Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity 0940262649, 9780940262645

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Introduction
I: HISTORIA GNOSOLOGIÆ
1: Gnosis and Angelophany
2: Religious Eros in the Christian Middle Ages
3: The Question of Platonism and Hermeticism
4: Theosophy
II: COSMOLOGY
5: Liturgy and Timelessness
6: Hierophanic Nature
7: The Unification of Christianity and the Holy Spirit
8: The Temple, the Pilgrim, and the Apocalypse of the Heart
III: METAPHYSICS
9: Metanoia
10: The Divine Sophia
11: Visionary Imagination
12: Celestial Hierarchy
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography

Citation preview

© Arthur Versluis 1994 Published in the United States by Lindisfarne Press, R.R. 4, Box 94 A-1, Hudson, New York 12534 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Versluis, Arthur, 1959– Theosophia : hidden dimensions of Christianity / Arthur Versluis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-940262-64-9 (pbk.) 1. Mysticism. 2. Occultism—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Hermetism. 4. Cabala and Christianity. I. Title. BV5083.V47 1993 248.2'2—dc20 93–44302 CIP Frontispiece: Thomas Bromley, The Way to the Sabbath of Rest (London: 1650; Germantown: C. Sower, 1759 ed.) Cover design: Barbara Richey 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and articles. Printed in the United States of America

Contents Preface Introduction I. HISTORIA GNOSOLOGIÆ 1. Gnosis and Angelophany 2. Religious Eros in the Christian Middle Ages 3. The Question of Platonism and Hermeticism 4. Theosophy II. COSMOLOGY 5. Liturgy and Timelessness 6. Hierophanic Nature 7. The Unification of Christianity and the Holy Spirit 8. The Temple, the Pilgrim, and the Apocalypse of the Heart III. METAPHYSICS 9. Metanoia 10. The Divine Sophia 11. Visionary Imagination 12. Celestial Hierarchy Conclusion Appendix Bibliography

Preface IT IS A BIT STARTLING TO REALIZE just how little has been published on theosophy in

English, particularly given the overwhelming significance of the subject. Of course, the absence of comprehensive studies—or even of references— might be attributed in part to the confusion of theosophy with the Theosophical Society of H. P. Blavatsky, Olcott, and the like, an error that often has important authentic Christian theosophic works catalogued next to late nineteenth century amalgams of diluted Hinduism or Buddhism. But regardless of such confusions—which have accrued around the word “gnosticism” as well1—it is high time to reclaim the words “theosophy” and “gnosis” as referring to authentic spiritual experiences and associated doctrines within Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Of course, theosophy is not for everyone. As its history has shown repeatedly, there are invariably some people of a mindset not only unwilling to understand theosophy, but in fact hostile to it. More than one theosopher, Christian or not in name, has met a fate not dissimilar to that of Christianity's namesake. If among my readers there be any of hostile mind, I would gently request they close this book and return it to the shelf upon which they found it. As for the others, those who feel themselves kin to those found in these pages, to you do I write; in a sense, though we may never meet, we are kin. To you, and to all those who have gone before, to all our friends, is this book dedicated. 1. See Arthur Versluis, “Gnosticism Ancient and Modern,” Alexandria 1(1992): 307–320. In no way is theosophy to be confused with the Theosophical Society of Blavatsky, any more than the gnosticism of St. Clement of Alexandria or St. Dionysius the Areopagite is to be confused with that of groups they denounced.

Introduction THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT CHRISTIAN GNOSIS. Doubtless, the term “gnosis” will raise hackles in certain quarters, due not least to a regrettable tendency among some ancient and modern writers to use “gnosis” or “Gnostic” like a truncheon, as if the term denoted something so reprehensible that merely to apply it was to administer a corrective. Nevertheless, the present situation in lands historically Christian—the ecological, sociological, cultural, and religious crises confronting us—has become so nearly untenable that one cannot help but think that a reassessment of Christian tradition in its entirety may be essential. In any such reassessment, gnosis—an experiential knowledge of divine things—must be considered as pivotal. Of course, the word “gnosis” is being used here in a very particular sense to mean not just those doctrines attributed to the Christian Gnostics of the first centuries after Christ (though we cannot exclude them), but rather as synonymous with spiritual insight itself. The uncapitalized word “gnostic” means simply “mystic,” or one gifted with spiritual insight. Hence one may speak of a Jewish, Islamic, or Christian gnostic or gnosis. Indeed, as we shall see, there is ample reason to consider the gnoses appearing in these three religions to be affiliated and even, in certain cases such as Ismaili gnosis and Eastern Orthodoxy or Christian kabbalism, to be mutually influential. But there is also specifically Christian gnosis or theosophy, and this gnosis will be our subject. Yet I must place our discussion in its present context. That we are enveloped in a world in crisis is today almost universally recognized. Of course, in a sense, this crisis is little different from that of the first centuries A.D., when Christianity took root and flourished. Our time, too, is one of confusion and transition. But whereas Christianity in those early centuries represented both a rebellion against a stagnant paganism and a continuation of the Mysteries that were at the heart of GrecoRoman antiquity, today there is no new and complete revelation to supplant and to continue what we have inherited. In our own confusing times we are faced rather with the hasty dismantling of religions and cultures and with the apparent victory of materialism over our inherited spiritual traditions. It is true that Asian religions are beginning to be transplanted to Europe and the Americas—not only into what was once called “the West,” but into the rest of the world as well. Certainly the arrival of Buddhism in Europe and America is an event of profound spiritual and cultural importance, and may well prove to be the single most significent cultural and religious event in the past century. At the same

rime, there have been some difficulties in adapting Asian traditions to Western conditions. Of course, if what one means by “Christianity” is limited to evangelical, historicist, or fundamentalist Christianity, then one can understand why Europeans or Americans become disillusioned with their own tradition and set off in search of spiritual truth where they can find it. But is it really necessary to leave Christianity behind in order to find authentic spiritual experience? Might it not be more appropriate for Christian spiritual seekers to turn their attention toward their own tradition, broadly conceived, than to set off at once looking elsewhere? Indeed, when one draws on the full scope of the Christian tradition, taking into account the whole range of Christianity, Eastern and Western—from Valentinian Gnosticism in the second century and the Desert Fathers in the third and fourth centuries, through medieval mystics like Dante, Eckhart, and Tauler, to the German theosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not forgetting the Eastern Orthodox tradition—one finds that Christianity itself also offers great riches and much guidance in our present situation. In his book The Crisis of the Modern World, René Guénon wrote that if the European West—which includes the Americas and Australia—is to avoid catastrophe, it will be necessary to restore authentic Christian spirituality. On the face of things, and given the destruction of traditional religions and cultures around the world, it would seem unlikely that there could be a restoration of anything resembling a traditional society in modern times. This is particularly so inasmuch as we continue to witness the continual erosion of traditional forms like the liturgical Mass. However, if we change our focus from trying to halt the great juggernaut of modernity to the cultivation of what we might call “outposts of light,” the situation is suddenly and remarkably altered. Throughout its history, Christianity has included a legitimate gnostic dimension, which we might also call “paracletic.”2 This dimension can be seen not only in the parables, but above all in the descent of the Holy Spirit, which is so intimately connected to the mystery of the Logos. From the beginning, the Christian revelation has meant the illumination of time by eternity, the transcendence of the temporal order in the radiance of the Christos. This transcendence is a vertical rupture in horizontal time, and is the reason that Christian mysticism recurs without direct historical antecedents—for the timeless is always accessible in the sphere of inward knowledge, whatever the outward conditions: the spirit blows where it will. This emphasis on the timeless revelation or gnosis within Christianity is maintained by those who traditionally are called “theosophers.” The word “theosophy”—theos, “divine” and sophia, “wisdom”—refers to the authentic gnostic tradition within Christianity, stretching from Dionysius the Areopagite,

through Clement of Alexandria and Origen, to St. Maximus the Confessor, John Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Jacob Böhme, Gottfried Arnold, Franz von Baader, and into the present era. Theosophers are sometimes Roman Catholic, sometimes Protestant, sometimes Eastern Orthodox. They are united, however, within the Christian tradition, in their common affirmations of authentic spiritual experience and transmutation. The words “gnostic” and “theosopher” are in fact interchangeable, even though “theosopher,” as used in this book, is particularly associated with seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century German mystics, including Böhme, Arnold, Oetinger, and Baader. The discussion that follows will be historical, cosmological, and metaphysical, and will focus throughout on the timeless or gnostic center within Christianity. Only this gnostic center—only spiritual experience—is sufficient to transcend time; anything else remains subject to the conditions of time, the limitations of history. What follows, therefore, is not an introduction to a continuous initiatory transmission from master to disciple in the manner of, for instance, a Sufi lineage. Christianity is so radical precisely because it offers a direct or immediate relationship to God in the Trinity. Thus, the Christian gnostic tradition, while possessing a supratemporal unity, represents a historical discontinuity: a Tauler, an Eckhart, or a Böhme appear suddenly, almost as if without precedent. This ahistorical or “paracletic” dimension of Christianity is directly rooted in the New Testament. Christ says “I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.” ( John 16:7) Thus Christianity comes into existence after Christ's death through the Paraclete, or Holy Spirit. In fact, Acts might best be called The Acts of the Holy Spirit, for it begins (chapter 2) with the well-known story of Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the assembled apostles. At Pentecost, Peter delivered a sermon, quoting the prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17) This paracletic dimension in Christianity is profoundly important—indeed, theosophers frequently quoted or drew upon exactly these verses to explain how their movement was a restitution of essential Christianity. For theosophy is nothing less than an effort to reconstitute primordial Christianity—to live in a world where the miraculous is indeed possible, to realize the timeless in the present moment. As such, theosophy is a modern manifestation of the gnostic tradition we can trace throughout Christian history. Thus the theosophers present another way of looking at history, what we might call hierohistory.3 This is the history of revelation or of spiritual illumination that the theosophers hold is as possible for us today as it was for the apostles in antiquity.

Hierohistory reveals the particular times and places when the Holy Spirit descends and hovers over people. Far from being an event that can only happen far away and in a distant time, such “Pentecostal” revelations (according to the theosophers) define what it means to be Christian. For them, whoever does not directly experience spiritual illumination remains in what Jacob Böhme called “Babel,” a state of ignorance dependent upon outside sources (hearsay, books) for understanding of spiritual matters. Merely attending a “stone church,” Böhme admonishes, is not enough for our salvation: we must participate in hierohistory and experience the paracletic or spiritual dimensions of life. Naturally, there is much work to be done in coming to understand theosophy and its place in the Christian tradition. This book can only introduce what will I hope be investigated further by insightful and understanding scholars. Certainly there is a need for study of this neglected field, and my own efforts will continue in bringing to the public a comprehensive view of theosophy and of its major texts. The following discussion is intended to provide a foundational understanding of the theosophic dimensions hidden in the Christian tradition. Although these dimensions are profound and extensive, they are largely ignored by most scholars and most Christians. One finds today scholars who concentrate on Eckhart, for instance, but few who consider the entire range of the Christian gnostic tradition. If we are to understand the modern theosophic movement within Christianity, which begins in earnest with Jacob Böhme around 1600, we must first understand its predecessors, its analogues in other traditions, its cosmology, and its metaphysics. 2. From Paraclete (Parakletos), another expression for the Holy Spirit, meaning “Comforter” or “Advocate.” 3. Hiero = sacred. i.e., hierohistory, sacred history.

I

HISTORIA GNOSOLOGIÆ

1

Gnosis and Angelophany TODAY IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE, as it once was, to regard as dualistic or nihilistic all the sects of the early Christian era that are labeled Gnostic. It is clear that early Christianity represents a diversity of viewpoints or approaches to the Christian mystery; and even if many of these perspectives were not historically sustained, they still represent Christian approaches that recur repeatedly in history, and cannot be dismissed with labels like dualism. What is more, comparative religion has begun to reveal definite filiations between religious perspectives as superficially diverse as Valentinian, Mandaean, Ismaili, and Eastern Orthodox spiritual traditions. Indeed, two golden threads, representing direct links to the Divine, run through all of these traditions: gnosis and angelophany. Of course, this is not the place to enter into detailed comparisons of these different religious perspectives. Rather, we will focus on Christian esoterism, as this is rooted in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite and visible throughout the Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western, drawing on the Mandaean, Ismaili, and other traditions only when necessary.1 What we are looking at in a Christian context is, of course, also to be found in other religions. Yet many readers may be surprised to learn that Christianity, like Islam and Buddhism, has included from the beginning an initiatory tradition. This Christian initiatory tradition is based upon the metaphysical doctrine of emanation. It takes as axiomatic that human beings can participate in progressively purer degrees of illumination, and that what exists in the macrocosm may be found in the microcosm as well. In fact, the whole Christian doctrine of initiation rests on this principle of the corresponding participation of the individual in the celestial hierarchy. The hierarch, or spiritual initiator, is one who has realized metaphysical knowledge and can introduce the person seeking initiation to the degrees of light the initiator personally has realized. It may be useful here to note that there is some controversy about the identity of Dionysius the Areopagite, whom tradition holds to have known the apostles directly (especially St. John and St. Paul), but who is generally regarded by modern scholars to have been a fifth century author deeply influenced by Neoplatonic cosmology and doctrines. Dionysius is indisputably one of the most important and influential of early Christian authors, and his mysticism, expressed concisely and beautifully in treatises like The Celestial Hierarchy, has influenced

countless Christian mystics since, in both the East and the West. In the East, his doctrines were adopted by St. Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) and thereafter his influence can be seen throughout Eastern Orthodoxy. In the West, Dionysius' gnosticism is visible in the whole history of mysticism and religious literature, for countless authors, including Dante and the Protestant theosophers, relied upon his understanding of spiritual symbolism and of the mystical ascent. Dionysius sees this initiatory ascent—which includes human and angelic initiators—as an ascent, occurring through illuminating manifestations of the central ray of light which, unitary and simple, is the axis of existence. Generous of itself, this ray draws upward and unifies those beings for whom it has a providential responsibility, while itself remaining always stable, simple, and unchanging.2 Entering into multiplicity, the ray retains this simple and transcendent nature while at the same time being clothed in the “sacred veils” of scripture and liturgy, as well as of the natural world. In other words, it is theophanic, revealing God all around us. Scripture and liturgy are perhaps more concentrated forms of theophany than nature, and some blessed souls contemplate the ray even more directly than in these. Such contemplation comes through revelation, for the function of higher beings is to illuminate those beneath them, while they themselves in turn are illuminated by those above them. A revealer is by definition an angel; and this is why human initiators are termed angelic by Dionysius and Origen. It is said that human beings can ascend even above the angels, but insofar as our task is to reveal, we are able to be divine messengers and to assume the function of an angel. Indeed, it is even said that Christ is an angel for humanity, the chief among the angels, since he is the perfect conjoining of the divine and the human, the perfect messenger, and hence the center of the angelic realm: the perfect revealer because he is revelation itself. Angelophany, theophany, and gnosis are indivisible in this tradition, for the angel is the means of divine revelation, which is itself none other than gnosis. Indeed, there can be no gnosis without an angelic revealer—and so it could be said that the angel is the revelation, inasmuch as the angel is divine manifestation. God is the source of revelation, just as the sun is the source of light; but the angels reflect and transmit that light as the planets do for the sun. Dionysius treats this question in his Celestial Hierarchy when he speaks of a certain theologian—almost certainly his own spiritual hierarch, Hierotheus—who was purified by the Seraphim and raised up to a most sacred degree of holy contemplation.3 His was a vision of the Divine, but it was mediated through the holy Seraph who was his revealer. This is so with every revelation, affirms Dionysius. Spiritual illumination, originating with God, is passed on from higher to lower beings, because were it not so the lesser beings would be overwhelmed by the light. The angelic beings purify

by illumination. They allow participation in the Divine, and this participation is itself purification—for awash in such beatitude, who could think of worldly things? And so the whole Christian initiatory tradition necessarily derives from the angelic hierarchies, which possess an objective existence but also correspond to human possibilities. Initiates ascend through the spiritual levels or hierarchies in the degree to which they are capable. Human beings are deified to the extent that they can realize the angelic—to the extent that the angelic can reveal itself in and to them. Johannes Tauler (c.1300–1361 A.D.) held that this relationship between the angelic and the human was typified in the angel's announcement to Joseph regarding Herod. The angel warned Joseph that, although Herod had died, his son Archelaus had taken the throne and still sought to kill the Christchild. Tauler views this entire drama as taking place within the soul of each believer—for even though the Herod in our souls might be dead, and the Christ-child engendered within us, there still reigns an Archelaus in our souls, who would kill the holy child if he could. We, as individuals, cannot bring ourselves out of the land of Egypt into the land of spiritual vision: we must wait for the angel, the manifestation of God's grace, to come and lead us forth. It is futile to look outside ourselves for deliverance from our spiritual confusion, Tauler admonishes. We must remain patient in the darkness of Egypt, waiting for God to illuminate us, either through one of his angels, or through a human being. This is the hardest discipline for the soul to learn, for we are inclined to look outward for deliverance; and looking outward for an angelic revelation is only a more subtle form of the desire to seek for some human deliverer. Our faith must be in God. It is God alone who can save us; it is he who kindles the light within the Egypt of our souls. Thus Dionysius affirms that each being, heavenly or human, includes within itself a triune hierarchy that mirrors the triune hierarchies of the angelic ranks. Just as each human being is constituted of body, soul, and spirit, so every creature (incarnate or not) has its own primary, secondary, and tertiary powers corresponding to its degree of illumination. In other words, all individuals, to the extent they are capable, bear within themselves an image of the angelic hierarchies, and in this is a secret of angelic revelation: we are capable of receiving only the revelation that corresponds to what we can bear within ourselves. But there is another implication as well: the angelic power that greets us from without and guides us is also the form we bear within, our own form seen coming to greet us, our own inward perfection manifesting in outward form to guide us. One can say that the soul is introduced to its spiritual origin and meaning through its spirit manifesting itself in angelic form. The soul of an individual can enter into an interworld of images and symbols where it is possible to see the angelic form

that is one's guide and protector, and this is exactly what we see in the works of the eighteenth century English mystic Jane Leade, whose marvelous otherworldly visions reveal her soul's journeys through the realms where her illuminations could take place. The soul's natural realm is symbolic, for its realm is that through which the spiritual can be seen. The soul conjoins the archetypal forms of the spiritual realm with the multiplicity of the material world and hence partakes of the dynamic power informing all creation. Consequently, the Holy Scriptures— and Christ himself—speak to the soul in images and parables, that is, in symbols. When Christ tells the parable of the lost sheep or of the prodigal son, he is reassuring the soul about Divine Mercy in a way that bypasses the rational, discursive mind but is directly and intuitively accessible to the soul. Dionysius the Areopagite dealt with the significance of sacred symbols on several occasions, even devoting a now lost treatise—The Symbolic Theology—to the subject. Essentially, Dionysius tells us, the symbols of the Divine speak to us of its dynamic qualities, which are often analogous to the human form. Thus, in Scripture, we find references to eyes, ears, feet, hands, not to mention fire, wind, and other elemental qualities, all of which reaffirm particular aspects of divine Goodness.4 According to our gnostics, not only the human being, but all of nature reflects its divine origins and meaning. The heliotropic plants, the eagle, the lion, the ox, clouds, rain, winds—all these things have spiritual implications. Every created form in some way tells us of the divine qualities, and is for us a sign to be interpreted, as Dionysius the Areopagite points out. The bee producing honey is like the contemplative praying; the eagle soars and cries out like the spirit rising toward God; the illuminated gnostic is like a fish in water. The use of such natural imagery to illustrate spiritual meaning and practice is entirely consonant with theosophic tradition, which affirms that all nature is theophanic, thus revealing God's delight in creation. The Russian theologian, Nikolai Berdaeyev, wrote that not only human beings, but grass, birds, trees, animals, fish, and rocks must also experience salvation, and that truly spiritual vows must encompass all of creation, which cries out for salvation. Suffering in creation came about because of the Fall of both the angels and humanity—hence salvation from suffering must come about for all creation by way of humanity's redemption. This is an Islamic idea as well, expressed in the saying that the whole of creation exists in order to serve the saint. One is reminded that the city of Sodom fell because it lacked ten good human beings; it lacked those whose very presence would have redeemed not only the city, but the whole natural world, restoring humanity and nature to primordial balance. Dionysius wrote that natural images such as the lion or the eagle are used by

those who wish to express aspects of angelophany without communicating to the uninitiated truths they are incapable of understanding. But such images of the divine messengers including for instance wings and human features—not to mention more dissonant symbolic features—are not to be confused with the spiritual reality they express symbolically; divine Reality conveys itself to the purified in an ungraspable and inexplicable way.5 Natural images reveal to us only through symbols how our world is itself fundamentally theophanic, everything in nature being divine revelation whether we recognize it or not. So far, we have sought to establish certain aspects of the authentically gnostic Christian tradition, above all, the fundamental connections between angelophany, gnosis, celestial hierarchy, theophanic nature, and spiritual symbolism. These aspects of the ahistorical, authentically gnostic tradition are critical because within the gnostic or theosophical tradition itself such distinction is not only useful, but essential. It is not accidental that all our theosophers—from Clement of Alexandria to Tauler and Ruysbroeck to Böhme and Gichtel—took great pains to differentiate authentic theosophy from its counterfeits. In the New Testament itself, there are references to true and false gnosis. In the second Epistle of Peter, for instance, there is the following warning: There shall be false prophets among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. . . . These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. For . . . they allure through the lusts of the flesh. . . . While they promise them liberty, they themselves are servants of corruption. (II Peter 2:1–19) Here the false prophets or false gnostics offer a pseudo-liberation, profess a freedom to sin, and indulge their desires—precisely as was alleged of the Carpocratians and several other heretical groups of early Christian times. False gnosis, in short, is antinomian, professing not freedom from sin, but freedom to sin. Such groups, against whom Tauler and Ruysbroeck constantly preached, were to be found again in the Middle Ages; and likewise after the Reformation, among Protestant libertines like the Ranters. But there are other characteristics of false gnosis. In Matthew, we read Christ's words:

Take heed that no man deceive you . . . many false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many. . . . [They] shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they would deceive even the elect. (Matthew 24:4–24) It is also here that Christ speaks of the “abomination of desolation” mentioned in Daniel (9:27 and 12:11) as being set up in the holy place at the end of time. This is a mysterious but evocative term, which suggests that false gnosis is connected to the desolation of nature prophesied by Jeremiah; it suggests the desolation of humanity and nature that comes from the desecration of holy places. Thus it is no coincidence that there were heretical Gnostic groups early in the Christian era who refused to acknowledge that nature is theophanic, who held that it was in fact an “abortion” and something to be escaped. These views—often linked to antinomian libertinism—were vigorously opposed by Platonists like Plotinus, whose Enneads defended the beneficent and theophanic qualities of nature.6 Anti-natural and antinomian Gnostics were also opposed by orthodox Christian gnostics like Clement of Alexandria, who like his Platonist counterparts recognized that there is a natural progression or hierarchy from the natural to the spiritual realms, not a disjunction or radical separation between them. In this sense, one can directly connect ancient anticosmism with modern materialism or scientism, which also results in a desolated nature, seen not as theophanic beauty, but as a place where we live as creatures in existential anguish.7 Both the anticosmic authors of antiquity decried by Plotinus and modern materialism view nature largely as a mechanism separated from God or divine powers—so that if God is recognized at all, it is as a deity “out there,” radically separated from creation. It is worthwhile to note here that modern theosophy—as represented in writers such as Jacob Böhme, Gottfried Arnold, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Franz Josef Molitor, or Franz von Baader—vociferously opposed the modern, materialist desecration of the cosmos. Some recent authors like René Guénon have represented Protestantism as having given birth to modernity and materialism, and while there is some truth in this view, at the same time the theosophers within Protestantism criticize modern materialism more harshly than anyone else. Our theosophers affirm that there are no radical discontinuities between God and the human or natural worlds. All of creation, they say, comes into being through an emanation from the supernal into the subtle and finally into the physical realms. They also affirm that each of the lower realms reflects its higher or principal origin or predecessor; and hence nature reveals its archetypal and serene origin, embodying the same spiritual and subtle principles that are to be seen in human beings.8 Finally, they affirm, like Plotinus, the possibility and indeed even

the necessity of the soul's purification and of a human “ascent to the Divine.” Of course, these are delicate issues: one certainly finds admonitions against “worldliness” among all the church fathers and great saints and mystics. But these are admonitions against an attitude of attachment to fleeting things and to desires —they are not denigrations of nature or creation. One finds Eckhart or Tauler urging us to leave behind images of nature and to enter into the imageless transcendent state of “disinterest,” but nowhere do they decry nature herself, or the gift of creation. Rather, they urge us to return to God with gratitude and repentance, and to acknowledge that God's gift to us is precisely to reflect God to God. By contrast, those who deny the fundamental principles articulated by Clement of Alexandria and Dionysius the Areopagite—those who acknowledge neither nature as theophany nor the celestial hierarchies, who regard nature as divine error, and humanity as radically separated from the Divine, who assert that we are free to be libertines—those are not authentic gnostics. We cannot say with certainty whether the fulminations of a Tertullian represent accurately the Gnostic movements or leaders he attacks; we cannot say with certainty whether some or any of the Gnostics so accused were in fact libertines or antinomian. But we can say that the theosophic or gnostic tradition cannot be so accused. What matters in historical analysis, for those drawn to theosophy, is whether a given author recognizes himself and is recognized by other gnostics as part of the authentic gnostic tradition or not. Authors whose work denigrates Creation, authors whose work does not reflect angelophany or gnosis in the sense one sees in the work of Dionysius the Areopagite—such authors do not belong in the theosophic tradition. There is a profound unity with, and reverence for, the works of earlier theosophers among later theosophers. Plato and Plotinus, the Hermetic writings, Dionysius the Areopagite, Dante, Eckhart, Tauler, Böhme, Baader: there is a continuity in this tradition recognized by its exponents regardless of their historical discontinuity. This no doubt represents an unfamiliar way for us to view authors. But there is a confraternity of the spirit: our theosophers recognize earlier theosophers, and are in turn recognized by later ones, so that there is in fact a kind of extended family. This same confraternity, or order of the heart, accounts for the timeless quality of our theosophers, their ability to awaken time and again among those of this kinship the spiritual nostalgia, the homesickness of the soul, the longing for reality that always has characterized the beginning of the journey home, and always will. There is a kind of friendship here that transcends what we ordinarily call friendship, a guidance of the soul that each theosopher offers. A true history of theosophy, then, must be paradoxical, for it is a history of those who have encountered ahistorical reality, and whose kinship consists precisely in

this fact. These encounters with the timeless occur in a visionary dimension wherein lies their ultimate validation and where such labels as heresy and orthodoxy do not apply. Gnostics such as Valentinus, Suhrawardi, Eckhart, Böhme, and many others have been judged heretical by some; indeed, the tension between orthodox doctrinalism and the inner gnostic validation of our theosophers is endemic to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps, then, it is more useful to consider gnosis from within than from without. For gnosis or theosophy is not a matter of historical validation. It is an encounter with what transcends history. This is its perennial call and its perennial authenticity, no less in our own beleaguered times than before. Theosophy speaks to those who recognize themselves to be strangers to this world, and who truly wish to know where they are, whence they came, and whither they go.9 To begin to realize this is to begin to realize the angelic encounter, the fruit of which is gnosis and gratitude, the soul's illumination by the spirit. For this alone—gnosis, angelophany, and their accompanying spiritual symbolism—marks those who are in the gnostic sense, friends of God. 1. The Mandaean religion—which still exists in the Middle East—is affiliated with Christian Gnosticism; and the Ismaili tradition is a part of Islam, but continues doctrines that predate Islam. Both Mandaean and Ismaili traditions have been discussed at length in the remarkable works of Henry Corbin. 2. See Dionysius, “The Celestial Hierarchies” in The Complete Works, trans. Colm Lubhéid (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1987), 1.121B. 3. Ibid. 8.301C ff. 4. See Divine Names, ibid., 8.597B. 5. Ibid., book 8. 6. See Plotinus, Enneads, 2.9. 7. It is no coincidence that “existentialism” appeared in the twentieth century, and that during this same time scholars like Hans Jonas interpreted the whole of Gnosticism chiefly in light of “existentialist philosophy.” There is a deep filiation between existentialism and a desecrated mechanistic worldview. 8. On nature as revelation of the archetypal, see George William Russell, The Candle of Vision (Wheaton: Theosophical, 1965). 9. See Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 17–19.

2

Religious Eros in the Christian Middle Ages IT IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED that there are two main currents in medieval European mysticism, represented by the terms via negativa and via positiva. The via negativa (or negative way) is ascetic, and entails an ascent toward the unknowable. By going beyond images and created things, it proceeds into the “cloud of unknowing.” On the other hand, the via positiva (or positive way), is not ascetic, but seeks to realize the images around us as transparent, and to return to the transcendent through symbolism— the world for it being translucent or theophanic. Such distinctions may have a certain categorizing utility. However, when we examine medieval Christian mysticism in detail, we find that these “two ways” are essentially joined in sophianic mysticism or religious eros. A central manifestation of religious eros in the Western world can be seen in the tradition of courtly love, which flourished especially during the twelfth century throughout Western Europe. This troubadour tradition was also a movement of spiritual chivalry, in which poets or knights dedicated themselves not only to a monogamous relationship, but also to a spiritual love, often unconsummated, for a woman who was seen as a manifestation of the Divine Feminine, or Sophia. There were both male and female poets, whose poetry expressed their longing for their lovers. This courtly love tradition was of course at one level literary, producing an abundance of well-known poetry, but the movement also had secret or initiatory dimensions that were expressed through a cryptic language, the key to which only the initiates possessed. Thus, in this rich and beautiful tradition, religious knowledge, chivalric mythology, initiatory wisdom, asceticism, and love were all combined. The following is a quotation from one of the earliest and best of the courtly love poets, Guillaume, Ninth Duke of Aquitaine, (1071–1127), a boisterous, life-loving man who was excommunicated numerous times, and whose verse is quite beautiful. He wrote in one characteristic lyric: Farai chanoseta nueva ans que vent ni gel ni plueva; ma dona m'assai' em prueva quossi de qual guiza l'am; e ja per plag que m'en mueva

nom solvera de son liam. Q'ans mi rent a lieys em liure. qiem sa cartam pot escriure. E no m'en tengatz per yure s'ieu ma bona dompna am, quar senes lieys non puesc viure, tan ai pres de s'amor gran fam. I shall make a new song before the wind blows and it freezes and rains. My lady is trying me, putting me to the test to find out how I love her. Well now, no matter what quarrel she moves for that reason, She shall not loose me from her bond. Instead, I am her man, deliver myself up to her, and she can write my name down in her charter. Now don't go thinking I must be drunk if I love my virtuous lady, for without her I have no life, I have caught such hunger for her love.1 This quotation captures something of the delightful, life-affirming spirit— combined with a discipline of love—that flows throughout the whole of the courtly love tradition. It is true, of course, that one must distinguish between the high medieval mysticism of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing on the one hand, and the courtly lover or minnesinger tradition on the other. Certainly the injunctions of an Eckhart against being ensnared by or attached to images or to anything in the created world—injunctions one finds in Tauler, as well—seem to represent an altogether different mystical way than that of a visionary mystic like Hadewijch, whose work manifests spiritual chivalry (a feminine chivalrous perspective, I might add), a way that goes through symbolism and visionary inspiration and is not too far removed from what we see in the courtly love tradition. Chivalry at heart is about the spiritual quest and about proving one's nobility in the world by pledging oneself (an act both men and

women can do). Thus, in quest, mysticism goes inward, chivalry outward. Such distinctions are fine, so far as they go. But divisions like this do not hold up quite so well under scrutiny when one finds that, for example, a mystic like Jan van Ruysbroeck—generally recognized as belonging to the company of Tauler and Eckhart—was deeply influenced by the “feminine” chivalrous visionary way represented by Hadewijch, who pledged her troth to Christ. Indeed, the more closely one examines medieval European Christian mysticism, the more one has to recognize that under consideration are very different aspects of a single spiritual path: a gnostic path that may be seen in terms of symbolic mediation, angelic revelation, or complete transcendence of images. In fact the courtly love tradition is, in its own way, as ascetic as its mystical counterpart: the courtly lover or the knight who is on a quest and dedicated to a lady lives in a state of privation from the beloved. This separation is the occasion for much courtly love poetry, which therefore has an ascetic quality that is close to the asceticism expressed by those who dedicate themselves to spiritual practice. While at first glance the relationship between the courtly lover and the beloved might seem to be worlds removed from monasticism, in reality the two are closely related. The traditional ascetic and the courtly lover both spurn worldliness, both are dedicated to a spiritual life—it is just that for the courtly lover, the beloved is like a divine image on earth. This symbolic path—in which earthly creatures are recognized as reflecting the Divine—has its Christian origins in the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, who describes the “way of symbols” in a threefold manner. First, there is the way in which symbolism reveals its own anagogical meaning; second, there is the way of angelic illumination in the celestial hierarchy, which is mirrored both by the ecclesiastical initiatory hierarchy and the gnostic hierarchy; and third, there is the way of absolute illumination, or transcendence of all forms. That these three ways are all found in Dionysius certainly does not mean that he contradicts himself; rather, it means that these ways represent different aspects of the one gnostic path —different levels, we might even say, of a single ascending path. The works of the medieval mystics, including especially the poets, form a unity which is not only manifested in the poetry of courtly love (which celebrates divine Beauty seen in this world), but also crystallized in stone and glass in the great cathedrals. Indeed, in all such works, there is a union of this world and the other.2 The works of medieval gnostics thus reflect a reverence for and a deepening of the orthodoxy found in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. At the same time, however, their lives and works represent a tension in between orthodoxy and individual spiritual realization, as revealed in works of art whose symbolism shows this world as transparent to the Divine.3 We see this metaphysical transparency in all great medieval works, from the songs and poems of the courtly love tradition to Chartres

cathedral and Dante's great Divine Comedy. In all these manifestations, symbolism is profoundly important. While in a general sense it can be said that everything in the physical world can be interpreted symbolically—that everything from a tree to a stone to a cloud to the human body can reveal spiritual truths—in fact, certain things (the eagle, the heart, the breath) are so deeply symbolic that one cannot reach the end of their ramifications in the soul. And so, it is possible to speak in terms of a “science of symbolism,” which is of course precisely what one has in Christianity when writers speak of the “anagogical” interpretation of symbols.4 While a confirmed materialist will say that spiritual symbolism is quite arbitrary, and that a hawk is as good as a handsaw, in reality the more closely one examines the manifestations of Christian esoterism in the Middle Ages—particularly in light of other traditions like kabbalism and Islamic esoterism—the more one recognizes that what we have in such works as the poetry of Dante or the visions of Hadewijch is a kind of spiritual geognosy or spiritual physiology, to which certain symbols refer because they best represent spiritual reality or the way to it. Indeed, only this can finally explain the powerful recurrence and reverberation, with all its constellated symbolism, of the holy figure of Sophia, Virgin Wisdom. Sophia appears in early Christian Gnosticism, in Sufism, in medieval Christianity in, among others, the fedeli d'amore and Cathari, and finally in German theosophy after the Reformation. Sophia appears in this way not because of unseen historical filiations—though in some cases these filiations or transmissions certainly exist, as in the case of medieval Provençal kabbalism, which drew on ancient Gnosticism— but because she is a spiritual reality that calls people to nobility, and is a reality of the soul's realm recognized in all three traditions. These three Abrahamic traditions represent a spiritual reality experienced in strikingly similar symbols and related images, and the recurrences of certain ideas or images is determined by this reality. Seekers in these traditions reach this reality in much the same way: through the mediation of certain symbols. Modern thinking would make the soul's realm merely the product of belief, or a fantasy; but according to theosophy there is a science that comes not from belief but from supersensual knowledge. Of course, the knowledge in question is of an order wholly beyond modern “empirical” science, for such knowledge requires faith and reverence as a prerequisite. The anagogical transparency of symbols in medieval Christian poetry, architecture, and visionary literature is nowhere more evident than in religious eroticism, in the numerous love poems whose characters are at once earthly and celestial. What matters is not who Beatrice was historically, but how Beatrice, as a human being, was also simultaneously an angelic revealer for Dante. Through her, Dante was able to understand in a much deeper way Christ's affirmation that the

kingdom of God is not “there,” but accessible here within, called forth and realized inwardly through the mediation of symbols seen in our physical world. One great source for the doctrine of religious eros in Europe is Plato. In the Symposium, Plato has Diotima, Socrates' female initiator, teach Socrates that eros is the intermediary between heaven and earth, the daemonic power linking “above” and “below,” and that through eros a human being is drawn to what is higher. This means, of course, that it is misdirected eros that draws people toward the accumulation of money or toward merely physically or sexually attractive partners. But one who is properly initiated into love's mysteries begins to realize more and more deeply that longing for the Divine inspires love and is its only true fruition. The same eros or longing for the Divine infills all creation and procreation, but it is only realization of the Divine that truly satisfies this longing. This Platonic understanding of all creation as impelled by eros or longing for the Divine was also recognized in early Christianity. Origen, like his teacher Clement of Alexandria, wrote in his Commentaries that some people are infatuated with money, others with power, and still others with sexual desires. These infatuations, writes Origen, are “sicknesses of the soul”—the soul is infatuated with them, taken over by them, and forgets that its real longing is for its fulfillment in God. Even the lust for money is merely misdirected eros for the Divine.5 Hence Christ heals such people—he is a physician of the soul, who restores to the soul its true desire and meaning. From this basic understanding we can begin to see how the doctrine of religious eros redirects the basic human longing for procreation, and ultimately for immortality, not by rejection of natural human desires, but by orienting them toward their ultimate transcendence. The longing for a partner is also a longing for spiritual companionship, and religious eros turns the former into the latter, shows how the former really is the latter, and makes the two, one, allowing us to see heaven through one who is on earth. In essence, religious eros is the transposition or transmutation of one's beloved into symbol, through which the whole world and one's spiritual journey through it is revealed in its symbolic reality. Symbolic reality here takes precedence over historical fact. Thus, in a sense, medieval Christian spirituality and courtly love converge. Troubador spiritual symbolism, angelic revelation, and the gnostic spirituality of an Eckhart or a Tauler are essentially one. Here the whole of religiosity consists in the meeting or union of heaven and earth, in the gnostic revelation of earthly life as a symbolic or imaginal reality. It is true that the center of spiritual experience is transcendence, about which nothing may be said at all; but the way toward transcendence, and the meaning of it, are expressible in human terms and images. This truth is best exemplified perhaps in the overwhelming splendor of Dante's vision of paradise, which certainly surpassed his ability to tell, but which he

nevertheless expressed in words and images. Let us then turn to Dante's testimony and his love for Beatrice. In La Vita Nuova, Dante tells us of falling in love with the beautiful young Beatrice, a young lady of nine, “clad in a goodly crimson” robe, just as the Virgin Mary in Eastern Orthodox tradition is clad in crimson. “At that moment,” Dante writes, “I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble violently” and, in its trembling, said “here approaches a deity stronger than I.”6 Nine years after this first meeting, Dante experienced a new revelation, the vision of this same lady again—but this time clad in white and accompanied by two others—after which, “marvelously intoxicated” and asleep, Dante beheld his new master, Love, who held in his hand a heart aflame, and said to Dante “Behold thy heart.”7 Here spiritual symbolism totally overwhelms its “historical significance.” What Dante expresses through these traditional symbols comes alive in his visionary realization. Precisely the same symbol of the flaming heart is linked in both Islamic or Persian and Christian esoterism with the symbol of the breath and of the spiritual eye. This symbolism is also seen, for instance, in the works of Dr. John Pordage (d. 1681), who wrote that the essence of the Christian path can be understood in the image of the eye in the flaming heart. But such cross-references are not necessary here; what matters most is what Dante intended, that we intuitively understand his visionary experiences through his poetry and prose. For, disregarding speculations about whether Dante belonged to an initiatory order, we can certainly say that his visionary works offer us a direct entry into the path of religious eros, and that for Dante, as for other followers of religious eros, what matters above all is individual revelation: the relationship between an individual and his or her revealer, who takes the form of a person and who is an angel.8 In other words, while the totality and reality of Catholic teachings, cosmology, and metaphysics are revealed to Dante in the Divine Comedy, this revelation comes through the mediation of a spiritual guide and angelic revealer, personified above all by Beatrice and her dazzling eyes; it is a personal revelation, or a revelation in the form of a person. That what we are here discussing is a path open to both men and women is shown by the remarkable works of Hadewijch who, while she did not write a literary work on the order of the Divine Comedy, demonstrates nevertheless in her letters and visionary works an exceptional realization of religious eros and an ability to guide others on this path. Hadewijch's work, like Dante's, has as its center the angelophany, the angelic revelation, through which she is shown spiritual truth and enters into the symbolic realm. Hadewijch's writings are permeated with the language of chivalry and courtly love, certainly giving the lie to those who would argue that chivalry and courtly love were a matter for men and

not women. Hadewijch, whose precise dates have not yet been discovered, lived during the early and middle thirteenth century. She belonged to a lay order called the Beguines. The Beguines were somewhat controversial because although they were pledged to poverty, they were not officially nuns. Like the much more recent theosophical communities established from the seventeenth century onward in Germany, England, and Pennsylvania, the Beguines represented a spiritual organization whose closest analogy in another religion is the tariqah of Sufism, since its members do not live in monasteries, but do follow a spiritual rule and are guided by a spiritual elder. In her order, this elder was Hadewijch herself. Hadewijch was gifted with visionary experiences from an early age; she tells us that one of her visions occurred when she was nineteen, for instance, and about another she says that she had not yet grown to maturity, a statement that has several levels of significance. But such powerful visionary experiences when young point again to what we were suggesting in relation to Dante, that one need not posit some mysterious initiatory transmission for our fedeli d'amore, making them distant from us, and eliminating the possibility of our own transmutation unless we can contact this mysterious initiatory organization. Rather, in question here is precisely what Dante and Hadewijch themselves testify to: a spiritual, visionary revelation through the person of an angel. In one visionary recital, Hadewijch writes that she “felt such an attraction of my spirit inwardly that I could not control myself outwardly.” She says that she was taken away from “every remembrance of alien things” “as if into a meadow, an expanse that was called the space of perfect virtue.” Here, “having grown up,” she received the presence of an angel, one of the Thrones, who are charged with spiritual discernment. “From then on,” she continues, “he was to be the guardian and the companion of all my ways.”9 Later, she writes, one of her greatest joys was to experience the “Countenance,” which is to say the divine Presence itself was bestowed upon her; and through this experience she understood what was meant by Divine-Humanity. Hadewijch experiences the Divine through angelic mediation in the celestial form that is, ultimately, she herself as angel. She tries to convey something of this experience's profundity by relating a dialogue with her Angel, who tells her: These heavens, which you behold, are wholly hers and mine; and these you saw as two kingdoms that were separated were our two humanities, before they attained full growth. . . . You have wished, dear strong heroine and lady, with your doubts, to know from me how it might come to pass, and through what works, that she should attain full growth so as to be like me, so that I should be like her, and you like myself. Let this be in me, and let it be

announced to you by my mouth; it is my understanding of my rich nature.10 How do we unpack the many meanings of this astonishing passage? The “she” in this account is the “real” Hadewijch, who through the angel's presence is seeing the unity of the “real” Hadewijch, the spiritual Hadewijch in ecstatic vision (“you”), and the angel who announces to her that when they all three “attain full growth” they shall all be one, and yet separate—hence “like myself.” There is the earthly personality; the one to whom the angel announces; and the angel: at the end of the journey, the three will be full grown together. One cannot but feel, even through the passage of centuries, the resonances of this encounter with its multiple meanings—above all the revelation of how the angel announces to Hadewijch her own spiritual essence, which is not “her,” or is more completely her than she is herself. As Hadewijch herself said in a letter, one must have “strong confidence that God will allow you to love with that great love with which He loves Himself.”11 Through the angel one realizes the love that is really God's love for himself manifested back to him through his creatures, one realizes even his countenance. In this image of the countenance, we are in fact beyond images, or what words can say; what remains is joy, delight, and above all, eros revealed finally as the love of God for himself through his creatures. When we turn to Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293–1381 A.D.), we find that the same religious eros we saw manifested in the work of Hadewijch appears again, but this time with an emphasis on the transcendence of images even while using them. Ruysbroeck, in other words, stands midway between the poetic symbolism or imagery of religious eros as seen in Hadewijch and the emphasis in Eckhart and Tauler on an almost Neoplatonic transcendence and “cloud of unknowing.” Ruysbroeck draws on the traditional wedding imagery of the bride and the bridegroom, as well as on other symbols, including the zodiac; but much more than Dante or Hadewijch, he emphasizes the inward transcendence of such symbolism. In his Spiritual Espousals, Ruysbroeck speaks directly of angelophany of the heart and of its dangers. Ruysbroeck writes: These persons who live in the transport of love sometimes have still another kind of experience, for a certain light may shine upon them, one which God causes through an intermediary. In this light, the heart and the concupiscible power are raised toward the light. . . . Some interior people are at times instructed in dreams through their guardian angels or other angels about many different things of which they have need. There are also to be found some persons who have many inspirations—words or thoughts that come into their minds—yet they continue living according to the external senses. . . . Such experiences may be natural, or they may come from the devil or from the good angel. For this reason, they may be relied on only insofar as

they are in accord with Holy Scripture and with the truth, and no more than that; if still more reliance is placed upon them, a person may be easily deceived.12 This “accord with Holy Scripture and with the truth” is no minor point. All the visionary mystics, including Hadewijch, St. Theresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross, tested their experiences against scriptural and spiritual validity. One must beware of being deluded, of mistaking the hazy subtle or astral world for authentic spiritual illumination. Ruysbroeck emphasizes that our greatest danger lies either in mistaking some discarnate spirit or demon for a “spiritual voice,” or in mistaking a vacant “emptiness” for the transcendence of all images. Both of these can lead to spiritual destruction, and so, at the end of his Little Book of Contemplation, Ruysbroeck observes that: You should beware of those deceived persons who—by means of their empty, imageless state and through a bare, simple act of gazing—have found in a natural way God's dwelling. . . without His grace and without the practice of virtue, in disobedience toward God and the holy Church. With all their perversity of life, which I have previously described, they wish to be sons of God by nature.13 If the Prince of Angels fell through self-infatuation, Ruysbroeck asks, how can a mere sinner rise to heaven without grace? Ruysbroeck, like Tauler and Eckhart, is here attacking the confusion of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit or the libertine antinomians, who deny moral order, and who exist in our time as in his. By contrast, writes Ruysbroeck, “all our ways end in superessential Being.”14 That is, all three essential ways of being—the angelic, the transcendent, and the perfect—are fundamentally one, in that they all derive from, reflect, and draw us into God's superessential being and grace. This is why Ruysbroeck also reiterates that “a contemplative lover of God is united with God through an intermediary, and also without an intermediary, and, thirdly, without difference or distinction.”15 This is essentially our point here as well—that even though one can divide mysticism into via positiva and via negativa, in reality “all our ways end in superessential Being.” Perhaps, finally, this unity of aspiration and consummation is best seen in the great medieval cathedrals of Europe. For in the cathedrals we see celestial inscriptions in stone, wood, and glass—massive, sweeping ciphers of the marriage of heaven and earth. Molitor was not wrong when he wrote that “Christian architecture, particularly of the Middle Ages, derived primarily from a theosophic

element which was part Pythagorean and part kabbalistic.”16 Nor was he wrong in writing that “The Christian mystical worldview has its ground in Judaism, and the liturgical and formal art has its origin in mysticism.”17 In essence, the cathedrals are nothing less than crystallized music, mystical harmonies frozen in formal art, in buttresses and arches, windows and figures. What the astonishing edifice of Dante's Divine Comedy is in literature, the cathedrals are in the physical world: sign and seal of the marriage of heaven and earth, of religious eros made manifest in stone and glass. Even the irreligious, at the portals of such an edifice, are struck silent and cannot but feel the reverence that these great monuments generate, for the possibilities of angels and humans meeting here are not remote. This is recognized by Fulcanelli who, in his treatise Le mystère des cathédrales, wrote of the many alchemical references visible in the figures found on the great cathedrals, and who, even if one can dispute this or that interpretation, certainly was referring to images that bear within them spiritual meanings today as they did centuries ago.18 Religious eros, in short, is a mystery at the center of the Christian tradition. The flaming heart bearing in its center an eye is an emblem that bespeaks the mystery that recurs again and again in Christianity, not in outward life of events and history, but in the inward life without which such monuments as the cathedrals could not exist. While it might appear that one can speak of an affirmative and a negative way, in reality such distinctions are inadequate, for ultimately in the spiritual life the expressible depends upon and is inseparable from the inexpressible, to which we are ineluctably drawn, for here alone is the culmination, the crowning of what it means to be human—here, where the human and the angelic are indivisible. 1. Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouveres, trans. F. Goldin (New York: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 40–41. 2. Having written elsewhere on the subject, I will not be considering here the extreme paracletic mysticism that one sees in the early antinomian Gnostics, sees again in the medieval “Brethren of the Free Spirit,” and finds yet again in the so called “Ranters” who appeared on the heels of the Reformation. The “Brethren of the Free Spirit” was purportedly an antinomian medieval group that held that those who possessed the spiritual knowledge of the “Free Spirit” were free to do as they willed, including sin. The Ranters were an eighteenth century Protestant group in England that also held that moral law and obligations were overturned by the “age of the Spirit,” so that again, one could sin freely. Both groups ignored sexual conventions. I will discuss the Ranters and libertines and their connections to heretical Gnosticism at length in Gnosis and Literature (forthcoming). 3. This tension between individual spiritual revelation or renewal and orthodox doctrines remains problematic throughout the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, which in this respect more than any other certainly represent a single tradition renewed by new revelations (Christ and Muhammed), inasmuch as all three religions manifest a similar tension and even antagonism between exoterism and esoterism. Christianity, particularly in its Western European forms (not surprisingly, given Christ's fate among men) is particularly subject to this tension, which in its most extreme forms makes martyrs of men like Giordano Bruno and anathematizes men like Ramon Lull. This is not to say that Islam hasn't made martyrs of men like Suhrawardi or al-Hallaj al-Mansur, of course. 4. See on symbolic science René Guénon, Fundamental Symbols of Sacred Science (Oxford: Quinta Essentia,

forthcoming); see also the many works of A. K. Coomaraswamy on Christian and Asian symbolism in art. 5. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Edinburgh: T. T. Clark; 1990; Grand Rapids: Eerdman's) 10.430. 6. Dante, La Vita Nuova, ii. 7. Ibid., iii. 8. René Guénon, L'ésoterisme de Dante (Paris: Gallimard, 1957); see the forthcoming English translation of this work by Bernard Bethell, Perth, Australia. Guénon argues here the initiatic nature of Dante's work, a view about which we will say chiefly that all too often modern writers have concerned themselves with outward aspects of Dante's work— including even the outward manifestations of esoterism like stellar and esoteric references— without adequately recognizing the essentially angelic revelation that inspires all of Dante's writing. 9. Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. Mother C. Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), p. 263. 10. Ibid., p. 274. 11. Ibid., pp. 80-81. 12. See J. Ruusbroec, Onmia Opera, in Corpus Christianorum, ed. G. de Baere (Brepuls: 1988), CIII.530ff.; see also CI.122. See also J. Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, trans. J. Wiseman (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 87–88. 13. See John Ruusbroec, Omnia Opera, CI.114. See also Ruysbroek, Spiritual Espousals, p. 269. 14. John Ruusbroec, Omina Opera, CI.108–110, and Ruysbroek, Spiritual Espousals, p. 268. 15. John Ruusbroec, Omnia Opera, CI.110, and Ruysbroek, Spiritual Espousals, p. 252. 16. Franz Josef Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, oder Über die Tradition (Münster, Thessing'schen, 1827, 1834, 1839, 1853), 4.11. 17. Ibid., 4.8. 18. Fulcanelli, Le mystère des cathédrales, trans. M. Sworder (Sudbury: N. Spearman, 1977).

3

The Question of Platonism and Hermeticism FROM

THE BEGINNING Christians have had an ambivalent relationship with Platonism and Hermeticism, those two orphan children adopted by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and carried along on their historical caravans. They have sometimes been regarded as hidden treasures, sometimes as nuisances, and sometimes, even, as outright dangers—or at least, as orphaned delinquents. Certainly one can find many confirmed Aristotelians in Islam and in Christianity who regarded our orphans as undesirables. Be this as it may, however, the historical affiliations we will discuss here are inescapable—for Christianity's theology owes as much of its metaphysics (which includes and transcends cosmology) to Platonism as its cosmology owes to Hermeticism.1 Platonism may be said to begin with Plato's students and successors, but in reality it belongs to a long tradition that stretches from the ancient Greek Orphic mysteries and the initiatory traditions of Pythagoras (hence relatively early in Greek civilization and considerably before Plato) right into the Christian era with such Neoplatonic authors as Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Hermetism inherits some of this Platonic tradition, and also reflects mystery traditions that hark back to ancient Egyptian religion. In essence, Platonism—rooted in Plato's “dialogues”—and Hermetism, embodied in the Hermetic dialogues of the Corpus Hermeticum, represent a consigning to paper of principal initiatory symbols and concepts so that, even if one did not have access to a living spiritual teacher, one could still participate vicariously in a written dialogue like Plato's Timaeus or the Corpus Hermeticum's Poemandres. Let us begin with Platonism. In itself, Platonism is neither a religion nor any more “otherworldly” than the religions it has existed alongside. While any religion necessarily has an “otherworldly” character, inasmuch as it recognizes that its “kingdom is not of this world,” Platonism is essentially a constellation of parables, myths, and poetic images designed to continue the initiatory mystery traditions that Plato crystallized in his dialogues. But because Plato used poetic forms and allusions to convey visionary truth, he necessarily ran the risk of being misconstrued, taken literally. Thus when Plato's Socrates suggests that this world is like shadows flickering on a wall, some might believe he was being “otherworldly” and “dualist.” But those who use such terms pejoratively, and who take Plato's images and

analogies literally, fail to recognize that Platonism expresses spiritual truths through these poetic parables, and that “otherworldliness” and “dualism” are entirely valid ways of expressing truth. Certainly Taoists who use the imagery of yin and yang cannot therefore be accused of being dualists, for Taoism consists in recognizing and transcending this dualism—as did Manichaeism, for instance.2 So too with Platonism. In this human world, our souls can be compared to a good and a bad horse, and can rise or descend, as Plato suggested in Phaedrus. To say this is not to deny the unity, beauty, truth, and goodness of life for those who ascend closer to the Divine. To speak of the “other world” is to affirm the transcendent, archetypal realm of which this world is but a transient reflection. It is not “escapism” but metaphysical realism. But Platonism on its own, wherever it finds a home, though it recapitulates the essence of perennial metaphysics, does not offer a religious path in itself; it requires a religious ambience within which its metaphysics can be realized. This is why Platonism is taken into Islam, Christianity, and at times Judaism, again and again, and sparks within those traditions the fullest flowering of their metaphysical possibilities. We often forget that Platonism originally existed in the ambience of the Greek mystery religions, and that those mysteries were continued particularly within Christianity and even to a lesser extent in Islam—religions which were, as a result, especially receptive to Platonism's pollinating effect. It is amusing to consider how at times Platonism had this effect under the name of Aristotelianism—as when for instance, under the name of the Theology of Aristotle we find circulated in medieval Islam Proclus' commentary on the Enneads of Plotinus, not exactly the most Aristotelian of texts! Such historical ruses—of which there were many in Christianity as well—allowed Platonism to survive the historicist, literalist, and fundamentalist attacks of those more usually aligned with Aristotelian thought. For look! the Platonist mystics and visionaries could say, Aristotle himself taught the visionary ascent to the Divine. The remarkably influential works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite are also in this category—for they too bear the unmistakable stamp of Platonic influence. This story of Platonism's survival in Judeo-Christianity and Islam is at heart the same story that we see played out in the life and death of Socrates—the story of the opposition between historicist, literalist fundamentalists on the one hand and visionaries on the other. Indeed, one could well argue that the life and death of Christ himself reveal this same opposition between those with eyes to see and ears to hear, and those without, between those who think that the kingdom of God is of this world, and those who recognize that “my kingdom is not of this world”—an assertion whose real significance has not been fully recognized by historicist Christians and Muslims. Certainly the history of Christianity and of Islam is replete with Platonist visionaries martyred by spiritually blind literalists.3

One can see precisely how Platonism's influence continued on in Christianity in the work of Johannes Tauler, for instance. Tauler (c. 1300–1361,) a disciple of Meister Eckhart represents quite clearly the enigmatic and at times tenuous position of visionary Platonist spirituality within Christianity. Tauler himself was not brought up on charges of heresy, but like his master who died facing charges of heresy he was certainly subject to criticism. Yet at the same time, one can hardly deny that like Eckhart, Tauler is one of the most developed flowers of the Christian faith. One sees in Tauler's sermons just how Platonism traditionally was carried along in the Christian caravan through time; for Tauler's sermons show how Plato and the Neoplatonists were regarded as precursors of the Johannine Christian mystery itself. Tauler writes: This ground of the soul was already known by the pagan philosophers. As they searched its depth, the knowledge of it caused them to think poorly of transitory things. Such great masters as Proclus and Plato gave a lucid account of it, in order to guide those who could not find the way by themselves. Saint Augustine says that Plato had already fully foreseen the first part of Saint John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” up to “there was a man sent from God.” . . . . This understanding, my Beloved, arose from their inmost ground, for which they lived and which they cherished. Is it not shameful and a great scandal that we poor latecomers, we Christians, aided by grace, the Faith, and the sacraments, should be running about like blind hens, ignorant of our own self and of the depth within us?4 The outward forms of religion, including vigils and other practices, are in no way so essential as this inward realization, which Tauler, like Augustine, recognized in Platonism. Rather, the forms of religion conduce to and are illumined by this inward realization. Religious forms enhance and support spiritual illumination. Indeed, Tauler recognized in Platonism the “one thing needful” in the Christian mystery. In another sermon, he said: A pagan master, Proclus, has this to say on the subject: “As long as man is occupied with images inferior to himself, and as long as he does not go beyond them, it is unlikely that he will ever reach this depth. It will appear an illusion to really believe that this ground exists within us; we doubt that it can actually exist in us.” “'Therefore,” he continues, “if you wish to experience its existence, you must abandon all multiplicity and concentrate your attention on this one thing with the eyes of your intellect; and if you

wish to rise higher, you must put aside all rational methods, for reason is now beneath you, and then you may become united with the One.” And he calls this state a divine darkness: still, silent, at rest, and above all sense perception. Beloved, it is a disgraceful thing that a pagan philosopher understood and attained this truth, while we are so far from both.5 Tauler's re-emphasis of this last point—the disgrace of Christians who do not even seek this transcendence when it is the central mystery of life and has been attained by such pagans as Plato and Proclus—underscores the kind of function Platonism has traditionally served in both Christianity and Islam as a reminder of what Christ truly meant when he said “The kingdom of God is within us.” Here—and precisely here—at the meeting point of Platonism, Neoplatonism, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and Tauler's German mysticism—is the absolute heart of Tauler's message. It is certainly no coincidence that Tauler happens to bring up the “pagan philosophers” at exactly those points in his sermons where he wishes to focus on and exhort his listeners to the spiritual center of the Christian mystery. Thus, when at the end of yet another sermon, Tauler says, “Now we should rise with all our might into our highest nature,” and when he anagogically interprets how Abraham left his ass (the natural human) at the base of the mountain and ascended to transcendence, he finally focuses on the heart and mind in the “secret place, the Holy of Holies,” and concludes with the affirmation of none other than Proclus: “When a man enters here,” says Proclus, “he is unaware of anything that may happen to him, be it poverty, sickness, or suffering of any kind.”6 Here the Christian “secret place, the Holy of Holies” atop the mountain is identified with Proclus, by no means a Christian! Conventionally, modern scholars try to separate Dionysian, Neoplatonic, and Platonic “influences” in German mysticism, as if these had been separate in the spirituality of men and women like Tauler and Hadewijch. But this kind of analysis misses the point, for Tauler's theosophy itself is incorporative, integral, and focused on the “one thing needful,” so that what matters for him in his sources is not their “pagan-ness,” but the extent to which they urge one toward inward spiritual realization. To this incorporative, inclusive spiritual understanding, the spirituality of Islamic theosophers would certainly not be alien—here too, had Tauler known of the work of a SÛhrawardi or a RÛzabehân Bâqli, he would have said “how disgraceful that these Muslims ascend to the inward Truth, and we Christians do not.” All this represents an approach to understanding from the inside, as it were—an approach in which we try to enter into another's understanding. This act, which is an act of love, Henry Corbin called “phenomenological,” for it requires that we at

least in some degree experience what our authors experienced. Indeed, our gnostic authors insist time and again upon the transcendence of natural reason and upon the necessity of ascending inwardly into the supreme unitive understanding of the heart that is the ground of being, which is not divisive and categorical but unitive and all-embracing, and encompassed finally within the word “love.” If the significance of Platonism in Christian theosophical metaphysics is rather clear, the place of Hermeticism on the other hand is altogether a different matter. From very early on, arguably in the Gospels themselves, one finds in Christianity much evidence of Platonism's presence, which is intimately tied to the presence of the Mysteries whose roots go back very far into antiquity.7 Moreover, Platonism's importance in the spirituality of theosophers like Tauler is self-evident. But since Hermeticism has always been a secret or hidden tradition by its very nature, it is by no means easy to assess its place in Christian theosophy.8 Mostly, this ambiguity regarding Hermeticism derives from its having a primarily cosmological significance. The word “Hermeticism” comes from the Greek god Hermes, who was the messenger between the gods and human beings, denoting of course exactly the cosmological realm, and in particular the “intermediate” or subtle realm of the soul “between” the spirit and the physical. The same symbolism is incorporated in the “pillars of Hermes,” which likewise span the distance between heaven and earth. It is not surprising, then, that the mysteries of Hermeticism belong essentially to the soul's realm, and to the soul's purification, transmutation, and ultimate illumination. Hermeticism leads from darkness to light, precisely the implication of that apocryphal early Christian book, The Shepherd of Hermas. Hermeticism thus ultimately leads toward metaphysical realization. For this reason, such visionary works as The Shepherd of Hermas suggest a more than cosmological meaning for the figure of Hermes or Hermas, the revealer. Indeed, in The Shepherd of Hermas various spiritual visions are described that urge us as readers toward realizing a life of the spirit. Hermeticism, like the mysterious discipline of alchemy is, in the phrase of Titus Burckhardt, essentially a “science of the cosmos” and a “science of the soul,” but at the same time it does lead toward the great illumination that is metaphysical and not merely cosmological. So, when we look at the collection of texts now available under the heading of the Corpus Hermeticum, which are generally held to have been written by Greeks who had studied in Egypt during the third centuryA.D., we see a group of documents revealing a range of individual master-to-disciple revelations or illuminations. In this collection, Hermetists have in common primarily their attitude toward the spiritual search and illumination, but these are seen not as concerned with sacred scripture but as having to do with spiritual dialogue, and with the individual encountering the angelic. There is no trace in the Corpus

Hermeticum of the institutional, or even of ritual practices; like the Platonic dialogues, they are concerned with the spiritual encounters of individuals, with spiritual experience. Given the noninstitutional character of the Corpus Hermeticum and its initiatory mode carried on either through a master-disciple conversation or through the recounting of an individual revelation—combined with a despising of the ignorant masses and of more ignorant times to come—one is not surprised to find that there is little written trace of Hermeticism per se in Christianity from the third to the eleventh centuriesA.D., when we find the Byzantine Platonist Michael Psellus working from a collection of Hermetic texts, or to the fifteenth century in the Latin West, when Marsilio Ficino first published his edition of the Poemandres and other Hermetic works. Hermetism is an inherently esoteric phenomenon, whose adherents are ever able to recreate or rediscover the tradition anew. As such, the Corpus Hermeticum continued in Europe under various forms. In other words, Hermeticism—which is another manifestation of theosophy— did not cease to exist during these long centuries. Though admittedly only a few manuscripts remain showing the transmission of Hermeticism during this time, we must recognize that one would be unlikely to find much material evidence of a tradition that by its nature is hidden, initiatory, and able to reconstitute itself through an ahistorical continuity. It is certainly not necessary for the authors of The Shepherd of Hermas, the Poemandres, the medieval poem Pearl, and La Vita Nuova or The Dream of Poliphilo to have known one another's works in order to have demonstrated very much the same scenario in their own. All of these “Hermetic” works have their genesis in a common attitude, in an approach to spiritual revelation, of which the Poemandres is perhaps the best example: Once on a time, when I had begun to think about the things that are, and my thoughts had soared high aloft, while my bodily senses had been put under restraint by sleep,—yet not such sleep as that of men weighed down by fullness of food, or by bodily weariness,—methought there came to me a Being of vast and boundless magnitude, who called me by my name, and said to me, “What do you wish to hear and see, and to learn and come to know by thought?” “Who are you?” I said. “I,” he said, “am Poemandres, the Mind of the Sovereignty.” . . . When he had thus spoken, forthwith all things changed in an aspect before me, and were opened out in a moment. And I beheld a boundless view; all was changed into a light, a mild and joyous light.9 Here, as in the other works we have mentioned, we see a visionary experience in a realm that is different to ordinary sleep and whose closest analogue is dreaming.

This is the world that Henry Corbin called the “active imagination.” In it we see a visionary encounter, a dialectic in the world of light. This approach to visionary spirituality is closely allied with Platonism. Hence it is not accidental that those who have done most to bring the Corpus Hermeticum to light in Eastern and Western Christianity were Platonists. Both Platonism and Hermeticism have occupied a common spiritual ground historically—their province being above all the individual visionary encounter with the Divine, which we can trace from Plato onward. Indeed, if this were all there were to Hermeticism, we would have little more to say. But Hermeticism is also cosmological. The Poemandres itself goes on to speak at length about the nature of the cosmos; about the “things that are;” about the primordial fire and the waters; about the appearance of the Logos; about the “seven administrators,” and the seven planets; about the constitution of human beings as spiritual beings; and much else besides.10 It is here in the cosmology that we find the focus of the Corpus Hermeticum as a whole: the nature and destiny of humanity and of the cosmos. This Hermetic cosmology, which embraces herbal, alchemical, and astrological knowledge, includes an understanding of how the seven planets represent qualities (like bitterness, sweetness, heat, and cold) that are found in all created things— from trees and rocks to plants, animals, and, of course, the human being. Unfolding this wisdom, Hermeticism proceeds from the analogies between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and is predicated on the realization that qualities present in the human soul are also present in the world around us, even as they are present in the heavens themselves, in the form of planets and stars. Hence in Hermeticism there is an approach to sacred cosmology that appears in such Renaissance authors as Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Valentin Weigel, Jacob Böhme, and Johann Georg Gichtel. The latter two writers above all offer a religious interpretation of alchemical symbolism, but they are certainly at the same time carrying on an approach that is generally Hermetic in nature. The authors we have mentioned are perhaps the best known—particularly Paracelsus and his spagyric medicine—yet there are many others too whose manuscripts remain untranslated or unpublished who were also undoubtedly part of this “hidden” Hermetic-cosmological understanding, traces of which can even be seen in the very buildings and cathedrals of Europe.11 Thus one can speak of a “Christian Hermeticism” and of a “Christian alchemy,” just as one can speak of “Islamic Hermeticism” and “Islamic alchemy.” Hermeticism, like Platonism, represents a kind of independent visionary spirituality that can be incorporated into the Judeo-Christian or Islamic traditions. In its cosmological emphasis, Hermeticism includes the discipline of the alchemical transmutation of the soul, using the symbolism of metals, smelting, and

transformation as well as certain images like the King and Queen; the rebus, or androgyne; and various animals like the lion and the pelican. This cosmological transmutation, however, is fully consummated only within the religious sphere, which completes it with metaphysical or spiritual realization. This is why these disciplines of the soul have been carried along especially within the religious caravans of Islam and Christianity. We cannot now enter into the complex morass of opinions regarding such topics as the masons (or freemasons) and their relation to Hermeticism, nor for that matter into a detailed discussion of alchemy and its rather cloudy relationship to traditional Christianity—although we will discuss alchemy's significance for our theosophers as regards their relationship to nature. Essentially, alchemy's consummation may be seen in works of Christian alchemists like Thomas Vaughan —whose works manifest a profoundly reverential attitude toward Christianity— and in devoutly Muslim alchemists like Jabir. Admittedly, in some alchemical texts we find few if any religious traces, so that alchemy then seems a discipline of its own that can be quite separate from the religious traditions in which it subsists.12 On the whole, however, Platonism and Hermeticism require a religious ambience in which to be realized, a tradition to carry them along and to support them. Our task here is to recognize what Hermeticism and Platonism represent within Christianity: namely, individual spiritual insight into the nature of our cosmos, and into our own spiritual destiny and meaning. Such insights are timeless and recur because they are intrinsic to the human condition itself; and the path to their realization is the alchemical path of the soul's transmutation and illumination. In this sense, then, Platonism and Hermeticism are peerless examples of and sources for the ahistorical continuity that is at the heart of theosophy, to which we now turn in its recent European manifestations. 1. Here we are using the word “Hermeticism” to include the entire Hermetic tradition, including Renaissance Hermeticism. See Antoine Faivre, “Ancient and Medieval Sources of Modern Esoteric Movements” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. A. Faivre and J. Needleman (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p.3. 2. One grows tired of clichés regarding Manichaeism: undoubtedly the Manichaean emphasis on the Light's revelation is not “pessimism” or, ultimately, dualist, but rather is a profoundly optimistic and unified vision of spiritual revelation. 3. Two instructive cases: that of Ramon Lull, anathematized by one pope, and restored by the next, and that of Giordano Bruno, martyred by the Inquisition. Both were certainly visionary Platonists, and both devotees of the religious eros. 4. Johannes Tauler, Predigten, ed. G. Hofmann (Eiseideln: Johannes, 1979), II.338–339. See also Johannes Tauler, Sermons, trans. M. Schrader (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), sermon 44, p. 149. 5. Tauler, Predigten, op. cit., I.201; see also Tauler, Sermons, op. cit., sermon 29, p. 105. 6. Tauler, Predigten, op. cit., II.458–59; see also Tauler, Sermons, op. cit., sermon 59, p. 168. 7. In my book The Egyptian Mysteries (London: Routledge, 1988), I discussed the indebtedness of GrecoRoman and Christian traditions to the Egyptian mysteries. 8. See Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, trans. W. Stoddart (Baltimore:

Penguin, 1971). The term “metaphysical” refers to the realm of the spirit; the term “cosmological” refers to the realm of the soul, including the psychic and physical worlds. 9. Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings, trans. W. Scott (Boston: Shambhala, 1985 ed.), 1.115. 10. Ibid., 1.115 ff. 11. The writings of Fulcanelli come to mind most immediately, but many writers, including Keith Critchlow, John Michell, and David Fideler have delineated the geomantic symbolism of Greek, Roman, Islamic, and Christian buildings, all of which reflect sacred proportions, and are constructed as mesocosms. See David Fideler, Jesus Christ, Sun of God (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993). 12. This was precisely why Julius Evola, a fierce despiser of Christianity, could write a book on alchemy in the West. See Julius Evola, La Tradizione Ermetica (Roma: Edizione Mediterranee, 1971).

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Theosophy IF THEOSOPHY, in the broad, phenomenological sense we have defined it, has its origins in a way of being that is precisely a transcendence of history, as may be seen in the Platonism, Hermetism, and Christian gnosticism of the early centuries —including such authors as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Dionysius the Areopagite, as well as in later Islamic theosophy as discussed by Henry Corbin and in such medieval Christian authors as Dante, Hadewijch, Eckhart, Tauler, and Ruysbroeck—then its appearance for us moderns is best represented by the tradition of Jacob Böhme. After Böhme, Christian theosophy takes on its most historically aware form, and far from being a forgotten province suitable only for scholars, in fact represents in an era of unparalleled spiritual confusion and forgetfulness an essential spiritual alternative within Christianity. Böhme is certainly a figure often misunderstood. Indeed, even some modern authors who style themselves “mystics,” and who ought therefore to know better, have seen fit to label Böhme “demented,” a “deluded shoemaker.” In so doing, however, without realizing it, they merely reveal their own ignorance of what Böhme and the Christian theosophical tradition, of which he was a central figure, really signify.1 Of course, one wonders what is worse—the calumnies of those who don't understand the theosophical school, or those who simply ignore it, relegating it thereby to the hidden body of knowledge that the West possesses, but does not recognize. To understand Böhme and the theosophical school to which he is central, we need to recognize their historical context and significance. Böhme (1575–1624) was born on the cusp of the Reformation, and hence represented a mystical possibility inherent in Protestantism itself, as evidenced by the fact that Luther edited and arranged for the publication of the Theologia Germanica, a mystical work arising from the stream of German theosophy represented earlier by Eckhart and Tauler. Most people are taught that Protestantism originated merely as a revolt against Roman Catholic excesses or corruption, seeing it as a paring away of the ritual elements of the Catholic tradition and little else, save perhaps a focus on laypeople reading the Bible. But Böhme represents a profound dimension of Protestantism that is altogether too seldom discussed. Originally, and particularly in the theosophical school, Protestantism represented a completely nonsectarian Christianity. This is of course ironic, given the

proliferation of often bitterly oppositional sects into which Protestantism fragmented and congealed, and by which it is known today. But Jane Leade (1623– 1704), the English theosopher, wrote of her spiritual mentor Dr. John Pordage (1608–1681) that he cared not at all for schismatic names like Luther and Calvin; he sought rather to focus only on what it means to be truly a Christian and to awaken the inward vision of the heart.2 Indeed, all our theosophers either supported the sect or tradition to which they were born, or ignored sectarianism altogether. The following are only a few of the major instances: Böhme was Lutheran, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803) and Franz von Baader (1765–1841) were Catholic, and Johann Georg Gichtel (1638–1710) and John Pordage were nonsectarian. All these theosophers were linked by a common understanding of what it truly means to be a Christian. All were rooted in the gnostic, visionary spirituality of Jacob Böhme; and all followed what must be called the “path of the heart.” In their presence, we are far indeed from the exoteric fundamentalism currently associated with much of Protestantism—after all, one of Böhme's largest works is Mysterium Magnum, a massive commentary on the esoteric or theosophic meanings of Genesis that is probably about as far from literalist Biblereading as one can imagine.3 And yet, at the same time, Böhme impelled an enormously powerful and popular “underground” spiritual movement, called “radical pietism,” which, based in simple faith, reverence, and profound mysticism, swept through Northern Europe and carried all the way to America. In other words, theosophy highlights the complementary relationship between esoteric and exoteric, between spiritual practice and religious forms in Christianity. Without a gnostic or esoteric dimension—and the spiritual practice that informs this dimension—Christianity often becomes a matter of forms alone, just going to church on Sundays. Religious form without spiritual practice is what Böhmeans railed against, calling it “Babel.” Conversely, because theosophy reveals the spiritual meaning of these religious forms, our theosophers affirmed the traditions to which they belonged—Tauler a Catholic, Böhme a Lutheran—seeing in formal religion not an opposition to gnosis, but its ritual complement and fulfillment. All of this also suggests that Christian theosophy of the modern era is by no means a phenomenon that can be dismissed as easily as it usually is by scholars of theology, history, political science, and above all, the history of spirituality. Modern Christian theosophy embraces a unique combination of popular influence and profound metaphysical heights, of deep learning and enormous spiritual consequence among ordinary people in Europe and America. Certainly it is a rare spiritual movement that combines not only these two apparently dissonant elements—faith and intellectual power—but also an ecological or, dare we say, an ecosophianic perspective of nature and its meanings; a profound cultural

conservatism (especially a preservation of medieval cosmology) and at the same time, a remarkable insistence on spiritual experience, not dogma—on spiritual realization, not institutional preservation. Given all this, then—what was European theosophy, its doctrines, and effects? In essence, European theosophy stood for a radical emphasis upon the inward transmutation effected by a “new birth” in Christ. There are many other dimensions to theosophy, of course, and different theosophers each focused on particular aspects of theosophic spirituality, but all of them emphasized and drew upon a fundamental concentration on the inward transmutation of the soul and upon the revelation of spiritual truth. Indeed, one could even say that the whole of the theosophical tradition was an elaboration of the soul's nature, transmutation, and illumination. This central focus on the nature of the soul is why the theosophical movement could incorporate—paradoxically—such apparently diverse elements as both the incredibly learned treatises of Gottfried Arnold or Franz von Baader, for instance, and the popular movement of “radical pietism,” which was not particularly intellectual, but was deeply concerned with leading a spiritual life in a community of like-minded spirits. If writers like Arnold or Baader represent the formidable intellectual power sparked by theosophy—Baader sprinkled French, English, Russian, Greek, Latin and other languages through his writings —“radical pietism” represents the as yet only partially mapped effects of theosophy in people's lives, the effects of a very profound and far reaching “underground movement.” Indeed, “radical pietism”—based directly in Böhme—resulted in many spiritual communities being formed in Germany and other European countries, as well as in America. Some of these communities were admittedly somewhat odd—one thinks of the eighteenth century German couple Ann Catherina vom Büchel and Elias Eller who, convinced that they were to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth, developed a secretive community, Ronsdorf, where all the members lived in buildings oriented toward the Eller home, to which they prayed. The Ellers and their followers were convinced that the Eller's son Benjamin was Jesus himself. Their community continued for many years, eventually provoking something of a scandal when it was revealed to the wider public. On the other hand, most of the pious communities were not so sensational as Ronsdorf. The most well known of these Böhmean associations in England was one centered around Dr. John Pordage (1608–1681) and his wife after their spiritual illumination in the early 1650s. It continued later around the remarkable mystic Jane Leade, whose visionary treatises were published from the 1680s until her death in 1704. Leade founded a nonsectarian group called the Philadelphians, which was controversial among its German affiliates because by assigning the group a name, they feared that Leade and her friends were creating a kind of

nonsectarian sect. The English and German theosophers of this time worked together informally, and there were a number of such associations or orders, many of which did not organize into formal communities. Some of the more organized German communities emigrated to America during the eighteenth century, and it is remarkable that there were among the earliest settlers in America pious Böhmean theosophists, who lived in the American wilderness as part of lay, quasi-monastic orders. Among these emigrés was Johann Conrad Beissel, who sailed to America at age thirty, in 1720, and lived as a hermit in the American wilderness until a group of followers developed around him. Beissel, who was deeply influenced by Johann Georg Gichtel, organized a “Melchizedekian priesthood”—as he called the householders at “Ephrata”—who were celibate, and wore a modified Capuchin garb. Count Zinzendorf wanted the Ephrata community to become part of his own plans for an American community, but they declined, preferring their spiritual independence.4 It is interesting and perhaps instructive to consider that the greatest representatives of medieval theosophy—including Tauler and Hadewijch—were associated with or founded spiritual orders that were neither lay nor clerical orders, but like Beissel's group occupied an intermediate ground and were open to all according to their spiritual proclivities. Tauler was instrumental in the “Friends of God,” for instance, an order that, like Hadewijch's order for women, engendered controversy because it was not directly a church institution. But this is precisely the point: theosophy itself is not institutional but experiential, and any ecclesia it embraces is necessarily an ecclesia spiritualis. So it is not surprising that the German theosophers also engendered informal groups devoted to spiritual practice. One thinks for example of Johann Georg Gichtel's “Engelsbrüder,” or Angelic Brethren, a name that recalls Dionysius the Areopagite and Origen, both of whom, as we will recall, suggested that human beings and angels were not so distant as some might think, and that the earthly hierarchy reflects its origin in the angelic hierarchy. We are reminded, too, of Jane Leade's English “Philadelphians.” Some of these German theosophical groups were based on a twofold order like that of the medieval Cathars, who distnguished between the believers and the “perfecti” (those who were devoted wholly to spiritual practice), and one wonders if this kind of twofold order isn't inherent in theosophic spirituality generally. In any case, certainly the informal theosophical orders or groups were focused not at all on institutional hierarchy, but wholly on degrees of gnosis or piety. These spiritual orders or communities common to early Christianity, to medieval Christianity (surrounding such figures as Tauler, Ruysbroeck, and Hadewijch), and to Protestant theosophy (surrounding such figures as Böhme, Gichtel, or Beissel), remind one of nothing so much as Sufi communities or tariqahs in Islam, which

are also organized around gnostic figures, according to degrees of gnosis and piety, and are also often more or less “hidden orders” composed of people who maintain their outward place in society, but who are inwardly devoted to spiritual practice. What is more, like the Sufi orders, these Christian theosophical groups exist on the border between the institutional religious figures and the lay populace; and like the Sufi orders, they focus entirely on individual spiritual experience or gnosis. The historian of theosophy may be tempted to focus primarily on its intellectual doctrines and its publications, thereby excluding the whole “hidden” practical dimension of the tradition that was effective in people's lives and not just an abstract intellectual influence. We must beware in considering theosophy that we not reduce it to mere cosmological doctrines that we can force into an unholy alliance with, for example, modern physics.5 Such an attitude would have greatly distressed Böhme, who was above all a pious man, not at all a “heretic,” but someone who profoundly influenced many people toward actually living a more spiritual and inward life. Indeed, while those interested in Böhmean doctrine may be inclined toward Böhme's first book, The Aurora, those interested in precisely how one moves toward a spiritual state in which one is capable of realizing those doctrines and truths inwardly for oneself will turn to Böhme's last book, The Way to Christosophia. In The Aurora, we see the germinal structure of Böhme's cosmological insights and metaphysical understanding, but in The Way to Christosophia, we see those insights applied to actual spiritual practice. We see how we should dedicate our life through daily prayers, and we see the soul's dialogue with the holy Sophia, the glory and presence of God. It is surely an unusual book that, like the medieval Cloud of Unknowing, includes a consistent warning to the reader to approach its words with caution and with a pure heart, as we are repeatedly warned in The Way to Christosophia. Indeed, such words as these give the lie to those who would make of Böhme merely someone with cosmological insights derived from alchemy. Beware, Böhme warns, that “these words do not ignite the Wrath of God in your soul,” for “this little book belongs only to those who wish eagerly to repent, and who have a desire to begin.”6 Whether one is an intellectual who finds in Böhme an elaboration of the same spiritual truths espoused by the other great theosophers of the Christian tradition, or a seeker of spiritual sustenance and gnosis (and sometimes these two are identical), Böhme's words apply: what matters first of all is your orientation, your piety, your spiritual intention. Given this emphasis on actually experiencing the spiritual truths our theosophers espoused, one well may wonder how their lives reflected what they understood. While we cannot offer here a comprehensive overview of European theosophers, we can nonetheless offer an introduction to some of the major figures,

and can certainly show how their lives and works manifested the same spiritual attitude or orientation found in Böhme's work, albeit in surprisingly diverse ways. While all the theosophers we have just spoken of may be termed nature-mystics, and all emphasized the soul's illumination by spirit, each represented a particular aspect of the school as a whole. Certainly the most influential theosopher was Jacob Böhme himself, the “cobbler from Görlitz” who, born to humble circumstances in Germany, experienced a wonderful illumination while still in his twenties. Based on this experience he produced The Aurora, a manuscript that circulated among his circle and finally reached the hands of Richter, the local minister, who proclaimed Böhme a heretic and forbade him to publish. For seven years Böhme obeyed, but during this time deepened and elaborated his original insight even while he met friends who helped him develop his terminology and his scholarly background, writers such as Valentin Weigel and Jacob Spener. After seven years, Böhme and his friends began to circulate and publish his later works. This outraged the Lutheran pastor Richter, but also drew to Böhme a widening circle of admirers and gnostics. Böhme continued to publish and to give spiritual counsel until his death, and although he died a member of the Lutheran church, local citizens saw fit to destroy his humble grave marker soon afterward. While Böhme's influence as a spiritual guide continued to expand after his death, so too the invective against him continued, and more than one observer has noted the parallels between Böhme's own reception in this world, and the reception that Christ himself received. After Böhme came Johann Georg Gichtel who did more to make theosophy a living, experiential spiritual praxis than perhaps anyone since. Gichtel, born in 1638 in Regensburg, Germany, was a religiously inclined, even visionary youth, who went on to study theology at Strassburg, but was unhappy with the rationalistic manner of thought espoused there and later became associated with a Protestant “Society of Jesus” (not to be confused with the Jesuits). Traveling to Holland after having studied law, Gichtel became acquainted with the writings of Angelus Silesius and, most importantly, of Jacob Böhme, an encounter that was to inform the rest of his life.7 From this encounter until his death in 1710, Gichtel was an indefatigable and deeply spiritual interpeter and practitioner of Böhmean theosophy. The informal center of a spiritual group called, as we have said, the “Engelsbrüder,” Gichtel was in fact the spiritual guide or adviser to many Christians. After Gichtel's death, his friend Ueberfeld published a large collection of Gichtel's letters and other writings under the title Theosophia Practica, a classic work that was to deeply impress Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, the great French theosopher, nearly a century later. Gichtel lived an outwardly quiet life, reliant on the largesse of friends and

admirers, but inwardly his life was one of deep spirituality. He was convinced of prayer's efficacy by the spiritual rescue of a friend who had committed suicide, and whose soul Gichtel—through years of earnest prayer—saw freed from suffering. Gichtel and his friends subsequently formed a “Melchizedekian priesthood,” whose prayers they recognized as having a powerful effect in this world and in the next, as intercession for the dead. Gichtel, though he was approached over the years by many women, remained celibate and unmarried, faithful to the holy Sophia, the Virgin Wisdom who appeared in revelations to him, as indeed she did to many theosophers both male and female. Gichtel's was a very rigorous and profound spirituality, with many levels. His spiritual group, the “Engelsbrüder,” had two levels, the vollkommen, or “completed,” who were contemplatives, and the fleischlichen, or “fleshly ones,” the householders. The latter were married, the former celibate, and Gichtel never tired of exhorting the faithful toward ascetic spiritual practice, not unlike the classic Eastern Orthodox teachers. In his writings, Gichtel revealed the most elaborate understanding of the “subtle human body” to be found in Christian esoterism, including a developed recognition of such subtle centers as the heart, the throat, and the crown of the head—as well as of the spagyric or Hermetic medicine using tinctures or essences. Gichtel's spirituality included all levels: bodily, subtle, and spiritual. Gichtel was discerning in his assessment of other Christian esoterists—for example Jane Leade, the English leader of the Philadelphians. Philadelphian supporters tried to enlist Gichtel in their cause, but he declined after some consideration, opposing Leade's support of the wiederbringung or “restoration of all things” doctrine (essentially a belief in apocatastasis) observing that Leade had “knowledge of astral spirits, but had not penetrated to the ‘light’ region.”8 Louis Claude de SaintMartin later reached similar conclusions, not only about Leade, but also about Swedenborg.9 If Gichtel was among the greatest of the practical theosophers, Gottfried Arnold, born in 1666 in Annaberg, Saxony, was among its greatest scholars. Arnold was influential above all for pointing out with enormous erudition how the theosophical doctrines of the Böhmean school are in fact found also in the writings of the early Church fathers and mystics. In his book Das Geheimnis der Göttlichen Sophia, [The Mystery of the Holy Sophia] Arnold scarcely mentions Böhme, relying almost totally on quotations from early Christian writers. Gichtel, who was of course an advocate of the holy marriage with Sophia, the feminine aspect of the Divine—and of celibacy—was quite taken with Arnold's learned book on this great spiritual mystery. However, Arnold got married—a bad enough mistake in Gichtel's eyes—and then, even worse, had children, about which Gichtel remarked, amusingly, that

Arnold “ist in Kinder gefallen (has fallen into [having] children).” Arnold, of course, argued in reply that marriage is the “blesséd middle road,” not at all a spiritual failing, and that while Gichtel's asceticism was no doubt admirable, it was not the path for everyone. This clash of views certainly has its analogues in other religious traditions: there are many ascetic Buddhist writings, but also such sutras as the Vimalakirti Nirdesa, which champions the householder bodhisattva Vimalakirti. There are many ascetic writings in Eastern Orthodoxy, but these can be coupled with the recent works of Philip Sherrard on the sacrament of marriage.10 Or again, one thinks of the many Sufi orders that enjoin a householder life, combining marriage and asceticism. In the end, one suspects it will not be possible to conclusively resolve such a conflict, save perhaps to observe that Böhme himself was married and had children. During his productive life, Arnold wrote many influential books, including extensive Christian histories, in particular his Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (1699), the first modern theological history to take some forms of early Christian Gnosticism—particularly Valentinian Gnosticism—seriously. For Arnold, as one might expect, what mattered in theological history was whether a given writer manifested correspondences with the theosophic views we have been elaborating in this work. The true history of the Church was that of the wiedergeborene, those who are spiritually reborn through gnostic experience, a concept that includes and transcends phenomena connected with being “born again” in contemporary Protestantism.11 The titles of his later works are indicative of the same perspective: Historie und beschreibung der Mystischen Theologie (1703), and Theologia Experimentalis (1714). The next pivotal figure we will discuss is Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (b. 1743), a French theosopher whose works were published under the name “The Unknown Philosopher,” or “le philosophe inconnu.” Saint-Martin did not come to the works of Böhme until relatively late in life; his early works were written from the perspective of his theurgic school, founded by Martinez-Pasquales, a sect that employed theurgic rituals and “operations.” Adherents of this school, called Martinists, or later, Elects Cohens, fought vigorously the growing atheism of contemporary France, and in this battle Saint-Martin played a major role. Saint-Martin's public role began with his books Des erreurs et de la vérité, ou les hommes rappelés au principe universel de la science, (1775), and Tableau naturel des rapports entre dieu, l'homme, et l'univers (1782). In these works SaintMartin explained the traditional doctrine of correspondences between man and nature, and the idea of man as a microcosm. He sought to oppose the reductionist atheist assertion—which has by no means disappeared since—that religion originated in mere delusion inspired by a fear of nature's powers. His works alluded to the Scriptures, but were couched in a parabolic Hermetic language that

was designed to lead a materialistic, atheistic or scientistic readership back toward authentic religion through its reference to God, for instance, as the active intelligent cause. It was not until the mid 1780s that Saint-Martin was introduced to Böhme's works, but he immediately recognized in the theosopher “the greatest human light that had ever appeared,” and the revelation in toto of what he had glimpsed in his earlier theurgic school. From this time on, Saint-Martin's works and life were increasingly informed by Böhmean theosophy, seen especially in such books as De l'esprit des choses, ou coup-d'Iil philosophique sur la nature des êtres, et sur l'objet de leur existence, (1800), and Le ministre de l'homme-esprit, (1802). In the latter book especially, one sees Saint-Martin emphasizing the necessity for human regeneration in the Logos, which is the Gospel way and the simple key to wisdom —something not seen in the spiritism of the day nor in authors like Swedenborg. In his later years, Saint-Martin learned German and translated several works of Böhme into French, not only as a service to French readers, but also to incorporate more fully those pivotal works into his own being. During the years 1792 to 1797, Saint-Martin also corresponded with the Baron de Kirchberger of Bern, and in this correspondence, published in English by E. B. Penny in 1863, we see the gentle wisdom of Saint-Martin and his fellow traveler, the Baron, most clearly displayed. Here we get a sense of what it was like to live during the severe social and political upheaval of the French Revolution—which dispossessed SaintMartin, a nobleman, and caused all manner of disruptions in his life. Yet he remained wholly devoted to the spiritual path represented by Böhmean theosophy. We see Saint-Martin and Kirchberger learning of and differentiating among such diverse authors as Jane Leade and Eckartshausen, whom they saw as not having fully realized the higher levels of theosophy, and Gichtel, for whom they had the highest respect. The affection and mutual understanding of SaintMartin and Kirchberger, who never actually met, is perhaps the best and certainly the most touching introduction to theosophy as a spiritual path. If we were to characterize the overarching significance of Saint-Martin's work beyond what we have here suggested, it would be to say that in him one sees how an extraordinarily chaotic social milieu need not be a barrier to the theosophic path. This is a significance that should not be overlooked in the present era, itself not the most stable nor the most spiritually inclined of ages. Indeed, while we may not be experiencing quite what Saint-Martin called a prefiguration of the Last Judgment—the French Revolution—still we are faced today with unprecedented ecological, social, and religious fragmentation. The serene spiritual path of a SaintMartin has something to offer in such a time. From Saint-Martin we turn back to Germany, and to a theosophical current about which we have as yet said little, this being the confluence of Judaic

Kabbalism and Christian theosophy. Jewish Kabbalism includes a whole range of esoteric traditions, from spiritual practices like the recitation of Divine names to various millennialist sects.12 In Christian theosophical Kabbalism, however, we are in a primarily intellectual realm: whereas Gichtel and Saint-Martin were concerned with how to live the theosophical life, the theosophical Kabbalists focused on the intellectual speculations of Kabbalism in relation to Christianity, and on the ways that Kabbalism provided ammunition against contemporary materialism and atheism.13 This was also true of such earlier Christian Kabbalists as Pico della Mirandola (1463-–1494), who held Kabbalism to confirm Christianity, and his student Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who used Kabbalism in a similar fashion.14 In a sense, Kabbalism has been like Platonism and Hermetism within Christianity—absorbed into Christianity as a way of expressing theosophical truths. There was of course a “practical” Kabbalism as seen in the De occulta philosophia of H. Cornelius Agrippa, and in many other “underground” books that emerged later and were responsible for the widespread and often erroneous connection between Kabbala and magic or witchcraft. This connection was strengthened in the nineteenth century by groups like the Golden Dawn, who focused on the kabbalistic “tree” of the Sephiroth as a center of magical practices. But such groups notwithstanding, there was a Kabbala much more given to speculative theology and mysticism, and it is to this “higher Kabbala” of writers like Isaac Luria that our German authors were drawn, just as Mirandola and Reuchlin before them were drawn to the doctrines associated with the Zohar.15 The first German theosopher in the Böhmean tradition to be learned in Christian Kabbalism was Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782). As a young theological student, Oetinger encountered Böhme's theosophy and recognized in it “the true theology.” His publications on this subject followed for nearly fifty years, from his Aufmunternde Gründe zur Le-sung der Schriften Jakob Böhmes (1731) to Versuch einer Auflösung der 177 Fragen aus Jakob Böhme (1777). But it is in his combination of various theological currents that Oetinger was most original, for he wrote not only on Böhme, but also on Swedenborg, alchemy, and various kinds of Kabbalism, of which he was made aware by Koppel Hecht of Frankfurt am Main.16 Oetinger certainly was not alone in his interest in Kabbalism, which was no doubt supported by such books as Knorr von Rosenroth's vast Kabbala Denudata (1677–1684), and Georg von Welling's Opus Mago-Cabalisticum (1735). Oetinger offers above all a confluence of Böhmean theosophy and alchemical symbolism with the speculative doctrines of Lurianic kabbalis—about which he wrote in, for instance, Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia—drawing attention to very abstruse

doctrines, including the concepts of Adam Kadmon, or the universe conceived as a cosmic human being, and of the essence of the Godhead.17 In this book Oetinger discusses the kabbalistic doctrines of the Zohar and of Isaac Luria: he writes of the doctrine of the “ain-soph, God the Infinite, before creation took place,” and of the doctrine of the tsim-tsum, the Lurianic “contraction” and “opening up” in God himself necessary in order that Creation could take place. God the Infinite had to do this in order to allow for freedom of will; and through this contraction came about the Adam Kadmon, the macroprosopos: the Word that was with God in the Beginning.18 Oetinger affirms the traditional kabbalistic doctrine of God's emanation of the world, and “Hence Light, the worlds of Azilut, Briah, Jezirah, Asiah, and Adam Kadmon himself are not created, but rather flow out of God, so that they cannot ultimately be separated from their Origin.”19 Oetinger, in affirming that “the things of the spiritual world described in the Bible are realities in the highest sense, more real than what seems real on this earth,”20 expressed what may well be called a crowning achievement of his theosophical writing, the union of Christian Kabbalism and Böhmean theosophy, including the many theosophical streams that fed into these, as well as the work of writers like Swedenborg. For one may say that in a broad sense—and taking into account their many differences—all these visionary or esoteric schools were certainly affirming the reality of the spiritual and subtle worlds. This confluence is why a modern critic can say of Oetinger that his naturphilosophie “derives not from abstract concepts or bloodless ideas, but rather out of concrete reality. Against the rationalistic and idealistic thought of his time, his work provides an excellent and healthy sense of reality.”21 This sense of concrete reality derives precisely from the nature-symbolism of alchemy inherited from Paracelsus, Weigel, and Böhme; it recognizes that nature is herself sign and symbol of the spiritual truths informing all existence. So even though Oetinger's work includes the heights of Kabbalistic speculative theosophy, it remains grounded in the cosmological insights of alchemy and spagyric medicine. In Oetinger we begin to see a current that was to grow even stronger in Christian Kabbalistic theosophy: opposition to materialism, atheism, and mere rationalism, all of which are in fact linked together and emerge in Europe at precisely the time Oetinger was writing. Oetinger's use of kabbalism was, like his use of alchemical principles, designed to show that Christianity was not a matter merely of “belief” as opposed to rational knowledge, but rather consisted in principles to be found “outside” Christianity proper, in Judaic Kabbalism and in the Hermetic disciplines traceable to Hermes Trismegistus as well.22 Certainly the crowning achievement in the fusion of Christianity and Kabbalism

in the battle against materialism was the work of Franz Josef Molitor, whose four volume series Philosophie der Geschichte, oder Über die Tradition [Philosophy of History, or On Tradition] (1827–1853) was the most erudite and profound consideration of Kabbalism's significance for Christians through the nineteenth century.23 Even in the twentieth century, with the many discoveries of more recent scholarship, Gershom Scholem affirmed the importance of this work and the insights it contains for scholars.24 Molitor argues that although all orthodox Christian theology derives from Judaism, more or less, this relation between the two traditions is not alive or sufficient any more. In the battle against formal rationalism and the scientistic worldview, he asserts, we need a spiritual rebirth of theology. Judaism alone can explain certain aspects of Christendom's world-historical nature, and can open for us the natural world as understood in antiquity.25 He discusses “the speculative way of the common principles of theosophy, namely the teaching of the eternal absolute Godhead, . . . the teaching of the original Creation and of the primordially pure relation of the Creature to the Godhead.”26 The modern, scientific, materialistic worldview derives, Molitor writes, from an extension or intensification of the primordial Fall of Humanity that resulted in our human existence, and our task is to “reverse” this Fall. Theosophy is the path to such a reversal. “With this inward separation [of the Fall],” Molitor asserts, “the outward man is bound in earthly space and time relationships; and thereby separate for him are the outer from the inner, the earthly from the heavenly realm.”27 Hence, he affirms, writing of the transcendent archetypes reflected in nature: Each really-existent creaturely essence exists thus in a living Form. However, in our current fallen condition, it is no longer easily possible to know the inner qualitative essence of things. . . which is only possible via the holy language. We have become concerned only with the outward “objective,” quantitative relationships among things; we have forgotten that the outer forms or signatures of things reveal the world of their inner, spiritual qualities.28 True science consists in coming to realize these inner, spiritual qualities and in moving from a condition of disunion, quantification, and confusion to a condition of qualitative awareness and spiritual unity. Authentic philosophers and scientists, then, focus their attention not on quantity, but on quality, and this leads inevitably toward spiritual rebirth. Molitor writes: There are essentially two kinds of philosophers: those who study forms, and those who pay attention to actual content. These latter strive to more or less completely divest their speculation from pantheistic and naturalistic

elements, try to follow further into the hyperphysical world their glimpse of it, and seek to clarify the true philosophy of the revealed religion. . . and so theirs is the science that leads to rebirth. This new grand approach has its richest, most preëminent exponent in Franz von Baader.29 It is not surprising that Molitor should offer such an endorsement of Franz von Baader, arguably the greatest expositor of Böhmean theosophy. While Molitor and Oetinger—drawing on Kabbalism and theosophy—were profound critics of atheism and materialism, it was Baader who offered the most complete synthesis of traditions, and it is to him we now turn. Franz von Baader was born in 1765 in Munich, the son of a physician, and although he was originally trained to take over his father's practice, he went on to study mineralogy and the other sciences under such luminaries as Alexander von Humboldt. He spent four years in England (1792–1796), where he came to see at close hand the results of the industrial revolution and the creation of an industrial proletariat. In 1796 he returned to Germany where, in addition to attaining in quick succession a series of ever higher official positions, he was able through various chemical experiments to develop a patented formula for glass fabrication that brought him a substantial income. During this time, he was assiduously studying Böhme and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, as well as other mystics including Meister Eckhart and Tauler. Indeed, so thoroughly did he come to know Böhme that August Wilhelm Schlegel called him “Boehmius redivivus,” or “Böhme reborn,” a complimentary designation still indissolubly linked to his name. It is of course as a theosopher that Baader is most famous, but his theosophical writings encompass an extraordinary range of subjects, from religious eros to the political concept of “theodemocracy,” to a theosophical union of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.30 As one might expect, given Baader's remarkable personal life and force of character, his ecumenicism did not remain only theoretical. As early as 1815, Baader had hopes of helping create a “holy alliance” between German, Austrian, and Russian leaders, particularly after the ascendence of Tzar Alexander I, who combined a deep spiritual piety with great tolerance. Baader traveled to St. Petersburg in 1822, seeking to establish ties between European and Russian Christianity. But unfortunately, his hopes were dashed in 1825, when Alexander I died under mysterious circumstances, his death linked to fears of the “Westernization” of Russia. After the death of his first wife in 1839, Baader married twenty-five year old Marie Robel (1814–1877), with whom he spent his last years. During this time he continued to write, of course, and among his writings were attacks on the institution of the papacy. Although he remained Roman Catholic all his life and

was not censured, he felt that the papacy was responsible for much of the suffering in Western Christendom, and championed a union of Eastern and Western Christianity that would by its nature entail synodic rather than hierarchic papal authority. Baader died in May 1841, in Munich, but his influence continued and extended far beyond Germany. To this day, Baader remains the most profound model for the fundamental union of Christianity's various forms. His influence on Russian writers like Berdyaev and Solovyov is certain, but his effect was felt on Italian writers like Rosmini and on the continental forms of Romanticism, as well. However, Baader's primary significance is as a Catholic who, by way of his deep understanding of classical Greek sources, Böhmean theosophy, and Eastern Orthodoxy, was able to unite in his writing these various traditions by revealing their fundamental origin from a single source of spiritual experience, a key to which is certainly found in Böhme and SaintMartin. In many ways, Baader's work remains the crowning achievement of European theosophy, not least because the vision it offers opens out to wider horizons even today. In his work we see the union of what at first glance appear to be opposites: pious Catholicism linked to the “Protestant” mysticism of Böhme; alchemy and a “paradisal anthropology” linked to a profound sense of social concern; eros revealed as Christian religious aspiration; Orthodoxy linked to Catholicism and Protestantism. At first glance these might seem incompatible, but as we have noticed before in other contexts, seen through the spiritual perspective of theosophy, they are all aspects of a unified understanding as accessible today as in the early nineteenth century. We have seen before how Gichtel emphasized avoiding marriage and remaining ascetic; and while Baader incorporates into his perspective a traditional asceticism, he also recognizes a higher dimension to human sexuality in his discussion of the “religious erotic.” Like the twentieth-century writer Philip Sherrard—who also has sought to convey Eastern Orthodoxy to Europeans—Baader offers a whole “paradisal anthropology” based in a spiritual understanding of human sexuality and an inner “spiritual marriage” that restores to the theosopher the paradisal unity that is every human's birthright.31 “Transmutation is the key to Christianity and to the higher Physic,” writes Baader.32 Here we begin to glimpse the magnitude of the challenge theosophy offers us. For as seen in Baader and the earlier theosophers, theosophy offers nothing less than a restoration of humanity's proper relation to the cosmos, nothing less than a profound science of transmutation through which all nature may be understood not in quantitative, but in qualitative terms. Theosophy offers spiritual understanding of sexuality and a new vision of human culture; a “reversing” of the Fall and a return to the paradise that has always been ours had we but known our true

purpose. Far from being merely a footnote in Christian history, theosophy offers the resolution to more crises than we might at first think. To its cosmology and metaphysics we now turn. 1. Figures as diverse and as purportedly “mystical” as Arthur Edward Waite and Annie Dillard have written very harshly of Böhme, thus advertising their ignorance of what he actually taught. Indeed, Waite frankly admitted that he had no idea what Böhme or Saint-Martin meant by, for instance, the Virgin, openly confessing why he denigrates Böhme, whom he did not understand. 2. See John Pordage, Theologia Mystica (London: 1683), pp. 12–13. 3. Mysterium Magnum represents the somewhat cloudy relationship between Jewish kabbalism and Christian esoterism: in it, one sees a kind of kabbalistic exegesis of the Bible, but in Christian theosophic terms. Much work remains to be done on the interfertilization of Christian and Jewish mysticism, a mutual influence much deeper than superficial histories would suggest, stretching all the way back to Jewish and Christian Gnosticism of the early centuries in the present era. 4. See Chauncey David Ensign, “Radical German Pietism (c. 1675–1760)” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1955), pp. 270 ff. 5. See for instance Basarab Nicolescu, Science, Meaning, and Evolution, The Cosmology of Jacob Böhme (New York: Parabola, 1992) a remarkable book by a French physicist that reveals a deep humility before, and an admiration of, the works of Böhme. See also Versluis, The Hermetic Book of Nature (Phanes Press, forthcoming), where I discuss this subject in much more detail. 6. See Jacob Böhme, Christosophia, “Vorrede des Autoris”; see also The Way to Christ, trans. P. Erb (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 27. 7. See Bernard Gorceix, Johann Georg Gichtel, Théosophe d'Amsterdam (Delphica: L'Age D'Homme, 1975). 8. Moreover, her works “can be suitable only for women who follow the same road.” One can differentiate slightly male and female spiritual practice, which of course is reflected in sophianic and christic erotic mysticism respectively, since the former often attracts men more, and the latter women. Mysticism draws on and transcends erotic polarity. See Ensign, “Pietism,” 111. 9. See Theosophic Correspondence, trans. E. B. Penny (Exeter: Roberts, 1863), pp. 139 ff. on Gichtel; p. 146 esp., p. 161. 10. See The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, trans. R. Thurman (University Park: Pennnsylvania State Univiversity Press, 1976); see also Philip Sherrard, The Sacred in Life and Art (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1990), pp. 108 ff., “The Nuptial Mystagogy.” 11. Being “born again” in contemporary Protestantism has taken on a relatively superficial meaning, suggesting an emotional catharsis, and while Böhmean pietism certainly includes this dimension, it is part of a more profound metanoia one can affiliate with the Buddhist “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness” as a definition of spiritual awakening. 12. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974) for an overview of Kabbalism, its doctrines and sects. 13. This is not to say that theosophers like Oetinger were uninterested in spiritual praxis—far from it. But Kabbalism appears in their writings primarily as a confirmation and deepening of spiritual truths in Christianity. 14. See Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man and Other Works, trans. C. Wallis et al. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); see also Johannes Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, [The Art of the Kabbala], trans. M. and S. Goodman (New York: Abaris, 1983). 15. It is sometimes said that Reuchlin was attracted to a “practical Kabbalah,” which is of course true; but he would have been less than enthusiastic about the unreligious use to which the Kabbalah was put by those less interested in religion than in magic. Reuchlin was certainly more interested in Christian Kabbalistic mysticism than in what we see appearing later in groups like the Golden Dawn. 16. See A. Faivre, “Le Courant Théosophique (Fin XVI–XX Siecles)” in Politica Hermetica 7 (1993): p. 22. 17. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, in his Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia, ed. Reinhard Breymayer and Friedrich Häussermann (Tubingen, 1763; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977), I.131 ff.

18. John1. See also Prov. 8.30 on Wisdom. 19. Oetinger, 1.133. He also writes, interestingly, “Abba ve Imma, or Father and Mother.” These are masculine and feminine powers or heavenly water of life, which is part fire, part light, but with the intelligence of spirits. He refers also to the “woman Malkuth,” and to the “birth of Rahel [sic] and Lea.” Lehrtafel, 1.134. See Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton University Press, 1987). 20. See Wehr, Deutsche Mystik, p. 290. 21. W. Hauck, in Wehr, op. cit., p. 292. 22. See Ernst Benz, “Die Naturtheologie Friedrich Christoph Oetingers,” in Epochen der Naturmystik, Hermetische Tradition im wissenschaftlichen Fortshritt, ed. A. Faivre (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1979), p. 275. 23. Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, op. cit. Direct quotations from Hebrew, II, pp.242 ff. 24. See Scholem, Kabbalah, op. cit., 200–201. 25. Molitor II, pp.6–10. 26. Ibid., II, p.10. 27. Ibid., II, p. 224, §354. 28. Ibid., II, p. 82, §128. 29. Ibid., II, p. 51, §81. 30. See Franz von Baader, Sätze aus der erotischen Philosophie (Frankfurt: Insel, 1966), introduction. 31. See Sherrard, The Sacred in Life and Art, op. cit. 32. See Baader, Sämtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1851–1869; Aalen, 1963), XV.598.

II

COSMOLOGY

5

Liturgy and Timelessness IT WAS ONCE CHARACTERISTIC of Roman Catholicism—during the Middle Ages— and is still characteristic of Eastern Orthodoxy today, that members of the faith do not as a rule study the Bible in the way that most Protestant sects do. There is good reason for this: in medieval Catholicism, and in Eastern Orthodoxy to this day, the sacramental mysteries of the Church—its maintenance of sacred rites and language —are so powerful and rich that the faithful receive their spiritual nourishment from the liturgy itself. Unlike Protestants, who are compelled by virtue of Protestant individualism to study the Bible, the Eastern Orthodox Church has always sought to maintain the whole sacramental mystery of the Christian faith in its liturgy—a liturgy that is a manifestation of timelessness in time. Unfortunately, it is difficult for modern people, schooled in the positivist belief that only what can be grasped with the hands possesses reality, to envision what is meant in Eastern Orthodoxy by the “liturgical mystery.” Especially to those of us brought up in Protestantism, the whole notion that God is present in the liturgy is foreign. Schooled in the classroom and by society to believe in evolutionism and the primacy of “progress” through time, we are unfamiliar with the idea that the timebound can be sanctified through a sacramental encounter with eternity. Yet the mystery of Christianity, preserved since the tradition's beginning, is to be seen in this truth. The mystery of the liturgy can be understood through the symbol of the cross, in which we see horizontal time pierced by vertical eternity. This piercing of the temporal by the eternal represents for us the central mystery of the eternal Now within Christianity: no matter where the vertical line intersects the horizontal, it can do so at only one place, just as no matter where the eternal manifests in time, this perception for the human perceiver can only occur in the present instant. Moreover, if the cross is taken to represent the four directions, then its center represents the quintessence, the center or origin of existence, the heart, which is the heart both of the individual and the macrocosm, where the Eternal is perceived. If the mystery of the liturgy is the mystery of the cross, this mystery itself is inseparable from that of verticality, or celestial hierarchy. Dionysius the Areopagite, in his treatise The Celestial Hierachy, discusses how each lower being is informed or illuminated by its higher counterpart, and this in turn is illuminated by that which transcends it, so that the whole of existence proves to be a vertical

chain, an irradiation downward from the transcendent God—through his ministers, through humankind, and into creation. Given this perspective, we can see how the sacraments could not be effective unless there were precisely such an illumination of them by the divine Presence. Hence the sacraments are as much an ascent of the celebrant through the hierarchy as they are a descent of the Holy Spirit. This is why it is said in Eastern Orthodox tradition that the angels are present at the sacred liturgy. Far from being hyperbole, this belief corresponds to the deepest heart of the Christian message: that salvation is present for us in this very instant. To say that the angels are actually present at the liturgy is to say that the celebrants at the liturgy are in the divine Presence, that the liturgy represents the illumination of the temporal by the eternal. Indeed, the liturgy represents a rupture in time, a “reversal” of the Fall, and a restoration of the proper human relation to the Divine. To be truly present at the liturgy is to participate in it; and to participate is to transcend the trammels of time and existence. Liturgical mystery is the mystery of salvation. This is not to say that the liturgy absolves one of the responsibility to “work on oneself” spiritually. Indeed, it is the reverse: the majesty of the sacraments is a divine gift to humanity, and calls us toward the permanent transmutation of our being through spiritual practice. The liturgy ultimately is spiritual practice. It is surely no accident that the greatest of the hesychasts in Eastern Orthodox tradition —the saints of the Jesus prayer—are precisely those who took it upon themselves to urge the daily celebration of the sacrament of communion. The sacraments are an outpouring of grace, and call us to our own divine origin and purpose; in them we glimpse what we can be, what horizons are open to us. This sense of illumination, of opening horizons, is visible within certain sects deemed heretical by those interested in consolidating the temporal power of a historically based church structure. If some Gnostic groups emphasized the spiritual nature of the Christ at the expense of the historical, this was to counterbalance the excessively historicizing nature of their opponents. Perhaps some Gnostics went too far when they denied the human nature of Christ, but such a viewpoint is one possible among many that do express a legitimate truth about the Christian revelation, namely its transcendence and redemption of all things temporal and historical. Certainly such a perspective is akin to the recognition of countless transcendent ahistorical Buddhas in Mahayana Buddhism, Buddhas whose existence one would hardly call heretical. It is therefore not surprising that in the Gospel of Thomas we read that the disciples asked Christ when the “new world” would come, and he replied “What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it.” Again, said Jesus, “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is.’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth,

and men do not see it.”1 These statements refer to the omnipresent divine Reality in which the whole cosmos exists, and which it reflects. This reality is present to us flawed and crippled human beings through the Divine Liturgy, through the spiritual ceremonies that are for us like apertures of the holy; they are “openings” through which the angels can constantly descend and ascend. Franz von Baader has written that this is the meaning of sacred communion, which is nothing less than the Divine descending to our lowly level without diminution or alteration.2 Communion, or the Holy Eucharist, is therefore the actual presence of the Divine before us; it bespeaks our eventual destiny as divinized beings at the holy table. The mystery of communion is ultimately the mystery of divine unity and multiplicity; it is the paradoxical unification of the holy assembly by partaking of the Holy Eucharist. Hence the Divine Liturgy is a hierurgic act, a revelation by the hierarch of the possibilities of human destiny, and of the supreme sacrifice that is the manifestation of Christ, in whom we can participate by virtue of the ritual. The redeemed human being thus beholds in the hierurgy his or her theosis, or divinized participation in the body and the blood of Christ. For this reason the Communion, or Synaxis, is followed by thanksgiving—it is the mark of the lost that they cannot give thanks, just as it is a mark of the initiated that they cannot give thanks enough. Everything in the sacred space—the icons with their elongated features, the crosses, the vestments, the censer, the chants and songs—acts together to bring participants into a state of timelessness. During the liturgy, the normal temporal bonds are broken; every action of the priest becomes hieratic, and the atmosphere becomes completely different from that in a secular event. The music and rhythm around and within you, the iconography before you, the incense permeating you, these things are not mere ritual “accretions,” but date back to the very origins of the Church, and all act to bring you into the holy Presence. What the Liturgy is in Orthodoxy, the Mass is in Roman Catholicism, and this is why many Catholics are deeply upset with the Novus Ordo Missae, the New Mass instituted after the Vatican II conference (after 1969). A sacred language like Latin with its sacred formulations does not allow for translation without reduction of meaning: like Greek, Latin retains a liturgical, invocational quality not present in vernacular tongues like English. Hence, when the Catholic Church abandoned the traditional Tridentine Mass in favor of vernacular languages, it also gave up some of its liturgical power, a loss intensified by the abandoning of other liturgical features, including the altar itself. Essentially, by jettisoning the traditional Latin Mass in favor of what amount to more diluted Protestant sacraments, the Catholic Church diminished the degree to which the official Church doctrine affirming the actual presence of God in the Sacraments could be reinforced by traditional liturgy. The solemn and unchanged

Mass has a liturgical power and timelessness that a diluted, vernacular, virtually Protestant Mass does not have. Of course, such a change allows for greater ecumenical affiliations with Protestant sects; but it also means that the timeless is submerged in time, that the serene dignity of the traditional Latin Mass is exchanged for a less grave and profound celebration of communion. Many authorities attest to the supreme holiness of the Liturgy. St. Ambrose wrote that “angels are present when we are celebrating the Sacrifice, for you may not doubt that angels are present when Christ is there, when Christ is being sacrificed.”3 St. John Chrysostom wrote of the Liturgy that “A fountain is opened which sends forth spiritual rivers—a fountain around which the Angels take their stand, looking into the beauty of its streams, since they more clearly see the power and sanctity of the things that lie open to view, and the insatiable splendors.”4 Pope Urban VIII wrote that: If there is anything divine among the possessions of man which the citizens of Heaven might covet (were covetousness possible for them), it would certainly be the Sacrifice of the Mass, whose blessing is such that in it man possesses a certain anticipation of Heaven while still on earth. . . . How greatly must mortals strive that the most awesome privilege be guarded with due cult and reverence, and take care lest their negligence offend the eyes of the Angels, who watch with envious adoration.5 Perhaps we may say that in the case of Catholicism, the Mass was withdrawn from us. Still, the celebration of Communion remains holy, vernacular or not. But one may say in the case of Protestant piety that while the actual presence of God in Communion is not theologically accepted, there must be a compensatory emphasis on individual piety and openness to God—which is certainly not to say that this emphasis is absent from Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism. One can certainly find instances of holy men or saints in these traditions whose prayers were accompanied by great illuminations seen by startled fellow monks or parishioners, so that the individual's spiritual maturity takes precedence over ritual. Perhaps in a sense one may say that in lands where the Liturgy has been diminished, the individual's holiness must make up the difference. Certainly this seems to have been the idea of Jacob Böhme, who in his final book, The Way to Christosophia, emphasized making every moment of one's day liturgical. Böhme urges us to pray, to pray in the morning upon awaking, and upon dressing, to pray upon eating a meal, and earnestly throughout the day, even unto the moment when we go to sleep. In a real sense, Böhme in this last of his books was as if compensating for the loss in Protestantism of the all-encompassing medieval Church with its liturgical cycle and its constant presence in the center of

the human community, offering instead an individual piety—so that even though the Liturgy does not link the whole world around us to God as once it did when Christianity permeated our whole society, still we can link our own world to God. There is in this a profound significance for us today. In one sense, of course, we can see how our present age is one of confusion, fragmentation, and the loss of traditional forms. From this perspective ours is the Iron Age predicted long before such writers as Hesiod or even Daniel, in the Old Testament. But our Protestant theosophers point out that even when traditional forms have been stripped away, there remains the prayer of the heart, and the angelic brotherhood that links the whole theosophical tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is certainly hard to contest Böhme's affirmation that inward piety and a true relation to God are more important than outward forms; for without this right inward orientation forms remain forms, and eventually are withdrawn, or break apart, are discarded, or lost. Here, in truth, is the most radical affirmation of our theosophers. They affirm that we should embrace what traditional forms or sacraments we are given, but that what truly matters for individuals is their own spiritual life and right relation to God, a heliotropic turning toward the visionary sun, the light at the center of the cosmos. Liturgical forms are a gift that allows us more easily to participate in this light. But even if they are absent—even if one must meet with but a few people of like mind, in secret, as in the beginning of Christianity, or even if one is alone, like Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, a spiritual Robinson Crusoe—one can still participate in and add to that theosophic timeless community which the liturgy points us to and of which it is an angelic celebration on earth. Far from being anti-ritualistic, theosophy instead encourages us to extend the liturgical awareness of divine Presence to every aspect of our daily lives. Goethe's aphorism—that each of us ought to be in daily life like a priest celebrating a liturgy with Nature as our altar—reflects a fundamental insight of theosophy. Although the Western European Reformation resulted in the elimination of the ceremonial liturgy common to both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, theosophy represented a kind of compensatory extension of this liturgical consciousness to daily life: an effort to consecrate anew the whole of one's life, to embody as much as possible the state of Christ himself, whose very presence is blessing, the appearance of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. We see this effort to return to a primordial state of human perfection (what in Eastern Orthodoxy is called “deification”) throughout the whole of theosophy. Edward Hooker, in his The Triple Crown of Glory, writes that [This} man may easily observe in his own Bodily Kingdom, namely, that hee hath a Heavenly Spirit with an innumerable company of Angelical loving Spirited inclinations and imaginations in his Spiritual Body or

Temple of God.6 Our purpose in life is to realize fully this angelical company within our “Spiritual Body or Temple of God”—and we should each investigate our own life to see “whether it be Good or Bad, [governed by] a Heavenly or Worldly inclined Spirit, for without doubt, as he ends his Life, he is most certainly saved, or damned.”7 Salvation means to have “an entire love to God, and Man, clear and free from all objection.” The theosophers hold that the paradisal state is our primordial inheritance and ultimate destiny, marked by love for all and by joy. But to reach this “fulness of Glorified Humanity,” as Jane Leade remarks, we must “go through to clear and get off, what [we] contracted of vile matter, and evil deeds in this life,” to “escape the fiery indignation that will come upon the workers of iniquity.” “Oh! now then, whilst you have day with the everlasting sunshine of Love in your souls, turn into it, and it will clarify and brighten you.”8 Only this turning into the “everlasting sunshine of Love in your souls” transforms our lives into a liturgical celebration, which in turn can only be a foreshadowing of the illumination of paradise itself. 1. J. Robinson, ed., “Gospel of Thomas,” Nag Hammadi Library (New York: Harper, 1977), pp. 51, 113. 2. See Franz von Baader, Sämtliche Werke, VII, p. 15–27; see also “On the Eucharist,” in Avaloka, trans. H. Urban, (1992) IV:62–68. 3. R. Coomaraswamy, The Problems with the New Mass (Rockford: Tan, 1990), p. 3. 4. Ibid., p. 1. 5. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 6. Edward Hooker, The Triple Crown of Glory (London: 1697), p. 18. 7. Ibid., p. 13. 8. Jane Leade, Enochian Walks with God (London: Edwards, 1694), p. 108.

6

Hierophanic Nature IT HAS BECOME SOMETHING of a commonplace to blame Christianity for the modern divorce between humanity and nature. Some critics go back to Genesis, where humankind is given dominion over the creatures of the earth, finding there a source for our technologism, for our Cartesian belief in nature as merely a grand machine, and for our relentless despoliation of the natural world. Others see the origin of the modern anti-nature worldview in Protestantism itself, with its anti-iconic, often Puritanical stance. But in truth, the origin of modernity lies not in the JudeoChristian tradition so much as it does in the jettisoning of that tradition in favor of scientistic “ratiocentrism.” The truth is, Christianity has always contained within it an esoteric understanding of nature as hierophany, and it is upon this understanding that we will now focus. Before doing so, however, a few comments on recent tendencies within Western Christianity ought perhaps to be made. Numerous recent writers have brought against Protestantism the charge that it entailed a diminution of the Western Christian tradition, a kind of denaturing, which in turn allowed the wholly desanctified modern worldview to appear. Protestantism, seen from this perspective, was historically necessary in order that eventually a wholly profane modernity could take root in the West. But this conception of Protestantism, while it has some merit, wholly ignores the emergence of the German and French theosophers—men like Jacob Böhme, Johann Gichtel, and Friedrich Oetinger— and Protestant-influenced Catholics like Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Franz von Baader, to name only the most outstanding. This theosophical movement of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was an authentic spiritual counterbalance to precisely the barrenness of Protestantism. If Protestantism entailed the abandoning of Roman Catholic ceremonialism and iconography, with its rich pageantry and imagery, in favor of bare pews and a plain wooden cross, it was also responsible for the astonishingly rich inward imagery to be found not only in the Rosicrucian movement of the seventeenth century, but also in the works of Jacob Böhme, the Lutheran visionary, as well as in the theosophical movement of which he was a prime mover. Not all the theosophers were Protestant. As I have mentioned, Franz von Baader remained Roman Catholic to the end of his life, and was never censured even though he fiercely opposed the institution of the papacy and of the Vatican for

much of his life and in most of his writings. Interestingly enough, it is exactly this opposition to the Roman Catholic papacy that characterizes Protestantism, and thus makes of Baader the exception that, in the end, proves the rule: the richness of theosophical writings complemented the Protestant movement's attempt to return to the origins of Christianity. Central to the theosophical movement was precisely the tendency opposite to that which René Guénon recognized in Protestantism: if Protestantism represented the beginnings of the modern, profane view of nature, then the theosophical movement represented a renewed awareness of nature as theophany—as, finally, divine revelation. Whether it was Jacob Böhme in De Signatura Rerum, Louis Claude de SaintMartin in his Tableau Naturel, or Franz von Baader with his Philosophie der Liebe (philosophy of religious eros), theosophy entailed a deep understanding of nature as embodying for us the divine language, the Logos speaking to us from forest and brook. It is well known that in shamanism all over the world there is said to be a secret language of nature. The shaman is able to understand the speech of birds and animals, and even of stones—and is also able to speak to them. This archaic unity between humanity and nature reflects a primordial state that, in Christian terms, cannot be other than paradisal. Indeed, it was exactly this unity that was referred to when Adam gave the creatures of the earth their names in the Garden of Eden; those names were none other than the “secret language of nature” that marks the paradisal state in which the Logos can be recognized in all created things. Christian Hermetism, or theosophy as displayed in the writings of Paracelsus, Böhme, Saint-Martin, Baader, and Oetinger, also understands that there is a “secret language” of nature—but for them it is an emblematic language rooted in alchemical imagery and, even more, in the science of correspondences. This theosophical tradition derives its basis from a concept expressed in the Tabula Smaragdina (The Emerald Tablet): what is below reflects what is above. In other words, there is a correspondence between spiritual truth and what we see in the natural world. One sees this in the many parables of the New Testament, which use natural images to reveal the most transcendent of spiritual truths about the human condition. Hence Valentin Weigel wrote “O my creator and God, through thy light I know how wonderful I am created: Out of the world am I created, and I am in the world, and the world is in me. I am also created out of you, and remain in you, and you in me . . . I am your child and son . . . and all that is in the greater world is also spiritually in me; thus am I and it one.”1 This is a mystical unity between humanity, nature, and God that the traditional formulation “man is a microcosm” does not completely express. Here we see a theosophic understanding of humanity, the world, and God that one cannot reduce to formulations, but that certainly

reflects the alchemical science of transmutation and imagery, as well as the German theosophy of, for example, an Eckhart. The theosophers drew their conception of an emblematic language in nature at least in part from alchemy, which is above all a science of correspondences between humanity and the cosmos. For example, we might take the alchemical recognition of three essential principles in the natural world—mercury, salt, and sulphur. As we know, each of these principles has fundamental characteristics, mercury being fluidic, salt crystalline, and sulphur fiery. These same principles are operative in the natural world, in the human body, and in the human psyche. What is more, each of them presents an image of certain qualities inherent in all nature. Precisely here the science of alchemy diverges from the technological science of modernity—for whereas modern science is almost exclusively concerned with quantitative analysis, traditional sciences like alchemy are concerned with qualities. We might add that such a concern with qualities entails a natural limit on technology—some alchemists knew the explosiveness of gunpowder, for instance, but were not concerned with it—whereas modern science is fundamentally concerned with quantitative technological effects; and so there is no limit to its technological applications, which indeed seem to spin out of control, as if, like the fabled golem, they had taken on a life of their own. Although alchemy has often been reviled as a materialistic search for gold, and as the “primitive” predecessor of modern chemistry, in fact alchemy is above all the science of correspondences and signatures, and ultimately a secret language in images that reveals the spiritual truths hidden in nature herself. The alchemist is concerned with the subtle qualities that inform both nature and humanity, and any changes or transmutations that we work in nature occur in the outer world because they correspond to changes within ourselves. The alchemical tradition that most influenced the theosophers like Böhme and Baader was based in the medical and cosmological thought of Paracelsus, the remarkable medieval spagyric physician. The German and French theosophical tradition, then, derived from the confluence of two streams—the alchemical stream represented most completely in Paracelsus, and the gnostic German stream perhaps best represented by the figure of Meister Eckhart. From the alchemical current comes the use of images, figures, and principles in such writers as Martinez de Pasqually, teacher of Saint-Martin; and from the gnostic current of Eckhart comes the supracosmological understanding that informs virtually the whole of the theosophical perspective. Briefly, we may say that the alchemical perspective offers an understanding of how the spiritual informs nature, and the gnostic perspective offers an understanding of that which not only informs but transcends nature. One can see the confluence of these two streams in the naturtheologie of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, who wrote:

It is the most pestilent of ideas that nature can be envisioned as outside the presence of God. There is in all men an uncontradicted awareness or feeling of the invisible powers that animate nature. There is also in us a secret “yes” or “amen” to the presence of wisdom within and without us. This secret awareness causes us to recognize the beauties of nature as copies of the primordial Right.2 The “secret ‘amen’” to the presence of wisdom reflects the gnosis of Eckhart or Tauler; and the awareness of the invisible powers animating nature reflects the cosmological gnosis of the alchemists. But not all people are willing to recognize the invisible powers that inform nature—indeed, precisely during Oetinger's lifetime (1702–1782) a materialistic science arose that held nature to be not the emblematic representation of divine wisdom, but a kind of machine or clock that perhaps God wound up. To this divorce of humanity, God, and nature, the theosophical movement of which Oetinger was a part directly opposes a unified understanding of the human being as microcosm and of nature as analogical macrocosm, both informed by and reflecting divine power.3 In a very real sense, one may speak of the esoteric theosophy of Böhme, Oetinger, Saint-Martin, and Baader as having appeared as a direct counterbalance to growing materialist scientism and atheism in Europe at that time. Each of these writers presented a complete and unified spiritual understanding of the cosmos and of hierophanic nature that was utterly antithetical to the kind of reductionist dualism and mechanistic view of nature Descartes and others put forth. For the theosophers, nature is like scripture, a divine revelation through parables and emblems, through figures and images. All things are the manifestations of the Logos and their signatures can be read. The historical appearance of the theosophers and their understanding of nature —both in their dual inheritance from the German gnostics and from the alchemists, and in their counterbalance both to Protestant anti-iconolatry and to materialist science—is nothing less than providential. Unfortunately, however, their importance has not been adequately recognized. Certainly in an era in which the failures of materialist scientistic premises have become obvious, and the societal collapse of modernity—which has no concept of how a culture can be theocentric —is upon us, it is important that we at least consider what possible alternatives to our present worldview might help us out of our impasse. Theosophy is relevant to our current situation. Environmentalists or ecologists today present arguments about the “biosphere” and about the earth as a single living organism, but such arguments still present nature based on materialist premises; they entail no concept that nature might be understood in light of a

unified religious understanding. Some criticize Christianity as having been responsible for the birth of the modern world and its destruction of nature, but in fact it was the progressive erosion or disintegration of a religious center in the Judeo-Christian world that gave birth to modernity. The absence of Christianity— in any complete sense—is responsible for the divorce between humanity, nature, and God that many now feel, and perhaps only its re-establishment can restore the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage between humanity, nature, and God in the West. Such a re-etablishment of what can only be called a normal culture in the West may come about through a yet unforeseen spiritual illumination coming from three main sources: the gnostic mysticism represented in Roman Catholicism by Tauler and Ruysbroeck and Franz von Baader, in Protestantism by Böhme and Oetinger; and in Eastern Orthodoxy by virtually the entire tradition itself. Only these three sources are capable of representing from within Christendom itself a complete understanding of the proper relations between human beings and nature. This proper relationship has certain fundamental characteristics, the most essential of which is its religious center. For the right relationship between humanity and nature can take place only in a spiritual context. Saint-Martin expresses the proper human function as that best exemplified in Christ, whom he calls the Repairer, and who restores to humanity and nature the spiritual equilibrium lost in the Fall. Christ, who is the pillar between heaven and earth, is the means by which humankind is able to “bind and loose” on earth and in heaven. That is, Christ is the means by which the terrible catastrophes and evil let loose by the primordial angelic Fall are reversed. This function of repairing directly manifests the proper human relation to nature—for human beings in their primordial state are Christlike, manifesting heaven on earth. According to Saint-Martin—who is following Böhme, Baader, and others in the theosophical tradition—nature itself reflects the fall of the angels and of humanity.4 In other words, on the horizon of time there was a catastrophe of which we can only glimpse the outward manifestations or signs, but which produced the evil we can see manifested not only in the destructive aspects of nature, but even more in the evil acts of destructive people. That the modern human being is a fallen creature is a doctrine not happily admitted in the modern university, dedicated as it is to the premises of materialist science; but even modern biologists and chemists are busy cataloguing the catastrophic effects of modern humanity on nature. This theosophical recognition of evil is not a mere “dualism,” however—rather, it is a cosmological understanding of how powerful are the effects of sin, sin conceived not just as individual miscreance, but as cosmological disequilibrium. In Islamic tradition, in particular in Ismaili gnosis, theosophers recognize that ours is but one of a long series of temporal cycles, cycles which are the result of Adam's

Fall, itself a cosmic “event” that ultimately produced our contemporary entrapment in history.5 The Fall is a fall into time, both our gift and our punishment, shared with all living creatures. Since the Fall, Nature is like a widow longing to be in a state of marriage, or unity. Baader wrote: Thus cursed, nature could no longer bring forth heavenly fruit, (paradisal); and her impotence followed upon that of man. Throughout the beauties of nature, man perceives, now more, now less, the melancholy plaint through the widow's veil for what she must bear for the guilt of man.6 It may not be possible for human beings to completely restore their paradisal state now, at the end of a temporal cycle, but it is certainly possible on an individual level to return to a harmonious relation to nature. Such a relation is glimpsed in the way figures like St. Francis live, around whom one sees prefigurations of the lion lying down with the lamb. This spiritual restoration can only appear out of freedom from time and its constraints. Our current terrestrial condition reflects our fall from an earlier, angelic state, but it also represents our opportunity to reascend to that state through spiritual practice. Spiritual practice entails the transcendence of temporal limitations, from which derives the restoration of paradise. Böhme writes: Every particular thing, be it herb, grass, tree, beast, bird, fish, worm, or whatsoever it be . . . has proceeded from the separator of all beings, from the Word. . . . For this visible world with all its host and being is nothing but an objective representation of the spiritual world, which spiritual world is hidden in this material, elemental world, like the tincture in metals and herbs.7 In every being there are two aspects, according to Böhme: the spiritual or eternal, and the natural or outward.8 The spiritual aspect manifests as the light of glory, and is above time; the natural aspect is its fiery reflection in the physical, temporal realm. From these observations we can see how throughout nature in its beauties, we can see the reflection of the paradisal state that is still there—not in historical time, nor in our physical world (which is itself a fall from a higher state) but glimpsed through nature as if seen reflected in water. In this we can also see exactly how religious man, homo religiosus, is the uniter of heaven and earth. For we alone are capable of “seeing through” nature; we alone are capable of being the pillar that reaches from the timeless to the temporal, from the transcendent to the physical, from the celestial to the tangible. This doctrine of course emphasizes to us once again just how profound is the human task on this earth, and how few of us even

begin to approach our proper way of living. This proper way of living does not necessarily mean that we live in the virgin wilderness and do nothing to disturb it, even though the virgin wilderness reminds us with great force of our obligations to the transcendent, both of how small and of how significant we are. Rather, to live properly and to fulfill our human vocation to be homo religiosus, our obligation is first of all to realize upon earth how we form a connection between heaven and earth, and how nature reflects its divine origin just as we do. When people are organized aright—when the earthly kingdom reflects the heavenly kingdom, when earthly gardens reflect the gardens and orchards of paradise—then nature too is justified and restored. This is why in the alchemical texts the culminating illustrations often depict the king and the queen crowned and together in a paradisal landscape. The alchemical mysteries indeed lead to a paradisal state, in which the mysteries of nature yield their secrets to those who have made themselves worthy of them, and who have come to understand the “secret language,” the emblematic language of the soul's truths. This harmonious state, in which humanity and nature are both restored, is possible today for the individual, but is also possible on a broader scale for an entire state or country—a kind of late reflection of the golden age. Clearly the theosophical and alchemical teachings offer us a coherent cosmological science, as yet quite unfamiliar. Here is an alternative and completely integral, unified understanding of hierophanic nature—accessible not only far off in the exotic Himalayas, but also right at home, so to speak, in the European Christian Hermetic traditions. To understand the spiritual truths ensconced in nature, it is not necessary to go far afield, but even if one does, in the end one may return to one's inherited traditions, where unexpected treasures may be found. As John Pordage wrote in his Treatise of Eternal Nature: The Divine Nature and glory of the Deity is hid in Nature, as a Jewel in a Cabinet, or as a treasure hid in a field. Indeed, in pure Nature this Jewel is easily found, for there it lies open . . . but in impure Nature it lies deep hid and buried, and cannot be discovered, but with great pains and difficulty.9 Undoubtedly, the glory hid in nature is less visible to us today than it was in times when nature still existed untouched by the human hand, unsullied by venomous rain and the drifting poisons of urban, mercantile humanity. But it is always possible to see beyond the apparent to the visionary reality that, far from being fantasy, possesses an authenticity of being far exceeding the mutable world before us. It was not so long ago, nor was it in a world so different from our present one, that the poet George William Russell (AE) could feel the inward calling of the breath of celestial nature even while in some urban office surrounded by bustle and

paperwork. Indeed, it was not so long ago that he was called out into the open lands of England where he saw the earth transfigured before him, saw celestial beings of surpassing splendor, and felt a delight inexplicable and overwhelming. It is possible, too, for such hierophanies to take place in America, or Australia, or Europe, or anywhere on earth—there are many sacred places that still bear within them the power to transmute, and to be transmuted. 1. Valentin Weigel quoted by F. W. Wentzlaff-Eggebert, Deutsche Mystik Zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), pp. 177-178. 2. Friedrich Oetinger, “Die güldene Zeit,” Theosoph. Schriften, VI, §52. 3. “In diametric opposition to materialistic atheism is idealistic Theism, . . . which is based in the unity and objectivity of the unending spiritual Ur substance.” So wrote Franz Josef Molitor, in his Philosophie der Geschichte, II, p. 42. Likewise, Franz von Baader well remarked—in an extension of the Aristotelian idea that man is created to know—that “Just as it is man's need to know (in both the sense of knowledge and of becoming familiar with), so too it is man's need to know God.” So too, Molitor adds that just as it is a human necessity to will, so too it is a human necessity to will toward God and to live in God. II, p. 55, §87. 4. See Saint-Martin, Tableau Naturel, in ŒOeuvres Majeures, ed. R. Amadou (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1973 et seq.) II, i, p. 100: “The wisdom and bounty of the Divine Being are manifested by the birth of man into terrestrial life. He is thus placed in a position to soothe by his labor a part of the evil which the first crime caused on earth.” 5. See Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London: Kegan Paul, 1983), for an extended discussion of the Fall as cosmic disequilibrium. 6. See Franz von Baader, Sämtliche Werke, VIII, p. 226; see also XVI, pp. 323–330, 501.“Der Urstand des Menschen,” in Schriften (Frankfurt: Insel, 1966), IV, pp. 428; see also XVI, pp. 323–330. 7. Jacob Böhme, Theoscopia, or Divine Intuition, III, §34, §35. 8. Jacob Böhme, Mysterium Pansophicum, V, §1 ff. 9. John Pordage, A Treatise of Eternal Nature (London: 1681).

7

The Unification of Christianity and the Holy Spirit SOME WRITERS of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have held that there is emerging a “universal religion,” a conglomeration of the various world religions rolled into one. This seems highly unlikely, and even, if it were possible, undesirable, since the world religions must be seen to exist separately and not as parts of some imagined “evolutionary process.” Indeed, even that there might be a unified Christianity—given the vast proliferation of sects and the age-long schisms between Eastern and Western Christianity—seems improbable, on any broad scale. The union of Christian traditions must take place inwardly. Thus theosophy is not concerned so much with institutions as with inward transformation, and its vision is really the radical transformation of society from within outward, through the descent of the Holy Spirit. Only at this esoteric center or heart can the various outwardly diverse forms of Christianity be recognized as fundamentally one. Perhaps, as Gillaume Postel, Franz von Baader, and Vladimir Solovyov earnestly wanted, there will one day be a reunion of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, a merging of the Greek, Russian, and Roman spheres, and a return of the Protestants to the fold. Perhaps. But regardless of whether or not such an event comes to pass, theosophy affirms that it is possible for us as individuals to recognize what these traditions have in common at their esoteric heart. Certainly it is the case that, exoterically, the existence of the Roman hierarchy and the doctrine of papal infallibility make a union of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism unlikely. For Eastern Orthodoxy, the very existence of the papacy and its claim to catholic authority is an affront to the Orthodox recognition that no person can claim to infallibly speak for God, and that the proper relation between the individual and the church is seen in two central ways: in participation in the liturgy and sacraments, and discipleship to a spiritual elder. Whereas the Roman Catholic's relation to the church is necessarily that of an individual to an institution, the Eastern Orthodox relation is seen primarily in the liturgy alone, and it is unclear whether such differences can ever be overcome. But esoterically—in the religion of the heart—such differences are overcome, not only between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics, but between these traditions and Protestants as well. We have seen how Franz von Baader, a Catholic, found primary inspiration in the writings of Böhme, a Protestant mystic, and how

Baader sought to unite the Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant faiths. Baader certainly recognized the exoteric and doctrinal divergencies between these disparate parts of the Christian world, but because of his esoteric studies, he was also able to recognize the spiritual truths that bound these groups together. Let us begin with Böhme. One cannot deny that there are in Böhme elements that derive from Paracelsian Hermetism, for example, and that Böhme's alchemical doctrines derive from a Hermetic tradition which has existed along with Christianity since the beginning of the Christian era, but which is not exclusively Christian.1 However, it is precisely because of this “independent” nature that Hermetism can also be found in disparate traditions—there is a Catholic Hermetism, an Islamic Hermetism, an Eastern Orthodox Hermetism, and a Protestant Hermetism. Hermetism can appear in multiple traditions because it offers cosmological insights that do not conflict with, but illuminate religious doctrines. As an example, Böhme writes of how human beings were created in the spirit of gentleness and charity, but how as a result of the Fall they have within them the dominion of wrath and the dominion of love. If we allow the dominion of wrath to predominate in this life, then after death we will experience precisely that wrath— as hell.2 The exoteric doctrine is that of judgment and hell; Böhme's esoteric explanation of the kingdoms of wrath and of love clarifies how judgment and hell come about. Some might argue that Böhme's esoterism is really a psychologizing of exoteric doctrines. However, unlike some modern writers—among whom Jung is perhaps most accused, sometimes unjustly—Böhme certainly does not reduce spiritual or subtle realities to mere functions of the human mind. Rather, for Böhme, as for esoterists of Islam and Judaism, the human imagination is an active faculty through which we can see realities that transcend the merely physical. To recognize that the human being is a microcosm, and that by turning inward one can recognize transcendent reality operative both within and without, is by no means the same as to reduce the truths of soul and spirit to mere mental functions. There is a fundamental agreement among mystics of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant faiths about certain principles, not because these mystics influenced one another, but because by and large independently of one another, they came to similar conclusions from similar experiences. This is not to say that all mystics share Böhme's alchemical visions of the “three principles,” for example, but that when it comes to absolutely central or fundamental truths, they agree. Let us then consider these universal truths, shared by mystics of all three major Christian traditions. First among these truths is that concerning human nature and

the nature of God. Humanity is created to know God, to turn toward him like a plant turns toward the sun. This is the meaning of prayer; it is the central purpose of being human. God, however, is unknowable in rational human terms; God is the Unground, the Transcendent, clothed for us humans in a “cloud of unknowing.” Hence there is an incommensurability between God and humanity: a human is an iota, a mere speck, transient as a cloud at sunset. This having been said, we may also point out the fundamental significance of the human being on this earth: we alone are created to pray, and to link heaven and earth. This is the meaning of the Incarnation, which is also the doctrine of universal redemption. One sees this truth in the words of Saint Patrick who, when asked to identify his Christian God, said: Ours is the God of all men, the God of Heaven and Earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountains and the lowly valleys, the God above Heaven, the God in Heaven, the God under Heaven; He has His dwelling round Heaven and Earth, and sea and all that in them is. He inspires all, He quickens all, He dominates all, He sustains all.3 Humanity is created in order to realize this truth on earth; and this realization itself is the process of universal redemption, the spiritual liberation of nature herself, the secret of Incarnation. God encloses and sustains the earth, and our purpose is to realize this, in the purest meaning of the word “realize”—to make manifest. We do not come to realize spiritual truth through ratiocination, nor through “knowledge” in the ordinary sense of the word. Meister Eckhart points this out in one of his sermons when he flatly says that the condition of blessedness does not consist in knowing that one knows God. Rather, the condition of blessedness appears when “the soul contemplates God directly. From there, out of God's ground, it takes all its being and life and makes it everything that it is, and it knows nothing about knowing or loving or anything at all.”4 Likewise, Jacob Böhme writes out of Lutheran Protestantism: “Reason is a natural life, whose ground lies in a temporal beginning and end, and cannot enter into the supernatural ground wherein God is understood.”5 And St. Maximos the Confessor, in the Philokalia of Eastern Orthodoxy, writes that when the intellect has been liberated from its attraction to all created things, and is offered up to God, the saint is “wholly united with God in this way,” and is “totally intermingled through the Spirit with the whole God, since [he has] put on the whole image of the heavenly—so far as human beings can do this.”6 To use a formulation that recurs in various forms throughout Eastern Orthodox tradition, “God became man in order that man might become deified.” This could well be termed the tacit center of all Christian mysticism—tacit, because it is not always framed in these terms, but central because it succinctly encapsulates what is

found throughout both Western and Eastern Christian mysticism. The deification of human beings, of course, has to do not with the lower self, with passions and attachments, but with the higher self, with that center or heart within us which is the intellect, the synteresis, the divine “spark” of the spirit, through which grace can manifest itself in the human being. It is not that we should vaunt ourselves unceasingly or deify ourselves—for this is the way of Lucifer—but rather that through denying ourselves and allowing grace to enter through the heart or intellect, we participate in the brilliance of the divine nature. This is the simple call of Christian mysticism: order your life, turn inward, and come to experience God's divinizing grace. This is true of Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox traditions alike; in this fundamental call there are no sectarian differences. To use another analogy: this call is like the call to order of a kingdom divided and ruled by avaricious ministers, a call to heed the orders of its rightful king and queen. When the kingdom is properly ordered, then it receives from above a beneficent influence dispersed through the royal personages—for precisely which reason one speaks of the “grace” of nobility. This analogy brings us naturally to the second focus of our discussion; the nature of the Christian polis. For what is true of an individual is true also of a state. Microcosm: mesocosm: macrocosm. Individual: culture: cosmos. If the properly ordered individual is like a properly ruled kingdom, the properly ruled kingdom is like the order of the cosmos itself. What is true on one level is also true on broader application—the proper order of an individual or a society cannot go against the order of the cosmos. Order by definition must not create a larger disorder. A totalitarian state, for instance, may enforce an inhuman order upon its population, but that order is, in the larger economy of a cosmos, disorder: it goes against what marks us as human, qualities like freedom and creativity. Hence we can distinguish between two kinds of ordered states: one in which order appears naturally, from within, and one on which order is imposed from without. The first is theocratic, and the source of its stability is suprahuman, spiritual; the second is totalitarian, a parody of the theocratic state, and it is held together by inhuman force. Many ancient texts suggest that the theocratic state is to be found in its most pristine form early in human history, and thus the totalitarian states we see appearing today represent inhuman parodies of the proper human societal condition. Certainly one can find in Scripture prophecies of the end of our time cycle, and these refer to the parodic Antichrist, who incarnates the “reverse” pole to the edenic garden. Indeed, it may well be that we are too far into this time cycle for human society to return to the kind of order and serenity that characterized all traditional cultures. The only examples we have today of theocratic societies are those of fundamentalist Islam—and although these societies do represent a reaction against

modern materialism, they also embody a kind of harshness, an oppressive quality not found in truly traditional countries, among the last of which, Tibet, unfortunately fell under totalitarian Chinese rule. It would appear that ours is an era in which even the most nobly conceived institutions are destroyed or corrupted, co-opted by worldly powers. No doubt in the past a unified spiritually based culture was possible. The theocracy, like the spiritual man or woman, is ordered around a central religious axis, whose irradiation permeates every aspect of daily life. This axis has two manifestations: sacerdotal and royal. Spiritual authority manifests in the priesthood, but its earthly reflection—for the stabilization of the kingdom—is the temporal power of royalty. One may say that the royal function is to order daily life, while spiritual authority itself is interpreted and embodied by the priesthood: royalty exists in order to protect the spiritual practice of the sacerdotal class, without which the kingdom itself would not have any reason to exist. In brief, the theocratic kingdom exists in order to create saints. However ideal such a theocratic kingdom may be, in modern circumstances perhaps more than ever before it is inclined to become despotism, and its religion to become fanaticism. The best of plans for an ideal state may well result in the worst kind of totalitarianism—enforced by all our modern technological tools for communication, which is also to say, for surveillance. Without doubt the potential is here, today, for a mass society governed by a kind of secular religion of the state, and by the swaying of opinions through images and propaganda. Dressed in the trappings of quasi-religion, such a society would become worse than a prison for someone of independent mind—not to speak of the persecution of those who still embrace traditional and authentic religion. Nonetheless, and with these dangers fully in mind, one can still recall how an authentically Christian society has functioned in medieval Europe and in Byzantium. Admittedly, one is hard pressed to consider medieval Europe as exemplary of a traditional society in all respects: the presence of destructive elements like the Inquisition, for instance, not to mention the periodic corruption of the papacy and the occasional royal despot, all mar Europe's history, and of course Byzantium was not without its darker aspects as well. Yet European and Byzantine societies were stable in ways that modern societies certainly are not. Governed by a religious concern for human being's ultimate destiny, both offered a social milieu in which religious practice was encouraged, and both were far less destructive to humanity and nature than modern cultures. But the vision of the theosophers is far more radical than simply envisioning a return to some kind of “medieval” arrangement. Certainly theosophy carries on much of medieval Christianity, not only in its continuation of the high German mystical tradition of Eckhart and Tauler, but also in its absorption of medieval

astrology, cosmology, and magic. Yet the essential message of theosophy is even more radical—if possible—than this indebtedness would suggest. For the theosophers, affirming an initiatory Christian tradition, not only address themselves to the individual and speak to how one must live a spiritual life, they insist that the kingdom of God is spread out before us now, but we see it not. They insist that the profoundly radical life of Christ must be lived by each one of us, now, and that this is the only way to the real transformation of society. It is not enough to rely on the individual conscience as is characteristic of extreme Protestantism, represented by midnineteenth century American Transcendentalism, for instance. While there is a nobility in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, their admonitions to follow the conscience are not adequate for most people to live by—the world did not convert to Transcendentalism and become a utopia. Rather, the sardonic criticisms of Transcendentalism by the Catholic Orestes Brownson proved more often true than not, and his central point, that human beings need an orthodoxy, an orthosophia to guide them, is certainly a valid one. All the Transcendentalist utopias—including Alcott's Fruitlands, which was based at least indirectly on Böhmean thought—collapsed in dissension and confusion, not least because their adherents' inner lights did not tell them all the same thing. Of course, historically the most successful utopian attempts are those based not in rational schemas like those of Charles Fourier or Karl Marx, but those organized around a religious center. It is no accident that although most nineteenth century American attempts at utopia collapsed into disarray in but a few years, the communities established in Pennsylvania with Böhmean theosophy at their center lasted from before 1700 well into the nineteenth century, albeit not always formally organized. But in order to understand what is at the center of the theosophical revelation, one must in the end return to the common ground on which Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox spiritualities meet, for it is only there that the radical, paracletic message of the theosophers can be found. This common ground is ultimately mystical. Let me illustrate this. In the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, sung in Orthodox services, there is a passage in which the priest invokes spiritual protection for the secular rulers and the armed forces of the land in which the congregation resides. This is not to say that the secular rulers are all converted, or that the armed forces will not therefore participate in an unjust war. But it is to say, nonetheless, that the spiritual power which resides in the rites and spiritual practices of the congregation—which irradiates from them—is effective in blessing the land and its people, despite what powers might seem to be arrayed to the contrary. Here perchance we begin to see why Böhme said that spiritual people should not be concerned about the vices of their age, nor criticize others, but rather should

look inward to their own spiritual practice. For what matters for each of us in the final analysis is not whether we have managed to impose on others our own vision of how the world should be, but rather the degree to which we have reformed ourselves, and become vehicles for spiritual truth and grace. What matters, too, for the world at large is not how we have imposed our will upon it, but rather whether we have helped to preserve the spiritual traditions that reveal the spiritual meaning of man and nature, how we should live, and why. When Rainer Marie Rilke wrote that “Einzig das Lied überm Land / heiligt und feiert,” (“Only the song over the land/sanctifies and celebrates”), he was describing something similar to what we see in ancient Greek mythology as the power of Orpheus to enchant with his song the animals and trees, the waters themselves. If this was so of the songs of Orpheus, how much more is this so of the sacraments, and of those who recite the sacred liturgy? In these words of Rilke one sees again the hidden spiritual significance of rites and spiritual practices. For it is through them that the land is made harmonious; it is through them that people are satisfied with what is, and do not seek and destroy. One wonders to what degree the harmony of ancient civilizations was brought about by the presence—the mere presence—of spiritual men and women who sang the old chants, who sang plainsong and invoked God's presence over the land again and again. Perhaps it is here that we find the key to ancient ways of life, here in the unseen currents flowing into our world through the rites and practices of the spiritual; perhaps the relative harmony of the past was achieved through prayer— despite the wars and pestilence and disease that still beset us—and perhaps the very presence of such beings among us is alone why and how our world is still preserved as well as it is. It is only here, finally, that one will find the key to any authentic utopia—which in the end will be established through love. Theosophy is so radical because it tells us that such a dispensation is already given to us, although we do not see it. Theosophy brings us back to the very origins of Christianity, and holds that the perfect human society appears for us the moment that we truly live in the paracletic way of Christ. To live in the way of Christ means, though, that one no longer lives a materialistic life, that one truly turns away from worldliness, and is open to the angelic life. Thus the Philadelphians—a group centered around Jane Leade, the great English visionary —took their name from the New Testament references to the true members of Christ who gathered together near the end of time—and were fiercely nonsectarian. Part of the Philadelphian mission statement reads: This is the extraordinary, powerful message that it hath pleased God of late to Impel and Constrain some of us, on account of the near approach of the Kingdom of Christ, to go forth and Proclaim it openly, which we have done now for almost these two Years: and lately in a more publick manner;

whereby the Alarm has been sufficiently given and a free offer made by God of a Renew'd Dispensation of his Grace and Spirit: which has been generally despised and Rejected, and the Messengers therof despightfully intreated.7 The critical words here are “a free offer made by God of a Renew'd Dispensation of his Grace and Spirit.” For theosophy is essentially Pentecostal, not in its modern but in its original sense: the theosophers hold that our world is already transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the most urgent announcement of this transformation was that by Jane Leade, who in her “Epistle to the Reader” in the Fountain of Gardens states that she calls everyone on earth, for “I am to Allarm all Ranks, Orders, and Degrees of Persons, from the highest to the lowest, that so they may be found in a readiness, to entertain the Joyful tidings of the Reign and Dominion of Christ in Spirit.”8 Leade wrote further that she was being led into that Prophetical Dispensation, in order to what may be expected, to have its ensuing consummation in this Age of Time. [All are called to be] Nursing Fathers and Nursing Mothers to the Church of the First Born, that is now to be gathered out of the various Forms, Traditions and Customs, that have been built up only of Man's Wisdom, into the Power, Life, and Glorious Ministration of the Spirit.9 Hence she offers this blessing: that the “undefiled Name” of “our Kingly Shepherd” “be upon you, and all those who shall gathered be into the true Philadelphian Fold; in which indissolvable Knot of Love-Unity I desire to be known, both in Time and in Eternity.”10 Here we begin to see just how extraordinarily radical the theosophical perspective is, and how it relates to the point of union among the main Christian traditions. For Leade is not concerned with the outward forms, the inherited “Forms, Traditions, and Customs” of Christianity, so much as with its inward meaning in the “Power, Life, and Glorious Ministration of the Spirit.” We are living even now in the “Prophetical Dispensation” at time's end, and if we hearken to the Spirit, we too can become indissolvably part of the “Philadelphian fold,” that community of love whose bond transcends time. This is perhaps the most radical aspect of theosophy: its affirmation that, even though the traditional ways may be gone, we nonetheless can individually belong to that angelic community whose existence is finally the world's salvation through love. 1. There is, for instance, an Islamic Hermeticism, as Henry Corbin has pointed out. 2. Jacob Böhme, Six Theosophic Points (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), VI, §25, §28. 3. H. J. Massingham, The Tree of Life (London: Chapman, 1943), p. 37. 4. Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, op. cit., p. 245. Cf. “Von abeschiedenheit” in Meister Eckhart,

Deutsche Werke, ed. J. Quint (München: Hanser, 1958–1976), II, p. 539 ff. 5. Theoscopia, op. cit., I, §2. 6. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, trans., Philokalia (London: Faber, 1990 ed.), 2.278. 7. The Declaration of the Philadelphian Society of England (London, 1699), pp. 6–7. 8. Jane Leade, A Fountain of Gardens: or, A Spiritual Diary of the Wonderful Experiences of a Christian Soul, under the Conduct of the Heavenly Wisdom; Continued for the Year MDCLXXVIII (London: 1700), vol. 3, n.p., p. 1. 9. Ibid., 3, n.p., p. 2. 10. Ibid., 3, n.p., p. 7.

8

The Temple, the Pilgrim, and the Apocalypse of the Heart IN THE IMAGE OF THE TEMPLE and in the figure of the pilgrim there lies a deep spiritual mystery at the very center of the three religions of holy Jerusalem: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When we speak of the holy Temple and of the pilgrims who travel to it, we are touching upon a mystery that transcends and enlivens the deeply connected theosophical or visionary traditions of the three religions. Judaism, of course, holds at its center the geomantic mystery of the Solomonic Temple of Jerusalem, a geomantic mystery that was certainly incorporated into the symbolism of the medieval Knights Templar, those Christian knights eventually martyred precisely because their access to holy Jerusalem meant that they incorporated aspects of Islam and Judaism with Christianity. In brief, the mystery of the Temple is intimately bound up with the “end of time,” the Apocalypse, and the revelation of the metatraditional spiritual illumination at the heart of all three great “Western” traditions. In all three traditions, the figure of the pilgrim haunts us. To be a pilgrim means that one is a stranger to the land through which one journeys; it presupposes that although the land through which one journeys will reveal a certain spiritual symbolism, “signs” that have meaning for the pilgrim, the journey's raison d'être lies in the holy place to which the pilgrim travels. This recognition that one is a stranger to this world and its ways is, of course, precisely what is meant by Christ's admonition that “my kingdom is not of this world.” The pilgrim is unattached to the things of this world, for what matters to him above all is the symbolic import of the “signs” on his way. Hence to be a pilgrim is above all an attitude toward one's surroundings, a way of transposing them into, or revealing, their spiritual archetypal origin. Here is the conjunction of the pilgrim and the knight in the chivalric ethic. For to speak of chivalry or of pilgrimage is to speak of the symbolic.1 Certainly this is nowhere more true than in the function of the Knights Templar, which was to guard the Christian pilgrims on their way to the holy Jerusalem. One can think of no task more deeply symbolic, not only of the holy pilgrimage in this life, but of protecting the spiritual path as well. At the same time, one can see how the Knights Templar, in their contact with Muslims and Jews—indeed, in their unique position

as guardians of the Christian access to the holy city of Jerusalem itself— represented a threat to both secular government and institutional Catholicism, with its center in Rome. To some in Vatican City, pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem and all its allied mystical symbolism for the individual may well have been seen as threatening. Everything in the symbolism of the Temple points toward the meeting of metaphysics and cosmology—the angels and the cosmos. This meeting by definition is also the junction or nexus of the three religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. One sees this symbolism in the work of Dante when, in canto 31 of the Paradiso, “Dante pilgrim”2 turns from the guidance of Beatrice to that of St. Bernard of Clairveaux who, as we will recall, wrote a treatise on the Templars. Here Dante sees paradise in the form of “a radiant white rose,” and exactly here “that sacred soldiery before mine eyes appeared.” (canto 31.1–3) Here, gazing, blinded by the light, Dante writes: “as the pilgrim quickens in his blood / Within the temple of his vow at gaze, . . . / The general form of Paradise my sight /Had apprehended.” (canto 31.43–53) Canto 31 of the Paradiso is precisely the point at which Dante pilgrim encounters the meeting of the cosmological and the metaphysical mystery compared to the form of the Temple and guarded by the “sacred soldiery,” the spiritual chivalric order under St. Bernard of Clairveaux. The Temple thus represents the nexus of the mystery of transcendence, the point at which Beatrice leaves Dante pilgrim to take her celestial place. Dante pilgrim's guide then becomes St. Bernard, at which point the cosmos meets the divine Mystery, the axial center of light into which we emerge with our author in the following canto. But this same canto also turns—like the conclusion of La Vita Nuova—on the image of Christ imprinted on a piece of cloth in St. Peter's in Rome. In this canto of the Commedia we read, after being introduced to St. Bernard, that Dante pilgrim felt like one who gazed on the image of Christ's countenance. (canto 31.103 ff.) Likewise, part 41 of La Vita Nuova begins: “About this time, it happened that a great number of persons undertook a pilgrimage, to the end that they might behold that blessed portraiture bequeathed us by our Lord Jesus Christ as the image of His beautiful countenance.” Both these points are central to both works; and both are precisely about being spiritual pilgrims on this earth, pilgrims traveling to the divine image of Christ. In other words, Dante's two most spiritual works focus, at their central points, on the mysteries of pilgrimage, the temple, and the countenance of Christ. Of course, the holy city possessing this image, the Veronica, is Rome, not Jerusalem; but Rome, in this context, is the holy city, not the institutional Rome, but the New Jerusalem as the place in which one sees the countenance of Christ himself. It is not surprising, therefore, that the end of La Vita Nuova should leave us with the

image of Beatrice contemplating in bliss and light the countenance of Christ forever. With this pivotal image, we are very near the center of Dante's mysticism —and of the mystery of the Apocalypse as well. After all, the heart of the Apocalyptic mystery, as proclaimed by St. John in his Revelation, is also the image of the Temple and the New Jerusalem. Revelation culminates in the vision of the New Jerusalem that—with its golden and bejeweled city—has no temple, “for its temple is the Lord God Almighty.” (21:22) This is a city of light, of illumination, and “there shall be no night there,” for “the glory of God is its light.” (21:26, 23) Finally, “they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads.” (22:4) The Apocalypse, the final judgment and the revelation of the New Jerusalem out of heaven, is a revelation of the most archetypal symbolism, symbolism that opens out into its own transcendence in dazzling light—precisely as does Dante's in both the Commedia and La Vita Nuova. For to “see His face” is to have truly reached the heart of the New Jerusalem, situated precisely in “a new heaven and a new earth.” (21:1) A “new heaven and a new earth” signifies entry into the visionary or archetypal reality in which the New Jerusalem can be revealed, the realm of symbolic reality through which our Dante pilgrim traveled in his Commedia and La Vita Nuova. The New Jerusalem is not of this earth; it is a visionary earth, an archetypal universe in which all is symbolic. Hence it is “eternal,” situated in the eternal now—present at this very moment, not only at the end of history, but at the end of time—in the visionary reality where historical time ceases to exist. The whole idea of spiritual pilgrimage is one of journeying toward a holy place through a symbolic landscape, a visionary realm that transmutes and purifies the pilgrim himself. We do not enter the New Jerusalem by “going to” this or that actual place, but by purifying ourselves, by entering into visionary reality. The unbelievers, the “abominable,” the “idolators” and “sorcerers” are cast in the lake of fire that is the outward manifestation of what they inwardly are—subject to the wrath of God. (Rev. 21:8) Yet the “pure of heart” experience not the lake of fire, but divine illumination, not the “second death,” but “all things” made “new,” and ultimately the divine Countenance itself. This image of the divine Countenance is central to Dante and to the Revelation of St. John, and indeed to the Christian mystery itself. As the culmination of all these visionary works we see the angelic illumination in the words uttered by St. Bernard: “Look now upon the face!” (canto 32.85) in preparation for the final, unutterable vision of God himself that Dante pilgrim is to be granted in the final canto to follow. To see the countenance is, in short, to experience divine reality in the form of a supra-angelic Person, so that one is “reflecting back” God to God— hence the Divine Name written on foreheads. Here expressed symbolically is the

essential mystery of gnosis: for is it not we who are the holy temples of God in our transfigured bodies? The highest gnosis is the experience of the divine Presence: the realization of God in and by his creatures, expressed in the mystery of the illuminating face. This is the illumination at the center, not only of Christianity, but of all three Abrahamic religions. The temple of our theosophers is the heart, understood as an organ of spiritual perception—what John Pordage calls the “eye of the heart,” and what Islamic theosophers call the “eye of the world beyond” (Chasm-i barzakhî).3 Only here, through this inward eye, can the illumination of the Temple take place, in the visionary reality disclosed in the Revelation of St. John, and in the other visionary recitals found not only in Christianity, but in Islam and Judaism as well. In his book on Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, Henry Corbin translates the “Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzân,” and in it we find exact parallels with our Christian and Jewish sources. In the culmination of this visionary journey through a spiritual universe, our author visits the King of transcendent Solitude, and warns that none should “be so bold as to compare Him to anything.” For “He is all a Face by His beauty, all a hand by His generosity.”4 Likewise, in early Kabbalist writings, we find the ultimate mystery of divine knowledge couched in terms of the divine Face, which even Moses may not see, for it is the primordial light before creation itself.5 And here too, the mystery of divine knowledge is contemplated in the heart's temple. Divine knowledge is a matter for solitary contemplatives. Dante pilgrim experiences the Divine Comedy alone; it is an individual journey through the soul's world to the illumination of the spirit. Likewise, St. John experiences the Revelation alone, guided by his angel-companion. So too our Jewish and Muslim theosophers are guided, alone, through the mysteries of wisdom. In the recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzân we read that “sometimes certain solitaries among men emigrate toward Him. So much sweetness does He give them. . . that they bow under the weight of His graces.”6 And in the gentle reply of Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob HaKohen to a disciple, he notes his disciple's “tremendous desire to ascend the ladder of wisdom,” and points out that this “is a long and deep path and it eludes all masters of wisdom who are not willing to descend into the depths of the wisdom of the hidden emanation . . . [For it is known] only to those few solitary individuals, ‘the remnant whom the Lord shall call’” [Emphasis added].(Joel 3:5) Each theosopher—regardless of which tradition—belongs to this “remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Each is called to journey through the soul's world, a journey of purification (visible too of course in the Revelation of St. John), that culminates in the vision of the divine Presence, a glory so great that it is unutterable. Yet it is conveyed in terms not just strikingly similar, but virtually

identical—terms of the heart as Temple, of holy solitude, of angelic annunciation, of approaching the divine Countenance, of the paradoxical “Thou shalt not see Me,” and its exact complement, “I have contemplated my God in the most beautiful of Forms.”7 This is the point where the cosmological meets the metaphysical, the point where vital revelation manifests not as dry doctrine, but as divine Presence in the heart. Naturally, this offers a rather different concept of the apocalypse than one might previously have had. For in this perspective we are confronted not with a historical but with an ahistorical revelation, the visionary encounter in the temple of the heart with the transcendent angelic presence, an entry into the eternal, experienced as both a symbolic realm and as divine reality. In this sense the apocalypse is always present, here and now. One can see how theosophical experience can at times appear to transgress “orthodox” boundaries. Nonetheless, there are astonishing parallels between our visionary recitals, from Revelation to Dante to Judaism and Islam. Perhaps these documents attest to a universally acknowledged spiritual reality: precisely the meeting point in the individual heart—not in received doctrine—of the cosmos and the angelic revelation. This was elaborated by the great modern scholar and theosopher Henry Corbin: The visionary is no longer the solitary self, reduced to his mere earthly dimension in the face of the inaccessible Godhead, for in encountering the being in whom the Godhead is his companion he knows that he himself is the secret of the God-head. . . . We do not see the Light; it is what makes us see and what makes itself seen in the Form through which it shines. The “Temple” is the scene of theophany, the heart where the dialogue between Lover and Beloved is enacted, and that is why this dialogue is the Prayer of God.8 When we turn from theosophy broadly conceived—as the meeting point of these three traditions—to theosophy of the specific current represented by the school of Jacob Böhme, we see these same themes reiterated. In fact, all of the themes discussed here come together in Böhmean theosophy, which might well be seen as a distinct modern revelation whose center is the individual heart. Certainly we see this exemplified in the work of Dr. John Pordage, several of whose works turn on exactly the image of the eye in the heart. In his Theologia Mystica (1683), and his Treatise of Eternal Nature(1681), his only works available in English, Pordage escorts us on a visionary journey into the “archetypous globe” or holy temple of the inner world, and shows us a visionary encounter with the eye of the heart, which is to say, inward spiritual consciousness of God.9 Pordage, in the tradition of

Böhme, insists that we must encounter God directly for ourselves in this inward holy temple of the heart. In Pordage's writings, and in those of his great colleague, Jane Leade, we readers are also pilgrims who share with these authors their visionary experiences vicariously. Jane Leade, whose wonderful visions and images ought to be far better known than they are, wrote to her readers that “I have given you a true and single account of what in my spiritual travels I have seen, known, and understood, by being admitted into that Heavenly Court at certain times and seasons; and shall leave this living testimony to the spiritual-minded, hereof to judge; for no other can receive or fathom this wisdom of God.”10 Leade, like Pordage, was a pilgrim who had traveled often in that inward “Heavenly Court at certain times and seasons.” It is as if in this school we see the most profound and essential mysticism of all three great traditions coalesced and crystallized in a revelation suited for the end times. For indisputably, theosophy is a millennialist tradition. The theosophers all saw themselves as living in the final times before the return of Christ prophesied in the Johannine Revelation. In fact, the theosophers who came to the New World under the guidance of Johannes Kelpius early in the eighteenth century kept a telescope pointed to the heavens so that they could see the signs of the apocalypse when they occurred. Although it is no doubt easy to laugh at such expectations—several hundred years have since passed, after all—in reality there is a very profound meaning in millennialism. Throughout Christian history, the Johannine Revelation has been interpreted as meaning that the “end of time” is imminent, and so countless groups have lived their lives “on edge,” as it were, waiting for that celestial revelation. And perhaps this is one central meaning of that profound and intricately symbolic text—perhaps the readers of Revelation were intended to see themselves as living out those prophecies in their own times, again and again throughout history, precisely so that the prophecies would be internalized and realized within. In theosophy, we see not only a temple and a pilgrim, but also an apocalypse of the heart. Probably the most controversial result of this extreme insistence upon internalization of Christian spiritual truth is to be found in Jane Leade's affirmation of what is often considered heretical, the doctrine of the “restoration of all things.” This was Leade's primary revelation, given to her in a vision: she experienced Christ just as did St. John in Revelation, and Christ said to her: I will make all things new, the End shall return to its original-primary-being, let none grudge that the grace of God of this latitude is, as to make a complete restoration; for as there was neither sin, nor centre to it, so it must be again, when the hour of God's judgment shall come, to pass a final sentence thereupon, to cast all into that lake and bottomless pit where all of

sin, and death, sorrow and curse, shall become a nonentity: then nothing of diabolical spirits (any more God's offenders, and his creature disturbers, or tormentors) shall be.11 Further, said Christ: “all this in the prophecy of eternity will be known, and everlastingly rejoiced in, as forerunner of this blissful Jubilee Trumpet of the Everlasting Gospel of love, peace, and reconciliation to every creature capable thereof, in flesh, and out of flesh, that are not yet fully redeemed.” This Christ is one of complete compassion, in whom the term “forgiveness of sins” has universal application. All things shall be restored to their archetypal, pristine, pre-Creation state, and “love, peace, and reconciliation” will be rejoiced in by all beings. In Leade's vision, which she offered in a characteristically nondogmatic way, the apocalypse is not only internalized, seen as reflecting inward transformation that we must each realize—it is recognized as also having the radical effect of universal transmutation. The apocalypse of the heart—that spiritual alchemy that we must each undergo—is an inward image of what ultimately must be experienced by the entirety of creation. The urgency of millennialism, the expectation of this universal transformation, is only a spur for each of us to realize it for and in ourselves first of all. For Leade's doctrine of universal restoration did not lead to antinomianism or spiritual anarchism—to a belief that since all would be forgiven, one might do what one will—but was simply an extension of the Christian recognition that God is indeed ultimately love for all his creatures, and longs for their salvation or restoration in the divine image. Yet theosophy ought not be seen as a tradition that failed to recognize the existence of evil. Far from it. In fact, when beginning in 1649 Dr. John Pordage and his wife witnessed the “opening of the Invisible worlds,” they first experienced the dark or wrathful world, full of noxious sulphuric scents and demonic images that tormented them, and only later the angelic or paradisal realm, characterized by sweet scents and inward joy. It would appear that much like Dante, who had to pass through the Inferno and the Purgatorio to reach the Paradiso, so too the theosophers had to pass through the onslaught of dark or wrathful powers before having the paradisal realms opened to them.12 For Pordage, as for Böhme, evil, or the “wrathful fiery power,” was real enough for them to experience it directly in their lives, not only in their persecution by “orthodox” authorities, but in spiritual trials as well. Pordage, like his colleague Thomas Bromley and like Jacob Böhme before them, had passed through a kind of personal apocalypse, had experienced the Beast or Wrathful power firsthand, and had passed beyond this experience to the paradisal realms. By the time he wrote his comprehensive later works during the

1670s (only published in German, posthumously), Pordage was able to virtually “map” the infernal and paradisal realms. And Böhme too was able to write authoritatively of what the wrathful evil energy is like in action—it is altogether clear from his works that Böhme knew directly what it was like to face the onslaught of the powers of Gog and Magog in the soul and to overcome them. For all these authors, the apocalypse was first of all a personal experience in this lifetime, its resolution our salvation in Christ. The word “apocalypse” in Greek means “unveiling” or “revelation,” and it is in this sense that the theosophic apocalypse of the heart ought to be understood. It may be useful here to quote Pordage directly in order to explain this “unveiling” further. For theosophers do not believe that “revelation” takes place only once in history, or only in the past—for them, divine revelation is something we are each enjoined to experience for ourselves. In fact, if we do not experience revelation directly, we cannot be said to really understand our own tradition. Pordage wrote, in a defense against orthodox attacks upon him, of how he had had the invisible worlds unveiled to him: I say then there were two invisible internal Principles opened and discovered to us, which may be called Mundi Ideales, being two spiritual worlds, extending and penetrating throughout this whole visible Creation. . . . Now these two Principles or worlds, seemed very much different from one another, as having contrary qualities and operations, by which they work on this visible Creation. . . some [creatures in them being] poysonful and noxious, others wholsom and harmless. . . . Now these could not have been seen had not that inward spiritual Eye which hath been locked up and shut by the fall, been opened in an extraordinary way in us.13 The “dark world” consisted in “innumerable multitudes of evil spirits or Angels” hierarchically ranked, while the “light world” or paradisal realm, opened later, was “ravishing,” “delightful,” full of “wonder-full Odours.” Pordage and his wife had to pass through the dark world before entering the paradisal; they had to undergo a personal apocalypse, an “unveiling.” Thus the fundamental implication of theosophy is made clear for us: as Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801) wrote, the human purpose is to participate in divine sympathy with all things, to help God to redeem creation, and ultimately to be a “Messiah for all Nature.” Theosophy takes the Christian injunction to follow Christ quite literally to heart. Theosophy does not “psychologize” Christianity, but rather recognizes all too clearly just how radical Christianity's essential message really is, and affirms that each of us has a responsibility not just to believe in historicizing Christianity (what Johann Gichtel, an Amsterdam theosopher of the late seventeenth century called a “historical clown's faith”) but to

realize Christ in ourselves, to truly be pilgrims in the heart's temple, and to experience the inexpressible joy of having passed through the apocalypse of the heart. 1. See Arthur Versluis, “Notes on Chivalry,” Avaloka (1992), 6:109–114. 2. I use the term “Dante pilgrim” to refer to Dante as a character in his own poem, a term I owe to Professor Ralph Williams of the University of Michigan. 3. See Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: From Mazdæan Iran to Shi'ite Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 81. 4. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 150. 5. See J. Dan, ed., The Early Kabbalah (New York: Paulist Press, 1986). 6. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, p. 150. 7. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 281. 8. Ibid., pp. 280–281. 9. Pordage, Theologia Mystica, op. cit., also A Treatise of Eternal Nature with Her Seven Eternal Forms, op. cit. 10. Leade, Enochian Walks, p. 61. 11. Leade, Enochian Walks, p. 58. 12. For an account of Pordage's experiences, see Pordage, Innocencie Appearing Through the Dark Mists of Pretended Guilt (Cornhill: Blunden, 1654), esp. pp. 72–73. 13. Ibid., p. 73.

III

METAPHYSICS

9

Metanoia ALL TRUE METAPHYSICS BEGINS WITH a metanoia—that is, with a “turning” toward the truth of a revelation that transcends the rational and the temporo-physical. The very word “metaphysics” itself suggests this transcendence, which thereby distinguishes metaphysics from cosmology, the study of the cosmos that includes the subtle aspects of existence, but does not reach to spiritual revelation. Metanoia, the turning of the being toward the Divine, in German called wiedergeburt, or rebirth, is central to understanding the theosophical perspective and all that it encompasses, for metanoia is ultimately an opening to and realization of what one truly is. Unfortunately, the Christian gnostic concept of being “born again” in the spirit has been corrupted and degraded during the development of Protestant literalism, and this has in turn led to campaigns of mass evangelism. This is not to say that evangelical fervor may not produce changes in the life of this or that individual— the spirit bloweth where it listeth—but certainly the popularized notion of being “born again” does not reflect what was originally meant by the much more ancient and more profound concept of metanoia and spiritual rebirth. To understand the idea of metanoia, we must turn once more to that fountainhead of Christian gnostic teaching, Dionysius the Areopagite who, like many of the Eastern Orthodox fathers, taught of a spiritual yearning, or eros. Essentially, the doctrine is that, as fallen beings, we are drawn outward toward the sensible, and metanoia consists in our turning inward toward God. This turning inward comes from deep yearning to reunite with God and realize our own transcendent nature; we recognize our fallen nature, and yearn to be raised up, transfigured, just as a lover longs to be united with his or her beloved. Metanoia ultimately is not so much a negative as an affirmative act, not so much a rejection of the world as an embracing of the Divine. Dionysius explains this longing for the Divine in his treatise on the Divine Names: And so it is that all things must desire, must yearn for, must love, the Beautiful and the Good. . . . And we may be so bold as to claim also that the Cause of all things loves all things in the superabundance of his goodness, that because of this goodness he makes all things, brings all things to

perfection, holds all things together, returns all things. The Divine longing is Good seeking good for the sake of the Good.1 This yearning, this eros, then, is the Divine in us seeking to be known by itself through us; it is the Good yearning for the Good. This complementarity is seen also in a verse Dionysius quotes from Proverbs: “Yearn for her and she shall keep you; exalt her and she will extol you; honor her and she will embrace you.”2 Here the “she” is Divine Wisdom, Sophia, the glory and presence of God. It is interesting that when discussing this eros toward God, St. Maximos the Confessor (580–662 A.D.) quoted the same verse from Proverbs, and makes the same observation as Dionysius that the Divine, through this eros, “moves others, and itself moves since it thirsts to be thirsted for, longs to be longed for, and loves to be loved.”3 This is the meaning of ecstasy, which entails going out of ourselves in order to unite with God—even as God, because of his intense love for his creatures, “goes out of Himself,” “relinquishes His utter transcendence in order to dwell in all things while yet remaining in Himself.”4 In other words, there is a reciprocity between the Divine and the soul in the soul's realm: at the heart of the soul's longing is the Divine itself, which yearns to be known through the lover of God. This is what is called theopathy, that mysterious longing for union that underlies and impells all creatures toward union, and ultimately toward reunion with God through his own image, which the soul bears within it, and which is ultimately also the soul's own image, God knowing himself in his lover. At this point we begin to recognize just how profound is that Manichaean concept of Jesus patibilis, the Jesus who is suffering in creation as it longs for redemption; and of Jesus impatibilis, the transcendent image beyond suffering—for the two are ultimately one, just as the lover of God finds that his or her own longing for redemption is precisely the longing of God himself to be revealed at the heart of creation. St. Maximos the Confessor emphasizes this reciprocity between God and those in creation striving to know him, and writes that the means of reciprocity is precisely “erotic force,” or love. St. Maximos recognizes that “one must be bold enough to affirm that the Cause of all things . . . goes out of Himself in His providential care for all beings.” Hence this Cause is the “exemplary lover,” because “He rouses others to imitate His own intense desire,” for “He deserves to be imitated by the beings under His care.”5 In short, “You should understand that God stimulates and allures in order to bring about an erotic union in the spirit,” and far from being a profane power, “the erotic force, whether divine, angelic, noetic, psychic, or physical, [is] a unifying and commingling power.”6 One can of course understand how such affirmations border on scandal to a certain kind of literalist or externalist mentality—just as did Ibn ‘Arabî's love for a

young girl who was for him a manifestation of the divine Sophia, and just as did the affirmations of the fedeli d'amore, the courtly lovers of Provençe or, for that matter, those of Dante and his companions.7 But under consideration here is a profound philosophic understanding no doubt rooted in the ancient Mysteries, and seen in the works of Plato, whose master Socrates was precisely a “lover of Sophia,” an initiate into the mysteries of love, and a victim of a society incapable of understanding either him or his teachings of transcendent eros. As St. Maximos wrote: For he who has been united with the truth has the assurance that all is well with him, even though most people rebuke him for being out of his mind. For, without their being aware, he has moved from delusion to the truth of real faith; and he knows for sure that he is not deranged, as they say, but that through truth—simple and always immutably the same—he has been liberated from the fluctuating and fickle turmoil of the manifold forms of illusion.8 In Christian gnosticism, the idea of spiritual rebirth derives from the Gospel of John, “Except as a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (3.3) Exactly what is meant by the “kingdom of God” we will suggest in our chapter on the visionary imagination; our focus here is on what, in theosophical terms, “rebirth” means. Some comments by Corbin on Islamic mysticism deeply influenced by Christian gnosticism will help us realize how profound is this concept: In our context this new birth will signify that the mystic soul in turn “creates” its Creator, or in other words: that the mystic's exemplification of the Creative Feminine, his “sophianity,” determines the degree in which he is fit to assume the secret of his Lord's divinity, (the secret which is “thou”), that is to say, in which his theopathy “gives birth to” the God whose passion it is to be known by the mystic.9 To unfold what is meant by this quotation with regard to Christian theosophy is the essence of our task. We have already established how for the theosophers—and again, we may justifiably speak of a common understanding among all who would call themselves “lovers of Sophia,” be they Platonic, Persian, Eastern Orthodox, or German—it is God's longing to be longed for. This means that our inward longing for the Good and the Beautiful, for the Beloved, is God's own longing to be known to himself through us. In essence, then, “rebirth” means the awakening of exactly this eros within us; and this awareness of longing separates us from those who are unaware of the true nature of this erotic force toward the Divine within themselves.

Oblivious to this “inner world,” they are also unaware of how their inmost nature is precisely “God's ground” and “my ground.” Meister Eckhart, like later German theosophers, insisted that what is most important for the individual soul is not that Christ was born on earth, in history, but rather that he be born inwardly in oneself. Eckhart writes, regarding the Johannine assertion “God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world”: You must not by this understand the external world in which the Son ate and drank with us, but understand it to apply to the inner world. As truly as the Father in his simple nature gives birth to the Son naturally, so truly does he give him birth in the most inward part of the spirit, and that is the inner world. Here God's ground is my ground, and my ground is God's ground.10 Our ground and God's ground are one, because ultimately it is God himself who is seeking to be known in us through our becoming aware of him. However, we human beings are transformed through a personal encounter with the Divine; we must feel the awakening of the divine Presence in our hearts and, in the soul's realm, understand this transformation or revelation through the reflection back to us of our own transmutation by the image— the anthropomorphic, angelic other who is ultimately more intimately we ourselves than anything we might term our “individuality” in this present world. This most intimate and profound spiritual encounter comes about through symbol, through that realm in which all is transmuted into symbol and leads us out of our present limited understanding. The simplicity and profundity of this encounter and transmutation is again perhaps best presented, insofar as our Protestant mystics are concerned, in the book written late in life by Jacob Böhme, The Way to Christosophia. Here Böhme describes the soul's travails in being reborn, in truly achieving the metanoia. At first, he writes, after conversion and repentance, when the soul becomes conscious of Christ inwardly, and when the Virgin Sophia appears in her pristine beauty, the soul is terrified, not least because of its own unworthiness. The soul feels the sting of judgment. Then, Böhme affirms, “the noble Sophia draws Herself near to the soul's being and kisses it in a friendly manner. . . [and] the soul leaps in its body for great joy in the power of this virginal love.” “We who have tasted this heavenly treasure understand this, but no one else does,” Böhme warns.11 This is not a matter for analysis, but for experiential confirmation. If we seek to understand such descriptions from the outside, and without situating ourselves sympathetically within the gnostic world, we will not be able to understand what Böhme means, and in fact Böhme has for centuries been derided or dismissed by those who were unwilling or incapable of situating themselves within this gnostic world, and who nonetheless sought to pass judgment on Böhme, the “mad shoemaker.” It is not for nothing that at the end of this discussion of the noble

Sophia, early in his book, Böhme warns us: Dear reader, do not treat this as an uncertain story. This is the true ground and contains the whole Holy Scripture, for in this book is the life of Jesus Christ truly depicted, even as it is known by the author himself, for this was his way. He gives you the best that he has. May God give the increase. There is known to be a heavy judgment on the one who scorns this. Let him be warned.12 Let the reader be warned indeed. Here is one reason Böhme, and the entire theosophical tradition found in England, France, Germany, and America, has been ignored. For to read these authors aright, as to read the Ismaili and Sufi gnostics illuminated for us in the works of Henry Corbin (and to read Corbin himself) is to be changed by the reading. The demands made upon us by this inwardness, and by the compresence within us that these theosophers reveal, are great; and it is better to ignore them than to begin to be aware of what they truly mean, to become frightened, and to revile them. Böhme insists upon the unitary nature of metanoia, and the “new birth.” He writes: This birth must take place in you; the Heart or Son of God must be born in your life: thus is the holy Christ thy true Shepherd; and you are in him and he in you; and all that he and his Father have, is yours, and no one is able to take it out of your hands. Just as the Son (the Father's Heart) is one, so too is also thy new Man one in the Father and the Son, one power, one light, one eternal Paradise, one eternal heavenly birth: one Father, Son, Holy Ghost and you their child.13 This is extremely powerful language, and its demands on us are high. The whole of religion, according to these theosophers' writings, lies in the realization that we are responsible in this lifetime for coming to realize paradise. For them, the process of spiritual rebirth is the unfolding revelation within of a dialogue between the soul and the noble Sophia, a dialogue that reveals the soul's pristine virginal beauty through the grace of Sophia's presence, and allows us to realize the birth of the Logos within us. But this unfolding process—which does not cease at corporeal death—must begin with an inward awakening in this life, an awakening of the heart and of the noblest of loves, eros for the Divine. In general, theosophers hold that this eros for the Divine is incompatible with earthly attractions or longings. Probably the most emphatic in this regard was Johann Gichtel, the “hermit of Amsterdam,” who turned down numerous proposals of marriage from various women enamored of him during his lifetime spent in exile from Germany. Although he had many correspondents (nearly four thousand

pages of correspondence have been published) and led a fairly active socialspiritual life, Gichtel was also by nature highly ascetic and somewhat reclusive, insisting throughout his correspondence that to enter into spiritual marriage with the holy Virgin Sophia, one must remain celibate and true only to her. A typical example from Gichtel's life appears in the second volume of his collected letters, where we are told in a letter dated 10 June 1698 that he met a young woman abundantly adorned in jewels and pearls, rebuked her, and then asked God to lay her “spirit-burden” on him, which prayer God heard. I was indeed for a few days compelled to see myself in my phantasy with pearls and such like thoughts. But by constant prayer and cursing of this astral influence I overcame, and she cast aside those things without my speaking, and despised vanity, and became fond of me, and wished to marry me, which I silently declined. And she is still single.14 This is fairly characteristic of Gichtel's life experience: he often took upon himself the psychological or spiritual problems of others. Gichtel would not marry because he followed a modern chivalric path: “He that is in earnest about the marriage bed of the Virgin must woo her in right earnest, and testify by deed that he loves her more than his life.”15 Gichtel, like Böhme and Pordage, underwent a long process of metanoia, or spiritual rebirth. Although I will not here elaborate his entire spiritual autobiography—for it suffices to say that Gichtel and his fellow “angelic brethren” underwent a series of conversion experiences or deepening spiritual awakenings over many years—I will quote an example from one of Gichtel's letters about his experiences with the Virgin Sophia: When God in 1668 appeared to me a second time, and showed me the sufferings, I resisted for six years, and would not enter into the strife. . . . Then my playmate [Sophia] appeared in 1673–1674 a third time, putting faith, love, and hope into my heart, assuring me mouth to mouth, as one friend to another, of her fidelity, and poured such fire into my heart that I surrendered my own will and laid down my life for my brethren.16 Gichtel “surrendered [his] own will”—this is key. For his rebirth consisted in an ever-deepening identification and union with the Virgin herself, and with the very heart of the Christian mystery, which is to lay down one's own life for others. For the theosophers, Christ's self-sacrifice is not merely a dogma of vicarious atonement, but is a path we must each follow ourselves. Although all of the theosophers, including Böhme, Gichtel, Pordage and Jane Leade underwent specific experiences of spiritual rebirth, we should keep in mind

that for all of them, rebirth was a lifelong process of spiritual awakening and deepening, not merely a one-time event. Böhme's first experience came about when, after a long period of depression and spiritual confusion, he “stormed violently against God and all the Gates of Hell,” until “at last my spirit broke through into the innermost Birth of the Divinity.”17 Of this experience at the age of 25, in 1600, Böhme wrote, “my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all creatures, even in herbs and grass it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is.” What is more “in that quarter hour I saw and learnt more than if I had studied many years in some university. . . for I perceived and recognized the Being of all beings.”18 But the rest of Böhme's life, like Gichtel's and Leade's, was spent elaborating and deepening this original illumination. What then is metanoia in the theosophical tradition? It is an inward unveiling, an inward seeing into the spiritual worlds that entails the transmutation of the whole person. One turns from a worldly and materialistic life at the mercy of the passions to a balanced, inwardly focused, and compassionate life that serves others. In a rare seventeenth-century theosophic manuscript entitled “A Short Dialogue between a Learned Divine and a Beggar,” (a manuscript claiming the “Divine” here to be none other than the medieval mystic John Tauler), an illuminated beggar tells the learned divine that: The Kingdom of Heaven is within me, in my soul, and I can now, and do by his power in me, so govern and command all my inward and outward senses, that all the affections and powers of the old man in my soul are conquered and are in subjection to me. . . . Divine: What hath brought thee to this perfection? Beggar: My silence, sublime Meditation, and union with the ever-blessed God of peace and rest: and I could rest in nothing which was less than God; and now I have found my God, I have forsaken the unquiet world, and in him I have everlasting peace and rest.19 This state of inward peace is the fruit of a life turned toward spiritual practice, and this turning is the process of metanoia that lasts beyond a lifetime spent in this unquiet world. 1. Dionysius, op. cit., Div. Names 10. 708A, p. 79. 2. Ibid., 11.709A, p. 81, Prov. 4:6, 8. 3. Palmer, Sherrard, Ware, trans., Philokalia, op. cit., II, p. 281. 4. Ibid., II, p. 281. 5. Ibid., II, p. 281. 6. Ibid., II, p. 282. 7. See Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the SÛfism of Ibn ‘Arabî (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1969), pp. 136 ff., on “The Sophianic Poem of a Fedele d'Amore.” 8. Philokalia, II, p. 282. 9. Corbin, Creative Imagination, p. 170. 10. Eckhart, Essential Sermons, op. cit., p. 183; see also Eckhart, Werke, ed. Quint, op. cit., I.442–445. 11. Böhme, Christosophia, 1, §45; see also The Way to Christ, op. cit., p. 57. 12. Ibid., 1, §52; see also The Way to Christ, p. 62. 13. Böhme, Beschreibung der drei Principien, 4, §9. 14. Johann Gichtel, Theosophia Practica, 7 vols. (Amsterdam: 1721), II, p.191. 15. Ibid., II, p. 201. 16. Ibid., IV, p. 8. 17. Jacob Böhme, Aurora (London: 1910), chap. 9, §10–12. 18. Jacob Böhme, Epistle, trans. C. Barker (London: 1910). 19. Ms., n.d., n.p., in private hands.

10

The Divine Sophia THERE IS NO SUBJECT MORE IMPORTANT to theosophy than Sophia, or Wisdom; one might even say that the doctrines surrounding Sophia represent another revelation within the Christian tradition—a revelation which can be found in the very earliest Christian writings, which reappeared in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which produced the German, French, and Russian theosophical traditions. That there is a heterodox aspect to the sophianic revelation in its multiple forms can hardly be denied; and yet at the same time were this dimension of Christianity removed, we would be lacking not only the writings of Dante, but also those of the greatest theosophers of the Christian tradition. For who can imagine removing divine Wisdom from Christianity? Sophia is at the heart of theosophy. But let us consider who Sophia is. Certainly Judaism and Christianity are more closely intertwined on this question than on any other. For instance, Philo of Alexandria (20B.C.–50A.D.) wrote on “Logos/Sophia” in his scriptural exegeses, and, like many later commentators, suggested that these two are fundamentally one. The Logos is the mediator between things, like a vowel amid consonants, wrote Philo—and Sophia “flows in a perpetual stream from the Divine Logos.” The “daughter of God, Sophia,” (or Wisdom) is “masculine” to human beings, since Sophia “engenders in souls a desire to learn discipline, knowledge . . . noble actions.”1 From this language, we can see that not only Sophia, but all things discussed in these scripturally based terms are anagogic in nature: we have to recognize that although the terms used are anthropomorphic, the exegesis of Philo immediately points us toward a perspective that transcends its anthropomorphism. Although it may be useful for us to conceive of Sophia as a Virgin, because she is pure and chaste, we ought not cling too strongly to this image, because while Sophia is a “daughter” of God, she is “masculine” to us inasmuch as she draws us toward what is noble and good, “inseminating” us. This kind of anagogic exegesis is found throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions—as is Sophia. According to the early Christian documents found in the Nag Hammadi Library, Sophia is the feminine syzygy of the First Man. In the treatise Sophia we read: I desire that you understand that First Man is called “Begetter, Mind who is complete in himself.” . . . His male name is called “First-Begetter Son of

God”; his female name is “First Begetress Sophia, Mother of the Universe.” Some call her “Love.” Now the First-Begotten is called “Christ.”2 A similar symbolism of Sophia as emanation or divine hypostasis—highly developed by Gnostics of the Valentinian school early in the Christian era— reappeared in the Jewish Gnosticism of the kabbalist book Bahir during the thirteenth century in Provençal France. Kabbalistic interpretation holds to a distinction between the “Wisdom of God,” or the “upper Sophia,” and the “Wisdom of Solomon,” or the “lower Sophia,” the term “Sophia” closely linked to the concept of the Shekhinah, or the “exiled” presence of God conceived in feminine terms.3 Hence, somehow, either through an ahistoric continuity, or through some historical means of transmission as yet unknown, this emanatory sophianic Christian Gnosticism reappeared in Jewish circles in France more than ten centuries after its having flourished in antiquity. Emanatory Gnostic cosmology, however, is not our focus—but rather, the consubstantiality of the First Man, Adam, Sophia, and Christ. It appears that here we have something that Henry Corbin recognized again in Ismaili gnosticism within Islam, and which reappeared again in Christian theosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe: the recognition of Adam, Sophia, and Christ in angelogical terms. In all of these traditions, metaphysical and cosmological principles and interpretations take precedence over historical figures, for what matters in the spiritual life of an individual is precisely on this inner, visionary spectrum, and certainly not on the level of historicism or fundamentalism. A similar description is to be found in the writings of Jacob Böhme, who like the author(s) of “Eugnostos” and “Sophia,” more than twelve centuries later described what exists before Creation: And here we give the Reader (that loves God) to understand clearly in the great Deep, what the pure Element is, wherein our Body (before the Fall of Adam) stood, and in the new Regeneration now at present stands also therein. It is the heavenly corporeity, which is not barely and merely a spirit, wherein the clear Deity dwells; it is not the pure Deity itself, but [it is] generated out of the Essences of the holy Father (as he continually and eternally goes in through the eternal gate, in the eternal Mind in himself. . . ).4 This “pure Element,” Böhme writes, is barmherzigkeit, or “warmheartedness;” it is the mercifulness that surrounds God. Böhme continues: And the Virgin of the Wisdom of God is the spirit of the pure element, and is therefore called a Virgin, because it is so chaste, and generates nothing; yet

as the flaming spirit in man's body generates nothing, but opens all secrets . . . so also here; the Wisdom, (or the eternal Virgin) of God opens all the great wonders in the holy Element, for there are the essences, wherein the fruits of Paradise spring up.5 Sophia is at once the Virgin, and the Virgin Mary—in Eastern Orthodox theology the theotokos, or bearer of God; she is the key to human regeneration.6 Just as through Eve Adam fell, so through the Virgin, through Sophia, and the warmheartedness of grace, humanity is regenerated. As Gillaume Postel wrote, the new Eve (the Virgin) must be of the substance of Christ, since the old Eve came from the old Adam, “ut esset in figura necessario verificanda.”7 Of course, Postel's life bore out this doctrine in an unusual way. Gillaume Postel met a little fifty-year-old Viennese woman named Madre Johanna, a virgin who ate no meat, slept little, and spent her life working for the poor.8 She asked Postel to be her spiritual director and father—and her son, while she was in turn his holy mother. She was for Postel the holy Virgin and the holy Shekhinah; she is, he says, the angelic pope. She is the moon who reflects the sun; she foretells the restitution of all things. God commanded her to reveal to Postel how God willed that all creatures be united in one sheepfold and that there be a general pardon for all, with none excluded. Indeed, she said, the peace and harmony of the world were dependent upon this universal restoration through general baptism. There is to be a renaissance of the Church in which men and women together teach; the old papacy will be left behind. She taught him the significance of the Zohar, which he began to read under her tutelage; she was for him a new Jerusalem, unveiling the third and fourth of the four ages of the Ecclesia: nature, law, grace, and restitution. In 1552 Postel experienced his “immutation,” an experience under Madre Johanna that she herself had undergone in 1540. He saw a new body, a new spiritual “garment.”9 His “immutation” had been promised by her before her death; it occurred two years after that death, and was his spiritual transfiguration and the supreme spiritual experience of his life; it intensified his program to reform the world. His was the “chemical wedding” of the New Eve and the New Adam.10 Böhme was responsible for reintroducing this doctrine of the “new Eve” (though not Postel's rather literal interpretation of it) into Europe, and his teachings reverberated throughout the next several centuries, the sophianic doctrines having a particular impact on writers like Gottfried Arnold and Johann Georg Gichtel. Arnold, author of a massive and influential study of Christian history and heresy, was also author of a major book of the Böhmean school, focusing solely on Sophia. In Das Geheimnis der Göttlichen Sophia, published in Leipzig in 1700, Arnold expanded essentially Böhmean sophianic doctrines to include Christian

sources both orthodox and heterodox, ranging from Augustine to Origen to Valentinus. Sophia, then, in the words of Nigg, who edited the modern edition of Arnold's work “is an eternal Being, which before all creatures, with the Holy Trinity, is eternal, and remains forever in eternity. She is above all the Angels; the eternal wisdom has her root alone in the Godhead itself, and through her Being it reveals itself. . . . Sophia is not a Person outside the Trinity; . . . the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of Sophia are not separate.”11 “The eternal Sophia urges men through being reborn to return to completeness in Paradise, to which she will lead them.”12 This last point is particularly significant: Arnold's book on Sophia leads us through a kind of sophianic journey—from acquaintance with her, to her kisses, to the sacred marriage with Sophia—and all these things depend on one's inward metanoia, or “regeneration.” Sophia leads man back to the wholeness of Paradise. Protestantism has an excessively masculine intellectual character, and the feminine nature of Sophia speaks to an aspect of humanity ignored in much of Protestantism; she brings a warmer and even motherly atmosphere. As Nigg points out: “In womanhood lies one of the deepest mysteries of the world. From this mystery emanates a clarifying power, the same as the uncreated light that shone from Mount Tabor. Sophianic mysticism directly affects the heart of man.”13 It was necessary for Arnold to use a somewhat colorful erotic religious language to speak of Sophia, but in doing this he followed a much older tradition stretching back to the Song of Solomon itself. It is certainly possible to misunderstand this language, but it has antecedents in the Bible: it is an attempt to make accessible to the reasoning mind that which transcends reason. As Wisdom consubtantials with Christ, Sophia is the breath of the spirit within the Scriptures; and we come into contact with her only after we have undergone metanoia. Arnold writes that “no one is permitted to make the error through reasoning . . . that another were to have written the testimonies found in Scripture. Since above, one must remember, the spirit of Wisdom and the spirit of Jesus are essentially one, so one comes to the one by what was said by the other; and no one may try to separate them.”14 But one ought not rely only on the letter of Scripture, for “Wisdom ought not be sought only in letters; and hence not only in written works, without effective struggle and prayer in oneself. One ought not gape after things outside oneself, but rather look toward the inward ground, for there she is first glimpsed, where the will is descended and sunken in her.”15 This looking within brings about the metanoia, or inward regeneration. Arnold affirms: “Above all things know and believe, O Man, that this noble Sophia is never far from you, but rather is nearer than you yourself . . . where you cannot exile her.”16 She is this “pure element” of spirit, the mercifulness or

warmheartedness, the “virgin within” through whom the Logos or Christ is born within us. Louis Claude de Saint-Martin writes: “I have no doubt she may be born in our center. I have no doubt that the Divine Word can also be born there by her means, as he was thus born in Mary.”17 For, writes Saint-Martin, all the saints and all the elect share this Sophia.18 Arnold writes that, “The Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of Wisdom are not two different spirits, but rather are one spirit and one inseparable Essence.”19 In theosophy, Sophia represents inwardly an ambience in which the Logos can be born; she is the “substance” or “presence” through which Christ manifests within, but she is also the transcendent form or “Virgin of Light” toward whom we move inwardly on our spiritual journey to realization of our transcendent spiritual center. Thus she is Mercy itself, as the divine “element” within whom Christ is conceived through the Holy Spirit; but she is also revealed through spiritual discipline. Arnold writes after speaking of this discipline: “So we know how a lover of wisdom must be formed within and without. . . . let us speak so much in words as we can of the secret work of Sophia; let us also say as much as is possible to understand and express of the inner journey to truth, to the light of the eternal Godhead, still more superabundant, felt in the innermost heart.”20 The journey toward Wisdom and illumination entails a rebirth and, as Arnold says in quoting Augustine, a dying to the things of this world, an inward detachment.21 One begins to recognize divine beneficence: “Whoever wishes to come to know wisdom, must first recognize that all good and all life is an image of God's goodness.”22 Eventually one begins to recognize the presence of Sophia in the heart: “Then is it nothing other than a gentle and loving breath and protest in the soul, something unknown and unsought comes to pass, an inward stillness. Yes, it is so subtle and so mild a remonstration, that she can subdue the trifling eruption of the coarser nature in word or work, yes, even in thought.”23 Finally, one feels the call of Sophia deeply: “Then one finds in the soul nothing other than a great seriousness, a sharp stringency, which brings about a true change or repentance (metanoia).”24 But the rewards of Sophia are real, and as Nigg writes: “She is to be sought in the heart, because she reveals herself inwardly, through most secret selfremembering, and through kisses of the soul, which no man can gainsay.”25 The fundamental ground for this is once again the primordial position of man, indeed, paradise itself; for once Adam lived in erstwhile transcendent harmony and union with Sophia: he could do no other than live in sweet ecstasy's play. Although man was untrue and false, still he longs to return to that primordial realm of joy.26 The kiss of Sophia is divine revelation, illumination within, and the experience of

paradisal joy in this life. The Virgin Sophia kisses the soul, but the kiss of Sophia is not received freely without first a testing of the soul. The sweet rays of Sophia's love surround the soul in an indescribable way: “Thousands upon thousands of kisses and embraces are given in a single day. . . . Each glimpse renews her love's excitations, and one would nevermore be separate from her, where one remains immoveable, hanging upon her nectar mouth. Intoxication in her is forever removed from disgust or satiety; she is today so delicate, graceful, penetrating and alluring.”27 In the chapter entitled “Of the Spiritual Marriage with Sophia” (XVII), Arnold writes that “I come now to something highly important and essential, but my idea and my feelings are inexpressible. . . . ‘She is encountered (by the Godfearing) as a mother, and she receives like a virginal woman.’ In these words is a strange mystery hidden. . . .”28 “It is an effective power out of paradise that one encounters in this spiritual bride. It is a sweet enrapturing and taking up of all soul's power; it is an absorption of all the senses in this love's flood.”29 One enters into “paradisal love-play.” For whoever experiences a taste of this nobility of the heavenly bride, anything else is dross. Arnold teaches of a “pure wollust [voluptuousness],” and he says that Sophia's play is not the intimacies of Aphrodite, but rather holy love (minne; hence minnesinger). This is not merely a sweet dream or fantasy; the kiss and marriage of Sophia are essential experiences of the soul.30 “O pure Ecstasy, come and seek what is yours; let not your love-alluring be far away! . . . O you most beautiful of all women, take our degenerate nature in this act of betrothal; guide our pilgrimage! Reveal to us the hidden secret of this mystery forevermore, my one and pure turtle-dove!”31 This is an invocation that strongly evokes the medieval chivalric language of the troubadours. What is the relation between the earthly and the heavenly marriage? Does the marriage with the heavenly Sophia preclude marriage with a flesh and blood woman? Gichtel, author of Theosophia Practica, held to a strictly celibate view; his view was that an earthly sexual life was incompatible with a spiritual life, in contradistinction to the Pauline view that marriage was sacramental. Conversely, in the same year that the book on Sophia appeared—his thirty-fifth—he married Anna Maria Spragel, an event which caused a deep rift between him and Gichtel.32 Arnold insists on the transcendent nature of this holy inward marriage, which has little to do with the outward life: “The communication of this undying lifepower appears after the revelation of the new birth in inward communication with Sophia; for the root of eternal life lies there, in the inner spiritual working in the newborn man. . . . Hence the true children of Sophia anticipate their portion of immortality, whose ground is verified in they themselves daily. In consanguinity

with wisdom is immortality; through her lies the memory of the eternal.”33 What is more, Arnold insists on the primacy of Wisdom imprinting herself in all authentic acts of the soul: “The spirit of wisdom must herself be incontrovertibly there in all begettings that possess the true spirit, and must together as a spirit of faith and of love imprint in the soul a sweet trust and reliance on God, the soul who will nevermore flee Him as if He were a fiend or a tyrant, but rather will turn and heed the softly enticing voice of wisdom in the heart.”34 Here we have the antithesis of the thundering, wrathful deity of Calvinism: the soft inward voice of Wisdom herself. Likewise, Francis Lee, the spiritual son of Jane Leade, writes in a letter dated 12 October 1697 that to realize Sophia is to realize a “state of revelation, and Divine vision opened in the soul,” prerequisite to anyone becoming a member of “the everlasting priesthood” of Melchizedek. Lee, a brilliantly learned scholar and a member of the Philadelphian Society of Leade, wrote further that “the birth of Wisdom in the Soul, [opens] therein the secrets of the invisible worlds, the soul becoming as a clear, unspotted mirror, to receive their reflections.”35 This birth of Wisdom (or the Virgin “Mother”) in the soul precedes the birth of Power, or the Logos Christ. One first opens one's spiritual eyes, becoming receptive to spiritual truth, and then becomes active oneself, a member of the “everlasting” timeless order of Melchizedek. This process of spiritual birth and growth represents a complete and intricate spiritual discipline too complicated to elaborate further here.36 In this discussion of Sophia, I have relied chiefly on the Böhmean school represented by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Gottfried Arnold, as well as on the work of Böhme himself, of course. While we have also drawn on the kabbalistic teachings regarding Sophia and the Shekhinah, our focus has primarily been on the most developed form of sophianic mysticism in the West, that of Germanic theosophy, not least because this form of sophianic mysticism is virtually unknown in Europe and America. This Böhmean sophianic mysticism is highly alchemical, and full of astrological references to planetary symbolism that take many years of study to reveal their full significance. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century authors like Vladimir Solovyov and Sergei Bulgakov, while interesting exponents of sophianic mysticism in an Eastern Orthodox setting, offer a perspective that although certainly related to German theosophy, is not couched in the alchemical language characteristic of the Böhmenist school. Bulgakov acknowledged the importance of writers like Böhme, Gichtel, Arnold, and Pordage, but he affirmed the holy tradition of Orthodoxy as manifested in the St. Sophia in Istanbul.37 That such authors have occasionally been deemed heretical or heterodox is not so important as whether they represent

verifications of the same theosophical understanding that appears in the writing of groups as diverse as the Christian Gnostics, the Kabbalists, and the troubadours of Provençal France and of Italy; the Ismaili visionary tradition in Persian mysticism, and, of course, German, French, and English theosophy. Under consideration here are different formulations of essentially the same spiritual verities or experiences. Solovyov, like Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, had studied not only the writings of Böhme, but those of Gichtel, Arnold, and Pordage as well, particularly in 1877.38 Yet Solovyov himself said that he studied these latter three writers primarily for confirmations and elucidations of his own visionary experiences of the divine Sophia, visionary experiences the first of which occurred when he was nine, as was also the case with Dante. In his visions of Sophia, one of which occurred in Egypt—where Solovyov felt he was called in order to make contact with a hidden order that he never found—Solovyov experienced a visionary reality which, as Arnold had also written several centuries before, nothing could gainsay. But Solovyov also absorbed intellectual doctrines from the German theosophers. Interestingly, Solovyov, whose own understanding of Asian religious traditions certainly left much to be desired,39 took from Franz von Baader the view that Sophia appeared among many peoples—among the Hindus as Maya, among the Greeks as Idea, among the Hebrews as Sophia. He sees three aspects of the Sophia: magisch, lebhaft, and leibhaft, or magical, living, and incarnate, or, to use the ternary noted above—maya-magie, ideal, and incarnate wisdom in Sophia.40 The first is the formative power of creation; the second is the ideal, midway between the transcendent and the immanent; and the third is the means of salvation, Sophia herself. Even as Sophia takes form as holy Presence in creation is she also means of redemption. This brings us to the idea, characteristic of Kabbalism and recurring in both German and Russian sophiology, of a higher and a lower Shekhinah, or Sophia.41 The higher Sophia is unfallen, pristine, the Virgin eternal; the lower Sophia is the weltseele, the world-soul, the presence of God in creation. The higher Shekhinah is the primordial Light of creation; the lower Shekhinah is the light present in creation, the light emanated from the primordial uncreated light. Yet as the kabbalistic saying has it, “As His Shekhinah is above, so is it below.”42 The two are ultimately one; but the Fall meant that the higher hypostasized into the lower, its reflection on the waters below. Solovyov adopted this Kabbalistic doctrine into his Sophiology, taken from his contacts with Kabbalism and Böhmean gnosticism as filtered through the writings of Molitor and Schelling. Russian sophiology tended—much more than its Germanic predecessors—to make the argument that the place of human beings is to “raise up” the fallen Sophia to reunite her with her transcendent archetype. In some cases, like that of

Florensky for instance, this argument was extended to suggest that people could contribute to God himself through this process of redemption, an idea found earlier in the aphorisms of Novalis.43 It is certainly true that there are historically two views of Sophia, one as world-soul, and one as the angelic form of Wisdom herself, and that this dual concept only makes sense through a doctrine of the “raising up” or redemption of the world-soul through a reuniting with the transcendent Sophia. That all sophianic spirituality entails this redemption process manifested in an inward visionary realm through a personal devotional practice cannot be denied; for this is precisely what links all the forms of sophiology—Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. Henry Corbin expresses this well in his Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth: To come face to face with the Earth not as a conglomeration of physical facts but in the person of its Angel is an essentially psychic event which can ‘take place’ neither in the world of impersonal abstract concepts nor on the plane of mere sensory data. The Earth has to be perceived, not by the senses, but through a primodial Image and, inasmuch as this Image carries the features of a personal figure, it will prove to ‘symbolize with’ the very Image of itself which the soul carries in its innermost depths. The perception of the Earth Angel will come about in an intermediate universe. . . a universe of archetype-Images, experienced as so many personal presences.44 The Earth Angel here is none other than Sophia as world-soul in the inward realm, as the soul realizes its own spiritual significance revealed in this image, of which ultimately the soul itself is a reflection. The soul is devoted to that which is its most intimate center, seen “outside” itself on the visionary plane. At this point we begin to understand the nexus where all our authors meet. Sophia is the “pure element” in which the spiritual revelation of the Logos, or spiritual sun, takes place; she is therefore also the divine Presence as manifested in the cosmos. This is why Böhme wrote that Sophia is like a prism, through which the pure light of the Godhead is refracted into being; and also why he wrote that one must necessarily approach the Trinity via Sophia: Sophia is not a member of the Trinity—despite various attempts to make her so—but rather is the “medium” or element through which we as created beings approach the Father, the Logos, and the Holy Spirit. This approach, which takes place in the spirituality of our visionaries only in an inward visionary realm, must be an approach to a “Virgin of Light” that is, in an ultimate sense, our own true center. In this way, we begin to understand why the devotion of Arnold or other theosophers to Sophia—like that of Dante to Beatrice, or that of the troubadours to their Beloved, or that of Socratic lovers to their Beloveds—must take an

anthropomorphic form that, in its more extreme manifestations as spiritual eroticism and marriage, may even appear scandalous. This spiritual devotion incorporates—through what in Plato is called the “mysteries of love”45—all the natural energies of eros in human beings, but orients them toward our transcendent origin and meaning. Although he was writing of Persian Sufism, and in particular of Shaikh RÛzbehân de Shîrâz, Henry Corbin's analysis of the Islamic forms of Dante's companions, the fedeli d'amore, holds true for the more European manifestations of this tradition as well. Corbin wrote: “The passage from human love to love of the Divine does not consist in passing from one object to another. Rather, one accomplishes a metamorphosis of the subject.”46 Hence the famous love of MajnÛn for Layla serves like that of Tristan for Isolde, or like that of Dante for Beatrice, as an exemplar of love for the Divine: he is become a “mirror of God,” which is to say, in him is accomplished the unity of love, lover, and beloved such that he can wonder if his name is not that of Layla; for through love his is a state of total absorption. Thus, even though some make a firm distinction between the via negativa of, say, Eckhart or Tauler or Dionysius the Areopagite, and the via positiva represented in the relation of lover and beloved as glimpsed in sophianic mysticism, these two ways are really one way seen from different angles. That this is so we can see in the paradoxical historical proximity of, for instance, Catharism (a rigorous form of Manichaean asceticism appearing in medieval Provençal France) and the courtly love tradition;47 and in the fact that Johannes Tauler, for instance—certainly in the tradition of the via negativa to which Dionysius the Areopagite and Eckhart belong—deploys the same spiritual terminology as Böhme regarding the Virgin and Wisdom. Tauler writes that the soul must become “virginal,” pure and chaste regarding the world; we must, like Mary, be “betrothed” to the Divine; and we must finally through “inward stillness” attain to the noble condition of “divine motherhood,” that the Logos be born in us.48 The contemplative language here is virtually the same as that in the visionary Böhmenist Sophianic tradition we have been considering all along; distinctions like “negative” and “positive” theology do not hold up under scrutiny. Rather, there is a single spiritual path that may be described as the katharsis, muesis, and epopteia of the ancient Mysteries: the soul is purified (katharsis), returns to its primordial state of communion (muesis), and finally is illuminated by its spiritual center, the Logos (epopteia). This transmutation of the soul is symbolized precisely by the revelation of Sophia, who is the world-soul and yet, from a visionary perspective, is the soul greeting itself, for in the soul's interworld what is within is experienced as outward reality. Only after this purification is

Christ truly born in the soul, which must become virginal to the things of this world in order that Christ be revealed. We come here to a final aspect of the sophianic tradition, that of masculine and feminine symbolism. Some modern authors argue that the various forms of Christian mysticism are merely transpositions of personal psychology onto an inward religious realm; that both sophianic and christic mysticism in erotic language are merely the projection of personal desire via fantasy. Perhaps this is so in certain cases;49 but fantasy and psychological projections are precisely the opposite of the visionary perceptions of transcendent reality in question here. This is why masculine and feminine terminology sometimes shifts in sophianic texts— Böhme for example wrote of the männliche Jungfrau, or masculine virgin, an idea that harks back to Philo of Alexandria's assertion that “the daughter of God, Sophia, is both masculine and feminine, inseminating and engendering [nobility] in souls.”50 Masculine and feminine in these texts refer to principles operative in the soul— to the “one who gives,” the male, and the “one who receives,” the female. Inasmuch as these roles can reverse (i.e., the Virgin can bestow), their sexual symbolism can change as well; this is not a matter of fantasy but of operative principles. Hence sophiology—including its Eastern Orthodox and its German theosophical forms—is really a matter of cosmological and metaphysical principles and of revelation in individual souls; it is not arbitrary, but rather recurs in ahistorical continuity because it is precisely that which transcends history. Bulgakov writes: The doctrine of divine Sophia has nothing to do with putting forward any new dogma, and certainly cannot be described as a new heresy within Christianity, although such is the attitude adopted by certain “guardians” of the faith who see in complete stagnation the only guarantee of a true faith.51 One may say that roughly the same relationship between rationalist “defenders of the faith” and visionaries or mystics appears in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and whether it is a question of Valentinian or Böhmean gnosis in Christianity, the Ismaili gnosis of a SÛhrawardi in Islam, or the Lurianic gnosis of Jewish Kabbalism, the experiential visionary nature of gnosticism is feared and opposed by the very people of whose religions such experiences are central.52 But let us conclude with an invocation, an invocation with which Arnold ended his book on the divine Sophia, which reminds us again of how in the end to invoke Sophia is to awaken the soul's own virginal purity, in which, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the Logos may be born in us: “May the eternal Wisdom be revealed ever nearer, and the soul be bound to Her in ever truer love, that the soul might through all eternity want no other life than that in its master Christ Jesus through

the most beloved spirit of Wisdom!”53 1. Philo of Alexandria, trans. D. Winston (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 94–95. 2. “Sophia” 3,4; cp. “Eugnostos” 3,3, Nag Hammadi Library, ed. J. Robinson (New York: Harper, 1977), p. 217. 3. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, op. cit., pp. 92-93. 4. Böhme, Beschreibung der drei Principien, 22, §9. 5. Ibid., 22, §21. 6. The unity of Sophia and the Virgin Mary is analogous to the unity in separation of the Trinity. Böhme did not teach that these two were identical. 7. Letter, 25 Nov. 1563, quoted in Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi, The Career and Thought of G. Postel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 103. 8. See Marion Kuntz, Gillaume Postel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981); see also Rosalie Colie, Light and Enlightenment, A Study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). 9. Kuntz, pp. 77 ff. 10. Kuntz, p. 105. Postel had clear links to the Rosicrucians, and was recognized by his later contemporaries as such; he used Rosicrucian symbols in his writings, or manuscipts, as Kuntz points out, pp. 155 ff. 11. Arnold, Das Geheimnis der Göttlichen Sophia, op. cit., preface, pp. xxvi–xxvii. 12. Ibid, p. xxvii. 13. Ibid., p. xxxi. 14. Ibid., p. 84. 15. Ibid., p. 57. 16. Ibid., p. 51. 17. Saint-Martin, Lettre xxx in “Penny,” Theosophic Correspondence, p. 107; [see also Waite, p. 257]. 18. Ibid., Lettre xxxiii, p. 103. 19. Arnold, p. 35. 20. Ibid., p. 84. 21. Ibid., pp. 59–60. 22. Ibid., p. 63. 23. Ibid., p. 53. 24. Ibid., p. 85. 25. Ibid., p. xvii (W. Nigg, preface). 26. Ibid., p. 149. 27. Ibid., p. 152. 28. Ibid., p. 111. 29. Ibid., p. 113. 30. Ibid., pp. xxix, xxx. 31. Ibid., p. 113–114. 32. Ibid., pp. xxxv. 33. Ibid., pp. 170–171. 34. Ibid., p. 188. 35. See Christopher Walton, Notes and Materials For . . . Biography of . . . William Law (London: 1854 ed.), p. 210. 36. See Lee's letter to Henry Dodwell, reprinted in tiny type in Walton's sprawling book, for further elaboration of this process. 37. See Sergius N. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God (Hudson, New York: Lindisfarne Press), 1993, pp. 1– 21.

38. See E. Strémooukhov, Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work, trans. E. Meyendorff (Belmont, Mass.: Nordlund, 1981), pp. 64–65. 39. See Jonathan Sutton, The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 102 ff. on Solovyov's rather limited understanding of Hinduism, Taoism, and other “pagan” religions. 40. Strémooukhov, p. 65. 41. Bulgakov, A Bulgakov Anthology, ed. J. Pain, N. Zernov (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 155. 42. Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 178. 43. See in this regard the discussion of Pavel Florensky, “La Sophia chez le père Florensky,” in Le Combat Pour l'Ame du Monde, ed. Corbin (Paris: Berg, 1980), pp. 101 ff. 44. Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, op.cit., pp. 4–5. 45. On Plato's references to the “mysteries of love,” see Diotima's speech in the Symposium; see also Phaedrus. 46. Henry Corbin, “RÛzbehân Bâqli de Shîrâz,” in Henry Corbin, ed. Christian Jambet (Paris: L'Herne, 1981), p. 166. 47. See Henry Corbin, “Manichéisme et Religion de la Beauté,” in Henry Corbin, pp. 168–172. 48. See Johannes Tauler, Predigten, ed. Hofmann, I, p. 19; see also Sermons, tr. M. Schrader (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), Serm. 1, pp. 39–40. 49. While the sophianic mysticism of Solovyov himself was not of this order, it bordered on it; and this is underscored by the eccentricities of some in his circle. See on this point Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Solov'ev and the Knighthood of the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1977), pp. 71 ff., 233 ff. One also found such eccentricities among some of the German pietists; one might say that by their fruits shall ye know them. 50. Philo, op. cit., p. 95. 51. Bulgakov, A Bulgakov Anthology, p. 149. 52. The virulent opposition of Lutheran pastor Richter to Böhme is both instructive and typical; SÛhrawardi met martyrdom. 53. Arnold, Sophia, p. 188.

11

Visionary Imagination IN HIS MANY BOOKS on Sufism and Ismaili gnosticism, Henry Corbin unfolds for us the significance of the imagination, not as a mere organ of fantasy or delusion, but as the soul's means of revelation and transmutation, what he calls “Active Imagination.” This unparalleled series of expositions on Islamic esoterism has had a quickening effect on many contemporary artists, poets, and writers, who through Corbin were able to recognize the spiritual power of the visionary imagination.1 What is perhaps not so well known is that Corbin came to Islamic esoterism through the essentially Protestant visionary mysticism of Böhme, Oetinger, Pordage, and Baader, and that more than one European writer has called Corbin a “Protestant theologian.”2 While keeping in view the works of Corbin—which we urge readers to examine in conjunction with this discussion—we will focus on the visionary imagination as a spiritual discipline in European theosophy manifested in the works of Böhme, Karl Eckartshausen (1752–1803), and Pordage. It is true that at first glance one finds little indication of what discipline one might follow to understand for oneself the visionary spirituality of Böhme. Böhme's work stands as a mysterious testament to visionary spirituality; his cryptic style and terminology seem to stand on their own, forming a complete cosmology based in alchemy to which we readers often do not possess the key. Long study, of course, makes us familiar with Böhme's terminology and with the cosmology it reveals; but for entry into the visionary discipline that offers one actual access to Böhme's mysteriosophy, one is better off working through the writings and images of his successors, in particular those of the English author, Dr. John Pordage. We can begin, however, with an absolutely fundamental distinction between the two forms of imagination. Essentially, according to Böhme, there is one creative power in the cosmos, which he calls Magic, and which can lend itself to good or evil. But it is possible for the individual will “with the right true spirit” to enter into this creative power through “understanding,”3 just as it is possible for the misguided individual will to be “transformed into earthly, animal quality by the individual imagination of the false will,” which “wills not with God,” but “after the manner of the devils, who likewise stand in their own imagination of sensual knowledge.”4 In short, there is active imagination, and there is fantasy. To distinguish between these two kinds of imagination is critical, for while

visionary imagination, rightly employed, leads ultimately to paradise, fantasy leads ultimately to hell. In order to understand how this is so, one must recognize first of all that for our theosophers, our physical life on earth is an opportunity to determine, and in a sense to create, our afterlife. For in a discarnate state, what previously was a human individuality has its “protection” of incarnation removed, and the soul enters into a realm that reflects back to it its own nature. If that nature is uncontrolled and wrathful, it sees a hell; if, on the other hand, it has through the “science of the heart” entered paradise, this will be its state in the afterlife. This is why Karl von Eckartshausen, another in our line of Hermetic theosophers drawing upon Kabbalism, and an eighteenth-century colleague of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, writes in Aufschlüsse zur Magie [1788] [Elucidating Magic] that “our life on Earth is only the childhood of our existence,” and that in this most secret of spiritual sciences, the discipline of imagination, “nothing is as dangerous as occupying yourself with the mystical sciences, and then falling victim of daydreaming.”5 Indeed, Eckartshausen entitles the final chapter—which consists in nothing but warnings against the dangers of false imagination—“A Chapter That Should Be Read Three Times.”6 Eckartshausen is so insistent on distinguishing between true and false imagination because this is truly the key to the spiritual science of the heart. With these introductory observations, then, let us turn to one of the best examples of this visionary practice in Christian theosophy, that offered by Dr. John Pordage in his short treatises Theologia Mystica, and A Treatise of Eternal Nature, published in 1683 and 1681 respectively.7 The images Pordage offers us are remarkably simple but very profound, opening an entire subtle physiology and visionary science of the heart. Pordage was not only a speculative thinker, but had also actually experienced that about which he wrote. Jane Leade attested to this in her preface to his Theologia Mystica, referring to “those wonderful Transportations he had (or rather they had him) for the space of three weeks together. . . . His outward Body lay in passive Stillness in this visible Orb.”8 Pordage's imagery is very simple: he writes of an archetypal or eternal Globe of Nature, in which there are three Courts, the “Outward Court,” the “Inward Court,” and the “Inmost Court,” the “Holiest Place of all.”9 In this globe is an eye, which is the “Eye of the Spirit,” or the “Abyssal Eye of Eternity.” In the Inward Court one can see the Holy Trinity from the opening of the eye, which is “a lively, operative, reviving and yet amazing . . . sight,” that “no pen can decipher,” for “it is only the Spirit of the Eye that can open itself.”10 When this eye opens, it “divides itself into three parts, the first of which is the Abyssal Eye, the second is the Heart, and the third is the outflowing Breath.”11 This triune symbolism of the eye, the heart, and the breath—which reveals to us

the “deep mystery” of the Trinity—three, yet in essence one—is the key to the science of the heart. To see how this is so, we will have recourse to the science of the heart of Ibn ‘Arabî, the well-known Sufi theosopher. Henry Corbin writes: “In Ibn ‘Arabî, as in Sufism in general, the heart (qalb) is the organ which produces true knowledge, comprehensive intuition, the gnosis (ma'rifa) of God and the divine mysteries.” Needless to say, this “heart” is not the organ that pumps blood, but rather is a subtle center in what we may call the physiology of the soul. Corbin writes of the heart's theandric function, since its “supreme vision” is of the form of God; he points out that the heart in Sufism is the seat of pneuma, the spirit or divine “breath” of the being, and that the “gnostic's heart is the ‘eye,’ the organ by which God knows Himself, reveals Himself to Himself in the forms of His epiphanies.”12 Corbin is expressing here precisely what Pordage conveys in his little treatise: that this “eye in the heart” is how God reveals himself to himself, in Pordage's words “Face to Face” in the soul of the mystic.13 This is a mysterious unity in multiplicity: the gnostic in his heart “sees” with the eye that is the eye of God, God's own eye. The heart “opens” to become the realm in which God contemplates himself in the gnostic's soul. Pordage writes: This sight of God's attributes from the opening of the Eye in the Abyssal Globe, is both a ravishing and amazing sight, for you do not behold the Ideas or Similitudes of things, but the things themselves intellectually, which causeth most inexpressible joys, and extasies in the Spirit of the Soul, to which nothing in this world can be compared.14 The opening of the inward eye reveals an angelic world composed of images that are more real—and more delightful—than anything in this physical world. We enter here a Platonic world of archetypes, what Corbin calls an “imaginal world.” Pordage is insistent: In the first place, I say that those Images and Figures which the opening of the Eye manifests are not Shadows and Empty representatives but Reall and Substantial ones, they are not only figures of Heavenly things, but the Heavenly things themselves. In the second place, I say that these Figures are living and spiritful representatives, not dead Images, for the fullness of the Living God fills them all with Life and Spirit and Power. In the third place, these figures are unchangeable [and immortal].15 The eye of the heart, then, opens to reveal the archetypal or spiritual world, which is alive with the “outflowing breath” of God.

This angelical world revealed to us in the eye of the heart is an “interworld” or an “imaginal realm” of the soul; it possesses a reality of its own, and a special kind of “materiality,” although of course it is not physical. In it, “These spirits are endued with a spiritual kind of materiality from the LoveEssence in the Heart of God,” and hence “are endued with the spiritual senses, of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling, whereby they are inabled to discern the object of the still Eternity.”16 The spirits, whose unity is symbolized by one ear, one eye, and one breath, possess a “language” of the spirits, and their food and drink is power from the Trinity. Under consideration here is not theory; as Corbin wrote, “it is an initiation to vision. Is it possible to see without being in the place where one sees? Theophanic visions, mental visions, ecstatic visions in a state of dream or of waking are in themselves penetrations into the world they see.”17 Thus in question here is not syncretism, but a common mode of perception, “from the participation of all”— Protestant and Islamic theosophers alike—“in a common prophetic religion.”18 These theosophers all belong to “the same temple of Light, the same kingdom of spiritual man.”19 It is not surprising, then, that access to this temple within is gained through precisely the same subtle physiology of heart, eye, and breath. The parallels between the gnostic exegesis of Ibn ‘Arabî's work by Corbin, and Pordage's use of the symbols “eye, heart, and breath” are not accidental; this exact parallelism suggests simply that European Christian theosophy had come to realize the same esoteric physiology and theophanic symbolism as the great shaikh of medieval Islam. It goes almost without saying that such unanimity about specific symbols and their meanings in the soul is not a matter of “cultural influence.” Rather, this parallelism demonstrates clearly that one need not abandon the Christian tradition as being devoid of the profound spiritual vision and praxis found in Islamic esoterism and in Asian religions. At the same time, we must be aware that there is a perpetual conflict within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam between the esoteric and the exoteric or, to put it another way, between the “companions of the light” and inner vision on the one hand, and the literalists on the other. Indeed, it would not be wrong to suggest that exactly this conflict between the literalist Pharisees and Sadducees on the one side, and Christ on the other, began Christianity itself. It is no doubt worth contemplating deeply why it was that Christ said “my kingdom is not of this world,” and why history records the persecution and martyrdom of so many visionaries in all three religions by the “orthodox” of these religions themselves— not to mention the martyrdom of Socrates, that earlier visionary. One must wonder whether it is possible to follow the path of Christ without understanding how spiritual vision and literalism conflict.

Certainly in any case theosophy is the path of spiritual vision, of opening the eye in the heart that perceives hidden reality. While this opening often leads to conflict between the theosophers and those of a literalistic, dogmatic mindset who do not like to be reminded that spiritual vision or direct revelation is at the center of their religious tradition, this opening of the inner eye nonetheless remains central to any religious tradition that is to remain vital. Without the active imagination, without the continuation of revelation, without direct contact with authentic spiritual experience, a tradition becomes sclerotic and withers. However controversial it may be, what we see in theosophy is the heart of religious experience, its lifeblood, its renewal through the discipline and gift of opening the spiritual eye. 1. Among such poets and artists one may include Kathleen Raine and her circle, members of which are found in Australia, India, Europe, and America. 2. See Richard Stauffer, “Henry Corbin, Theologian protestant,” in Henry Corbin, ed., C. Jambet (Paris L'Herne, 1981), pp. 186–191. 3. Böhme, Sex Puncta Theosophica, 5, §9–24. 4. Ibid., 2, §23. 5. See Karl von Eckartshausen, Aufschlüsse zur Magie (München: Pflüger, 1923 ed.) II.159. 6. Ibid. 7. The full titles are: Theologia Mystica, or the Mystic Divinitie of the Aeternal Invisibles, viz. the Archetypous Globe, (London: 1683) and A Treatise of Eternal Nature with Her Seven Eternal Forms (London: 1681). 8. Pordage, Theologia Mystica, p. 7. 9. Ibid., p. 16. 10. Ibid., p. 31. 11. Ibid., p. 32. 12. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination, op. cit., p. 221. 13. Pordage, Theologia Mystica, p. 37. 14. Ibid., p. 34. 15. Ibid., pp. 51–52. 16. Ibid., p. 87. 17. Corbin, Creative Imagination, op. cit., p. 93. 18. Ibid., p. 92. 19. Ibid., p. 93.

12

Celestial Hierarchy THE CONCEPT OF CELESTIAL OR ANGELIC HIERARCHY is central to our theosophers. Indeed, when the greatest of the theosophical church historians, Gottfried Arnold, wrote his accounts of Christian heresies and of Christian mysticism, he said not only that the basis of all true theology was the wiedergeburt (being born again), but also that the essence of all authentic Christian spirituality was rooted in Areopagitische grundgedanken (the thought of Dionysius the Areopagite).1 Arnold was right. While undoubtedly the celestial hierarchies seen in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions do vary in certain respects, fundamentally (or esoterically), what we see in Kabbalism and in Christian and Islamic esoterism may best be understood through reference to the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is of course true that one cannot trace all our theosophers back to Dionysius— certainly not, for instance, many Islamic gnostics, and often not even many Christian mystics, at least directly. However, we have already excluded at the outset of our enquiry the necessity for direct historical transmission of the theosophical understanding. Under consideration here, rather, is a perspective that evidently reconstitutes itself under altering circumstances, and of which we might better say it represents a common vision of transcendent reality, recognized through a particular spiritual tradition. If a Christian realizes that he is a “priest after the order of Melchizedek,” and if a Muslim realizes that he is an initiate of the “green one,” Khidr, and if by these terms each refers to “vertical” or supratemporal initiation, are not these people familial in a sense transcending sectarian barriers? Undoubtedly Dionysius the Areopagite represents for Christianity the fundamental source for understanding the celestial hierarchies. Dionysius writes that “In my opinion, hierarchy is a sacred order, a state of understanding, and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the Divine.” Thus: If one talks then of hierarchy, what is meant is a certain perfect arrangement, an image of the beauty of God which sacredly works out the mysteries of its own enlightenment in the orders and levels of understanding of the hierarchy, and which is likened toward its own source as much as is permitted. . . . Therefore when the hierarchic order lays it on some to be purified, and on others to do the purifying, 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.2 Dionysius here refers to the essential triadic hierarchy that he had been taught by his initiator, Hierotheus: purification, illumination, and perfection. But the center of these is illumination, and one may well say one is purified to the extent that one perceives the light, and perfect to the extent that one is wholly illuminated and can illuminate others. In fact, in a marvelous passage, Dionysius affirms that the center of divine illumination is an astounding light that suffuses those nearest this center, who in turn illuminate others to the extent that they can bear it, who in turn pass the ray on to those immediately “below” them, so that in this way the whole cosmos is illuminated.3 Hence purification consists in a transparent clarity, while illumination consists in the reception and passing on of this light. But, Dionysius writes, in a passage describing someone's angelic initiation, “the Deity emerges from secrecy to revelation through mediation.”4 This means that, precisely because the Divine is a transcendent light, human beings are incapable of beholding this light directly and without mediation. The angelic hierarchies are the intermediaries who “soften” the light according to the soul's nature—and indeed, only through this mediation was the prophet Isaiah (or Dante) able to withstand the blinding illumination of witnessing the highest angelic powers. Human beings become like Dionysius “lovers of angels,” and through the angel are able to bear what is beyond them. Of course, as Origen has written, it is at times difficult for us to distinguish between human beings and angels. Origen notes that those who support this idea adduce “numberless instances” “to show that in Scripture ‘man’ and ‘angel’ are used indifferently.”5 And Dionysius likewise writes that the human hierarch is serving the function of the angel, that is, illumination. Precisely this hierophanic function governs St. Dionysius' treatise The Ecclesiastic Hierarchy which, despite its use as justification for institutional hierarchy, is certainly above all a work on the human hierarchy, to the extent that the human hierarchy serves an illuminative, essentially angelic initiatory function. Here we enter into territory perhaps unfamiliar to many modern Western Christians. For it soon becomes clear in Dionysius' treatise on the ecclesiastical hierarchy that such a hierarchy is authentic insofar as it really manifests here on earth the angelic functions. This is why he writes that “the order of the hierarchs has the task of consecration and of perfection, that the illuminative order of priests brings light, and that the task of the deacons is to purify and to discern the imperfect.”6 Just as the higher angels encompass the tasks of those lower, so too those hierarchs can illuminate and purify as well as perfect; the hierarchs who

initiate incorporate in themselves all the angelic functions, and is to the initiates their angelic purifier, illuminator, perfecter, and protector. Without these angelic functions, however—and this is a matter Dionysius does not envision, for in his day the earthly ecclesia was also an angelic ecclesia—the earthly church would be false, without spiritual authenticity, and hence nothing but what Böhme called “Babel,” a word that connotes both the Tower of Babel and Babylon. If Dionysius, like Clement of Alexandria, came at a time when the earthly hierarchy could be a gnostic hierarchy, when entrance into the church was in the complete sense of the word an angelic initiation, Böhme came into a far different era, in the face of which he felt it imperative to emphasize a purely vertical initiation, because while he certainly did not reject the sacraments, he could not see in the hierarchy of the church the angelic hierarchies. We begin now to see the fundamental and profound affirmation of the European theosophers for what they themselves said it was: namely, the reiteration of the Areopagitic theosophic understanding in a radically different historical situation. In this new historical situation, in a world moving rapidly toward the materialism, scientism, and spiritually dead rationalism of modernity, the European theosophers did not relinquish the essential concept of the hierarch, or spiritual initiator—but because they did not see in the current ecclesiastical hierarchy the direct image of the celestial hierarchy, they had to emphasize the gnostic transformation of the individual.7 Franz Josef Molitor wrote in 1834 that the various races or peoples all have revelations that spring from a primordial revelation, that there is in fact a spiritual Ur tradition, an archetypal revelation accessible in all times precisely because it is timeless.8 This the individual may always experience, and be transmuted by. Unfortunately, in modern times Nature has “lost her deeper, inner meaning,” which she had had during the Middle Ages; “higher spiritual ideas have been lost, even as the higher understanding of Nature in antiquity has been destroyed, the fundamental truths of Christianity have been shaken, and our whole age sunk in a spiritless dead materialism.”9 Hence, Molitor adds, So long as the philosopher takes for granted the revealed truth of religion because he thinks that reason alone is sufficient, so long has he the bare form of the religion without its living essence; and thus his acts take place without God, in the unfree voluntariness of practical rationality. Thus such a philosopher should . . . seek out all secrets of religion with his insight, and find within an inward feeling of the heart . . . thus being raised up in the freedom of God; . . . he thereby finds knowledge and life in God.10

Like Böhme, Arnold, Oetinger, and Baader before him, Molitor found it essential to emphasize first, individual spiritual realization, and second, the spiritual origin and symbolic transparency of Nature. Historically, one can see why this was so: it was becoming commonplace in their age to think of religion as merely institutionalized beliefs and external rites, and of nature as nothing more than a gigantic mechanism—both views that have by no means disappeared. In order to counter the “dead outward show” of institutionalized religion lacking inward transformative power, the theosophers emphasized above all the “inward feeling of the heart” to which Molitor referred, just as in order to counter the intensifying scientism and ratiocentric mechanism of the modern era, they emphasized how spiritual insight reveals nature to be above all spiritually symbolic, reflecting the same cosmological principles that manifest in human beings. Both gnosis (the awakening of the heart) and cosmological insight into the human microcosm and the macrocosmos itself are to be found in Dionysius the Areopagite; but because the historical situation had changed dramatically, one finds a diminished emphasis on celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchy among the German, French, and English theosophers. This is not to say that the emanatory Areopagitic cosmology was abandoned by the theosophers. One still finds in Böhme, Oetinger, Arnold, and Molitor a common recognition that the physical world reflects its subtle and spiritual origin; and one finds among them also the idea of emanation, that the Fall of man and nature consisted in a descent into time and space, the world of history. There are higher worlds than ours, just as there is, ultimately, the transcendent light of the Godhead; and the human task is to realize to the extent it is possible this transcendent light—in a word, to “reverse” the Fall. In a sense, the introduction of Jewish Lurianic Kabbalism into Christian theosophy by Oetinger and Molitor reintroduced to Christianity the emanatory cosmology and so was similar to the Dionysian perspective of celestial hierarchy. This is not to say that the Kabbalistic doctrines of the Sephira and of the emanated “worlds” are directly comparable to the Dionysian hierarchies. Yet both are certainly emanatory cosmologies, and both enjoin a celestial ascent for the gnostic, whose task is to “repair” the Fall, to restore himself to transcendent wholeness and, in the process, to redeem fallen nature as well. Here the Kabbalist doctrine of Adam Kadmon—of the primordial anthropos who represents the whole of the cosmos—is particularly important, for it re-emphasizes how the human being and the cosmos are ultimately one (since they both have celestial origins), and how the redemption of human beings (through purification and celestial ascent) is also the redemption of nature.11 The Lurianic doctrine of tzim tzum—that God created a “space” inside himself in order that there be “room” for creation of the cosmos—also is significant in

Christian theosophical terms, because again, like the doctrine of the Adam Kadmon (the cosmos as a vast primordial Human Being), it underscores the significance of the natural world: tzim tzum ultimately means that humankind and nature both exist in God, and reflect God. In neither doctrine do celestial hierarchies come into play directly, but both remind us, like Böhme's alchemical cosmology, that the natural world reflects the Divine, and that our purpose as human beings is to be purified and redeemed, and to redeem nature, to follow Christ and, in Saint-Martin's term, to become “Repairers.” It is interesting that when many of the theosophers have to deal with the question of celestial hierarchies, they deliberately shy away. This is certainly true of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, who said outright that the transcendent hierarchies were beyond what he was willing to write about. Indeed, even the question of superior and inferior, or active and receptive beings was a mysterious subject about which he would not divulge everything he knew.12 Of course, in his book De l' esprit des choses, Saint-Martin does discuss in quite Dionysian terms the hierarchic nature of the angels, and how “the more splendid this angelic region, the closer were the angels in contact with the unveiled principles of beauty.”13 But on the whole, one must admit that the Böhmean theosophers, like Böhme himself, devote relatively little written space to the celestial hierarchies. This is not to say that the European theosophers refuse to accept a Dionysian metaphysics. But Saint-Martin writes that metaphysical questions are simply beyond what he can discuss in his time in a written work, and so one must also consider the question of historical context. Dionysius the Areopagite wrote in an age much closer to that of Christ himself, and in his day there was evidently a living authentic gnostic tradition, which he experienced through his teacher Hierotheus. The European theosophers, on the other hand, lived after nearly two millennia of Christianity, and what is more, during an era much more conducive to scientism and skepticism than to a historical gnostic church community. The primary focus of our theosophers is not on the ways that an historical church community reflects the celestial hierarchy, nor, for that matter, on the celestial hierarchy itself, but rather on the humble conversion and spiritual awakening of the reader. Indeed, this is the whole thrust of the European theosophical movement, and how it had such an enormous “underground” impact in Europe and, later, in America. For if you examine the many spiritual Protestant pietist groups that arose in Europe during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, you find one common denominator: the theosophical stream to which Weigel, Böhme, Gichtel, Arnold, and Oetinger were important tributaries.14 Consider Böhme in his book The Way to Christosophia. At first, perhaps, this little book might not appeal to the reader drawn to Böhme's cosmological

doctrines. Nonetheless, The Way to Christosophia, with its many devotional prayers—prayers upon waking up, upon dressing, upon eating, upon preparing for bed—is nothing less than an exhortation to transform the whole of one's life. Böhme often addresses his readers directly in this book, and tells them that the path outlined here is the very path that Böhme himself has followed. It is critical, Böhme tells us, that we be “in earnest resolution on the way to new birth intending to become another man,” else the words in his prayer “will be the judgment of God in you.”15 Here we see Böhme's primary focus—not only here, but in all his works, including those on cosmological or metaphysical doctrines: his work centers on the transmutation of the reader, on our realization that the soul creates in itself in this lifetime the states of heaven or hell, paradisal bliss or hellish wrath. Whereas the works of a Dionysius the Areopagite begin with the assumption that the reader has embarked on the gnostic or angelic path, those of Böhme demonstrate to unregenerate human beings their own inward possibilities for wrath or for bliss, and the urgency of conversion, repentance, and spiritual practice. Hence Böhme emphasizes in his Dialogues on the Supersensual Life that heaven or hell are not somewhere outside us, but rather are states of mind within us right now in this lifetime. Indeed, he writes, entering heaven or hell is not like going into “another world” as one goes into a house, for “there is verily no such entering in; forasmuch as Heaven and Hell are everywhere, being universally co-extended.” They are both “here present, where we are now sitting,” for heaven is “but the turning in of the Will to the Love of God. Wherever thou findest God manifesting himself in Love, there thou findest Heaven, without traveling for it so much as one foot.” Likewise, hell is but the “turning in of the Will into the wrath of God.”16 There are of course degrees to which one's Will is turned in toward the Love or the Wrath of God, and these degrees correspond to the “levels” or “mansions” of paradise or of perdition. Celestial hierarchy, implicit in Böhmean theosophy, becomes explicit in the works of, for instance, later writers like Johann Georg Gichtel.17 However, Böhme and the entire European theosophical school are far more inclined to emphasize the “one thing needful”—spiritual conversion, repentance, the metanoia, or turning of the Will to Love of God. On the whole, then, we may say that while the Dionysian celestial hierarchy is implicit in the European theosophical school, its focus is on the purification of the soul, the igniting of the “warmth in the heart” that is barmherzigkeit, or spiritual mercy, the awakening of the spiritual eye of the heart, and the illumination of the soul by the spirit, or Logos. Its focus is on repairing the inward separation between earth and heaven, as Molitor put it in his great series on the Christian Kabbala.18 For without the healing of this inward separation, without the soul's purification

and without the opening of the heart's eye, the whole great initiatory tradition represented in the work of Dionysius will remain closed to us. Sophianic mysticism figures so highly in the European theosophic tradition because it represents not only the entry into the entire spiritual understanding that we have been considering, but also brings us to it in a direct and personal way; for sophianic mysticism requires the soul's intimate relation to the divine Presence manifested in Sophia, and finally the soul's purification and transmutation. The angelic hierarchies and their presence everywhere will remain for us a closed book until we have been inwardly changed and awakened. In the history of northern European spirituality one finds the Dionysian visionary understanding recurring again and again, in writers like Eckhart and Tauler, Dante and Hadewijch and Ruysbroeck. We find it too among the later theosophers, but above all we find among them the call to the heart's awakening that gives entry into the spiritual life itself, the awakening of the angelic that begins our process of transmutation and vision, leading far beyond what we might imagine from without. 1. See Gottfried Arnold, Historie und beschreibung der Mystischen Theologie (Frankfurt: Fritschen, 1703); see also Chauncey David Ensign, “Radical German Pietism (c. 1675–1760)” (Boston University, Ph.D. Diss., 1955), pp. 135 ff. 2. See Dionysius, op. cit., CH 165B, p. 154. 3. Ibid., CH 301C, p. 178. 4. Ibid., CH 305B, p. 180. 5. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, op. cit., 10.336. 6. Dionysius, op. cit., EH 508C, p. 238. 7. Even Catholic theosopher Franz von Baader inveighed against the papacy and corruption in the church; he was, incidentally, never censured by the Vatican for this. 8. Franz Josef Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, op cit., II, p. 1, §2–3. 9. Ibid., II, p. 4, §5. 10. Ibid., II, p. 234, §366. 11. See Oetinger, Die Lehrtafel der Prinzessin Antonia, op. cit., p. 133. 12. Saint-Martin, Des erreurs et de la vérité, in Œuvres Majeures, ed. R. Amadou, op. cit., I, pp. 60–62, 132. 13. Saint-Martin, De l'esprit des choses, op. cit., I, p.53ff. 14. See Ensign, “Radical German Pietism (c. 1675-1760),” op. cit., to wit: “Boehemism represents [pietism's] most significant doctrinal principle of unity” p. 22. 15. Böhme, Christosophia, 1, §31. 16. Böhme, Von übersinnlichen Leben §36–38. 17. Indeed, with his “Engelsbrüder,” or “angelic brotherhood,” Gichtel and his friends seem to have reconstituted the Dionysian initiatory spiritual hierarchy in the eighteenth century; but we will leave an extended discussion of Gichtel and his significance to a future work. 18. See Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, op. cit., II, p. 224, §354.

Conclusion BY NOW IT WILL BE CLEAR that the vision theosophy offers is far more radical,

profound, and wide-reaching than we might have imagined at first. In essence, theosophy is a way of understanding that is central to and yet transcends Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. What Augustine said of the “heathen religions” remains true above all for theosophers—that what was true in antiquity or among the “heathen,” we recognize as true today, even if clothed in different religious form. This is unquestionably the case for our theosophers, whose numbers include such apparently disparate figures as Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Eckhart, Tauler, Hadewijch, Böhme, Gichtel, SaintMartin, and Baader, not to mention their Islamic or kabbalist counterparts, precisely because their approach to knowledge through inward vision is fundamentally one. This profound unity, we can be sure, has enormous ramifications for us today, facing as we are not only societal but ecological fragmentation and destruction. One could fairly say that modern society is adrift, a ship cut loose from its mooring, with no anchor nor even a rudder. Certainly the conditions of our cities, filled with scenes of barbarous violence and hopelessness, lead us toward a rather pessimistic view, not to mention the confusion in our educational systems, or the continuing devastation of the natural world. Both in the human and natural worlds, we see danger ahead. But our theosophers also lived in times of confusion, and saw through to the spiritual truth that brings serenity and wisdom. I would not argue that the resolution of all modern crises can be found in theosophy—not in any historical sense. Can one really imagine a mass movement toward theosophy in our own times? Nothing is impossible, of course, and there was such a movement in eighteenth century Europe. But that movement, often today called radical pietism, was essentially the collective manifestation of individuals, each of whom felt called toward spiritual experience, and who gathered together not to form institutions, but to share their experiences. In essence, theosophy is intensely personal: it is the soul's encounter with the Divine, the informing of this life with its vertical dimension. Theosophy means the individual resolution of the existential crisis. Yet it offers keys to the resolution not just of individual, but of natural crises as well. Franz von Baader wrote of “ecosophy,” by which he meant far more than we mean by “ecology.” Some indication of this is given by Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner: “Christendom, as Baader understands it, is the theocentric sanctification of Nature,

an esoteric of the Earth, a progressive Ökosophie.”1 It is to “build paradise and spread it over the whole earth,” to quote Baader himself.2 In other words, theosophy entails much more than merely studying nature's principles; it is nothing less than the revelation of nature's spiritual origin and meaning, which is sanctification. Contemporary ecology is based in quantitative science, which of course excludes a religious element. But Baader's ecosophy is centered on nature's spiritual meaning, and on the human being's role as “repairer” or redeemer of nature through spiritual praxis. I would argue that the very premises of contemporary science—to which ecology is heir—are responsible for our current ecological crises.3 To build machinery and devices without regard for whether they aid or diminish humanity's spiritual role on the earth is to build blindly; whereas Baader's ecosophy presumes that spiritual ends take precedence over material satisfactions, that scientific enquiry must be guided by spiritual vision. Likewise, theosophy offers guidance for a society in crisis: in a fragmented world, it offers a coherent and cross-cultural way of understanding the realms of the soul and spirit. It points toward the authentic and living center of JudeoChristian and Islamic culture and religion, which is made manifest in the arts and in religious life; it affirms that when this center is recognized and upheld, the other aspects of a healthy culture will organize around it. We will not solve ecological crises or social crises by applying bandages first to this, then to that wound—we must first treat the heart. If the heart is wounded, what can bandages do? We read today of crises in education and in the arts. But these are fundamentally crises of souls lacking a cultural center. Educators do not know what to teach because the external bonds of cultures have given way; artists cannot concur on what constitutes great art because cultural traditions are largely dissolved. Literature, once the songs of the soul, has now become largely mere diversion, or a chronicling of our world's fragmentation. In such an era, one suspects that theosophy has something to say—this hidden science of the soul and of nature— pointing us toward what is truly important in culture, in art, and in life. Again, I would not say that the hidden tradition is meant to sweep a society like ours—were it to do so, it would be only in a superficial, bastardized, and perverted form, one must suspect. But the hidden tradition is meant to speak to the individual of the heart's discipline. It speaks to us of how to resolve our existential crisis itself, from which all outward crises derive. Theosophy speaks to the individual of time's transcendence and of overcoming our fall into darkness, materialism, and isolation from the higher realms. This is not a message for the masses, nor of mass change. Rather, it calls us to the resolution of nothing less than our own inward crisis.

Yet such a resolution in turn cannot but affect the way we see the world. At a late twentieth-century conference at the University of St. John of Jerusalem, Henry Corbin spoke of the “combat for the soul of the world.” The soul of the world, or Sophia, is mediatrix between heaven and earth, between Creator and the created; and we see in our day a combat—as in the day of our theosophers, but far more intense—between materialism and the realms of the spirit. Corbin speaks of the “urgency of sophiology” precisely because sophiology mediates between an outward science and a science of the soul, between rationalism and its unutterable transcendence, between our present confused world and the serene delight of the spirit. We may even speak of the “knights of the holy Sophia,” for it is not a matter of an external war, but of an inner combat within each of us between that which longs to be reunited with the supernal light of God, and that which clings to the desireself, and to a world in constant flux that nonetheless gives the illusion of permanence. This battle is waged within us, and to it are devoted the major spiritual texts of Christianity, from Dionysius the Areopagite's writings to the Eastern Orthodox collection of works called the Philokalia. The theosophers focus unremittingly on the primacy of the individual inner combat, on the soul's transmutation and the spirit's revelation. Yet we may also speak in outward terms of the “combat for the soul of the world.” For surely there is a combat between a modern society that has apparently lost all sense of the sacred, and a theosophical worldview that recognizes the earth as a revelation of paradise. Surely now—given our era in which even the oceans and the air, not to mention the earth with its forests and rivers, are all endangered —surely now more than ever before there is clearly also an outer battle between those who affirm the sacredness of the earth, and those who deny it. This is not merely a matter of one group overcoming another. In such a battle, victory can only be won by a triumph of truth and of spiritual vision. Perhaps I can best convey what I mean with the startling affirmation of a modern theosopher—who is certainly basing himself on the whole range of theosophical teachings from Christian to Mazdaean to Gnostic to Muslim—that the earth is an angel.4 This is what is meant by the term “soul of the world.” We encounter this angelic presence not on the ratiocinative plane, still less in the sensory realm, but in an intermediate realm that is precisely the world of the soul, where we meet in inward vision the Angelic presences. While to ordinary perception we are beings in the world, in the intermediate realm, the world is in our soul, experienced as presence. We may yet say more. For we have seen that among our theosophers there is a religious eros, a chivalrous plighting of one's troth with the spiritual Beloved. This is true for men and women across history, who could not have known of one

another through historical transmission, but whose experiences bespeak a profound individuality and unity. According to this tradition, to plight one's troth with the archetypal angelic presence is to accept one's authentic spiritual destiny. As Corbin writes, “because she is the archetype, the guardian angel who guides and inspires the life of the believer, she is also his judge, she who reveals to him the degree to which his earthly existence has satisfied the most personal law of his being, in the living expression of it.”5 This means that this angelic presence, Sophia—the glory and presence of God— is recognized by the soul as its own origin and purpose, its destiny and its judge. In her, the soul recognizes itself as it is in truth. Hence the angel may say to the soul: “I am in person the faith you have professed and she who inspired it in you, I am she for whom you answered and she who guided you, who comforted you and who now judges you, for I am in person the Image set before you since the birth of your being, and the Image which, finally, you yourself desired.”6 Every soul, our theosophers tell us, has a choice. It may choose either to realize or to ignore its celestial image and destiny—the angel. Corbin writes: “It is not in the power of a human being to destroy his celestial Idea; but it is in his power to betray it, to separate himself from it, to have, [at death] nothing face to face with him but the abominable and demonic caricature of his ‘I’ delivered over to himself without a heavenly sponsor.”7 Here we begin to approach the very heart of the “inner combat” and the meaning of spiritual chivalry itself. Throughout recorded history—which is, after all, but a fleeting moment in the passing of great aeons—there have been those who have recognized the meaning of spiritual chivalry and the true significance of the visionary or imaginal faculty in humankind. In fact, and perhaps as a startling compensation for the spiritual poverty of our age, some of the greatest representatives of or initiators into this spiritual chivalry have appeared during the modern era—we are thinking of such visionaries as Böhme, Gichtel, Baader and, more recently, Corbin. When we enter into this community, we enter into an atemporal communion, a fellowship of souls, a spiritual confederacy that is not bound by recorded history or the crises of our times. This community is drawn together by paraclesis, by the descent and working of the Holy Spirit. Many traditions speak of a sacred, supratemporal community— one thinks here of the “hidden kingdom” of Dzambhala in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition—and in the Christian tradition this supratemporal community, sometimes called the “order of Melchizedek,” is realized on earth through the working of the Holy Spirit. It is the secret of those remarkable theosophic communities in Germany, the Netherlands, England, and Pennsylvania from the seventeenth century onward, those communities who forecast the human potential for living together on this earth in holiness—reuniting humanity, nature, and God, and

realizing anew the primordial golden age. Perhaps it is here above all that theosophy can speak to us. For although we live in confusing and even dangerous times, our theosophers remind us that the only true authority is that of the heart, the spiritual heart, and the only true betrothal that of the soul to its spiritual origin. Spiritual Robinson Crusoes, alone in an age of confusion and error, those drawn to theosophy will nonetheless continue to find in it their spiritual meaning, for it is not a matter of historical continuity but of the eternal validation in the heart, the call of Sophia. 1. Baader, Erötische philosophie (Frankfurt: Insel, 1991), p. 25. 2. Ibid., p. 25; Sämtliche Werke, 11, p.119. 3. See Philip Sherrard, The Eclipse of Man and Nature (Stockbridge, Mass.: Lindisfarne Press, 1987) for more on the origins and false premises of scientism. 4. See Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, op. cit., pp. 3 ff., passim. 5. Ibid., p. 43. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough to those who wish to understand European theosophy. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

Appendix THEOSOPHICAL WORKS THERE IS CERTAINLY A WEALTH of theosophical literature from which to draw, so

much so that one wonders what would best reveal the theosophical path as the theosophers themselves saw it. I have here chosen to include extracts from two English theosophers whose work, directly in the stream of Jacob Böhme, exemplifies very well this extraordinary tradition. The first extract is from perhaps the most popular of all the theosophic works, being from Dr. John Pordage's friend and fellow theosopher Thomas Bromley, whose writing was very influential in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century. This book, later published in the New World, was actually written and first published in the late seventeenth century in England, and exemplifies extraordinarily well what one may call the theosophic “path of knowledge” or gnosis. Bromley's gnostic path here bears striking resemblances to meditation instructions one finds also in Mahayana Buddhism. The second extract is from the conclusion of Jane Leade's The Enochian Walks with God, likemost of her writings chiefly a record or recital of her visionary experiences, coupled with her compassionate insistence that all beings must ultimately reach salvation from suffering. Thus these two works reveal on the one hand visionary compassion, and on the other direct spiritual illumination, complementing one another, and providing as good an introduction to the richness of theosophical literature as one could ask for. I hope to publish many more such writings as opportunity permits, including a complete edition of Bromley's remarkable little book. From: THE WAY TO THE SABBATH OF REST, OR THE SOUL'S PROGRESS IN THE WORK OF THE NEW BIRTH

Thomas Bromley I have written this experimental Discourse of the New Birth, not for the Wise and Rich, who think they see, and enjoy enough, but for the Poor in Spirit, who enquiring the Way to Zion, are sensible of their Defects, and breath after a Supply. Let none then come with Prejudice; for that will give a false Tincture to the Eye of the Mind, and prevent the sight of Truth, by a Prepossession that ‘tis Error. If any have attained, and enjoy as much, or more than is here expressed, let them bless God for his Goodness, both to themselves and me: If not, let them not be ashamed

to learn and practise more than they have already; for, teach a wise Man, and he will be yet wiser. Prov. 9.9 And ‘tis no diminishing of Esteem, to grow in true Knowledge, or Disparagement of Age, to gain Wisdom from those that are young; because true Wisdom is the Gift of God, who is no Respecter of Persons, bestowing his Gifts on whom he pleaseth. But think not, I have here chalked out a Way for every one to walk in; for I have only wrote my own Experience: And I know there may be great Variety in Gods Works upon Souls, so that none are to be confined to one exact Path; though all are to be informed, that we must turn, and become as little Children, and be wholly dead with Christ, before we can be as the Angels in the Resurrection, delighting our selves in the Light and Life of Eternity: Therefore the perfect Death should be aimed at by all; for nothing less can fit us for Glory: For, how can any Imperfection enter there, where is nothing but Perfection? or any Thing of Darkness dwell with him, who is Light, and in whom there is no Darkness at all? I have written this small Discourse, as believing it may be instrumental to undeceive Many, who are wandering in the Labyrinths of Error, yet seek the true Way; and to confirm, strengthen, and direct Others, who are making their Way through the Cross to the Crown of Life. And truly this Subject is of great Concernment to all, because all are capable of the New-Birth; and none without it can ever be happy. To mistake this Work, is very dangerous, because it is the Passage to eternal Rest. The highest heaven is situate in the large Plains of Eternity; yet the Way to it is very narrow: At the Entrance the sharp Sword of Circumcision is placed; on the left Hand there's a Gulf of Fire, on the right Hand a deep Water; at the End there stands a Cherubin with a flaming Sword, whose Office is to cut off the Reliques of all Corruption from the Soul; so that the least Grain of Selfishness or Flesh cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The Spirit of Man is totally to be inhabited by Christ: There's not one Weed to be left there. We are to be stript of all the Riches of corrupt Nature, before we can pass through the last Gate into the City. A naked Spirit quickly enters; hence that of Christ: Blessed are the Poor in Spirit; for their's is the Kingdom of God. An empty Spirit God will fill: For God is Love, and delights (through his Son) to communicate of his own Fulness to all that can receive it. The Soul can not be emptyed, but through Regeneration; not filled, if not first emptyed. We part with Darkness, Vanity, and Lust; We receive Light, Substance, and Love. A complete Exchange brings complete Happiness. How few are willing to sell all for Christ! How many Distinctions are created by Reason to avoid the Cross and Death of Christ! But it is very dangerous to take up such Principles, that may indulge any Part of that which must be destroyed. It may make us fall short of Heaven, when we expect to enter into it. ‘Tis far more safe to be too strict than too remiss: But the Mean is best; which (I believe) is here somewhat clearly discovered.

—Farewell We are strictly to watch over the Phantasie, which may easily err in the particular [be drawn to pleasant Images]. . . . For. . . by such Working of Imagination, we come to slacken the Exercise of the Cross, both upon Imagination itself, which is continually to be restrained, and as much as possible reduced in Subjection to the illuminated Understanding, and also upon the Relicks of the old Man in any other Faculty. Seeing there may be so much Danger indulging Imagination, even in these pure Objects, we shall find it very requisite, oft to cease from all Imagination, and to act no Thought upon any thing in the Heights above, or the Depths below. I say no thought: Thoughts being but Images, which reach not the Essence of spiritual Objects. But this Practice excludes not that general, constant, intellectual Sight and Apprehension of God, which the Soul, (thus far arrived) enjoys. Therefore I speak not here to those who have not attained a continual, habitual Apprehension of the divine Presence; for if they should strive to cease from their good thoughts, they might fall into a Kind of Stupidity, far worse. But I here give Directions to those who having attained constant habitual Communion with God, press after Perfection. And certainly there is no better Way than from the Annihilation of all thoughts, and the Retiring from the Phantasie into the silent Mind, which more fits the Soul for divine Irradiation and spiritual Imbraces; for the more quiet we are, the less Resistance we make against a supernatural Impression, and the easier we perceive the Beginning of divine Attraction, and so yield ourselves to it. And truly, when the Soul hath attained the Power to throw itself (as oft as is meet) into the silent super-imaginary State (which must be attained by the habitual constant Practice of it) it will then come to internal Openings, and intellectual Sights of the invisible World, and many times receive quick'ning Glances from the Eternity, with those strong Infusions of Love, that bring the Soul many Times near to a Rapture. And truly, the Enjoyment we have in this State, fully recompenseth all that self-denial, we pass through to the Attainment of it. Here then the false Prophet (which is irregular Imagination) comes to be conquered, being commanded by the inward Mind, that now oft draws up the Soul into the Paradisical World, from the Motion of Phantasy and Imagination. Imagination being now overcome, and the animal man mortified, the Soul cannot but clearly discover its Growth into the Image of God, and the Resurrection of the Angelical Man, which now evidently perceives its self springing up in a new Principle, above the Spirit of the World, and its mixt Laws: And here we come to own and receive new Relations, contracted in our progress in the New-Birth, and our Tendency from the Spirit of the World toward Eternity. But we shall here find a nearer Union and Communion among those, who have

been by one particular Instrument begotten into the Life of Christ, having a peculiar Vein of spiritual Enjoyment running through them; which others, who received not that particular Tincture, do not partake of. And had we lived in the Apostles Times, we should have seen this among the primitive Christians. . . . [for] amongst those who are thus peculiarly united, we shall see some more closely knit in spiritual Agreement than others, and essenced into one anothers Spirits; as may appear by that great Union which Christ had with St. John, and that particular Affection he bore towards him. For Grace and the Work of Regeneration do not destroy our natural Signatures, only rectifie them by that Heavenly Principle, which reduceth all our Spirits into the highest Perfection they are capable of, by their primary Model and Frame. Hence it appears that they are more truly Brethren (even according to natural Nature) who thus agree, and correspond in their essences, than they who are ordinarily called so, who are many times very contrary signatur'd. And the reason of this assertion is, in that, when our Natures come to their perfect Rectitude and Restoration by Union with God; this secret Propension and harmonious closing with those that are like essenced, remains; whereas from meer natural Relation there nothing continues; though in those who are related, there may be this Agreement too. But meer Relation is not the Cause of it, but that secret Law of Influence, which God hath established to Signature some one Way, some another; some in much Agreement and Proportion; others more differing, tho' all representing something of that Variety, which is wrapt up in the Unity of the eternal Nature. I could not but give an Hint of this, because it may open some things concerning Relations, which may lie dark to those who know not the deepest Ground and Root of them. But I shall proceed to the further Opening of those Enjoyments, which flow from Union with new Relations, which come now to be very dear, because the Ground of the Relation is so pure and good, being not of Man, but of God. Here we shall experience the happy Effects of our pure Union, which produces that Divine Love that none can know, but those that enjoy it. But this will be strongest, where there is most Harmony and Agreement in Spirits and Natures; because the eternal Tincture works upon and thro' every thing according to its Nature and Capacity: Hence we come to enjoy more from some, than others; and some from us receive more than others. But that brotherly Love and Friendship, which now comes to be renewed in Spirit, far transcends any Enjoyments meerly natural: And whatsoever we parted with, in dying to all earthly Affection and its Objects, we regain in the Resurrection of our Spirits, in this pure Love, which is not Affection, but something above it; not consisting in sudden Outflowings and Eruptions, but in a constant sweet Inclination and secret Propension of the Spirit, to those which are one with it, in the pure Life: And this Good-Willingness is so great, that from it the

Soul could give its Life [or if there were any thing dearer than Life] for its Brother; and choose Sufferings, to free Others from them. In this state there will be a sympathizing in Joy and Sorrow; and where the Union is eminently great, there may be some Knowledge of each others Conditions at a Distance, which comes from their being essenced in each others Spirits and Tinctures, which is the Cause of this invisible Sympathy. And they that are in this near Union, feel a mutual Indwelling in the pure Tincture and Life of each other: And so, the further we come out of the animal Nature, the more universal we are, and nearer both to Heaven, and to one another in the Internal; and the further instrumentally to convey the pure Streams of the heavenly Life to each other, which no external Distance can hinder: For the Divine Tincture (being such a spiritual Virtue, as Christ imprinted into the Heart of the Disciples with whom he talked after his Resurrection, making their Hearts to burn within them) is able to pierce through all Distance, and reach those that are far absent; because it is not corporeal, nor subject to the Laws of Place or Time. Now this is known to some by Experience, who in Absence enjoy such Influences of Spirit and secret Insinuations of spiritual Virtue from one another, that they cannot but value this spiritual Communion above all Enjoyments in the World; which compared to it, seem but like the basest Metal to the purest Gold. . . . And though some (who think they have passed far in the New-Birth) have experienced this; and may therefore look upon it as a thing not much to be regarded; yet let all such know that the Reason may be, in that they never yet passed clear out of the Spirit of the World, nor overcame their animal Nature by a complete Circumcision and Renunciation; and so were not capable to receive any extraordinary Enjoyment of Visions, Revelations, In-speaking, Prophecies, Unions of Spirits; and being not come into this inward Wilderness, where the Soul is fitted for such Things, and where these spiritual Temptations arise to try it: Whereas being in the outward sensitive Spirit and detained in Flesh and Blood, as Israel in Egypt, the inward spiritual Faculties of Sensation lie lock'd up, and can have no Knowledge of those spiritual Operations and Enjoyments. But they that have come so far in the Work of the New-Birth, as to be acquainted with, and to live with these things, must of Necessity die to them, and come to be nothing in them, given up all to God. . . . After this Death upon the mystical Cross, the Soul in Conformity to Christ's Progress, passed through a State analogous to that of Christ's Descent into Hell, being that Principle, which stands as a smoaking Furnace before the Entrance of Paradise, into which none can pass, but those that are dead with Christ, and washed from the Pollution of Flesh and Spirit by the Blood of the Lamb: For whosoever retain the Spots of Guilt, will be kept back by God's Wrath, which in this Principle burns like Fire.

This also is spread (at least potentially, as to its Root) through the whole World; yet invisible to the outward Eye. In this the Dragon and all evil Angels and Spirits are; for Jud. Epist. Vers 6 the Lord reserved the fallen Angels in everlasting Chains under Darkness. . . . Now though the fallen Angels are every where tempting the saints, yet they are always in the chains of this invisible Darkness, which could not be, if this were not every where in this World: whence Ephes. 6, 12, it is called, The Darkness of this World. Of which the chief Devils are the Kosmokraatores or worldly Rulers. And although evil Spirits receive some Refreshment by Mixing with the Souls of Men, which are cloathed with the animal sensitive Nature, and live in the Spirit of the World; yet they are still in Chains under this Darkness, as in their proper Center. The dark World and Hell is made up of spiritual Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, not united and harmonious in sweet Proportion, for then they would be Paradise; but as in Discord and Disproportion, working in contrary Motions through the Absence of that pure balsamic Oil, which flowing from the Heart of God, makes Paradise so delightful. . . . Now Hell or the dark World may be called the Heart of the Earth. First, In allusion to that large Sphere or Lake of Fire, which according to desCartes and some learned Hermetick Philosophers, is seated in and about the Center of the Earth. Secondly, In that according to the eternal Gradation of Beings and Principles, it may be said to be within, in the middle or Center of it; the Earth and all terrestrial matter being more outward, in the circumference. And though Hell is called Matt. 8.12 To skotos to exoteron, the utter or more outward Darkness, yet that's spoken in relation to Paradise and the Eternal World, not in reference to the Earth and this World. Now Christ having passed through this Principle into Paradise, draws us all after Him. . . . But we must know, that in our Progress we may many Times be cast into Terror and Anguish; yea feel Hell awakened in us, and afterwards by delivered by some influence of Christ's Spirit, and Infusions of his Love, and yet be short of this Resurrection. . . . [until] we descend thither without Guilt, in Child-like Innocency, with the Candle of the Lord in our Hands, which is the Pillar of Fire, which alone can lead us through this night into the Day of Paradise. . . . By this time the soul experienceth the happy State of being freed from the Principle of Selfness, in Returning to God from the Spirit of the World, and sees the real Progress it hath made, from the outward thro' the inward dark World into the internal Paradise, where Adam lived before his Fall, and where Christ conversed betwixt the Time of his Resurrection and Ascension. In this spiritual Region, the Curse is not manifest, there being a perpetual Spring. Here are the Idea's of all visible Bodies, in much Beauty and appealing Lustre. Here are those

bright Clouds, which overshadowed Christ on the Mount, and when he was received up into Heaven; in which he will descend, when he comes again to judge the Earth. Now the Soul, having attained to the state of this angelical Garden, knows what it is to turn and become as a Child and to attain a secret and quiet Life of Innocency and pure Love, free from those Passions and evil Affections it had formerly groaned under. And here it experienceth what it is to be born of Water and the Spirit, as a necessary Qualification to do the Will of God: And sees its Conception in the Womb of Wisdom, (which is our new mother) who here distills the milk of the eternal Word, (from the Eternal World) to feed and nourish the Soul. Whither it now travels, as fixing its sight upon that pure River of Water of Life, clear as Chrystal, proceeding out of the Throne of God, and of the Lamb. But now likewise the Soul lives the life of spiritual Vegetation, and grows like a Willow by the Water-Courses, or a Lilly in the Garden of the Lord, being continually refreshed with the Dews of the eternal Heavens and quickned by the Beams of the Sun of Rightesouness, and cherished with the enlivening Gates of the Holy Spirit. All that are in this State, are like the harmless Flowers in a fruitful Garden springing from the same Ground, yet differing in Colour, Virtue, Smell, and Growth, according to their several Natures and Times of Planting; yet all serving to express the Power, Love, and Wisdom of their Creator, without any Strife or Contention for Eminent Place or Esteem, being all satisfied with what God affords them, and their different Capacities fit them. O what a sweet Harmony is here! In a word, this is a Life of Stillness, Silence, and spiritual Simplicity, in which the Soul turning its Eyes from Nature, looks directly forward to Eternity, and strongly breathes after its Arrival there. . . . Here the internal Faculties of spiritual Sensation are more opened, and give a greater Enjoyment of the first angelical life hich was in Paradise: And we attain the Use and Restoration of these Faculties through our Growth in Regeneration, and as a Priviledge purchased for us by Christ: So that all Saints shall partake of them, either here or in Heaven, according as their Attainments are. In this State, our internal Eye is more unlocked, to behold the paradisical World, with those luminous Objects and Inhabitants that are in it. . . . In this State likewise we oft smell the hot Perfumes of Paradise and are pierced through with most delightful Odours, which infuse themselves into the tincture of the Heart, create Delight, and give a plain Feeling and Sense of the Presence of Paradise and that invisible light World, where there is no Curse or Corruption. And in a Word, here we feed upon the heavenly Manna, Angel's Food, which is living Bread, that quickens, enlivens, and corroborates the Soul. . . . Thus all the spiritual Faculties of Sensation, are in this Dispensation more opened, and more freely

entertained with their peculiar Objects. But yet we are not to rest in these Enjoyments, nor to go build Tabernacles with them; but to look forward, and to press after perfect Union with the divine Nature in the eternal World: Where is our true Sabbath of Rest, in the Vision of God, and the perfect Fruition of his Love forever. By this Time the Soul begins to draw near the eternal World, in its fixed Station and habitual Enjoyment, lying under the showers of Love which descend from the Heart of God and the Bosom of Sophia: Here the blessed Tincture of Jesus coming so powerfully, as though it streamed from his glorified Humanity, flows into the Soul like a River of Oyl mixed with Fire, which affords that unutterable Delight, which cannot be conceived by those that know it not experimentally. Here Christ saith: Drink, yea, drink abundantly, O Beloved! . . . .The Soul becomes filled, swallowed up, and transported into a kind of Rapture, not being able to express those Pleasures, Gusts, Imbraces, Love Extasies, which are then piercing through it. And in this State, there is such holy Commerce in pure Love, betwixt God and the Soul, so there is between the Soul and other Saints; who cannot but wonderfully own and love one another, and delight in that Likeness of God, which they see in each other. . . . Here we bear one another's Burdens, and so fulfil the royal Law of Love; for we can keep nothing as our own, but what we heartily communicate and make our Brethren Partakers of, because they are Part of our selves: Here we come to practice that heavenly Law of loving our Neighbours as our Selves, and of doing God's Will on Earth, as it is done in Heaven; for which End Man and the visible World were brought forth. . . . And this is the End of Christ's Coming into the World of Man's Nature, even to restore it from the Discord of Sin and Wrath, to the Harmony of pure Love and Righteousness. The Soul being brought thus far in the Heart-work by the Power of Jesus, through the Practice of the Cross in Self-denial and Resignation, lives in habitual springings up of the Love in the Centre of its Spirit, where the Work is near finished; the Will being constantly drawn toward the Heart of God, in the Chariot of Love. And in this State the Soul is completely fitted for Ascension, and the Opening of the eternal World, which is part of the Head-work; for in that the spiritual Eye is seated, which is capable to see and to know the Wonders of Eternity. And though some in Rapture may be taken up into that World, long before the Work in their Hearts, Wills, and Affections is finished; yet such must afterward go through the work in Nature, of rectifying all their Properties, and of bringing their Wills into Death, and pure Resignation, that so they may be fitted for the Birth of the Love. . . . The Ascension, after this Work of Regeneration in the Heart, is more weighty,

and more tending to Perfection, than any Rapture of Transportation before, can be; because by such a Work the Will is brought up into a constant Union with Christ, which by Ascension is more confirmed and established, the Heart through that, being more raised above all mortal corruptible Objects, and more reduced to a passive silent Waiting for the Opening of the eternal Temple, whence the infallible Voice proceeds, and where the great High-Priest sparkles with the most bright Beams of divine Glory. But the manner of the Soul's Ascending from the Internal to the Eternal World, is very remarkable and wonderful. It cannot of itself move one Degree upward: That same Hand of Power which carried it downward to see the Wonders of God in the Depths, must carry it upward to see his Wonders in the high Places above. So that in this, the Soul is meerly passive; The Spirit of Christ being the Agent which descending with an overshadowing Virtue upon it, wraps it up swiftly, and in a strong Force, (by which the Soul's Acts are for a while suspended) translates it, as it were, in a straight Line from the inward toward the Inmost. In this Translation or Ascension, what Wonders are seen and felt, I shall not particularly express: But in general, this I must declare, that there is an unutterable Power transmuting the Soul in this Ascent, which first comes into the Womb of the invisible Worlds (out of which they issue) in which it finds a universal Silence or Stillness; and above which it discovers a great Glory, inhabited by glorified Spirits, who live there in perpetual Harmony and Joy. . . . To be taken into this, is a further Degree of Ascension, being the second Mansion in the eternal World; where Myriads of Angels attend those Commands, which come out of the most holy Place, which is the last and highest Mansion in that World, answering to Love as the second to Life, and the first to Light, corresponding with the threefold Manifestation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But to speak much of the two last, requires greater Experience than I have yet enjoyed. Neither is it expedient to describe the first, nor those Wonders which are in it, in Regard of that Blindness and general Enmity which is in Men's Hearts against the deep Mysteries of God in invisible Nature. But after Ascension into the first, the Soul becomes so much imbued with the Sense and Apprehension of those spiritual Mysteries, it was there acquainted with and hath such a clear View of the outward World and of the misery that most there lye in, that it cannot but weep over the greatest Part of Men as Christ did over Jerusalem, as seeing them exceeding ignorant of Eternity, and so of their own everlasting Happiness; and involved in the Spirit of the outward World, where the Prince of the World holds them captive. . . . After this also the Soul begins to discover the evil Properties and Habits of Men's Spirits, very much portrayed in their Faces, discovering in their very Aspects and Signatures those bestial and devilish Passions by which they are swayed and captivated within; so that the Eye

many times affects the Heart with Grief, in viewing the sad Estate of Souls estranged from the Life of Innocency, and pure Virginity, and imprisoned in the dark Chains of corrupt Flesh and Blood. Here likewise the Soul is exceeding passive, and much comprehended in deep abstract Silence, by which it much enjoys unutterable Pleasures, and Gusts from the inward Ground of Eternity, having much Sense of the Nearness of that Kingdom where the angelical Thrones sing Hallelujahs, and sport themselves in the innocent Delights of their eternal Spheres and luminous Mansions. And as the soul passeth from the first Mansion toward the second and third, Jesus of Nazareth (in his glorified Humanity) begins to give great Demonstrations of his Presence, and to visit the inward Man with frequent and very great Impressions; so that it cannot doubt but that he is sometimes personally present, infusing the Tincture of his glorified Body into the Heart, which is sweeter than Honey, and burns like Oil and Fire mixed together. And truly this Dispensation is exceeding comfortable and very weighty; for the Discovery of Christ's Presence sometimes swallows up the Soul in unspeakable Joy, being transmuted with the Breath of his Mouth, which is most odifrous; and quickened by the Touch of his Body, which is most delightful; and pierced through with the Sound of his Voice, which is most harmonious and powerful; causing the Soul deeply to admire the Grace of God, and to cry out with St. Thomas: My Lord and my God! In this Dispensation Christ shows very powerfully, the Necessity of his Mediation, as God-Man; and that whatever we receive, is through Him, who standing in the deepest Union with the Father, conveys all Light, Life, and Love from himself unto us, who at the Time of the Restitution of all Things, Acts 3:21, will again breath the holy Ghost on his chosen Vessels, of which those in the primitive Time received but the first Fruits. He also reveals in this state, how the Mystery of Iniquity (even the Spirit of Anti-Christ) works in most sects of Christians; carrying them either to deny or slight the great Mystery of his mediatory Office: Or by Misconceptions to cry up his Blood and Merits, to the Prejudice of Mortification, Self-denial, and the imitating of his most innocent Life as our Pattern to walk by in this World. Moreover, in this Dispensation, the Soul enjoys very great Openings of Eternity in the Heart, which are different from Openings in the Head, where the inward senses of hearing and seeing are resident; for whatever in a divine Sight (Eternity opening in the Head) we clearly and distinctly view and behold, the same (in a Heart-Opening) we really feel and handle in a spiritual Way, for in it we come experimentally to know and perceive the Motions and administering Influences of Angels: the Virtue and Efficacy of Christ's universal and particular body: the Harmony, Love, and Enjoyment of the Spirits of just Men made perfect, with much of the glory and Majesty of that Kingdom prepared for us from the Beginning of the World, into which none can enter but those, who have forsaken all for Christ,

and devested themselves of all the Vestments of Corruption, and have put on the Robe of Innocency, which is the Garment of true Virginity, in which they will not be ashamed to stand before the Son of Man, in his Kingdom. Then be ye wise Immortal Sparks of Fire And strive to get you Garments of pure Light In which you may from mortal Dregs retire Into that Glory, where's no Spot of Night. O do but weigh how swiftly Time goes by, And how all earthly Pleasures, rise and fall As soon as they a Being have, they die, And nothing can their hasty Joy recall. But when the outward Garment is withdrawn, Eternity presents its constant Face, In which all Actions clearly will be shown, Which ever have been wrought in Time's Short Race But such alone can there possessed be Of Happiness, that have been born again: Others will feel the Pangs of Misery, Who in their Wills Corruption still retain. Then die to Sin, while on the Earth you live, So after Death, true Life you shall receive. (London: 1650; Germantown: C. Sower ed., 1759) From: THE ENOCHIAN WALKS WITH GOD Jane Leade The Manner of Christ's Appearing A Dialogue betwixt Christ, and the Spirit of my mind, which was upon enquiry, whether I might not be initiated into a present Dowry, and Spouse to my Lord, to partake of the Heavenly possessions, which he himself is inheritor of, as the Father's Heir. And it was replied unto me, Yea, surely, it will so follow to be, to the soul that

has put on the deiformation of Christ the Lord, such hath a good and right claim to his Person and possessions. And when thus believed, and apprehended, liberty is granted for to draw out of this stock, and treasury, as the present occasion shall require; for out of this fulness an emptying into the most Holy and Sanctified Vessel may be most easily, proportional to its growth and degree. For my Lord said to me, You are not ignorantly to suppose that I willingly do hold back from that which stands in Unity with me: But there is a cause if any stop be. Then replied my spirit, Oh my Lord! Let it be given to me to know, and understand where the obstructions have lain? Answered I was, That the veil of not knowing, and not believing the things reported of, which do of right belong unto my virgin Spouse; also wanting are holy boldness and courage to come freely, and take what is minbe, and make it your own; for be it known to thee, It is far from Me, to ingross to Myself; what the Father hath so much, and liberally bestowed on Me, was it not that I might give out as plenteously? Therefore come with full assurance of faith to me, and ye shall receive grace for grace, wisdom for wisdom, love for love, and power for power; as I have obtained, and received of my Father in Heaven, so you from Me all answerably. Pondering in my spirit these words of my Lord's I replied: How shall it be, thaat a spirit should thus be mingled, and made . . . pure . . . with Thee, so as nothing of itself for to be? Answered it was. This should be effected by dying out of creaturely sensation, whereby a vacancy of place, for the Holy Ghost to rise, and spring, and move, as One Entire Spiritual Body within; for so it will be when ever there is a cessation, and a rest, from the whirling thoughts and motions, which from the outward astral birth is. This will be the manner of my coming in this latter day, to stand upon the earth, which thus emptied is, and refined by the fire that never dieth; which fire is that seed of God, that shall multiply itself, to bring your Christ forth, numerously to overspread this world, till all shall be formed anew. Thus shall each one become a Christ (or an Annointed) from this deified root opening within their own soul. And when this life of Christ shall out-grow its minority, and come to maturity of wisdom and strength; then it shall be known what you are made heirs to and shall possess, while in the age of time you do remain; for Christ fully grown will bring such gain, as trains of heavenly powers will open and fly like lightning, that shall reach from one nation to another, by which the dark corners of the earth shall become light. This is the new and living model which your Lord-Christ will now begin to

manifest himself in; therefore hereunto, let the holy anointed ones be ever waiting for me, till power come over all that is nature and creaturely spirit. Seeing I have (Oh my Lord) liberty of speech farther to proceed for enquiry into this into this deep condescending love of Thine, what upon my spirit do move, which is, How the ardent soul, that so great a lover of thee is, may have frequent admittance into thy Council-chamber, to know, hear, and learn what may be conducible to such an high degree of Unity, as hath been mentioned by Thee; for thou art so over-clothed with Greatness and Majesty, that it is no light or easy thing to maintain such accesses unto thee, as required is in so high an import as this is: for to know the secrets that do concern the Kingdom of Things, and my joy and glory in Thee? O my Lord, be pleased in this to satisfy me. Which was answered most sweet and mildly of my Lord, in these words: “O thou soul of mine! thou hast searched deep for to find a path of life that few have found, because it is all holy ground where none but spirits that have put on my spiritual body can ascend, and keep their feet steady in this track, which I to God the Father did freely pass; and so may you, as I in you this risen-body shall quicken up, that so, as hereby you may know it is not my Personal Glory, that shall prevent such spirits, in this their humble and love attempt: for I your Lord do well know it is but expedient you should thus keep up your acquaintance with me; for great will be your advantage hereby, in taking and receiving, from such fresh and wonderful supplies of wisdom, and knowledge in the Heavenly mysteries, as shall satisfy, and quiet the mind in the midst of an unquiet and disturbing world. And now I have informed you, in what you are privileged in, take all care to keep this way of the Spirit all free and clear, that your flight not be stopped; so then you will keep your dwelling securely above with me in the Heavens, and need not be careful what happeneth in the world beneath: for your mountain-situation in God shall never be moved. Therefore only happy unutterably are they who know me thus for to be their new living and ascending way, that as with my Spiritual Body, they may go in and out, taking what is for their present use, which they may have from me all free, as coming in the faith of sanctity.” Now having taken in these communications from my Lord, I found a precious feeding hereupon, and did feel such a spreading and quickening life come upon me, as if all were filled with Christ in every part, which may be compared to Elijah's stretching himself upon the dead child, which was made alive thereby. Thus the Lord Christ draws a lively draught of Himself in every part of the soul, and nourisheth it with his own Royal Blodd, which runneth through every vein, by

which we know we have put on Christ in his Resurrection-spirit, and inward body, to which perfect thing coming, redemption is finished. Highly blessed are those that shall arrive hereunto. By all these manifestations, I see the Day of Love is breaking out, to compass the whole earth, and Christ will no longer a stranger be; for so he doth prophesy in me, That in the Holy Ghost, he will in this last age of the world more wonderfully appear; therefore I am pressed in spirit to excite all that love, and long for to see, feel, and know Him as a present counsellor and comforter, that they would thus prepare by pureness of heart and mind, waiting for this Love-Star to rise, and multiply itself to numberless stars of love and power, that may a heavenly host be, to proclaim the glory of Christ's Kingdom. Even so come, thou Mighty King of Glory, and make us kings to reign over all that of the earthly life, so as redeemed by Thee, thou Lamb of God, to whom the Hallelujahs is given.

A Post-Script being a Question put to the Author, which is this, viz. Q. GOD, being so pure, holy, and good in Himself, how comes Evil and Sin to be awakened, since God is the original whence all created Beings have proceeded? As (now) both angels, and all rational-creatures are infected therewith all. As this was answered privately, so it is thought necessary and serviceable (for the public satisfaction of all in general) to be inserted here, being of a weighty concern for to be resolved in (which is not from the reach of man's knowledge or wisdom, but from the Revelation of the Spirit of Christ so given in, and in thiswise opened) viz: A. That the great and mighty God and creator had all principles and centres, both of light and darkness in Himself; with good and evil, death and life. But all of these (tho' seeming contrary) were bounded in Unity and Harmony: so that the darkness did not mingle to eclipse the light; nor the evil to lessen and diminish the good; or the death to be hurtful to the life. The Divine Wisdom kept all in their place and station unviolated in Himself. But when the might of God procreated, and generated out of Himself angels of that kind who kept not their first station, they derived from their Creator all essences, both in the light, and in the darkness, and were very noble, potent, and great. But being (now) distinct, and apart from their original root (The Being of God) they found a power in themselves to awaken what principles or essence they would (standing in a free-liberty, either to the good, or to the evil) but not being watchful to keep all in our bounds in a meek humility; a sinful disorder brake forth, and the Luciferian-spirits got against the Creator, who, (thereupon) turned them out of the

Pure-Angelical principles, so as they must remain apostates from God, till their number of punishment shall be finished. Now, from hence came the infection of all mankind, these fall'n angels envying that new and heavenly image. For God, after this, made and brought forth (to replenish and fill up the void and empty spaces of the light-world) man, whom he had created in their room: upon which they did conspire, how they might involve this new-created-being in the same fact of disobedience with themselves, for they were subtle knowing-spirits, and understood better than Adam, of what consistency of principles he stood in; and that (through temptation set on) the hidden essence of evil might be awakened in him; for he was essenced both in the good and evil; and so, became more easily corrupted and defiled. Thus we given the enquirer an answer to the Question, How sin at first came in. Now it remains to let you know how this poison of sin (that hath infected all of Adam's posterity) shall be allayed and expell'd. The original cure hereof is so well known, that I need not set that forth, being generally believed that Christ came in the flesh to be a propitiation for the sins committed in the flesh. But now a deeper thing than this I have to declare and kame known as thus. We know all outward-births have been conceived in sin; and yet somewhat of god (from the original root of nature) hath therefrom (in every one) sprung forth. Now know and consider, there is no other way to make a perfect cure, but by taking the sting of sin out; and that by another birth conceived within the soul (which is Christ the Quickening-Spirit) (that which is a sinless-Birth:) and as that groweth up, and becomes strong in spirit, the sinful part withers and dies away. Thus Christ the God-man works out sin within the properties of fallen nature, and so completes redemption victoriously; For that which is thus born of God, overcomes the world. I John, Chap. V. But here meets me a question, viz: Is Christ to be conceived, and born in every one for salvation so intrinsically? Yea, surely, This is, and must be the foundationseal, whereby God the Father will own, and rescue us, as being the express image of his Beloved Son. But again it may be objected, That I have verified that God is love so great and large, as all fallen-angels and spirits shall be redeemed, but the question is how can that be when so many die without any appearance of this new-birth you speak of? It is so, that millions of souls do so (out of this world) pass away, and much to their loss and sufering it will be. Yet know “The root of the eternal God is in every soul, tho' never so vile and evil in this body they have lived in and so died. For Christ is the light that hath enlightened every one, that cometh into the world. John I. Tho' that this light and life of Christ hath been shut up, and sin hath got uppermost, yet Christ (the eternal spark of life) will save Himself in all that have apostatized from Him; nothing shall suffer loss but the fuel of evil works, that cannot pass through

the judgment and burning; and if this life be passed over, and little or nothing of this done, there must be a remaining in a fearful expectation of going through this terrible refining work after this life, in regions so appointed for that end. Oh! that all careless, desperate soul-adventurers, that know not the hard tugs they must go through to clear and get off what they contracted of vile-matter, and evil-deeds in this life;” therefore let all be warned to mortify and renounce the earthly-birth that so they may escape the fiery-indignation that will come upon the workers of iniquity. Oh! now then, whilst you have day with the everlasting sunshine of Love in your souls, turn into it, and it will clarify and brighten you that (so saved) you may be out of all future-punishments, and entrance find into the joy of our Lord; which may be known now in this present time, in the heavens of a pure heart; the happy felicity, of which I have already set forth in this treatise. So hoping this may give satisfaction to the impartial and sober-minded, for information into the mysteries that have been under a veil (which is now rending away) for the which break of day, let us earnestly pray. A Visional Appearance, or Prophecy 15 July 1694 I had a sudden representation come before me of a round globe, like an oval, that had four circles, and within the first circle was a pure white glass of light; in which there appeared the personal Prince of Glory, with a numberless number of bright bodily figures, with whom the elders were; they had got victory over this world, who departed in the faith of what they now enjoy; and the circle that was encompassed, was of a bright flame-colour. Then, next to this was an azure blue-circle; and here appeared the faces only of numerous persons, that are yet living in bodily figure in this world (who some are known and others unknown to me) and the motto that was written on their foreheads was, These are those who are waiting for to break through into MountSion-Principle, where Christ the Lord, with all that are redeemed out and from the earth are. Then, in the third circle, which appeared like pale-lightning; There oepened seraphims and cherubims, bright Angels, very numerous, that ascended; and were appointed as a guard, always ministering to those. And I did see them break their circle, and come amongst those, who pressing were into the light-world. The fourth circle was a more dark dusky-colour; and here were those who were yet to be gathered in, and born again; some among them were known by face to me; they were yet but moving in the dark-principle (as shut from the light). All of this was conspicuously opened unto me. And as I was waiting further upon the Vision (as it shut up and opened again the

next night) then I saw one mighty-potent-Angel break through the circle where the Glorified Person and their elders were; and a great shout there was, crying: The Principle of Salvation is broken through; and now the Beast's kingdom will quickly go down, and worthy is this mighty Conqueror to receive (with the Lamb of God) power and riches, wisdom and strength, honour, glory and blessing; for the way is broken through for such to follow after, who in the same spirit of faith are, acquitting their sensual reasonings. Then did I see many striving to enter in, but could not till they had relinquished the name and mark of the Beast (which is this worldly principle) with all its polluted immersements and Babylonian traffics which, by the sight of this AllConquering-Angel, were prevailed upon to do so. Then a free pass was made for many (known by figure and name) to enter in, and to receive mutual-power to multiply and spread Mount-Sion's glory over the whole face of this earth. So will all nations be made to flow in, at the rising of this Bright-Orient Spirit; for great powers are moving from the Heaven in very deed. Oh Mighty Jesus! Thou art this Circle-Breaker, by, and in such, whom Thou wil assume, and take up to open the Fountain of Great Wonders; by the which, the lostpurity shall again come to be restored, and the Heavens (as a curtain) over the whole world spread. This is a prophetical Vision, the fulfilling thereof draweth near; therefore it seemed good to me to add it to the foregoing Part. The Author has much of this kind lying by her (in manuscript) that may yet come to light, as God shall open an effectual door for more to be revealed, that may conduce, and make ready, the New-Jerusalem Bride to be married to the immaculate Lamb of God, for the which I say to all, Come, Oh come away with speed. The lifted up Standard of Christ, the trumpet of whose Spirit does now sound, that the dead in sins may live again in a newstate, from the Resurrection-life of Christ, who com-eth down in a fiery-baptizing cloud: by which, He will enter into souls who willing are to have this Sin-defiling-garment taken away. The Oil of the Spirit is still flowing; but must now stop for the present, till vessels shall be found and made ready to take it in. For the which, the incense of pure prayers shall still ascend up to Heaven. FINIS (London: 1694)

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