Much more than ashes

On Ash Wednesday, among many peoples and diverse interpretations of Christianity, you will doubtless see a smudge of ash on the foreheads of those who attend mass. This heralds the beginning of Lent. Ash Wednesday as such was not a tradition of the early Church, and in fact first mention of if appears about 900 years after the time of Christ. That Ash Wednesday became an important day in the Middle Ages, after a few dark centuries of reaction, lack of primary texts, and downright ignorance –saved only by monasticism- comes with little surprise. Ironically, the monks who laboured ceaselessly to preserve Classical and Christian knowledge themselves became vehicles of misogyny, misinformation and a precursor to the kind of culture which has regrettably hounded the Church universal to this day.

Notwithstanding this historical background, the tradition of the Lenten ashes can be embraced today as an outer sign of an inner reminder that only a portion of us is mortal, and set to return to the earth when our bodies, as the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Are as grass, and wither away.” (Isaiah 40:6, c.f.; 1 Peter 1:24.) This theme was repeated in the Romantic literature and music of the 19th century in the form of the second movement of the German Requiem by Johannes Brahms, which recites this same verse in German: “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras”, and in the poetry of Christina Rosetti, Victorian poet and wife of the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

All Flesh is Grass

 

by Christina Rossetti

So brief a life, and then an endless life

Or endless death;

So brief a life, then endless peace or

strife:

Whoso considereth

How man but like a flower

Or shoot of grass

Blooms an hour,

Well may sigh "Alas!"

So brief a life, and then an endless grief

Or endless joy;

So brief a life, then ruin or relief:

What solace, what annoy

Of Time needs dwelling on?

It is, it was,

It is done,

While we sigh "Alas!"

Yet saints are singing in a happy hope

Forecasting pleasure,

Bright eyes of faith enlarging all their

scope;

Saints love beyond Time's measure:

Where love is, there is bliss

That will not pass;

Where love is,

Dies away "Alas!"

The cycle of the liturgical year that separates Christmas, the Incarnation of the Divine Light, and the initiation of Christ into the Mysteries by St. John the Baptist reflects the 40 days; the Quadragesima (Lent) of spiritual training and inner work.(1.)   The number 40 can be seen in many biblical stories including the 40 days and 40 nights which Noah is mythically remembered to have spent in the ark. It is equally recounted that Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness. It is no coincidence that the esoteric meaning of the number 40 can be understood through its etymology and cultural significance. In Semitic languages, including Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and Phoenician, this number is called “Mem”, “Meem”, or “Mim”. Linguistic scholars generally contend that this word is derived from, or is at the very least related to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic which represents water. So we could understand this 40-day period of Lent as being a time of purification and contemplation; a bath in the spiritual waters which reminds us of our baptism.

Consequently, this time of the year has become the focus of inner work, contemplation and preparation to enter more fully into the Christian Mysteries. After Vatican II within the Roman Catholic jurisdiction of the Church, the link between Lent and the reaffirmation of the Sacrament of Baptism was given new life. (See The History of Ash Wednesday.)

This is a time that was traditionally used by the Church to prepare the catechumens for baptism on Easter eve; a solemn but not sullen period of introspection before initiation. (2.) It is a time for us to open up a scenario, through contemplative aids such as the ashes of Ash Wednesday and the Stations of the Cross as spiritual icons, to internalize and realize our existence within the Radiant Darkness, imbued with the Divine Light, and filled with the Spirit. Spiritual work through visual steps is the work of the great mystics. These images or compositio loci are universally accepted within the Church as most helpful to the seeking Christian initiate.

The character of Lent, however, must be taken in a very different light when we compare Johannite, or any Gnostic Christian theology, to that of many mainstream Christian traditions which are based on a radically polarized construct of human existence. In traditional esoteric Christianity, the spiritual image of the “hyper-essential” (hyperousion), that is the indwelling Christ, is meant to exemplify the way towards our liberation from this perceived polarity, but the Christ-impulse must be balanced with the realization of the divinity within nature as well as the spirit. The goal, or Holy Grail, could be perceived as the simultaneous understanding of ourselves and the universe around us in its purest, unified form. This is the essential unity of matter and spirit, the union of opposites.

Our bodies are just as much a part of the divine as our souls and spirits. The Gospel of Thomas records a wisdom saying of Jesus that illustrates this perception: “What you have within you will save you, and what you do not have within you will kill you.” St. Paul also mentions the archons in relation to time and our perception of linear progress, clearly making a distinction between the Christian / Hermetic schools and that of the Judaic culture from which he came.

St. Paul (or a community representing Paul) wrote:

So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. [...] Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain (Cf. Gal 4:3-5, 8-11). (See the article “On Time and the Calendar” in Orthodox Liturgical Theology for an excellent review of this idea)

 

Emanation theology, such as that which was espoused by some Eastern Orthodox, Neo-Platonists, early Alexandrian Christian sects popularly identified as “gnostic”, and the Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme, is ground zero for understanding how to overcome the rule of these powers.

The reason that emanation is such a crucial starting point for any observation of divinity and the human condition is to be found in the nature of these powers and their relationship to us and the wider universe. If all things emanate from the Divine, then the perception of a binary “Good” vs. “Evil” is not only inaccurate, it’s not very helpful to understanding how to deal with these “archonic” influences. By focusing on death, suffering and redemption, some quarters of the Christian world bowed, however unwittingly, to the very powers they sought to overcome.

The self-denying, world-hating ideas that were embraced by some early Christian theologians such as Tertullian, Augustine and John Cassian, did not entirely embrace the true meaning of the word that gave birth to asceticism: askesis, in Greek. Atonement theology did not grow out of a consensus of Christian thought, but out of a lack of knowledge. Askesis to the Greco-Roman philosophies was a practical training which gave the individual the capacity to deal with the world in an ethical and rational way – and decidedly not through the rejection of the world. This non-judgmental, very personal process of self improvement simply does not work correctly within the context of a moral theology of the God vs. Satan or Good vs. Evil.

The Gospel of Philip affirms:

Light and darkness, life and death, on the right and the left,
These are children, they are inseparably together.
But the good are not good, the wicked not wicked,
Life not life, death not death.
Each element fades to an original source.
But those who live above the world cannot fade.
They are eternal.

And again:

The rulers (archons) thought they had done everything alone, but in secret the Holy Spirit on Her own accomplished it all.

The deviance from classical askesis between the first and fifth centuries is marked. Christian self-examination in the eyes of influential theologians such as John Cassian (360-435 CE) boiled down to being able to determine if any given thing or action was a trick of the devil. The Stoic Epicetus (55-135 CE) on the other hand, sought self-mastery and self-sovereignty; not by punishing himself, but by acknowledging errors and correcting them. The review of the day was a common technique used by the Stoics and Pythagoreans before them, but if we look closely to the wisdom sayings of Jesus, a similar pattern appears. In the Gospel of Thomas we see a rather matter of fact answer given by Jesus:

His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"


Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed." (Thomas, 6)

There are many examples of these ideas, which may indeed come from the experience of Hellenistic Judeo-Christianity in Alexandria. This connection to Egypt through similarities in Pythagoreanism underscores the importance of the esoteric view of Jesus’ time in Egypt, just as Pythagoras had done centuries before.

Asceticism in any tradition gives in to these powers as much as mindless hedonism by playing by the rules of these forces. More than several Christian mystics indulged in severe self-depravation and self-torture, only to find that their severity did not do justice to themselves as sparks of the Divine, or as children of God. Anything that denigrates the dignity of the human person must in the end divert our attention from our inner-divinity because it necessarily bows to the powers we seek to transcend.


Whatever the details of history might be, it is clear that to succumb to material powers is human, but to totally give in to their authority is neither essentially real, nor is it something that we should do. I do not believe that most people, including myself, are going to become wandering monks and give up any relation to the world; what is more, I don’t think that is particularly helpful to our spiritual journey. I do think that these powers must be subjugated to the Self, to our will; to our perception of inner-divinity, and to how we relate to others as equally important sparks of the Divine. Building on the ancient technologies of self-sovereignty is just as important as fostering a culture in which medicine can give people with physical or psychological disabilities a level playing field.

Science and religion must flourish together, not apart, just as matter and spirit are parts of an integral community of the Divine Fullness. Ash Wednesday and Lent is a time to rededicate ourselves to that community; to investigate our internal, spiritual needs and responsibilities, and to remember, as Christina Rosetti wrote:“Where love is, Dies away ‘Alas!’”

***

Notes:

(1.) Watts, Alan W. Myth and Ritual in Christianity. Boston, Beacon Press, 1968, p. 138

(2.) Ibid. Watts, p. 139

(3.) Ioannes Paulus II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, I.1