses drawn from her book and found them heretical. ‘Their major opposition to her teaching’, as McGinn explains, ‘seems to have centered on fears that she advocated antinomian freedom from the virtues and the moral law, as well as a form of quietism or indifference to the ecclesiastically mediated means of salvation.’ Margaret still refused to recant her views and was condemned as a lapsed heretic; she was handed over to the civil authorities and publicly executed on 1 June 1310. One contemporary chronicle records that ‘she 225 226

See Aimé Solignac, ‘Jubilation’, in DSA vol. 8 cols. 1471–8. McGinn 1998 pp. 240–42.

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showed many noble and devout signs of penance at her death, by which the feelings of many were moved to heartfelt compassion for her and even to tears’.227 Despite its condemnation and public destruction, The Mirror of Simple Souls survived in six different versions in four languages with thirteen manuscripts; hence, it is one of the most widely read vernacular mystical texts of the Middle Ages. Margaret’s book was almost certainly known by Meister Eckhart, for there are numerous parallels and echoes in his various works. The Middle English translation of her French original refers to this book as ‘one of high divine matters, and of high ghostly feelings, and kerningly and full mystily it is spoken’. Only sixty years ago, in the late 1940s, an Italian scholar identified the sole extant manuscript of her French text, thus assuring Margaret Porette as the author of the many betterknown Latin versions.228 The mirror of the title is a large-scale representation of the mystical souls brought to nothing through their encounter with God.229 Amy Hollywood has remarked that the soul is both one of the interlocutors and the arena within which the drama takes place, in the sense that the transformation of consciousness is the subject of the book which itself is unfolding or being written within her: The Mirror, like The Romance of the Rose, brings the genre of personification allegory in its macrocosmic dimension together with the tradition of psychological personification found in the romances. The Soul is both a character in a larger drama, that of the movement of created beings to the divine, and the arena where the drama takes place. The outcome of the debate between Love and Reason will affect the Soul, who is not only a passive observer of their interaction but also the initiator of the argument and the final judge of its outcome.230

Hollywood likens Porette’s figure of the Soul to Bernard Silvestris’ figure of Nature in his Cosmographia: the Soul, like Nature, will ultimately be changed and transformed by the debate between the various figures. There are three main figures in the text: the Soul, Love and Reason, though there are scores of lesser characters. The Soul often speaks for the author, but should not be identified with her. Love is usually identified with God, but she is also the power of the soul whereby the soul takes part in divine nature and even becomes divine through annihilation. Reason is usually the opponent of Love, the human faculty that must be overcome and die in order for the soul to reach nothingness. Although Reason dies, it still remains essential to the process of psychical transformation; Love and Soul have to take over what Reason would possess if it were still alive. Reason returns to the discussion later in the text: ‘the grounds for Reason’s refusal to disappear are multiple, involving not only the necessity for the continuing presence of the rational faculty to highlight the paradoxes of annihilating union, but

McGinn 1998 pp. 244–5. On the story of its discovery see the Introduction to Porette 1999 pp. xliii–xlv. 229 On the ever-popular mirror theme, see esp. Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 230 Hollywood 1995 p. 95. 227 228

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also Reason’s ambiguous role as at least a partial subject of the transformational process described in The Mirror’.231 The Soul also repeatedly reflects on the book-like character of its inner process: the book called The Mirror of Simple Souls is the externalized text of the annihilated soul of its author. Her book is designed to implode, ‘first back into the soul, and finally, when the soul is truly annihilated, back into the Divine Abyss. The first implosion occurs when Love says that God’s lesson is written not by human hands, but by the Holy Spirit, who writes the lesson on the Soul’s precious parchment. The second implosion is one that reveals the true message to be the ultimate meaning of love in annihilation.’ Margaret says, The opening of this book has made me see so clearly that it made me give back what is his and receive what is mine, that is, that he is and I am not. So it is indeed right that I do not possess myself. And the light of the opening (apertura) of this book has made me find what is mine and to remain in it. Thus I have only as much being as he is able to be of himself in me. Thus, what is right has rightly restored what is mine to me and nakedly shown that I do not exist. (Ch. 1)

McGinn says that in describing her book as an aperture she employs technical language that appears elsewhere in her text for the ‘chink of contemplation’ or the ‘opening of the moment of glory’ by which the Soul passes into the final stage of complete annihilation.232 One of the characteristics that distinguishes her book in a way that might be considered heretical is that it is more like Gnostic gospels of the second century than the canonical gospels of the NT. It even displays affinities with some Gnostic themes, such as an obscure passage about the descent and ascent of perfect souls. But her efforts to spread the word, to disseminate these mystical teachings, are at odds with the esoteric attitude of most Gnostic authors. All sorts of oppositions and contraries are evident in her book; perhaps she thought that although her book was treated as an esoteric text, she wished that it were not: ‘The book seems to exist on the border between the opposition of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, flaunting its extreme statements at the same time that it often seeks to qualify them and to protect its essential orthodoxy.’233 The vacillation between the two poles appears quite clearly in her explication of God’s creation of the human body and soul. After Adam’s fall from paradise, humans are introduced to the prison of correction where our deficiencies in thought and action displease God. No human being sins without free will, she asserts, and the weakness of the human bodily condition hinders contemplation of divine goodness (Ch. 102–109). The extreme measure of her lesson is starkly apparent when she discusses how the super-exalted spirit emptied herself totally in order that divine goodness might dwell within her (Ch. 117). Through this emptying she is an exemplar of salvation, not only for herself but for every created thing. This is because she is the ‘height of all evil, for she contains what is wretched in her nature’; God is the height of goodness and cannot do what is unjust, for then the soul destroys himself. Since she 231 232 233

McGinn 1998 p. 249. McGinn 1998 p. 251. McGinn 1998 p. 253.

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is wretchedness and he is total goodness, it is necessary for her to have the totality of his goodness before her wretchedness can be terminated. In this ‘quasi-Gnostic image’ she refers to super-exalted souls as those who are planted by the Father and who descend from perfection to imperfection in order to attain higher perfection. The soul’s height of goodness is fused with the depth of wretchedness in her distinctive teaching about God’s presence in the human soul. Her sense of the union of opposites in the soul leads her to coin a new name for the Holy Trinity, the Loingprés, usually translated as the ‘Far-Nigh’ or the ‘Near-Far’. God is not thought of as the supreme being or a supernatural entity, but as the presence of absence, the conjunction of the infinitely distant with that which is most intimately close. She says that the Far-Nigh is ravishing and gentle (or noble), he is very sweet in the unencumbering that he effects in the soul. Love describes what happens to the Soul when she has been freed: ‘she falls from this into an astonishment, which one calls “pondering nothing about the nearness of the Far-Nigh” who is her nearest one. Then such a soul lives not by the life of grace or by the life of the spirit, but only by the divine life, freely not gloriously, because she is not yet glorified’ (Ch. 84). This sort of negative theology strives not to create systems of thought but to break down systems and subvert those that threaten to make God another reality or real being. Like other apophatic mystics, Porette insists that ‘there is no coming to terms with God, but only the constant effort, the performance, of the process of negating the works of intellect and will in order to attain the annihilation in which God and the Soul become absolutely one once more’. Therefore, as McGinn argues, nothingness is central to her whole way of thinking: ‘her mystical thought may be said to be founded on two apophatic pillars: (1) God is totally incomprehensible and therefore “nothing” from the perspective of human categories; (2) the Soul must become nothing by willing nothing in order to attain the God who is nothing and therefore all’.234 The seven stages of the soul’s ascent can be integrated with the types of souls and the types of deaths. The first stage comprises the first death, that is, the death to the temptation for sinning whereby the soul begins to keep the commandments. The second stage comprises the second death whereby the soul strives to mortify nature by practicing the evangelical counsels, of whom Christ himself is the exemplar. In the third stage the soul continues to strive for the works of perfection by trying to conquer the works of the spirit’s will. The fourth stage marks the traditional apex of the mystical path where the soul is drawn into the height of contemplation and enjoys ‘the touch of pure delight of love’. At this stage, love actually satisfies the soul so that she becomes completely drunk and cannot see the possibility of any higher state. But here the soul is reminded that ‘love has deceived many souls by the sweetness of the pleasure of her love’; McGinn comments that this is ‘a remarkable critique of most previous Christian understandings of mystical consciousness’. In the fifth stage, true annihilation commences and the third death, the death of the spirit, takes place. The overflowing of divine light into the soul shows ‘the will of the soul the rightness of that which is and the understanding of that which is not, in order to move the soul’s will from the place where it is … to the place where it is not’ (Ch. 118). McGinn says that 234

McGinn 1998 p. 257.

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the soul’s recognition of the coincidence of her wretchedness and divine goodness means the disappearance of the will precisely as a created something. In this long discussion [she] rings the changes on dialectical language experiments exploring how the soul sinks into a bottomless abyss of wretchedness under the ‘flood of sin’ in order to be able to see the Divine Goodness which transforms her into the nature of Love – no longer created, desiring love, but Divine Love itself.235

Once the spirit has died and attained the fifth stage, there is no slipping back to lower levels, although there is some difference between the two forms of annihilated consciousness. In the fifth stage, the author still seems to speak from the point of view of the effaced ego, while in the sixth stage, the divine point of view predominates, that of the ‘Ravishing Far-Nigh’. Here the author comes close to the expressions used by Meister Eckhart about the paradoxical mode of seeing, where the eye which sees God is the same eye with which God sees the soul: ‘God sees himself of himself in her, for her, without her. God shows to her that there is nothing except him. And thus the soul understands nothing except him, for there is nothing except him’ (Ch. 118). The brief moment of ‘aperture’, the stage of the soul’s clarification in knowledge, is succeeded by the seventh and final stage, the soul’s glorification in heaven, but the author says nothing of this. Margaret Porette’s Mirror of Simple Souls thus announces an important shift in Christian mystical thinking about the soul’s ascent: her emphasis on the mystic’s virtual pre-existence in God before creation and her present efforts to annihilate the soul in order to sink into an abyss argue for ‘a radical new sense of the oneness with God that can be attained in this life’.236 She gave voice to the mystic’s need to return to the primordial time before creation in which there is no good except God. She thus went beyond previous Christian theologians in finding ‘the very notion of created will and its possibility of not willing the good a separation or a fault that tortures the loving soul until it is negated through annihilation’. She is the first writer to describe the anima abyssata, ‘the abyssed soul’, when, for example, she addresses the soul as ‘most sweet abyssed one at the bottom without bottom of total humility’ (Ch. 53). On occasion, her language reaches a paradoxical paroxysm: the soul’s wretched state is so great and so deep that she finds there ‘only an abyssal abyss without bottom; there she finds herself, without finding and without bottom’ (Ch. 118) – and about this we can say nothing. In this context, McGinn quotes an astonishing statement by the twentieth-century French mystic, Simone Weil: ‘God created me as a non-being which has the appearance of existing, in order that through love I should renounce this apparent existence, and be annihilated by the plenitude of being.’237 The author of The Cloud of Unknowing (c.1370) and related texts remains unknown to this day. Scholars have thought him to be a secular priest, a cloistered monk, a Carthusian, not a Carthusian, a hermit, and a recluse.238 But he was probably McGinn 1998 p. 258. Summary of McGinn 1998 pp. 258–60; Hollywood 1995 pp. 98–9, 110; Petroff 1986 pp. 294–8. 237 Simone Weil, quoted in McGinn 1998 p. 265. 238 P. Hodgson, The Cloud of Unknowing, London: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. lxxxiii; J. P. H. Clark in Szarmach 1984 pp. 273–5; A. D. Putter in Edwards 2004 pp. 43–4. 235 236

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a country parson who lived in the East Midlands in the second half of the fourteenth century. The author has some knowledge of some of the major mystical texts, such as Pseudo-Dionysius,239 Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas’ Letter on Prayer, and especially Richard of St. Victor; but he is never concerned to back up his main ideas with the verdict of authority, aside from Sacred Scripture itself. One of The Cloud’s main lessons is that God is indescribable in his essence, a transcendent being beyond our power to comprehend. However, God is not unknowable for he can be reached, known and united with by love. Humans’ ability to know him and love him would not be possible without his prior love for humans and his revelation of this love through Christ’s incarnation. The Cloud endorses a form of meditative exercise to achieve this union, meditation with a threefold purpose: to instruct the mind, to move the will, and to warm the heart for prayer.240 In the first three chapters, the author describes how God calls a young disciple to a higher stage in the spiritual life. Although he may feel that he does not deserve this privilege, he must respond to the call with diligence and humility. In the initial stage the soul suffers because it wants to give everything to God and wants nothing except God, but feels dismay at the distance that separates him from what he so ardently desires. God must be loved for himself alone and this entails both surrendering one’s self to God’s control and abandoning all attachments to sensible things. This ‘night of the senses’ signals the soul’s movement from an active seeking to a passive drawing forth. This may be followed by a ‘night of the spirit’ in which the soul undergoes further purification, becoming aware of its own lack of worth and emptiness until it is utterly resolved to love God alone for himself and not for the consolation that love brings. The soul may feel utterly lost in the dark and become impatient, wanting to turn back; this often signals a moment of crisis, it may seem there is nothing left to live for. But when the night is the darkest the soul has moved closer to God; a faint hope refuses to be put out. The soul yields to God’s touch, and experiences moments of intense bliss; taken out of itself in God’s presence the soul is ravished. But this is not the goal of mystical meditation, and the author warns against taking moments of rapture or ecstasy as a sign of the final mystical state. Beyond these transient flashes of divine union, there is a steady permanent condition which the author describes as the spiritual marriage – this is the closest union with God which a human in this world can achieve. He declares that it is only by God’s undeserved mercy that ‘you are made a god by grace, inseparably united to him in spirit, here on earth and hereafter in the bliss of heaven’ (§67). The whole interior journey is a mystical ‘work’ which has its own process and premises. One premise is that the human soul has some affinity with God since humans have been created in his image and likeness. Only God is completely sufficient to fulfill the longing and will within our soul; when the soul is restored by grace it is made wholly sufficient in order to comprehend him fully by love. Both angels and humans have two faculties, the power to know and the power to love; to the intellect God is forever unknowable, but to diligence he is in principle knowable. 239 The anonymous author also wrote a short treatise called Dionysius’ Mystical Teachings, The Letter on Privy Counsel, The Letter on Prayer and (perhaps) The Discerning of Spirits and The Discretion of Stirring, Clark in Szarmach 1984 pp. 275–90. 240 In general, Clark in Szarmach 1984 pp. 275–91; A. D. Putter in Edwards 2004 pp. 45–9.

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Grace works within the soul through a sudden impulse; it comes without warning, ‘it springs up to God like a spark from a fire’.241 In a flash it may quickly forget the sensible world, but just as quickly it can relapse into its old habits. In order for the soul to enter the cloud (or darkness) of unknowing it must first establish a cloud of forgetting between itself and worldly things (§5). It may be that thoughts of worldly things intrude in this exercise, but the author reassures the disciple that these are ‘expressions of the normal mind, the reasoning power of your soul … [and] reason is a godlike thing’ (§8). This occurs because the soul is still located in the lower stage of the active life and must press on to the higher stage; the higher stage of the active life overlaps with the lower stage of the contemplative life; each is linked to and dependent on the other. Everything that one does in the lower stage of the active life is exterior to him, or even beneath him. In the higher stage the human soul turns inward and he is on a par with his own better, perfectible nature. In the higher stage of the contemplative life, a human reaches above himself and is inferior to nothing except God. In the higher stage the soul is entirely caught up in darkness, in the cloud of unknowing, where he feels a blind groping toward God, a ‘naked intent’. All the time that the soul dwells in the body, the clarity of spiritual understanding is distorted, and this causes our works to be imperfect and inclines us to error (§8). In the central sections the author sets out some of the main features of the contemplative life: its prior discipline, the embracing nature of prayer, the need for generous response, indifference to rules, the summons to complete self-forgetting; spiritual consolations must not be sought, but steadily ignored. The author is also concerned lest the disciple follow the wrong model, and illustrates some of his ‘therapeutic’ points with stories about counterfeit contemplatives (§§51–60). In order to properly situate the spiritual operations within the mystical life, the author devotes considerable attention to the powers, functions and purposes of the human soul. The soul, he avers, has three major faculties – the mind (including memory), reason and will – as well as two minor faculties – imagination and sensuality. The soul as a whole cannot be divided into parts, though what the powers work with can be analyzed; hence, reason and will work with spiritual things, needing no aid from the minor powers, which work with material things. The mind is the pre-eminent faculty because it spiritually embraces in itself not only the other four faculties, but also those things through which they work (§63). Before the fall from grace, human reason would have been able to distinguish between good and evil by the natural light, but now the faculty of reason cannot do so without the light of grace. After enlightened reason has approved what is good, the will chooses the good and attempts to realize it; before the fall from grace the will would always have chosen the good, now again, like reason, the will is attendant on grace (§64). The faculty of imagination is also afflicted by its lapsed condition, since it originally would have been entirely obedient to reason, such that it never pictured anything perverted or fantastic. If it is not restrained by the light of grace (within reason), it will never cease from suggesting spurious and misleading images, such as we experience in dreams and hallucinations (§65). Sensuality is the soul’s power which

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The same spark imagery is seen after death in the soul-voyages to the other world.

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affects and controls our bodily reactions, and through which humans experience sensible things. One of its functions is to look after our bodily needs and another to provide for our bodily appetites. The author here seems to make some sort of distinction between desire as ambition for better things and unchecked appetite for what makes it feel good. Hence he states that it is one and the same faculty which grumbles when it lacks what it needs and then wants more when that need is met; he refers to ‘strong desires’ and ‘greedy delight’ (§66). The soul’s tendency to fall back on its own powers must be resisted; the light of grace must be encouraged, and the soul’s original condition restored through mystical work. He enjoins the disciple ‘to work hard, with all speed, in this nothing and nowhere’ (§70). One must not rely on one’s own will but on the will of God, who will confer on those with ‘naked intent’ the object of their spiritual love. Lest the disciple think that this state of grace translates into an ecstatic condition the author distinguishes two types of mystical experience. The first is like Moses’ encounter with Yahweh on Mt. Sinai: it is a rare event, it follows after strenuous labor, and proceeds from a special summons; the other is like Aaron’s ability to contemplate the Ark of the Covenant, assisted by grace he could look upon this treasure whenever he wished. The human soul is the spiritual temple of God, the inward work that results in union is like the temple jewels, and the mystical path to this inner state is the way of meditative prayer (§71). The Cloud-author was probably familiar with another contemporary English mystic, Julian of Norwich (1343–1413) who lived as an anchoress (walled recluse) in the parish church of Norwich. When Julian was thirty she had a series of sixteen visions over a two-day period; The Showings of Divine Love is her later attempt to capture and understand the message of those visions. The short version of her text was probably written shortly after her mystical experiences, the longer version includes additional narrative scenes and was composed about twenty years later (c.1393). Julian interprets each vision as ‘a kind of allegorical drama in which every detail of the imagery and the dialogue is significant … the similes that occur to her as she observes her recollections, which sometimes take the form of static, hieratic images, but more often are visualized as scenes dramatizing parables original with her’.242 Julian’s Showings are best known for her deeply moving account of her own efforts to achieve self-abnegation and her strong claims about Christ as mother. The motherhood of God emphasizes God’s maternal aspects: generative, sacrificial and nurturing. Some of these same themes were shared by her younger contemporary, Margery Kempe (1373–1439), who visited the anchoress in order to gain guidance in an active mystical life. In her autobiography (one of the first in English),243 Margery said that she sought ‘compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion’. Although she admired Julian’s commitment to meditation and contemplation, Margery took her deeply religious calling ‘on the road’. She invented a new religious role, a blend of personal asceticism, public imitation of the apostles’ way of life, and pilgrimage to holy sites. Margery also famously identified with the suffering and death of Christ 242 Petroff 1986 p. 300; Introduction to Julian of Norwich 1978; Windeatt in Edwards 2004 pp. 67–79. 243 Kempe 1940; A. C. Spearing in Edwards 2004 pp. 83–94.

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on the cross. This deeply personal unification with Christ’s passion would become the main theme of St. John of the Cross about a century later. St. John of the Cross (1542–91), the son of a poor family of noble origins, entered the Carmelite monastery in 1563 and studied theology in Salamanca (1564–68) after which he was ordained a priest. He felt real discontent with the pervasive laxity of the Carmelite Order240 and was considering entering the Carthusian Order when he met the great mystic teacher and mother superior St. Theresa of Avila. With her aid he made significant reforms to his order and was master of the Discalced Carmelite College and confessor of the convent in Avila in the 1570s. After the General Chapter of Carmelites met in 1575 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Toledo monastery, from which he escaped nine months later. When the two Carmelite orders formally split he was made rector of their college in Baeza, then prior in Grenada and Segovia. But he then incurred the hostility of the general of his new order and was banished to Andalusia in 1591, where after severe illness and great suffering he died that year. St. John’s writings possess the paradoxical character of works in which the imagination and sensitivity of the poet are combined with the intellectual activity of the theologian trained in Thomistic philosophy in seeking to capture and communicate the mystic’s apprehension of a living and loving being which is found essentially beyond the reach of feeling, imagination and understanding; it can ultimately be known in itself only as these modes give way to the response of pure love.245

The major part of The Spiritual Canticle (SC) was composed in prison in 1578, The Dark Night (DN) shortly after, The Ascent of Mount Carmel (AMC) in the early 1580s, and The Living Flame of Love (LF) in 1583–85. Along with St. Theresa, ‘St. John brought into being a uniquely comprehensive and analytical account of the successive stages of purgation, illumination and union through which the soul passes in the course of its approach to God’.246 St. John of the Cross devoted his considerable skills to the question of the relation between God and human being insofar as human gives himself up to the search for that perfect union with his creator which is possible in this earthly life. Hence the divine-human relation which is consummated in the spiritual marriage can only be understood in light of his picture of the distinctive traits of human nature which permit this ultimate union. He agrees with Aquinas that God moves all things according to their nature; ‘for God to move the soul and raise it up from the extreme depth of its lowliness to the extreme height of his loftiness, in divine union with him, he must do it with order and sweetness and according to the nature of the soul itself’ 244 Founded in Jerusalem in the mid-twelfth century with a strong rule of asceticism, poverty and prayer, after the collapse of the crusades its followers migrated into Western Europe, where over the centuries its rule was relaxed. By the mid-sixteenth century there was a powerful incentive to return to the more severe rule and this was instituted by St. Theresa and St. John, who were known as ‘discalced’ (‘sandaled’ or ‘barefoot’); their order came into conflict with the mitigated rule of the anti-reform order, the ‘calced’ Carmelites. 245 ODCC 2nd edn 1990 p. 747. 246 ODCC 2nd edn 1990 p. 747; on his life and writings, St. John of the Cross 1991 pp. 9–38; de St. Joseph 1974 cols. 408–10.

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(AMC 2.17). There is an ontological distinction between God and human, one of kind and not degree, as well as one of likeness, such that God is not like human, but human can achieve likeness to God. ‘God is of another being than his creatures’, he says (AMC 3.12); even in the highest union of the soul with God, ‘its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the being of God as it was before’ (AMC 2.5). God is uncreated, self-subsistent, un-derived, infinite and eternal being, where human has created, dependent, finite and immortal (not eternal) being – God is being, human has being, all he has is a gift from God. All created things have some relation to God and bear a divine imprint, some more and some less, according to what is more or less dominant in their nature (AMC 2.8). However, the natural separation between the uncreated being of God and the created being of humans does not comprise an impassable barrier between the two. In the case of human being this is because ‘the soul is as perfect as when God created it, yet in its rational being, it is vile, foul, black, and full of evils due to its inordinate desires for things of this world’ (AMC 1.9). These desires have so blinded and darkened the mind that it can no longer receive the divine image, ‘like a mirror that is clouded over cannot receive within itself a clear image’.247 The soul as mirror was sometimes so clouded that ‘neither the sun of natural reason nor that of the supernatural wisdom of God can shine upon it and illumine it clearly’. The soul is darkened in the intellect, weakened in the will, and the memory becomes dull and disordered (AMC 1.8). Due to its fallen nature the human soul is a captive in the mortal body, subject to bodily passions and desires. Insofar as humans have affections for other creatures the closer the soul’s likeness becomes to that of creatures it loves, and this likeness to the other makes it incapable of pure union with God. Hence, there is a positive barrier to humans’ union with God since humans are immersed in the darkness of sin and cannot take part in the light. The human soul through its love for earthly things is deformed from its best shape, ‘ravished by the graces and beauties of creatures’, it has ‘only supreme misery and ugliness in the sight of God … setting its heart upon the good things of the world is supremely evil in the eyes of God’ (AMC 1.4). In The Dark Night, St. John emphasizes the intimate relation between soul and body in striking words when he discusses the sin of spiritual lust: ‘It often happens that, in their very spiritual exercises, without being able to prevent it, there arise and present impure acts and motions in the sensitive part of the soul.’ This happens ‘when the spirit and sense are pleased every part of human is moved by that pleasure to delight according to its own way and manner’. The spirit as the higher part is moved with pleasure and delight in God, and the sensitive nature as the lower part is moved to pleasure by the senses. It attempts to grasp that which is nearest to itself, the impure and sensual; those souls which are frail and tender become drunk with enjoyment (DN 1.4). Sensual delights also play their role in stronger souls, those who strive towards union with God, but can be left behind as hindrances to greater perfection: ‘It is more proper and habitual to God to communicate himself to the spirit, in which there is more security and profit to the soul, than to sense, wherein 247 The common medieval trope of the soul as speculum, ‘mirror’, should take account of the fact that mirrors in the Middle Ages were usually imperfect, sometimes cloudy, even tarnished metal sheets.

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there is ordinarily much danger and deception, for bodily sense judges and estimates spiritual things by thinking that they are as it feels them to be, whereas they are as different as is the body from the soul and sense-perception from reason’ (AMC 2.11). He sometimes uses the word ‘soul’ to designate the whole human being and this is the reason why he rarely speaks of soul and body tout court, but rather contrasts body with the higher and lower parts, or the sensitive and rational parts. He nominates them as ‘that part which concerns creatures and temporal things, the sensitive and lower part, and that part which has respect for God and spiritual things, the rational and higher part’ (AMC 2.4). The sensitive part includes the bodily senses and faculties, both the interior and exterior senses: ‘The operation and motions of sense contrive to attract the will pleasantly to themselves from the rational part of the soul.’ According to the analogy of the human soul with a city, ‘its suburbs are the interior senses, such as phantasy, the imagination and the memory, wherein meet and gather the phantasies and imaginings and forms of things’. The images of things ‘enter these suburbs of the inward senses through the gates of the exterior senses’ and that which is called the city of the soul is ‘that most inward part, the rational part, which has the capacity for communion with God’ (SC 31.4). On occasion the author also refers to the sensitive part as the soul and the rational part as the spirit. In its natural state the soul is like a smooth blank tablet upon which nothing is inscribed; except for what it acquires from the senses nothing is communicated from any other source (AMC 1.3). But through proper spiritual instruction the soul can be brought to a higher state where God’s favors are granted to the rational part ‘in the spirit only’. In this state the soul is likely to see itself ‘so far withdrawn and separated, according to the higher and spiritual part, from the sensitive and lower part, that it recognizes in itself two parts so distinct from each other that it seems that one has nothing to do with the other, except that one is very remote and separate from the other’ (DN 2.23). When the soul has passed through the dark night of sense and the dark night of spirit ‘it receives only that which is given to it’. It receives this gift from the Holy Spirit when all the soul’s own natural operations have ceased. This occurs in the ‘third night’, the perfection of the communion of God with the spirit, whereby the innermost depths of the soul are touched by God. This inner touch of God brings complete satisfaction and nothing more is desired. He says that it is also called a whisper, ‘because even as a whisper is caused by the air as it subtly enters the organ of hearing, even so the most subtle and delicate knowledge enters the inmost substance of the soul’. It is received by the passive intellect, not by the active intellect, which works with images and notions derived from the senses (LF 12.14). In its nature the human soul is as perfect as when God created it and its perfection consists in its being in his image and likeness. It is a spiritual substance with a rational, willing nature; it has its own life and is united to the body for the perfecting of that life. ‘The soul lives in that which it loves’, he says in The Spiritual Canticle, ‘rather than in the body which it animates, because it has not its life in the body, but rather gives it to the body, and lives in that which it loves. But besides this life of love the soul has its natural and radical life in God’ (SC 8.2). And again in The Living Flame: ‘the soul being a spirit has neither height nor depth, nor greater or lesser degrees of profundity in its own being’. Unlike material substances, ‘there is

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no difference for a spirit between its interior and exterior being; it is all one, and has no depths or greater or lesser profundity in any way that can be measured’ (LF 1.10). The interior measure of the human soul consists in its ability to understand, and since it can understand itself, it knows itself to be different than the power of will or memory. It is only when the faculties are at rest and in a passive state that the soul can be united with God. When the higher part of his soul was at rest with respect to its desires and powers, St. John says that his soul went forth to the divine union of the love of God: ‘As soon as these two houses of the soul have become tranquil and strong, with all their servants, that is, the faculties and desires, and have put them all to sleep and caused them to be silent with regard to all things, both above and below, this divine wisdom immediately unites himself to the soul’ (DN 2.24). The intellect (or understanding) is that power or faculty of the soul by which one can apprehend the true nature of things by abstracting all that is particular in order to grasp the universal. In this respect the human intellect constitutes the most perfect form of life which is the closest (except for angels) to that of God himself. The intellective faculty brings with it the capacity to understand one’s own self, and in that reflective activity the mind is made in the image and likeness of God, the perfection of whose nature is that he knows himself by himself. Human beings need to use their natural reason, since ‘God ever desires that humans should use their own reason insofar as it is possible, and all things have to be ruled by reason, save those that are of faith, which exceed all reason and judgment, although they are not contrary to it’ (AMC 2.22). However, one should not mistake reason for intellect, for reason is an imperfect form of intellect. The intellect has insight into the true nature of things, whereas reason is the ‘necessary imperfection of intellect’; it is the cognitive power whereby the mind arrives at truth by a discursive process. The highest act of understanding is intellectual apprehension, an intuition which is the more direct as the intellect is the more perfect.248 God’s intellect is pure intuition, an angel’s intellect is less perfect, since it is finite, but still more perfect than humans’ intellect, since an angel can directly perceive the true nature of immaterial things. Unlike the angels, the human mind gains knowledge ‘as long as it is in the body’, but ‘like one who is in a dark prison and knows nothing, save what it sees through a window’ (AMC 1.3). What the rational soul can come to know is constrained by what it acquires from or through the senses. However, in The Spiritual Canticle St. John qualifies this excessively empirical view of the extent of human knowledge by recourse to a higher state of the passive intellect achieved in mystical perfection: ‘The secret and hidden wisdom of God is given without the service or aid of any bodily or spiritual sense, as in the silence and quiet of night, in the darkness of all that is sensible and natural.’ Here, ‘God teaches the soul after a most hidden and secret manner, without her knowing how … for this is not done by the active intellect which works in forms and phantasms of things’ (SC 38.9). Hence, St. John claims that the intellect can receive knowledge by both natural and supernatural means: the natural means are through the senses and the supernatural is that which is given beyond the intellect’s natural capacity. In this regard the human intellect has an even deeper capacity, one that permits the soul to receive ‘the essential communication of the divinity without any intervening means, 248

As Bede Frost elegantly phrases it, Frost 1937 p. 132.

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through a certain contact with the divinity, a thing far removed from all sense and accidents, inasmuch as it is the touch of pure substances, that is, of the soul and the divine’ (SC 32.3). At this stage there is complete unification of all the soul’s powers, ‘when the soul attains to interior union with God, the spiritual faculties no longer work in it, still less do the corporeal faculties, since the work of union with God is already accomplished, and thus the faculties have ceased to work’ (SC 25.7). The third faculty of the soul, in addition to intellect and memory, is the will, with its four passions – joy, hope, grief and fear – as well as its desires and affects. It is necessary, as St. John enjoins, that the will be freed of its passions and desires: ‘The whole business of attaining union with God consists in purging the will from its affections and desires, so that, from being a mere human will, it may become a divine will, one with the will of God’ (AMC 3.16). In one of his letters, the author further distinguishes between the will’s feeling and its operation. The passive feeling of the will is a sentiment aroused by some object towards which it feels a like or dislike. The active feeling of the will is the will’s operation in consequence of this like or dislike. Insofar as the will can comprehend God and become united with him, this is not achieved by means of desire, but by love. None of the pleasant feelings associated with ordinary objects of desire is a suitable means by which the soul may unite with God; only the operation of the will can achieve this. Through the human will’s operation the soul places on God all of her affection and hence leaves all worldly things behind in its exclusive focus. In conclusion, let us consider the way in which St. John lays out the stages of the soul’s perfection via its passage through the dark night of sense and the dark night of spirit.249 The first night is the night of the senses when the soul is purified in its lower, sensitive part, that is, its exterior and interior senses in relation to desires for external things and its own faculties. The soul must become detached from its desires for creatures and comforts and detached from the faculties of intellect, memory and will, cognitive powers that cannot operate if the soul is to reach its goal. The second night is the night of the spirit and, unlike the first night which can happen to many, the second night happens only to the few (DN 1.8; 1.14). In the second night the two extremes, the divine and the human, intersect in the soul: the divine gift is manifest in contemplation in its highest function, purifying the soul through suffering and perfecting the soul through illumination (DN 2.6). In this state God does everything, the soul does nothing, it is entirely passive and obedient to God’s will. This state is literally a form of purgatory since, ‘just as the spirits are purged in the next life with dark material fire, in this [life] they are purged and cleansed with the dark, loving spiritual fire’ (DN 2.12). The physical torments the sensitive soul passes through purify and refine the whole soul, while darkness and dread prepare the spirit, in order that the whole soul may be made ready for its transformation. Those who reach the final stage of ‘the secret ladder of love’250 have already been purged and can now enter heaven (DN 2.20). Although St. John died only five years before Descartes’ birth, fifty years before the publication of The Meditations, they are light-years apart. St. John’s picture of the highest achievement of human knowledge is the inverse of Descartes’ picture; 249 250

Frost 1937 pp. 145-57; Stein 1960 pp. 30–37, 89–96. Stein 1960 pp. 104–8

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like positive and negative film cells, white for black, and black for white. St. John’s mystical discipline is a science of the cross; supreme knowledge is the human-divine union achieved through the mystic’s efforts to imitate the crucified Christ. The new method for Descartes (as well as Bacon) endorses a ‘cross’ (crux) in science, the notion of a crucial experiment that decides the truth between two competing hypotheses. St. John declares that the human will must be suppressed or voided in order to be appropriated by God’s will; humans must abandon their free will, an attribute responsible for their original fall from grace. In stark contrast, Descartes extols free will’s enormous value: ‘Free will is in itself the noblest thing we can have because it makes us in a certain manner equal to God and exempts us from being his subjects; and so its rightful use is the greatest of all goods we possess.’251 According to St. John, the passions are deceitful, making the subject like an object of desire; passions weigh down the human spirit by guiding the lustful soul towards worldly goods. According to Descartes, the passions are the most reliable guide to what is beneficial and harmful to human nature. For St. John, detachment from the senses prepares an individual for the gift of God’s wisdom, whereas for Descartes, detachment from the senses is a strictly methodical expedient that permits reason to attain clear and distinct ideas about the essences of natural things. St. John repeatedly refers to and encourages the inner sense of God’s presence, whereas Descartes sets out to achieve the full presence of one’s self. Charles Taylor says that ‘the Cartesian proof [of the thinking thing’s derivation from God] is no longer a search for an encounter with God within. It is no longer the way to an experience of everything in God. Rather, what I now meet is myself: I achieve a clarity and fullness of self-presence that was lacking before.’252 For St. John, the path of perfection is one of purifying and illuminating the spirit, making the soul itself more perfect. For Descartes, the perfection towards which his rational project aims is one of representation, the more and more perfect expression of the rational order of nature.

Letter of Nov. 1647; see also The Passions of the Soul sec. 152. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989 p. 157. 251 252

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Magical Ideas about the Soul from Isidore to Goethe (1) The medieval rediscovery of magic and its view of the soul Here our historical investigation cycles back to roughly the same period that saw the emergence of Christian mystical ideas in the confluence of Christian Neo-Platonism and the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. Our thesis is that the late NeoPlatonic schemes in Iamblichus, Proclus and the Chaldean Oracles permitted, even encouraged, two distinct though interrelated views about working on the soul to achieve ascent. One could be briefly characterized as the development and cultivation of a divine spark within the human soul by way of techniques of contemplation; the stages or grades in the soul’s progressive purification, illumination and unification with the godhead are made possible by God’s voluntary assistance. The other view was one in which at least some of the tools used in the aspirant’s efforts had been exteriorized in material things, that is, in spoken or written spells, ritual observances, and the manipulation of hidden virtues in things, such as stones, plants and animals. The scholarly debate about the exact meaning of ‘theurgy’ in the fourth century, for example, and the cogency of distinguishing between higher and lower forms, nicely illustrates this divergence. For our purposes, the rehabilitation of ancient Graeco-Roman ideas about magic in the early Middle Ages follows the third main criterion in our sketch of heterodox lines of thought. Let us briefly reprise these criteria here: (1) they are arcane, esoteric teachings, kept secret from the public, open only to insiders. (2) Their emphasis is not on an explanatory account of nature, but on techniques for the soul’s ascent. (3) They are formed in close alliance with magical ideas and lend themselves readily to various occult theories: (a) some aspect of these ideas can be externalized in some form, such as rituals, spells, and so forth; (b) these external forms can become detached from the theoretical base which explains them. (4) Their diagnostic, therapeutic and practical effects are achieved by natural and/or demonic magic. Our survey of the development of what we have chosen to call the ‘magical view of the soul’ must, to some degree, follow the same path (or paths) as the development of European views of magic vis-à-vis the Christian religion. Hence, our survey of the magical view of the soul accords with a scholarly division of historical periods in the spread and transformation of late antique and pagan views of the nature, scope and purpose of magic itself. For convenience, let us assume that there are four main periods: (a) the many-layered phase of conversion to the Christian religion of the various peoples of Europe, which happened in different regions over many centuries (c.500–1100), where indigenous practices are often condemned as superstitious, and where the Christian clergy extol and practice their 299

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own form of magic. (b) The reformation (or renovation) of intellectual ideas (c.1100–1350), when scholastic theologians redefined the nature of human knowledge, at least in part under the influence of Arabic and Jewish ideas, and when popular magic accepted for centuries is subject to censure. (c) The Late Middle Ages and Renaissance period (c.1350–1550), when demonic association with paganism is changed to an association with heresy, witchcraft is said to show evidence of diabolical conspiracy, the ‘clerical underworld’ practices necromancy and ritual magic, and the figure of the philosophical adept emerges. (d) The Early Modern period (c.1550–1700) when Hermetic, occult and magical ideas merge with, or are considered compatible with, advances in the scientific understanding of the natural world and humans’ place in it.1 Until quite recently it was very difficult to retrieve primary documents about magic and occult ideas in the early Middle Ages; the principal texts were in recondite, out-of-print editions or in obscure journals, and often had no modern language translation. The same state of affairs was true for scholarly studies of these sources as well. But general access to these works – and our specific studies here – were vastly improved by the publication of Valerie Flint’s exceptional (and much debated) major work, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (1991). Flint argues that the ancient traditions of natural magic were not merely tolerated as survivals in the Christian world from the early Middle Ages, but were actively rescued, preserved and encouraged: ‘In their attempt to find a place for unreason deeper than, rather than this side of reason, the early Middle Ages in Europe display a good deal more enlightenment about the emotional need for that magic which sustains devotion and delight than does the post-Reformation Western world in general or, come to that, the Enlightenment itself.’2 Where the forces of nature appeared to be hostile to humans and where rational knowledge of them was meagre, the possibilities for preternatural intervention were feared. As scientific knowledge of the natural world expanded and as nature itself was perceived as more benign, the scope for supernatural interference diminished – though so too may the awe and terror that it inspires. Under the former scheme, ‘one may expect competition for the power that magic as a form of control seems to hold out, but anxiety about its practice and alarm at its practitioners’. Under the latter scheme, ‘the need for such magic may seem to be less urgent, but paradoxically that which it has to offer may be a little easier peacefully and generally to accept’. The process by which traditional magic was ‘rescued’ began with the first state of affairs and ended with the second. ‘By the year 1100 certain practices, objects and aims which had at one point in their spans of existence most certainly fallen into the dreaded dimension of the magical had become the object of reverent attention.’3 Our current focus of interest, the early medieval view of the magical soul (or the human soul seen through a magical filter), will cast light on several high points in this period: popular and clerical views of demonic power, reports of miracles and marvels from the saints’ lives, Isidore of Seville’s On Magic and Magicians, Pseudo-Bede’s 1

On this break-down into periods, see Jolly 2001 pp. 13–26; Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 10–12,

16. 2 3

Flint 1991 p. 4. Flint 1991 pp. 6–7; Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 10–12.

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the Worlds of Heaven and Earth, and the great medieval grimoire the Picatrix. The various religions and cults of late antiquity, despite their diverse range of beliefs and rituals, had at least one common link – the belief in demons as spirits of evil. Wherever demons were said to reside and whatever their origins, they were the possessors of supernatural powers and evinced malice and cruelty towards humans. In the view of John Cassian in the 420s, humans can control demonic malice in only two ways: either they can subjugate demons by their own sanctity, that is, devout Christian piety, or they can invoke them through sacrifice and incantation. Flint claims that the stark opposition between sanctity and magic stands behind much of the belief in the special attachment demons had to magic which preoccupied so many people in the early Middle Ages. Indeed, the magical arts were expected in some sources to play a major role in the protection and service of the Antichrist himself. What Flint identifies as the motive for rescuing magic appears as early as an ambivalence shown in Roman laws regarding magic. At the same time as the overt statements in the strong current that denounces magic, one can detect a counter-current that begins to rescue certain practices. The counter-current follows a different course towards a different end, and calls into service two special sources of strength in the production of a changed form of magic – oracles and prayers. The increasing recognition that the demands of human helplessness and impotence could be satisfied by recourse to practices and materials which served salvation brought powerful impulses to bear on the rescue of magic: ‘Thus, signs and portents and predictions, lot casting, planetary influences, shape-shifts, dreams, the strangest of animal and herbal remedies, and the most wondrous of substances, all of these were given passage through to the Middle Ages on viable craft, and sometimes on the most substantial and impressive and undoubtedly Christian of vehicles.’4 When used ‘upside-down’ (as it were), early efforts at scientific discourse can be very useful in showing the opposing pressures on the practical employment of magic: ‘Such treatises could actually excite by reaction that response that turned certain churchmen away from scientific counters to non-Christian magical practice and actively toward a Christian form of magic in their stead. Christianity … was, after all, deeply anti-intellectual and passionately concerned to establish the rights of irrationality in a controllable form.’5 The evolved role of demons in the late antique and early medieval period showed them to be prime candidates for rescue by Christian authorities: ‘Demons were retained for their help in isolating those wicked forms of magic for which a scientific answer seemed neither desirable to Christians nor available to them.’ Apuleius had stressed the superiority of demons to other airy creatures in terms of the heights to which they could fly and their mental powers. In the Life of St. Anthony, turbulent wicked demons of the lower air take center-stage. Anthony said that they are numerous and proximate; they also make a loud noise, emit silly laughs, and hiss: ‘If no one pays any attention to them, they wail and lament as though defeated … The appearance of the evil ones is full of confusion accompanied by crashing, roaring, and shouting; it could well be the tumult produced by rude boys and robbers.’ Signs of demonic activity like wailing 4 5

Flint 1991 pp. 21, 34. Flint 1991 p. 50; see also Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 36–42.

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and hissing are much the same as the symptoms of the improperly buried dead, the ghosts of those thwarted from their just abode in Greek popular religion.6 The airy locale of these demons meant that they exercised dominion over the zone that dead souls had to traverse on their ascent to heaven. Flint here makes a valuable conjecture based on clues in the various texts: there is nothing supernatural or even magical about demons’ apparent powers. They are attributes of their airy bodies, hence arise their exceptional speed and strength. The reason that demons can appear to see into the future (or far away) is because they can see much further in space and because they can fly out and back with messages about distant places at lightninglike speeds. Flint claims that this special demonic interest in ‘predicting’ the action of travellers may explain why divinations associated with journeys were so often singled out in church councils for proscription. It was always helpful too to be able to turn to these real demons as a means of explaining away any successes human diviners might seem to have had, especially in a period when diviners were especially prevalent. Augustine will play a crucial role in the rescue of demons for this very purpose.7

Moral failings common to ordinary humans might be illustrated and even explained away through the idea of demonic assault. John Cassian’s vivid descriptions of monks locked in mortal combat with demons were eagerly taken up by other writers and preachers:8 ‘Once the idea had taken root, the institution fed the theory, and Benedictine monasteries especially became both spiritual and physical strongholds against demons and so against the worst of their magic also.’ The very picture of demons’ preternatural power does much ‘to project monks into this embattled role’. With Cassian one again hears about the demons’ extreme malice, airy speed, subtle intelligence and fluid ability to penetrate thick, heavy masses, like human flesh. So here, even demonic possession is given a cogent and credible ‘natural’ explanation: demons’ acute insight allows them to ‘perceive’ a person’s secret inner desires and hence to more easily manipulate them. The very concept of ‘demon’, transformed from the Graeco-Roman to the early Christian context, was crucial to the establishment of the early medieval magical world because there was both a cosmological framework and a scriptural basis to support their existence.9 Flint points out that ‘Medieval Christians have the dubious distinction of confining the term “demon” with absolute firmness to wicked spirits alone, and of insisting upon their particular malevolence to human kind.’ But the changing status of demons helps to illuminate what features of the old magic had to be junked, how their practitioners required special treatment, and what Christian form the ‘new’, rescued magic had to take.10 The explanatory role of demons in the works of Augustine and Caesarius of Arles show that demons do none of the actions they are accused of without divine F. E. Brenk in ANRW vol. 16.3 pp. 2068–110 Brown 1972 pp. 119–46. Flint 1991 p. 105; see esp. Civ. Dei VIII.16–23, IX.1–13, IX.18–23; Flint 1999 pp. 324–48. 8 On John Cassian, see McGinn 1991 pp. 218–27; Flint 1999 pp. 310–15. 9 F. E. Brenk in ANRW vol. 16.3 pp. 2110–45; Flint 1999 pp. 315–24. 10 Flint 1991 pp. 107–10. 6 7

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permission. These theorists denied demons any genuinely supernatural powers; rather, they can do only what is consistent with their ‘natures’ and have no capacities which are actually divine. Belief in demons allowed humans to see that events beyond ordinary understanding take place and saved them from taking full responsibility for their occurrence. Belief in demons supported by the Christian Church could help to rescue humans from excessive blame and punishment. Irrational elements could be assigned to powers with higher, though inscrutable motives, and hence not be considered products of humans’ own irrational nature: ‘Demons do not here play that role for which they are later to become so famous in witchcraft trials; the role, that is, of active agents in a drama of fear and repression, and sometimes as assistants to so-called scientists in a process of proscription.’ Instead, Flint argues, demons play an almost exactly opposite role: ‘They are used to take the panic, much of the blame, and the extreme penalties from the accused maleficus upon themselves. Thus humane use of a belief in the magical powers of demons by the early medieval church is one deserving of some emphasis, for in the light especially of later abuses, sight of it can easily be lost.’11 According to the expert opinion of witnesses such as Hincmar (ninth century) and Burchard (eleventh century), demons incited humans to practice magic; moreover, humans are helpless before demonic assaults and in desperate need of supernatural remedies from the Church. In many popular stories old-style magicians who relied on demons for their maleficia are defeated by priests, bishops and saints who use the ‘new’ magic: ‘The ability to cast the blame upon demons could help … and did help most strongly to hold fiercer, perhaps secular, pressures for the persecution of magicians at bay, and to enable even those who felt themselves most harmed to recognize, in the one who worked for demons, a victim of demonic ill-doing rather than a wholly culpable perpetrator of it.’ It is not sufficiently appreciated how important was the connection between good angels and good magic needed to overcome demons and maleficia. First, the old demons are ‘brought through’ to the new way of thinking, though usually disguised under a novel definition, in the role of angels as well as that of demons. Second, angels in their new guise are used with great force as agents in the selection of what in the ‘old’ magic would be rescued in the ‘new’ magic. In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the crucial distinction between angels and demons becomes solidified in theoretical treatises about the scope of magical operations; it is an indicator of whether the operator had beneficent or maleficent intentions.12 The nature and role of demons, the power of magicians to control them, and the types of magic they practiced were some of the principal concerns of Isidore of Seville (c.560–636). Trained as a monastic scribe, Isidore was made Bishop of Seville about 600; he devoted most of his energies to the spread of the Christian religion by founding convents and schools, as well as converting Spanish Jews. He was famed in his own lifetime, and for centuries after, for his vast eclectic knowledge, which he stockpiled in his Etymologies, an encyclopedia of up-to-date information on grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, medicine, church history, folklore

11 12

Flint 1991 pp. 153–4. Flint 1991 pp. 155–60; Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 151–75.

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and magic.13 He also wrote a manual of Christian doctrine, a manual of church offices, a major chronicle, and a history of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi (one of the primary sources for these peoples’ histories). In the Etymologies, Isidore says that human is twofold: the inner human is the soul, the outer human is the body. He conjectures that anima is so called from the Greek for wind (anemos) due to the belief that humans live because they draw air in through the mouth. But this is wrong since anima comes into being long before air can be taken in, since the fetus lives in the womb. Anima rather is an incorporeal thing which provides life-force to living things, but to humans alone is spirit given. The meaning of anima is indeed connected with life, but in each form to its own life; thus anima lives in the body, animus lives in wisdom. Isidore agrees with the view that even without animus life remains, and without the mind, anima endures (Etym XI.1.6–11). In the soul (anima) it is the mind (mens) that is the most excellent. As the mind is the head or eye, as it were, of the soul, so human is called the image of God in respect of the mind. All these things are united to anima making the soul one thing; its different names are the result of the various workings of different causes: ‘When it gives life to the body it is anima, when it wills it is animus, when it knows it is mens, when it remembers it is memoria. Further, when it judges what is right it is ratio, when it breathes it is spiritus, when it is conscious it is sensus’ (Etym. XI.1.12–14). In the Differences among things, Isidore sums up his view as follows: the soul is not fire or blood but rather is incorporeal, capable of feeling and change, without weight or color or shape. The soul is not a part of God but a creature of God; it is not of the same substance as God or made from the underlying matter (elements), but instead was created out of nothing. The human soul has a beginning but cannot have an end (Diff. II.92–5). Isidore says that the body (corpus) is so called because it is corrupt, subject to decay and diminution. ‘It is better for those who are well and strong to become infirm, lest through vigorous health they may be defiled by illicit passions and the desire for luxury. The body’s life in this world has no value, it is brief and wretched. Holy men desire to spurn the world and devote the activity of their minds to things above, in order to convey themselves back to the place from whence they came, and withdraw from the place into which they have been cast’ (Sent. III.16.5). In Book VIII Isidore gives a nutshell history of magic, magicians, demons and demoniacs.14 He mentions several famous magicians and their emblematic feats and links them with malefici because of their great guilt. ‘They throw the elements into commotion, disorder men’s minds, and without any poison they can kill by the mere virulence of a charm. They summon demons and dare to work such jugglery that each one slays his enemy by evil arts. They use blood in their rites, as well as corpses. Necromancers are those whose incantations appear to revive the dead in order to prophesy and answer. To summon the demons for their service blood is thrown on a corpse’ (Etym. VIII.9.8–11). ‘He asserts that magicians can change into 13 Introduction to Brehaut 1912; Thorndike HMES vol. I pp. 623–33; Hillgarth 1986 pp. 57–64; E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953 pp. 450–57. 14 Short summary, Flint 1991 pp. 51–3; Kieckhefer 1989 pp. 10–12; in detail, Klingshirn 2003.

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beasts either through the use of charms of herbs; their wicked shapes reflect their villainies’ (Etym. XI.4.2). He speculates on the connection between humans and demons in the origin of pagan religions: humans made images of their great heroes after their death in order to draw comfort from contemplating their likeness. But later demons influenced human ideas about these images to make them think that they represented gods: The use of images arose when, because of longing for the dead, likenesses were made of them as if they had been received in heaven. Demons substituted themselves for these dead to be worshipped in their place and then persuaded wretched humans that sacrifices should be made to them. Demons appear to know far more than humans for several reasons: their subtle sense is very keen, they have a very long life, and their aerial bodies are very strong. Indeed before demons fell to earth they had celestial bodies; they are not allowed to occupy the pure stretches of airy space, but live in the misty zones which serves as a sort of prison for them until their time of judgment. The pagan gods, demons and other fabulous monsters are things humans worship through ignorance, and in doing so they bring about their damnation. [Etym VIII.11.4–17]

Isidore’s chapter-length treatise on magic and magicians is ‘well organized, erudite, flexible enough to include a wide range of specialists, and, as its record of influence demonstrates, enormously useful as a template for later medieval classifications’. Klingshirn says that it ‘offers what can rightly be called the first definitive western Christian taxonomy of unauthorized practitioners. Although Isidore relied heavily on a wide range of pagan and Christian sources for the contents of the chapter, their selection, revision and arrangement … were all his own.’15 Isidore placed magicians and diviners under the general heading of magi, including divination among their arts, but he also took pains to distinguish magicians, who performed occult actions, from diviners, who supplied occult knowledge. At the fuzzy edges of these categories he located ‘boundary-crossers’, such as necromancers, hydromancers and incantatores. According to his view the magical arts were learned from wicked angels, now called demons, and flourished because of the great extent of space and time these agents surveyed: ‘The most striking feature of [his] classification of diviners is its relatively high degree of differentiation and precision, when compared with his classification of magicians … A long history of state-sponsored divination had (within limits) legitimated its practice by private individuals. Magic was not so authorized, which encouraged magicians to be circumspect about their services.’ This relative legitimacy extended to how practitioners advertised and promoted their services. Where magicians were not very eager to advertise their services, diviners seem to have been more inclined to market their skills in public. Diviners developed different specialities because this was good for business – more options mean more sales – and also because they could be safely conducted in the streets and other public places: ‘Even when the political atmosphere made certain kinds of divination dangerous, practicing in public could still be recommended, in part as a defence against charges of illegal activity.’16

15 16

Klingshirn 2003 p. 59. Klingshirn 2003 p. 73.

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One of the most prestigious and long-standing forms of divination was astrological prediction; casting horoscopes and taking juridical readings from the stars also had the distinct benefit of not being associated with demonic sources, since it was data ‘written’ in the stars, for anyone with proper training to discern. Christians in the early Middle Ages were just as much, if not more concerned with magic which issues from the earth as they were with the magic which issues from the heavens. Valerie Flint suggests that gross earth-bound magic was centrally engaged in the rescue of heavenly magic. Compensations in belief and practice directed at the powers of the planets, stars and lower air came to be seen as an ‘excellent way of combating the prevalence and popularity of the non-Christian earthly magic purveyed by conjurors and witch doctors and necromancers, love charms and potions, spells and the powers of the dead’.17 Against the previous scholarly view that medieval Christians disavowed and deplored astrology, Flint argues that divination by stars and planets was eagerly advocated by those who wanted to counter what they saw as the more invidious, maleficent forms of magic. Astrology was made respectable for three reasons: (1) astrology might prove an active counter-force against other forms of non-Christian magic more destructive than astrology. (2) Once astrology had been rehabilitated, material that supported this decision could be found in both scientific and scriptural sources. (3) Properly understood in this fashion the study of astrology provided excellent mental exercise for those who most needed it: ‘Such exercise might be seen as a quite acceptable ingredient of asceticism, and an appropriate way of freeing the spirit from the miring of the earth, and of associating it with the angels, provided that it be undertaken with due purpose, and in the context of a style of life in other respects undeniably virtuous.’18 An additional practical benefit of scientific study of the heavens was to establish an ecclesiastical computus for calculating movable feasts (such as Easter) and the schedule of monastic hours. The most important turning-point in the Christian rescue of astrology came in the ninth century. The presence of great numbers of competing magicians held up ‘the process of conversion [and] caused, as it were, a catch of breath, and made space for choices. These moments … and those choices allow parts of the old magic to slip through and take up, paradoxically, a position far more stable and permanent than the circumstances which set it on its way.’19 An excellent example of a contemporary text that exhibits this positive view of astrology in the period before the influx of Arabic scientific texts in the twelfth century is a treatise on the heavens, earth and the human soul attributed to St. Bede, and hence known by the name Pseudo-Bede. The De Mundi Celestis Terristrisque Constitutione is an important, interesting text because it offers a diverse view of theories available before the appearance of specialized works translated from Greek and Arabic sources. The earliest version of the text dates from the late tenth or eleventh centuries. It cites by name such authorities as Macrobius, Hyginus, Martianus Capella, Fulgentius and Bede’s On Time; it shows the use of Calcidius’ translation of the Timaeus, Pseudo-Clement’s Recognitions, Servius’ Commentary 17 18 19

Flint 1991 p. 128; and Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 58–64. Flint 1991 p. 129. Flint 1991 p. 130; and Kieckhefer 1990 pp. 120–31.

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on Virgil’s Aeneid, Isidore’s Etymologies, and Bede’s On the Nature of Things. The modern editor says that there is very little originality and hardly any attempt to offer a unified picture. It is characteristic of this little work that incompatible explanations are offered of the same phenomena, as though various passages were simply added without revision to the composite text. The collection of opinions on the cosmos and the soul has two notable features: knowledge of and sympathy for astrology, and the use of motifs from folklore and popular myths. The four horoscopes come from a section of the Clementine Recognitions that reproduce the arguments of the Syrian theologian Bardesan: ‘The very astrological textbook that Bardesan quotes to demonstrate the absurdity of astrology is plundered by the compiler of the DMC for its astrological contents.’ The compiler is unusual at this date for his sympathy for astrological explanation and his neglect of teleological explanation more common in Christian contexts.20 The author summarizes some of the philosophers’ beliefs about souls that were created at the beginning of the world: they were placed in comparable stars to learn the rational motion of the firmament. This was done so that when the souls were embodied, from hope and desire for the highest blessedness, they would rule their bodies with reason. When the souls are lodged in the stars they have complete knowledge of present, past and future things; but when the desire to become embodied comes to them, at once they become heavier and are led down toward bodies. As they descend through the planetary spheres they acquire ethereal and airy envelopes and absorb a certain property in each sphere. In the first sphere of Saturn, the soul absorbs the power of correlation, that is, the collection of similar things in order to judge other things; in Jupiter, the soul acquires knowledge and the desire to rule and command others; in Mars, ardent animosity; in the sun, the power of perceiving with the five senses; in Venus, fervid passion; in Mercury, the power of speech, and in the moon, the power of increasing and diminishing. However, the soul does not exercise these powers until it has acquired the fleshy envelope. After its descent through the planets the soul is tossed about in the lower air by various disturbances like hail, snow, wind and rain, until finally it is enveloped in the darkness of the body (et tandem tenebris corporis obvolvitur). After this the soul remembers nothing because it is weighed down with the watery mass of the body (DMC.21–36). The author then addresses the question about the nature of these ethereal envelopes; those who assert that souls are not embodied in envelopes claim that the soul’s brightness is only dimmed by the envelopes, like an image by smoke. Others say that the souls are united with and hence embodied in these envelopes because, according to Macrobius, souls returning from the body bring the envelopes back to where they have taken them on (DMC.37–43). Whether or not the soul is enveloped by an ethereal vehicle, when it is captured by an organic body it gains two further powers, anger and desire, which are wrongly called parts. When the soul uses these powers in a rational manner, the person’s soul is just, but when it takes the opposite path the soul degenerates from its natural origin. The process of learning is given to the soul to re-illuminate reason so that by gathering what has been neglected it may return to its former state of knowledge. Even when the soul has been enlightened, it 20

Burnett, Preface to DMC 1985.

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may still be unable to do the things it knows are good and useful; in order to remedy this, virtue is added to its powers. The author next considers how it is that some persons’ souls are more powerful than others. His answer is that although each soul is worthy in its own nature, in conjunction with its bodily character, the order of worth is subjected to the body’s conditions (DMC.52–61). When the question turns to the origin of such a diverse array of souls, one thesis put forth has been that each individual soul has been derived from the one world soul. On this view, the world soul animates all things, granting to each thing powers according to its aptitude; thus, to humans, who alone of all things possess a spherical head and an erect face, it poured reason and sensuality. In this double gift humans are like divine beings, although the latter do not use their sensuality: ‘Just as one face appears in several mirrors, and several faces in one mirror, so one soul appears in several things and everywhere possesses all its powers, although in different things it has a different function.’ Although one and the same soul is good in its own nature, it can become worse when conjoined with a body where sensuality rules over reason, because, as the author alarmingly declares, in whatever body a soul may reside, ‘that body is the soul’s hell’ (DMC.83–92). (It is worth noting that we see the same perverse equation in the higher mystical stages of Mechthild of Magdeburg three centuries later.) If one were to claim that all souls were created at the institution of the world this would agree with the Hebrew revelation that ‘the voice of the blood of your brother cries to me from the earth’. In other words, as the author rephrases it, those under the earth are the souls which were to form the bodies of those born from Abraham’s blood. He disparages further speculation about the origin of souls: that they are part of the divine essence, that they are born from angelic substances, that they are born from the passing of sperm from the father to children (DMC.99–103). The true faith, in contrast, teaches that human souls are born together with the body itself. The higher power of the soul adheres to heavenly and incorruptible things, it has sublime desires, and it is called rationality, spirit, ruling mind and intellect (animus). The lower power acquiesces in the body’s desires; it is called sensuality, animality, the slave-mind (famula mens). It is also said that there are three kinds of spirit corresponding to the kinds of soul: (1) one which is never united with the body, although it can assume an airy or ethereal form, for example, angels and demons. (2) One which is never without a body, that is, the spirit of brute animals which is born and dies with them. (3) Another which is sometimes within the body and at other times outside the body, that is, the spirit that gives life to humans, namely the soul (anima). When it was said that ‘the spirit of the Lord was carried over the waters’ it refers to either the air poured around the earth and waters or a more subtle thing (ether) or the Spirit of the Trinity. And if this statement refers to the latter then it hints that salvation will come through water (DMC.106–117). If Pseudo-Bede’s short text illustrates the quasi-magical view of the soul in the Latin West before the influx of Arabic ideas, another text from the same period shows Arabic ideas throughout. One of the most influential of all magical handbooks is the Picatrix, whose Arabic original was known as the Ghâyat alHakîm. The original Arabic text has long been attributed to Maslama ibn Ahmad alMajrı¯tı¯, an Arabic mathematician who died c.1005–1008, and the Latin translation has been dated to 1256, under the direction of the Spanish king, Alfonso the Wise.

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The very name ‘Picatrix’ poses a curious problem: if it is a Latin transcription of an Arabic name, what is the original name? One theory (now long discredited) is that it was a clumsy Latin version of an Arabic word which itself transcribed the Greek Hippocrates. Until recently, the most common theory was that ‘Picatrix’ was the Latin transcription of the Arabic name Buqratis, an otherwise unattested name mentioned five times in Book II, chapter 10. The problem with that idea is that the Spanish translator seems well aware that, in this portion of the text, Buqratis is one of the sources used by the author; further, since the text is supposed to be written by a well-known authority, there seems little point in attributing it to an unknown person. The most recent (and most plausible) theory is that Picatrix is a translation of an Arabic author’s name, Maslama al-Majrı¯tı¯; the Arabic salama, ‘prick’ or ‘bite’, for example, by a serpent, can be rendered by the Spanish picatriz (f.), from the verb picar.21 In any case, the sequence of chapters in this grimoire is erratic and the headings often do not convey the actual scope of the contents. The author seems to move almost arbitrarily among various types of material: philosophical doctrines from ancient, Hellenistic and Arabic sources; astronomical and astrological lore; extensive discussions of the practice of magic, especially the making of talismans, and accounts of the various peoples who have employed the magical arts. The German editor Plessner said that this manner of writing may well have been intentional: perhaps to make the magical sections appear less suspect by interlarding them with theoretical passages, or perhaps to make certain magical doctrines appear less strange by administering them in small doses, or even to demonstrate the equal validity of magical and philosophical ideas. The Picatrix is a rich, strange work that unrolls chapter after chapter in many different voices: high-minded praise for philosophy, lengthy quotes from ancient authorities, curious anecdotes, practical advice for magical operations, and so forth. The reader struggles to keep a focus on any single theme, as we do here with the magical soul. The author opens Book I, chapter vi with these words addressed to his disciple:22 know that science is something truly noble and high; he who studies and works through it receives nobility and elevation. Science is comparable to the highest degree in attaining knowledge. One who does so is perfect when he attains the ultimate degree of science; he honors and loves that degree of science. Such ones are called philosophers in Greek, in Latin interpreters, lovers of science. He who does not labor in science has a defective and fallible authority, and as a result, should not be called ‘human’ by name. The study of science has been given to humans; it allows them to know human nature itself and that it is a little world similar to the great world. It is a body with a complete natural spirit, ensouled and rational; through its three spirits it is separate from every other thing in the world and from every animal insofar as [human] is rational. And reason means that it knows because it is able to apprehend contingent things, and determine what is not true, and take an

21 According to Thomann’s ingenious reading 1990; endorsed by Bakhouche et al. (henceforth ‘the French editors’) 2003 pp. 23–4. 22 What follows is my literal translation of the Latin text, compared side by side with the French and German translations; some of the passages don’t make much sense in the original.

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interest in what is in the world, and apprehend its own place through science and ‘sense’,23 and retain by force and power what it has heard. God created human with the ability to discover and compose wisdom and knowledge, to explain their qualities and all things in the world through prophetic spirit, wisdom’s treasure. In doing so, intellect grasps all things and the existent conjunctions in the macrocosm. Human also comprehends through his ‘sense’ intelligent and composite things in the world, but they do not comprehend him; all things serve him; he himself is not in the service of any other. By his voice he imitates every animal in its guise, and makes forms similar to them with his hands; by his voice he counts and explains their natures and works. There is no other animal which has the power of understanding, where it cannot transform its voice or imitate other voices, like the cock, the dog and the lion – these cannot transform their voices. Human’s natural voice has the power to produce all other sounds of all animals, and to change their forms and appearances likewise … He has a dense body and a subtle spirit, since he has one subtle part and another gross part. By the subtle part he lives, by the gross part he dies; thus one portion is mobile, the other is fixed; one is formed, the other is not formed. One of these is night, the other is day; one is light, the other darkness; one is open, the other hidden; one senses, the other does not attend except with ‘sense’; one humbles, the other is humbled (depressum). He is ashamed of his evil actions, he makes the choice for what he wants and repents certain actions. He is composed of a compact and a subtle matter; he possesses in himself the grossness of earth, the subtlety of air, the hotness of fire and the coldness of water; from these it effects regular motions of vital power. One knows the hotness of fire after the fire that is in oneself, and the coldness of water after the coldness patent in oneself. And one knows in the same way the other elements according to one’s own composition.24 The form of the head imitates the form of heaven in shape and roundness; every subtle thing in general is associated with the human form (I.vi.1). The general human form is an ark, that is, an ark in the form of general spirit; general spirit is an ark for general ‘sense’, and general ‘sense’ is an ark of light from which ‘sense’ proceeds.25 Now, the light is material for general ‘sense’, higher than all inferior things, material which is always lesser and more simple compared to it. The complete human is a composite form because it is served by all other bodies and is itself conjoined with another nature.26 These ideas about human nature, especially 23 The Latin sensus has two meanings in the Picatrix: (a) sensibility or sensory capacity, exercised through the sense organs; or (b) ‘sense’, as in ‘ability to make sense’; when the second meaning of sensus is translated ‘intellect’ (as the French does) it obscures the distinction with the Latin intellectus. 24 The French editors note that this expresses the Greek view, for example, Empedocles (DK B109) according to which like is known by like, 2003 p. 55 note 81. 25 The French editors comment that archa is not a term found in the classical language, but it designates the ark of Noah (Gen. 6:14) or the ark which stored the Tablets of the Law (Ex. 25:10), 2003 p. 56 note 81. An ‘ark’ is the name of the alchemist’s secret vessel in which matter undergoes dissolution and putrefaction leading to the generation of the philosopher’s stone, Abraham 1998 p. 10. 26 The French editors state that this passage is relatively obscure: ‘The hierarchy appears to be as follows: human – spirit – intelligence (‘sense’) – light. The highest term of the hierarchy

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the intellectual power, are the foundations of magical science, because if you always labor to know, to comprehend and to understand these things then you intend to know magic. The obscurity and profundity of sages in their reasons (discourses) occurs in order to make those who are unworthy to know unable to reach great consideration … Magical science is divided into two parts where one is manifest and the other hidden. The hidden part is profound, that is, it contains a profound meaning which one cannot grasp without the antecedents, whereby through industry reason opens and discovers. However, if he pursues these investigations as stated above he will have what he desires. The hidden will be opened, and he will attain what he wants. By this path one can obtain many things; by examination one can make manifest what is hidden, one can trace back root from the branch … One can prevail and discover hidden things; one can obtain what one wants, one can understand this science and all things; each ‘sense’ according to this order (hierarchy). In other words, profound knowledge is realized by three methods: deduction, induction and comparison (I.vi.3). All things in this world are in their orderings subjoined under an order (et omnia huius mundi sunt suis ordinibus ordinata quemadmodum subiungitur). The first of all things in the world, the noblest, the highest, the most perfect of things found in the world is god himself who is the maker and creator of everything. Next in order is ‘sense’ or intellect, after ‘sense’ spirit, after spirit matter, and these are immobile, unalterable and immutable from place to place. After this, the heaven-nature, called the first mover of motions and the first of generation and corruption.27 After the common material, the elements exercise their actions and operations on ordinary matter, and according to their order, it brings forth plants, animals and humans. Through laborious study in magical science human can come to understand and manipulate these material effects (I.vii.1). Know that what is found in the world has other orders and other divisions which will be stated in order to incite the intellect to more greatly exercise itself in science. And after apply to those [orders?] these things and understand the secrets of the sages. The order is as follows: first, there is the principle, then there is high material, then the element, next matter, then form, next nature, then body; next growth, then animal, next human, then masculine, and next names of individual humans. The first principle is common high matter, since it is said to be beyond matter and accident, and it is not said to be matter unless it is matter in body. Matter is more common to the elements since matter is without complexion and elements cannot exist without complexion. The element is more common to other materials because an element is a simple body and receives qualities; matter is a summation (coadunacio) of elements ordered to receive a form. Matter is more common to form since it is simple before it receives a form, and when it receives a form, it is both matter and form. Matter is divided into two kinds: one is simple matter which receives a complex form of elements, such as earth, air, water and fire, and transforms one (light) is called material intellect. The author seems to distinguish a double matter … perhaps the summit is matter and prime form’, 2003 p. 82 note 57. 27 French editors’ note: coelum nature apparently designates the exterior envelope of the cosmos, under the sphere of stars. In what follows coelum corresponds to the celestial space delimited by the stellar or planetary orbits, 2003 p. 84 note 60.

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material into another. The second is common matter ordered to receive all forms composed of simple qualities, such as heat, cold, dryness and humidity. All the above are designed for using the intellect and clarifying the understanding, since these words and reasons are the spiritual images which Adam received from the Lord God (I.vii.2). It is manifest that divination is the virtue of the fifth essence, and that is what we call prophecy. It is one of the forces of spirits in which is found what is seen from separate things.28 One perceives and comprehends this way in sleep and waking since that virtue in which beings are found is complete and it is pure of all superfluity and excess; one can see separate things as though they were beings that appear in a mirror. In the same way, they disclose themselves in spirit as bright and complete. Due to this, no one will be able to divine who can predict from abstract things what occurs if he has not achieved the thing perfectly comprehended by ‘sense’ … This is not possible unless by singular humans in whom the prophetic spirit is completely poured out by the first disposer of beings, who is god himself. It is he who transmits and infuses the prophetic spirits by the mediation of common ‘sense’, because god himself places such virtues in material things, and from the common ‘sense’ comes the virtue and potential of human ‘sense’ and intellect. This ‘sense’ is joined by way of forces from which beings are formed; next, due to the bonds with these virtues, human ‘sense’ is decorated with wisdom. And what attains to the enformed virtues of beings is called prophecy. Human being, who disposes in this way, is higher, more complete, and more fortunate than every other thing … By this sign humans in their laws and beliefs about the future can unite one intellect in goodness. This is the way to achieve greater fortune and knowledge of things in the world and their qualities. Since the system consists in progressing from sensible to higher things, it continues to follow science where one comes to the perfection of human virtue – it is by speculative science that human being comes to perfection (II.v.5). Human being has ten visible and five hidden sources of sensibility. Human is the animal median between the celestial spirits and beasts without reason. Human is the most noble of animals because in his body the elements are in a suitable quantity without excess; this allows him to be more balanced than other living beings in his complexion. Human is called a little world by comparison with the great world, since the former is continuous with the great, and the latter is virtually continuous with the small. Demons also are in the same small world in a certain manner. When the irascible appetite is inflamed in human, that is, inflamed to an immoderate degree, it also transumes the demon in every action. Demons exist in fire, that is, they are contained in an irascible fire which one finds in humans and from which follow demonic effects. And vice versa, when the human will is suitably regulated and governed by the virtue of reason, a human becomes like an angel (III.v.1). In the next two sections, the author discusses the influence of stellar forces on the actions of worldly agents (III.v.2–3).

28 French editors’ note: ‘when one regards objects in a mirror, the mirror is an intermediary between the sensible and the visual act; one does not see objects directly, one only sees their images; and the same in the case of dreams’, 2003 p. 117 note 53.

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In Book Four, the author provides the details of God’s ordered arrangement of forces and powers in the cosmos. God, he states, has disposed and ordered five things by degrees: (1) prime matter and prime form, the first source of all things, (2) ‘sense’ or intellect, (3) spirit, (4) heaven’s nature, and (5) the elements and the elemented.29 The first enables things in the superior heavens’ circuit where nothing other than god and nothing other than the lord is itself permitted; by such things it has ordered that from others light emanates. ‘Sense’ and intellect are in the first circle from which they derive, and from which in the same manner light derives. Knowledge and noble virtue when combined bestow and flow (tribuit et manat) from the same force. ‘Sense’ and intellect placed in the first circle derive from them, in the same manner that light derives from them. Next, in a lower circle, is spirit which, in the same manner as the first light, is emanated from them. Next in order is nature under spirit which proceeds in the same way from the first, and nobility combining with them by force is generated from them. It is patent that the first form is more noble and in every way more subtle than ‘sense’, and ‘sense’ than spirit, spirit than nature, and nature than the elements. In the foregoing manner, [each] is placed above the other owing to its quantity, as if what is first is absolute, pure in itself, and stripped of all grossness. Yet the second has in itself more than a little bit of grossness or material, and less than the third, and also by degrees deriving the elements and the elemented (IV.i.1). The first essence shines forth more than the others, an essence whose purity diminishes through the ordered species. This occurs from subaltern genera to the most general genus, whereby each receives the nobility of the one above it and attributes force to the one below. After this he creates the heavens and forms: the heaven of spirit is in the midst of four heavens, two of which above him are light and clear (prime essence and intellect) and two inferior things, dark and obscure (nature and the elements). The same heaven of spirit, as a subaltern genus, receives from that which is above knowledge and nobility, which are combined and flow from above. There is a spirit that dominates and illumines the two superior heavens and receives their light, knowledge and nobility. This same spirit is maximally formed in that it tends upwards and dwells where it has been made and created, where it receives fortune, goodness and light; this place is called paradise. The spirit that dominates the two inferior heavens is a dark spirit, unhappy and unfortunate; it tends downwards and dwells in a place where it is captured and where it has no repose; this place is called hell. There is also a spirit in animals, vegetables and hard bodies. They do not receive ‘sense’ and knowledge from the prime form. These two inferior [spirits] dominate the heavens (nature and the elements) and dwell on earth where they stand permanent and created. All things that come before proceed by force and divine virtue (Omnia vero supradicta vi et virtute divina procedunt) (IV.i.1). Material is divided into two parts, spiritual and corporeal. Spiritual is prime matter, which is the high world, and prime form, which is the premier spiritual element; that is, ‘sense’, soul, nature, element and every principle of the prime genus

29

The concept of ‘elemented’ is also found in Ramon Llull, see below pp. 334–6.

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purified of matter. And the prime unity which resides indivisibly in something like unity, point or similar, and which is not divided in time as an instant, as the principle of a line, which is a point … All material which cannot be perceived by the five corporeal senses is simple material, pure, spiritual, luminous, durable and high. All material which can be discerned by any one of the five senses is median between simple and spiritual material, between composite and corporeal material. The corporeal is attached to bodies and with them it produces motion in time and heat and the spiritual remains with the light and the high spirits, and with them it lasts through infinite centuries. You who have studied this book consider that your soul is able to return to the degree and knowledge of good spirits. You seek to attain through these operations the spiritual part where knowledge renders you different than brutes (IV.1.3). The sages are not in accord about the properties of ‘sense’ and its divisions. The name ‘sense’ or intellect is expressed according to four significations. The ancient sages divided ‘sense’ into six parts, which are comprehended under two words, that is, general ‘sense’ and universal ‘sense’, which we have said are natural spirit and universal spirit. And thus [both these two] are divided into three parts: that is, body, natural ‘sense’, spirit of the intelligences or angels that move the heavens. The first of these occupies a place more paltry than the two others. We reckon the second more noble than all, and the third we discern to be a median between these two. The reason why the second is more noble is that it is purified of all things that depend on matter. However, the separate intelligences or angels that move the orbs are median between the preceding [two] because they move the heavens, such that the motion operates effectively as an agent intellect. General ‘sense’ is abstracted from form and matter because, as we said about humans in general, it comprehends the ‘reason’ of human rationality, reason which coincides in all humans, and in terms of which he is separate from all other animals. And this we have called general ‘sense’ (IV.i.8). The author of the Picatrix reveals some distinctive things about the medieval magical picture of the soul and its special powers. It is mind or intellect that perceives the hidden connections between things, ‘sense’ or reason that permits understanding of natural things. Human speech has power over everything that it can either imitate or reproduce. The human form is a nested set of ‘arks’ or vessels, the lower vessel containing the higher within itself, and from which its virtue radiates outward. The micro-cosmic order (or hierarchy) within human being replicates the macro-cosmic order: god, intellect, spirit and then matter. In addition to the order (or hierarchy) of intelligible principles, there is an order of sensible principles: element, matter, form, nature and then body. There are two types of matter, spiritual and corporeal: spiritual matter is simple, pure and luminous, and comprises the nature of soul; corporeal matter is mixed, impure and dark, and comprises the nature of bodies. The study of magical science can lead to the cultivation of human’s fifth essence, prophetic insight, whereby one who is specially trained can see the secrets of nature and the future. God transmits and infuses this special sense to seers (diviners) and places hidden virtues in things in order that they can be seen. The right use of magical science disciplines the demonic forces in the human soul, forces that tend toward anger and lust, and permits the exercise of reason by which a human can become like an angel.

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(2) The magical soul in the High Middle Ages The great medieval grimoire Picatrix exemplifies the conflux of influences at this time: an Arabic-inspired text, in both Arabic and Latin manuscripts, with an obvious Spanish provenance, for Spain in the late twelfth century was the conduit through which Arabic ideas flowed into the Latin West. Michael Scot (c.1180–1230) exemplifies these same influences in his own life and work. Born on the AngloScottish border, he studied at Toledo where he learned Arabic and began his long career translating Arabic scientific texts into Latin. He held several church posts in Italy until he was appointed official court astrologer to Emperor Frederick II. Scot presented the emperor with his three major original works: the Liber introductorius (on astrology), the Liber particularis (on alchemy), and the Physionomia or De secretis naturae (on occult sciences). The legend of Michael Scot’s magical powers entered the folklore of Scottish medieval history; Walter Scott made him a Merlinlike figure in several of his stories and poems. In his works, Scot often quoted Holy Scripture about angelic and human nature when he described the divine creation of the world. In the first three days God created spiritual substances such as the empyrean heaven, angels, stars and planets, in the next three days he created visible bodies from mixtures of elements. He said that God himself resides potentially everywhere but in his substance he resides in the empyrean heaven. He thought that the human soul was designed according to the model of the Holy Trinity, specifically in the rational soul’s three faculties; the intellect, reason and memory owe much more to astrology than they are ready to admit. He also distinguished astrology in its acceptable form from other versions where the operator acts more like a geomancer or sorcerer in trying to find out more than God allows. He condemned magic and necromancy but delighted in recounting stories about magicians and quoting from their handbooks. He considered that nigromancers are so called because they deal with dark or black (nigros) things, that they work more at night than day, and that they raise the dead (nekros) to give responses to their questions. He repeated Hugh of St. Victor’s assertion that the magic arts are not received in philosophy, they destroy religion, and corrupt morals. The magus is a trickster and evil-doer as much as he is wise in the secrets of nature and prediction of the future. He showed considerable erudition in his catalogue of various kinds of divination, such as augury by bird-song, dream interpretation, observance of auspicious days, and so forth. In this he followed the basic class scheme of Isidore of Sevile in his sub-divisions of divination. These methods of seeing into the future are true, much like the marvels reported about Simon Magus, but are contrary to the Christian faith.30 Scot defined and presented the various magic arts in much the same way as other writers of his time, but with some very interesting divergences. Under the heading of aeromancy he included divination from thunder, comets, falling stars and cloud shapes. He thought that hydromancy is as much an art of experiment as it is divination by means of water. Gazing into clear or liquid surfaces is usually performed with observance of the hours, secrecy and purity, and carried out by a 30 Thorndike HMES II pp. 316–19; Thorndike devoted an entire book to Scot (Michael Scot, 1965).

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child who repeats after his master an incantation or evocation of spirits over human blood or bones. He referred to maleficus as one who interprets characters, phylacteries, incantations and dreams, and who makes ligatures of herbs. The praestigiosus (conjurer) deceives his audience by producing phantastic illusions of transformation, such as changing a woman into a dog or a bear, or a man into a wolf or ass, or a human head to look like an animal. He said that ‘alchemy transcends the heavens in that it strives by virtue of spirits to transmute common metals into gold and silver, and from them to make a water of great diversity’, that is, of many different uses.31 Scot argued that astrology, properly understood, is of significant utility and distinguished it from prohibited ‘sciences’ such as magic and divination. However, he also argued that those who practice nigromancy, the notarial arts and alchemy can only do so by allying themselves with demons. Since demons are naturally fond of blood, magicians mix water with real blood, or even bloody-colored water: ‘And they make some sacrifice with the flesh of a living human being, e.g. a piece of their own flesh, or of a corpse, but not that of brutes, knowing that consecration of a spirit in a bottle or ring cannot be achieved except by performance of many sacrifices.’ There is evidence (according to Lynn Thorndike) of a necromantic experiment in an elaborate character in a fifteenth-century manuscript, which purports to copy it from ‘a very ancient book’ – ‘a phrase which scarcely increases our confidence in the genuineness of the ascription’. The purpose of this experiment is to secure the services of a demon to instruct one in learning, that is, to gain yet more secret, hidden information by way of the demon’s superior knowledge.32 William of Auvergne (c.1180–1249) was a Christian theologian whose works present an unexpectedly detailed picture of the mixture of magic and superstition. William was well acquainted with occult and magical literature and had very interesting things to say about magic, demons, occult virtues, divination and astrology. Although only a humble deacon when he appealed to the pope during an important dispute over an election, the pope made him Bishop of Rome. He granted the Dominican Order their first chair of theology in the University of Paris and took a prominent position in the Parisian attack on the Talmud; he was perhaps the first thinker in the Latin West to have an intimate knowledge of the Hermetic Corpus. In the third part33 of the second book of On the Universe of Creatures, William assumed that the principal aim of magic is to work marvels; its ends are sought with the help of demons and by means that are idolatrous. There is another sort of magic which consisted of nothing more than tricks and deceits wrought by conjurors. But there is yet another kind of marvel that is produced neither by human deceit nor by demonic work; it may be produced through the wonderful occult virtues resident in natural objects. Here William made an important distinction between natural and demonic magic, one which centuries later would shape judicial thinking about witchcraft. The operations and effects of natural magic are veridical without any Thorndike HMES II pp. 319–20; on his alchemy, see Thomson 1938 pp. 523–59. Thorndike HMES II pp. 320–21; on his astrology, see Edwards 1985 pp. 329–40; on his science, see Burnett 1994 pp. 101–26. 33 Sadly, this entire large section of William’s magnum opus is omitted from the recent translation by R. J. Teske, hence one has to rely on Thorndike’s very compendious summary. 31 32

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doubt, but the author denied the validity of many devices and methods commonly employed by magicians. However, William himself did not always keep these types of magic distinct, an example of one type will sometimes overlap with an example of another type: ‘The demons avail themselves of the forces of nature in working their marvels and their marvels too are often only passing illusions and empty shams. The experimenters and operators of natural magic also deal in momentary effects and deceptive appearances as well as in more solid results.’34 He granted that some works of natural magic are so marvelous that they seem to the ignorant to be the work of demons or gods, and this false inference (so to speak) has been one source of idolatry in the past. One of the roots of natural magic, in William’s opinion, is the sense of nature; it is ‘a sublimer sense than any human apprehension, nobler and more like prophecy’. By its means one can sense a burglar or harlot’s presence in one’s house, even if unperceived by ordinary senses; so also a dog can detect a thief in a crowd. It is the same cognitive power by which a vulture foresees a coming battle, sheep detect an approaching wolf, and the spider a nearby fly. He gave an example of a woman who could feel the presence of her lover when he was two miles away and of another who fell into a fit when her detested husband was within range. This sense of nature seems to be the same as some sort of divinatory power which William accounted for in terms of an intrinsic sympathy or antipathy between the animals of persons involved. But one should note here the confusion between highly sensitive normal sense perception, as with the sheep and the spider, and an inexplicable telepathy in the case of the two women. In the same way that William accepted an ambiguous range of phenomena as falling under sensus naturae, so also he accepted or rejected various kinds of magical power according to rather slippery criteria. Some aspects of magical practice do not attain the aims they intend and other aspects rely on means that are not suited or adequate to those ends. He attacked the employment of magical images, characters, words, names and incantations. Magical images do not possess mind or will, nor can they act by bodily virtue, since that requires either direct or indirect contact in order to be effective. William conjectured that the only way such images could be said to bring about the effects claimed for them is that at the same time that the magician operates on them a demon inflicts the same suffering on his victim.35 When Hermes Trismegistus referred to earthly gods, each associated with some material substance, he indicated the natural force within these stones and herbs. Hermes himself distinguished between natural gods and factitious (or artificial) gods, such as statues, images and idols made by humans into which ‘the splendor of deity and the virtue of divinity’ had been poured, or which have been impressed by celestial spirits. This plastic impress is accomplished when the proper observance of the stars has been taken. William reported that there were still some ignorant people (even Christians) who believed in magical statues, though it seemed to be the common belief that they lose their virtue within sixty years of their fabrication. He asserted that Hermes made a shameful mistake in claiming that a mind or soul could be infused in a statue, that Hermes had been deceived by evil spirits into thinking this. He further stated that it is impossible that, as some astrologers had 34 35

Thorndike HMES II pp. 342–3. Thorndike HMES II p. 350; see esp. Teske 2003 pp. 201–18.

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claimed, a statue will speak like a human if one casts it in bronze at the rising of Saturn.36 In his cosmic scheme William assumed a position common to theological speculation in this period, but one that caused him some difficulty, according to Thorndike. On this view, angels occupy physical space and are located in their own heaven, just as the stars are located in their own heaven. He condemned the view that neither glorified souls nor glorified bodies will be in the empyrean heaven with the angels, but in the watery or crystal heaven which is above the firmament. He declared that the tenth, empyrean heaven will be the eternal abode of humans whose souls are saved, although their resurrected bodies would presumably still be corporeal substances. Unfortunately, this view seemed to imply that the same heaven cannot be the abode of the angels for ‘if that heaven is a corporeal place it cannot be filled except by corporeal substances’.37 Another puzzle that William contended with is whether there will be room in hell for all the evil spirits and new bodies of the damned that are destined to make this their final abode. Since the infernal regions are located in the earth’s center, it seems too small a place compared to the vast extent of the heavens.38 When he discussed demons’ limited control of nature he made decisions that seem arbitrary and capricious (in Lynn Thorndike’s words). He granted them superhuman powers of divination and asserted that it has been repeatedly proven that demons know when invocations and sacrifices are made to them. But the apparitions which they produce are neither real objects nor airy images, but thoughts and pictures in the perceiver’s mind. The armies of horsemen produced by necromancers leave no hoofprints behind them, their elaborate castles completely vanish without leaving a trace. Demons have the power to toss around sticks and stones, throw people out of bed, and transport heavy objects across great distances. But this marvelous power attributed to them is not stranger than the magnet’s ability to attract iron. Like Pliny’s attitude in his Natural History, William picks and chooses amongst a diverse range of marvels those things which can be credited to the actions and intentions of demons, those which are the result of manipulation of occult natural powers, and those which are merely illusions. His attempts to debunk the claim that a human can be transformed into a werewolf are insightful in this respect. He said that the devil first made man imagine that he was a wolf and then the devil caused a real wolf to appear and frighten people; the association of the two events is the source of the false belief. He went on to say that demons cannot make idols or images speak, but when human bodies are possessed by demons, they produce nearly human voices, raucous and distorted due to internal abuse.39 William argued that if a human died while shut up in a huge corked bottle his soul would still be able to escape; a demon shut up in a human body tortured his host. Thorndike remarks that ‘William’s logic simply reduces to this, that God can do anything he Thorndike HMES II pp. 350–51. Despite the exhaustive scope of Bynum’s work on doctrines of resurrection in this period there is no mention of William of Auvergne; the same omission occurs in Valerie Flint’s work on magical theory and texts in the medieval period. 38 Thorndike HMES II pp. 355–6; and Teske 1994 pp. 85–90. 39 Thorndike HMES II pp. 358–9; on werewolves in this period, see esp. Bynum 1998 pp. 1005–8. 36 37

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pleases with demons while men can do nothing with them against the demons’ wills and without imperiling their own souls.’ At the very end of On the Universe of Creatures, William indicated another large project which he planned to undertake: ‘though so many and such great wise men have written about the soul, they left the soul’s nature and the intellective power quite obscure and unexamined. For this reason I had, and still have, the desire to write a complete treatise on it by which the human soul might be able to become known to itself and to know itself.’ William’s treatise on the soul was composed about 1240 and evinced his familiarity with recently translated Arabic texts, including Averroes’ Large Commentary, as well as the works of Alfarabi, Alghazali and Avicenna.40 William established his aim through the definition of the soul as ‘the perfection of a physical, organic body potentially having life’. He did not intend to offer this as proof by way of authority but instead proceeded by laying out demonstrative arguments. He explained that by the words ‘physical, organic body’ he meant a body made by nature as an instrument for performing various operations; by ‘potentially having life’ he meant that it is a body that remains after an animal’s death, since a human being cannot be said to have life only potentially. Hence, as Teske remarks, ‘from the very start the Aristotelian definition of soul receives in William’s thought a very non-Aristotelian interpretation’ (Soul p. 17). William also argued that the human soul is simple in the sense that it does not have parts, that is, it is not a composite of matter and form, but rather a form that is free from matter in every way. Some misguided thinkers have thought that a human being is a composite with matter, because matter alone was receptive and that the soul received all sorts of forms. These thinkers held the same views about the noble separate substances, that is, the intelligences or angelic beings. William was one of the first, if not the first, thinker to abandon Augustine’s view that everything outside God was material and to hold that angels and other beings were strictly immaterial. He also argued against the view that the soul is composed of its natural powers and thus constituted a potential or virtual whole; in this regard their names for powers are ‘childish and feeble-minded’. However, he did argue that there is a power in the soul capable of correcting itself (the will) and that the human will has freedom such that humans are responsible for their actions. He thought that the will is the most important and highest power in the human soul and says that he is surprised at how little attention the Aristotelians had given to it (Soul pp. 18–20). William made use of Avicenna’s so-called ‘flying-man’ argument:41 Avicenna said that if we put a man in the air who has his face covered and is without the use of any sense and had not used any sense, there is no doubt that it’s possible that this man thinks and understands. Hence, he will know that he thinks and understands, and he will know that he himself exists. And if he asks himself whether he has a body, he will undoubtedly say that he does not have a body, and in the same way he will deny of himself each and every part of a human body … But that being within him that he grants belongs to him will be one thing, while what he denies belongs to him will belong to something else. Since, then, On Arabic scholars’ commentaries on Aristotle, see HCM pp. 161–77. From Liber de Anima, ed. by Simone Van Riet. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973. vol. I, pp. 36–7, 162–3. 40 41

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he will deny of himself that he is a body, but will grant to himself his being, whether what he has or what he perceives he has, it is necessary that he have being that does not belong to the body and, for this reason, it is necessary that the soul not be a body. [Soul p. 91]

Several comments on this thought-experiment: (1) one should resist the temptation to take this as an early version of Descartes’ argument42 about the real distinction between mind and body, one that follows from the skeptical hypothesis about the disembodied mind. (2) One can’t help but wonder about Avicenna’s and William’s motive for placing their imaginary human in the air – why have him flying in order to then consider him stripped of bodily properties? (3) It is more likely that this thought-experiment is linked to the discussion of rapture (ecstasy), that is, it echoes actual experiences of someone who in a shamanic trance seems to be flying through the air. He also developed an extended analogy between the human will qua power of command and a king or emperor in his own domain. The power of command (imperium) is the supreme power that in the kingdom of the soul rightly has sovereignty over reason or intellect, which operates as counselor to the king, as well as over the lower motile powers, which do his bidding, and over the senses which operate as messengers bringing reports from outside. On William’s view, the human will is apprehensive as well as appetitive, since a counselor like reason could not persuade a judge such as the will to do something if the judge were himself incapable of knowing. The will thus has knowledge as well as desires and, further, the intellect is not merely cognitive but also appetitive. After all, it is one undivided person who knows and who wills, for these two powers, like all soul-powers, are identical with the substance of the soul. Properly speaking the soul is not a part of human being but the whole human being. If the whole body is the soul’s tool one cannot say that a unity is composed of the soul and a tool. Knowledge of one’s own soul can be the most clear and certain of any kind of knowledge; it far surpasses knowledge gained through the senses. The reason why some people say that they do not know their own souls is that they tend to follow a natural habit in deference to their eyes, such that they think their soul is only what they can picture of themselves to themselves (Soul pp. 20–21). William also argued against the standard Aristotelian model of three souls in one human being: the vegetative, the sensitive and the rational. He held that the soul is unitary in the sense that it is one form that makes the human existent, an animal, and rational.43 About the origin of human souls he repudiated Plato’s view that the souls were created in the stars before being captured by human bodies, as well as Pythagoras’ view that souls migrate from one body to another. His conjecture was that in the conception of an embryo the parents do nothing but remove from matter the dispositions opposed to the form that is being generated, while the creator infuses the soul wherever matter is prepared to receive life or soul. Here he felt compelled to repudiate the Arabic commentators who assigned to the order of soul-creation another efficient cause for the soul, that is, the tenth noble 42 Bazan does say that William’s view is the predecessor of Descartes’ view, but in virtue of the claim that the rational soul alone can think itself as itself, Bazan 1969 p. 46. 43 For an analysis of this argument, see esp. Bazan 1969 pp. 43–8.

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intelligence.44 If someone claims that intellectual knowledge is more than the reception of intelligible forms in the mind where does this knowledge come from? It cannot be caused by external sensible things since they cause only forms; nor can it be caused by the agent intelligence because, if knowledge were received from that source, there would be no need for empirical investigation. If one followed that line of thinking then Biblical prophets would not have needed to prepare themselves by various kinds of purification to receive divine illumination: Since no study, no discovery, no art of invention is needed for these prophetic illuminations, each of these will be needed far less for inferior acts of cognition and apprehension, since they are likewise produced by the rays of the agent intelligence. [On the contrary] they are not said to study in order to learn what they know through revelation … But prophets purify and sanctify themselves with certain sacred rites in order to obtain from the creator the grace of revelation. [Soul p. 22]

William considered it contrary to reason (or outright insane) to maintain that the human soul is merely a passive recipient in its more noble intellective power. This degree of passivity would eliminate any virtue or vice in the higher powers of the human soul, for no one is praised or blamed for what is done to him, but rather for what he does. In Teske’s words, ‘William’s position here is a flat-out rejection of the function of the agent intelligence; it is not, as Gilson claimed, that [he] substituted God for the agent intelligence. Rather, he eliminates any role for an active cause of our knowledge outside ourselves, whether that cause is Avicenna’s agent intelligence or the Augustinian God’ (Soul p. 23). In parallel with the flying-man argument about human being’s intrinsic nature, William proposed that one imagine the human soul in all forms of oppression, the whole misery of its servitude and bondage to the disorders of passion; in other words, the human soul as it would be if it were not affected by original sin. Even in its present state the human soul is free to turn away from sensible things and toward intelligible things; anything that hinders its turning away must be due to its being sunk in misery: In our present state it is difficult for the soul to turn away from sensible things, though states of rapture show what is possible, and in its state of purity and freedom the soul is not held back from intelligible things by any love of sensible ones, though [he] is quick to note that there is a proper love of sensible things. The powers of reason and intellect are like spiritual wings of the soul by which it can ascend to higher goods, which are the source of spiritual delight for human souls. [Soul p. 25]

William provided his own instructive example: ‘In rapture it happens that the human soul is turned away and in a sense abstracted from sensible things and even its own body, so that it does not feel the goads or barbs or burning in its body. [There is] still living a man whose soul is taken in rapture in that way, as often as he wills it, and is turned away from his body so that he feels nothing of the sufferings that are produced in his body.’ There are other persons of sound mind and body who cannot see things set before their eyes or hear what is said to them; those in this condition 44

For details, see HCM pp. 165–7.

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are called ‘awestruck’, that is, ‘strongly attentive to and carried off to lofty things’ (Soul p. 233). Near the end of the treatise, he returned to the question of rapture or ecstasy. He said that love is a kind of rapture like erotic madness; it is a very strong disease whereby a lover is carried off to where he cannot think of anything except his beloved. But in contrast to erotic madness, ‘a grave alienation of the mind’, the rapture meant here is ‘the most noble guidance and illumination of the mind’. The nature of human souls is such that they are taken by such things and carried toward them when souls draw near to them. Note here that ‘taken by’ is a technical term that indicates a passive undergoing; it is not a self-directed or guided ecstasy. The reason why the irrational part of the human soul draws toward and clings to sensible things is due to the corruption that it experiences in its fallen state; ‘corruption has become ingrown in them like a [second] nature and likewise clings to them’. In contrast to this adhesion to sensible things, human souls in their more noble aspect have a natural motion away from their bodies and towards intelligible, beautiful things. Hence, William concluded, ‘it is impossible that souls are inseparably attached or bound to their bodies, especially in this state, since they are naturally meant even to abandon them and flee to … things away from their bodies, without even the death of their bodies standing in the way’. The well-attested experience of rapture is sufficient evidence that human souls are immortal (Soul p. 389) – and this is a very strong assertion. The rational soul’s movement towards the intelligible realm in the experience of rapture is not a metaphorical notion; it is snatched away from the animate body to another place. Ecstasy is a transport of and from the mind (excessus mentis): ‘it is the proper lifting of the human mind above itself as if on some height from which it sees itself and what belongs to it and others beneath it’. This is in accord with the Biblical statement ‘the solitary person will rejoice and be silent, because he has raised himself above himself’ (Lam. 3:8). It is ‘as if located in some other place from which he sees himself and in others those things on account of which the solitary person ought to be silent’. Here in one sentence William affirms three key terms of the magical modus vivendi – ecstasy, solitude and secrecy – the initial solitary setting is the best platform from which to launch an ecstatic trance: ‘No one sees such a state and the creator’s indignation toward oneself unless he has been raised up above himself and as if from above sees and recognizes himself prostrate and downcast in the depth of his sins.’ It is not true that the creator looked down on the prophet, rather he looked upon him and enlightened him with such a mind that he was transported in his mind and had knowledge of himself: ‘Since sins and vices are darkness and filth that block the interior and spiritual vision, they do not permit even themselves to be seen unless the sinner has been enlightened by the light of divine grace or is able in that state to see either himself or those sins.’ The text presents some difficulties here and the translator acknowledges ambiguity in conveying its sense. The prophet calls this event ‘being cast forth from before his [God’s] eyes – as if the creator himself turned his face and eyes from him, unable to endure the filth and breath of that abomination or, rather, of the sinner himself instead of these’ (Soul p. 387). William attempted to explain how such mental transports occur: ‘the human soul is naturally able to be carried off by signs of things to those things, and to the extent

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that the things whose signs enter the soul are greater and nobler and more unusual, to that extent the soul is carried off by them more and more intensely, and from that comes states of stupor and awe’. However, in contrast with ecstasy, stupor is strong wonder, and awe is strong distraction from the sensible world – these states take away from normal conscious states without adding anything. Rapture does not occur without a new enlightenment, beyond the mere withdrawal of the senses from what they are most often taken up with (Soul p. 387). Withdrawal from sensible things occurs naturally when the soul is terrified; like a person whose house is assaulted, the terrified person withdraws into the most interior recesses of his soul: ‘But rapture is not such a flight [inward], rather, it is the pursuit of noble things and motion toward those things whose nearness or apparition in that way takes human souls away from their bodies and carries them off to themselves.’ William seemed to think that the other-world is physically (or spatially) nearby and that those who are very sick and/or near death can be transported there temporarily. He says that in serious illness ‘it is as if their souls were impeded and expelled to some extent from their bodies, they immediately draw near to and are carried into the region of light, from whence they receive revelations and divinations. For some, when the death of their bodies is close, similar things occur on account of the nearness of the region of light.’ Here he helps to make sense of the light-region’s nearness by thinking of death as being proximate, in a literal sense, to physical bodies: ‘Such a region, after all, is next to human bodies from above, and for this reason they are raised up and illumined by it. And some are raised up suddenly, while others are raised up by intervals of alienation’ (Soul p. 390). He cited St. Paul’s own self-declared transport to the ‘third heaven’ (2Cor 12:2) as an exemplary instance of sudden and complete rapture: ‘The brightness of the illumination in such raptures is so great that the mind carried off in that way sees the very things that are revealed to it as if they were present to it45 and at times it appears to itself to be present with them or in the midst of them.’ This kind of vision is called rapture due to the complete removal46 of the mind from the senses due to the sudden appearance of the revealed objects; ‘so it ascends from this latter state through a sudden rapture to see those things which are revealed to it through such rapture. From this it is seen that the mind is naturally located or established as if on the common horizon of two worlds and that it naturally lies in its free will to which of these two worlds it will adapt or apply itself’ (Soul p. 392). In closing this important section, William quoted ‘Mercury the Egyptian’ (Hermes Trismegistus) with approval when he said that ‘the body holds the soul with its neck twisted’, which means, according to the author, that ‘it cannot raise itself up or stretch itself toward the intelligible world which, as you have often heard, is called the region of light.’47 One exceptional medieval figure gained the widespread reputation for moving back and forth, at least in speculative flights, between the world of appearances and the world of hidden things – Roger Bacon (1214–92). Bacon enrolled at Oxford Does this as-if clause and the next one take away from the literal definition? This locution puts raptus correctly in the passive voice as something that is ‘snatched away from the bodily senses’. 47 Also quoted at Book V.13 p. 229; the editor has not been able to track down this reference, p. 292 note 106, p. 421 note 137. 45 46

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University about 1233 and during his student years he was known for his inventive spirit; he was made Master of Arts in the early 1240s. When strife broke out in Oxford between town and gown, Bacon moved to the University of Paris, where he remained for several years, enjoying the benefit of a few great teachers such as Alexander of Hales, William of Auvergne and John of Garland. Here Bacon met the itinerant master Peter Peregrinus (of Maricourt) who wrote a treatise on the powers of the magnet. Through this savant ‘Bacon gained knowledge of matters of nature, medicine and alchemy through experience, all that is in heaven above and earth beneath. He knew spells, divination, magic, illusions, conjuring.’ Peter showed Bacon the various frauds behind magical trickery and inspired Bacon with a skeptical view of some common practices ascribed to magicians. Upon his return to England, Bacon applied himself to the study of the Secret of Secrets, adding copious notes to his own copy; in this endeavor he probably used the new Latin translation by Philip of Tripoli (1243). Before becoming a monk and renouncing material goods and money, Bacon estimated that he had spent £2000 on books, an astonishing amount of money at the time (perhaps about £2 million today).48 Resident again at Oxford, Bacon wrote a short tract, On the Marvelous Power of Nature and Art, in which he attempted to carefully segregate sorcerers’ tricks from genuine operations on occult powers in natural objects. Part of the text described what have often been called ‘wonderful inventions’ or ‘technical marvels’ (like Da Vinci’s two hundred years later), but which, on closer inspection, are little more than pieces of wishful thinking, flashes of fancy. (To state that someday a chariot might travel at very high speeds, with no obvious motive power, is not to envision an automobile.) In any case, he joined the Franciscan Order which enjoined voluntary poverty as well as adherence to the monastic rule. Bacon knew and admired the work of Adam Marsh, Robert Grosseteste’s successor, who was an assiduous student of nature. In 1251, he made a return trip to Paris where he witnessed the march of the Pastoreaux rebels through the streets. Despite the fact that they announced the imminent end of the world, they considered themselves the poor who would inherit the earth, an army that would reclaim the Holy Land. The Pastoreaux, according to the contemporary chronicler Matthew of Paris, were ‘unstoppable, exciting and dangerous, though finally they were destroyed like mad dogs’. Bacon was more of a trouble-maker than an inventor, and probably stirred up more trouble than his ideas would have caused on their own if he had just shut up about them. He criticized Richard of Cornwall on some church question, an unfortunate choice since Richard soon after became the Order’s chief in England, when he began to implement a regime of severe discipline. Bacon was almost certainly sent to the parent convent in Paris and ordered to undertake menial duties. His health broke down and for the next ten years he had no contact with the outside world. He later said that ‘they forced me with unspeakable violence to obey their will’. Soon after Bacon’s demotion, Bonaventure was made Minister General of the order; he clamped down on the so-called ‘spirituals’ who espoused the ideas of Joachim of Fiore.49 He issued an edict that no monk could read or write books without their superiors’ express permission. In 1265 Cardinal de Foulques (or 48 49

On Bacon’s life, see Thorndike HMES II pp. 616–30; Sharp 1930 pp. 115–18. See esp. McGinn 1994 pp. 337–41.

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Fulcodi) was made Pope Clement IV; having heard of Bacon’s unusual achievements in ‘natural science’ he ordered Bacon to send him his book – not yet written – on subjects of great interest to the pope. Within the year Bacon composed the Opus Majus, Opus Minor, Opus Tertium and a short tract on alchemy – altogether perhaps one million words. Bacon wrote the Opus Minor as a shorter version of the Opus Majus, and the Opus Tertium as a shorter version of both the Opus Majus and the Opus Minor, worried that either he would fail to finish the major work or that the pope would fail to receive it. In the event, when he sent all four works to Viterbo, the pope died before seeing them. But someone who thought badly of Bacon did indeed read his work and made trouble for Bacon. In 1274, Jerome d’Ascoli became Minister General of the Franciscans, Bacon’s works were condemned and he was imprisoned in Ancona citadel. In 1288, when Ascoli was made Pope Nicholas IV, the new head of the order Raymond Ganfredi had Bacon and many others released from prison. In his final years, Bacon worked on the Compendium of the Study of Theology, a bulky portmanteau left unfinished at his death in 1292.50 Roger Bacon’s On the Marvelous Power of Art and Nature and on the Nullity of Magic had longer lasting influence on European thinking than any of his other more substantial works. An English translation of the text first appeared in print in 1597, accompanied by several anonymous short tracts on alchemy. The English edition was preceded by a miscellaneous collection in French in 1557, in which Bacon’s tract was attributed to Jean de Mehun (due to misplaced patriotic feelings). An important Latin edition of Bacon’s Letter appeared in Hamburg in 1618, comprising works by John Dee and Ramon Llull as well as Rosicrucian and Chieromantic texts. This version of the Letter differs in many respects from the French and English editions: it is divided into titled chapters, contains marginal annotations, and is followed by Dee’s own notes. This edition is the basis for another popular English edition in 1659, called Fryer Bacon, His Discovery of the Miracles of Art, Nature and Magick. Although this work played an important part in establishing Bacon’s reputation in the seventeenth century, in the absence of publication of any of Bacon’s other works, he became known primarily as an alchemist and magus.51 The general consensus is that the first part, resolutely skeptical about alchemy and other forms of magic, is certainly by Bacon himself, whereas the latter part, offering detailed recipes and instructions for alchemical work, has been spuriously attributed to Bacon by an anonymous later writer. Linden characterizes the latter part in these sharp words: the author’s instructions for preparing the philosopher’s stone are replete with fanciful jargon and metaphor, analogy, anthropo-morphization, and allegory; concreteness is entirely lacking; there is a persistent refusal to anchor words in things. In addition to these problems, the author’s perspective is one of credulity and uncritical acceptance of the authorities he cites. There is nothing of the skeptical outlook that informs the earlier part.52

50 51 52

See the Introduction to Bacon 1988 (Maloney ed.). Linden in Bacon 1992 p. xxv. Linden in Bacon 1992 p. xxvii.

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The 1597 edition includes an enigmatic text called the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. Bacon was very interested in the Tablet and included it in his transcription of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets, where it appeared in its earliest known form. In contrast with the practical and exoteric character of the Mirror of Alchemy, the Emerald Tablet is speculative and esoteric. In Linden’s limpid summary, the Emerald Tablet ‘proceeds from enigma to enigma, affording few glimpses beyond the surface of its darkened glass’. The main idea advanced seems to be the unity of all things, from one level to another, the micro to the macro, and the postulation of uniform prime matter which provides the basis for manyshaped creatures. It suggests that while the Platonically conceived creator is the ‘One’, the creation of the philosopher’s stone is the result of the union of binary opposites: father and mother, male and female, sun and moon. These polarities suggest the conjunction of opposites which is necessary for production of the transmuting agent, according to alchemical and metallurgical theory. The treatise then seems to suggest, through the images of ascension and descension, and by analogy with the creation of the world, the various laboratory processes, such as separation and distillation, which are vital in compounding the philosopher’s stone. This process results in the production of the alchemical quintessence, the glory of the whole world.53

Bacon asserted in the Letter that many people are deceived by conjurers, jugglers and ventriloquists into believing things that are frauds and deceits; no actual magic is at work. On the other hand, there are wicked people who invoke nefarious spirits (demons) in order to accomplish their desires, but it is wrong to believe that the spirits are subject to the force of human will. They are just as much in error if they think that magicians control spirits through ‘natural means’ or invocations, prayers and sacrifices. Rather, demons assist only sinful persons by God’s permission. Bacon declared that the books of the Magi should be prohibited, even though they contain some truth. Ancient philosophers disguised their ideas in hidden symbols and words, but the uneducated cannot be trusted to read them correctly. He disabused the vulgar notion that charms are directly effective in curing diseases, although a skilled doctor employs them in order that the genuine medicine may be taken more faithfully. Bacon’s principal metaphysical model is the multiplication of species through proper channels; here he invokes it to explain that ‘all agents act in their own virtue and bring their intrinsic species to bear on nature’. In general terms: an object can have an active quality and idea beyond itself, especially when it is nobler than other corporeal things. Humans because of the dignity of the rational soul drive away spirits by their vital warmth, and similarly they are excited by the proximity of other animals [LMP p. 21] … When a human possesses a good complexion (ratio of humors) a healthy body, and youth, beauty, and elegance, a soul clean from sin, a keen intelligence, and a strong desire for any task, then whatever he is able to accomplish by reason of his idea, his courage, his spirit, and his natural heat may be done more strongly and more vehemently by reason of these several spirits, vapors and influences than it could be done if any of these forces were lacking. This is especially the case if a strong desire and a valid 53

Linden in Bacon 1992 pp. xvii–xviii.

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intention are not wanting. And so, a human may bring about great things by word and deed provided all the causes which have been are concurrent. [LMP pp. 23–24]

Words arise from a person’s interior by reason of the thoughts and desires of the soul and by reason of the urge and heat of the spirit, and they issue from the vocal organs. They are generated in open passages through which there is a great efflux of such spirits, heat, vapor, virtues and ideas as are produced by the soul and the heart. Hence, spiritual effects are produced by words insofar as, and to the extent that, the words are indebted to the power of nature.54 It is clear that certain natural effects may be brought about by the generation and prolation of words, especially when the effect is intended or desired. Hence, ‘it is properly said that the living voice has great virtue, not because it has the power that magicians ascribe to it [for invocations, adjurations, and so forth] and not because it is efficacious in actually doing or altering anything, but because the living voice is determined by natural causes’. There are many books to be avoided which are devoted exclusively to magic, symbols and characters, incantations, conjurations, sacrifices, and things of that sort: Such for instance are the books de Officiis Spirituum, de Morte Animae, and de Arte Notoria, and an infinite number of others which contain none of the power of art or of nature but only figments of the Magi. It must, however, be taken into account that there are many books reputed to be magic which are not such but which contain the dignity of wisdom. Experience will teach which books are suspicious and which are not; for if a book treats of the work of nature or of art, it is acceptable; if it does not it is to be left as unworthy of the attention of a wise person. [LMP pp. 24–25]

When Bacon discussed the various ways of concealing secrets, the seventh method is what he calls the notarial art (not to be confused with its later magical version): by this Bacon seems to mean nothing more special than a kind of shorthand. It is usually thought that Bacon’s endorsement of magical practices and alchemy is confined to the Letter on the Marvelous Power, and that otherwise Bacon maintained a healthy skepticism towards any other kind of magic. But toward the close of the very long chapter on mathematics in the Opus Majus, in an untitled section easy to overlook, he made some very strong claims about the magical efficacy of words in incantations and conjurations. Bacon considered that the real skill of the astrologer consists in the verbal magic employed at the correct time – at the decisive moment when his words resonate with astral forces. He said that ‘when the purpose, desire and force of the rational soul, which is nobler than the stars, are in harmony with the force of the heavens, either a word or something else [an object or charm?] is produced of wonderful force in altering the things of this world, so that not only the things of nature, but human minds are drawn toward those things which the skillful adept wills’ (OM I p. 410). Bacon carefully qualified the last clause by reiterating one of his principal theses, that the stars do not determine humans’ fate but only their ‘complexion’ (elemental make-up), which can be revealed to and influenced by a properly trained magician. 54

On these ideas, see esp. Maloney 1983 pp. 120–54.

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The specific shape that this influence takes is through the hidden powers of characters and incantations; characters are complex letter-like symbols which ‘capture’ the hidden nature of the object they signify. Characters, Bacon said, are like images, ‘incantations are words uttered in accordance with the intention of the rational soul, which receives in the mere act of pronouncing them the force of the heavens’. The positive uses of this verbal power are manifest to everyone in the cure of the sick, control of wild animals, defense against malign agents, and so forth. But there are other magicians who abuse these powers and bring discredit on magical ‘science’; they distort characters and incantations designed against harmful things and for blessings by adding false words and fraudulent characters. In addition, demons and ‘old women’ have tempted many persons by their false magic and taught all sorts of superstitious practices (OM I pp. 610–11). Bacon offered an explanation of the connection between verbal magic and astral forces: ‘Just as a child born and exposed to a strange atmosphere … receives the impression of the celestial forces, from which he has a radical55 complexion which he can never lose, because what the new jar receives it retains the savor of when old. So this is true in regard to everything newly made, since it receives the heavens’ force at the beginning of its existence’ and expires when it undergoes corruption. ‘Therefore, in these images, incantations, and characters, composed by means of the necessary constellation, the forces of the stars are received and retained, so that through them they can act on things of this world, and when the constellation recedes … they recede.’ The whole astral-verbal process takes place according to the tenets of species multiplication, something like the transfer of quantum forces from point to point: ‘Since the rational soul is nobler than the stars, just as the stars and all things impress their forces and species on external things … so then is the rational soul, which is the most active substance after God and the angels, able to impress its species and forces on the body, of which it is the motive impulse, and on external things, and especially when it acts with a strong desire, definite purpose, and great confidence’ (OM I p. 412). By this means Bacon attempted to explain the workings of ‘fascination’, whereby persons of an evil complexion and a corrupt, diseased nature are able to transmit their contagion to others. Hence, ‘if some malign soul should think strongly on infecting someone else, and should ardently desire it, and definitely design it, and earnestly consider that he is able to harm it, there is no doubt that nature will obey the thoughts of his mind, as Avicenna taught, so that there will be more vigorous multiplication of species and a more violent infection’ (OM I p. 413). Bacon often referred to the mental preparedness of the magician with the same four terms (he later adds sanctity) - intention, desire, design and confidence – they are not mere rhetorical expansions: ‘Since a word is generated from the natural members within and is formed with thought, care and delight, and it is the most ready instrument of the rational soul, therefore it has greater efficacy than any other thing he does, especially when it is uttered with definite intention, great desire, and strong confidence’ (OM I p. 414). Nature, Bacon asserted over and over again, obeys the 55 They are ‘radical’ in the sense of ‘natural root’; radix mundi are the principles by which nature works at the hidden level, made manifest and brought forth by the magician, esp. the alchemist.

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thoughts and affections of the rational soul, when it is in full concord with both the correlative species in the object and the species in the stars.56 In his comments on Apuleius’ On the God of Socrates, Bacon subscribed to the notion that to each human there is an angel deputed to guard over him against all evils, and to urge and arouse him to the good. After the soul has been separated in death the angel becomes a witness before god as the judge of all the good and evil things which that soul did in its body.57 Apuleius asserted that angels carry human petitions to heavenly beings and bring back gifts to humans, and that various angels are charged with various duties. Bacon recounted the details of the Roman magician’s view of angels (that is, good demons) and then concluded with these words: ‘this is a wonderful statement and wholly favorable to the Christian, and contains nothing unworthy either in the letter or in the spirit … [His] statement evidently contains nothing except that which is consistent with the truth in a wonderful way.’ Bacon said that he made this point in such an emphatic manner because other writers sometimes attempt to obscure genuinely Christian ideas when they are found in pagan philosophers (OM II p. 647). He argued that virtue and felicity do not belong to the soul alone, but to the soul-body union; it is the human in his whole being who can be perfected according to his special character (OM II p. 650). There are also intellectual virtues more noble than those that depend on sensibility – they are intellect, knowledge, art, prudence and wisdom.58 They may be thought of as directed toward the truth, either through mental discipline or in practical application. They are virtues in the sense that they aim at salvation of the soul, for example, in divine worship, public good among citizens, integrity of life and morals, and consideration of eternal life: Intellect is an acquired mental condition concerned with the principles underlying practice, and knowledge is an acquired mental condition concerned with conclusions. Art is the knowledge of good works in their outcome, and prudence is the acquired mental condition directing such works. But wisdom is the perfect knowledge of spiritual blessings together with the sweetness of love, a sweetness in which there is peace of mind as far as it is possible for the mind to enjoy such in this life, and therefore this is the beginning of future felicity. [OM II p. 666]

With much approval, Bacon quoted the magician Apuleius where he says that he is astonished that humans devote such care to their bodies and sports when care of the mind is far more important. He also endorsed Algazel’s view that felicity comes from perfection of the soul and that this consists of two things, cleanness and adornment: Cleanness is the purification of the soul from filthy habits and sanctification from foul impressions; adornment consists in depicting on the soul the certitude of divine truth and the being of the whole universe in its sequence, by means of a revelation in which there is On his extreme realism, see Maloney 1985 pp. 807–38. On Bacon’s view of angels, see Sharp 1930 pp. 167–9; Long 1997 pp. 266–82. 58 On Bacon’s view of the human intellect and his faculty psychology, see Sharp 1930 pp. 155–67. 56 57

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no error or concealment, like a mirror which does not possess perfection unless a beautiful form is apparent in it. But this is not possible unless it has been cleaned completely from dirt and rust, and then beautiful forms placed before it. The soul then is like a mirror, for there are depicted in it the forms of the whole universe when it is clean and has been freed from bad habits. [OM II p. 671]

It is not of great moment, he said, how the rational faculty of the soul is defined, for on any view we know that the rational soul is formed to learn the truth and to love it. However, religious truth is perceived only insofar as knowledge of God abounds in the individual. He who wishes to attain any definite knowledge of religious truths must begin with the idea of God and this idea is common to all humans in their nature, as Cicero says. If one were to wish for full certainty about God’s existence 59 then one would have to advance demonstrative proofs, as Avicenna advocated: ‘For the natural knowledge possessed by the individual in regard to God is feeble and is weakened by sins which are numerous in every one. For sin darkens the soul, and this is especially true with regard to divine things’ (OM II p. 795). These overtly magical passages (and others) are central to our claim that Roger Bacon is more the Janus-faced magician-scientist than his rehabilitated image depicts him. Ramon Llull (1232–1316) is in many ways a perplexing figure in the history of western intellectual ideas. During his long life and many travels he acquired a baffling reputation, some claims perpetrated by his successors and admirers, some by his detractors. He was, amongst other things, a Christian philosopher in the NeoPlatonist tradition, the first of the great mystics of the Iberian Peninsula, the first European to write prose novels on contemporary themes, the first writer to use a vernacular language to discuss theology, philosophy and science, a founder of a school of oriental languages for training missionaries. He was also the inventor of the Great Art, a complex system of principles, using semi-mechanical techniques combined with symbolic notation and diagrams, which was to be the basis of his Christian apologetics, as well as the flexible template for all fields of knowledge.60 Behind all these achievements there seems to lie a paradox, as Anthony Bonner puts it: a figure who came from a small island and a minority culture who developed one of the most universalist systems, one which he presented to popes, kings, sultans and universities in Spain, France, Italy and North Africa and which brought him extraordinary fame for many centuries after.61 One aspect of Llull’s multi-faceted character which has perhaps caused the most confusion for students of his thought is the wide variety of subjects in which he wrote. Bonner says that one must always keep in mind that when Llull wrote on philosophy, it was not as a philosopher, and when he wrote on science, it was not as a scientist: ‘He was less interested in those subjects for themselves than as tools to further his main purpose, the conversion of unbelievers by means of a method based on the general principles that govern the natural order of the universe.’62 One can On Bacon’s employment of Avicenna’s ideas, see Crowley 2002 pp. 82–8. Summary from Pring–Mill 1961; see also Charles Lohr in CHRP pp. 539–43; Yates 1982 pp. 55–9; and Anthony Bonner & Charles Lohr in DSA vol. 13 cols. 171–87. 61 Bonner, Introduction to Llull 1993 p. 1. 62 Bonner, Introduction to Llull 1993 p. 47; see esp. Mark Johnson, The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramon Llull, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 59 60

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describe Llull’s lifework in terms of its development over time: (1) the pre-Art phase (1272–74) prior to his mystical vision of God and the set-up of his art; (2) the Quaternary phase (1274–89) from his mystical vision to his first teaching experience in Paris, where his written works appear in groups of sixteen (hence the name); (3) the Ternary phase (1290–1308) where the principles of the Art appear in groups of nine, the number of figures is reduced, and algebraic notation disappears, and (4) the post-Art phase (1308–15) where his interest in mechanizing thought is abandoned in favor of logical problems. The last period also includes his vigorous campaign against the teaching of Averroes’ doctrines in schools and the dictation of his autobiography, the Contemporary Life. Llull wanted to avoid the danger that his system would be unacceptable to all three religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – by basing his arguments on a form of faith amenable to all basic religious principles, and not by making an appeal to reason at the expense of conflict with any faith. These considerations inspired him to produce an amalgam of three types of doctrine: the first based on the three powers of the human soul, the second on principles of virtues and vices, and the third on a theory of the elements as basic constituents. Every faith endorsed some set of basic premises about God which Llull tried to characterize with regard to divine attributes or ‘dignities’: goodness, greatness, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth and glory. Llull said that these dignities were not only concordant but convertible into one another, without at the same time involving God in any plurality. These divine attributes are pre-eminently real in the Platonic archetypal sense. They are also active powers within God’s essence (ad intra) and within the world (ad extra). This idea gives rise to the doctrine of the threefold correlatives of action, which Llull designated with the Latin suffixes -tivum,-bile and -are. The divine dignities, he said, are ‘proper, intrinsic, and eternal acts, without which the dignities would be idle, and this from eternity. The acts of goodness (bonum) are bonificative, bonifiable, and bonifying, while those of greatness (magnum) are magnificative, magnifiable, and magnifying, and so on for the other similar divine dignities.’ Bonner notes that these three terms made their first appearance when Llull argued with the Muslims in North Africa, and occurred in connection with his attempts to prove the Christian doctrine of the trinity. They are best understood when associated with the metaphysical triad of agent, power and action: ‘This active structure of being became the salient characteristic of Llull’s metaphysics; such a total dynamic ontology was unknown in any other medieval thinker.’63 Llull’s overall project might also be described in terms which would be entirely intelligible for someone who was more familiar with reading Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. For all these thinkers there was, on one hand, an order of thoughts (or intelligible order), and on the other, an order of things (or essential order). Descartes’ overall ambition – as he envisioned it for his mathesis universalis – was to establish the necessary connections between the order of thoughts and the order of things. Spinoza, on the other hand, would have agreed with Llull: ordo et connexio idearum est ordo et connexio rerum. Frances Yates said that, ‘the art of thinking [is] infallible in all spheres because [it is] based on the actual structure of

63

Llull 1993 p. 29 note 83 and pp. 50–51: Yates 1982 pp. 101–3; Lohr in CHRP pp. 543–7.

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reality, a logic which followed the true patterns of the universe’.64 He presented the reader with a totally structured universe, where the intelligible ‘mode’ (as Spinoza also called the infinite divine attribute) is overlaid on the essential ‘mode’. The two modes do not actually constitute the Art, they are its substructure and related to the Art in three ways, as Bonner explains: (1) the Art specifies the modes’ foundation; (2) the Art uses them as a basis for an operative mode; and (3) the Art demonstrates the truth of the system, that is, it has a proof mode.65 Llull himself said that the matter consists of the figures and terms of the Art itself. The form is to be found in the descent from a given universal to particulars, it consists in the ordered discourse of the soul’s acts by means of the mixture of triangles in the remaining terms of the figures. Through their ordered mixture the desired result is achieved, which is the necessary affirmation of the truth or negation of falsehood. This is what we declare to be the purpose of this Art.66

In general, Llull’s Art works by means of a logic of analogy, drawing inferences from the proportions of elements in one cluster to proportions of elements in another. He attempted to establish an analogy between the positive, comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives and the sensible, intelligible and divine worlds, on one hand, with the three forms of proof whence, according to which, and by equilibration, on the other. Llull’s analogical reasoning is closely allied with his Neo-Platonic ontology, according to which he assumed that evil is privation, good is existent: Hence, he devised a scheme of concordance between goodness, truth, affirmation, and being, on one hand, and evil, falsehood, negation, and nonbeing, on the other. Since the culmination of the ladder of being is God, it is but a small step to having the first series accord with perfection, ‘greater nobility’, and merit, and the second with imperfection (or defect), ‘lesser nobility’, and blame. These then are used as criteria against which his analogical arguments are measured, thus closing the gap between the modus essendi and the modus intelligendi.67

In the Compendium of the Demonstrative Art, Llull listed five important applications: (1) to know and love God, as when he said that God created this world and gave it to humans so that he would be much loved and known by them; (2) to become attached to virtues and to hate vices, a state which Llull called ‘accustoming’, that is, the means by which one comes to know and love God; (3) to confound the erroneous opinions of unbelievers by means of cogent reasons, the very motive for setting up the Art; (4) to formulate and solve questions, each portion of the Art leads to this demand, and (5) to be able to acquire other sciences in a brief time and bring them to their necessary conclusions, according to the requirements of the material.68 On this last point Paolo Rossi comments that Llull’s Art is the Yates 1982 p. 12. Llull 1993 p. 52. 66 Lectures on Figures IV.1; see esp. Mark Johnson, The Spiritual Logic of Ramon Llull, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. 67 Llull 1993 p. 53; and see Yates 1982 pp. 65–6. 68 Llull 1993 pp. 54–5; in 1619, Descartes reported meeting an eccentric who claimed 64 65

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‘science of sciences, offering a key to the exact and rational ordering of all knowledge, whose various aspects are comprised or verified by it’.69 Within fifty years of Llull’s death, the Franciscan spiritual group had embraced Llullism to such an extent that the Inquisitor General of Aragon, determined to extirpate the spiritual movement, issued a directive which contained a list of one hundred pernicious errors attributed to Llull. Although the inquisitor was expelled from court after the pope condemned twenty of Llull’s books, the definitive sentence was reversed forty years later and the Spanish mystic rehabilitated. But in 1390, the University of Paris issued its own condemnation, prohibiting the teaching of Llull’s doctrines. The combination of these two condemnations caused enormous damage to the study of Llull’s thought and forced those interested in his works to disguise their use of Llull’s ideas in their published writings. Because of the close resemblance his semi-mechanized element theory bore to alchemical transformations (or at least, as these were viewed at the time), about one hundred alchemical texts were spuriously attributed to him over the next three hundred years.70 The most important Renaissance figure influenced by Llull’s ideas was undoubtedly Nicholas of Cusa; although he seldom mentioned Llull by name in his published works, Nicholas’ library contained an impressive collection of Llullian manuscripts, copied and annotated by their owner. According to the Catalan scholar Eusebi Colomer, many aspects of Llull’s thought can be detected in Nicholas’ works: the doctrine of divine dignities, their mutual convertibility, their unfolding into the correlative triad, the worldly creation as an image of the creator, and Christ’s incarnation as the object and crown of creation: ‘No other thinker influenced Cusanus as much and it can probably be said that no other later thinker understood Llull so well.’71 Where Nicholas did not openly avow Llull’s name and hence did not publicly champion his mentor’s work, by the end of the fifteenth century the French scholarpublisher Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (1455–1536) had done just that. Through his extraordinary energy, advocacy and circle of pupils, Lefèvre did more than any other single person to bring Llull’s work into the open arena of European discussion. Written about the same time as Lefèvre, Agrippa’s commentary on Llull’s Brief Art was perhaps the most widely read work in the history of Llull studies; it was printed seventeen times between 1531 and 1651. Agrippa’s enthusiasm was vigorous: ‘the Art contains nothing that is trivial, it does not deal with specific objects, precisely for this reason it is to be regarded as the queen of all arts, an easy and sure guide to all sciences and doctrines … Aided only by this Art, humans will be able, without being required to possess any other knowledge, to eliminate all possibility of error and to find of every thing that it can be seen in truth and science.’72 Llull’s discussion of human nature occupies all of the incredibly long Book Eight of Felix or the Book of Wonders, though strictly speaking, most of that chapter is to be able to discourse on any subject for an hour using Llull’s art, CSM III pp. 4–5. 69 Rossi 1961 p. 185. 70 On these later attributions, see Yates 1982 pp. 27–30; and see esp. Michela Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus, London: Warburg Institute, 1989. 71 Colomer quoted in Llull 1993 p. 63; on Nicholas of Cusa, see HCM pp. 212–15; and Lohr in CHRP pp. 548–54. 72 Quoted in Llull 1993 p. 65 note 25.

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taken up with extended analyses of paired opposites of moral attributes, such as justice and injustice, chastity and lust, and so forth His view of the human soul also appears in the Book of Contemplation (chapters 103–226), the Doctrina Pueril (chapters 85–93), the Ars Brevis (Part IX) and the Book of the Lover. The Book of Wonders recounts the travels of Felix, one who searches for wisdom, through many strange lands: Book I is on basic theological ideas, Book II on angels, Book III on the heavens, Book IV on the elements, Book V on plants, Book VI on minerals and Book VII on beasts. In Book VIII Felix observes various characters whose behavior he does not understand and, in search of answers, resorts to the sage advice of a holy hermit. He hopes that the hermit will explain the human condition, the nature of human being, the reason for his existence and the purpose for which he was created. The hermit explains that human is a being which unites soul and body, a being with five powers or faculties: vegetation, sensuality, imagination, reason and movement. Through the vegetative power human is composed of the four elements, by which he has length, breadth and width, and hence all his bodily organs and members. Through the sensitive power he feels inclination and appetite; he feels heat, humidity, cold and dryness (the four humors); he wants to eat, drink and dress; he is healthy and sick, and so forth: ‘Insofar as human is vegetated, he is elemented, with one element being present in another, entering and moving in that other element, [like fire into air into water into earth]. This circle is continually active in the human body, inside it and outside it; outside appears the image of the entire body, and inside the body is the human form and human matter.’ The unusual distinction between elementa and elementata is unique to Llull’s thought: it indicates the particular ground or basis by which the constitutive element manifests itself. ‘The form of human is made up of the four forms of the elements, because human is one bodily form that is the multiplication of the four elemental forms. Beneath this form lies a common matter composed of the four matters of the elements, of which matter and of which form the human’s body is elemented.’73 Unless ‘form of elements’ is a pleonasm, Llull here makes a distinction between the four elements as such and their elemental forms: ‘The form and matter constitute a single body in which exists sensuality, by which a human has five senses, which are sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. This sensuality is called the sensitive form, whose subject is the body that is vegetated, sensed, imagined, reasoned, and moved to be a human body’ (VIII.44 p. 833). After running through the standard definition of the five bodily senses, he defines imagination as the power whereby a human thinks perceptible objects, retains them and then represents them. ‘Through reason human has a rational soul, one that is created anew when it is joined to the body’, in contrast with the powers which are engendered through human procreation: ‘This reason consists of three things, viz. memory, understanding, and will, and altogether they make a single soul which is rational. By means of memory a human recalls past events, by means of understanding he has knowledge, and by means of will he is inclined to like or dislike things’ (VIII.44 p. 834). An unusual feature of Llull’s facultative classification is that he considered imagination a power separate from the rational soul, instead of as one of the rational soul’s aspects along with memory and 73

On the concept of ‘elemented’, see Ars Demon. Dist. II, no. 53.

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understanding. Also, Llull distinguished between understanding and intellect, as becomes clearer in later passages: Human reason is a better and nobler form than all the others, and it dominates the movement of the others; by its movement and capacity all the others are made to move. And this is why it is said that the soul is a form for the body, and dominates everything that is in human through vegetation, sensuality, and imagination. Reason moves the imagination to imagine, the sensitive power to feel, and the vegetative power to vegetate. And beneath reason, i.e. the intellective soul, the sensitive moves the vegetative, and the imaginative the sensitive; and beneath reason the appetitive moves the digestive, the retentive, and the expulsive … [and so forth].

From the combination and successive movements of these forms coupled with matters, ‘there follows a single form called human form, which is the result of the composition and union of many forms, and a human matter, composed of many matters. And human form and human matter are the essence of human; human is a being composed of the joining of human form and matter’ (VIII.44 pp. 834–5). Llull made it clear that he did not want to assert that human is simply the specific shape or configuration of enformed matter, that is, a specific clump of matter shaped by a specific form, but that human is a union of specifically formed elements and specific kinds of matter. According to the hermit, the purpose of human’s life is that, through living his life, ‘he may remember, understand, and love God; and human lives in this world in order that he may live in the next world in glory. The rational soul is one with a human’s life, for a rational soul is life. That is to say, memory, understanding, and will are of the nature of spiritual life, and their life is a being that is the soul, similar to the sun’s being, which is to shine with the form and matter of light.’ In contrast with the spiritual life, a human’s physical life consists of the union of elements in his body whereby the principal powers move the levels of constituent forms, as outlined above: Both the body and the sensitive power live by virtue of the rational soul, for the soul is so potent in its effect upon life, that it gives life to everything vegetated or sensed. And by the power of the rational soul the food he eats and drinks is transformed in vegetating and sensing life [note the gerundive, active forms of these powers], just as the bread, wine, and meat he eats are transformed into blood and into living, vegetating, and sensing flesh.

The hermit continues: ‘human is a structure composed of physical and spiritual life, and the function of physical and spiritual life is living. Death is the contrary of life, i.e. human dies through the disordering of this structure, and by the separation of soul from body, which cannot exist without the soul to give it life.’ When a human being is dead he is no longer a human, only the soul remains, the body turns to dust: ‘He remains a non-human until the resurrection when the soul will return to his body and together they will constitute the same human they were before’ (VIII.47 pp. 840-41). One of Llull’s most concise statements about the nature, place and purpose of human being is that

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human’s body is a receptacle in which the elements constantly pass in and out of one another; and in his body one thing is transformed into another … and by the resistance of one thing to another is brought the corruption by which human develops an inclination toward old age. Within the human body, fire enters air, and passing through the air, heats water, which water offers resistance to the fire, and puts it in earth; and thus fire is mortified74 in passing through air, water, and earth. And the same happens with the other elements passing through one another, mortifying each other; and it is by this mortification that human grows old, and becomes indolent, weak and sluggish. [VIII.49 pp. 846–7]

When Felix asks the hermit why it is that Moslems grow wiser the older they get, whereas Christians seem to grow less wise the older they get, the hermit boldly replies that Christians consume wine and large amounts of food and these are agents in the destruction of the brain, the seat of the understanding: Whereas water which is cold and moist acts in tempering the brain, as well as on the ascending and descending vapors; for by this they rise up to the moisture of the brain, and by the cold they descend from it, since the moisture is light and the cold heavy, on account of the subject in which they are; and since the brain is cold and moist, it can be more tempered by similar than dissimilar vapors. [VIII.50 pp. 848–9]

According to the hermit, it is God’s will to be remembered by humans and hence humans take pleasure in remembering God. To remember is an act and likeness of memory, just as to forget is an act and likeness against memory. Thus, memory takes pleasure when it can engender its own likeness, and it would have even greater pleasure if its remembering could be converted into the being of memory, as is the case in God’s essence. In God the Father, the pleasure taken in understanding is the semblance of wisdom, where understanding is God the Son’s conversion by generation into the being of wisdom (VIII.53 p. 853). The greatest pleasure that a human intellect can experience is to understand, since understanding can be more similar to intellect than anything else:75 ‘The intellect takes greater pleasure in understanding than in remembering or wanting, because understanding is the activity of the intellect and is more similar to the intellect.’ The intellect was created to understand God’s work and, since it is best suited to this by natural laws, it takes greater pleasure in understanding the work of God than its own works (VIII.54 p. 855): When the intellect is in an ordered state and follows the purpose for which it was created, then it takes pleasure in understanding sin and the false for three reasons: the first is to understand that in sin and the false there is no semblance or work of God; the second is that through understanding sin and the false the will is inclined to dislike sin and the false; the third is that when the intellect understands sin and the false, it engenders its own likeness, i.e. understanding. [VIII.54 p. 857]

‘Mortified’ means ‘destroyed in its intrinsic vitality’, see Book IV.19 pp. 737–8. Bonner notes that ‘intellect’ is distinguished from both ‘understanding’ and ‘mind’, and that he translates enteniment as ‘intellect’ and entendre as ‘understanding’, Llull 1985 II p. 855, note 53. 74 75

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In the third place, after the pleasure taken in remembering and understanding comes the pleasure taken in willing. The hermit says that God’s will wants there to be in humans the will to love God, and since God’s essence includes glory, God’s will also wants human’s will to take pleasure in loving him. In God the will that is God has everything that it wants, and since God wills that human’s will want him, then humans want to have what God has. When human’s will has that, they take pleasure in having it, and when human’s will cannot have it, then it is displeased. When the human will has what it wants, its pleasure reflects the pleasure that God has in himself. It is only natural, the hermit continues, for the human will to love its own likeness – its wanting is its activity – but it is more natural for it to love God’s will. When it happens that human’s will turns to a purpose contrary to that for which it was created, then its will runs counter to God’s will, and it prefers its own wants to those of God. It feels displeasure in what the divine will wants and it feels pleasure in what the divine will does not want (VIII.55 p. 858). Through the three internal powers and the five external senses, the human soul takes pleasure in all those things, as well as the actions which bring them about, which God’s creative action has instilled in his nature by way of an image of the likeness of God’s nature.76 The three faculties of understanding, memory and will figure prominently in the Book of the Lover and Beloved: in many verses the personified versions of these three powers speak on behalf of the lover (the human soul) in his search to know and be joined with the beloved (Jesus Christ): ‘The loves of lover and beloved were bound with bonds of memory, understanding and will, so that lover and beloved might not be parted. And the cord which bound them together was woven of thoughts and yearnings, sighs and tears’ (verse 131). When asked what gave birth to love, the lover replied that ‘love was born of remembering, lived on understanding, and died through forgetting’ (verse 138); ‘Devotion and yearning sent thoughts by means of messengers [neural spirits?] to the lover’s heart to bring tears to his eyes, for his eyes had wept so long and he wanted to weep no more’ (verse 172). Bonner notes that ‘in his scientific mode, Llull located the intellect in the brain, but in his literary writings affective thoughts came and went from the heart’.77 The dialogue continues: ‘So great was the love of the lover for the beloved that he believed everything he was told by him. And so greatly did he want to understand his beloved that everything he heard about him he wanted to understand for necessary reasons [that is, the light of reason]; therefore, the love of the lover lay between belief and understanding’ (verse 198). On the question whether love is closer to thought or patience, the answer is that love is engendered by thought but nourished by patience (verse 224): ‘The will wanted to rise up high so it ordered the understanding to rise up with all its might, and understanding ordered memory to do the same; all three rose up to contemplate the beloved in his properties’ (verse 226). With regard to the real-world results of this model, he says that ‘love is the concordance of theory and practice toward a given end, to which fulfillment of the lover’s will is impelled, the end to make See verses 19, 103, 127, 131, 138, 226, 314, 331, 354 in Llull 1993 pp. 188–237 passim. Llull 1993 p. 211, note 61; perhaps Bonner means ‘thoughts and affections’ or ‘thoughts associated with affections’; memory is also located in the heart, acc. to verse 210. 76 77

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people honor and serve his beloved’ (verse 236). The author also connects this concord with the idea of moral improvement: ‘Desires and memories of the lover held vigil and went on journeys and pilgrimages to the beloved’s perfections. They brought back his traits and filled the lover’s understanding with splendor, by which his will greatly increased in love’ (verse 331); ‘With his imagination the lover painted and formed the traits of his beloved in bodily things, and with his understanding he made them shine in spiritual things, and with his will he worshipped them in all creatures’ (verse 332). It seems that the lover’s relation to the beloved survives beyond this life into another, better life. In the closing sections of Book VIII of the Book of Wonders, the traveler turned to questions about the Christian doctrine of resurrection. He asked the hermit how a person could rise from the dead in that same being he had when he died, if the body is subject to corruption and turns to dust beneath the earth. The hermit responded by saying that, since human is constituted and composed of soul and body, and since he could not exist as a soul without a body, he must therefore rise up from the dead. The hermit stated the missing premise: if human did not rise up from the dead then the purpose for which human was created – to know and love God – would be lost. The loss of this purpose is impossible since God is so powerful, just, wise and willing that everything he has seen fit to ordain must be fulfilled: It is only natural that a human should prefer to be a human than to be only a soul. If the just human likes to be a human, and yet would never again be human after his death, and if a human is a greater thing than just a soul alone, then if the resurrection did not exist, the likeness that God’s will, which is great, instills in human would be contrary to the greatness of the just human’s will, which contrariety is impossible.

The hermit attempts to bolster this argument – which is patently defective – with an analogy to a silkworm’s change from a worm to a moth through the worm’s death. If nature alone has the power to produce such an ordinary change, then how much more power does God have: ‘from the dust that was once a human’s body [God can] resuscitate that body; he can join one speck of dust to the next, no matter how far apart they have been since God’s power and wisdom pervade the world’ (VIII.114 pp. 1072–4). (3)

The magical soul in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

Ramon Llull’s Great Art is a symbolic model of combinatorial mechanics that operated through the magical exploitation of hidden correspondences (or analogies) amongst the elemental constituents across many regions of being: the cosmos, angels, the human soul, animal species and propositions about these ordered series of beings. Where the Llullian art languished amongst a little-known group of devotees, another older symbolic-mystical model, the Jewish Kabbala,78 was 78 In the scholarly literature this word is variously spelled ‘Cabbala’, ‘Kabbala’, and ‘Qabbala’ (each with or without final ‘h’); no attempt is made here to distinguish different concepts by different spellings; in order to avoid confusion and inconsistency, it is spelled ‘Kabbala’ throughout.

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rediscovered by Christian occultists and took its place in an emerging ‘rebirth’ of human nature. Moshe Idel describes the Jewish Kabbala as ‘a theosophical understanding of God combined with a symbolic view of reality and the theurgical conception of religious life’, coupled with ‘the way to attain a mystical experience of God through the invocation of divine names’.79 One of the principal advocates of the Hebrew mystical tradition was Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) whose great efforts, in a very short life, were devoted to the reconciliation of several streams of prisca sapientia: the Hermetica, Neo-Platonism and the Hebrew Kabbala.80 Another important figure in bringing the Kabbala to the forefront of western European intellectual debate was Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), by some regarded as the first true German humanist.81 The reputation of Reuchlin’s two major works, On the Wondrous Word and On the Cabbalistic Art, has suffered some wild swings and round-abouts. Twentiethcentury scholars of the Renaissance in Germany, although they profess to treat this work within the context of Reuchlin’s overall activity, give summaries but without any critical comment, ‘and merely convey a vague sense of wonder and admiration’. Charles Zika says in his ground-breaking article, ‘this is a strange state of affairs for the first philosophical work of a scholar universally regarded as one of the key figures of European scholarship and intellectual life at the turn of the 16th century’.82 The De Verbo Mirifico (1494) has been understood as ‘an intensely personal document, an expression of [his] internal mystical gropings; and at the same time, an attempt to present a systematic account of Jewish Kabbala, relating it to Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine’.83 In other words, it is most usually seen as little more than the precursor to his later more famous De Arte Cabbalistica (1517), which has received a great deal of scholarly attention. In the opening letter to the Bishop of Worms and Chancellor of the University of Heidelberg, Reuchlin said that his work was in response to vital intellectual issues of the day. Here he stated that Certain diligent explorers of arcane matters … whom the recondite powers of words, the abstruse energies of utterances, and the divine characters of secret names excite, have been detected in our age … to draw away considerably from the most ancient tracks of the first philosophers and to often err gravely concerning the operations of mysteries, most full of wonderful effects. And especially for this reason, that either because of the fleeting obscurity of figures which have been obliterated, or perverse and faulty alteration by librarians, these symbols of that sacred philosophy and most venerable seals of supernatural powers, have not been able to be read, let alone understood.

The principal direction of the work is clear: it is to examine the occult property of names and the secret power of words used in ancient times in performing sacred rites, to correct erroneous conceptions concerning the marvelous effects of Moshe Idel, ‘Qabbalah’, in EER vol. 12 p. 117. Discussed in detail in HCM pp. 235–40. 81 See the new biography by Hans-Rüdiger Schwab, Johannes Reuchlin: Deutschlands Erster Humanist, Ein biographisches Lesebuch. Munich: DTV, 1998. 82 Zika 1976 p. 104. 83 Zika 1976 p. 104. 79 80

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mysteries, and in this way to choose that name which is supreme and most powerful in the performance of wonders.84 The marvelous word is not merely the instrument of internal mystical union between man and God, as is generally assumed, but also the instrument by which man performs external miraculous activities in the world. As is stated numerous times throughout the work, in what becomes almost a leitmotif – by this word man can perform wonderful works beyond human strength, and although constituted in nature, hold dominion over it. The word is a sign of the divine union in so far as it is the source of man’s superhuman activity.85

The three speakers in the trialogue are Sidonius, an ex-Epicurean, Baruchias the Hebrew and Capnion the Christian.86 Book One concerns the limitations of philosophy in achieving an infallible science and whether humans should make use of divine revelation to achieve this knowledge. Sidonius begins with an account of his Phoenician background, for they were the ones who invented letters and handed them down to the Greeks. Baruchias agrees with Sidonius’ assessment, but then adds that ‘those who would condemn almost the whole east for their ignorance and barbarism, by saying that all Scythians and Sauromatians are enemies of humanity and doctrines, and that they had invaded that region they now hold with the result that there is no survivor to cultivate the arts’. Note here the reference to Sidonius’ views as deriving from Scythia, that is, from the source of the non-Greek, alien concept of the immortal soul; though this may be no more than an epithet, like Manichean for Cathar, and so forth, common to invective. The aim of the discussion at this point is to show that genuine, infallible knowledge can only come from the divinity, and that God concerns himself with human affairs, even to the extent of uniting with them through love. Baruchias rejects the notion that there can be any science founded on sensible phenomena; such a source of knowledge is precluded by the fragility and instability of the natural world, as well as by the deficiencies in human understanding. Baruchias thus denies that there can be a pure form of knowing available to humans, unless it can be acquired by means of divine tradition and discipline, which in Hebrew is called Kabbala. Sidonius then attacks the possibility of any such divinely bestowed knowledge due to the incompatibility between finite and infinite, between human and divine. He quotes from Lucretius to prove their incompatible character and the claim that no mortal should be so presumptuous as to invoke the gods’ assistance. Baruchias responds with some violent words, calling Lucretius an evil deceiver and the Epicureans ‘the filthiest nourishers of crimes’.87 At this point Capnion intervenes in order to distinguish between the science of sensible, natural things and the science of the essence of substances, one that is immutable, constant and permanent. The former deals with inferior things through Zika 1976 p. 106. Zika 1976 pp. 106–7. 86 Lynn Thorndike characterized the discussion of the three disputants as ‘about as difficult to distinguish as would be the barking of the three heads of Cerberus’, Thorndike HMES vol. 4 p. 517. 87 Zika 1976 p. 110. 84 85

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the senses and reason, the latter deals with superior things, divinely bestowed through the agency of mind. Human is connected to the lower order by way of his reason, and to the supernal intelligences by way of mind infused with faith. God has placed humans in the center of the cosmos, where he exists among mortal beings as a god by virtue of faith and among celestial beings (angels) as human by virtue of reason, but greater than both beasts and angels by virtue of wisdom. Capnion offers an unusual argument to demonstrate the intercourse between the divine and the human: ‘we ourselves are producers of marvelous works above human powers, and at the same time constituted in nature, we hold dominion over it, and work wonders, portents and miracles which are signs of the divinity’. Reuchlin then proceeded to examine the power of words, especially the divine names, and the type of power that humans can wield through them.88 In order to be instructed in these secret matters, all three disputants must be prepared and purified. Capnion also remarks that Roger Bacon, Peter d’Abano and the Picatrix were unable to achieve anything important in their magical efforts because of their ignorance of Hebrew. In Book Two, Sidonius begins by requesting the word through which humans, constituted in nature, may perform miracles above nature, that is, magic gained by knowledge of the true word of power, and not merely magic used for making marvels. Sidonius claims that knowledge of the wonder-working word will allow the philosopher-magician to bypass the dangers associated with demonic powers; it is a divine magic dependent on God’s will alone. Capnion describes four types of wonder-working – physics, astrology, magic and ‘soliloquy’ – it is the fourth science that one cultivates in order to receive the divine word of power:89 ‘The wonder-working word is to make philosophy fruitful in works, and thereby save a crippled and ailing philosophy from shame and derision.’ Baruchias explains the power of Hebrew names by arguing that God performs wonders in the world through the operation of the human mind. God shaped two images of himself – one is the world, the other is human. In the world, the divinity makes play by means of the sidereal virtues of elements and the occult properties of natural things. For example, occult properties are present in the quality of heat which permits the transformation of food into flesh through digestion. The divinity also employs similar occult properties in humans; through the heat of God’s love God transforms human into himself. Although this property of transformation is secret and hidden, God has given humans the ability to know and control these processes through words of power. The analogy between digestion and deification suggests that Reuchlin modeled the word-of-power magic on the sacramental invocation spoken over the Eucharistic bread and wine. Capnion has thus set up a series of links: God is spiritus, the word is spiratio, and human is the spirans. God is conceived by the human mind, and this concept is produced by the word; God has chosen both ‘the insensible seat of the mind’ and ‘the sensible mansion of words’. By means of these words, God makes a covenant with humans, and humankind is united with God.90 Zika 1976 p. 111. Zika speculates on the striking parallels between Reuchlin’s hymn-singing and the Orphic singing in Ficino, the Byzantine Pletho’s hymn-singing, and Diacceto’s magical music, 1976 p. 118; see also D. P. Walker 1958 pp. 12–24, 60–63. 90 As Zika explains, 1976 p. 121. 88 89

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In Book Three, Capnion finally broaches the wonder-working word of God by name – it is IHSUH. The word of God is a power above all nature for it is both the rational word within the mind of God and the verbal reason as the perfect external image of the divinity. It is completely equal with God the Father, yet through Christ’s incarnation, the word reveals the unknown Father to humans. The reality and name of the ineffable Father is made known through the incarnate son of God, as well as through the record of the many, many names (attributes) accorded to God. Near the close of his lengthy exposition, Capnion focuses on the wonder-working power of the divine name IHSUH: The name of the incarnate Son of God is none other than the name of the Lord [IHUH] but for the assumption of one letter ‘s’, which with the deity of the first syllable, soaks, immerses and steeps the second syllable, that is, human nature which has been imbibed by the poured-out oil … and (then) precious myrrh flows into us drop by drop; and anointing our mind, if properly prepared, it penetrates and soothingly mollifies it. It then fills it with the most gracious liquor of the divinity, so that it receives into itself the splendors of all knowledge … just as gleaming water, or a smooth body smeared with oil, can catch the rays.91

Reuchlin’s other influential work was De Arte Cabalistica (1517) in which the author took some of the main ideas of Pico’s Conclusions and transformed them in strange and wonderful ways. As with De Verbo Mirifico, there are three interlocutors: Marranus the Moslem, Philolaus the Pythagorean and Simon the Jewish Kabbalist. On the first day, Simon tells them the basics of the Kabbala, on the second day (which is the Sabbath) Simon is absent and Philolaus holds forth on Pythagoras, and on the third day, Simon rejoins them and delves deeper into Kabbalist mysteries. The three speakers rarely disagree, and when one intervenes in another’s main speech, it is only to offer more support; all three clearly express facets of the author’s ideas.92 In his article on the late antique paradigm in Reuchlin’s work, Celenza detects five main themes associated with ancient esotericism. The first is a specific kind of allegoresis which involves reading exemplary texts in such a way as to protect a given figure or set of concerns; for Reuchlin, this figure is Pythagoras, the paragon of a holy man. The author wants to show that Pythagoras’ doctrines are in harmony with both Christian ideas and Kabbalist traditions. Philolaus claims that, despite ancient testimonia, Pythagoras did not believe in the transmigration of souls; rather, when he talked about transmigration he was referring to the fact that matter always has the desire to take on new forms. Second, Pythagoras was someone whose very word had been trusted like a divine oracle. He recognized the central place of humankind in the overall process of salvation; he shows that the saviour is one who saves the smaller world, human being. Pythagoras is not himself the universal saviour, but ‘an oracular figure who was an important part of the unveiling of the truth by which humankind would be guided, saved and ultimately divinized’.93 91 92 93

And again, Zika 1976 p. 132. See the Introduction by G. Lloyd Jones to Reuchlin 1993 pp. 7–27. Celenza 2001 p. 128.

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Third, the author endorses Neo-Platonic theurgy (working on god within) that the relevant prayers and actions must have efficacious power. Kabbalist practice merged well with this tradition, since ‘individual words, mysteries, syllables, [and] diacritic marks are full of secret meaning’. The Kabbala is ‘the means by which one can arrive at the highest level of understanding, even if it is impossible that our soul arrives as high as the Messiah without an incomprehensible flash of intuition’. The Kabbalist is the friend of angels; he uses divinely ordered things in a ritual manner and thus effects marvels: ‘The inner meaning of the words and their components can be plumbed and used by the divinely illumined interpreter.’94 Fourth, the author constantly affirms the radical disjunction between the human and the divine; human powers of understanding are insufficient for achieving knowledge of the divine. Simon declares that ‘we are so damned by our feeble understanding of divine matters that we judge things that are not apparent in the same way that we judge things that do not exist.’ Celenza says that ‘the immense gap between the human and the divine is bridged by the interpreter who experiences the profunditas which, guided by his faith, transcends the infirmitas which is the human being’s natural condition’. And fifth, there is a certain kind of information transfer which takes place in an environment of religious crisis: human capacity alone is not able to master all that is needed to liberate the soul. It must be supplemented by technical knowledge of symbols, signs and proverbs, as well as numbers, letters and words: ‘As the boundaries of knowledge were being burst open … coded, veiled wisdom was appealing, as a short cut, as a means to combine learning and inspired wisdom, an epistemological bypass to knowing the truth.’95 Although Reuchlin’s role in the spread of Christian Kabbala is quite well known, attested by contemporary writers and clearly delineated by scholarly studies, his influence on the development of magical ideas has remained largely ignored. Charles Zika argues that it was primarily Reuchlin’s statement of the possible fusion of magic with religion which constituted the driving force behind Agrippa’s formulation in the De Occulta Philosophia of a sacralized magic which would enable other forms of magic to be viewed in correct perspective and ultimately to be purified and restored to their proper place of honor. Reuchlin … opened the way for the new possibilities taken by men such as Cornelius Agrippa, who brought magic wholly into the sphere of religion through the modification of religious ceremonies and rites, and thereby endeavored to endow those ceremonies and rites with new energy and power.96

The glimmering, translucent figures of Reuchlin and Agrippa wander through the works of Thomas Vaughan and the young Goethe, as we shall see. It is to the strange and remarkable figure of Agrippa that our attention now turns.

Celenza 2001 p. 130. Celenza 2001 pp. 131–2. 96 Zika 1976 p. 138; Zika points out that Agrippa gave a series of lectures on Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico in 1510 and that Agrippa combines the Hermetic idea of the human magus with Reuchlin’s idea of the wonder-working word in the Christian magus whose powers depend on Christ himself. 94 95

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Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), archmage and occultist impresario, studied at the University of Cologne, from which he graduated in 1502. In his studies, he had come into contact with the still vital tradition of Albert Magnus and its marked interest in natural philosophy. He would also have been introduced to the baffling system of Ramon Llull under the guidance of Andreas Canter. After short periods in Spain and Paris during the years 1508–10, he became associated with a group of friends devoted to the study of magic, who had organized themselves into a sort of secret circle or self-help society (sodalitum). There is no doubt, as Compagni says, that it was at this time that Agrippa attended an introductory course on Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico which ‘for the first time in clearly defined terms, suggested to Agrippa the notion of a radical restoration of magic’. In the winter of 1509–10, he went to the monastery of St. Jacob at Wurzburg to meet the Abbot Johannes Trithemius, whose strong endorsement of his project fired the young enthusiast: ‘He was thus in a position to finish, at short notice, a compendium of magic which would shake off all the moral and intellectual discredit which seems to have accrued to the art over the centuries.’97 By April of 1510 he had finished the first version of De Occulta Philosophia which he then presented to Trithemius for his approval; the work circulated in manuscript for many years, while Agrippa added more and more material, until he finally agreed to have it published in 1533. The most recent editor of the (now-definitive) Latin text compared the first manuscript version with the second printed version in great detail and made some surprising discoveries. He says that a thorough comparison reveals Agrippa’s still very lively interest in the problem of how to rebuild the foundations of magic, while the massive extensions to the text, inspired by new readings, reflect the emergence of broad new issues. It seems, therefore, that there is no radical change in Agrippa’s magia renovata project. Certainly there is no retraction of or going beyond his youthful positions. Instead, a profoundly altered cultural situation suggests to Agrippa a different orientation for his expectations of reform in occult philosophy; instead of denying his original intention and the way it was expressed, he enriched it with new ideas and new possibilities.98

When the young adept had submitted the early version to his revered mentor, he had adopted humanist sentiments already given voice by Trithemius and Reuchlin. Along these humanist lines, ‘corrupted texts and inadequate critical and philological awareness had led directly to a total perversion of magic which had become an incomprehensible jumble of errors and obscurities, despised by the learned, mistrusted by the church, and practiced with feckless irresponsibility by superstitious old witches’. De Occulta Philosophia proposed a total renovation of magic as an umbrella science which, by gathering under a single auspice all the empirical data collected in various fields of research, would guarantee the efficacy of each branch and actualize its potential for acting upon reality.99

97 Compagni 1992 pp. 2–3; for full details of his life, see Donald Tyson’s Introduction in Agrippa 2004 pp. xv–xxxvii; Nauert 1965 pp. 8–34. 98 Compagni 1992 pp. 14–15. 99 Compare Copenhaver’s sarcastic comments, in CHRP pp. 264–66.

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In the opening sections, Agrippa sets the scene for his mathesis universalis by declaring that there are three main divisions of the true science: elementary, celestial and religious. Without doubt this is an echo of Reuchlin’s threefold division into physical, astrological and magical, both the goetic and theurgic varieties. For Reuchlin, magic is one of three operative faculties that compose the miraculous art: (1) magic based on physics cannot be checked and is thus limited in its powers; (2) magic based on astrology is often false and confused, and (3) magic tied to supernatural agencies is feasible in theory but difficult and dangerous in practice because it may employ malign as well as benign demons. Reuchlin proposed a fourth way: by the use of ‘soliloquies’ one is able to name and command those to whom one prays; these soliloquies are chanted refrains of inner power (quae soliloquia possumus appellare ubi quodcumque propositum ad commoda petentium vota succedit). Altogether, Reuchlin’s magic ‘dissociates itself from the other current kinds of magic [and] is thus articulated as purification and interior elevation, and as the outward expression of miraculous activities relying on the use of the name of Christ’.100 Agrippa also made great use of Pseudo-Albert’s De Mirabilibus Mundi which proposed to establish congruencies between natural laws and the basic principles of magical activities. These general laws permit the magician to operate at both the natural and the symbolic levels through the exploitation of an underlying common mechanism: ‘Upon these axioms all the operations of genuine magic are based; not simply those operations which exploit the natural dispositions of things and their natural relationships of attraction and repulsion, but also the rather more complex activities which manifest themselves as ligations, incantations and promotions for anger, hate, enmity, detriment and gaudy.’ The author postulates the existence in the human soul of a force from an immutable thing: ‘the existence of an active force such as this in the human soul and its reflection in perceptible reality as a ligature of the human faculties would seem to be a special, even though sensational, instance of the general laws which govern nature. The axioms of similars and the principle of sympathies and antipathies are, in the final analysis, the cornerstones of all humanity’s magical activities.’101 For Agrippa, the Orphic-Pythagorean notion of an animate universe (an idea that Albert Magnus had rejected) is the precursor for the doctrine of the world spirit as mediator between heavenly souls and earthly bodies, and is the source of life-force diffusion in the universe.102 The virtues naturally occuring in things are the magicae illecebrae upon which the practice of Neo-Platonic magic rests: ‘those magical decoys which by representing elements of congruence between seminal reasons and inferior forms allows sympathetic exchange between different levels of the ontological hierarchy. Within this framework of correspondence and coded signs, natural magic tends increasingly to be regarded as the initial level of theurgic activity whose colossal potential Ficino had cautiously hinted at.’103 Here is another link in the chain of ideas from Iamblichus’ splitting of the philosopher’s 100 101 102 103

Compagni 1992 pp. 17–18; see also Zika 1976, pp. 105–38. Compagni 1992 p. 22. See Tyson’s edition of Agrippa 2004 pp. 417–23, 713–18. Compagni 1992 p. 27.

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transformative activity into inward contemplation and outward manipulation. In this context there appears on the surface one of the two underground streams whose spring is Iamblichus’ tortured separation of magical activity into outward work upon things. The kind of magic described in Book III constitutes the culmination of the various potentials rediscovered in the philosophical discourse which finds in religion the guarantee for the practice of a rigorously non-superstitious magic immune to demonic deceptions (Bk III § 4). So, religion offers the savant a model of moral improvement which makes his knowledge true and gives his actions a foundation, thus allowing him to realize the Hermetic ideal of the ‘perfect philosopher’, endowed with exceptional and supernatural powers. The path towards this deification can only take on concrete form through faith, virtus omnium superior, because faith rests exclusively on divine revelation and is therefore infinitely truer and more reliable than knowledge which man has acquired by his own independent efforts – faith represents a privileged access to God, to the knowledge and acquisition of divine powers.104 Agrippa agrees with the distinction made by William of Auvergne between faith, which has descended from the first light, and the reflection of that first light accepted by our intellect; science without the divine light cannot be guaranteed free from error. In the threefold division of the soul’s faculties (Bk. III § 43), the mind is the highest element, the privileged seat of the relation between human and God. Whatever illumination God offers to the mind through the light of faith is transmitted by the mind to human reason. (Note here also the conceptual segregation of mind from reason.) In its turn, reason, insofar as it is illuminated by the mind, is not immune to error, and may not therefore attain certain knowledge, even of the lower orders of reality. According to Compagni: the first draft of the book contained neither a general theoretical exposition nor a systematic manual of magic, but was rather an encyclopedic and, above all, literary review of the subject from antiquity onwards. Identifying the sources, to which this enterprise in compilation is indebted, reveals all the typical features of a humanistic approach: the profusion of documentary sources, the erudite curiosity, and the exotic even bizarre allusions.105

In the twenty years between the first manuscript edition and the printed edition of 1531, Agrippa’s learning was clearly influenced by a large collection of magical manuscripts which had belonged to Trithemius and acquired by Agrippa after the abbot’s death. His thought was also shaped by the religious and political events of his age, the first rumblings of the Reformation: ‘An acute and far from superficial witness to a deep and radical religious, cultural and social crisis, [he] became ever more closely involved with the burning issues of his time and he did so at both the personal and intellectual levels … The reworked version of De Occulta Philosophia Compagni 1992 p. 28. Compagni 1992 p. 31; Agrippa’s sources include Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Symposium and his edition of the Corpus Hermeticum; Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on Human Dignity and his Apology; Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico; commentaries on Apulieus’ Apology and On Socrates’ God; and Pliny’s Natural Histories. 104 105

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reflects both the crisis which [he] took part in and his own impassioned contributions to it.’106 The material which Agrippa had assembled for the initial draft of his great work is ‘subsumed in its entirety in the new version’. However, the material is subject to a complete rethinking which brings ‘a new depth’ to his approach to magic, though ‘without repudiating the compilatory structure and encyclopedic ambition of the original’. The opening lines of Agrippa’s second version declare the threefold division of the world: the elementary, the celestial and the intellectual. In conjunction with his references to Pico’s Heptaplus and Reuchlin’s On the Kabbalistic Art, this supplies a metaphysical structure which coordinates the original material with new subjects and definitively justifies the enterprise of the total re-establishment of magic. This reformation should be able to guarantee not only the dominion of nature and the attraction of celestial and angelic virtues, but also the ascent per singulos mundos right up to the First Principle. This is the doctrinal bedrock of the ancient philosophers and priests who had been lost in the passage of time and which had to be traced and restored to its full religious and cognitive scope.

Thus, as Paola Zambelli says, the project for a completely renovated magic ‘strove to fulfill Agrippa’s religious demands … in search of a new and more intimate spirituality which, by contrast with the emptiness of the practices and doctrines of the church of Rome, seemed to be more accessible in ancient mystery manuals’.107 The most important source for the mature version, according to Compagni, was On the Harmony of the World by F. G. Veneto (also known as Zorzi). In this work, Agrippa found a conceptual scheme open to different influences but at the same time coherently related to those models which had inspired the initial draft of his survey of magic. Here he found ‘a concrete realization of the attempt to organize so many different doctrinal threads into a single common philosophical and religious sapientia which partook of the true, necessary wisdom that is ever inaccessible to unaided reason because it transcends reason’s limits and powers’. In Zorzi’s work Agrippa read a description of the process from the One to the many and of the return of his creations to God. Despite the fact that Zorzi had only a marginal interest in magic as such, Agrippa sought in his text for a perspective that … would justify the possibility of a return to the One and signpost the way of health. If it is true that this way consists of asceticism, of the renunciation of material things, of the struggle against the bonds of the flesh, it is equally true that the new, more intimate spirituality attained by the savant will allow him to contemplate nature in a new light – no longer as the source of evil and sin, but as a receptacle of the divine, a created symbol which testifies to its Creator.108

In connection with his study of Jewish Kabbalist ideas, Agrippa also turned his attention to the Hebrew language, seeking in OT texts traces of the prisca sapientia about human genesis and human nature.109 In the 1533 edition there is a long section 106 107 108 109

Compagni 1992 p. 33; and esp. Zika in his 2003. Zambelli 1960 p. 178. Compagni 1992 pp. 36–7. Despite the fact that Agrippa apparently had to rely on other writers’ knowledge of

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on human as a microcosm (Book III § 36); the nucleus of this section is taken from Agrippa’s Dialogue on Human, an unfinished work dating from the 1510s that the author abandoned but often cannibalized in other writings.110 Zorzi had considered the concept of human dignity in the light of the mystical Zohar’s doctrine of the three degrees of the human soul: nepesh, ruach and neshama represent the three parts of the human soul which Plato, Plotinus and Hermes called infimum, medium and supremum. Zorzi gave these three terms the meanings ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ and ‘portio superior’ (or ‘spiraculum’), but also detected in them the Pauline opposition between carnal human and spiritual human regenerated by the word of God. This Zoharic notion had considerable influence on Hermetic-Christian thought and involved their respective interpretation of the destiny of the soul after death. The three Hebrew terms were eventually identified with ‘mind’ (mens), ‘reason’ (ratio) and ‘idol’ (idolum), each with a different destiny to match their different origins and natures: Since the human mind is divinum quoddam, that is to say, the breath of God, and as such immune to sin, it returns immediately to its abode where it is reunited with its beginning. The rational soul, by contrast, standing between two opposite extremes and free to choose its path, must undergo judgment and receive a sentence appropriate to the choice it has made in life: freedom and participation in the beatific vision if it has followed the way of the mens; damnation and reduction to the status of an evil demon if it has made itself a slave to the animal soul.

The doctrine expounded by Zorzi is adopted in its entirety by Agrippa who found in it the inspiration for the more deeply thought-out analysis which he presents in Book III, chapter 41.111 Agrippa also commented on Augustine’s arguments about the doctrine that the souls of the dead are asleep or moribund until the day of final judgment and resurrection. The Pauline dictum that ‘the temple of God is within you’ means recognizing the divine spark within as the presence of God in each human being; that is, mind characterizes the peculiar dignity of human as microcosm since he conforms to the dignity of the divine image. If reason recognizes neshama, ‘divinum illud quod est in nobis’, it will not choose to follow the animal soul (nepesh, the idol) into sin, but will know how to subject itself consciously and constantly to the superior portion which shows it the way to salvation. If this is so, reason by its ambiguous nature will be able to aspire to immortality and beatification. The dualism, which pits matter and spirit against each other at the beginning of this path to perfection, can be resolved and man will become a child of God, uniting himself with him, transforming himself ‘into the very image that is God’ (Bk. III §36), and thus discovering himself to be a worker of miracles in virtue of God: ‘Interiority becomes a fundamental of a religious life which stays substantially indifferent to the outward manifestations of itself in acts of worship, often interpreted as metaphors and perceptible signs of the mysterium which God works in us. This intimate Hebrew in order to make the points that he wanted to make; see Appendix VII in Tyson’s edition, Agrippa 2004 pp. 762–72. 110 See the text edited by Zambelli 1965. 111 Compagni 1992 pp. 42–3.

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experience is in fact facilitated by certain practices and rules for living which can contribute to the redemption of sin and ignorance’ (Bk. III § 53–9). According to M. H. Keefer, ‘Hermetic rebirth provided [Agrippa] with a theory for the understanding of the divine; it set out the means by which God is to be approached and outlined the consequent rewards.’ This overall doctrine constitutes ‘the basic unity’ of his two works; the delicate relations between reason and faith, paganism and Christianity, are brought to crisis point when Agrippa realized that Hermetic doctrines coincided with the ideas of Simon Magus.112 Copmagni says that he can find little to agree with in Keefer’s summary statement: ‘Rather than seeking the path of knowledge of God tout court, his abiding concern was to sketch out a broad foundation for human knowledge and then to establish its scope, its limits and its functions in the achievement of religious wisdom.’ By the time of the definitive 1533 edition, the Hermetic influence had been absorbed into a much broader conceptual framework which owed a great deal to Christian-Kabbalist syncretism, to Neo-Platonism, and to Hermetic ideas derived from his later readings: ‘All of his later studies contributed to his intellectual reorientation and inspired both the reworking of De Occulta Philosophia and On the Vanity of the Arts and Sciences. For all its hyperbole and polemical ferocity, the latter work exalts the word of God above, but not against, a reformulated conception of magic.’ In both works, ‘Agrippa bases the validity of human knowledge on an awareness of the relationship which binds man to God, and on man’s trusting and voluntary acceptance of the illumination which comes from God and which is guaranteed to him by his very essence.’ Compagni declares that a close examination of both versions of his magnum opus shows that there is an internal consistency: ‘Agrippa was proposing to supply an answer to questions which so many thinking people of his time were also asking: the hoped for reform of knowledge and religious life also includes magic.’113 Paracelsus (1493–1541) was born Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in a small town in Switzerland; his family moved to Carinthia about ten years after his birth, and throughout his turbulent life he thought of himself as German.114 He later said that he suffered from poverty in his youth and had to make his own way in the world. He made his own way everywhere; his motto was ‘Let no one belong to another who can belong to himself’ (alterius non sit qui suus esse potest). He did not stay in any school long and spent most of his time traveling around Europe, scavenging scraps of information from barbers, peasants, chemists, cunning women, quacks and magicians. Amongst the many legends which attached to his travels, he is said to have visited Constantinople where he learned the alchemical secret of the philosopher’s stone, to have been an army surgeon, and to have received a medical degree from the University of Ferrara sometime in the 1520s. In 1527 he was appointed medical officer in Basel and was allowed to lecture to students, which he did in German instead of Latin. He declared that he would examine the local apothecaries’ competence, much to their annoyance, and asserted that the works of Keefer 1988 pp. 650–51. Compagni 1992 pp. 49–50. 114 On his life, see esp. Philip Ball’s new biography 2006; Partington 1961 pp. 113–15; Pagel 1958 pp. 1–12; Debus 1977 pp. 45–51. 112 113

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the ancient medical authorities were worthless, going so far as to publicly incinerate some of their books. He was a fanatic for experiential knowledge and first-hand observation; he had an unshakeable conviction in the divine order of nature, even though all around him he saw poverty, ignorance and disease. He desperately sought to understand the hidden mysteries of nature in order to reduce the discrepancies between theory and practice, word and deed.115 In Basel, Paracelsus impressed the famous printer Froben (who introduced him to Erasmus) with one of his ‘chemical cures’; but he managed to antagonize everyone else, and soon was made very unwelcome in the city.116 Andrew Weeks detects a pattern of behavior in the Basel affair: After seeking, and for a time even enjoying, recognition from the established elements in Basel, after appealing to the magistrates to intervene against his academic detractors, Paracelsus explodes with sweeping condemnations of the wickedness and stupidity of his tormentors, no doubt thereby alienating old friends and potential allies. When the damage had been done and can no longer be undone, he reacts like a man recovering from a delirium, attempting to woo back individual supporters and restore the high-minded reforming aura heralding the start of his activities in Basel.117

Having left the city under a stinking cloud, Paracelsus wandered around Central Europe for the next fourteen years, effecting cures here and there, giving impromptu lectures in taverns, and furiously writing the seemingly endless short tracts which he left in his estate (such as it was) on his death in 1541. One of the serious problems confronting any study of Paracelsus’ ideas is the unwieldy and heteroclite mass of manuscripts which have taken nearly one hundred years to collate, transcribe and publish. Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm Matthiessen have edited fourteen volumes of his medical and scientific writings118 (Munich and Berlin, 1922–33) and Kurt Goldammer has edited twelve volumes of his theological and religious writings119 (Stuttgart, 1955–2000). Paracelsus was the self-proclaimed ‘Luther of physicians’, his image the very antithesis or mirror-image of Martin Luther, whose life and work paralleled his own – except upside-down.120 Nicholas Guibert attacked him as the world’s worst liar and Satan’s limb, and another contemporary scholar called him ‘an insuperable magician, monstrous, superstitious and impious, who blasphemed God in his execrable writings’.121 Philip Melanchthon, a staunch opponent of alchemy, took every chance he had to make fun of Paracelsus, but not everyone thought him a Jacobi 1988 p. xlv. Pagel 1958 pp. 13–15; Partington 1961 pp. 116–18; Jacobi 1988 pp. lii–lvi. 117 Weeks 1997 p. 130; see also Ball 2006 pp. 211–21. 118 Complete inventory of the content of fourteen volumes in Jacobi 1988 pp. 235–44. 119 Weeks recounts the story behind the original division of MS material into two broad groups and argues against the cogency and usefulness of this division, 1997 pp. 32–43; see also Gilly 2001. 120 However, like any mirror-image, Paraclesus and Luther shared many traits, see Weeks pp. 12–17; Hartmut Rudolph, ‘Paracelsus und Luther’, in Archiv fur Reform, vol. 72 (1981) pp. 34–53. 121 Quoted in Partington 1961 p. 121. 115 116

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charlatan. Tycho Brahe called him ‘the incomparable philosopher and physician of the Germans’, Thomas Browne thought that any thinker would have been content to write like Paracelsus, and Gabriel Naudé said that he was the zenith and rising sun of all the alchemists.122 In Philip Ball’s words, Paracelsus was a complex amalgam of contradictions: ‘a humble braggart, a puerile sage, invincible loser, courageous coward, pious heretic, honest charlatan, fuelled by profound love and by spiteful hate, dining with princes and sleeping in the ditch, both personifying and challenging the madness of his world’.123 Paracelsus clearly knew his own worth, even if no one else did, and was a tireless self-promoter. He said that ‘the monarchy of all the arts belonged to him, prince of philosophy and medicine, chosen by God to extinguish all the fantasies, falsehoods, and presumptions of the Greek and Arabic physicians and their followers’.124 Paracelsus was not always very forward in acknowledging those thinkers who had influenced him, but one can make educated guesses: Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, the Abbot Trithemius, the German Book of the Holy Trinity (c.1415–20), Raymond Llull’s Lesser Art and Pseudo-Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy.125 While he was traveling in Italy he seems to have acquired some ideas about the Gnostics, whose imagery sometimes appears in oblique, startling glimpses: the primal hermaphrodite (or rebis, as he called it), the Ogdoad or ‘eight mothers’, and the Virgin Mary as Goddess-mother.126 He had some knowledge of (and great admiration for) the Kabbala, perhaps derived from reading Agrippa or Pico, as well as some of the main ideas of Neo-Platonism, probably derived from reading Marsilio Ficino.127 Paracelsus coined a large number of new words, probably, as Partington says, ‘with the intention of puzzling and irritating the conventional physicians and making his writings impressive’.128 After his death many of Paracelsus’ disciples made their careers from editing, publishing and translating his texts, as well as compiling lexicons and commentaries on the master’s works. Andrew Weeks says that ‘the most profound source of Paracelsian theory has to be sought in a critical transformation of [previous] thinking, in an explosion, collapse and reconstruction of traditional authority, an event from which we can retrieve only shards and pieces in the form of declamations, doctrines or theories’.129 An understanding of Paracelsus’ view of human nature follows from his distinctive ideas about matter, the elements and the mysteries. The mysterium magnum is the entity or medium that hovers between the stars and earth; the mysterium holds things in place and transmits influences. It is the most inclusive entity and the vitalizing agent for all things: he says that ‘it contains all creatures in heaven and earth, and all the elements live from it’ (SW p. 15). Just as an egg must Quoted in Partington 1961 p. 123 Ball 2006 p. 1. 124 Partington 1961 p. 119. 125 Weeks 1997 pp. 55–7; Pagel 1958 pp. 204–13. 126 Rebis SW p. 148; Eight Mothers, Weeks 1997 p. 178; Virgin Mary, Weeks 1997 p. 127. The ‘rebus’ is the alchemical name for the hermaphrodite, the union of the hot dry male aspect (sulphur) and the cold moist female aspect (mercury), Abraham 1998 p. 98. 127 Pagel 1958 pp. 213–27; Ball 2006 pp. 149–52. 128 Partington 1961 p. 127. 129 Weeks 1997 p. xi. 122 123

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contain a vital medium which encompasses the yolk and the albumen in order for it to become an animal, so also the cosmos must be filled with something more potent and more basic than its constituent elements.130 He thought that primordial matter (which he called limbus131) was water, over which the divine spirit (yliaster, from hule¯-aster ‘starry matter’) moved as an architect (archeus). From this movement of the life-giving spirit the four elements emerged: two compact, dense elements (water and earth) and two more diffuse ones (fire and air). The ether is formed from fire, and the apparent void from air. The first form of the body is always vapour, or ?a smoky spirit?, which gradually coagulates into a material body. The cosmos is surrounded by an enormous air-like chaos called yliados (from hule¯-ados or he¯dos ‘seat’ or ‘base’) which supports the heavens, such that the whole forms the cosmic egg.132 In general, it seems that Paracelsus never held a consistent element theory: Partington says that ‘his theory of the elements is very confused and contradictory’. Despite his careless definitions of the principal elements and the dynamics of their internal derivation, the concept of ‘complexion’ remains fairly steady. Each and every thing has its own proportionate mixture of elements, although only one element provides its essential complexion. The fifth essence can be obtained when the individual’s life is destroyed and it is freed from all incomplete elements. The fifth essence contains the arcanum or curative force, whether it was a mineral, plant or animal; the fifth essence of a living heart would be the elixir of immortal life. He said that ‘the fifth essence is the only one that preserves health … for all which drives out disease is a kind of comfort, as when an enemy is repulsed by force’. He gave the name oportet to the compulsory, internal cause of every disease; it resides within humans and is released (or activated) due to external factors. He gave the name Ares to the occult dispenser of nature, who gave form and difference to the various species. The first three essences are the result of permuted complexions and the fourth essence is the relolleum, which perhaps refers to the degree (magnitude?) of any one of the four elements. He said that ‘Nature can sometime sin by appetitive virtue. Before Ares is entirely produced, the archeus enters him with his ilech, adverse to the microcosm … Whenever archeus simulates nausea and hates his proper nature and work, the physician, his minister, cannot repress this abomination’ (SW pp. 144–6). The fifth essence, therefore, was not of the same order as the other four, but instead the kernel of an object. Each of the four elements contains an archeus, who completes its generation from seeds: the heavens’ archeus forms rain, snow, hail, and thunder; the archeus of water forms salts, stones and metals; the archeus of earth forms plants and trees. The spiritual force of an archeus forms the arcanum of each thing, the rest is just dead elemental matter. In each of the three kingdoms of nature there is something intermediate between spirit and matter: in the mineral kingdom it produces crystal forms and is called Stannar or Truphat; in vegetables it unites with the life-force to produce the prime entity and is called Leffas, and in humans it Weeks 1997 p. 65, see also pp. 109–10; SW pp. 13–14. On the concept of limbus, not to be confused with limus, ‘clay’, see Weeks 1997 pp. 178–80; and also SW pp. 16–17, 217, 255. 132 Partington 1961 p. 129; Weeks 1997 pp. 116–18. 130 131

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is a dark force which can be used by spirits in occult forms and is called Evestrum.133 The fifth essence is ‘endowed with extraordinary powers and perfections; in it is found a great purity, through which it affects an alteration or cleansing in the body, an incomparable marvel’ (SW p. 147). Ball says that, for Paracelsus, alchemy was a medical-mystical philosophy that explained the mysteries of all things: ‘alchemy becomes so powerful and so beautiful in [his] hands because it is a part of a greater system; a magical vision of the universe distilled in the overheated alembic of a feverishly imaginative mind’.134 The primal human is an emanation from God, and all spirits emanate from him. He is the limbus minor (identified with Christ), an emanation from the limbus major. The limbus major is boundless light and the seed (der same) of all creatures.135 There are two kinds of seeds: the sperm are the vehicle of true seeds, which are generated by speculation and imagination, and are produced by the stars. The other kind of seed is vital sap, a fifth essence; it is that which in objects exists only in potential. The sperm is the tangible material component of semen, and does not include the spirit and essence, the active forces of the seed.136 God had created human as a compressed image and occult blend of every other thing, the expression of the great world in a small world. Human had three natures: the animal body, composed of the four elements; the spirit (or astral body), and the divine soul (God’s image). The human body and the human spirit had been made by binding clay and stars together, forming flesh and blood in the body, and sense and thought in the spirit. In Walter Pagel’s striking words, Paracelsus’ ideas went quite far in spiritualizing matter and materializing spirit.137 Human being has two kinds of life, animal and sidereal, and human also has two bodies, animal and sidereal (SW p. 18). The animal body is made of flesh and blood, in itself it is always dead – which seems to contradict the idea that the animal body has its own kind of life. Only through the actions of the sidereal body does life emerge in the animal body. The sidereal body is made of fire and air, but it is bound to the animal life in the animal body. These two bodies seem to be mortal, and their life limited, since Paracelsus says that mortal human consists of all four elements, two pairs of which comprise each body (SW p. 18). Perhaps the dualist scheme here was designed to capture his alchemical, natural view, one that he later abandoned for an unabashed Christian trialist view. But in other places Paracelsus’ words seem to imply that human has three bodies, or at least that, in virtue of the third spiritual part, he can gain another, new body. He said that the elemental, material body goes to the grave with its essence and the subtle, sidereal body dissolves and returns to its source. But the divine spirit in each human, made in God’s image, returns to God: ‘Thus each part dies in that medium from which it has been created and finds rest accordingly’ (SW p. 217). In another related passage pertinent to the soul’s separation from body at death, he stated that human has ‘a body which does not spring from matter’ – which could be construed 133 134 135 136 137

Partington 1961 p. 141; Pagel 1958 pp. 93–7. Ball 2006 p. 176. See Weeks 1997 pp. 178–9. Partington 1961 p. 129; SW pp. 27–29. Pagel 1958 pp. 208, 227; Midelfort 1999 pp. 110–12.

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as referring to the sidereal body – except that he then qualifies this clause by saying that ‘it was breathed into human by God’, it is intangible and invisible. At the Last Judgment, that is, the general resurrection, the sinful body will have to give an account of itself. The ‘things that proceed from the heart’, good words and deeds, or evil words and deeds, belong to an immaterial body, one that comes from God’s breath. However, Paracelsus appealed to the New Testament notion of resurrection in the flesh when he says that this breath-like body will be joined by the original body derived from the limbus (SW p. 217). The implication is that the scheme of three bodies is applicable to the total eschatological view of human in his eternal aspect, while the scheme of two bodies is applicable to human in his earthly life.138 E. W. Kämmerer has devoted much attention to these two schemes in Paracelsus’ works: the dualism of body and soul with the twofold body, and the trialism of body, soul and spirit with the inclusion of spirit. He says that the body is spiritualized through the arcane forces and virtues, while the soul is spiritualized in the creative imagination, the kernel or microcosmic analogue of God’s creative power.139 According to the dualist body scheme, although human shall rise again in the flesh, there is only one flesh which ‘clothes’ two bodies, material and immaterial. Evil words and deeds arise from the flesh, that is, from fleshly desires, but not by way of humans’ elemental, material body, rather by way of the immaterial body which humankind acquired when Adam sinned and fell from paradise. Because of their fallen, sinful bodies humans can eat and drink more then their natural bodies need. To exceed the measure set by natural things is both an evil deed and an unfaithful action, unfaithful because ‘the intangible body vowed that it would not overburden the natural body and would not drive it beyond measure’ (SW p. 218). However, his assertion that humans ‘only know one flesh, not two’ seems to be contradicted in another text which states that there are two kinds of flesh, ‘flesh from Adam and flesh that does not come from Adam’. Flesh from Adam is crude and earthen, but the other flesh is ‘an ethereal body’, not made from earth (SW p. 219). Perhaps this means that the eternal, immortal flesh is an ethereal envelope, like an okhe¯ma or soul-vehicle in the Neo-Platonic scheme.140 In his short work on the Eucharist, The Lord’s Supper, he said that there are two creatures within human: the mortal one created from Adam, and an eternal one created from Christ. Each of these is an independent substance, and hence each human has two bodies. The mortal Adamic body was made by God the Father, who is invisible but whose works have been made visible; the immortal body was made by (or from) God the Son, who was made visible in Christ but whose works are invisible. The mortal body draws nourishment from food and drink, transformed into its own flesh and blood by each human’s archeus, where the immortal body feeds on bread and wine in the sacrament.141 138 In her glossary Jacobi refers to the third body as ‘the illumined body, the imperishable, essential kernel of man, the “spark of God”, which is also called the resurrected flesh’, SW p. 249; but there is no textual warrant for calling this third part another kind of body. Jacobi’s selections are a hodge-podge of extracts and her translations are often slippery, but the state of Paracelsus’ works in English has been remedied somewhat by N. Goodrick-Clarke’s edition, Essential Readings, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books 1999. 139 Kämmerer 1971; see also Midelfort 1999 pp. 110–16. 140 For details, see HCM pp. 121–3. 141 The Lord’s Supper, quoted in Weeks 1997 p. 142.

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Despite the deep ambivalence about the question of two or three bodies, Paracelsus emphatically claimed that humans have three forms or parts: body, soul and spirit. (He distinguished between ‘spirit’ (sing.), the highest immortal part, and ‘spirits’ (pl.), vital forces at work in both the world at large and the human organism.) In one of his many attempts to explain embryonic development he stated that, upon conception in the womb, a word from God enters the seed and gives the flesh its soul: ‘The body is the house of the soul, but the soul is the house of good and evil spirits [sc. impulses] which dwell in him’ (SW p. 199). He also said that ‘it is correct to call the soul a spirit and to call the spirit God’s angel in human. For both of them have come from the mouth of God and we have received them from his hand’ (SW p. 199). One presumes that he means that the rational or highest part of the soul is correctly called the spirit, for in the next paragraph he stated that ‘the spirit is not the soul, but – if it were possible – the spirit would be the soul of the soul, just as the soul is the spirit of the body. For the human spirit is not the body, and not the soul, but a third thing in human.’ He claimed that the soul enters the embryonic body after the spirit has been infused by God’s breath (or word) – an inversion of the standard Christian sequence (SW p. 31). After death, the spirit dwells in the place that God assigns, either with the body (as a corpse) or with the soul (?) or with God in heaven (SW p. 200). The human spirit governs the body by way of the soul and the soul has reason, wisdom and foresight as ‘adjuncts’, that is, assisting powers. The heart is the seat of the soul; the heart nourishes the spirits which know good and evil; it is the seat or source of life, against which death fights (SW p. 197). Humans received their heart from the hand of God; the heart is a rock, a solid center, upon which a human stands or falls according to whether he pursues good or evil (SW pp. 191, 217). He said that, ‘the human form is according to his heart, for virtue and mind form his body just as the carpenter’s thoughts form the house’.142 The various human faculties or psychic adjuncts result from the process of embryonic formation. The mother’s imagination shapes the infant’s reason, making it turn to higher or lower things. The mother’s form compels the child to look like (or bear the likeness of) its parents, and the maternal influence determines the body’s health or sickness. The mother’s ‘inner stars’ act with power and vigour on the embryo, imparting to it the heavenly motions of the mother’s sidereal body; ‘its nature is thereby deeply and solidly shaped and forged’ (SW p. 32). God planted the seed deep in the parents’ imagination; when a human wills some thing, desire arises in his imagination, and desire generates the seed. ‘God endowed man with reason in order that he might know what the desire means’, namely that desire’s object is achieved in copulation: ‘God has entrusted the seed to man’s reflective reason because [it] encompasses both his intelligence and the object that inflames his fantasy’ (SW p. 33). The products of the spirit, on the other hand, are not bound by the body’s needs; thoughts are free and not subject to rule: ‘Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. They create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow’ (SW p. 45). There are two kinds of reason, angelic and animal; the first is eternal and derived from God, the second is perishable and derived from nature. There are also 142

Quoted in Midelfort 1999 p. 110.

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two kinds of wisdom, coincident with two kinds of reason: the first is from the light of the Holy Spirit, the second from the light of nature. The first light, or source of inner illumination, is pure and just, the second can be either good or evil (SW pp. 160, 163). In his Book of Lunatics,143 Paracelsus employed the idea of two kinds of reason to describe the character of insane persons, ‘those who go mad in their bestial reason’. He said that the real difference between folly and madness was that fools (or idiots) were born into an animal spirit and ‘live like reasoning bestial cattle’, while the mad ‘live in a crazed bestial spirit’. Thus, ‘fools go mad with reason, what they do is bestial shrewdness … The mad however have that [bestial] reason too, but deranged in its nature.’ On his interpretation, lunacy was not something that just happened to a person, it was a self-induced, immoral disease. He said that ‘the bestial stars look down on man’s bestial reason, penetrate the pores, skin, and cells, where the bestial reason is in charge’. Thus fools were led around by their inner stars, and the clever or witty were liable to go mad with their excessive reason. Midelfort says that here Paracelsus betrayed a basically Stoic view of mental health as a state of ataraxia, the freedom from passion, affection and disturbance. Sadly, the rebellious animal spirit in human was full of cares, fears and regrets, and if uncontrolled he easily became ‘mad, silly, senseless, foolish or doltish’. He made the startling claim that Christians were a whole new species (more or less), essentially different from the blind, sinful, cursed race of reprobates who had not set aside their bestial nature. In a stunning image he said that ‘man is not made from animals, but men become snakes and basilisks, not sent from God, not men of the new birth, but worms in the pit of hell’.144 In sum, Paracelsus was truly original in his syncretic use of Scripture, chemistry and astrology in his attempt to capture the entire nature of human being. And like Martin Luther, Paracelsus assumed that ‘divine salvation was an intensely rational, health-giving process, bringing order, restraint, reason and inner peace to bestial, lunatic and demonic human beings’.145 Paracelsus’ ideas had a profound and lasting influence on speculative thinking about medicine, alchemy and personal faith for the next two centuries; it is not feasible to pursue more than one example. The Saxon pastor Valentin Weigel (1533–88) is the direct precursor of German theosophy; his thought is the fruit of an unusual marriage of the Rheno-Flemish mystical tradition and the Paracelsian synthesis. The article on theosophy in Diderot’s Encyclopedia (1765) gives his ideas a prominent place, but after this date Weigel’s ideas were almost completely neglected. The Belgian scholar Bernard Gorceix studied 6,000 pages of Weigel’s work, both rare printed texts and manuscripts; Gorceix’s studies stands as a monumental investigation of this strange and curious thinker; our summary of his results follows the detailed assay of his work by Antione Faivre. According to Gorceix, Weigel claimed that human contains in himself the entire basis and core of all beings, the qualities of the entire world. All of nature, both material and immaterial is concentrated into ‘a closed fist’, the macrocosm has become the microcosm. The light of nature and the light of grace do not oppose but complete 143 144 145

Discussed in detail by Midelfort 1999 pp. 124–31. Midelfort 1999 pp. 125–7. Midelfort 1999 p. 138; see also Ball 2006 pp. 103–9.

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one another, forming together this most noble human attribute, knowledge of nature and knowledge of the divine. According to Weigel the three ways of knowledge are the sensory, the intellectual, and the revealed. He cited Paracelsus when he said that imagination depends on the firmament, that is, the star in human being, the sidereal spirit. He employed Paracelsus’ idea of gestirn: when the body obeys the lower elements and the spirit is governed by God himself, then the arts, wisdom and light depend via the imagination on the inner firmament. Weigel distinguished himself from Paracelsus in that he seemed to consider the outer world to be not the dwelling-place of the divine word, but rather the inner world is its seat. There is no need then to seek God in the objects of nature but in the deepest part of the subject. Weigel either did not know or did not confirm Copernicus’ reversal of the cosmic scheme, but he did posit that place and spirit are incompatible; the spirit cannot be contained in any place, since no circle would be great enough to contain in it. The angels are not prisoners of the earthly sphere but float in the limitless abyss of divinity. Demons reside in the four elements, though the beings of the middle world and the souls of the dead do not seem to have their status clearly defined.146 The world is made up of matter from three basic substances, as with Paracelsus: sulphur, salt and mercury. On this view, the visible emerges from the invisible; humans perceive only the body, not the agent of creation. It is the invisible spirit that explains the activity of nature; language does not speak, rather human reason speaks. The passage of the invisible to the visible is an explanation of divine nature, in the literal sense that it develops (explicatio) what is enveloped (complicatum) in divinity; the very concept of ‘concept’ (begriff) originates in an attempt to render the concrete meaning of envelopment. The visible world is born of the angels who were born on the first day, at the same time as the light of which they are the fruit. This emergence is made real through the mediation of the four elements, the mothers of all things, that is, the invisible forces, seeds and matrices. It is they who allow the creation of matter to take place, and hence the appearance of the three basic substances. Gorceix does not point out that this reverses the traditional alchemical sequence, according to which the elements issue from three principles of which they are the condensations. But although the aetiology is inverted, the chain of ideas is the same: principles may be thought of as elements and vice versa; the four elements are often reduced to only three (fire, water and earth) which fulfil the roles of salt, sulphur and mercury.147 The threefold division of the great world is reproduced in the three levels of the human body, since the human body is made of three parts (lower, middle and upper). The eye of flesh (oculis carnis) permits humans to see the sensible world, the eye of reason (oculis rationis) is gauged with the astral world, and the eye of mind or intellect (oculis mentis seu intellectus) allows humans to perceive god and the angels. However, each part of the human composite is not itself a simple correspondence, but is a product of the microcosm: ‘From the elements and from all spiritual creatures human draws his visible and palpable body. He draws his spirit from the astral firmament; the soul comes to him from the spiraculum vitae.’ 146 147

Faivre 2000 pp. 40–43. Faivre 2000 pp. 45–8.

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Whereas Adam lived like an angel before the fall, humans are now subject to the stars; however, those who live in the new birth are no longer bound by the strictures of the stellar spirit. Astrological constraints pertain only to natural humans; the study of astrology permits us to know our own place in the world, at least until we are born a second time. Human being is the fifth essence, an extract, a summary or a synthesis of the world as a whole; as the tongue of creation, human puts into language the totality of the work of God.148 The intuition of spiritual corporeity (God’s own body) appears to be the central point of Weigel’s system. Faivre says that ‘the concretization of the spiritual, the corporealization of the new birth, expresses a celestial naturalism in him that is grafted onto the mystical tradition; it is an important historical moment’.149 In many respects John Dee (1527–1609?) carried forward, even embodied, the ideals of Roger Bacon, the medieval philosopher-scientist, and the practices of Paracelsus. Dee was one of the most astute mathematicians of his age; he traveled widely in search of the foremost authorities in geometry, geography, navigation, astrology, mineralogy and the Kabbala, and he assembled the largest private library in England.150 He cultivated political favor at the courts of Queen Elizabeth and the Emperor Rudolph II, as well as the Polish Prince Laski (though he often failed to secure the favor he wanted); he had hopes that university education would be reformed so that scholars and students could pursue their investigations beyond disciplinary boundaries. He advised the English court on Martin Frobisher’s several expeditions to discover the Northwest Passage in 1576–78 and announced one of the earliest proposals for the establishment of the British Empire abroad.151 He devoted at least five years of his life (1581–86) to an investigation of ‘the other world’ through conversations with angels by way of his personal ‘scryer’ Edward Kelley; Dee kept meticulous records of these conversations, the angels’ transmission of an arcane language in which their most important secrets were couched. Some of these documents were stashed in a wooden chest where they remained hidden for more than sixty years. In 1672 the chest’s new owner sold the papers to Elias Ashmole, the great antiquary, who instantly recognized them as the Five Books of Mysteries.152 Another bundle of angelic communiqués was buried by Dee on his own property at Mortlake House on the River Thames where they were found in the 1620s and given to the English scholar Meric Causabon. It was Causabon who transcribed the badly damaged but still legible script and published them in his True and Faithful Relation (1659).153 The baffling variety of his printed and unprinted works, as well as his Faivre 2000 pp. 50–53. Faivre 2000 p. 56. 150 In 1990 Julian Roberts and Andrew Watson published their exhaustive catalogue of John Dee’s library; the results of their long-term efforts to reconstruct and inventory the widely scattered items from Dee’s extraordinary collection: John Dee’s Library Catalogue, London: The London Bibliographical Society. 151 Woolley 2001 pp. 131–8. 152 See the recent edition with this title by Joseph Peterson (ed.) Boston, MA: Weiser Books, 2003. 153 On these remarkable discoveries, see Woolley 2001 pp. xv–xvii, 323–4; Harkness 1999 pp. 219–20. 148 149

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strange legacy as an occultist, magician, astrologer and archmage, has exercised the ingenuity of many intellectual historians. In his recent study of Dee’s natural philosophy, Nicholas Clulee describes what he calls the Warburg interpretation of John Dee’s work, so called because the main exponents of this view have all been connected with London’s esteemed Warburg Institute. Frances Yates, the doyen of the British school of Hermetic studies, accorded Dee a central place in several of her works.154 One of Yates’ students was I. R. F. Calder who wrote a massive two-volume dissertation, ‘John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist’, said by Clulee and Harkness to be the most thorough and comprehensive study of Dee’s sources ever undertaken.155 In his exhaustive study Calder relates all of Dee’s diverse works to a scientifically oriented version of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, since this progressive philosophical framework laid the foundations for a mathematical approach to the natural world. Peter French, although not an official student of Yates at the Institute, drew the basis of his view of Dee from Yates’ work and credits her guidance in his 1972 intellectual biography, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus.156 The Warburg interpretation, as Clulee explains, approaches John Dee ‘as a problem of finding the correct intellectual tradition into which he appears to fit, both as a way of making sense of his disparate and often difficult to understand works and activities, and as a way of establishing his importance by associating him with an intellectual context of recognized importance for sixteenth century and later intellectual developments’.157 In contrast to the scholarly views that situate Dee’s thought within Renaissance Hermetic and/or Neo-Platonic Magic, Nicholas Clulee presents a strong case that the largest influences on Dee’s thought came through medieval Latin and Arabic texts on magic inspired by scientific ambitions, especially the works of Al-Kindı¯ and Roger Bacon. In his lifetime devotion to reading the book of nature through the filter of magical languages158 Dee did not maintain a unified or coherent line of thought; there is ‘no strong impression that Dee settled into a well-thought-out and stable position. Despite Dee’s faith that he would find divinity reflected in the glass of creation, his works present us with a broken mirror reflecting in different ways different fragments of creation, behind which we hear the continuous murmur of the voices in his library.’159 Over sixty years of productive work, Dee’s thinking was in ‘a constant state of flux through the continuous assimilation of new material and the modulation of his earlier ideas … The major expressions of his thinking, each composed hastily in response to some immediate and short-term occasion, represent momentary eruptions reflecting his current thoughts and material he had most deeply assimilated at that point brought to bear on issues of current concern.’ The central inspiration for his understanding of the causal mechanism at work in cosmic Yates 1969; and Yates 1982 vol. I pp. 210–21. I. R. F. Calder, Ph.D. dissertation, London 1956, unpublished due to its enormous, unwieldy size. 156 See Yates’ very positive review of French’s book in her Collected Essays vol. III, pp. 49–59. 157 Clulee 1988 p. 15. 158 Numerical proportions in the PA, alchemical hieroglyphs in the MH, the natural Kabbala in various works, the angels’ Enochian language in the Five Books of Mysteries, and so forth. 159 Clulee 1988 p. 17. 154 155

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phenomena was the Neo-Platonic concept of emanation which ‘provided the foundation for extending the model of geometric optics to the analysis of a broad range of causal relationships. This served both to provide an intelligible and nonspiritual, non-demonic treatment of the action of “occult” qualities and influences, and to facilitate the extension of mathematical treatment to domains of physics beyond those Aristotle had considered appropriate for mathematical study.’160 According to manuscript notes from the 1550s, Dee considered astrology primarily as a kind of physics by which terrestrial phenomena can be explained through the influence of celestial bodies. He accepted a qualitative physics, according to which the generation, alteration and corruption that occur in the sublunar sphere of elements are the result of changes in the secondary qualities of things which themselves are produced by primary qualities, such as cold, heat, humidity and dryness. The heavens are the agent of these changes because primary qualities are generated in the inferior world by the hidden virtues of celestial bodies, conveyed through motion and light. The different climates and environs of various regions derive from these influences, and the specific environment produces mixtures of qualities from which the great diversity of creatures are generated. At this early stage, Dee accepted an entirely naturalistic concept of human nature, construing humans as integral parts of their environment, affected in both body and soul by their surroundings, as well as the celestial influences at work at their birth.161 Another group of manuscripts162 records his ideas about the human soul and belong to this same naturalistic setting by way of an interpretation of Aristotle’s texts on the soul. The most outstanding feature of these notes, as Clulee explains it, is their critical and even negative character regarding the accepted views of Christian theology on the immortality and spirituality of the human soul. The general tenor of these ideas emphasized the unitary nature of human that results from the natural generation of body and soul, rather than a dualist picture of an entity composed of matter and spirit: ‘Dee questions the idea that the soul is eternal or that it is an incorporeal form joined to a material body contrary to its own nature; instead, he thinks that it is a quality or form of that body. Because the soul is present in the seed and has need of the body for its operations according to Aristotle, Dee concludes that it cannot be something eternal added to the mortal body from without.’ Moreover, the unity of soul and body, and the dependence of soul on body are further indicated by the nature of the intellect: Although reason has been considered an indication of the immortality and spirituality of the soul because it is the distinguishing characteristic that differentiates man from the other animals, reason is in fact nothing other than the power of leaping from one imagination or cognition to another. The intellect, furthermore, is dependent upon the senses and the sensible conditions of things for its operation, which indicates that the intellect is a functional part of the body and, therefore, mortal along with the body.163

160 161 162 163

Clulee 1988 p. 233. Clulee 1988 p. 40. Manuscripts analyzed in great detail by Calder 1956 vol. I pp. 338–403. Clulee 1988 p. 41.

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Dee’s notes on these texts about the human soul seem to deny ‘any dualistic division of the cosmos into separate realms of nature and spirit subject to different laws and to make the soul a natural inhabitant of the physical universe and subject to the laws of that universe’.164 In one marginal annotation, Dee states this view in simple terms: ‘nature made human: body, spirit and soul’.165 In the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558, 2nd edn 1568), Dee argues that because the parts of the human body, as well as its humors and spirit, are formed from a certain proportion of the elements, the influence of astral forces on the elements will mutatis mutandis influence individual humans.166 An individual human’s potential functions are derived from its parents via the seed, but the development of these characteristics is induced and conditioned by astral forces. The sense organs are witnesses of the sensible rays that flow from all things, but other species also affect humans, and ‘show themselves to us principally in our imaginative spirit, just as they coalesce in a mirror, and act on us in a wondrous way’ (PA XIII). He concludes that these elemental and celestial sympathies establish and maintain an orderly continuity of natural occurrences throughout the universe and are the foundation of our knowledge of nature (PA CXVII). As with Roger Bacon and Al-Kindı¯’s work on divine rays, ‘species’ are the hidden forms of essences, while ‘virtues’ are active powers that enable these species to impress themselves upon and change things. Although ‘species’ have a broad spectrum, and range from the overtly observable to the completely occult, the most important species are also the most recondite. The most hidden species are the basis for the world, even the soul of the world, for ‘the insensible and intelligible rays of the planets are to the sensible rays as is the soul of something to its body’ (PA CXI). This is apparent in the human soul itself, which like ‘the specific form of every separate thing, has far more [in number] and more excellent virtues and operations than either the body itself or the same thing’s master’ (PA CX). Clulee cautions the reader that Dee’s world is not animistic in the spiritual sense: ‘just as the human soul, though non-spiritual and mortal but also unseen, orders and motivates the behaviour of the body, so these occult species order and excite the phenomena of nature’.167 In the penultimate aphorism, Dee affirms an assertion which he attributes to Hermes Trismegistus, ‘Nothing happens to humans without cosmic sympathy’ (PA CXIX). As well as studying Al-Kindı¯ and Robert Grosseteste, Dee was especially attracted to Roger Bacon’s ideas, for example in his Letter on the Secret Operations of Arts and Nature and his treatise On Burning Mirrors. In the preface to the Aphorisms Dee states that he had written an apology for Bacon, called The Mirror of Unity, where Dee showed that Bacon ‘did nothing by the aid of demons but was a great philosopher and accomplished naturally and by ways permitted to a Christian man the great works which the unlearned crowd usually ascribes to the acts of demons’ (PA p. 117). Dee would have found Bacon’s summary view quite congenial (at least at the time): an illegitimate version of magic that employed the aid of demons was to be rejected in favor of a legitimate version that made skilful use of 164 165 166 167

Clulee 1988 p. 42. Clulee 1988 p. 252 note 19. On the PA, see Harkness 1999 pp. 71–77; Clulee 1988 pp. 42–52. Clulee 1988 p. 46.

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occult natural forces as instruments for achieving the scientist’s aims. Dee also adopted Bacon’s thesis about multiplication of species and the idea that mathematics was the most important science for understanding natural laws.168 The text of Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) is very strange indeed, even by the eccentric standards of contemporary magical treatises.169 The entire short book is devoted to an explication of the sigil that appears on the title page. Dee demonstrates in twenty-four quasi-Euclidean theorems how the device was geometrically constructed and then its disassembled components are shown to have cosmological, astronomical, numerological, alchemical, magical and mystical meanings. For the author, the sacred sign of the Monas represented the unity of created nature and the unity of hidden knowledge about nature. In the dedicatory letter Dee declares that this work has ‘great rarity and remarkable quality’, that its readers will want ‘to expend intense studies and work, examining its depths’, in order to discover the ‘great secret and philosophical treasures’ contained within it. At the start of his expert and patient analysis of the Monas, Clulee confesses that the text is ‘exceptionally opaque and has remained largely unintelligible to modern commentators who consider it a professional responsibility to grant that it must mean something, yet may be inclined to sympathize with Meric Casaubon’s confession that [he could] extract no sense nor reason (sound or solid) out of it; neither yet doth it seem to me very dark or mystical’.170 Dee’s encomium on the great rarity of this work is laid out in a grand metaphor about the two paths that confront the student of nature: one leads to pleasure and the other to wisdom, truth and science. The earthly path leads to hell (abyssus) and has three grades of rarity – cares (solicitudo), deceit (fraus), and force (vis) – the number who reach each grade stands in the ratio of ten to one, and is presided over by tyranny. The path to wisdom is presided over by the spiritual and it too has three grades: the philosopher corresponds to the element water and knows the truths of natural science; the wise one corresponds to the element air and knows the celestial intelligences, as well as the reasons for the rise, condition and decline of all things; the adept corresponds to the element fire, one who aspires to an understanding of the super-celestial virtues and metaphysical influences.171 These measures of philosophical rarity amount to a new manner of writing that has never been used before and that brings mathematical clarity to the various sciences. Dee’s basic idea that sacred writing contains the secrets of a universal science (or discipline, mathesis) is derived from his study of the Hebrew Kabbala, which Dee described as the Kabbala of what-is-said, which he wanted to distinguish from the Kabbala of that-which-is. The real Kabbala that he proposes for the reformation of all sciences involves the combined disciplines of magic, medicine, scrying, alchemy and adeptship.172 The alchemical work that Dee endorses is an inward path to mystical knowledge of God; it is a metaphor for the human soul’s salvation through its 168 On Dee’s relation to Bacon, see Harkness 1999 pp. 72–4; Heilbron, ‘Introduction’ to Shumaker 1978 pp. 62–70; Clulee 1988 pp. 64–6, 171–4. 169 On the Monas, see Harkness 1999 pp. 77–90; Clulee 1988 pp. 77–115. 170 Clulee 1988 pp. 77–8; Debus 1977 vol. I pp. 44–6; Josten 1964 pp. 84–90. 171 Clulee 1988 p. 81; Josten 1964 pp. 90–92. 172 Clulee 1988 pp. 83–5; Harkness 1999 pp. 84–90.

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liberation from material impurities and ascent to heaven. Although this might not have been a common interpretation of the alchemical work, it was one that Dee found in the writings of Abbot Trithemius. Through his readings in the early 1560s Dee came to appreciate Trithemius’ view that alchemy is an analogy for the inner transformation of the soul and its ascent to communion with the divine.173 The human mind has a natural affinity with the super-celestial realm: it begins with ordinary knowledge but then requires divine illumination to grasp the mysteries of magic necessary for the complete ascent of the soul that endows the magus with complete knowledge of all the sciences. Dee annotated a medieval commentary on Pliny’s Natural History at a passage which describes a three-tiered cosmos – terrestrial, celestial and super-celestial; Dee wrote the word adeptiva in the margin next to a description of the soul carried off and drawn by God into himself.174 Since the progression from body to soul is related in this scheme to the alchemical process, it is likely that the mystical ascent of the soul is intended as an analogue to alchemical transformation. It is even suggested that ‘the alchemical process is in some way the medium through which the ascent of the soul is accomplished. When discussing the monas as a magical parable in which a terrestrial body is united with solar and lunar influence, Dee says that he [who has] fed the monas will first himself go away into a metamorphosis.’ In the context of the reformed Kabbala and Trithemius’ rendition of the soul’s ascent the restoration of the monas to itself after it has been dissected is intended to be the attainment of the integrated knowledge of the cosmos that is preliminary to divine rapture rather than an actual alchemical experiment in the laboratory. Rather than being about alchemy, or astronomy, or magic, the Monas is a gnostic work in which mystical ascent to and knowledge of God is an integral part of and the culmination of the attainment of an integral knowledge of the cosmos.175

Dee’s Mathematical Preface to Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (1570) is often cited by those scholars concerned to show Dee’s more modern tendencies toward the scientific revolution.176 It bears favorable comparison with Francis Bacon’s betterknown The Advancement of Learning (1606) because, in addition to his advocacy of experimental method and practice, Dee also claimed that mathematics had central theoretical importance for understanding the workings of natural laws. Dee’s motives for issuing an English translation of the most venerable of all mathematical texts were laudable: not only would its study improve the preparation of students for their university studies, but it would also benefit artisans, technicians and amateurs who did not attend university. In his lengthy Preface, Dee was also able to promote his own view of how mathematics could make better sense of some of the mysteries of nature. Human beings, he averred, are midway between the realm of matter and the realm of spirit, and mathematics is ideally suited to humans’ purposes because it is midway between the natural and the supernatural. Knowledge of mathematics can lead the human mind to ascend to the contemplation of spiritual things, as well 173 174 175 176

On Dee’s view of Trithemius, see Clulee 1988 pp. 110–14, 218–20, 136–9. Clulee 1988 p. 112. Clulee 1988 p. 114. See Harkness 1999 pp. 91–7; Debus 1977 pp. 41–5.

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as to descend to conclusions about the natural world and the construction of useful inventions.177 Mathematical operations are concerned with number and magnitude: a number is a sum of units or monads, where the units are ideal indivisible entities, and where numbering is the mental union of these units into an idea of quantity. Magnitude is an idea according to which things are judged in terms of quantity; it is rendered by a line which is itself composed of indivisible points; a line is produced by the motion of a point. Mathematical things are completely abstract and devoid of material stuff; they are intermediary between natural and supernatural things. Natural things are material, compounded, divisible, corruptible and changeable; whereas supernatural things are immaterial, simple, indivisible, incorruptible and unchangeable. Mathematical entities, ‘since they can be signified by material things and are capable of division and aggregation, are not as simple or absolute as supernatural things, yet they differ from material things because their forms are immaterial and constant’.178 Mathematical entities have formal reality since they exist in the mind of the creator, and rational reality since they exist in spiritual or angelic minds, as well as in the human soul. But, unlike the formal exemplars, mathematical entities in their rational existence are not creative, although in other respects they are like divine ideas. Mathematical knowledge in its rational existence has an intermediary status between knowledge of natural things, dependent on sense perception, and knowledge of supernatural things, which are directly and immediately grasped by the mind: ‘Mathematical knowledge is the product of the understanding, which makes use of sensible images in the imagination but extracts from them what is purely formal and elaborates a knowledge of these things that yields the certainty of truths derived from “perfect demonstration”. Mathematics thereby shares some of the limitations of sense knowledge and some of the perfection of pure intellection.’ In any case, humans’ share in such knowledge shows that it provides a glimpse of divine wisdom and the means ‘to ascend and mount up, with speculative wings, in spirit, to behold in the glass of creation, the form of forms, the exemplar number of all things numerable, both visible and invisible, mortal and immortal, corporeal and spiritual’.179 The Neo-Platonist Proclus’ view of the three cosmic levels and the purchase that mathematics made on hidden things influenced Dee in many ways: ‘If in Proclean fashion understanding the structural realities of nature results from projecting upon natural things the mathematical ideas of the mind, the model of intension and remission based on the infinitely divisible magnitudes of Euclidean geometry and manipulated arithmetically in non-Euclidean fashion as numbers rather than as proportions may have taken precedence over philosophical commitments to the invisibility of forms.’180 Further, ‘the mystical and magical dimension of mathematics seem to be sanctioned by the third dimension of Proclus’ philosophy in which mathematics 177 Clulee 1988 p. 149; on his expertise in math, see Heilbron’s Introduction in Shumaker 1978 pp. 16–34. 178 Clulee 1988 p. 150; see Debus (ed.) 1975. 179 Quote from MP in Clulee 1988 p. 151. 180 Clulee 1988 pp. 165–6; and see Harkness 1999 pp. 93–4.

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serves in the intellectual ascent to “knowledge incomparable and heavenly wisdom” through knowledge of the supernatural, the eternal and the divine. The mathematical philosophy that Dee articulated in the Preface thus may well represent his attempt to integrate the range of his previous work, all of which he considered mathematical, within a coherent framework.’181 In his vision of a universal science that embraced all particular sciences, Dee did not follow Proclus but Roger Bacon in conceiving of this as ‘archemastrie’. Dee considered archemastrie the sovereign science because it builds upon and extends all other arts and sciences, through its use of ‘experiences’. In addition to the ordinary sense of experience as first-hand observation of natural phenomena, Dee also included ‘interior illuminations’ such as divine inspiration and mystical rapture. Archemastrie investigates through direct observation what other sciences reach only by the process of reason, but it also has the power to investigate nature through the acquisition of knowledge about the past, present and future.182 In summary, as Harkness declares, Dee considered his archemastrie to be the unification of all branches of natural philosophy into a single discipline that explored the propagation of rays, employed mathematical aspects of optics, depended upon astrology to capture astral radiation, and utilized a highly refined stone resulting from an alchemical experiment. When used together, these natural philosophical skills and techniques would raise the natural philosopher from the contemplation of transitory terrestrial conditions to a state of communication with celestial truths.183

In the last decade of his life, the lonely, obsessive figure of John Dee stands at a summit of magical science, gazing deep into the past to discern the distant line of pristine wisdom, something he thought that Roger Bacon had been privy to. He is a younger contemporary of Francis Bacon, whose Janus-like figure also stands at the inception of the scientific revolution, and who also looks backward for insight and guidance to assist in his forward-looking projects. (4) The magical soul in the Early Modern Period In this final section we will consider some of the principal figures in the last phase of the development of the magical view of the human soul. It is in this period that Hermetic, occult and magical ideas merge with, or are considered compatible with, advances in the scientific understanding of the natural world and humans’ place in it. Francis Bacon’s career is an obvious candidate to begin such an investigation. Bacon (1561–1626) was a politician, jurist, councillor and natural scientist, who spent his entire life within the highest political, courtly and intellectual circles around Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Bacon wrote on a wide variety of topics, but often due to the pressures of office was unable to carry through his ambitious plans. He made his first literary mark with the Essays and Counsels, Moral and Civil (1596) which continued to accumulate entries in the second edition 181 182 183

Clulee 1988 p. 170. Clulee 1988 pp. 170–71. Harkness 1999 p. 96.

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(1612) and third edition (1625). Two of his most popular books, The Advancement of Learning (1606) and The Wisdom of the Ancients (1609), were followed by the publication of several parts of his Instauratio Magna, ‘The Great Setting-Forth’, which included the Novum Organum (1620), the revised and expanded version of The Advancement of Learning in Latin, called De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), and various portions of The Natural and Experimental History; two of his other major works, Sylva Sylvarum and New Atlantis did not appear until after his death. The most concentrated places where Bacon discussed human nature, the functions of the soul, and the mental faculties are in The Advancement of Learning (Book II, chapters ix–xii), De Augmentis Scientiarum (Book IV), The History of Life and Death, and the unpublished manuscript titled De Viis Mortis. At the center of Bacon’s picture of scientific knowledge are the doctrines of enumerative induction, hidden forms and maker’s knowledge. In the notion of hidden forms he revived an old idea, that it is the inner form which gives a thing its true nature. These occult forms are the simple constituents of matter and, though there are only a small number of them, they can be combined in an infinite number of ways, like the letters of an alphabet which can be combined to generate a vast number of words. Bacon’s most basic classification of spirits characterized them in terms of fundamental dichotomies, such as dense-rare, solid-liquid, crude-fat, similar-dissimilar, and so forth. These were the ‘material schematisms’ which comprised an idea-complex, in Rees’s words, whose potential would be most fully realized in Part Four of the Great Instauration: ‘The two halves of the complex become an exhaustive survey of all the natures and motions which would, when thoroughly investigated, provide a complete body of “abstract physics”, whence would come knowledge of the letters of the alphabet necessary for constructing the syllables, words, and sentences of the new philosophy.’184 The aim of Bacon’s entire project was, in his own words, ‘an inquisition of forms’, a trial-like inquiry that leads to works, the fruits of experimental procedures. The canon of basic physical properties is the discovery of those true forms which are ‘nothing more than those laws and determinations of absolute actuality which govern and constitute any simple nature’. An integral actor in Bacon’s overall picture, the Creator moves the created world in a cryptic manner; the surface language of the sensible properties of all things conceals a secret code, which the scientist must decipher in order to interpret the latent language. The new learning which Bacon proposed in several programmatic works endorses secrecy, an adept’s privileged knowledge, and this knowledge is best expressed through aphorisms and riddles: ‘God’s encryption of the world is an enigma, and its maker is hidden to all but those who can discover the signs of God’s wisdom by suffering the scourging of their vanities in the sweet ordeal of Solomonic inquiry.’185 In the opening of the Novum Organum Bacon declared that ‘human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed, and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule’ (NO I §1). One can only command natural material and forces in order to shape them into works insofar as one has already understood the deeper 184 185

Rees in Bacon 1996 p. lxiv; Dear in Garber & Ayers 1998 pp. 153–6. Briggs 1989 p. 9.

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structure of hidden forms. In addition, the object of theoretical insight has its own causal dynamics which must be strictly followed in practical terms in order to (re)make the object of one’s own purposes. Francis Bacon’s scientific interest in the ways in which knowledge is acquired probably induced him to classify learning in terms of the faculties through which humans actually come to grips with the world.186 In De Augmentis Scientiarum he declares that ‘the best division of human learning is that derived from the three faculties of the rational soul, which is the seat of learning: history has reference to the memory, poesy to the imagination, and philosophy to reason’ (Aug. Sc. 2.1). Bacon held an avowedly Aristotelian picture of the soul as the first actuality of the living body, that is, the principle of life, and further distinguished two souls in human beings: the rational soul present only in humans, and the irrational soul, which humans share with animals. He was convinced that there was a radical difference between human and animal behaviour: ‘there are many and great excellencies of the human soul above the soul of brutes’. Wherever these criteria are observed there is a difference in kind and not just in degree (Aug. Sc. 4.3). The rational soul sprang from the breath of God, where Scripture said that God made human from the dust of the earth, and breathed into him the breath of life. On the other hand, the irrational soul was brought about according to another Scriptural verse where it said that the water and the earth bring forth. In other words, the rational soul (or inspired substance) derives from God’s breath, the whole human from earth and water (the elements). Bacon thought that the animal soul must clearly be regarded as a corporeal substance and hence was material. He attempted to make a further distinction between the senses of God’s breath: insofar as the soul was breath-like ‘it was attenuated and made invisible by heat; [it was] a breath compounded of the natures of flame and air, having the softness of air to receive impressions, and the vigour of fire to propagate its actions’. The breath-like soul was ‘clothed with the body’ and resided ‘chiefly in the head, running along the nerves, and refreshed and repaired by the spiritous blood in the arteries’ (Aug. Sc. 4.3). In an even more lapidary statement he said that, ‘the mind itself is a kind of divine power’ (NO II §16). Bacon rejected Paracelsus’ overlay of alchemical imagery when he interpreted the Genesis account of creation in several stages, but ‘with the religious language amputated the phantom limb still aches’ (as Rees says). He argued that Sacred Scripture should not be defended when its statements went against the findings of natural science: ‘Theological respectability could not persuade him to adopt a theory [but] lack of respectability was always sufficient for him to reject one. Thus what was fundamental in nature was first in the order of Creation; what was first in the order of Creation was recorded in the book of Genesis; what Genesis said about the Creation acted as constraints on natural-philosophical explanation.’187 In addition to Paracelsus, Bacon had competent knowledge of recent work in chemistry by Isaac Hollandus, Oswald Croll, George Agricola and Basil Valentine;188 he was familiar with the Christian Kabbala and the Sylva Sylvarum drew heavily on Della Porta’s 186 187 188

Olivieri 1991 pp. 61–81. Rees in Bacon 1996 p. li. On Bacon’s view of alchemy, see esp. Linden 1974 pp. 547–60.

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Magia Naturalis. He disabused the fashionable reliance of scientific writers on Aristotle’s texts, and instead preferred Democritus the ancient atomist (although he sometimes rejected the theory of atomic constituents); in his cosmology he drew on Telesio, Campanella and Alpetragius.189 Unlike some of his contemporaries, Bacon was far more interested in the behavior and function of the rational soul than he was in its substance or nature. The rational soul is never at rest, even when the body which houses it appears to be at rest. The functions of the rational soul involve movement, and hence the soul’s specific powers designate types of the soul’s activities: understanding, reason, imagination, memory and will.190 He thought that these specific powers were innate and inherent in the human soul and that they were best studied from the point of view of their source in the spiritual substance of human beings. Although one can consider the soul and the body as separate subjects of inquiry, he preferred to carry out an investigation on undivided human nature, that is, on human as a person. He did not attempt to label or define the ‘league’ between soul and body, but left it as obvious that there was a connection of mutual influence. He said that ‘the lineaments of the body and the notions and gestures of the countenance disclose the dispositions and inclinations of the mind in general’ (Aug. Sc. 4.1). Overt bodily behavior, as well as gestures and facial expressions, were reliable signs (provided one knew how to read them) of mental states. He conjectured that if there were sufficient and precise information about human behavior, both in general terms and with regard to each individual, it would be possible to systematize an art of prediction for personal beliefs and actions.191 The influence between the soul and body was mutual and hence worked the other way as well – bodily states brought about mental states: ‘The humours and temperament of the body alter and work upon the mind’ and ‘the passions and apprehensions of the mind work upon the body’ (Aug. Sc. 4.1). In addition to life-force and sensation, the distinctively human form of soul includes understanding, reason and will: ‘The types of movements by which the rational soul discharges its distinctive function are known as faculties of the mind.’192 The breath-like character of the irrational soul meant that it should properly be called spirit; but further, this spirit was the instrument and chief organ of the rational soul. Bacon made an important, and now common, distinction between ‘spirit’ (sing.) and ‘spirits’ (pl.) The principal organs in the human body were its parts and these were organized and controlled by the spirits: ‘the nature of spirits is, as it were, the master-wheel which turns the other wheels in the body of man’. His vitalist view of spirits is consequent on his twofold view of matter: on one hand matter is composed out of particles, which are ‘the last term or smallest portion’, it is ‘a body without vacuity’. But matter could also mean spirits, or perhaps one might say, all material things contain spirits. Hence, as Wallace says, ‘the material world consisted of body stuff and spirit stuff, made up of bits of matter so small that they were inaccessible to man’s senses’.193 The ubiquitous spirits comprised in all material 189 190 191 192 193

Partington 1961 pp. 393–4; Rees in Bacon 1996 pp. xxxvi–xl. Wallace 1967 p. 18. Vickers in Peltonen 1996 pp. 214–22. Wallace 1967 p. 22. Wallace 1967 p. 24.

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things were lifeless, though not motionless; only the vital or animate spirit in living things provided its life-force. The dominant element in lifeless spirits is air; they are diffused in the substance of the human body, in the flesh, bones, membranes, organs, and so forth. They are present in the human body not only during its life, but even after death in the corpse. In contrast, the dominant element in the vital spirit is fire, though it is conjoined with the infused breath; it seems to be ‘a mysterious combination of flameous and aerial nature’. However, here the difference between lifeless spirits and vital spirit is one of degree, not kind, since even the lifeless spirits possess this flameous component. In The History of Life and Death and elsewhere he stated that ‘inanimate bodies have their spirits no whit inflamed or kindled’, and that ‘the inflammation of the vital spirits [sic] is gentler by many degrees than the softest flame’.194 The flame-like material of the spirits helped to account for an object’s motion that otherwise is imperceptible to observers. On Bacon’s strange view, the spirits’ intrinsic heat literally swelled and pushed out the material particles in things, and hence gave each thing its shape and figure. Further, the lifeless spirits can separate from each other and become surrounded by, or engulfed in, the other material parts of both animate and inanimate things. The vital spirit must remain ‘integral with itself’, that is, each ‘part’ must be continuous with other ‘parts’, spreading out through the body in channels. Although this may seem the same as the medicalanatomical notion of animal spirits, Bacon wants to distinguish them (NO II §27). He says that ‘the principal seat of the [vital] spirits is doubtless in the head, and though this is commonly referred only to the animal spirits, yet it applies to all.’Yet another distinction between lifeless spirits and vital spirits is that the former feed on organic material adjacent to them (and hence lead to corruption and disease), whereas the latter are self-subsistent and contribute to the health of the whole being (NO II §40). According to Graham Rees, Bacon applied this idea to the three classes of living beings: (1) inanimate objects possessed inanimate spirits dispersed in discontinuous portions, (2) vegetable bodies have these spirits and vital spirits organized in a network of branching channels, and (3) animals have discontinuous inanimate and branching vital spirits, but their branching spirits are connected to one cell which is their senate or university.195 In the section of The History of Life and Death called ‘The Porches of Death’, he argues that the living spirit requires three things for its subsistence, although this seems to negate the very idea of self-subsistence. First, it must have room to move according to its nature, especially when it passes through the ventricles of the brain. Second, although its own nature is flame-like, its condition for movement is more cold than hot, and respiration provides the proper refrigeration. Third, the body in which it is resident must be nourished and healthy, and thus ‘fit’ for the vital spirit to operate. Therefore, Bacon avers, ‘a man may easily believe that the living spirit subsists in identity, and not by succession or renovation’. This seems to mean that in each person the vital spirit is one thing which endures over the continuous life of the individual. Its vital force does not increase or decrease, like a candle-flame, ‘perpetually generated and extinguished and of no sensible duration’. However, the 194 195

Wallace 1967 p. 23. Rees in Bacon 1996 p. lvii; Rees in Peltonen 1996 pp. 137–41.

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vital spirit must not be confused with the rational soul which ‘is not propagated, nor subject to either repair or death’. The vital spirit in fact has a special affinity for the organic body and abhors leaving the body, even at death; ‘it has no connaturals near at hand’ and even when it rushes to the body’s extremities when it desires some outer thing, ‘it is loath to go forth’. The lifeless spirits, on the other hand, want to multiply, to generate more of their own kind; they are not content to remain in the body but want to join their own kind in the ambient air.196 In conclusion, ‘Bacon seems to think that the vital spirit is some sort of force-carrying, or force-bearing, substance without which no animal or human activity is possible. Perhaps the notion of “vehicle” fits here. If so, we are reminded of one of Bacon’s more general philosophical tenets, “the efficient cause is nothing else than the vehicle of the form”.’197 He thought that sense organs were passive instruments of the vital spirit, where different organs modify the spirit’s motions to produce five species of sensation. The vital spirit takes the altered impression through the nerves to the cerebral cell in the brain. From there the impression travels to an area of concentrated spirit called the sensus communis which synthesizes the sense-specific images and passes the resultant image to the memory. In order for voluntary movement to take place the image in memory travels to the imagination. Alterations of the imaginative spirit promote alterations in the spirits along the nerves and sinews which bring about gross bodily movement. Reason could be seen in action when it grasped a single thing and thus moved in a non-discursive manner; but reason also moved in a discursive manner when it formed symbols and manifested its thoughts in speech. Bacon’s exposition of the multiple functions of the intellect echoes the standard model of three terms: passive intellect, potential (or possible) intellect and active intellect. The principal function of the intellect as a whole was to abstract: when it abstracted qualitative features from experience the intellect combined them into forms, and when it did so it made experience intelligible. The understanding responded to the formal aspects of nature and yet it could not grasp pure form; only to God, ‘the architect of forms, and maybe to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation … [but] this is assuredly more than a human can do’ (NO II §15). Bacon did not speculate very much about the ‘nature’ of human understanding; when he spoke of ‘materials laid up in the understanding’ he may have been referring to the passive intellect, but he may have been referring to the memorial power. The genuine activity of human understanding was inferred from the behaviour of language-using animals. Speech is evidence of the intellect’s abstractive powers, and on Bacon’s view, words were analogous to things, and things analogous to reason. Things became objects of intellect through signs, words, letters, real characters, hieroglyphs, and so forth. They are the currency of intellectual exchange, where words are the images of thoughts. Speech made ideas tangible to sense, and words were regarded as responses to mental activity. If the edifice of natural science were to be built on solid foundations, the understanding must produce clear and 196 197

Rees in Bacon 1996 pp. lv–lvi, lxii. Wallace 1967 pp. 26–8; see esp. Fattori 1984 pp. 79–92.

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accurate ideas: ‘words are the tokens and signs of notions. Now if the very notions of the mind – which are as the soul of words and the basis of the whole structure – be improperly and over-hastily abstracted from the facts, vague not sufficiently definite, faulty in short in many ways, the whole edifice tumbles’ (NO I §59–60). Bacon’s attempt at an all-embracing system of knowledge was eclectic to a fault. It grew and matured as [he] raided disparate traditions for attractive tidbits which he refashioned as a curious hybrid which embodied some very peculiar alliances of ideas … The outcome of [his] dialogue with past and present was a philosophy combining a theory of the structure of the universe based on Paracelsian cosmogony with ideas about celestial motion derived from an Arab Aristotelian.198 At its heart was a theory of matter which owed much to the doctrine of the tria prima and Renaissance pneumatology … Its scope became universal, capable (in principle) of dealing with everything from microscopic subtleties to the macrocosmic phenomena of the universe.199

From about 1612 Bacon began to use the three-zone model of the universe derived from Bernard Telesio in conjunction with an Arabic-Aristotelian kinematics as the framework to build a chemical theory of matter. In works from this period the universe is pictured as a finite plenum with the earth at the center; the earth consists almost entirely of dense, passive, sluggish tangible matter. The rest of the universe, including the heavens, contains weightless, invisible, active pneumatic matter. The interior of the earth is the realm of homogenous, immobile tangible matter, whereas the earth’s crust forms part of the ‘frontier zone’ between the stable core and the pure celestial regions. The frontier zone reaches some miles into the crust and some miles into the middle region of the air. Only in this zone does pneumatic matter mix with tangible matter; this mixture is the origin of most terrestrial phenomena.200 Bacon’s matter theory adopted some of the basic tenets of Paracelsus’ idea that elements were not simple bodies but rather matrices which generated kinds of objects specific to its source: ‘The matrices were composite bodies devoid of any qualities; they were receptacles where the seeds of things were hatched and endowed with their distinctive qualities by the three principles’, that is, sulphur, mercury and salt. However, Bacon’s novel interpretation of this scheme differed from the received Paracelsian view on three points: (1) the nature of various entities in matter theory, (2) the status of celestial kinematics, and (3) the relationship between Holy Writ and natural philosophy. Rees says that the most striking feature of Bacon’s reworking of Paracelsian cosmogony was his refusal explicitly to represent the Creation as a separative process whereby the Divine Alchemist extracted the principles, seeds and elements of things from Chaos. Bacon stripped Paracelsian materials from their Scriptural context and did not try to legitimize cosmological doctrines by representing them as infallible readings of Genesis.

Bacon believed that natural philosophy belonged to the realm of rational inquiry into the natural principles of things and not to the realm of faith by way of revealed 198 199 200

Rees identifies him as Alpetragius (fl. 1185–1217) in Bacon 1996 pp. xxxviii–xl. Rees in Bacon 1996 p. xxxvii. Rees in Bacon 1996 p. xlii.

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doctrines about things: ‘Natural philosophy was not to be invaded by revealed theology, but was never the less an activity bounded by it, and any theory that seemed to violate the boundaries was ipso facto suspect.’201 Perhaps no other thinker in the history of modern ideas since the scientific revolution has provoked such incompatible and biased assessments as has Bacon in the four centuries since his death. The seventeenth century praised and imitated him, the eighteenth century glorified him as the precursor of the French Enlightenment, while the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen great efforts to debunk his ideas and deride his name. In Nieve Matthews’ summary, Bacon is dubbed an atheist and hailed as a religious thinker; acclaimed for his prophetic insights in natural history, his grasp of logic, his theory of forms and his powerful imagination; while at the same time he is decried for his ignorance of natural history and basic logic, his absurd theory of forms and his entire lack of imagination.202 But throughout his long and varied life he persisted in his efforts to come to understand how to lengthen and improve life for everyone. In Rees’ succinct summary: Bacon wanted to leave no stone unturned in the search for means to prolong life. The upshot was a kind of practical, bet-hedging eclecticism coupled with a measure of intellectual ‘slippage’ forgivable in one struggling to escape from received ideas … Bacon’s vital spirit resembles the innate heat of Aviccenan tradition to the extent that it is both warm and the essence of life … Likewise, Bacon’s inanimate spirit has affinities … with Neo-Platonic, Paracelsian, and late 16th century pneumatism.

The theory has affinities with Renaissance concepts of spiritus as developed by Paracelsus, Ficino and Telesio. Moreover, ‘Bacon’s animate and inanimate spirits do not stand alone. They belong to a theory of matter which, whatever the intellectual antecedents of its parts, was unique to him … The concepts of vital and inanimate spirit limited or delimited a theory of matter which was itself a systematization and transformation of borrowings of an initially eclectic character.’203 The figure of Robert Fludd is like the reverse image of Francis Bacon; Fludd is more concerned with drawing the magical past into the present than using the magical view to move forward in scientific understanding. Fludd (1574–1637) was an authentic Renaissance character: an alchemist, astrologer and Kabbalist, he was also an eminent physician and accomplished musician. The descendent of a noble family from Kent, he attended Oxford University (1592–98) where he became acquainted with Neo-Platonic and alchemical ideas in the course of his arts studies. He traveled on the continent for several years and wrote various short tracts on geomancy, astrology, the art of memory and some of the early sections of his history of the macrocosm. He returned to Oxford in 1604 (or 1605) where he gained the Doctor of Medicine degree and license to practice: Fludd was one of the few university-trained physicians in the Elizabethan period. He was an active member of the newly formed College of Physicians in London and, although he was sometimes criticized for his unusual beliefs in Paracelsian remedies, he held a solid reputation. Rees in Bacon 1996 p. xliv–xlviii. Matthews 1996 p. 10. 203 Rees in Bacon 1996 p. lxix; on theories of matter, see Copenhaver and Schmitt 1992 pp. 303–28. 201 202

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By 1614 Fludd had twenty years’ worth of manuscript material and was well established in medical practice. He felt compelled to express his critical opinions, however, upon the publication of the two best known Rosicrucian manifestoes, the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis. Fludd’s attention was drawn to the Rosicrucian ‘cause’ when he read Andreas Libavius’ Analysis of the Confession (1615); he whipped off a quick reply which was published at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1616 (an expanded version of Fludd’s apology appeared the next year).204 In 1617 Fludd published the first volume of his monumental History of the Microcosm and Macrocosm which dealt with the creation, structure and dynamics of the great world; it was followed the next year by the second volume, on humans’ activities as the ‘ape of nature’ (De naturae simia). But Fludd had made enemies, other ‘intellectuals’ envious of his success, who said that his works were heretical; called before King James I, Fludd defended himself so well that he gained royal patronage. Fludd had made contact with Michael Maier (c.1568–1622) one of the great Rosicrucian exponents and it was probably Maier who arranged for Fludd’s future works to be published by de Bry in Hesse.205 The engravers at the House of de Bry are responsible for the numerous superb illustrations to Fludd’s enormous folio-sized volumes. In an appendix to his Harmonices Mundi (1619), Johann Kepler attacked Fludd’s theory of cosmic harmony, to which Fludd replied in his Veritatis Proscenium in which he systematically rebutted Kepler’s objections point by point. Kepler continued the polemic the next year with his Pro suo opere harmonices mundi apologia, where the astronomer drew a crucial distinction between his own mathematical approach and Fludd’s alchemical-Hermetic approach. The final round in this polemic was Fludd’s Monochordium Mundi, appended to his mystical study of human anatomy, the Anatomiae Amphitheatrum.206 Fludd published further parts of his great history in 1621 and 1623 when he became involved in controversy with Marin Mersenne, who had viciously attacked Fludd’s ideas in his Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim. Mersenne said that Fludd was ‘an evil magician, a doctor and propagator of foul and horrendous magic, a heretical magician’.207 Fludd was shocked by such tactless, ill-informed vehemence from an eminent member of the French religious order and issued his counter-attack in 1629, Sophie cum moria certamen, in which he restores and defends his basic themes, as well as emphasizing that he (Fludd) had carefully separated false evil magic from natural good magic. Allen Debus commented that ‘convinced of the truth of his own views and appalled by the acidity of Mersenne’s attack, Fludd could only conclude that it was the nature of his opponent to be violent, indeed insane’.208 Mersenne withdrew from the fray and asked one of his 204 Huffman 1988 pp. 15–20; Huffman 1992 pp. 14–24; Yates 1972 pp. 74–8; Debus 1977 vol. I pp. 206–20. 205 Huffman 1992 pp. 26–8; Huffman 1988 pp. 154–5; Yates 1972 pp. 70–80. 206 The Kepler-Fludd controversy was examined in a famous paper by the Jungian-inspired physicist Wolfgang Pauli, ‘The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler’ (1955); Pauli’s paper was further studied by Robert Westman in ‘Nature, art and psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler-Fludd polemic’, in Brian Vickers (ed.) 1984; see also Debus 1977 vol. I pp. 256–60. 207 Huffman 1992 pp. 62–5; Huffman 1988 pp. 31–2. 208 Debus 1977 vol. I p. 267; in general, pp. 260–78.

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close friends, Pierre Gassendi, to examine Fludd’s works, as well as those of his colleague William Harvey, and sort things out. The result was Gassendi’s own critique, Examen philosophiae (also known as Epistolica exercitatio). With both the Kepler and Mersenne controversies behind him, Fludd did not return to the still incomplete History of the Microcosm, but was deflected into another project, the Catholic Medicine, which appeared in four parts between 1629 and 1631. In his final years, poor Fludd was again the subject of several pamphlet attacks, to each of which he responded, with patience and detail.209 At his death he left incomplete yet another massive systematic treatise, the Mosaical Philosophy, Grounded upon the Essential Truth or Eternal Sapience, not published until 1659. According to Robert Fludd’s version of the creation within the eternal archetypal unity of God, there is a twofold principle which appears as polar opposites with contrary properties. The Nolunty of God is the principle that remains in potentiality, not willing, reserving itself within itself; it is expressed by darkness and privation, and is called the Dark Aleph. The Volunty of God is the principle of God in action or willing, expressed by the outpouring of life-giving light, and is called the Light Aleph. The result of these two opposite principles’ manifestation in this world is that there are two dimensions of existence: the dark side which brings discord, evil, cold, congelation, rest, death, privation and negation; and the light side which brings concord, goodness, heat, resolution, motion, life and position. This is not the same sort of scheme as the Manichean coeval principles of good and evil, since on Fludd’s view the two contrary principles remain aspects of God’s overall unity, to which they will return at the end of days. However, there is also a distant echo of the NeoPlatonic triad of procession, remaining and return.210 Before the act of creation itself Fludd posits an uncreated prime matter which he also calls Hyle¯ or Ain: This hyle¯ is mere nothing or puissance to be something; again we find that a thing in puissance or posse is far different from that which is act or esse, whereupon it follows that being the first matter … it is absolutely nothing in act. Now since all creation is the reducing of that which was never really before into act … it is to be considered consequently that creation is nothing else but an inactuation or reducing of nothing indeed into something.

Fludd also describes Hyle¯ as ‘an infinite mass or dark fog, as black as pitch, without any consideration of the least spark of light within it’ (Phil. Key 104). The first outpouring of divine light transforms the ‘void and inane darkness’ into a primeval chaos, dark and deformed in its exterior, but comprised by actual elements in the interior: After the apparition of God out of darkness the viscous spirits included in darkness, having embraced an infinite company of sparks and beams of light which penetrated into the dark abyss, turned immediately that mass of Hyle¯ or first matter into a chaos, which is

209 Huffman 1988 pp. 32–4; Huffman 1992 pp. 67–71; Copenhaver in Garber & Ayers 1988 pp. 463–5. 210 Huffman 1988 pp. 58–67.

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a rude and indigested matter in whose belly the five elements were so irregularly included that they jarred … and contended with one another impetuously. [Phil. Key 105]

Allen Debus points out that, in the Mosaical Philosophy, Fludd connected Aristotle’s prime matter, the Timaeus’ idea of hyle¯, Hermes’ umbra horrenda, Pythagoras’ symbolic unity and Hippocrates’ deformed chaos with the dark abyss of Moses on Mount Sinai.211 It should also be pointed out that here Fludd’s identification of the most basic stage of creation with the ‘dark abyss’ or ‘dark night’ of God brings his thoughts into close alignment with Pseudo-Dionysius’ negative theology. Another important aspect of Fludd’s cosmic scheme, according to Huffman, is the idea that God is ‘all in all’, that is, the divine spirit not only brought into being the created world, but continues to provide sustenance and multiplication at all levels of being.212 In Fludd’s rampantly syncretistic vision, this pervasive divine spirit is the same as what the Neo-Platonists called the World Soul, what the Kabbalists called Metatron, as well as the ‘divine mind’ and ‘emanation of the word’. It is that which provides the image and likeness of divine wisdom in all things. There is an entire chain of being which descends from the divine trinity on high through the nine orders of angels in the empyrean realm, the planets in the middle realm, and the elements in the lowest, earthly realm. Each stage is related to the other as the major harmonies of the monochord, that is, the double octave (4:1), octave (2:1), fifth (3:2) and fourth (4:3). Human being is structured in exactly the same way and the whole scheme is reconciled with the Kabbala.213 Fludd went to great pains to reproduce his vast multi-layered scheme in sumptuous engravings: one of the most famous shows the spiritual pyramid whose ‘ground’ in the heavens has full spirit and empty matter interpenetrating with the material pyramid whose ‘ground’ is in the earth with full matter and empty spirit. The great world and the little world are arranged around this axial order, with all the Kabbalist equivalents, the elementary array, the various planetary powers, and so forth.214 In the Philosophical Key, the author summarizes his highly detailed theory about human origins, a theory which clearly expresses the parallels between the greater and lesser worlds.215 In the first place, he says, humans were made from clay or dust, earth or ashes: And then the Demogorgon,216 burnished all over with sacred and eternal fire, drawing the dim curtains or dark tapestry of his high illuminated palace, attended by eternity and chaos, his two obedient and loyal vassals, did vouchsafe with loud majesty to respect and look on from above your senseless mould. And for your sake [he] did command chaos to discharge by abortion her troubled womb of Litigium,217 that after her purification she Debus 1977 vol. I p. 226. Huffman 1992 pp. 72–5. 213 Huffman 1988 p. 150. 214 Huffman 1988 p. 109. 215 Philosophical Key, Debus (ed.) 1979; see also Josten 1963 pp. 1–26. 216 Demogorgon, a hybrid of the Timaeus’ demiurge and the mythical gorgon, a second, crafter god; see Fludd’s ms. note, Huffman 1988 p. 197 note 30. 217 In a ms. note on this passage, Fludd says that Litigium was prone to debates (litigation), 211 212

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might conceive and bring forth a second fruit of a more worthy condition, that is to say, Pan or universal nature.

The creator persuades Chronos, the first-born of Eternity, to join with the ‘fair and humid’ Pan (=Nature) in order to set the whole world in order and provide everything necessary for human preservation. The resonance with Gnostic accounts of the production of primal human are clearly evident here: the two opposed principles, the second crafter god who sub-contracts several main tasks, the revolt of the dark force against nature as matrix, and so forth.218 The creator thought it necessary that this senseless mass of clay should have the ability to know about its divine origins: ‘Lastly apprehended in your benumbed sense that you behold this most high and mighty president of light, to impart unto those his first universal creatures and ministers a portion of his divine fire, which he breathed from his own nostrils to be infused into this deformed mass and senseless mould of yours to illuminate it’ (Phil. Key 23). Once the infusion of divine illumination occurs, ‘you immediately thereupon were from vile and senseless clay raised up a living, sensible, and reasonable creature, resembling the very image of that heavenly beam of light, by which you breathe and invest this angelical form and habit belonging to man’ (ibid.). The first human has a glimpse of the creator at the moment of the soul’s inspiration: ‘Behold the golden type of your creator, enthroned on the highest clouds, wafting upon the swift wings of the wind, who being accompanied with the many legions of angels … did draw the dark curtains of his cloudy pavilion over with the splendor of his presence, and so vanished quite out of sight, leaving you to the guiding and preservation of Nature and Time’ (ibid.). In the next scene of the cosmic drama, Pan (Nature) and Chronos (Time) address primal human: How infinitely are you obliged to the greatest monarch Demogorgon who by infusion of his sacred and never failing fire into your senseless and dead nostrils has framed you after his own image, and for your better safety in the accomplishment of a dangerous pilgrimage which you must enterprise in this wide and slippery world, he has ordained us as a double watch or guard upon your person, to defend you from the malice of Litigium, that spurious and abortive son to foul obscurity.219 [ibid.]

Nature then informs primal human that the creator has infused all his parts with musical sympathy so that his organs receive rhythmical and metrical action from his divine melody. Nature says that she was made to represent the ‘universal mass of watery spirit’ which the creator refined and sublimed by the ‘rectifying fire of his heavenly alchemy’. Through this process Nature has the glorious image of the creator impressed into her (its) substance in ‘bright characters’. The creator god also provided human with its spiritual structure: ‘he replenishes him with a supernatural splendor floating and swimming in the bright streams of the ethereal spirit’. Humans sought to ascend upwards with arrogance, and should be thought of as the prince of darkness, Huffman 1988 p. 197 note 31. 218 On the Gnostic background to Paracelsian ideas, see Walter Pagel, ‘Paracelsus and the Neoplatonic and Gnostic Tradition’, Ambix vol. 8 (1960) pp. 125–66. 219 There are obvious echoes throughout this text of Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmography.

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also have a vital soul for which Nature was directed to make a bodily temple from the grosser elements (air, water, earth and fire). In order that humans’ image should resemble the creator, Demogorgon decreed that, just as his chief dwelling is in the highest heaven, so also ‘the intellectual spark of my never-fading spiracle [will] inhabit the most eminent and capital region of this small world [the head]’. The vital spirit is housed in the heart from whence it can animate and vivify all the body’s members (Phil. Key 27). The celestial beams which guide the workings of the great world are replicated and reproduced in the human interior, where they form the bonds connecting organs. Fludd adopted Pico’s view of the true nature and stature of the magician, who is for both of them a servant of nature’s forces and not a contriver. Pico had said that a true magus ‘embraces the deepest contemplation of the most secret things and at last the knowledge of all nature. [The magus] calls forth into light as if from their hiding-places the powers scattered and sown in the world by the loving kindness of God; [he] does not so much work wonders as diligently serve as a wonder-working nature.’ And further, the magus ‘brings forth into the open the miracles concealed in the recesses of the world, in the depths of nature, and in the storehouses and mysteries of God, just as if she herself were their maker’.220 Pico’s idea of using natural magic to investigate the mysteries of sympathetic harmony in the universe nicely describes Fludd’s approach to exploring natural phenomena.221 Fludd thought that his alchemical studies warranted building an entire philosophy on them (as Huffman argues): ‘This most peerless Queen sitting most abstrusely in her central palace [the sun] feeds the composition of each of her three kingdoms, streaming forth the essence of her beams from the middle point unto the very skirts and margins thereof.’ These celestial beams form the bonds which hold the four elements of each kingdom in harmony: ‘the invisible fire of Zoroastes and Heraclitus, the essential ligament of the elements and that virtue of true comixtion which causes so complete a union amongst the four dissonant natures of every kingdom’ (Phil. Key 44). Universal Nature imprints the convenient character and form of every creature in his proper kind, whereby one thing is distinguished by an essential difference from another … And yet she is not many natures but indivisible and only one in number, governing like the very image of the general creator in all and over all; for as much as she being the life of all things is with the individual soul of the universe said to be in all and therefore in every part of the macrocosmic edifice. (Phil. Key 44)

Nature has chosen three pre-eminent ‘mansions’ in the three kingdoms wherein her greatest virtues are manifest: in the animal kingdom in the human body, in the vegetable kingdom in wheat, and in the mineral kingdom in gold. Through alchemical knowledge the human artist (the adept) can come to understand the inner and outer structures of all things: ‘By surveying of his most secret and hidden regions … quickly be taught in a true vision to know himself and to discern the highest heaven of his inward man, that is to say, the most intricate and central closet 220 221

Pico, Oration in CKR p. 247. Huffman 1988 p. 118–20.

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of his hidden spirit, in which the majestical presence of that intellectual beam has his residence, by whose sacred presence he excels and has command over the living creatures in this world’ (Phil. Key 45). The author admitted that he had never achieved an adept’s skill and confessed that he was afraid of this kind of high magic: ‘I profess myself to be ignorant of that excellent skill either to understand rightly those hidden mysteries or the regiment of that ethereal fire by which such glorious effects in nature may be accomplished and therefore am debarred and denied from entering into that straight path which conducts unto the vision and fruition of bliss.’ He compared himself to the mythical figure of Prometheus, punished by the gods for having stolen fire and given it to humans: ‘The sharp punishment of Prometheus has added terror unto my thoughts and deprived me of that hardness to steal any of this excellent fire from heaven; neither has my arrogance and unworthiness permitted me to obtain it from above through grace.’ And further, ‘piety, despair and dread of Jove’s displeasure commands me to forbear violently and vainly to attempt the winning and pulling of it by force from the adamantine skies, lest by the dent of a thunderbolt [he] should with the ambitious and audacious Typhon be buried in the bowels of the dark earth and with restless flames remain tormented for my rebellion’ (Phil. Key 45–6). Huffman comments on the importance of this confessional statement for understanding Fludd’s overall point of view: Whereas he thought it was possible for the ‘operator’ to achieve the wonder-working of the high Renaissance magus … he himself felt unable to attain this ability and had a great fear of the divine wrath for even attempting to gain it. Thus while he believed, as Ficino and Pico did, in the possibilities of high magic and the scheme of the universe that went with it, Fludd never involved himself with any kind of magical diagrams, ceremonies, incantations, purifications or the like. His magic was limited to the sympathetic natural magic of medical cures.222

Fludd’s omnivorous metaphysical system drew its strengths from the Renaissance revival of Neo-Platonic texts, the Hermetic corpus, an English version of the Kabbala and allegorical readings of the Old Testament. But without a belief in an all-encompassing angelic structure of the universe and Neo-platonic emanative harmony of that angelic structure, Fludd’s whole system collapses rather easily. The beauty of such a system lies in its being systematically all-encompassing, consistent throughout, in concord with many venerated ancient authors … and in its making man’s place in the whole scheme completely clear … Fludd’s system was also the epitome of the Renaissance ideal: to revive ancient texts and absorb the wisdom therein to purify every aspect of human society in order to relieve the present condition of ignorance and suffering.223

Although Fludd’s works were one of the boldest expressions and summations of this trend of thought, they reached their peak just as the intellectual milieu dramatically changed; like a star that burns its brightest just at the end of its life, Fludd’s ideas rapidly faded in the seventeenth century. 222 223

Huffman 1988 p. 120; see also Copenhaver in CHRP pp. 267–71. Huffman 1988 pp. 133, 168.

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Perhaps no other thinker epitomized the syncretistic approach to medicine, alchemy and Hermeticism better than van Helmont. Jan (or Johann) Baptista van Helmont (1579–1644) studied arts at Louvain University but did not accept a degree because, as he later said, he thought academic honors were a mere vanity.224 But he did attend the Jesuit School in Louvain where he studied the Kabbala and the works of Martin Del Rio who lectured in the subject of magic. From Del Rio’s lectures, in Thorndike’s words, ‘he only collected a harvest of empty stubble and poorest rhapsodies’.225 Van Helmont then turned to the study of various mystics, such as Johann Tauler (1290-1361) and Thomas à Kempis (1379–1471), and the study of medicine, reading the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna. He thought that his study of later medical writers was ‘altogether fruitless’ and donated 200 crowns worth of his books to the university students (though he later wished that he had just burned them). He toyed with the idea of joining the Capuchin order as the best route to Christian Stoicism, but his frail health put paid to that ambition: ‘He saw himself as an empty bubble (bulla) and recognized that stoicism had made him arrogant whilst lending an outward appearance of modesty.’226 He later claimed to have had mystical visions, in one of which he saw his own soul as a splendid crystal, and declared that all science and wisdom was a gift from God. After ten years of studious travel, in which he visited the Alps, Italy, Spain, France and England, he did take a degree in medicine in 1609. Famed as an adept in the magic arts, he refused offers of employment from the Elector of Bavaria and Emperor Rudolph II. For the next seven years he pursued his own researches into ‘pyrotechny’ and alchemy: ‘In stillness undisturbed by the sermonizing altercations of the scholastics, he set out to “unhinge” the works of nature and to lay bare her instruments.’ Chemical analysis, combined with meditation in front of an athanor, was his choice to achieve intellectual union with the occult forces and the divine power: ‘His endeavor was to make visible the invisible, which to him meant the real’, as Walter Pagel says.227 He rashly took part in a heated campaign by Jesuits (1617–25) against some Paracelsan tracts and came under the scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition, then with juridical powers in Belgium. In 1634 he was arrested and sent to the Franciscan prison in Brussels, but was shortly released upon the intervention of some powerful friends. Confined to his house when plague broke out, his family refused to leave him and two of his sons died. Some of his papers were confiscated and were thought lost until they were finally published almost two hundred years later. Shortly before his death he gave all his remaining papers to his son Francis Mercurius van Helmont and charged him with their publication. The finished collection known as the Ortus Medicinae was published four years after his death and went through several editions until 1707. One important collection, Opuscula Medica Inaudita, had been printed in Cologne (1644), the third edition is considered definitive (Amsterdam 1652). Some of his short treatises appeared in an English translation by Walter Charleton in 1650 224 Partington 1961 pp. 210–13; Thorndike HMES VII pp. 228–31; Pagel 1982 pp. 1–17; and Debus 1977 pp. 295–302. 225 Thorndike HMES VII p. 219. 226 Pagel 1982 p. 4. 227 Pagel 1982 p. 6. An athanor is an alchemist’s self-feeding digesting furnace.

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under the general title Three Treatises, also known as A Ternary of Paradoxes: these included On the Magnetic Cure of Wounds, the Nativity of Tartar in Wine and the Image of God in Man. A larger collection appeared in translation by John Chandler in 1662 under the general title Oriatrike, or Physick Refined: The Common Errors therein Refuted, and the Whole Art Reformed & Rectified. An important German translation by Knorr von Rosenroth, supervised by F. M. van Helmont appeared in 1683; something in which Leibniz took a great deal of interest.228 One of van Helmont’s contemporaries said that van Helmont was pious, learned and famous; he was called to patients who had been abandoned by other physicians and in a short time they were either cured or dead. Walter Pagel says that van Helmont’s contributions are many and varied: (1) the discovery of acid digestion in the stomach, (2) an appreciation of the function of bile for digestion in the intestines, (3) detailed description of the rhythmic movement of the visceral muscles, (4) recognition of the role of acid in inflammation and production of pus, (5) the association of the kidney with dropsy and oedema, (6) the denial of the existence of innate heat and radical humor, (7) recognition of the effect of silica dust in causing disease, (8) description of the variety of causes of bronchial asthma, (9) the introduction of aetiological therapy and new chemical remedies, (10) one of the first attempts at classification of diseases, (11) the refutation of putrefaction and decay of humors as causes of disease and fever, (12) rejection of bleeding as a curative technique, and (13) condemnation of strong purgatives.229 Although in his early works van Helmont showed the strong influence of Paracelsus and an admiration for his reform of medicine, in his later works he criticized him, and in others condemns the excesses of the Paracelsan approach.230 Van Helmont said that the common doctors sneered at chemistry as ‘smoke-seeking, delusive and false’, but, as a matter of fact, pyrotechny (fire-art) was unknown to Galen and had been concealed by the adepts under the Pythagorean oath of silence. He claimed that the alchemical fire-art had been engraved on stellae and was known to Pythagoras who revealed its secrets to select pupils. Van Helmont had himself contemplated the internal operations of the athanor until he received illumination. He thought that Paracelsus had been sent by God to show the way to the more profound preparation of medicines and had shown to van Helmont the true nature of diseases. He firmly believed in the power of alchemy to transmute mercury into gold by means of the philosopher’s stone given to him by a stranger whom he saw only once. He did not believe, as Paracelsus had done, that the stone was the elixir of eternal life, but claimed that he had made the universal solvent with which he had converted vegetables and even charcoal into water. In any case, his own son said that his father often boasted of more than he could perform.231 According to his overall scheme there are four forms of things. First is the essential form which belongs to things even with no signs of life, such as stone, metal, salt, sulphur, earth, dry bones, and so forth. Second is the vital form in those things which seem to contain their own life-force and are capable of feeding and 228 229 230 231

On their relation to Leibniz, see Coudert 2001 pp. 35–45. Pagel 1986 III p. 347 note; Partington 1961 p. 216. Pagel 1986 XII pp. 438–54. On his view of alchemy, Pagel 1982 pp. 74–6, 79–81; Partington 1961 pp. 218–19.

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growth. Third is the substantial form which occurs in those things that can move and sense. And fourth is the formal substance, the only genuine substance, which characterizes humans and angels insofar as they have minds. He criticized the prevalent view of the elements and rejected the usual four elements and three principles (salt, sulphur and mercury). He claimed instead that the primary element is water and repudiated the Aristotelian theory of prime matter. He endorsed the Hermetic notion that all metals consist of body and soul held together by spirit and that the three principles which are separated from such bodies are made by fire. The two genuine elements are water and air, neither of which can be converted into the other; fire is not a form of matter at all, and earth is formed from water.232 Van Helmont is also credited with introducing the word ‘gas’ into the chemical lexicon. In addition to the Aristotelian repertoire of watery vapour and dry vapour, he proposed a third vapour, smoke which is the sublimate of various metals, and a fourth, gas which is a ferment of a solid body.233 He says the windy spirit can neither be retained in vessels nor reduced to a visible form unless the seed from which it sprang was extinguished. Gas is not a volatile medium common to all things, but something in its own right. He believed that ‘he had discovered [it] in every being in nature, thereby substituting a visible, palpable, and weighable entity for the philosophical concept of the “soul” which is the realization, actuality or perfection of the body’. In summary, according to Walter Pagel: he rejects the role attributed to an imaginary ‘heat’ as the principle of life and generation, i.e. the emphasis laid on general and material as against specific and vital forces; he also opposes attempts at explaining natural phenomena by ontological concepts and mathematical patterns, i.e. by Entia Rationis as against really existing, visible and palpable entities endowed with ‘Life’ such as ‘Gas’ which he sees as the material vector of specificity, different in each individual being and not a substance of which all partake.234

Van Helmont derived the word ‘gas’, not from gäscht (froth) or geist (spirit), but from the Greek chaos, and distinguished five or six different kinds. Gas is contained in bodies as a concrete spirit which, once it has been fixed or coagulated, can be freed by fermentation as in wine, bread, and so forth. He also said that gases are composed of invisible atoms which coalesce when intense cold occurs and then condense into minute liquid drops. In contrast to gas, van Helmont also introduced the word ‘blas’ to designate the principle of stellar motion; it is a pulsing virtue, the reason for travel, according to place and aspect235 (blas motivum est virtus pulsiva, ratione itineris, per loca et secundum aspectus). The stars’ blas pours its influence upon the earth, causes events, but does not affect humans. He claims that wind is air moved by the stars’ blas and causes tidal movement. In addition to the stellar blas, another kind presides over and controls the functions of the human body; it regulates both voluntary and involuntary movements, metabolic changes and other organic functions.236 232 On his theory of the elements, Pagel 1982 pp. 43–6, 49–60; Partington 1961 pp. 222–3; Debus 1977 pp. 317–22. 233 On details of his ideas about gas, see Pagel 1982 pp. 60–76. 234 Pagel 1986 III pp. 386–7. 235 On details of his ideas about blas, Pagel 1982 pp. 87–92; Debus 1977 pp. 314–17. 236 Partington 1961 pp. 228–9.

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He also adopted and modified Paracelsus’ theory of the archeus, ‘a peculiar form of vitalism’. He classified the archeus according to a scale of spiritual control: the mind (mens) is divine and eternal; the sensitive soul (anima sensitiva) is the mortal life-force; the archeus influus is the interior architect; and the archei insiti (pl.) are the vital organic centers which he identified with local blases.237 The combination of matter and force in the body gives it life which exists in gradations from minimal life-force to the ultimate life-force. At the organism’s death, the archeus returns to the matrix of nature, and through the fermentation process, leads to new life. The archeus influus is not the soul itself but the soul’s organ and resides in the stomach and spleen. It rules the archei insiti (local blas) by means of its active powers which bring about ferments in the solid and fluid parts, impressing on them its ideae sigillares to form the archei insiti. These local archei can be described as either ether-like or blas-like. The mortal sensitive soul coexists in a human (in his present state) with the immortal mind. The soul is the husk or shell of the mind, and the mind works through the soul; at the mind’s order the soul makes use of the archeus. Before the fall from grace, Adam possessed only a mind which acted directly on the archeus, discharging all of his body’s life functions, and hence was an immortal being. After the fall, God instilled into humans the sensitive soul, like that of beasts, and hence rendered the whole being mortal. After the fall, the immortal mind retired deep within the sensitive soul and became as it were its kernel. The animal soul itself emerged from sin through humans’ fall; it controls the archeus and deprives the mind of complete mastery. The vital spirit or breath of life is illuminated by a pure vital light, which can be neither seen nor described, but which rises to the brain and permits human to understand.238 Walter Pagel thought that he had detected several important ‘contacts and parallels’ between Van Helmont’s and Leibniz’s philosophical biologies: (a) like Leibniz’s monads van Helmont’s archei do not normally perish, but may enter new colonies after dissolution of the aggregate; (b) the living organism is not a mere aggregate but is also represented by an archeus of its own, similar to Leibniz’s central (or dominant) monad; (c) they both subscribed to determinism at the material level and rejected the notion of interaction between mind and body; (d) for van Helmont all action in nature is due to the active entity imagining its own form, that is, an awareness of its specific life schedule, similar to Leibniz’s petite perceptions; (e) Leibniz’s three grades of life – bare monad, soul and mind – correspond to van Helmont’s grades of archeus, sensitive soul and mind: In both Van Helmont’s and Leibniz’s world it is the ‘forces’, the ‘life’ intrinsic in organized matter to which a central position is accorded – with the difference that Van Helmont, professing Platonic Dualism, reserved a place for ‘uninformed’ and ‘undisposed’ matter as such, i.e. water, whereas Leibniz … knew of no such thing, but found a ‘dynamis’, namely the passive power of resistance, even in ‘primary matter’.239

237 On his use of the concept of archeus, see Pagel 1982 pp. 96–102; Pagel 1986 XII pp. 421–38; and Debus 1977 pp. 340-44. 238 Partington 1961 pp. 234–5; Pagel 1982 p. 97; Pagel 1986 XII pp. 421–3. 239 Pagel 1986 III p. 350 note 8; in much more detail now by Coudert 2001 pp. 45–51, 78–98.

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Pagel also speculates on a further connection with Leibniz: ‘a surprising application of fermentation to cosmology’ in Leibniz’s Hypothesis physica nova (1671) which he had presented to the Royal Society of London. According to Pagel’s synopsis, divine ether is made to penetrate the major part of matter which becomes the earth and is enclosed in bullae (bubbles). These are formed through the interaction of contrary rectilinear and circular motions engendered by the penetrating ether. The universal motion in our terrestrial globe serves as the basic pattern for all natural processes, rather than the figures of atoms or the varieties of particles and vortices. In the beginning, innumerable ‘bubbles’ arose in various sizes and shapes, through the interaction of the earth’s circular motion and light’s straight motion. The ‘bubbles’ are the seeds of all things, the warps of species, the receptacles of ether, the bases for bodies, and hence the causes of their consistency, variety and momentum. All solid things are held together by virtue of their bubbles, secured by their gyrations around proper centers. In forming bubbles, fermentation is liable to change a substance by turning it inside out. At this time Leibniz preferred an explanation in chemical rather than atomistic terms; he expected that the ideas of exhaustion and distension would increase our understanding of muscular motion: ‘For Leibniz, Van Helmont’s archeus is really the ether that operates through the bullae and … brings about natural processes, in particular, fermentation … Equally, the archeus is the “mercurial principle” which accounts for the perpetual internal motion that takes place in all things, but particularly in fluids, owing to the circulation of ether.’240 All of this appears in the Hypothesis physica nova where he plainly connected fermentation with the bubbulous ground-structure of all things, thereby making it a basic cosmic process: ‘Leibniz singles out fermentation among the natural phenomena that find their cause in the internal ethereal motion of the bullae which constitute the universe … The obligatory ebullition and bulla-formation connected with it, would have rendered fermentation worthy of his particular attention and thus affirmed its pre-eminence as asserted by Van Helmont.’241 Both Leibniz and van Helmont held to some basic ideas about the nature of ferment common to this period: (1) it is a spiritual force joined to a body; (2) capable of multiplying itself ad infinitum; (3) it can subjugate or seminally impregnate any object; (4) it can make the object similar to itself, and hence (5) perfect the object by effervescence, acidity and putrefaction. ‘All these points can be located in and defined against the ideas of Van Helmont, which are readily seen as providing a climax in their naturalistchemical as well as cosmological and metaphysical aspects.’242 Van Helmont’s entire life’s work was an effort to overcome the dualist separation of matter and spirit. He achieved this aim by reducing matter to an empty, inert medium in which God planted the forms responsible for the existence of all things. To become flesh these roots combine with water; ‘the object-specific combines with the non-specific empty medium to produce something new. This is the individual object as represented by its largely spiritual nucleus; its archeus accounts for its activity and its direction to certain ends. In other words, the object is neither matter 240 241 242

Pagel 1982 pp. 85–6; on alchemical fermentation, Abraham 1998 pp. 74–5. Pagel 1982 p. 86. Pagel 1982 pp. 86–7.

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nor spirit, but a unit (monad) with a spiritual and material root.’ What engaged van Helmont’s overriding interest was ‘the quest for “thing-ness”, for things as they were meant to exist by the creator and which therefore do so exist in reality and truth’.243 Van Helmont’s wonderfully strange ideas about spiritual vitalism percolated through the English writings of Anne Conway, Samuel Hartlib and the Vaughan brothers. Thomas Vaughan (1621–66), twin brother of the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, was born in Newton, Wales and probably spoke Welsh as his first language. The two brothers acquired Latin and some Greek under their tutor Matthew Herbert before attending Oxford, and it seems likely that Herbert introduced them to Hermetic ideas. Thomas was resident at Oxford from 1638 to 1642, and hence witnessed the turmoil and disruption during Cromwell’s war against the royalists. Thomas was made vicar of his Welsh parish about 1645 and both brothers fought on the royalist side. Thomas was evicted from his living in 1650 and moved to London where they both studied chemistry, although Henry alone treated patients. Vaughan moved in Samuel Hartlib’s circle244 with such important alchemists as Robert Child, Thomas Henshaw, John French (the translator of Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy) and Humphrey Blunden (who printed the English translation of Jacob Boëhme’s works). Thomas himself translated the two major Roscicrucian tracts, The Fame and the Confession (1652) under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes (‘well-born truth-lover’), while Henry translated Nollius’ The Chemist’s Key.245 Although he was living in London in the early 1660s and was well acquainted with several founding members of the Royal Society, there is no evidence that he joined. Sir Robert Moray, his good friend and patron, was the first president, but Thomas may have been discouraged when the charter members decided that they would not study God or the soul. Thomas was killed during a botched experiment with mercury and his brother had him buried in Albany, not far from Oxford. The English poet Samuel Butler repeatedly alludes to various alchemists in Hudibras (1663) and Butler’s own notes cite Vaughan’s work with admiration. In stark contrast, forty years later Swift, in A Tale of a Tub (1704), makes disparaging references to one of Vaughan’s works as ‘a piece of the most unintelligible fustian’.246 That consummate Victorian scholar of occult philosophy, Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942), was first inspired in his efforts to recover the prisca sapientia by Vaughan’s writings and edited all of his major works in the late 1800s. Waite claimed that Vaughan’s works were characterized by some distinctive traits. His major work is ‘described under the most mystical of all conditions, concerned as it is with that epoch when the last things of time will suffer dissolution into eternity’. Pagel 1982 p. 207. On the Hartlib circle, see esp. Srigley 2002 pp. 31–54; Webster 1975 on Robert Child, pp. 431–4; on the Hartlib circle, pp. 498–502; on Henshaw, pp. 90–93; and on Boehme in England, p. 280. 245 Heinrich Nolle, De Generatione Rerum Naturalium Liber, Paracelsian chemist and philosopher. 246 Biographical details from Alan Rudrum, ‘Introduction’ to the Works, Vaughan 1984 pp. 1–17, 21–31. See also Thomas & Rebecca Vaughan’s Aqua Vitae 2001. 243 244

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Despite the fact that he despised common, vulgar alchemy ‘done in mines and furnaces’, Vaughan recognized a higher alchemy, ‘the subtlety, the power and the universal diffusion of stellar influences, wherein under God, both soul and body – except in complete regeneration – would have been said by him to live and move and have their being’. Further, his view of magic was one of secret wisdom hidden in nature’s works and not some sort of ritual, demonic magic which trafficked with spells or sigils: ‘The intellectual fools of these subjects and devices he left to their foolishness and the cultus-mongers of diabolism to the disease of their black arts.’ Vaughan’s medicine, according to Waite, is a spiritual substance, true gold is wisdom, the stone is the catalyst which transmutes everything; the medicine is contained in a glass vessel, that is, the purified body of the adept; in the last transmutation, the mercurial nature of human being is endowed with the constancy of gold.247 The full title of Vaughan’s first short work (1650) is Anthroposophia Theomagica: or, a Discourse of the Nature of Man and his state after death, grounded on his creator’s proto-chemistry and verified by a practical examination of principles in the great world. It opens with a striking analogy which is worth quoting in full:248 This life [is] the progress of an essence royal; the soul but quits her courts to see the country. Heaven has in it a scene of earth, and had she been contented with ideas she had not travelled beyond the map. But excellent patterns commend their mimes, nature that was so fair in the type could not be a slut in the anaglyph.249 This makes her ramble hither to examine the medal by the flask,250 but while she scans their symmetry, she forms it. Thus her descent speaks her original: God in love with his own beauty frames a glass to view it by reflection; but the frailty of the matter excluding eternity, the composure was subject to dissolution. Ignorance gave this release the name of death, but properly it is the soul’s birth and a charter that makes for her liberty; she has several ways to break up house, but her best is without a disease. This is her mystical walk, an exit only to return. [Works p. 50]

He rejects the Aristotelian form-matter account which would explain the great world’s construction without recourse to the concept of life-force. The world, he says, is ‘God’s building, full of spirit, quick and living. This spirit is the cause of multiplication, of several perpetual productions of minerals, vegetables, and creatures engendered by putrefaction; all of which are manifest, infallible arguments of life.’ The earth is the visible, natural basis of animation and represents ‘the gross, carnal parts’. Water represents the blood, ‘for in it the pulse of the great world beats’. Air is the ‘outward refreshing spirit, where this vast spirit breathes, though invisibly, yet not altogether insensibly’. Ether and fire are in the heavens: ‘the interstellar skies are his vital, ethereal waters, and the stars his animal sensual fire’ (Works pp. 52–3). Waite 1926 pp. 267–70; see esp. Crane 1997 pp. 115–22; Dickson 2000 pp. 18–31. From the text established by Alan Rudrum (Vaughan, Works 1984); the spelling has been modernized and the heavy use of capitals and italics has been removed. 249 Where ‘type’ means something beaten or struck, and ‘anaglyph’ an embossed ornament in low relief; hence, the anaglyph is beaten from within by the world-soul in nature, Works p. 598 ad loc. 250 The ‘flask’ was a frame used to hold part of the mold for casting the ‘medal’; hence, the image means to examine the world in the light of its representation, Works p. 598 ad loc. 247 248

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The author wonders about the human fall from his original state, since his roots were planted in god but his eventual fruits are so faulty. But this, he avers, is due to humans’ taste of the tree of good and evil, from whence his ‘best part’ was bruised and he knows no cure. He quotes Iamblichus and Esdras when he describes the generation of the primal human: ‘God in his eternal idea foresaw that whereof as yet there was no material copy; the goodness and beauty of the one moved him to create the other, and truly the image of this prototype being embosomed in the second made him so much in love with his creature that when sin had defaced it, he restored it by the sufferings of that pattern by which at first it was made.’ He describes God by way of Pseudo-Dionysius’ divine triad: ‘God the Father is the metaphysical, super-celestial sun, the second person is the light, and the third is amor igneus, or a divine heat proceeding from both’ (Works p. 57). Before his creative activity, God was ‘wrapped up and contracted in himself’; in this state, he says, the Egyptians called him ‘the solitary monad’ and the Kabbalists called him ‘aleph of shadows’. But when the moment of creation came, the aleph of light appeared, ‘the first emanation was that of the Holy Ghost, into the bosom of matter’. Then darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the waters. Still there was no light, since this is the proper office of the second person, as his citation of Pimander from the Hermetic corpus testifies. When the divine light pierced the bosom of matter, the pattern of the whole world appeared in those primitive waters, ‘like an image in a glass’. The magical analysis of bodies reveals the protochemistry of the Holy Spirit who framed and modeled the entire universal structure. The divine archetypal idea is replicated at the material level: ‘the natural [idea] is a fiery, invisible, created spirit, and properly a mere enclosure or vestment of the true one’. The divine idea ‘before the coagulation of the seminal principles to a gross, outward fabric … impresses in the vital, ethereal principles a model or pattern, after which the body is to be framed, and this is the first inward production or draught of the creature’ (Works pp. 58–9). The author next proceeds to the ‘gross works or mechanics of the spirit’, the separation of several substances from the primordial mass. He calls this the ‘limbus or huddle of matter’, clearly drawing on Paracelsan imagery; he disputes the learned opinion that no created thing could come from ‘this sluggish empty rudiment’. This is indeed an obscure notion, but some light (sic) is cast on the issue by Hermes when he describes the shadows of primitive matter as ‘fuliginous spawn of nature’. The Hermetic notion agrees with that of Moses: ‘this fumus which ascended after the transmutation can be nothing else but that darkness which was upon the face of the deep’. Hence, light-heat and cold-moisture were not two elements but the hands of God with which he worked upon pieces of matter. In doing so, the Holy Spirit extracted from primordial matter ‘a thin spiritual, celestial substance, which receiving a tincture of heat and light … became a pure sincere innoxious fire’. The bodies of angels are entirely composed of this substance, as well as the empyrean heaven, where intellectual essences have their residence. Then the splendor of the world expelled the darkness downwards and became more settled and compact. This made ‘a horrible, thick night’ because God was between the light and the darkness. The second separation extracted agile air, ‘a spirit not so refined as the former, but vital and next in degree to it’. This was extracted in such abundance that it filled the space between the primordial mass and the empyrean heavens (Works pp. 60–61).

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Vaughan next proceeds to an examination of nature in her inferior elemental parts through which humans pass and from which they cannot be separated: ‘The earth being the subsidence or remains of that primitive mass which God formed out of darkness, must be a feculent impure body, for the extractions which the divine spirit made were pure, oleous, ethereal substances; the crude, phlegmatic indigested humours settled towards the center.’ Water is the second element, the mother of all visible things; it mediates the influx of divine breath and provides the proper cause of mixture and fusion. Air, on the other hand, is not an element as such, but ‘a certain miraculous hermaphrodite, the cement of two worlds, and a medley of extremes’. Air is the body of our sensitive spirit, an animal oil, the fuel of the sensual fire. And fire itself is ‘nature’s chariot’; a moist, silent fire moves through all things. It is ‘the mask and screen of the Almighty, wherever he is, this train of fire attends him’ (Works pp. 64–5). Hence, on the author’s view, every element is threefold: ‘this triplicity being the express image of their author and the seal he has laid on his creature’. He thinks it ridiculous to compare the divine triplicity in natural things to the ‘kitchen-stuff’ of alchemists’ fantasies: these three are not ordinary water, oil and earth, nor are they mercury, sulphur and salt. Rather, they are ‘celestial hidden natures known only to absolute magicians, whose eyes are in the center, not in the circumference’. The first is a visible, tangible substance, pure and fixed; the second is an infallible magnet, by which all things are attracted; it is Jacob’s Ladder, without which there is no personal ascent or descent, and the third is the principle that ‘all occurs in all’, that is, the Holy Spirit as agent is present in all things (Works pp. 66–8). As well as condemning the specious pretences of ordinary alchemy, Vaughan also disabuses his readers of thinking that this interpretation of God’s patterned design in the material world can be understood through witchcraft. He declares that ‘a witch is a rebel in physics, and a rebel is a witch in politics: the one acts against nature, the other against order, the rule of it. But both are in league with the devil as the first father of discord and sorcery.’ He admits that what he has now written will appear very strange to the common person, ‘whose knowledge sticks in the bark of allegories and mystical speeches’. Nevertheless, after rehearsing a potted version of the Genesis account of human creation, he turns to a Hermetic-Kabbalistic interpretation where all of his erudite skills are brought into play. After their creation humans continued in their substance as an intellectual essence, free from sensual affections. United with God through similar essence, the divine light reached the inferior portions of the soul and ‘mortified all carnal desires’. This state of affairs is allegorized in the Genesis references to Adam’s nakedness: before he ate the fruit he did not know he was naked, and after he ate he was ashamed of his nakedness. The first and best state is ‘the spiritual substantial union of his intellectual parts to God, and the mortification of his ethereal, sensitive nature … His second [state] or his fall, is the eating of the forbidden fruit which did cast asleep his intellectual faculties, but did stir up and exalt the sensual’ (Works p. 76). The little world of human reflects and reproduces the three levels of the great world: the elemental, the celestial and the spiritual. The earthly elemental portion envelops the celestial portion; the celestial, ethereal part is that whereby we move, see, feel and sense, and is the same in beasts. Our soul’s ethereal part is connatural with the anima mundi which mediates and conveys the divine spirit to the material

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parts. This ‘middle spirit’ has an ‘insinuating nature’, that is, ‘in every thing it is the mediate cause of composition and multiplication’. Within the sensual portion is the angelic or rational spirit: ‘this spirit adheres sometimes to the mens or superior portion of the soul’. It is filled with divine light, but most commonly descends into the inferior portions. Last, above (or within) the rational spirit is the mens or hidden intelligence, also known as the illuminated intellect and the spark of life (spiraculum vitarum); this is the portion of God’s breath in each human. Just as the divine light assimilates and converts the inferior portions towards God, so also the ingestion of the fruits of knowledge obscures and darkens the superior portions. Even after his originally pure spirit was dissolved and mixed with the earthly spirit, some ‘sparks of grace were left’, and though the perfection of innocence was forever lost, still conscience remains within human, both to direct and to punish him (Works pp. 77–8). After their fall humans cannot discern the truth of things without ‘a flash or tincture’ of divine light; this light descends into the soul and unites with it. This luminous descent is not the same as the exterior descent through the planets to the earth in ‘the night of bodies’, but the descent of ‘the most secret and silent lapse of the spirit’ according to the forms of a natural series. It is a Kabbalist maxim that no spiritual thing in descending below operates without a garment (a subtle body). The human soul ‘while she is in the body is like a candle shut up in a dark lantern or a fire that is almost stifled for want of air’. Although spirits in their own country inhabit green fields ‘in a spicy odorous air’, here below they mourn because of darkness and solitude. He affirms the opinion of Agrippa, Avicebron and Avicenna that if the spirit were ‘once out of the body she could act all that which she imagined’. In this state the soul could move the humors of the great animal (the world soul), make commotions in the spheres of air and water, and alter the complexion of time. He seems to endorse Trithemius’ notion that spirits can communicate their thoughts at a distance: ‘in an instant transfer her own vessel from one place to another’. Given his previous citation of St. Paul’s report of being taken up into the third heaven, this might imply the idea that the human soul can accomplish extra-somatic projection (Works pp. 81–2). In any case, death itself is the recession of life into the hidden; it is not the annihilation of even one particle of matter, but rather ‘the retreat of hidden natures to the same state they were in before they were manifested’. When the harmony of parts is broken by the ‘excess of any one principle, the vital twist … disbands and unravels’. Where the human body was composed by an access of several elements, death is the recess of these ingredients into their elemental constituents. The earthly parts return to the earth, the celestial parts to the heavenly limbus, and the spirits to God. Hence, the divine part of human vanishes by the ascent of the inward ethereal principles, but not immediately on the separation of soul from body. The sidereal human, as Paracelsus called it, ‘hovers some time about the dormitories of the dead’ because of the magnetism or sympathy between it and the ‘radical, vital moisture’. The dead individual’s idol, since it is the seat of the imagination, retains an impress of the passions and affections it had while in the body: ‘This makes him haunt those places where the whole man had been most conversant and imitate the actions and gestures of life.’ (Here Vaughan cites Robert Fludd’s testimony.) But this interim state does not last more than one year, since when the corpse begins to corrupt

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the spirit returns to its original element. After this final return every human is subject to divine judgment: either to the outer shadows, from whence there is no redemption, or to a delicate, pleasant region, one of the ‘suburbs of heaven’ (Works pp. 88–90). In another treatise of the same year, Anima Magica Abscondita (1650), Vaughan reprises some of his main themes, but in the context of a vigorous rebuttal of Aristotelian ideas. He says that the followers of Aristotle build castles in the air and erect their edifices in the realm of dreams. Their account of human nature is ‘the child of fancy, a romance of syllogisms, a texture of their own brain, like [a] cobweb company’. They base their judgments on ‘inward, invisible principles (forms as they call them) which are shut up in the closet of matter, and all this in perusing the outside, or crust of nature’. Vaughan seems to endorse Bacon’s maxim that the philosopher can only know things to the extent that he can make or remake them. He recommends that the scholastics use their hands in their studies, and ‘change their abstractions into extractions’; as long as ‘they lick the shell in this fashion and pierce not experimentally into the center of things … they cannot know things substantially’. They would improve their view if they understood that there is a certain spirit in nature ‘which applies himself to the matter and actuates in every generation’. Further, that there is ‘a passive, intrinsic principle where he is more immediately resident then in the rest, and by mediation of which he communicates with the more gross material parts’. There is a natural chain, or ‘subordinate propinquity of complexions between visibles and invisibles’, and it is by means of this that the spiritual essences descend. This chain is not to be construed as the divine spirit, but ‘a certain art by which a particular spirit can be united to the universal spirit, and nature can be exalted and multiplied’. Vaughan addresses those who ‘have your eyes in your hearts and not your hearts in your eyes: attend to the magical phrase, “listen to the intellect of the heart”’ (Works pp. 107–9). Perhaps Vaughan’s most famous work is Lumen de Lumine, or A New Magical Light (1651); the title itself is reminiscent of Arnold of Villanova’s Lumen luminum, seu flos florum (printed 1613) and Rice of Chester’s Lumen Luminum in Expositione Compositionis Alchimiae (printed 1625). The author describes a dream vision in which he is transported to some sort of paradise, where he is instructed in secret alchemical teachings.251 At dawn, he says, he fell asleep and his ‘fansie’ placed him in ‘a region of inexpressible obscurity’. Not far off he sees a weak white light, whose center is purple surrounded with a milky dilation: ‘it was a painted vesper, a figure of that splendour, which the old Romans called the sun of the dead’. As the light increases he sees a building which he takes to be the temple of nature, where nature has ‘joined discipline to her doctrine’. Between him and the light appears an exquisite beautiful woman, dressed in deep green silk, her head covered with ‘a thin floating tiffanie’ (from its original root in ‘theophany’). Remaining silent, she beckons him to follow her, and the attendant light brings them to ‘a most deep bottom’, as though they were near the earth’s center. They pass through seemingly thick, white clouds which turn out to be rocks, sparkling like diamonds. When asked her name, she says that it is Thalia, ‘for she is always green and never withers’.252 251 252

See Waite’s critical comments on this baffling text, 1926 pp. 269–81. From the Greek thallo¯, ‘sprout’, ‘thrive’; cf. Thalia Rediviva (1678) Henry Vaughan’s

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She says that these are the mountains of the moon;253 a great cataract springs from them and its stream flows past them. When he puts his hands in the stream he sees that it is not common water; rather, it is ‘a certain kind of oil of a watery complexion; a viscous fat, mineral nature it was, bright like pearl, and transparent like crystal’. On second glance, he notices that it is ‘spermatic’ and ‘obscene’ to sight and touch. Thalia informs him that this is the first matter, ‘the very natural, true sperm of the great world’ (Works pp. 305–7). Waite says that Vaughan was prone to ‘super-incession in language’, talking of one subject in the technical terms of another; his visit to the earth’s interior can be read like a visit to the soul’s interior: ‘We should find the great but not hostile darkness amidst which such experiences and ceremonies so often open; the hush of expectant anxiety, the breathing of the spirit, a light which goes before ritual manifestation in the spirit, the approach to the sanctuary, the intimations concerning a way of ascent and descent, and so forward.’254 At this point Thalia launches into an extended peroration about the world spirit and how it vitalizes all material things. God preserves and governs the world and all compositions are made by an active, intelligent life; the generation of every creature is accomplished through its sperm. The natural vessel for all things is earth, water thickens in earth and a figure emerges; water is the vessel of air and thickens in it; air coagulates the liquid fire, and fire involves and confines the thin light: ‘These are the means by which God unites and compounds the elements in a sperm, for the earth alters the complexion of the water, and makes it viscous and slimy.’ She gives him instructions about how to mix the lunar ‘water’ with ‘twofold earth, red and white’, and to feed those earths with ‘fire of air’ and ‘air of fire’ in order to produce the two magical luminaries. As a reward for his long study of alchemy, she then brings him to her ‘school’: it is ‘a rock of adamant figured to be a just, entire cube: it was the basis for a fiery pyramid, a trigon of pure pyrope, whose imprisoned flames did stretch and strive for heaven’. Vaughan borrowed this image from Reuchlin’s On the Cabbalistic Art where he says that the dual principle of all things, the pyramid and the cube (or form and matter) flow from one fountain, and that the origin of the sensible world is the conjunction of the pyramid and the cube.255 The goddess and the initiate enter the rock-temple and come across an altar, dedicated to the gods of the underground heavens. From thence they move to an earthen cave, obscure and dank, giving off an odor of graves, and then to the sanctuary where Thalia makes another speech. She complains of the clumsy, amateur attentions which students of nature have paid to her; in their ignorance they subjected her to posthumous collection of Thomas’s Latin poems, as well as his own English and Latin poems. Thalia is the name of one of the three Graces, T. Gantz Early Greek Myths, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993 vol. I pp. 53–5; OCD 3rd edn p. 318. 253 A. E. Waite commented that this image was peculiar to Vaughan alone and was not found in any alchemical texts he knew, Works, note p. 676 ad loc; but far-away mountains were the common alchemical location for prime matter, as Abraham points out, 1998 pp. 131–2. 254 Waite 1926 p. 280. 255 Works, note p. 676 ad loc.; the editor also says that Vaughan claimed to have found this same image in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Book III, chapter 23, but there is no such reference in the text.

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violence and sported about like vain courtiers. But she thinks that the author loves her in the right way and gives him tokens, her key and her scale, to better pursue her mysteries.256 The goddess leads the initiate out into the sunlight, and shows him a staircase by which they both ascend to the surface. This marks the end of their personal encounter; Thalia is ‘translated’ pros aio¯na257 into the ether of nature, the dwelling of the immortals (Works pp. 308–10). No sooner has she departed than she seems to return; Eugenius says that he can see her ‘as it were’ nearby, ready to give him more advice. She declares that insofar as the various branches of ‘real physics’ are kept separate, no genuine understanding can be attained and no fruitful works achieved: ‘Out of one specific root there grow several different substances … so out of one universal root, namely the chaos, grow all specific natures, and their individuals.’ Just as all things emerge from one common source so all knowledge must grow from one common science: ‘as for universals in the abstract, there are no such things, they are empty imaginary whimsies, for abstractions are but so many phantastic suppositions’. This clearly implies that philosophical references to universals should be construed as indicating actual universal natures, from whence particular things take their specific figures: ‘In the first matter the divine wisdom is collected in a general chaotical center, but in the particulars made of the first matter it is dispersed, and spread out as it were to a circumference.’ (Here is a curious image – from the Gnostics? – that individual things are spun out by centrifugal force from the cosmic krater.) ‘It remains then that the chaos is the center of all the sciences, to which they may and ought to be reduced, for it is the sensible natural mysterium magnum, and under God the secondary temple of wisdom.’258 Before his Latin translation of an extensive letter from the Rosicrucians, Eugenius leaves his readers with this salutary warning: there are ‘very dangerous places after night, for they are haunted with fires, and other strange apparitions occasioned … by certain spirits which dabble lasciviously with the sperm of the world, and imprint their imagination in it, producing many times fantastic, and monstrous generations’ (Works p. 317). Vaughan’s triumphant espousal of Rosicrucian ideas and his peculiar fusion of alchemical and mystical imagery brought him into a vituperative polemic with Henry More.259 He replied in print on several occasions to Henry More, who in 1650 had published his Observations on Vaughan’s first two tracts. In the same year, Vaughan responded with The Man-Mouse Taken in a Trap:260 More had called Vaughan ‘a heated nodle, a mome, a mimic, an ape, a mere animal, a snail, a philosophic hog, a nip-crust, a pick-pocket, a niggard, a tom-fool with a devil’s head and horns, one that desires to be a conjurer more than a Christian’ (Works p. 241). Vaughan replied in equal kind, lashing More page after page with opprobrious 256 These are the same two emblems of power that Mephisto gives Goethe’s Faust in Part Two, Act I, scene 5. 257 Another phrase from Reuchlin, Works, note p. 677 ad loc. 258 The Mysterium magnum clearly makes use of Paracelsus’ ideas, as well as being the English title of Jacob Boëhme’s book (1656); Works, note p. 677; quantum theorists may take note of Vaughan’s insistence that all natural sciences should be reduced to the level of ‘chaos theory’. 259 On Henry More, see HCM pp. 320–26; and esp. Brann 1980 pp. 103–26. 260 ‘mouse’ a pun on the Latin version of More’s name, mus, muris, Works p. 656 ad loc.

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epithets; he said that More’s craziness arose from his disgusting state of ill health, and thus his nonsense was like a ventriloquist speaking from his stomach. Henry More returned to the fray with The Second Lash of Alazonomastix (‘scourge of charlatans’) to which Vaughan again responded with The Second Wash, or The Moore Scoured Once More. The next year Vaughan published Aula Lucis, or The House of Light (1652), then his English translation with lengthy preface of The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of the Rosie Cross, and his final work Euphrates, or The Waters of the East (1655). Another one of the Ragley Hall circle around Lady Conway, Ezekiel Foxcroft, translated the third Rosicrucian tract, The Chemical Wedding, sometime between 1658 and his death in 1674, although it was not published until 1690.261 Goethe was sufficiently struck by the original German text of The Chemical Wedding that in 1786 he wrote that ‘there will be a good fairy tale told at the right time, but it will have to be reborn, not in its old skin’. His fairy-tale version appeared shortly after under the title ‘The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lady’. Alchemical imagery saturates this ‘Fairy Tale’, an allegory for every conceivable form of opposition: lightness and darkness, self and non-self, time before and time after, the heavenly ternary and the earthly ternary. The narrative can be interpreted in terms of his concept of the ‘primal plant’ (Urpflanze): it contains the same ideas of purification, rotation, death and reunion on a higher plane.262 Two years earlier Goethe read the German translation (1782) of Vaughan’s Anthroposophia Theomagica and began work on his ‘Rosicrucian fragment’, published later as ‘The Mysteries’. And so some of the hermetic, alchemical and Kabbalist ideas of midseventeenth-century heterodox philosophy entered the late eighteenth century romantic stream. Our survey of occult and magical ideas about the human soul concludes with a brief glimpse of the titanic figure of Goethe (1749–1832) in whose long life’s work many of the heterodox lines of thought come to life again: Egyptian wisdom, Manichaeism, Hermetica, Gnostica, alchemy and high magic.263 An enormous secondary literature surrounds Goethe’s life and works like the many tiers of a great walled city; the definitive edition of his complete works fills 143 large volumes, while scores of books and articles appear every year. With our limited means and specific purpose, we can only cut an exploratory trench into this vast domain. Goethe once said that all his works were ‘fragments of a great confession’; in some sense, his most famous fictional and dramatic characters reflect (or refract) stages in the development of a single individual, the author. As such, these part-for-whole facets of an imaginary biography can also be understood as his representation of the dialectical sequence of the development of humankind as a whole. Goethe endorsed 261 Foxcroft’s name often occurs in letters from Henry More to Anne Conway and More introduced Foxcroft to F. M. van Helmont, for which see Marjorie Nicolson, The Conway Letters, London, 1930. Foxcroft’s translation is printed in A. E. Waite’s Real History of the Rosicrucians, London: Rebman, 1887 and Paul Allen (ed.) Christian Rosencreutz Anthology, Blauveht, NY: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968. 262 Gray 1952 pp. 167–80; the fairy tale is discussed in great detail by Raphael 1965 pp. 77–115. 263 On Gnostic and Hermetic influences on Hegel and Goethe, see esp. G. Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, trans. by Anthony Alcock, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, Introduction.

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the idea that everything a human being undertakes must arise from his collective, united forces. In his diary he declared that ‘everything must eventually come to a single point, but bronze patience, stony endurance’. Ronald Gray says that, ‘Goethe had come to regard the artist as a kind of Spinozistic deity in whom myriads of differing personalities had their being, and for whom every kind of philosophy and religion had something to say … He had a god to worship for every aspect of being, and the more complete his own acceptance became, the more godlike he was.’264 In Book VIII of his autobiography, Poetry and Truth, Goethe set forth his own personal religion, in which the Holy Trinity represents expansion, translucence and self-transcendence, while Lucifer represents contraction, opacity and selfaffirmation. Lucifer was entrusted with the task of creating an entire universe of his own and began to think of himself as God. Goethe said that Lucifer forgot his origin and believed he had found that origin in himself; and from this first ingratitude arose all that seems to us to not correspond to the thinking and intentions of the Deity. The more he now concentrated himself in himself, the worse he must have felt … From this concentration of the entire creation (for it had gone forth from Lucifer and had to follow him) arose all that we perceive under the forms of matter, that which we represent to ourselves as heavy, solid, and dark, but which – since it seems, if not immediately, then through filiation, from the divine being – is just as unconditionally mighty and eternal as its father [Lucifer] and grandparents [the Trinity] … Yet the better half was indeed lacking from this creation, for it had all that is won through concentration, but lacked all that can only be gained through expansion; and so, through continuing concentration the whole creation might have eradicated itself, annihilated itself together with its father Lucifer, and lost all its claims to an equal eternity with the divinity. [P & T I pp. 380–81]

The whole of material creation is nothing else but a fall from a better state, while salvation must renew itself over and over again through all the time that living things continue to develop. Where the divine being of God subsumes all contraries in an instantaneous fusion, human being is compelled to realize first one side of his nature, then the other. The task then was ‘to fulfill the intentions of the Godhead, being obliged from one side to assert ourselves while not neglecting, in a rhythmical pulsation, to empty ourselves of selfhood’. Goethe’s personal religion was a strange affair indeed; he said that ‘I was pleased to imagine to myself a divinity which reproduces itself from all eternity, but since production cannot be thought of without variety, this divinity appeared to itself at once as a second person.’ He identified this second person with the son of god, as well as with the Gnostic mirror-stage in which the first being sees its unity and simplicity multiplied and varied: ‘These two had now to continue the act of creation and appeared to themselves again as a third person, who was now just as living and eternal as the whole. But with this the circle of the deity was closed, and even they would have found it impossible to create again a being fully equal to themselves’ (P & T I pp. 382–3). In his letter to Lavater of April 1781, Goethe agreed with the mystical chemist: ‘you say truly that human is God and Satan, Heaven and Earth, all in one, for what else are these concepts but concepts which human has of his own nature’. And again, 264

Gray 1967 pp. 100–101.

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in another letter: ‘there is an unending purification going on in me, and yet I confess gladly that God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, which you so well define, are one in me’.265 Nowhere is the idea of an endless process of becoming better illustrated than in his letters and diaries, where he speaks about already possessing the knowledge he set out to acquire. Gray says that ‘it is as though he were conscious all along that the stage he was about to reach was one he already knew potentially, rather as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists, in some way the object of their search, was also said to be fully present at every stage of the quest’.266 In September 1780, he refers to the strange idea that the whole of his existence is a pyramid, a large square base that tapers to an apex, a peculiar structure of four three-sided faces. At any given moment, his self-picture is one of climbing up one side toward the summit, while the ‘unseen external world’ grows to meet him on the other. When he wrote about his ideas on architecture (including Egyptian pyramids), he said that ‘what pleases me is that none of my old basic ideas are shifted or altered, but rather everything becomes more closely defined and detailed, it all develops and grows to me’.267 The ‘it’ he mentioned here seems to denote the outer world, or the hidden symmetries within the world, for example, when he found so many superb confirmations of his botanical ideas. He said that there was so much forcing itself in upon him that his being ‘grew like a snowball’. So much so that his head simply cannot grasp it all, and yet ‘it all develops outwards from inside’.268 One has the strange sense that what is forcing itself in upon him from outside is also forcing itself outwards from inside and this is another expression of the feeling intended by the pyramidal image. Here again it is not by chance that he likens his overflowing inner life to the paradigmatic Egyptian structure. In 1786 it seems that he thought he had achieved this summit when he wrote that, for every artist who has been loyal to nature, he has thus seen ‘the remnants of the great, ancient spirit’. Goethe said of the great artist that ‘his soul has welled up and he has felt a kind of inward transfiguration of himself, a feeling of freer life, higher existence, lightness and grace’.269 The state of ‘freer life, higher existence, lightness and grace’ might be taken as a lyrical definition of the Egyptian soul-term akh.270 It is not clear (to me anyway) whether his reference to transfiguration is meant in any exact sense as the Egyptian akh-ification after death, although it does seem clear that Goethe thought that this inner process was one that made him divine or god-like in this life. The great poet’s travels in Italy, especially his face-to-face encounter with monuments of Roman religion, marked a rebirth in him of all the creative ideas which converged from ancient traditions:271 ‘A new life begins when one sees with one’s eyes that whole which one partly knows already, within and without oneself.’ Gray interprets these sorts of comments from Goethe’s letters and diaries at this time: ‘Goethe felt himself not only at the culminating point so far as ideas were Quoted in Gray 1967 pp. 103–4. Gray 1967 p. 104; Raphael 1965 pp. 24–46. 267 Quoted in Gray 1967 p. 105. 268 Quoted in Gray 1967 p. 105. 269 Quoted in Gray 1967 p. 106. 270 On Goethe’s knowledge of and fascination with Egyptian ideas, see esp. Erik Hornung, The Secret Lore of Ancient Egypt, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002 pp. 122–30. 271 Gray 1952 pp. 188–92. 265 266

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concerned, but also at the place where good and evil met and were transcended; from the almost divine position he now felt himself occupying, distinctions no longer existed; subject and object, self and the world, good and evil were one, and in the zestful enjoyment of them he was as though born into a new life.’272 In Book XX of Poetry and Truth he said that he had discovered in both animate and inanimate nature, something which manifested itself only in contradictions and therefore could not be summarized in any concept, still less in a word. It was not divine, for it seemed irrational, not human, for it had not sense, not diabolical, for it was beneficent, not angelic, for it often gloated over misfortune. It resembled chance, for it displayed no logical sequence, it resembled providence, for it suggested coherence. All that confines and limits us seemed no obstacle to it; it seemed to play arbitrarily with the necessary elements of our existence, it contracted time and expanded space. [P & T II p. 423]

This force, of course, is what Goethe famously referred to as the demonic, something beyond the ordinary categories of good and evil, above and below. It is something that some specially gifted persons experience at rare times, and cannot be identified any further. In some passages he seems to identify it with god (or the gods), but denied that it could be found in the devil, since ‘the demonic expresses itself in a totally positive energy’. He comes closest to giving a definition to this higher power when he says that it is ‘an eternal, endless doing’. It was an incalculable, ineffable force that Goethe worshipped, an impersonal amoral lifeforce that has no other aim than self-exertion.273 Very late in life, he expressed this startling idea to his confidant Eckermann: ‘The eternal existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity; if I work incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit.’274 Nowhere in his works is this theme of endless doing coupled with an impersonal life-force explored more fully than in Faust Part One and Part Two. Faust is a character in the same mold as Agrippa and John Dee (at least at the start of the drama) – an eminent Renaissance scholar who has devoted decades to the study and mastery of the occult sciences. Goethe prefaces the main action with a prologue in heaven, modeled on the Biblical Book of Job, where Mephistopheles makes a wager with the Lord that he can tempt Faust away from the true path. In his study, Faust ponders the results of his long pursuit of wisdom; he reviews the merits and demerits of theories about potencies and seeds, alchemical energy and prime matter. With weary disdain he admits that knowledge of these secret things has not satisfied him; when he contemplates the sign of the macrocosm it reminds him of his youthful thirst for knowledge. He invokes the presence of the Earth Spirit, the source of potent energy in all things, who calls Faust ‘superman’ (übermensch). Faust is greater than an ordinary human but still only equal to his idea of the Earth Spirit, since Faust was made in God’s image (not his nature). Faust reflects that he is not like the gods because a human feels the pangs of ‘care’ (sorge); he dreads what 272 273 274

Gray 1967 p. 107. Gray 1967 pp. 111–13. Conversations with Eckermann, 4 Feb. 1829.

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might never happen and he grieves in advance for what he might never lose. Then, when he contemplates killing himself, he imagines Elijah’s chariot coming to snatch him away, ‘to newer spheres of pure activity, this higher life, this godlike ecstasy’ (F. I 706–7). Just as he is about to drink a lethal potion he hears a nearby church’s Easter bells and a chorus of angels singing ‘Christ is arisen’. But it is not the meaning of this miracle that saves Faust from suicide, rather it is the memory these bells recall of his youthful joy, ‘the sound from childhood that even now calls me back to life’ (F. I 770). He rushes out into the street and mingles with the crowds walking around on Easter Sunday; they are happy in their lives, he thinks, and he is happy to be alive; he returns home with a stray black dog. In his study Faust feels refreshed, ‘the better soul within him wakes’, and he turns to the New Testament for inspiration. He muses on the opening line of the Gospel of John, ‘In the beginning was the word’, but thinks that an inadequate interpretation; perhaps it should be ‘in the beginning was the power’ or ‘mind’ or ‘deed’. At the sound of the word ‘deed’ the dog becomes agitated, barking and shaking; thinking that a malign entity must be in the room, Faust invokes the spirit with magical words and gestures. After several changes of shape to evade capture, Mephistopheles appears in human form dressed as an itinerant scholar. When asked for his name he declares that he is ‘part of the force that would ever do evil yet forever works the good’, and says that he is ‘the spirit that constantly denies’ (F. I 1336–8). On Goethe’s view, anything less than committed action (‘doing’) was incapable of having life; Faust dedicates his life to endless doing; and Mephisto says that, although he is part of the force for evil (‘non-doing’), yet he always works the good (‘doing’). After admitting to frustration and despair over all his efforts, Faust curses everything that humans normally prize: he curses career, fame, wife, child, wealth and love, and then even hope, faith and patience. Mephisto is delighted with this speech, since he agrees with these sentiments, and offers Faust his services for life. At this point Goethe twists the old Faust legend in an unexpected direction; instead of asking for power, wealth and fame, this Faust asks for food that does not satisfy, gold that cannot be kept, a game that cannot be won, a girl that cheats him, and so forth (F. I 1678–88). The strange idea behind his demands is that he most desires those things which will force him to continue to aspire.275 He makes a deal with Mephisto: if he should ever declare that he is content, that he would want that moment to linger, then Mephisto can take his soul. Given the vast range of his powers and great experience in tempting humans, Mephisto thinks that this will be an easy success and agrees. Much of Part One is taken up with the clever stratagems the devil employs to seduce Faust into peace of mind, but all to no avail. Drinking and whoring in a tavern, hocus-pocus in a witch’s kitchen, even orgiastic revels at a witch’s sabbath – they all leave Faust discontent, yearning for more. When the middle-aged Faust falls in love with a young sweet girl, Margaret (also called Gretchen), Mephisto is more confident that Faust will lose his bet. But everything goes wrong: Faust kills her brother in a duel, Gretchen is imprisoned, their child dies and, in a dreadful scene, Faust fails to save her and Gretchen is executed.276 275 Amongst many interpretations of this theme, see Marshall Berman’s astute reading, All that is Solid Melts into Air, London: Verso, 1983 pp. 41–50. 276 And again, Berman 1983 pp. 51–60.

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Faust Part Two opens with Faust resting in a pleasant place; he acknowledges that his ‘pulsing life’ has its source in divine vitality and that this can be achieved through earthly works. Faust and Mephisto offer to cure an ailing kingdom by curing its ailing emperor; Mephisto uses magic to retrieve some hidden gold, that is, both real gold to remedy the kingdom’s poor finances and alchemical gold (‘the philosopher’s stone’) to cure the emperor. During a lavish carnival celebration, a herald changes Mephisto into an unformed lump and then into an egg which splits into two, and from which emerges a bat and a snake; this process symbolizes an alchemical attempt to unite three forces, mercury, sulfur and salt. Faust arrives in a vehicle drawn by an androgynous charioteer; this figure represents an abstract, spiritual union of male and female, Faust’s second ‘child’ (after the death of Gretchen’s infant), and found to be deficient and dismissed. In one of the most mysterious scenes, Faust promises to produce apparitions of Paris and Helen for the emperor’s amusement; Mephisto declares that in the pagan underworld his magic is useless, and directs Faust to consult ‘the mothers’. Faust follows his mentor’s ritual exactly and disappears below ground where he enters the region of unformed ‘matter’ (matrix, materia, ‘mother’). In order to rescue Helen, the ideal of beauty, and Paris, the ideal of love-for-beauty, Faust has to connect a magical key with the mothers’ tripod. When Faust returns with the eidola of Paris and Helen he has been transformed; he is dressed as a priest and the ceremony takes place in a temple. At the moment when the conjunction is about to occur, Faust is overcome by jealous desire for Helen, and in trying to seize her, she vanishes in smoke. In Act II, Faust’s former assistant Wagner, now an ambitious scholar, is engaged on the alchemical creation of an homunculus;277 with Mephisto’s help he has managed to enliven this creature, who is ‘born’ already full of knowledge and wisdom. He is able to read Faust’s dream of ancient Greece, the birthplace of his ideal Helen, and transports the main characters to the Pharsalian fields, where the classical Walpurgis Night takes place, a witches’ Sabbath which echoes the Nordic Walpurgis Night in Part One. Faust is guided in his further quest by Chiron the centaur (the union of human and animal) who takes him to visit Manto (from mantis, mania), a figure of divine madness and visionary power. Where Chiron is always in motion, Manto is always at rest; their paired opposition signifies a spiral movement towards the center. In the final scene, Faust pursues his quest for ideal beauty while Homunculus strives for self-creation. He is without a body, only pure mind, he is half-born and hence not at home in the material world; Proteus declares to him, ‘you are before you ought to be!’ (F. II 8254). Homunculus is flame-like, a fiery being who then unites with Galatea, a watery being; although he has achieved his goal, he is destroyed as an individual. He merges with living matter which must evolve before reaching the human level and hence Faust’s third ‘child’ disappears. Act III takes place before Menelaus’ palace, where Helen returns to find Mephisto disguised as the hideous monster Phorcyas (from the previous Thessalian witchscene). Helen begins to fear that she might not be as real as she thinks she is; she now considers herself more like a pagan myth, a dream in which she becomes a myth even to herself. After she revives from a deep faint she finds herself in a Gothic 277 On alchemical imagery in the homunculus scenes, see esp. Gray 1962 pp. 205–20; and Raphael 1965 pp. 153–7, 169–77.

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castle where Faust plays out the stages of courtly love. At the point when he is about to achieve his ‘perfect moment’, they hear the sounds of an army approaching; Faust announces that he will take her away to Arcadia, an immortal timeless place which symbolizes an ideal nature. In the final scene, Phorcyas announces that Helen and Faust, with Mephisto’s assistance, have produced a child called Euphorion. Where the spirits of water and fire dominated the previous two acts, the spirit of air reigns here in Arcadia. Euphorion flies about from side to side, full of life, erotic force and pure poetry, until he flies too high and crashes to earth dead. His little corpse vanishes, leaving behind his cloak, robe and lyre; his plaintive voice calls to his mother from the underworld. In Act IV it is the spirit of earth that dominates in the form of mundane matters such as warfare, money, craft and urban planning.278 At the end of the previous act, Helen’s robe and veil were changed into clouds and carried Faust away. Now the cloud-vehicle arrives on a mountain summit in the Alps, splitting into two halves, like the egg from which Helen is born and the Orphic egg in the Carnival, and from the egg Faust emerges. When asked by Mephisto if there is anything in the world that still tempts him, Faust replies that there is nothing in this world; rather, he now wants to create a new world by wresting land from the sea and building a modern city: ‘There dares my spirit soar past all it knew, here I would struggle, this I would subdue’ (F. II 10,220). In order to accomplish this scheme, however, he must gain legal title to the land and, in order to acquire that, he and Mephisto help the emperor in his war against a rival monarch. As Act V opens, fifty years have passed, Faust is one hundred years old, and his grandiose project to reclaim land from the sea has succeeded; he is now engaged in the final stages of his great modern city. But something stands in the way of total completion; an old couple refused to sell their cottage, chapel and grove of trees, so the developers have halted progress near their land. When Faust hears their chapel’s bell he is galled to think that his grand scheme is not complete; where the church bells in Part One brought back memories of his childhood and gave him a new reason to live, the church bells now remind him of the old feudal world that he has renounced. Despite Mephisto’s protests, Faust sends his three giant henchmen to ‘encourage’ the old couple to leave; the giants get carried away, the old couple are killed, and their cottage and trees burn to the ground. Deep in his heart Faust knows that, perhaps for the first time, he has committed an evil deed. At midnight he is visited by four spectral crones, Want, Debt, Need and Care. When they see a wealthy ruler’s palace the first three declare that the way is barred for them, but Care says that she can enter even a rich man’s house. Care speaks to Faust in a keening, wailing chant which works like a spell on Faust, nearly overwhelming him with dread. In his defense he says that he knows everything about earthly life, that knowledge confers power and power dispels worry. He admits that he knows nothing about the afterlife, but no living being can, so only a fool would worry about that. Care says that, just like all humans in their old age, Faust will worry about his future state, no matter what it is. When Faust continues to arrogantly defy her power, Care blinds him with one slight breath. 278 On these themes, see esp. H. C. Binswanger, Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe’s Faust, trans. by J. E. Harrison, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

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Even now unbeaten, Faust reflects that although all is dark outside, the light within him burns bright; his word and his mind alone can accomplish great deeds. In his final speech Faust articulates an all-embracing vision of a workers’ state, a socialist paradise, where ‘he only earns his freedom and existence who must reconquer them each day’279 (F. II 11,575). As he anticipates the satisfaction that he would feel if he were able to see his utopia realized, he utters these ominous words: ‘Then I might entreat the fleeting minute, oh tarry yet, you are so fair!’ (F. II 11,581). These are, of course, the very words of his wager with Mephisto in Part One: ‘If the sweet moment I entreat, “tarry awhile, you are so fair”, Then forge the shackles to my feet, then I will gladly perish there’ (F. I 1700). At that moment Faust collapses dead, attendant demons lower his corpse into the grave, and Mephisto keeps watch over it to ensure that he catches the soul when it exits. But God has other plans, Mephisto is tricked by angels who distract his attention and snatch Faust’s soul away to heaven. In Act V the fifth essence dominates over the cumulative elemental process of the previous four acts; Faust’s immortal essence has been rescued because ‘whoever strives in ceaseless toil, him we may grant exemption’ (F. II 11,936) – a perfect summation of Goethe’s distinctive picture of human’s best hope. Erich Heller said that Goethe was ‘a genius who, more than any other of his time (with the possible exception of Blake) seemed to have been sent to fill with precious life whatever order of the spirit, whatever tradition he may have found upon his arrival, as Sophocles had done with the religious tradition of Greece, and Dante with the scholastic order of the Middle Ages’.280 And Northrop Frye said almost the same about Blake: he wanted ‘to recover the mythological universe for the human imagination, and stop projecting it on an objective God or similar analogy of the external order. No contemporary poet made a comparable attempt to do this, except perhaps Goethe, in the second part of Faust.’281 Blake and Goethe were romantic individualists of the highest calibre; in The Four Zoas and Faust Parts One and Two, they laid claim to an entirely novel imaginative world order. Blake never published The Four Zoas and Goethe refused to allow Faust Part Two to be published until after his death. Both poets postponed the public’s discovery of their central works; the secrets of the texts were enforced as long as possible. Their mutual interest in exotic myths and occult imagery is closely allied with the chief values of Romanticism. Bidney defines Romanticism as ‘a project of pioneering introspection, aimed at discovering the sources of visionary power, so that each poet could write his or her own mythology, scripture or testament. [It] is intensified introspective individualism, with mythopoetic intent, and [its] enthusiasms tend to contribute to this project of making one’s own interiorized myth, with the help of unexpected unusual sources.’ This process of internalizing one’s own myth and creatively reshaping it by imaginative projection appears in stark outlines in their written works: ‘The greatest Romantic poems are those in which the poet has engaged in such an ambitious and diversified search for the roots of his own 279 For an excellent interpretation of Faust’s ‘dream of development’, see Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air, London: Verso, 1983 pp. 57–71. 280 Erich Heller quoted in Bidney 1988 p. xi. 281 Northrop Frye quoted in Bidney 1988 p. xii.

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imaginative being that the result constitutes a “criticism of life” from the perspective of an intense and cultivated inwardness.’282 Careful investigation of this complex creative process in both poets’ major works reveals three main themes, according to Martin Bidney. First, authentic life consists of creative tensions between contraries, and the most creative of all is the tension between self-affirmation and self-transcendence. Their works emphasize the continual symmetrical motion of the ethical life of the soul. Neither self-assertion nor self-renunciation taken by itself is a valid ideal; only the continual alternating motion between the two polar extremes is life-giving. Second, the self-assertive attempt to annihilate one’s contrary through negation poses a constant threat to creative contrariety. One form of destructive negation is the suppression of energy, another is the denial of becoming; in both forms, mental and moral failures result when humans do not learn how to live in time through creative activity. Third, the spirit of negation can be overcome by the spirit of imaginative mediation; the exercise of the creative imagination mediates between order and energy and diversifies the soul’s actions by multiplying opportunities for becoming: ‘The Four Zoas and Faust are modern Books of Job, presenting visions in which Urizen and Mephistopheles, embodying that Spirit of Negation that is the modern version of the Biblical Satan, learn about possibilities of self-transcendence in an expanded world of psychic diversity.’283 But in their efforts to construct this new value for imaginative mediation both poets express articles of faith that go beyond what the Book of Job offers: ‘The form of this new shared myth embodies a faith in unity, process, and immanence. The God-Devil polarity is now a creative tension, not a mutual exclusion; beneath all contraries lies the unity of mutual indispensability. In addition, the Devil undergoes a process of growth and learning.’ The Devil’s denial of becoming and his suppression of energy are problems that all humans share: if the Devil can grow and learn, then so can every human: All Jobean enigmas are to be transcended in the unity that arises from the process of growth through introspective discovery. The fourfold colloquy of immortals – pairs of mutually contrary mental forces in productive tension – takes place within us. The sons of God that sang at the morning of creation in Genesis may again join voices within regenerated humanity – if only after epic nightmares of negation. This shared faith in unity, process, and immanence … is at the heart of the Blake-Goethe attempt to redeem the Devil … They hope to overcome what are felt to be unfruitful elements of unreconciled dualism, stasis, and other-worldliness within received tradition.284

This romantic overcoming thus assimilates Manichean and Gnostic cosmic dualism, and then goes beyond it by demonstrating the ways in which the profound oppositions between good and evil, ascent and descent, are played out within each individual. The polarized oppositions between extremes is thus not one of established cosmic separation into two realms, but two poles between which each individual swings – 282 283 284

Bidney 1988 p. xiii. Bidney 1988 pp. xiv–xv. Bidney 1988 p. 2.

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it is a process of selving and unselving (in Bidney’s astute phrase). This strange and beautiful idea finds its most comprehensive expression in the chapter from Poetry and Truth quoted above: human being was created to bridge the gap between Lucifer and the Elohim, the gods: ‘But it did not take long for human to play fully the role of Lucifer. Separation from the benefactor is the real ingratitude, and so that fall was made manifest for a second time, although the whole creation was and is nothing but a falling away and a returning to the original.’ God the creator assumed the role of Christ in order to restore the cosmic balance: ‘And thus we find ourselves in a condition which, if it seems to pull us down and oppress us, yet it gives us the opportunity, even makes it a duty, to raise ourselves up and thereby to fulfill the intentions of the divinity, so that while on the one hand we are constrained to “selve” (make one a self), on the other hand, we may not neglect to “unselve”, in regular phases.’285 The regular oscillation between the creative contraries of contraction and expansion, inhaling and exhaling, opacity and lightness, are the inner law of our human life. Perhaps there is no better way to take our leave of Goethe and close this section (and chapter) than to quote Ortega y Gasset’s illuminating insight: Goethe is the man in whom for the first time there dawned the consciousness that human life is man’s struggle with his intimate and individual destiny – that is, that human life is made up of the problem of itself, that its substance consists not in something that already is – like the substance of the Greek philosopher and, more subtly but in the last analysis equally, that of the modern idealist philosopher – but in something which has to make itself, which therefore is not a thing but an absolute and problematic task.286

285 286

Bidney 1988 p. xvi. Ortega quoted by Greenberg in Goethe 1992 pp. xii–xiii.

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Chapter 7

Plurality of Dualisms and Duality of Life In the history of western philosophy problems associated with mind-body dualism have been predominant in discussions of dualism as such. One could say that mindbody dualism has been taken to be co-extensive with, or even the only version of dualism in general. But the bare word ‘dualist’ hardly captures what sort of two-ness is at issue when the question of the relation between mind and body is posed. The two-ness involved could mark out two worlds or realms, two parts or forms of the soul, two parts of human nature, or even two souls in one human – the epithet ‘dualist’ is a qualifier for all or none. To observe that an explanatory scheme is dualist indicates nothing more than that two-ness overrides one-ness (or even manyness, ‘pluralism’). In the bewildering array of 3000 years’ worth of speculation about the nature of the world and humans’ place in it, at least three kinds of dualism have been encountered so far. According to the first, cosmic dualism, there are two worlds, two entire domains of beings: the intelligible world and the sensible world. The intelligible world can be accessed through the intellect alone and is comprised of non-sensible, non-corporeal entities, while the sensible world can be accessed through the sense-organs alone and is comprised of sensible, corporeal entities. In this scheme, humans alone may partake in and/or be composed of elements from both the intelligible and the sensible domains. However, it is not a contradiction to maintain some form of cosmic dualism and still claim that humans only partake in and/or are composed of elements from the sensible domain. On this alternative, the intelligible domain has an independent status, one that has no intrinsic connection with humans’ constitution, one that is closed off to humans’ aspirations for another existence. Humans’ only relation to the intelligible realm is an intentional relation; they can know about that which remains forever out of bounds to them. According to the second type of dualism, anthropic dualism, humans alone of all living creatures have a double nature, that is, in their essence they are a composite of psychical and physical components, each of which could exist independently of the other, but which are dependent when they are considered parts of a greater functional whole, the individual person. It is not a contradiction to maintain that, aside from the constituent psychical parts of which a human is composed, there are no other intelligible, non-sensible entities. Hence, to assert anthropic dualism does not by itself entail the assertion of cosmic dualism, though problems certainly arise for an adequate explanation of how humans come to know about those very intelligible entities. According to the third type of dualism, axial dualism, there are two moral principles (archai), good and evil, which govern and are manifest in the sensible world. These two principles are usually (though not always) thought to be equi-primordial with the origin of the world itself. In some versions of this type of dualism it is only the creation of human beings that triggers or initiates the workings of one or both principles, that is, it is only through humans’ actions that good and 403

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evil things are brought into being. In some versions, good is identified with the source and goal (telos) of the human soul, and evil with the source and goal of the human body. Hence, ethical dualism can be allied with one or another version of cosmic dualism. However, it is possible to maintain a very basic (perhaps total) ethical dualism with an ontological commitment to materialist monism, viz. that all the forces at work in the world are entirely sensible (or material), but that humans turn these forces toward the establishment of good or evil as the principal domain. In his discussion of Platonic, Gnostic and Christian dualisms, A. H. Armstrong discerns four main varieties in two groups: cosmic dualism which ‘sees the whole nature of things as constituted by the meeting and interaction of two opposites principles’, and two-world dualism, ‘in which there are two cosmoi or levels of reality, that of our normal experience and a higher one, which may itself be conceived as complex and many-leveled’. Cosmic dualism can appear in two forms, each with two types, and this occurs with respect to an independence thesis, that is, the independent status of and harmony between the two principles. First, ‘the two principles may be thought of as both unoriginated, independent, and ever-lastingly operative in the nature of things’. These equally independent principles may be conceived as either: ‘(a) intrinsically opposed and in perpetual conflict (or conflict as long as the world lasts). This gives a conflict dualism of what may be called the Iranian pattern’, evinced for instance in Zarathustra’s worldview. Or, it may be conceived as ‘(b) equally independent, but working together in harmony’, for instance, in Heraclitus and other pre-Socratics’ view of Strife versus Love. Second, ‘the second principle may be thought of as derived from and dependent on the first … This derived and dependent “dark other” may be thought of as either (a) in revolt against, or at least opposed to, the first principle; or (b) working in accord and cooperation, at least passive, with it.’1 But although thinkers in the Platonic tradition range over all four varieties of cosmic dualism, they make important modifications: ‘When they think of the two principles as independent, they do not maintain an absolute and unqualified conflictdualism: and when the “dark other” is thought of as dependent for its existence on its opposite, it is not … accepted and qualified as “good”; though at the very end … in Syrianus and Proclus, we do arrive at a dualism of cosmic harmony.’2 One of the hinges upon which the various theories turn is the meaning ascribed in various contexts to the ‘dark other’ as evil: In the earliest form (or forms) of Pythagorean dualism known to us, the two principles (or group of principles) seem to be independent and everlastingly coexistent … The light, male, limiting ordering principle is qualified as ‘good’, and the dark, female, indefinite principle as ‘evil’… As the principle of indefinite multiplicity, [the dark other] can be the principle of formlessness, disorder and irrationality, and so opposed to the good principle of light and musical order. But both principles are absolutely necessary if there is to be a cosmos at all.3

1 2 3

Armstrong in Wallis 1992 pp. 33–4; two worlds in Johnston 1991 pp. 15–16, 19, 158. Armstrong in Wallis 1992 pp. 35; Wallis 1972 pp. 138–46. Armstrong in Wallis 1992 pp. 36.

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Plutarch, on the other hand, like some Gnostics, thinks in terms of three principles, and not just two. There is the principle of light, form and order and the principle of dark, unformed disorder; but between the two is matter, which he sharply distinguishes from evil. In his treatise On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch identifies matter with the goddess Isis, who is not just neutral but divinely good, with an innate passion for the good himself, who is Osiris. The evil soul is identified with Typhon who can disturb and damage, but not basically change, the beauty and goodness of the cosmos, which results from the union of the divine male and female principles.4 In the work of Plotinus the view that the ‘dark other’ derives from the good itself is finally accepted against the dualist opposition of two independent principles. For Plotinus, the matter of the lower world derives from the principles of the higher world, and thus ultimately from the good, and hence there is some sort of ‘hylic’ dimension of the intelligible realm. There are two sorts of matter, and the matter that composes this lower world is evil in a basic sense; our world is a sterile phantom, a ghost-world incapable of further productivity. At the same time, Armstrong argues, Plotinus passionately insists on and defends the divine goodness and holiness of the material world. The good in ‘its creative self-diffusion will go on till the ultimate limit is reached and everything that can have any, even the smallest measure of being and goodness has been called into existence’. Plotinus attempts to reconcile two types of matter with his two-worldview by way of two souls, the higher and the lower, in every human.5 Proclus develops the two-world model in a strange way: ‘he shows how the two principles operate at every level in his vast and complex universe, both in a positive way, and how the “dark other”, the infinite, is the principle of life, fecundity and creative expansion without which the great diffusion of the good through all the levels of multiplicity cannot occur’.6 In the variety of Gnostic, Platonist and Christian versions of two-world dualism, there is always some degree to which this world is hostile to or alienated from the higher world, toward which this world’s denizens seek to return. The Italian scholar Udo Bianchi devoted many years to the study of kinds of dualism in the early Christian centuries. According to Bianchi, dualism in its manifold appearances has certain constants; pairs of opposites are only dualistic where they are understood as principles or causes of the world. Dualist worldviews can be considered in terms of their oppositional character: radical versus moderate, eschatological (or linear) versus dialectical (cyclical), and anti-cosmic versus procosmic. Radical dualism admits the opposition of two co-eternal and co-equal principles, such as in Zoroastrian religion. Moderate dualism exhibits only one primordial principle, while a second principle somehow derives from the first, often through an incident that occurred before the world’s creation, such as in some Gnostic systems, Orphism and Plato’s Timaeus. In contrast to dialectical dualism, eschatological dualism entails the destruction of the negative principle at doomsday, whereas for dialectical dualism the original situation will be resumed in yet another cosmic cycle. Pro-cosmic dualism contends that material creation is basically good Armstrong in Wallis 1992 p. 37. On Plotinus’ dualism, see John Dillon, Introduction to The Enneads, Penguin Books, 1991 pp. xc–ci. 6 Armstrong in Wallis 1992 pp. 40–42. 4 5

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and that evil comes into the world from outside, again as in Zoroastrism, whereas anti-cosmic dualism contends that evil is intrinsic to this world, that is, present in an essentially negative or delusive dimension, such as matter, the body or the lower soul, as in Orphism, Manichaeism and Catharism. In Manichean doctrine, for example, the cosmos is created as an engine of providence in order to permit the progressive liberation of the souls trapped within it, which are eventually guided to the heavenly paradise.7 Ioan Culianu in his studies of the Gnostic and esoteric streams in western philosophy advocated a complexity approach to the question about the scope and structure of dualist schemes: ‘While a traditionalist works backward, knowing the ending and fitting each piece into a puzzle that explains it, a complexity scholar weighs different versions from the viewpoints of many different players, working forward to see each action as a product of chance and constantly shifting choices.’8 On Culianu’s view, historical movements branch into diverse permutations in a multiplication of theories in the process of historical-intellectual convulsions and deeper systems of thought are revealed. Each system functions almost as ‘an object coming from outside and crossing our space in an apparently disconnected way, in which there is a hidden logic which we can reveal only if we are able to move out of our space’.9 In his treatment of Gnosticism, Culianu declared that ‘all gnostic systems, without exception, appear as transformations of one another and therefore can be said to be part of a larger “ideal object” whose possibilities are being explored by human minds at all times, regardless of time and space’.10 Cosmic dualism appears in many guises in the various Gnostic systems of thought, sometimes in the shape of their inversion of moral and physical values. The Gnostic exegetes who interpreted the Genesis account of human creation, for example, shared two biases: ‘against the principle of the ecosystemic intelligence and against the anthropic principle of the fitness of the world to human beings’. Where the Christian tradition smoothed away the manifest contradictions in Biblical texts, especially in Genesis, the Gnostics worked in the other direction: ‘Gnostics are anti-traditional in so far as they do not resort to these illogical tricks. In their attempt at candor (and their lack of unity or orthodoxy), they would not hesitate to multiply the number of transformations to fit the logical range of potentialities offered by any episode.’ Gnostic hermeneutic candor is total across all main texts: ‘No limit is imposed on the number of transformations of myth … The number of logical “bricks” that could be inserted at some point in the narrative sequence has been exhausted.’ The early heresy-hunters treated the Gnostics according to their view of this perverse mess-making: ‘Christians were motivated in suppressing gnosticism by that peculiar feeling of guilt one gets from the existence of a brash, heedless, and decidedly troublesome close relative.’11 However, cosmic dualism as such does not have to take the form of opposition into extremes, all of one sort against all of another sort. Manichean teachings about Bianchi, ‘Dualism’, in EER 1987 vol. 4 pp. 506–9; and in greater detail, Bianchi 1978. Anton 1996 p. xiv. 9 Anton 1996 p. 26. 10 Culianu 1992 p. 62. 11 Culianu 1992 pp. 128–9; for Williams’ praise and criticism of Culianu’s thesis, see his 1996 pp. 49–50. 7 8

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the world and human nature are supported by the strange thesis of scalar dualism, that two ‘realms’ of light and dark represent two extremes on a scale of intensity, not two worlds of intelligible and sensible forms. They are organized from dense, heavy matter, full of darkness, to light, airy non-matter, full of light. This interpretation of the Manichean scheme shows that ‘the darkest of the forms although it is the most fallen and “smoky”, is a reflection of the highest element, the essential nature of the light itself. Fire, in which, as we might say, matter passes over into energy, is for Mani the point where matter passes over into its “ethereal state”.’12 The archetypes of the various elements are divine, living beings of light, and the earthly elements are reflections – as opposed to pale copies – of those archetypes. But, in addition, the five elements are also the external dimension of the spiritual qualities that underline them. The scheme delineates a scalar continuum from one extreme (prototype) in one dimension to the opposite extreme in the other (anti-type) dimension. In the anthropic dualist scheme, the rational part of human (the mind) lies at one extreme – simple, immaterial and immortal – in contrast with body at the other extreme – compound, material and perishable. The mind is the most hidden, deeply buried part (or aspect) of human nature; it is by looking within that humans come to know their ‘true’ nature; truth dwells in the ‘inner human’. Through contemplation of the inner human, one can enter the path for the soul’s ascent; the mystic (mustikos) is one who reaches into the inner recess (mukhos). The history of the emergence of religious mysticism is the story of the successive appearance of nooks and recesses. Moses stands in a cleft of rock (a nook) when Yahweh passes over, lest he be destroyed by God’s greatness (Ex. 19:16–20); he stands in a nook in order to understand what God has to say. Moses is the model of one who, breaking free of all seeing, ‘plunges into the truly mystical darkness of unknowing’, as PseudoDionysius said. Although he does not offer any details on the character of this mystical union, Dionysius thinks that union should be thought of in terms of theosis; ‘this consists of being as much as possible like and in union with God’ (EH 1.3). Hence, divinization is the gift that God bestows on beings endowed with reason and intelligence through their participation in the divine hierarchies. In the ancient Greek world, Empedocles’ going-under (katabasis) traverses hidden recesses where god-like powers reside13 (KRS frs. 402–5); he declares that he is ‘an immortal god, mortal no more’ (KRS fr. 399). The principal work of Pherekydes, another shamanic character, was called ‘the seven-nook god-mixture (or god-birth)’ (KRS fr. 43), according to which Chronos made the basic elements and disposed them in recesses, from whence the gods’ offspring emerged (KRS fr. 50). In the ancient Near East, cult statues of the gods were placed in temple nooks, sometimes in an underground chamber, where they were the objects of worship and ritual. The naos shrines and statue enclosures survived in the Greek mystery cults well into the Hellenistic Era and influenced Neo-Platonic ideas about the god that dwells within. Bernard McGinn has argued very forcefully for the importance of early monasticism in the formation of Christian mysticism: the monachoi Welburn 1998 p. 120. Empedocles travels in the underworld, acc. to Kingsley’s strenuous interpretation, 1995 pp. 250–55. 12 13

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(‘solitaries’) lived alone, some practiced anach¯or¯esis (‘out of public space’); selfenclosed in their cells and caves they discovered the divine darkness and the path of unknowing, searching for the secrets within the heart. The temple nook, the rocky cave and the underground recess are the proper residence of the gods; the inner nook, the hidden recess in the soul, is the proper place to turn to god. Before it became associated with the solitary experience of the divine, mustos or mustikos was associated with secret communal ceremonies for the patron god. And before that it referred to the concrete location for the god’s image or idol, suitable for an observer’s contemplation and propitiation. There is steady expansion across a wide semantic field from mukhos (nook or recess) to must¯es or mustikos (an initiate) and then to mysterion, the sacraments and/or ceremonies of initiates’ rites.14 Hence, the development of the idea of ‘mystic’ traces the same trajectory as that of psych¯e in the same period: from an external concrete location to an abstract internal location. The outer nook where god dwells is internalized, along the lines of Augustine’s ‘inner human’, so that the solitary thinker can contemplate the inner image of god. This interior, abstractive movement is only possible, when god-as-an-object is no longer a superhuman living being, but a transcendent timeless being. The profound changes in the concept of the human soul, as it recedes into yet further depths, are echoes of the profound changes in the concept of god as he (or it) recedes into yet further heights. Stroumsa argued that the birth of Christian mysticism is directly related to the contemporary development of a new concept of the person, a new approach to subjectivity and the inner human: Rather than the recipients of a private revelation, theologians and monks [in the early centuries] defined themselves and were perceived as virtuosi able to reach even deeper levels of faith. Rather than the secrecy of a special revelation, one came to recognize the secrets hidden in the depth of the heart. Humility became the new virtue necessary in order to enhance such hidden dimensions. The change of attitude toward esoteric traditions reflects the process of interiorization typical of late antiquity.15

Through the intellectual transition from esoteric doctrines to the emergence of mystical patterns of thought, the very meaning of ‘inner beliefs’, an individual’s private thoughts and desires, was transformed. The single most important figure in this process is Augustine: for him, the real secrets are no longer those of God, but those of each individual, hidden in depths of the heart: ‘Hence, a new vocabulary is developed, one of the “interior senses”, through which one can experience the divinity, in particular through spiritual visions. The significance of such metaphors of “interiorization” … lies in the fact that they are parallel to those of esotericism: what is inside is also what is hidden from the eyes, what cannot be seen, or expressed in words, be it invisible or unspeakable.’16 What marks out the radical change in the concept of mystery between the late Judaic and Hellenistic context 14 LSJ 1968 s.v. ‘musteri-’, ‘muste ¯ s’, p. 1156, ‘mukhos’ p. 1157; it is curious that Greek mukhos has the same range of meanings as English ‘nook’, OED vol. X pp. 507–8, which the editors say has ‘an obscure origin’, although its earliest appearances are in northern England. 15 Stroumsa 1996 p. 108. 16 Stroumsa 1996 pp. 159–60.

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and the early Christian context is that ‘the “mystery” is not any more something that should not be spoken about, it is something that cannot be entirely described in words, precisely because of its newness’.17 The progressive interiorization of the nook reverses this direction when it achieves the high peak of the thirteenth-century mystics; at the most inward recess one encounters the completely other, that which is entirely outside. In the thirteenth century, Hadewijch employs imagery from Moses’ encounter with Jehovah on Mount Sinai to symbolize the positive and negative aspects of experiential union with God. The bright lightning is the light of love which reveals who love really is, thunder is the fearful voice of reason which speaks of our failure and smallness. When the soul is drawn into union and becomes all that love is, the divine unity finally attains what it has demanded and the soul reaches fruition in the Holy Trinity. Both Margaret Porette and Meister Eckhart describe the highest stage of mystical vision as a paradoxical mode of seeing, where the eye which sees God is the same eye with which God sees the soul: ‘God sees himself of himself in her, for her, without her. God shows to her that there is nothing except him. And thus the soul understands nothing except him, for there is nothing except him.’ Porette describes her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, as an ‘aperture’, an opening onto the mystical truth. Elsewhere she refers to the aperture as the ‘chink of contemplation’; it is the ‘opening of the moment of glory’ by which the soul passes into the final stage of complete annihilation.18 The progressive interiorization and abstraction of the mind as self-aware passes across a cusp where it flips over: the image of the eye-seeingthe-eye marks the labile point where the most abstract internal aspect (the contemplative mind) coincides with the most transcendent external aspect (God as divine mind). Recent scholars of Meister Eckhart’s extraordinary mystical vocabulary have examined his introduction of the concept of grunt (ground) and the profound transformation of meanings it undergoes. There is no genuine equivalent for this term in the other vernacular writings in mysticism, nor in Latin literature. According to scholars of medieval High German, the word grunt can be understood, first, in the concrete sense of physical ground, the earth; second, in concrete sense of the bottom or lowest side of a body, surface or structure. In the third, and now abstract sense, grunt can indicate the origin (origo), cause (causa), beginning (principium), reason (ratio) or proof (argumentum) of some thing. In the fourth sense, it signifies what is inmost (intimum), hidden (abditum), and most proper (proprium) to an entity, that is, its essence: ‘The semantic richness of this simple German word, especially its spectrum of both concrete and abstract significations, made it a seed ripe for flowering in [this] age of linguistic creativity.’19 The new master metaphor of the ‘ground’ absorbed earlier themes at the same time as it exploded and recast them; these changes are refracted in various Latin terms used at this time. Eckhart and his followers used metaphorical terms like ‘spark’, ‘castle’, ‘nobleman’, ‘divine seed’, ‘highest point’, and the like; these images are echoed by Latin terms such as fundus

17 18 19

Stroumsa 1996 p. 162. McGinn 1998 p. 251. McGinn 2005 pp. 86–87.

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animae, scintilla animae, apex mentis, abditum animae or mentis or cordis, semen divinum, ratio superior, abstrusior memoriae, profunditas, and so forth.20 The thirteenth-century beguine mystics also contributed to the expression to a new view of how God becomes one with a human person: ‘no longer through mystical uniting, that is, an intentional union between God and human with the continuing distinction between the two entities, but in a mystical identity in which God and human become truly indistinct, at least on some level’. God as ground cannot be understood or expressed, but it can be manifested through concrete symbols suggesting the limitless divine nature, such as the ocean, the desert and the abyss. Ground-images were also associated with Eckhart’s focus on God as pure intellect and human as the image of that intellect. An individual’s realization of divine-human identity in the ground was often expressed by words for emptying and decreation. Christian mystics had always stressed the importance of turning away from worldly things and turning inwards; now the ground-theme promotes images of this inward-turning as ‘the birth of the word’ in the soul. More novel was the way in which mystics of the ground encouraged total separation from created things, including the self, through such terms ‘cutting-away’, ‘letting-go’ and ‘breakingthrough’, and the achievement of annihilation through ‘dis-imaging’ and ‘unbecoming’.21 Hence, at the very zenith of this mystical identity of the totally immanent with the totally transcendent, the distinction between the polar extremes of two axes disappears: the utterly outside with the utterly inside and the selfsameness of one’s ownness with the completely alien of the other. At the end of the Middle Ages one begins to hear about private, inner rooms in the better houses; these studies were the equivalent of monastic retreats and permitted solitary meditation. According to the Vita Nuova, Dante closeted himself in his private room so that he could weep over his lost love without being seen by others. Petrarch became so absorbed in reading Augustine’s account of the inner torment leading to his conversion that he cried aloud, struck his forehead and wrung his hands. In such a personal retreat, an individual could eliminate every distraction in order to be fully prepared to receive Christ within. Meister Eckhart said that ‘so high above the world and so mighty, this little castle is impregnable to all but the gaze of the Almighty. And because he is one and simple, he enters in his oneness what is called the fortress of the soul.’ The ideal retreat, of course, was not an actual room in a building, but the deeply inward, private sphere of one’s own soul. But the leisure for contemplation and meditation was not available to everyone, only those with both the education and inclination for such an intense endeavor. Many writers in this period testify to this turning inward; ‘they looked to the future with sincere and fervent anxiety. Indications of this can be seen in the revival of ascetic orders, the success of devotional confraternities, in some of the more spectacular aspects of the Mendicants’ preaching, and above all in innumerable manifestations of personal piety.’22 The epoch-making setting in which these private retreats and interior studies find their home is the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 20 See esp. Leonce Reypens, ‘Âme (structure)’ in DSA vol. 1 cols. 433-69; Aimé Solignac, ‘Nous et Mens’ in DSA vol. 11 cols. 459–69. 21 McGinn 2005 pp. 87-88. 22 Braunstein, in Duby, 1988 pp. 616–24; quote from Eckhart, p. 618.

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In contrast to the mystical tendency, the occult-magical stream of thought reverses the process with regard to grasping and releasing the rational part of the soul; it moves from abstract and inward to concrete and outward in the form of material analogues of psychical aspects. Like the mystical stream of heterodox thought, the magical stream endorses the notion that these ideas are esoteric teachings, kept secret from the public, and devoted to techniques for the soul’s ascent. But magical ideas lend themselves to various occult theories, where some aspects are externalized in certain forms, such as rituals, spells and recipes; there these forms can become detached from the theoretical base which explains them. Metaphorical images associated with soul-parts or soul-aspects, such as fire, vapor, breath, and so forth, are exteriorized in hermetic-alchemical schemes and then ritually operated on in order to effect correspondent changes in either the magician’s soul or in the world at large. The very concept of nature that underlies the dualism of matter and spirit is not the same for the magical-occult view: nature is the ordered arrangement of dynamic reality, imbued with hidden powers, and open to the ‘vexations’ (as Francis Bacon said) of the skillful operator. The Cartesian-Galilean understanding of the mathematical order of the natural world and the mechanical laws that govern change and motion would definitively overthrow the fundamental principles of the late medieval and Renaissance picture of dynamic nature. The model of a world-machine would supplant the model of a world-spirit, imbued with celestial and terrestrial intelligences that could be intuited and handled by wisdomseekers. Wisdom would no longer be the special endowment or privilege of a few initiates, but a collective achievement that can be realized through cooperative endeavors, pieces of which can become available to anyone with the right scientific education. According to Antoine Faivre, western Esotericism, that is, the heterodox tradition, can be identified by the presence of six basic factors:23 the first four factors are intrinsic, together comprising necessary and sufficient conditions; the last two factors are relative to social-cultural conditions. First, the esoteric stream posits systems of symbolic correspondence among all parts of the visible and invisible universe; they are not obvious at first glance but instead are veiled; they need to be read or deciphered: ‘The universe is a theatre of mirrors, a mosaic of hieroglyphs to be decoded; everything in nature is a sign, the least object is hiding a secret.’ Second, according to the idea of living nature, ‘the cosmos is not merely complex, plural and hierarchical, it cannot be reduced to a network of correspondences [since] it is also alive.’ The concept of nature is one that is thought to be living (or dynamic) in all its parts; it is pervaded by a light or fire which circulates through all natural forms. Natural magic is closely attached to this living nature, since it operates through hidden forces by means of the manipulation of seals, talismans, stones, metals and plants. Third, the idea of symbolic correspondence implies that humans have an imaginative faculty capable of deciphering these hieroglyphs, that is, seeing the true signatures of things. These signatures always present themselves more or less as mediators between the perceptible datum and the invisible or hidden thing to which it refers. Rituals, images and symbols are mediators since they allow the various 23 Faivre 2000 p. xxii; the dynamic system of correspondences, similitudes and analogies is discussed with great acuity by Foucault 1970 pp. 17–45.

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levels of reality to be reconnected to one another through the operator’s actions. Human imagination is a cognitive power that allows intermediaries to be used for ‘Gnostic ends’; it is ‘a sort of organ of the soul’ through which a human can establish an intellectual relation with the mesocosm, ‘an imaginal world’. Faivre comments that it is only after the rediscovery of the Hermetic corpus at the end of the fifteenth century that memory and imagination are privileged in the cognitive discipline of the adept. Fourth, in addition to the idea of visionary insight coupled with living nature is the personal experience of something like initiation, the experience of transmutation. What is called ‘gnosis’ is often this illuminated knowledge that favors a second birth through a process of substantial change. An interior transmutation follows the path marked out in alchemical terms: nigredo (blackening = death), albedo (whitening = change), and rubedo (reddening = new life). Faivre says that one is tempted to compare these three phases with the three stages of mystical knowledge: purgation, illumination and unification. The fifth factor pertains to the practice of concordance; closely akin to the basic idea of philosophia perennis, this notion posits the existence of common denominators amongst several traditions, then studies them in the hope of bringing out the forgotten or hidden trunk of which each manifest tradition would be a branch. The sixth factor pertains to the practice of transmission: by means of various channels, the basic ideas of the hidden tradition are passed from one initiate to another, either from master to disciple or amongst members of a secret society. The idea is that one cannot be initiated by oneself alone and that a second birth requires training. This may lead to the idea of authenticating, giving credentials for, specific channels of affiliation: The mystic – in the very classical sense – aspires to a more or less complete suppression of images and intermediaries (mediations) because they quickly become obstacles for him to union with God. This, in contrast to the esotericist, who seems more interested in the intermediaries revealed to his inner vision by virtue of his creative imagination than in tending above all to a union with his God. He prefers to sojourn, to travel, on Jacob’s ladder, where the angels – the symbols, the mediations – are ascending and descending, rather than venture beyond.24

One of Faivre’s more intriguing conjectures concerns the origin of the main figures in theosophy (such as Paracelsus) from Lutheran soil, a thesis for which he elicits several contributive conditions. First, Lutheranism allows free inquiry, an openness which in certain inspired souls can take the form of prophecy. Second, it embodies a paradoxical blend of mysticism and rationalism, whence the need to bring inner experience into discussion, and conversely to listen to discussions and transform them into inner experience. Third, less than a century after the Reformation, the spiritual poverty of Protestant preaching and the dryness of its theology were sorely resented and this also spurred the need for revitalization. Finally, in the milieux where Lutheran theosophy was born, there was some freedom of expression and observance for its ministers, but at the same time prophetic activity as such was not well tolerated. In the seventeenth century the ideal of solidarity amongst thinkers began to be realized; a community of effort amongst philosophers made the very 24

Faivre 2000 pp. xxiii.

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notion of a total science seem feasible: ‘Theosophy is globalizing in its essence; its vocation demonstrates an impetus to integrate everything within a general harmonious whole.’ This epoch also witnessed new theories about the nature of language and the meaning of signs; knowledge of divine things was gained by investigation of the concrete world where God’s plan could be read in signatures and hieroglyphs, provided one had the proper natural scientific training. In sharp contrast with the material-mechanical model of explanation in Descartes and Galileo, theosophy continued the long Platonic and Neo-Platonic tradition of explanation in terms of a dynamic model of reality.25 On first glance, it would seem that the Cartesian-Galilean model of matter in motion according to mechanical principles would suffice to put paid to the Hermetic-magical model of secret forces and cryptic signs – but the situation is much more complex than that. In the final chapter of his Religion and the Decline of Magic, Keith Thomas draws on the wealth of primary documents for England between 1500 and 1700 to offer his views on the reasons for the decline and disappearance of magical thought. He argues that magic and science had originally advanced side by side: the investigative, interrogative approach of one reinforced that approach in the other: The magical desire for power had created an intellectual environment favourable to experiment and induction; it marked a break with the characteristic medieval attitude of contemplative resignation. Neoplatonic and hermetic ways of thinking had stimulated such crucial discoveries in the history of science as heliocentrism, the infinity of worlds, and the circulation of blood. The mystical conviction that number contained the key to all mysteries had fostered the revival of mathematics. Astrological inquiries had brought new precision to the observation of heavenly bodies, the calculation of their movements, and the measurement of time.26

But this mutual support (or at least tolerance) was loosened and dissolved in the early seventeenth century by several serious controversies: Isaac Casaubon demonstrated that the Hermetic texts could not be ascribed to remote antiquity; Mersenne and Gassendi refuted Robert Fludd’s magical animism and his pervasive network of inter-cosmic forces; Robert Boyle’s chemical studies destroyed many of the basic assumptions behind alchemy; magnetism and electricity, once considered to be occult powers or virtues, were now explained in purely mechanistic terms. Francis Bacon and others proposed what we now take to be the sine qua non of scientific investigation: that statements about natural laws had to be tested against the facts, experiments had to be performed to look for disconfirming instances, and hypotheses had to be revised – and all of this by means of direct experience, and not by reliance on authorities or hearsay. Although this basic scientific approach was conceived and worked out by an intellectual elite, its results began to be disseminated to the general public through popular encyclopaedias and practical manuals. For example, in 1704 John Harris, in his Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, dismissed astrology as ‘a ridiculous piece of foolery’, and alchemy as ‘an art which begins with lying, is continued with 25 26

Faivre 2000 pp. 7–10. Thomas 1971 pp. 643–4.

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toil and labour, and at last ends in beggary’.27 It also seems entirely plausible to say that, before the full impact of these changes swept through European societies, all sorts of people had recourse to magic in an effort to understand or solve a variety of ordinary problems, to the extent that they lacked control over their immediate environment. The deep inadequacies of contemporary medicine drove sick people into the hands of cunning folk and wise women. Thomas also points out that ‘the slowness of communication and the lack of a police force fostered dependence on village wizards for the recovery of stolen goods and missing persons. Ignorance of the future encouraged men to grasp at omens or to practise divination as a basis for making decisions. All such devices can be seen as attempts to counter human helplessness in the face of the physical and social environment.’28 At the same time that people grew less vulnerable to certain kinds of disaster, new kinds of knowledge superseded magical explanations of misfortune by recourse to the actions of witches and ghosts. Foremost among these new kinds of knowledge were what we would now describe as social-economic theories. Slowly it began to be understood and accepted that impersonal causes could contribute to various kinds of hardship, prevalence of illness, poverty, and so forth. Underlying this view, and providing more exact ways of expressing these impersonal, anonymous causes, was the gradual development and implementation of statistics. It was a startling new idea to think that what was taken as a chance event (for good or ill) was an event whose causes were not fully known, but where it was possible to calculate the probability of its taking one form rather than another.29 The English word ‘coincidence’ was first used in the early seventeenth century to mean the juxtaposition of causally unrelated events.30 It was this nascent statistical sense of patterns in apparently random behavior which superseded previous conjecture about the causes of good or bad luck by way of deliberate magical intent or the operation of supernatural agencies. This same period witnessed the emergence and flourishing of the profession of antiquaries, collectors of folklore and scholars of traces and vestiges; they studied those beliefs, practices and artifacts which were no longer living, and hence relegated them to the now-defunct past. However, one strange paradox remains, one that Keith Thomas first broached and attempted to explain. According to his detailed examination of primary documents, at least in England, magic lost its appeal before the appropriate technical solutions had been devised to take its place. It was the abandonment of magic which had made possible the upsurge of technology, not the other way round. Indeed, as Max Weber stressed, magic was potentially one of the most serious obstructions to the rationalization of economic life. The technological primacy of Western civilization, it can be argued, owes a sizable debt to the fact that in Europe recourse to magic was to prove less ineradicable than in other parts of the world.

27 28 29 30

Quoted in Thomas 1971 p. 645. Thomas 1971 p. 650. Thomas 1971 pp. 655–6. OED 2nd edn vol. III p. 456.

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The real change was less an issue of technical progress than of an expectation of greater progress in the future: ‘Men became more prepared to combine impotence in the face of current misfortune with the faith that a technical solution would one day be found.’ For example, ‘dwindling reliance on love potions did not coincide with the invention of some more certain means of gaining the affections of another person, however much faith was placed in the power of cosmetics, deodorants or seductive manners and clothes’. In conclusion, Thomas declares, men emancipated themselves from those magical beliefs without necessarily having devised any effective technology with which to replace them. In the 17th century they were able to take this step because magic was ceasing to be intellectually acceptable, and because their religion taught them to try self-help before invoking supernatural aid. But the ultimate origins of this faith in unaided human capacity remain mysterious.31

Such is the general purport, and some specific claims, of Keith Thomas’ famous account of the decline of magical thought in the early modern world. But our studies of the development of various heterodox lines of thought brings out other factors in the fading away, not of magic as such, but of the magical soul, that is, the human soul under the sway of magical ideas. The most important conditions for the emergence of a more modern view of mind and soul in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are as follows: (1) the concept of dynamic reality is superseded by a mechanical model of matter in motion; nature is not shaped by divine intelligence, nor shapeable by human intelligence, it is insensate and dumb. (2) The magical doctrine of innate ideas, allied in many ways with rationalist metaphysics, is confronted by the empiricists’ attack on innate ideas; every thing one can claim to know is learned from experience. (3) This is connected with the empiricists’ view of language; its rules are conventional, its components arbitrary, and its acquisition by imitation; there is no primal language, no pristine wisdom hidden in a special code.32 (4) The empiricist view of human knowledge is coupled with the materialist view of the human mind; it is not a separate entity, not immortal, and hence there is no chance of the soul’s ascent. (5) The mechanization of the world picture severs the micro-macrocosm connection; the small world of humans is not a replica of the great world; the many levels of similitude and correspondence are shattered. (6) The rapid increase in scientific knowledge from Galileo to Newton vividly shows the vast complexity of laws that govern natural phenomena; no single person could ever gain sufficient mastery of nature to bring about magical effects. (7) Understanding of new ideas in natural science is advanced by the introduction and spread of scholarly journals and societies; openness and exchange become important, secrecy and concealment are devalued. Further, (8) from the revival of ancient skepticism, religious reformers’ suspicions about authority, and increased knowledge about non-European cultures comes the radically new idea that human being is not the paragon of creation; there is no perfect human state towards which one’s inner discipline could aim. (9) The very concept of divinity undergoes profound changes: Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian and Greek gods – as well as their avatars in magical traditions – are not all-knowing, 31 32

Thomas 1971 pp. 657, 660, 663. An argument developed at great length by Vickers 1984 pp. 95–163.

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all-powerful and eternal.33 The gods of magicians, witches and sorcerers do not accord very well with characteristics of what Pascal called the god of rationalist philosophers – remote, hidden and impersonal. (10) The establishment of democratic societies and the institution of basic human rights removed the basis for criminal indictments against persons for merely holding unorthodox beliefs. And finally, (11) the eighteenth century witnessed the converse of the social process which had occurred in ancient Egypt (and perhaps in other cultures) more than two thousand years earlier, the progressive democratization34 of the afterlife – for now there is a progressive democratization of this life, the ordinary social life of human beings as members of a community of equals. Our previous studies of ancient Hebrew and Homeric Greek soul-words35 showed that ideas about the distinctive character of human nature began with concrete, outward things or forces, such as wind, air, heat, and so forth, and over long periods of time became less concrete and more abstract, less external and more internal. Our further studies of Egyptian, Akkadian and Avestan records confirm this process of complexive modification: archaic thought does not work with concepts but with complexes whose salient features are an over-abundance of properties, an overproduction of connections, and weakness in abstraction. The basic level of complex formation may be the most inclusive level at which it is possible to form a mental image. The complexes involved in these archaic ideas about the soul are ideas fused with their ‘objects’; they have unstable traits and prototypical instances, and are thought at the most abstract level which have concrete images.36 However, the philosophical historian must resist the temptation to describe this process as some sort of spiritualization of the physical (or material) since the very idea of ‘spirit’ (pneuma, ruach, spiritus) originated from concrete images of wind or breath. The conceptual-linguistic development indicates that it is more likely that ‘spirit’ had to first become dematerialized before it could take on the role of an entirely abstract force or entity. It is through the influx of this anonymous, pervasive force that humans (and animals) are instilled with life; the presence of this life-force in an individual is called ‘soul’. But although soul as life-force is now more inward, it is no less concrete; it must be localized or situated in the host’s body. A range of conjectures from different times and places posits the locus or seat of the life-force in humans in the heart or the lungs or even the liver (later, the brain). In order to maintain their life-force humans (and animals) need to take in food and drink, and hence ensouled beings can be characterized by their desire for exogenous material; those which have to move to achieve this have self-willed motion. The soul as life-force takes another step 33 This is a very tricky issue, whose details vary from culture to culture, epoch to epoch, but in general, pre-Christian gods, and their ‘pale copies’ in the Hermetic-occult underground, shared certain features: they had very great (but not infinite) knowledge, power and long life; but their zone of influence was limited to certain regions and their ‘life’ could end by cosmic accident or lack of reverence. 34 Jan Assmann proposed the more appropriate term ‘demotization’, see Dunand & ZivieCoche 2004 pp. 185–7. 35 HCM pp. 1–25. 36 For details of this argument see my earlier paper, MacDonald 2005.

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toward abstraction when its desires are associated with longing-for or tendingtoward that which it does not have, as well as other affective states. The soul is then characterized as the disposition to behave in certain ways when it is in a needful condition. At this stage, the concept of soul is partially abstract and partially inward, but it is still fully comprised by the character of its source in an anonymous lifeforce. Hence, at this stage human is mortal, bound by death: when the seat of the life-force fails the soul departs and the individual ceases to exist. However, a trace of the dead person remains in others’ memories and dreams; it is a simulacrum or ‘double’ of the once-living person and is called the ghost, the phantom or psych¯e (2).37 The ghost is not a disembodied entity with a spiritual form of life; it is an eidolon (like a hologram) of one that no longer has life. As well as ordinary, mundane desires such as for food, drink, sex, and so forth, humans (or at least their heroic representatives) also have another, peculiar desire – to escape the bounds of death, to have a life like the gods’ life (if not to be a god). They began to tell themselves stories about why they do not have immortality and what they can do to attain it. Since they were denied immortality – as experience makes abundantly evident – perhaps the gods gave them something in recompense. There are some heroes, such as Gilgamesh and Adapa, who attempt to achieve an immortal, god-like status; but they are always knocked back. The main reason their ambition is repulsed is that it would make humans god-like, elevating them ‘above their station’. The next stage in conceiving the soul in more abstract terms begins at this juncture, for it is the rational part of the human soul that recognizes the huge gap and strives to bridge it. The concept of reason (logos) emerges from ‘inner counsel’, an individual’s efforts to resolve conflicts between two or more imagined courses of action. Reason is the site of an internalized debate about the meaning of things insofar as they can be considered before actually engaging with them. Reason is an inner power to make sense of competing desires and alternate goals. Reason seems to float free of any particular desire; it can govern or control the resources needed to achieve any given desire or set of desires. It is like a pilot in a ship or a driver in a chariot (both common metaphors in Classical Greek thought), overseeing and steering the forces at its command. The seat or locus of such a detached, impartial power cannot itself be comprised entirely by the life-force (the soul), but has its own independent center – the mind. As an independent, self-ruling agent power that is not constituted by the life-force of the soul and that recognizes the deficiency in its nature and the goal towards which it strives, the rational part of human being is not bound by death but continues its existence in another realm. It is this special endowment of mind which eventually makes it possible that some element of human nature is not bound by death. The common claim from Plato onwards that the rational part (or form) of the human soul is immortal is the result of the prior separation of cognitive powers into those allied with the body’s lifeforce (and hence mortal) and those allied with the divinely instilled intellect (and hence immortal). During the seventh to fifth centuries BCE some Greek thinkers began to change their views about human nature (at least in part) as the consequence of hearing reports about foreign ‘shamans’ or ‘seers’. These mysterious, semi-legendary 37

On the idea of a ‘double’ and psyche¯ (2), see HCM pp. 19–21.

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figures gave first-hand reports about their trance-like experiences, specifically extrasomatic projection, in which the shaman’s soul traveled great distances in time and space, even into the world of the dead. Hence, philosophical argument about the rational soul’s immortal nature follows from testimony about anomalous experience and then attempts to explain it by means of rational demonstration. However, the shaman’s out-of-body experience does not by itself demonstrate the soul’s immortal status, only its ability to separate from the host’s body. Such reported instances, after all, occur in this life, and not after death. Two crucial things have to happen in order to change this picture: first, the life-force (psych¯e or anima) must be exclusively located in the organic functions of the body, not in a divinely inspired force, which may enter and leave like breath. Second, the human mind is significantly enhanced in its status, function and power: it is now thought to be created and instilled by god, and it can leave the body only under exceptional circumstances, that is, with god’s assistance. The mind or intellect is not bound by the death of the soul’s host, the organic body with which it is contingently joined. The mind is not joined with or causally related to the soul in the same way as the soul is joined with the body. The human soul is the life-giving form of the organic body, its life-force is coterminous with the body’s functions, whereas the human mind exists (not lives) in the image of god’s mind, an intelligible being that can comprehend intelligible things. But the Classical Greek view of life, death and the afterlife is in striking contrast to the ancient Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern views – these ideas are rarely (if ever) taken into account. According to the ancient Egyptian picture, the aspects of human nature comprise an animate body, the person’s name, the person’s shadow, the ka as an anonymous life-force, and the ba whose seat is the whole person. After death the person can be transformed into a divine being (an akh), a shining light-like entity, equal in stature to the gods and demons. The most important idea underlying the Egyptian ‘complex’ of human nature is that there is only one life for all created, finite beings: this life is manifest in the earthly realm in the form of an animate, bodily entity, and is manifest in the unearthly life, after the first death, by way of the mummy and associated simulacra, in the person’s akh. In the Ancient Near Eastern picture the principal components of human nature are napishtu, life-force, vigor, vitality, or good health; libbu, the heart, seat of emotions, as well as intellect, thought and intention, and etemmu, the ghostly double. The ANE concept of human mortality excludes the idea that the worthy dead will achieve an eternal condition like an Egyptian akh, a transfigured, light-like being. According to Bottero, ‘Even after his death man did not escape control and seizure by the gods. What remained of him was, besides a body that returned in stages to its first state of “clay”, a type of duplicate that was shady, volatile, and airy, a “phantom”.’38 Human nature cannot be ascribed either immortality or mortality as though these opposed ideas were polarized over the presence or absence of one property or condition, for example, being death-bound. Although it is certain that a human’s earthly life was bound by death, it is not true that life as such was bound by death. The fact that the archaic idea of death signified a transition between one state and another does not imply that some aspect of human being was free from termination, that it was separable from the host’s body at death. The true or real 38

See Bottero 1992 pp. 230–32.

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being of all living things was manifested in various forms, one of which was an individual’s earthly form qua organic being; hence, an individual’s existence in that form was bound to its earthly life, and not to its death. In the ancient world, the life possessed by humans had an analogue in the life possessed by the gods; the core idea of life was the same for both gods and humans. The gods have an indefinite amount of life-force, which they cannot be deprived of except by accident, and humans have a definite amount of the same life-force which they are deprived of after their allotted time. According to several congruent myths in the Ancient Near East and ancient Egypt, human progenitors were denied the length of life the gods enjoyed.39 Gods, much like humans, grew older, moved around and changed their form; but where the gods had their life without limit and without illness, human life was limited and imperfect. Other associated ANE myths recount how prototypical humans were fabricated from material by one (or more) of the gods, instilled with life-force and inspired with reason, as recompense for being denied eternal life. But with the incursion of the one true god of the Christian religion, the one-ness of divine-human life is divided. The Judaic-Christian God is beyond this world, an utterly distant, transcendent being who is no longer the model of life, that is, he is not the life-force as its perfect type. This God bears no resemblance in his nature to the living beings whom he creates, not even at the extreme of plastic representation. So, the one true god had to create humans from nothing (according to the first Genesis story) and endow them with ordinary life; making them from the earth (or clay) is retained only in the second Genesis story.40 Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Egyptian accounts of the birth of the cosmos and the birth of the gods usually include an account of the fabrication of the first humans, or their prototypes, but Greek myth does not. Hesiod does describe the making of Pandora by an ensemble of Olympian gods, but she is then given to already extant male humans, who must have had their own female partners. On this interpretation of Pandora’s meaning, she is made the first of a long line of querulous, bitchy women.41 The only other candidate for human-maker is Prometheus, but he is not responsible for making humans as such, but for making humans makers (homo faber), by giving them the fire withheld by Zeus.42 Now, it is no accident that the Homeric view of human nature does not have any room for another life, for another form of existence after death. It looks as though certain Greek thinkers, such as Plato, had to invent or appropriate from outside the idea that humans in their nature had an immortal, god-like portion because there was no reliable story about how the living gods had fabricated humans in their image and likeness. In the Christian sphere, it is in virtue of the fact that Christ took the form of a living being that certain humans have the chance for a second life in the spirit. Humans do not have the chance for post-mortem existence in virtue of the fact that they were created by God the Father; they do not have a second life in their nature. This is an extra-logical 39 According to the recently discovered Old Babylonian tablet, ‘The Death of Bilgames’, humans were quasi-immortal like the gods until the great flood when they were reengineered with an inbuilt short lifespan; Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin Classics, 1999 pp. xliv–xlvi, 195–208. 40 Culianou studies exactly this distinction between the two stories, 1992 pp. 270–75. 41 Gantz 1993 vol. I pp. 152–60. 42 Gantz 1993 vol. I pp. 160–66.

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position, not one that arises from within philosophical debates. Christian doctrine attempts to circumvent philosophical argument by explaining (some) humans’ gift of continued life by God’s gift of his son. Greek philosophical argument about the divine, immortal status of the rational soul, especially in later Neo-Platonism and theurgy, is largely due to an unconscious (or at least suppressed) ambition to integrate old ideas about the human body’s life-force with emerging ideas about one uniform life which the mind exemplifies to the highest degree. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. God instructed the two proto-humans to not eat of either tree, but the woman took the fruit and they both ate from only one tree. Why didn’t she take the chance to eat from the tree of life, and ensure her own (and perhaps her progeny’s) eternal life? Why didn’t the serpent try to persuade her to become immortal and challenge the gods? But, of course, they didn’t eat the tree itself, just the fruit of the tree. Fruits contain seeds, and seeds are derived from the creation of species either by God the Father or by his adjutant, the demiurge. By eating the fruits’ seeds they acquired the capacity to know about things outside the garden; to know good and evil, as well as to know the useful and harmful, and hence they became makers. Live trees need water, and dead trees make fuel for fire. When humans were ejected from paradise they needed both fire and fuel to maintain their species. Through eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, humans also brought good and evil into the world, and so one says that ‘you will know them by their fruits’. It is through the perishable, material body that humans in their new state may acquire that which they lost at the beginning: ‘The body that the soul animates and through which it is placed in the cosmos is not an extrinsic addition but the circuit that it travels in order to be united with itself.’43 By way of continuous mediation through the cosmic levels the body is of the same nature as the soul, the soul with the intellect, and the intellect with god. The physical body was simply the point of condensation in a long process that followed the material function of creative dispersion.

43

Trouillard 1982 p. 251.

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Bibliography Introduction Copenhaver, Brian & Schmitt, Charles (1992) Renaissance Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Culianu, Ioan (1992) The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism. San Francisco, CA: Harper-Collins. Kieckhefer, Richard (1990) Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jolly, Karen (2001) ‘Medieval Magic: Definitions, Beliefs, and Practices’, in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages. London: Athlone Press. Stroumsa, G. G. (1996) Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Voss, Angela (2000) ‘The Astrology of Marsilio Ficino’, in Culture & Cosmos, 4, pp. 1–23. Chapter 1, section 1 Life, death and the soul in ancient Egypt Allen, T. G. (1974) The Book of the Dead, or Going Forth by Day. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Assmann, Jan & Sundermeier, T (eds) (1993) Die Erfindung des inneren Menschen. Güttersloh: Mohn. Assmann, Jan (1995) Egyptian Solar Religion. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul. Assmann, Jan (ed.) (1999) Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religion. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Baumgarten, A. I. (ed.) (1998) Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Bolshakov, A. O. (1997) Man and His Double in Egyptian Ideology of the Old Kingdom. Weisbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. Bottero, Jean (1992) Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Trans by Z. Bahrani & M. van der Mieroop. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Brunner, H. (1983) ‘Das Herz in Agyptischen glauben’, in Das Hörende Herz. Gottingen: Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 80, pp. 21–6. Derchain, Phillipe (1992) ‘Egyptian Cosmogony’, ‘Egyptian Anthropology’, etc. in Greek and Egyptian Mythologies. Yves Bonnefoy (ed.) Trans. by Wendy Doniger. Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, pp. 215–39. D’Auria, Sue & others (1988) Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt. Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts. Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C. (2004) Gods and Men in Egypt 3000 BCE – 395 CE. 421

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Trans. by David Lorton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Englund, Gertie (1978) Akh – une notion religieuse dans l’Egypte pharaonique. Boreas (Acta Univ. Uppsala), 11. Englund, Gertie (ed.) (1989) The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians: Cognitive Structures and Popular Expressions. Boreas (Acta Univ. Uppsala), 20. Frankfort, Henri (1978) Kingship and the Gods. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (first edn. 1948). George, B. (1970) Zu den Altägyptischen Vorstellungen vom Schatten als Seele. Bonn. Goedicke, Hans (1970) The Report About the Dispute of a Man with his Ba. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hornung, Erik (ed.) (1992) Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought. Trans. by Elizabeth Bredeck. New York: Timken. Hornung, Erik (1999) The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Trans. by David Lorton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lorton, David (1999) ‘The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt’, in M. B. Dick (ed.) Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, pp. 123–210. Luckert, Karl (1991) Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Meeks, D. & Meeks, C. F. (1999) Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. Trans. by G. M. Goshgarian. London: Random House-Pimlico Books. Piankoff, A. (1930) La Coeur dans la Textes Egyptiens. Paris. Pinch, Geraldine (1994) Magic in Ancient Egypt. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Segal, Alan F. (2004) Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. New York: Doubleday. Shafer, Byron E. (ed.) (1991) Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths and Personal Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Simpson, William K. (ed.) (1989) Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Simpson, William K. (ed.) (2003) The Literature of Ancient Egypt. 3rd edn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Taylor, John H. (2001) Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press. Zabkar, Lewis V. (1968) A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zandee, Jan (1960) Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Chapter 1, section 2 Life, death and the soul in Mesopotamia Abusch, Tzvi (1995) ‘Etemmu’ in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. K. van der Toorn & others (eds.) Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 588–94. Abusch, Tzvi (1998) ‘Ghost and God: Some Observations on a Babylonian Understanding of Human Nature’, in A. I. Baumgarten (ed.) Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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Bottero, Jean (1982) ‘La creation de l’homme et son nature dans poeme d’Atrahasîs’, in M. A. Dandmayev (Ed.) Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, pp. 24–32. Bottero, Jean (1992) Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Trans by Z. Bahrani & M. van der Mieroop. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bremmer, Jan (ed.) (1994) Hidden Futures: Death and Immortality in Ancient Egypt, Anatolia, the Classical, Biblical and Arabic-Islamic World. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Burkert, Walter (2004) Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cassin, Elena (1987) Le semblable et le différent: symbolismes du pouvoir dans le proche-orient ancien. Paris: La Découverte. Dalley, Stephanie (ed.) (2000) Myths from Mesopotamia, rev. edn. New York: Oxford University Press. Foster, Benjamin (1987) ‘Gilgamesh: Sex, Love and the Ascent of Knowledge’, in J. H. Marks & R. M. Good (eds.) Love and Death in the Ancient Near East. Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, pp. 21–42. George, Andrew (ed.) (1999) The Epic of Gilgamesh. London: Penguin Books. Güterbock, H. G. (1997) Perspectives on Hittite Civilization. H. A. Hoffner (ed.) Chicago, IL: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Press. Heidel, Alexander (1963) The Babylonian Genesis [Enûma-Elish] 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hoffner, H. A. (1990) Hittite Myths. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Izr’eel, Shlomo (2001) Adapa and the South Wind. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Jacobsen, Thorkild (1976) Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale Univsity Press. Lambert, W. G. (ed.) (1960) Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lambert, W. G. & Millard, A. R. (1969) Atra-has¯ıs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Malamat, Abraham (1989) Mari and the Early Israelite Experience. London: Oxford University Press. Parpola, Simo (1997) Assyrian Prophecies. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Schmidt, Brian (1996) Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Tigay, Jeffrey (1982) The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1991) ‘India, Mesopotamia, Greece: Three Ideologies of Death’, in his Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Froma Zeitlin (ed. & trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Von Soden, W. (1994) An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Orient. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Walker, C. & Dick, M. B. (1999) ‘The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia’, in M. B. Dick (ed.) Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, pp. 55–121. West, M. L. (1997) The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry

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Analecta 82 (Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge, 3–9 September 1995), pp. 607–18. Jasnow, R. & Zauzich, K.-T. (2005) The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth. Weisbaden: Harrassowitz. Johnston, Sarah (1991) Hekate Soteira. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Luck, Georg (2001) ‘The Doctrine of Salvation in the Hermetic Writings’ in Ancient Pathways and Hidden Persuits. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Mahé, J.-P. (1978-82) Hermès en Haute-Egypte. 2 vols. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. Mahé, J.-P. (1987) ‘Hermes Trismegistos’, in EER vol. 6, pp. 287–93. Mahé, J.-P. (1996) ‘Preliminary Remarks on the Demotic Book of Thoth’, in Vigiliae Christianae 50, pp. 353–63. Nock, A. D. (1972) Essays on Religion and the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nock, A. D. & Festugiere, A.-J. (1972) Corpus Hermeticum. 4 vols. Paris: Belles Lettres. [NF] Ray, J. D. (1976) The Archive of Hor. London: Egypt Exploration Society. Scott, Walter (1924–36) Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings. vol. I Text and Trans; vol. II Notes on CH; vol. III Notes on Asc. and SH; vol. IV Testimonia (ed. by A. S. Ferguson). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Scott I – IV]. Chapter 3, section 2 Gnostic secret teachings about the soul Culianu, Ioan (1992) The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism. San Francisco, CA: Harper-Collins. Filoramo, Giovanni (1990) A History of Gnosticism. Trans. by Anthony Alcock. Oxford: Blackwell. Fowden, Garth (1986) The Egyptian Hermes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hedrick, C. W. & Hodgson, R. (eds) (1986) Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism and Early Christianity. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. Layton, Bentley (1987) The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation. London: SCM Press. [GS] Jonas, Hans (1963) The Gnostic Religion. 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Klimkeit, Hans Joachim (1993) Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia. San Francisco, CA: Harper-Collins. Layton, Bentley (ed.) (1980) The Rediscovery of Gnosticism. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Logan, A. H. B. (1996) Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. Marcovich, Miroslav (1989) Studies in Graeco-Roman Religions and Gnosticism. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Merkur, Dan (1993) Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Robinson, James (ed.) (1990) The Nag Hammadi Library. Rev. edn. San Francisco,

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Lieu, S. N. C. (1992) Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China. Tübingen: Mohr. Lieu, S. N. C. (1994) Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Mirecki, Paul & BeDuhn, Jason (1997) Emerging from Darkness: Studies in the Recovery of Manichean Sources. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Obolensky, Dimitri (1972) The Bogomils: A Study of Balkan Neo-Manichaeism. Twickenham: A. C. Hall. Polotsky, H. J. (1934) ‘Manichaeismus’, in RE Suppl. vol. VI, cols 241–71. Puech, H. C. (1949) Le Manichéisme: Son Fondateur, Sa Doctrine. Paris: SAEP. Puech, H. C. (1968) ‘The Concept of Redemption in Manichaeism’ in Joseph Campbell (ed.) The Mystic Vision. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 247–314. Puech, H. C. (1972) ‘Le Manichéisme’, in Histoire des Religions, Tome II. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 523–645. Puech, H. C. (1979) Sur le Manichéisme et autres essais. Paris: Flammarion. Runciman, Steven (1955) The Medieval Manichee: A Study of Christian Dualist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stoyanov, Yuri (1994) The Hidden Tradition in Europe: The Secret History of Medieval Christian Heresy. New York: Penguin Books. Tardieu, Michel (1981) Le Manichéisme. Paris: Presses Universitaire de France. Welburn, Andrew (ed.) (1998) Mani, the Angel and the Column of Glory. Edinburgh: Floris Books. Widengren, Geo (1983) ‘Manichaeism and Its Iranian Background’, in Ehsan Yarshater (ed.) The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 965–90. Chapter 3, section 4 Oracles, ritual and theurgy in the soul’s ascent Athanassiadi, Polymnia (1999) ‘The Chaldean Oracles’, from Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Blumenthal, H. J. (1993) Soul and Intellect: Studies in Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism. Aldershot: Ashgate. Des Places, E. (1984) ‘Les Oracles Chaldaïques’, in ANRW 17.4, pp. 2299–335. Dillon, John (1977) The Middle Platonists. London: Duckworth. Dillon, John (1987) ‘Iamblichus of Chalcis’, in ANRW 36.2, pp. 862–909. Dillon, John (1997) The Great Tradition: Further Studies in the Development of Platonism and Early Christianity. Aldershot: Ashgate. Dodds, E. R. (1951) The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fox, Robin Lane (1986) Pagans and Christians. New York: Penguin Books. Iamblichus (2002) De Anima: Text, Translation and Commentary. Ed. & trans. by J. E. Finamore & John Dillon. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Iamblichus (2004) On the Mysteries. Ed. & trans. by Emma Clark & John Dillon. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Gersh, Stephen (1978) From Iamblichus to Eriugena. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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Josten, C. H. (1949) ‘Truth’s Golden Harrow: An Unpublished Alchemical Treatise of Robert Fludd’, in Ambix, 3, pp. 91–150. Linden, Stanton (1974) ‘Francis Bacon and Alchemy: The Reformation of Vulcan’, in J. Hist Ideas., 35, pp. 547–60. Matthews, Nieve (1996) Francis Bacon: A History of a Character Assassination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Olivieri, G. T. (1991) ‘Galen and Francis Bacon: Faculties of the soul and the classification of knowledge’, in D. R. Kelley & R. H. Popkin (eds) The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pagel, Walter (1986) From Paracelsus to Van Helmont: Studies in Renaissance Medicine and Science. London: Variorum Reprints. Pagel, Walter (1982) Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Partington, J. R. (1961) History of Chemistry vol. II. New York: Macmillan-St. Martin’s Press. Pauli, Wolfgang (1955) ‘The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler’, in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Carl Jung (ed.). New York: Pantheon Press-Bollingen Series. Peltonen, Markku (ed.) (1996) The Cambridge Companion to Francis Bacon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pelikan, Jaroslav (1995) Faust the Theologian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Raphael, Alice (1965) Goethe and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rees, Graham (1977) ‘Matter theory: unifying factor in Bacon’s natural philosophy’, in Ambix, 24, pp. 110–25. Rossi, Paolo (1968) Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science. Trans. by Sacha Rabinovitch. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Srigley, Michael (2002) ‘Thomas Vaughan, the Hartlib Circle & Rosicrucians’, in Scintilla, 6, pp. 31–54. Vaughan, Thomas (1984) The Works. Ed. by Alan Rudrum. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vaughan, Thomas & Rebecca (2001) Aqua Vitae. Ed. by Donald Dickson. London: British Library. Waite, A. E. (1926) The Secret Tradition in Alchemy. London: Kegan Paul. Wallace, Karl R. (1967) Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Webster, Charles (1975) The Great Instauration. London: Duckworth. Westman, Robert (1984) ‘Nature, art and psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler-Fludd polemic’, in Brian Vickers (ed.) Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7 Plurality of dualisms and duality of life Anton, Ted (1996) Eros, Magic and the Murder of Professor Culianu. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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Armstrong, A. H. (1992) ‘Dualism’, in Richard Wallis (ed.) Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 33–54. BeDuhn, Jason (2000) The Manichean Body in Discipline and Ritual. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bianchi, Udo (1978) Selected Essays on Gnosticism, Dualism and Mysteriosophy. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Bianchi, Udo (1987) ‘Dualism’, in EER, 1987, vol. 4, pp. 506–12. Bottero, Jean (1992) Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Trans. by Z. Bahrani & M. van der Mieroop. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Culianu, Ioan (1992) The Tree of Gnosis. San Francisco, CA: Harper-Collins. Duby, George (ed.) (1988) Revelations of the Medieval World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C. (2004) Gods and Men in Egypt 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Trans. by David Lorton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Faivre, Antoine (2000) Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism. Trans. by Christine Rhone. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things. London: Tavistock. Gantz, Timothy (1993) Early Greek Myth. 2 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Johnston, Sarah (1991) Hekate Soteira. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Kingsley, Peter (1995) Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. MacDonald, Paul S. (2005) ‘Concept and Complex in Archaic Patterns of Thought’, in Cosmos and History, no. 2. McGinn, Bernard (1998) The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism 1200–1350. New York: Crossroads. McGinn, Bernard (2005) The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany. New York: Crossroads. Stroumsa, G. G. (1996) Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Thomas, Keith (1971) Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Trouillard, J. (1982) La Mystagogie de Proclus. Paris: Belles Lettres. Vickers, Brian (ed.) (1984) ‘Analogy versus Identity’, in his Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 95–163. Wallis, Richard (1972) Neoplatonism. London: Duckworth. Wallis, Richard (ed.) (1992) Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Welburn, Andrew (ed.) (1998) Mani, the Angel and the Column of Glory. Edinburgh: Floris Books. Williams, Michael (1996) Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Index of Names Abrasax 131 Abusch, Tzvi 23 Adam 120–22, 124–5, 132, 152, 183, 284, 312, 354, 358, 382, 387 Adapa 22, 30, 36, 417 Adelard of Bath 258 Agrippa, H. C. 343–9, 351 Ahura Mazda 48–50, 53–4, 57, 133 Aineias of Gaza 186–7 Albert the Great xiii, 344 Alexius, Emperor 152 Algazel 329 Al-Kindi 360–61 Al-Majriti 308–9 Al-Marwazi 83 Al-Nadim 141, 149 Ammon 97, 110 Angela of Foligno 279–80 Anthony, St. 301 Anton, Ted 117 Anu 22, 26, 30, 35 Apollo 65, 91, 157 Apulieus 301, 329 Archelaus 137 Aristeas 65–6 Aristotle xiii, 65, 98, 202, 319, 360, 375, 389 Armstrong, A. H. 404–5 Asclepius 96–8, 105, 110 Assmann, Jan 12, 96 Asmussen, Jes 141, 146 Athanasius 184 Athanassiadi, P. 157 Atrahasis 21, 27, 36 Augustine, St. xiii, 136, 139, 165, 185, 207, 213, 224, 231, 302, 319, 348, 408, 410 Authié, Pierre 155 Averroes 319, 331 Avicenna 319, 330, 372 Avvakum 80, 85 Azarpay. G. 60 Bacon, Francis 365–72, 413

Bacon, Roger 83, 323–30, 359, 361–2 Ball, Philip 351, 353 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 214 Bandini, Marco 85 Barber, Malcolm 156 Bardesan 307 Barontus 237–40 Basil the Great 212 Batz, Philip xvi Bede, Pseudo 306–8 Bede, St. 234–7 BeDuhn, Jason 138, 141, 147–8 Bell, David 264–5 Benakis, Linos 179–80 Bernard of Clairvaux 154, 259–64 Bernard Silvestris 249–58, 286 Bessarion, Cardinal 206 Bianchi, Udo 405–6 Bidney, Martin 399–400 Blake, William 399–400 Boethius 224, 250 Bolton, J. D. P. 66 Bonaventure, St. 324 Bonner, Anthony 330, 337 Bottero, Jean 22, 36–40, 418 Boyce, Mary 43, 45–6, 54–8, 146 Brahé, Tycho 351 Bréhier, Emile 179 Breton, Stanislas 172 Brooke, Odo 265 Browne, Thomas 351 Burkert, Walter 67–8, 70, 73 Butler, Samuel 384 Bynum, C. W. 246–9 Caesarius 246–7 Calder, I. R. F. 359–60 Cameron, G. G. 51 Carabine, Deborah 231–3 Carozzi, Claude 240 Casaubon, Isaac 93, 413 Casaubon, Meric 358, 362 Cassian, John 301–2 445

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Cassin, Elena 29–30 Celenza, C. S. 342–3 Cerularius, Michael 181 Christian, David 43, 80 Christina of Trond 84–5 Clement of Alexandria 123, 212 Cloud-author 289–92 Clulee, Nicholas 359–65 Colish, Marcia 180–81 Comnena, Anna 152, 195, 199, 200 Compagni, V. P. 344–9 Constas, Nicholas 189–91 Contreni, John 238–40 Copenhaver, Brian 100, 103, 105, 107, 112 Cosmas, 151 Crouzel, Henri 126 Culianu, Ioan 122–3, 125–6, 143, 152–5, 406 Cumont, Franz 144 Cyril of Jerusalem 212 Dalley, Stephanie 30 Dante 247–8, 259, 410 Davis–Kimball, J. 80 Debus, Allen 373–6 Dee, John 358–65 Delaby, Lawrence 88 Del Rio, Martin 379 Derchain, Phillipe 2–3, 8, 11, 14, 15 Descartes, René xiii, 297–8, 320, 331 Dickie, Matthew 73 Digby, Kenelm xiv Dillon, John 158, 168, 175 Dinzelbacher, Peter 246 Dionysus 129 Dionysius, Pseudo 192, 207–8, 214–22, 231, 270, 275, 351, 375, 386, 407 Dodd, C. H. 111 Dodds, E. R. 67, 106, 111, 157, 173–5 Drythelm 235–7 Duchesne–Guillemin, J. 54 Duffy, John 195–7 Ea (or Enki) 22, 26–8, 30 Eckhart, Meister 273–8, 289, 409–10 Elchasai 134–5 Eliade, Mircea 69–70, 76, 87–9 Empedocles 66, 71, 73, 407 Englund, Gertie 17–18 Enki see Ea Enkidu 29–30 Ephrem the Syrian 137, 142, 191

Epicurus xiii Epimenides 66–7 Epiphanius 116, 135 Eriugena, John Scotus 185, 195, 223–30 d’Etaples, J. L. 333 Euclid 363–4 Eunapius 168 Eusebius 135 Eustratius 189 Euthemius 152–3 Eve 125, 132, 152, 183 Faivre, Antoine 356–7, 411–12 Faust 395–401 Ferguson, A. S. 94, 103 Festugiere, A. J. 94, 105, 111 Ficino, Marsilio xvi, 93, 206 Filoramo, G. 111–12, 122, 393 Firmicus Maternus 250 Flint, Valerie 300–310 Fludd, Robert 372–8, 413 Fowden, Garth 94–5, 109, 118, 130 Fox, Robin Lane 136, 158 Francfort, H. P. 43, 77 French, Peter 359 Frye, Northrup 399 Fursa (or Fursey) 234–5 Gardiner, Alan H. 1 Gassendi, Pierre xiv, 374 Genghis Khan 85 Gersh, Stephen 208–12, 229 Gignoux, Phillipe 46, 77 Gilgamesh 21, 29, 417 Ginzburg, Carlo 85, 87 Gnoli, Gherardo 77 Goedicke, Hans 13, 15 Goethe, J. W. 392–401 Gorceix, Bernard 356–7 Gorgias 71 Granger, Herbert 19 Gray, Ronald 393–400 Greenfield, R. P. H. 198 Gregory the Great 239–40 Gregory of Nyssa 186, 228–9 Grimm, Jacob 85–6 Grosseteste, Robert 230–33 Guibert of Nogent 246–7 Guibert, Nicholas 350 Gütterbock, H. G. 27, 33 Hadewijch of Antwerp 280–83, 409

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Index of Names Harkness, Deborah 363–5 Harris, John 413 Hartlib, Samuel 384 Heller, Erich 399 Helmont, F. M. van 379–80 Hekate 7, 32, 158–9, 162 Helmont, J. B. van 379–84 Hera 74, 205 Hercules 73–4, 80 Hermes Trismegistus 93, 95, 104, 323 Herodotus 42, 45, 58–9, 66–8, 74–5, 78 Hesiod 17, 27, 419 Hiebert, Frank 44 Hierotheus 219 Hippolytus 116, 134 Hollywood, Amy 286 Homer 16, 37, 419 Hopkins, G. M. 215 Hornung, Erik 10, 20, 96, 113–14 Horus 12, 102 Huffman, William 375–8 Hultkranz, Ake 87 Hylé 251–5, 374 Ialdabaoth 121 Iamblichus 99, 161, 168–72, 345–6 Idel, Moshe 339 Ierodiakonou, K. 180 Ignatius of Antioch 213–14 Ilawela 28 Imhotep 95 Insler, Wolfgang 52–4 Irenaeus of Lyon 116, 119, 126, 210 Isaac of Stella 269–73 Isaac the Syrian 186 Ishtar 31–2, 38 Isidore of Seville 303–5, 315 Isis 31, 102, 107 Izreel, Shlomo 30 Jasnow, Richard 95 Joachim of Fiore 324 Job 400 John of the Cross 293–8 John of Damascus 185, 190 John the Italian (Italus) 200–201 John of Lugio 155–6 John of Plano Carpini 83–4 Johnston, Sarah 70, 72, 159, 161–2 Jonas, Hans 119, 132, 144 Julian of Norwich 292 Julian the Theurgist 156–8

Justin, Emperor 81, 170 Kämmerer, E. W. 354 Keefer, M. H. 349 Kempe, Margery 292 Kepler, Johannes 373–4 Kerder 136 Khnum 4, 9 Kieckhefer, Richard xiv, 300–302 King, Margot 84–5 Kingsley, Peter 74 Klimkeit, H. J. 146–50 Klingshirn, William 305 Kobiakov 79 Krader, L. 89 Kronos 26–7 Kumarbi 26–7 de Lancre, Pierre 87 Layton, Bentley 116 Leibniz, G. W. 382–3 Lemerle, Paul 183 Leontios of Byzantium 188–90 Lewy, Hans 160–61 Linden, Stanton 325–7 Livshits, V. 51 Lloyd, A. C. 167 Llull, Raymond 330–38, 344, 351 Logan, A. H. B. 119, 120, 131 Lommel, H. 47, 55 Lossky, Vladimir 185, 214 Louth, Andrew 215, 218 Lucifer 393, 401 Luckert, Karl 2, 18–19 Lucretius 340 Luther, Martin 214, 350, 356, 412 Macrobius 250, 259, 307 Magnus, Olaus 86 Mahé, J.–P. 94–7, 111, 114 Maier, Michael 373 Majercik, Ruth 160 Mami 24–5, 27–8 Mani 134–40 Marduk 27–8 Martianus Capella 259, 306 Matthews, Nieve 372 Maximus Confessor 186, 192–4, 214, 222–4 McGinn, Bernard 211, 215–21, 230, 259–60, 264–6, 270, 272, 278–80, 284–7, 407

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Mechthild of Magdeburg 246, 283–5, 307 Meeks, D. & C. F. 4–6 Melanchthon, Philip 350 Menander Protector 81–2 Mephistopheles 396–400 Mersenne, Marin 373 Metatron 375 Meuli, Karl 67 Meyendorff, John 183–4 Midelfort, H. C. 356 Mithras 47, 160 Molé, Marijan 54 Moran, Dermot 224–5, 227, 229 More, Henry 391–2 Moses 215, 221, 232, 282, 292, 375, 407, 409 Murphy, Eileen 77–8

Plato xiii, 14, 17, 67, 71, 97, 117, 130, 158, 162, 168, 173–5, 185, 187, 193, 202, 206, 257–8, 320, 326, 404–5, 417, 419 Plethon, G. G. 202–6 Pliny 67, 318, 363 Plotinus xiii, 47, 163–7, 173, 199, 405 Plutarch 98, 173, 405 Podskalsky, G. 179 Poimandres 98–9, 109, 111 Polosmak, Natalia 79 Porette, Margaret 285–90, 409 Porphyry 163–7 Proclus 160, 173–6, 196, 202, 219, 364 Prometheus 378, 419 Psellus, Michael 152, 195–200, 202 Puech, H. C. 139, 142 Pythagoras 68, 203, 205, 320, 342, 380, 404

Naudé, Gabriel 351 Nicetas, Papa 154–5 Nicholas of Cusa 333 Nintu 25–8 Nock, A. D. 94, 105 Norwich, J. J. 199, 260 Numenius 126, 157, 168–9 Nyberg, H. S. 54, 77

Raphael (angel) 238–40 Ray, J. D. 94 Re (sun–god) 11, 96 Rees, Graham 366–72 Reitzenstein, R. 93, 99 Reuchlin, Johannes 339–43, 345, 390 Ries, Julian 139 Rig-Veda 42, 50, 57 Rist, John 218 Rorem, Paul 216–17 Rossi, Paolo 332 Rudolph, Kurt 128, 132–3 Runciman, Steven 260

Oehler, Kurt 179 Ogden, Daniel 75, 92 Origen 127, 207, 211 Ortega y Gasset, José 401 Osiris 11–12, 15–17 Ovid 249–50 Pagel, Walter 353–6, 379–85 Palamas, Gregory 184 Palmer, Nigel 283 Pandora 419 Paracelsus 349–56, 367, 371, 380 Parpola, Simo 31–2 Partington, J. R. 351–3 Paul the Deacon 85–6 Paul, St. 127, 210, 213, 348, 388 Pelikan, Jaroslav 192 Peter, St. 240, 244 Pherecydes 66, 407 Philo 121, 161 Photius 181, 189 Physis 252–4 Pico, G. F. 339, 377 Pinch, Geraldine 7, 9, 16 Pindar 73

Sarianidi, Viktor 43, 51, 75 Satan 213, 235, 246 Saturninus 119–20 Schaeder, Hans 141 Schmidt, Brian 53 Schmidt, Paul 245 Scholarios 202–5 Schurmann, Reiner 274–7 Scot, Michael 315–16 Scott, Walter 93–4, 97–9, 105 Seabass, Horst 33–4 Sethe, Kurt 2 Shaked, Saul 62 Shapur, King 135 Shaw, Gregory 161, 170, 172 Sheldon-Williams, I. P. 217, 226 Silva 250–58 Smith, Andrew 164–7 Smith, Morton 61 Smith, Rowland 156

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Index of Names Sophia 32, 121–4, 132, 158 Spes, Abbot 240 Spinoza, Benedict 331–2 Standaert, M. 262 Stein, Aurel 59 Stobaeus 102–3 Stock, Brian 250–58 Stoyanov, Yuri 154 Strabo 67–9 Stroumsa, G. G. 129–30, 209–14, 408 Synesius 166 Tatakis, Basil 179, 187, 193, 197, 201 Taylor, Charles 298 Taylor, John 1, 4, 5, 9, 14–16 Telesio, Bernard 371, 374 Teske, Roland 319, 321 Thalia 389–91 Theodore bar Konai 42, 137, 142, 146 Theophylact 151 Theresa of Avila 293 Thomas Aquinas xiii, 273, 276, 294 Thomas, Keith 413–15 Thorndike, Lynn 316, 318, 379 Thoth 6–7, 94–5 Thurkill 243–5, 247 Tiamat 27–8, 35 Trithemius, Abbot 344–6, 363, 388 Trouillard, Jean 172 Tundale 241–3, 246 Urania 252–4 Utanapishtim 21 Valentinus 127 Vanneste, Jan 221 Varenne, Jean 43, 58

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Vaughan, Henry 384 Vaughan, Thomas 384–92 Veneto, F. G. 347–8 Vergil 67 Vernant, Jean–Pierre 37 Von Soden, W. 34 Voss, Angela xvi Waite, A. E. 384–92 Wallace, Karl 368–72 Wallis, Richard 158, 169, 176 Wasson, R. G. 45 Weeks, Andrew 350–54 Weigel, Valentin 356–8 Welburn, Andrew 146, 149 Wetherbee, Winthrop 256–9 William of Auvergne 316–23, 346 William of Conches 257, 259 William of Rubruck 83–4 William of St. Thierry 264 Williams, Michael 115–17, 131 Woodhouse, C. M. 202–6 Woods, Richard 273, 277–8 Yates, Frances 331–3, 359 Yeats, W. B. 199 Yima 49–50 Zabkar, Louis 2, 11–14, 19 Zaehner, Richard 42, 46–8, 60, 202 Zalmoxis 67–8, 76 Zambelli, Paolo 347 Zarathustra 42–63, 77, 110, 133, 202, 237, 404–5 Zeus 27, 158, 204–5, 419 Zika, Charles 339–43 Zosimos of Panopolis 81

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Index of Subjects abstract 9, 34, 47, 53, 55, 57, 271, 296, 390–91, 408–9, 416 abyss 276, 279–80, 284–5, 289, 374 actions 52–4, 109–10, 139–40, 149, 162, 191, 204, 237, 310, 331, 337 active/-ity 10–11, 164, 186, 190, 219, 265, 271, 291 adept 362, 366, 376–7, 385 adorn/–ment 329–30 aeon 127, 129, 391 aether 101–2, 171, 352, 383 affection 188, 265, 294, 329 afterlife 4, 8, 16, 20, 38, 49, 59, 61, 72, 191, 240, 416 agent 32, 39, 62, 302, 326 ahura 48, 51 air 56, 102–4, 146, 149, 272, 302, 304, 310, 320, 352, 362, 369, 385, 390 akh 2, 11, 15–18, 20–21, 35–6, 112–13, 394, 418 alchemy 81, 324–30, 333, 349–50, 357–8, 362–3, 376, 385–92, 395–8 Aleph 374, 386 allegory 250–55, 286, 292 Amesha Spentas 46–7, 77–8 amin 90 anago¯ge¯ 215, 218, 232, 271 analogy 17, 97, 284, 295 ancestor 37, 39, 55–6, 88, 92 androgyne 32, 68–70 angels 17, 119, 121–2, 125–6, 134–5, 152–3, 155, 186, 198, 218–20, 230, 234–6, 238, 242, 245, 252, 271, 290, 296, 303, 312–15, 329, 341–3, 357–8, 376, 386, 399 anima 90, 103, 146, 266–7, 289, 304, 308, 382 animal 11, 29, 35, 44, 51, 55, 69, 73–4, 78, 87–9, 92, 105, 167, 170, 191–2, 205, 252, 265–7, 308–9, 312, 316, 353–6, 360, 369, 377, 382 animus 230, 266–7, 304, 308 anma 52 451

annihilation 287–9, 409–10 anschauen 282 aperture 36, 287, 289, 409 apkallu 22, 30 apophatic 192, 221, 270–72, 280, 288 Apostles 184, 213–14, 292 appear/-ance 4, 35, 37, 97, 229 appetite 10, 40, 188, 265, 268, 271, 292, 312, 320 Arabic 306, 308–9, 315, 320, 359 archemastrie 365 archetype 36, 120–21, 125, 149–50, 199, 219, 386, 407 archeus 352–6, 382 archons 109, 120–25, 143, 152, 205, 214 ark 310–11, 314 Armenian Definitions 94, 97 Art, Great 330–32 ascent xiv, 15, 18, 33, 59, 75, 88, 104, 109–12, 120, 127, 132, 147–8, 155, 158, 160, 162, 176, 184, 215, 230, 232–3, 263, 276, 288, 299, 302, 321, 263, 388 ascetic 31, 84, 115, 141, 194, 202, 263, 292, 306 astrology 250, 306–7, 315, 327, 345, 358–60, 413 astvant 52–3 atoms xiv, 250, 368 auditors 138–40, 155 Avesta 42, 45, 49–55, 62, 77 ba 2–3, 11–15, 18–20, 35–6, 112–13, 418 Babylonian 21–9, 134–5, 158, 160 beauty 172, 199–200, 218, 294, 330, 397 been 90–91 behavior 15, 84, 138, 368 beje 91 bird 1, 14–15, 18, 38–9, 76, 79, 84, 89, 160, 246 birth 9, 27, 33, 56, 98, 111, 145, 187, 199, 273, 276, 412 blas 381–2

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blind 199, 272 blood 22–4, 28, 103, 107, 121, 281, 304, 307, 316, 353, 367 BMAC 43–4, 75–6 Bogomils 136, 151–5 bond 32, 159, 171, 188, 218, 253, 256, 281, 377 bones 28, 77–9, 81, 89, 103, 108, 121, 150 boundary-crosser 73, 162, 240, 242, 305 brain 7, 78–9, 124, 257, 266–7, 336–7, 369, 382, 416 bread 8, 29–30, 38, 184, 211, 335, 354 breath 32–3, 36–7, 52–3, 102, 121–3, 160, 244, 267, 348, 367–9, 388, 398 bride 126, 128, 279, 285 bridge 55, 60, 71–2, 87, 162, 205 bubble 379, 383 burial 8–9, 39–40, 58–70, 77–9 burning 16, 58, 81, 235, 240, 281 Byzantine 151, 179–205, 247 cannabis 44, 78 Carmelites 293 catalepsy 191 Cathars 136, 154–6 cause 13, 25, 62, 175, 208, 258, 304, 320, 327 centrifugal 98, 171, 220, 223, 391 chain 112, 160, 204–5, 271–2, 375, 389 Chaldean Oracles 32, 118, 156–70, 197, 202 chaos 16, 119, 250–52, 371, 374, 381, 391 characters (magical) 324, 328, 376 chariot 73–5, 387, 396 charms 71–2, 304–5 chemistry 371, 379, 385 Chorasmia 43, 60 Christ 31, 61, 85, 118–19, 131, 152–6, 174, 180, 184, 188, 209, 212, 225, 247, 278–80, 288, 337, 353, 396, 419 church 135, 138, 194, 223, 239, 303 Cistercians 259–64, 269–70 clay 22–5, 28, 36, 153, 353, 375–6, 418 clean/-ness 24, 145, 166, 269, 329–30, 353 clothes 4, 30, 74, 79–80, 97, 248 clouds 87, 141–2, 215, 221, 231–2, 270, 291, 389 collection 138, 148 collectors 124, 143 commandments 139–40, 194, 288 communion 40, 46, 182, 184, 276, 295, 363

complex/-ive 1, 3, 18, 34, 38, 41, 54, 113, 406, 416 composite 1, 103, 108, 272, 319, 357 concrete/-tion 2, 9, 33, 47, 255, 325, 358 connectors 160–61 conscious/-ness 103, 288, 401 consolamentum 155 contemplate/-tion 118, 170, 194, 200, 215, 222, 227, 264, 269, 287, 291, 299, 346, 364–6, 409 control 22, 36, 72, 88, 91, 100, 141, 161, 291, 301, 303, 325, 381, 417 conversion 263, 278, 306 copy 91, 98, 130–32, 149, 191, 407 corporeal 33, 96, 218, 228, 270–71, 313–14, 318 corpse 4, 10–11, 15, 18, 37, 59, 129, 144, 235, 304, 316, 389 correspondence xvi, 17, 166, 338, 362, 411–12 council (church) 181–2 cow (divine) 51, 57 create/-ion 6, 22, 26, 36, 121, 125, 131, 143, 154, 158–60, 180, 186, 205, 226, 251, 258, 287–9, 313, 315, 333, 366, 387, 400 cremation 33, 58–9, 78 cross 293, 298 crusade 260 crystal 318, 379 cycles 5, 17, 123, 166, 203, 250 dae¯na¯ 53–5, 113 daeva 48, 55, 58 dakhma 58–60 damned 238, 241, 318, 348 dark/-ness 38, 49, 59, 61, 106, 119, 135, 142, 146, 149–50, 155, 176, 210, 217, 221, 232–6, 270, 275, 280, 290, 294, 307, 310, 322, 374, 386, 390, 404–7 death 4–5, 8–13, 16, 20, 23, 30, 33, 36, 37–41, 58, 68, 72, 79, 83, 88–91, 107–9, 122, 127, 132, 145, 148, 165, 183, 189, 205, 212, 235, 241, 248, 253, 288, 305, 323, 329, 335, 338, 348, 353, 369–70, 388, 417–18 decay 33, 99, 248, 263, 304 deification 66, 184, 186, 192–3, 200, 222, 270, 274, 345–6 demiurge 98, 100, 110, 117, 120–22, 125, 132, 141–3, 153, 158, 171, 176, 203, 420

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Index of Subjects demon xiv, 17, 21, 35, 38, 40, 55, 80, 100, 104, 107–10, 122, 125, 141–3, 146, 161–2, 171, 197, 204, 234–6, 238–9, 244, 300–305, 312–18, 326–30, 345, 357, 361–2, 395 dependent/-ence 40, 57, 165, 170, 183, 203 descent 33, 75, 89–90, 165–6, 171, 176, 187, 203, 211, 214, 228, 252, 285, 307, 387–8 desert 29, 191, 228, 270 desire 59, 104, 127, 227, 271, 290–92, 294–6, 307, 311, 327, 355, 417 destiny 13, 124, 127, 252, 284, 348 detach/-ment 75, 273, 278, 297–8 devil 152–5, 213, 238, 242–3, 393 digestion 247, 266, 352, 380 dignity 268, 326, 331, 348 discipline 51, 95, 109, 134, 138, 148, 291, 329 disposition 104, 277, 320, 345, 417 divination xvi, 68, 92, 162, 198, 302, 305, 312, 315, 318 Dominicans 273, 283, 316 “double” 9, 16, 37–8, 40, 55, 190, 417 dream 37, 41, 81, 190, 291, 389, 397 drug 44–6, 71, 76, 82 drum 25, 76, 82–3, 86 drunk 45, 285, 288, 294 dualism 1–2, 14, 99, 118, 129, 133, 147, 149–50, 153–8, 198, 225, 348, 354, 361, 383, 403–7 dunamis 14, 105, 109, 164, 190, 382 dust 38–40, 58, 120, 338, 367 dynamic (reality) xvi, 175, 185, 274, 331, 367, 411, 415 earth 3, 5, 12, 20, 27, 30, 36, 41, 47, 58–9, 101, 124–5, 141, 203, 242, 252, 272, 306–7, 310, 318, 336, 351, 367, 371, 385–7, 390, 398 echo 220 economy 185–6, 189, 261 ecstasy 31, 33, 46, 68, 72–3, 77, 86–7, 91, 112, 158, 161, 211, 218–19, 232–4, 279–80, 284–5, 290, 320–23 effigy 33, 79 egg 238, 351–2, 397–8 Egyptian 1–21, 36, 39, 93, 111, 169, 386 eidolon 37, 71, 400 eidos 54, 100, 104 elect 119, 131, 138–40, 148–9, 155, 230 element 12, 20, 30, 65, 97–8, 101–5, 107,

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113, 122, 131, 143, 146–50, 186, 193, 205, 228–9, 250–55, 268, 271, 304, 311–15, 331–4, 351–9, 357, 361, 367, 375, 380, 385–7, 407 elemented 310–11, 334–5 emanation 2, 18, 32, 143, 171, 175, 204, 209, 253, 257, 313, 353, 360 embalming 4, 7, 39, 59 embryo 26, 124, 320, 355 emotion 5, 32, 145 enarees 68–9 energy 10, 12, 15, 88, 108, 149, 161, 164, 167, 172, 184, 190, 355 envelope 107, 307, 354 ephedra 44–5 epilepsy 36, 88 epiplasis 190 epithumia 104, 170, 188, 193 epode¯ 71–2 see also charms ergeni 90–91 eros 188, 207–8, 211, 218, 285 esoteric 118, 129–30, 196, 209, 212, 287, 299, 408, 411–12 essence 12, 54, 99, 109, 150, 170, 185, 204, 226, 232, 253, 276, 298, 308, 312–14, 352, 386–7 etemmu 22–4, 35–8, 418 eternal 5, 15, 31, 99, 187, 201, 205, 284, 375–6, 419 ethos 104, 109 Eucharist 182, 184, 281, 341, 354 evangelists (female) 278, 283 evil xiv, 16, 41, 52–3, 58, 82, 86, 90, 119, 123, 126, 128, 140, 142, 148, 155, 165, 180, 188, 237–9, 256, 291, 294, 304, 328, 332, 395, 403, 405, 420 excarnation 58–60 exegesis 115, 125, 128, 156, 168, 209, 211, 260 exorcist 41, 80, 82, 197 external/-ized 34, 228, 299, 411 extra-somatic 46, 66, 92, 388, 418 eyes 18, 103, 106, 144, 233, 253, 269, 272, 279, 289, 304, 322, 337, 357, 389, 408, 409 face 4, 33, 78–9, 120, 122, 159, 231, 251, 282, 307, 322 faculty 62, 101, 146, 150, 193, 222, 278, 290–91, 315, 337, 367 faith 56, 106, 119, 140, 146, 176, 180, 265, 296, 308, 315, 331, 341, 346

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fall/-en 119, 132–3, 142, 144, 153, 165, 167, 183, 225, 228, 261–3, 287, 291, 298, 322, 354, 358, 386–8, 420 fanja 90–91 “Far-Nigh” 288–9 fate 30, 54, 99, 123, 203, 238–9, 255, 327 father 97, 122, 128–9, 131, 143, 152, 158–9, 165, 181, 203, 258, 276, 282–4, 342, 420 fear 5, 15, 40, 69, 71, 122, 141, 241, 268 fire 44, 76, 81–3, 101, 123, 133–4, 148–50, 234–5, 242, 252, 281, 291, 297, 304, 310, 312, 336, 362, 369, 376–8, 385, 390, 419–20 flesh 23, 28, 32, 37, 77, 81, 108, 121, 134, 143, 150, 235, 253, 261–3, 281, 284, 302, 316, 353 flow/-ing 256, 275, 283–4, 313 flower 160, 175, 237, 274 flying-man 319–21 food 8, 10, 30, 38, 40, 128, 142, 416 force 86, 104, 108, 110, 167, 254, 313, 317, 326, 352, 360–61 form 4, 35, 97–101, 107, 124, 170, 194, 203, 205, 228, 253, 258, 277, 295, 310–11, 319, 332, 334, 354–5, 364, 366, 372, 380 fountain 252, 274 fragments xvi, 18, 123, 148, 189, 248, 256 Franciscans 83–4, 278, 324–5, 333, 379 fravashi 55–7 free-will 13, 123, 155, 180, 187, 191, 226–7, 262, 287, 298, 319 frenzy 45, 69, 77, 82 fruit 73, 125, 127, 355, 387, 420 function 3, 14, 20, 63, 104, 112, 150, 228, 270–71, 307, 368 garments 30, 97, 107, 145, 155, 186 gas 381 gates 18, 30, 140–41, 238–9, 295 Ga¯tha¯s 42, 46–50, 61 gemüte 277 Genesis 21, 119, 125, 152, 261, 367, 387 genus 3, 100, 127, 205, 313–14 getig 53, 60, 62 ghost 22–4, 28, 33, 36–7, 111, 190, 246, 302, 417 gift 59, 100, 105, 110, 145, 149, 187, 191, 193, 270, 295, 420 glory 47, 74, 140, 184, 224, 288, 326, 335 gnosis 105, 113, 132, 148, 200, 412

Gnostics 32–3, 114–25, 214, 287, 351, 376, 391, 405–6 God 125, 180, 184, 187, 216–18, 225–7, 230, 265, 269, 271–8, 284–90, 295–8, 353–60, 363, 366, 375, 408 Godhead 18–19, 275, 281, 393 gods xiv, 3–5, 8, 11, 15, 21, 23–4, 27–8, 30–32, 37–8, 105, 110, 112, 119, 145, 160–62, 171, 174, 317, 378, 408, 416–19 goïs 70–3, 160, 162, 198 golem 119–20 good 91, 109, 119, 126, 128, 142, 145, 153, 155, 218, 223, 228, 278, 287, 291, 298, 329, 331–2, 395, 403–5, 420 Good Lord 50–53 grace 176, 184, 192, 199, 262, 278, 288, 290, 298, 322 grade see level grave 59–60, 78–9, 246 Greek Magical Papyri 94, 111, 160 griv 145 ground 273, 276, 375, 409–10 gya¯n 145 habit 266, 270, 291, 330 hands 14, 35, 139, 144, 256, 310, 386 haoma 44–6, 76–7 happiness 41, 60, 165–6, 243, 261 harmaline 45–6 harmony 47, 102, 160, 186, 199, 223, 254, 377, 404 head 14, 75, 78, 81, 90, 127, 141, 238, 256–7, 276, 307, 310, 367, 377 health 34, 45, 56–8, 254, 304, 334 heart 5, 20, 23, 28, 32, 34–5, 106, 112, 145, 211, 213, 257, 266, 272, 327, 337, 354–5, 377, 389, 408, 416 heat 9, 132, 240–42, 341, 367–9, 381 heaven 30–31, 59, 60, 125–7, 143, 148, 155, 167, 235–7, 240, 243, 263, 272, 282–4, 297, 302, 306, 313, 315, 318, 327, 355, 377, 385 Hebrew 33–4, 130, 210, 308, 339, 347 height 287–9, 293, 322 heka 7 hekhalot 212 hell 16, 60, 230, 236–9, 244, 281, 285, 307, 313 henad 174 henosis 164, 166, 215 heresy xiv, 115–16, 151, 154, 181, 190,

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Index of Subjects 287, 300 Hermetica xiii, 93–114, 158, 251–2, 259, 276, 316, 323, 326, 346, 349, 375, 386, 412 Hesychasts 184 hierarchy 122, 172, 176, 208, 217–19, 222, 255, 261, 314, 345, 407 Hittite 26–7, 33, 59 homunculus 397–8 Hor Archive 94 hule¯ 97, 122, 159–60, 352 humanism 183, 192, 206, 257, 344 humility 263, 285, 289, 408 humors 256, 266, 326, 334, 361, 387 hyper–real 226, 270 hyperstasis 47 hypostasis 47, 54, 158, 164, 170, 175, 184–5, 188 icon 182–5 idea (divine) 14, 57, 159–61, 185, 298, 386 identity 78, 111, 147–9, 192, 248 idol 318, 348, 388 ignorance 194, 217, 219, 232, 385 ilech 352 illumination 77, 120, 175, 215, 217–18, 263, 272, 276, 293, 297, 321–3, 346, 363, 367, 376 illusion 98, 106, 228–9, 316 image 8, 10, 20, 54, 98, 119–21, 132, 152–3, 169, 182, 186, 191–3, 199, 204–5, 220, 223–7, 250, 255, 262–4, 270, 274, 276–7, 290, 294–5, 304, 317, 334, 341, 364, 370, 375, 410 imagination 5, 98, 120, 194, 204, 257, 267, 271, 291, 294, 318, 355, 364, 370, 388, 412 imitation 71, 85, 98, 172, 217, 230, 310 immaterial 23, 102, 107, 187, 229, 296, 319, 354, 364, 407 immersion 279, 294 immortal xiv, 22, 25, 30, 36, 46, 57–8, 61, 66, 99, 101, 109, 111–14, 120, 133, 176, 183, 187, 192, 203, 205, 249, 262, 322, 348, 354, 360, 400, 417, 420 impulse 123, 172, 328 incantation 11, 25, 28, 327–8 incarnation 183, 201, 209, 212, 290 incorporeal 96, 101, 164, 192, 226, 304 individual 1, 10, 13, 19, 39, 41, 61, 107, 147–8, 188, 212, 238, 311, 361, 399 influx 275, 281

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ingenium 270–71 inhumation 59–60 initiation 72, 87, 89, 114, 128, 130, 158, 216, 218, 391 innate 171, 199, 415 inner 34, 47, 132, 166, 175, 198, 207–9, 211–13, 224, 265, 276, 287, 323, 345, 394, 407–10 Inquisition, Holy 333, 379 insanity see madness insect 87, 91 instress 215 intellect 23, 25, 101, 125, 144–6, 166, 193, 200, 203, 209, 233, 256, 265, 272, 276–8, 294–6, 308, 311, 329, 335–6, 346, 360, 370, 420 intelligence xvi, 23–5, 30, 36, 169, 174, 218, 232, 272, 314, 321, 341, 370 intelligible (world) 96, 109, 119, 158, 165, 169, 185–6, 223, 321–3, 332, 403–5 intercession 41, 189 inter-dependence 57, 133 Iran 43–6, 50, 60, 69, 134 irrational 103–4, 170–71, 267, 301–3, 322, 367 iru 4, 7 is-ness 274–5 isotypic 198–200 iynx 160–2 Judaism 61, 117, 130, 210, 212 Judgment, Final 6, 16, 39, 55, 60, 110, 113, 237, 243 ka 2–3, 9–11, 14, 18–20, 112–13, 418 Kabbala 338–43, 358, 362, 375, 388 Kephalaia 139, 146–8 kerpem 52, 91 kheperu 4, 20, 113 king 7, 12–13, 17, 19, 29, 31, 34, 68, 320 knowledge 6, 17, 29, 88, 106, 113, 125, 145, 160, 194, 211, 216, 223, 226, 230–32, 261, 270, 277, 290, 296, 300, 307, 313, 320, 329, 334, 340, 343, 349, 357, 364–6, 391, 395, 414, 420 Kore¯ Kosmou 100, 106 kurgan 79–80 ladder 230, 263, 272, 297, 332, 387, 412 lament 71–2 language 21, 33, 42, 48–50, 88, 135, 138, 211, 285, 289, 357, 366, 415

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level 56, 118, 166, 169, 175, 214–15, 230, 242, 265, 289, 357, 362, 387, 405 libbu 34–5, 418 liberation 73, 141, 147–9, 343, 363 life-force xiii, 1, 10, 19, 24, 34, 36, 90, 102, 109, 113, 126, 134, 143, 152, 164, 176, 192, 254, 267, 304, 335, 368, 380, 416–19 light 12, 17, 36–8, 102, 106, 119–20, 122–4, 127, 134, 142, 145–7, 155, 203, 219, 233, 258, 275, 284, 310, 313, 322, 346, 356–7, 374–6, 386, 404–7 likeness 31, 99, 120–21, 124, 132, 183, 185, 191, 193, 199, 258, 262, 264, 270, 272, 276, 290, 294, 305, 336, 355, 375 limbs 86, 145–8, 150 limbus 352, 386 linkage 175, 186 liturgy 46, 48–50, 181, 215 liver 89, 257, 267, 416 logos 71, 98, 105, 170, 261 love 98, 140, 185, 188, 207, 211, 218, 260, 263, 270, 277, 280–89, 295, 322, 337, 409 maat 20 machine 139, 142, 411 madness 74, 82, 87, 281, 356, 397 magic xiv, 6–7, 10–11, 17, 26, 41, 69–70, 72, 80, 86, 111, 125, 160–62, 167, 175, 198, 300–305, 309–16, 324–30, 342–9, 360–62, 377–8, 411–16 magos 66, 70, 326, 377 mainyu 52 maleficus 303–4, 316 manas 91 Manichaean 134–50, 374, 406–7 manifest 2, 4–5, 11–13, 32, 41, 47, 53, 113, 150, 222, 227, 310, 418 mannequin 78–9 marriage 282, 293 marrow 103, 121, 124 marvels 207, 250, 316, 318, 341 mask 76, 78–9 material 38, 47, 62, 99, 107, 122, 126, 128, 134, 142–3, 147, 153, 159, 164, 170–71, 183, 186–7, 194, 201, 225, 250, 256, 263, 304–5, 311–14, 332–5, 352–3, 357, 364, 368–71, 382, 405, 415 mathematics xvi, 271, 327, 358, 363–5, 411 mathras 49, 53

matrix 26, 98, 100, 357, 371, 397 mechanism xvi, 141–2, 266, 411 medical/-ine 35, 172, 193, 372–3, 380 meditation 290, 379 membrane 159–60 memory 5, 8, 14, 62, 187, 243, 255–7, 267, 271, 294–5, 304, 334–8, 367, 370, 412 menog 53, 60, 62, 146 mens 91, 277, 304, 308, 348, 382 metal 52, 61, 141, 352, 381 microcosm 122, 228, 250, 255, 312–14, 348, 375, 415 miracle 187, 201, 249, 341 mirror xvi, 79, 231–2, 255, 284, 286, 294, 307, 312, 330, 359, 361, 393, 411 misery 40, 165, 241, 285, 294, 321 mixture 25–6, 60, 99, 101, 108, 124, 141, 147, 171, 209, 228, 352, 371 monas 362–3 monastic 181, 236, 238, 240, 245, 302, 324, 407 Mongolia 80, 83–4 moral/-ity 55, 193, 200, 315, 334, 346 mortal/-ity 23, 36, 47, 172, 183, 186, 190, 256, 353, 360, 417 mother 25–6, 32, 121–4, 159, 181, 250, 282, 292, 351, 355, 387, 397 mouth 10–11, 87, 139, 152, 239–40, 271, 355 move/-ment 17, 38, 176, 186, 220–22, 230, 267, 294, 314, 368, 387 moving, self 13, 17, 108, 192, 267, 387, 416 multiple/-cation 258, 326–8, 334, 362, 388 mummy 4, 15, 20–21, 78–9, 113, 418 mystery 31, 33, 71, 114, 129, 135, 151, 175, 182, 198, 201, 207, 212–13, 215, 343, 350–51, 377, 391, 408–9 mystic 176, 207–21, 231–50, 262–5, 272, 278–82, 287, 290, 339, 362–3, 407–8 myth 29, 31, 44, 65, 77, 125, 129, 158, 209, 399 na¯ gas 82 names 7–8, 20, 28, 40, 112, 247, 281, 339, 342 napishtu 25, 33–4, 418 nature 3, 13, 98–100, 113, 146–7, 164, 181, 188, 193, 225, 230, 255, 266, 293, 303, 314, 317, 326–7, 350, 360, 375–7, 417–19 necromancy 35, 300, 304–6, 315 Neoplatonism xiii, 32, 130, 157, 164–6,

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Index of Subjects 170, 175, 185, 193, 204, 207–8, 214–15, 254, 274–6, 299, 330–32, 345, 359, 372, 378, 407, 413 nerves 149, 267, 367 Nestorian Church 181, 188 netjer 20, 39, 113 night 7, 9, 15, 41, 280, 290, 295–7, 310, 386, 388 noble/-ity 59, 273, 313, 319, 322, 327 nomad 77–8, 80 nook 407–8 Notarial Art 326–7 nothing 225, 229, 273–8, 286, 288–90 nous 105, 143, 166, 174–5, 258 obedience 51, 57, 133, 297 occult xv, 167, 198, 299, 316, 339–40, 360, 411 okhema 152, 167, 354 omi 90–91 One, the 164, 175, 200, 258, 326, 347 operation 72, 266, 295, 311, 345, 360 opificus 186, 228, 255 oportet 352 oracle 83, 156–60, 301, 342 order 20, 107, 125, 167, 174, 204, 209, 217, 251, 298, 311–14, 331–2, 341, 375 organ 2, 7, 20, 34, 39, 90, 100, 266–8, 368, 376, 382, 418 orgas/orgï 91, 104 origin 13, 21, 32, 47, 51, 70, 75, 96, 115, 122, 130, 194, 307 orthodoxy xv, 151, 156, 180–84, 192–4, 287 ousia 99, 104, 164, 185, 226, 232 ousiÿdes 99 overflow 218–20, 288 Oxus Civilization 45–6, 76–7 oyarses 253 Pahlavi 46, 48, 62 panentheism 275 pantheism 209, 275 paradise 60, 124–5, 152, 203, 225, 239, 244, 288, 313 participate/-ion 171, 175, 183, 257, 264 particles 100, 138, 143, 254, 368 parts 1, 37–8, 99, 104, 108, 113, 121, 164, 170, 205, 265, 294–5, 307, 314, 319–20, 357, 368–9, 386–7 passions 32, 110, 122–3, 194, 263, 268, 297–8, 307, 321 passive 10–11, 36, 110, 190, 265, 321

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pearl 49, 56 percept/-ion 37, 123, 204, 228, 295, 318 perfect/-ion 18, 31, 58, 105, 139–40, 188, 200, 217, 225, 237, 269, 288, 294–5, 298, 312, 319, 332, 353 person 20, 25, 34, 37, 47, 55, 181, 185, 188, 209, 265, 275 phantasy 98, 230, 271–2, 295 phantom 37, 98, 271–2, 418 pharaoh 3, 12 phrenïs 106 physical 1, 4, 13, 60, 158–60, 360 Picatrix 308–14 piety 51, 54, 57, 108–10, 133, 204 planets 120–25, 205, 250–53, 306–8, 361, 375 plants 5, 29, 44–5, 78, 176, 311, 392 pleasure 40, 71, 104–5, 113, 275, 294, 336–7 pneuma 36, 102, 122, 126, 132, 143, 164–5 power 11–12, 62, 109, 121, 124, 126, 130, 146 159, 176, 194, 217, 248, 254, 266, 271, 276, 291, 296, 302, 307, 313, 319, 331, 355, 366 practice 45, 50, 53, 60, 70, 72, 84, 254, 300, 305, 318, 328, 345 prayer 20, 35, 56, 84, 112, 123, 127, 205, 265, 290–91, 301 pre-existence 56, 108, 154, 187, 193, 255, 289 presence (God’s) 230–32, 269, 275–6, 298 Pre-Socratics 19, 62, 65, 404 priest 48–9, 59, 68, 70, 77, 81, 114, 182–3, 303 primal-human 24, 98, 105, 120, 124, 132, 142–3, 149, 376, 386 principle 119, 141, 154, 169, 175, 227, 258, 311, 314, 345, 357, 371, 374, 386–9, 404 prison 33, 107, 144, 154–5, 171, 253, 261, 287, 296, 305 procession 175–6, 208 property 3, 13, 19–20, 62, 101–2, 366 prophecy 31–2, 57, 85, 135, 157, 304, 310, 312, 321, 412 providence 109, 187, 251, 255 psyche¯ 14, 16, 37, 91, 103, 126, 146, 408 purgatory 85, 183, 244–6, 285, 297 purify/-ication 24, 28, 32, 48, 82, 135, 139, 162, 200, 215, 217–18, 263, 290, 293, 297, 313, 353 punish/-ment 8, 60, 124, 242, 378

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pyramid 10–12, 375, 390, 394 rain-maker’s handbook 82 rapture 234, 282, 290, 321–3, 363 ratio 100, 102, 326, 348, 362 rational 33, 53–4, 103–4, 140–42, 170–71, 267–8, 286, 295, 307, 314, 320, 326–8, 334, 364, 417 rays 160–62, 219, 321, 342, 361, 365 reason 14, 53–4, 98, 103, 109, 118, 140–42, 145–6, 192, 200, 217, 230, 257, 267–8, 270, 286, 291, 296, 304, 307, 309, 314, 320, 327, 334–6, 341, 355–6, 360, 367, 417 rebirth 33, 80–83, 88, 111, 129, 146, 165, 349 receptacle 97, 100, 161, 336, 371 redemption 140–43, 212 reflect/-tion 23, 34, 90, 98, 119–22, 149–50, 170 175, 276, 284, 387 rekh 6–7 release 273 relolleum 352 remaining 176, 208 ren 7–8 rescue 300–303, 306 resurrect/-ion 4, 15, 17, 31, 33, 60, 89, 128, 155, 186–9, 192, 212, 230, 247–8, 338, 354 return 165, 217, 229, 277, 289, 307 revelation 89, 210–11, 282, 290, 321, 340 reversion 176, 208 ritual xvi, 18, 30, 35, 45, 49, 72, 77, 160–61, 169, 171, 175, 189, 215, 343 roots 65, 176, 274, 383, 391 Rosicrucian 325, 373, 384, 392 sacrament 46, 182, 184, 281, 341 sacrifice 44, 46, 51, 55, 68, 76, 305, 316 saints 189, 201, 239, 243, 300 salvation 31, 58, 115, 118, 120, 122, 127, 131, 138, 144–8, 158, 166, 172, 175, 212, 261, 266, 308, 329, 342, 356 savior 47, 61, 127, 132, 144–5, 214, 342 scale 176, 186, 261 science 99, 271, 298, 301, 309–10, 328, 340, 345, 362, 366, 372, 391, 411 Scripture 115, 158, 174, 209, 230, 315, 367 scrying 358 Scythians 66, 69–70, 74–5, 80, 82, 340 seals 39, 123–4, 139–40, 282, 339

secret xiv, 93, 114, 128–30, 134, 196, 207, 210, 296, 299, 311, 314, 316, 322, 327, 340–41, 362, 366, 408 Secret of Secrets 324–5 seeds 24, 27, 49, 100, 108–10, 124–6, 132, 159, 187, 211, 256, 352–3, 360, 371, 383, 420 self 13, 23, 34, 146–8, 247, 392, 401 semen see sperm sensation 193, 230, 247, 267, 370 senses 103–4, 140, 192, 218, 272, 295–8, 310–12, 361, 364 sensible (world) 97, 109, 119, 158, 165, 169–70, 185–6, 223, 291, 321, 332, 403–5 sensus 270–72, 304, 310, 313, 370 separate/-ion 15, 147–8, 165, 189, 203, 241, 294, 312, 329, 335, 353, 417–18 seraph 282 sex 10, 29, 69, 140, 144, 154, 257, 355 shadow 9, 20, 41, 89, 98, 112, 210 shaman xiii, 44, 65–92, 281, 320, 418 shrine 44, 150 sia 6–7 sign 24–5, 28, 88, 241, 269, 301, 312, 322, 340, 368, 411 signature 30, 161, 411 silence 29, 194, 221, 296 similarities 216, 345 simplicity 262, 273 simulacrum 8, 19–20, 37, 113 sin 31, 33, 107, 123, 140, 144, 186, 203, 235, 239, 262, 287, 321–2, 330, 336, 348–9 sinking 285, 289 skeleton 38, 77–9, 81, 89, 91 skin 68, 74, 121, 143, 155 sleep 36–7, 39, 66, 86, 134, 160, 165, 190–91, 296, 312, 348 smoke 69, 89, 141, 149–50, 236, 242, 270–71, 307 snake 74, 86, 125, 152–3 Sogdiana 43, 81, 136, 146 soliloquy 205, 341, 345 solitude 91, 322 s¯oma 120, 146 sorcery 70–71, 83–4, 86–7, 160, 324 spark 2, 18, 115, 119, 122, 124, 126, 128, 131–4, 149, 158, 236, 246–7, 252, 273, 276, 291, 299, 348, 377, 388 species 54, 100, 149, 205, 313, 328, 338, 356, 361, 370, 383

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Index of Subjects speech 7, 30, 98, 105, 191–2, 231, 314, 370 spells 6, 15, 28, 41, 127–8, 160, 299 sperm 100, 308, 353, 390 spheres 62, 111, 123, 126, 128, 142, 167, 247, 284, 307 spiral 220, 274, 397 spirit 14, 24, 32, 38, 47, 52–3, 62, 87–9, 102–3, 107, 126, 144–8, 164, 193, 203, 229, 236, 241, 266–7, 288–9, 295, 305, 309, 313, 317, 326–30, 341, 353–5, 363–4, 366–70, 375–6, 385–90, 416 spirit, counter- 122–4, 152 Spirit, Holy 31, 120–22, 127, 181, 184, 264, 284, 295, 308, 387 spit 24–8 spring 274, 284 stages 147–8, 265, 274, 279, 288, 291, 297, 375 stars 17, 82, 204, 214, 253, 256, 306–7, 315, 318, 327–8, 351, 378, 381 statue 9–11, 27–8, 161, 317, 407 stele 3, 15, 380 Stoic 99, 124, 193, 356 stone 27, 55, 82, 325–6, 349, 365, 380, 385 substance 40, 99, 101, 143, 146, 188, 193, 226, 267, 296, 304, 315, 354, 370, 381, 386 summit 193, 231–4, 276 sun 9, 12, 15, 73, 97–8, 114, 142, 161, 219, 236, 253, 294, 307, 386, 389 symbol 8, 31, 79, 162, 169, 216, 222, 232, 255, 326, 334, 411 sympathy 162, 306, 317, 345, 361, 376–8, 388 syzygos 121, 135 taltos 87–8 tattoos 67, 78–9 Tebessa Codex 138 teletarch 160–61 temple 3, 63, 95, 276, 292, 348, 377, 389 terror 41, 71, 243, 281, 323 theatre 244–5 thele¯me 185 theophany 209, 230, 232, 272 theoria 215, 227 theosophy 41–3 theurgy 117, 156–60, 167–9, 198, 299, 339, 343 thought 50, 53, 57, 90, 146–7, 318, 329, 370 Thrace 67, 69–70, 76, 151

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thre¯ nos 72 thumos 103–4, 170, 188, 193 thunder 116, 158, 282 Timaeus 97, 100, 118, 121, 258, 405 tissue 121, 146, 150 tomb 3, 8, 10, 15, 36, 40, 60, 78, 80, 107, 129, 247 trance 73, 77, 85, 88, 91, 157, 160–61, 165, 279, 320, 322, 418 transcendence 13, 183–5, 209, 219, 232, 273–5, 400, 419 transform/-ation 69, 87–90, 100, 105, 129, 172, 186, 204, 230, 246, 249, 273, 279, 286, 302, 318, 336, 341, 363, 397, 406 translation 49–50, 100, 103, 135, 231, 309, 322 transmigrate/-tion 148, 201, 205, 342 transvestite 69, 74 tree 31–2, 77, 90, 125, 152, 274, 386 triad 159–60, 174, 207, 217–18, 331, 374 Trinity, Holy 182, 185, 188, 207, 209, 258, 265, 274, 279, 283–4, 315, 331, 409 truth 47, 52, 54, 105, 130, 140, 165–6, 187, 211, 223, 269, 329 turning 166, 277 twins 52, 135 two-ness 96, 99, 403 type 125–8, 134, 263, 288 understand/-ing 23, 53, 100, 144–5, 192–4, 217, 271, 296, 319–20, 334–8, 343, 370 underworld 13, 15, 20, 33, 36, 38–41, 58, 72, 75, 89, 90, 92, 96, 114 union 32, 98–100, 107, 166, 184–8, 205, 215–18, 221, 231–3, 263, 272, 278, 285, 293–6, 308–9, 335, 340, 368, 379, 407, 409 unity 164, 172, 175, 200, 229, 297, 314, 320 universal 180, 188, 296, 391 unknown 192, 219, 221, 232, 268, 275 unsayable 213–14, 222, 280 urvan 52, 56 ushtana 53, 56 vapor 100–102, 236, 336, 381 vehicle 126–8, 167, 171, 176, 204, 247, 307, 370 veil 31, 215, 231 Vendidad 48–50 virtues 145–6, 149, 161, 175, 187, 200, 203,

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265, 268, 270, 299, 307, 312, 314, 317, 326, 331, 361, 381 vision 54, 81, 218, 231–4, 235, 238, 243–5, 265, 269, 279, 292–3, 323, 353 voice 32, 121, 127, 135, 279, 310, 327 voyage 75, 90, 92, 114, 234–6, 248 water 30, 82, 98, 119, 134, 149–50, 272, 308–10, 315, 336, 352, 362, 367, 385–7, 390 whole/-ness 46, 57–8, 89, 229, 248, 319–20 will 53–4, 165, 185, 222, 262, 277, 288–9, 297–8, 312, 319–20, 337–8, 355 wind 30, 36, 82, 141–2, 146, 149–50, 252, 304 wine 211, 335, 354 wisdom xvi, 30, 109, 140, 146, 158, 198, 222, 230, 262, 266, 272, 296, 310, 327, 336, 356, 375, 411

witches 87–8, 300, 387, 397 womb 34, 89, 100, 158–9, 254, 304, 355, 375 word 7–8, 32, 46, 53–4, 98, 161, 186, 191, 220, 262, 275, 326–7, 340–43, 366, 370–71, 410 work 163, 240, 275, 290, 297, 336, 366 workshop 186, 228, 255 world-soul 100, 107, 159, 162, 172, 251–2, 307, 375, 388 xanjan 90–91 xratush 51–3 yliados 352 yliaster 352 zodiac 82, 109, 143