In puris naturalibus

Carl Jung's Natural Sacraments

2011-12-09T07:04:00.002-05:00

O vos doctores, qui grandia nomina fertis,

Respicite antiquos patris, jurisquae peritos.

Non in candidulis pensebant dogmata libris.

Arte sed ingenua sitibundum pectus alebant.

O ye learned men, who bear great names,

Look back at the ancient fathers, learned in the law.

They did not weigh dogmas in shining white books,

But fed their thirsty hearts with natural skills.

-- Sebastian Brant, Stultifera navis, 1497

In the late medieval book Speculum humanae salvationis, the method used to show the correlation between the Old and New Testaments was not through prophecy or scriptural comparison, but through the mirroring of concepts and an equivalence of imagery. This book pointed to the symbolism, the archetypes shared in both.[1]

The inborn spiritual language that humans experience and express through symbols, images and rites was the stuff of Carl Jung’s work. He discovered that he himself as a boy had created sacred objects and rites reflected in a far-off culture, and thus he attributed this ability to a great, unknown collective unconscious that drives to live and express the divine.

Contained within the archaeology of knowledge is the embarrassing realization that the way information, phenomena and values are processed and therefore acted upon by humans varies hugely from epoch to epoch. Learning and tradition in the medieval world was heavily reliant on symbolism, and not literature or scripture. Architecture was literally an open book to pass on intuitive, natural and completely present histories. The stories of Christ and Our Lady were to be experienced in the present, and not simply analyzed as historical fact.

Jung’s grasp and articulation of the inner knowledge of the divine lies at the heart of the Gnostic experience. There are some who would argue that the Gnostic Church, often laboring under the self-imposed title of “Neo-Gnosticism” was somehow reborn from the scraps of papyrus found by a farm boy at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. Some jurisdictions of the Gnostic Ecclesia have chosen to follow those scriptures to the letter, or to examine them in the way that an architect reads a blueprint.

Though I cannot speak for anyone but myself, I know that many Johannites do not share that sentiment precisely because we know that the greatest lessons learned are those that come from within, and more often than not those lessons are brought about through interaction with others. This is the reason why Johannite Liturgy places such an emphasis on the Apostolic Succession, and the Pontifical Litany. Our tradition is one that spans centuries without the benefit or distraction of the Gnostic Gospels. The human element in the transfer and interpretation of knowledge defines the esoteric, Gnostic Christian path according to St. John the Baptist, Initiator of Christ, and St. John the Beloved, Evangelist and Apostle. It is not by accident that the Johannite Liturgy sternly reminds us that error occurs when material things are placed above people. This, I think extends not only to greed and power, but also to elevating scriptures or canons above those they are meant to inspire.

Although the spiritual knowledge of our predecessors has been handed down from generation to generation through a multiplicity of structures, ecclesial and esoteric, the experience of the Gnostic must spring from within. No book could ever teach us what is plainly within our being, although learning and ritual can and do play crucial roles in extending and perhaps enhancing the divine encounter and knowledge which we call gnosis.

Carl Jung insightfully recognized that the impulses underpinning the rituals and images follow the contours of the human experience. Archetypes, he thought, were the purest, recurring expressions of spiritual roles variously demonstrated by peoples, cultures and eras quite removed from one another by time and space. The similarities in imagery and rite present such striking reflections of each other that there is a kind of holiness that emerges from the innocent ignorance of the existence of the other. The convergence of inner expression, without the benefit of rational knowledge, is indeed amazing. According to Jung, Archetypes are innate universal psychic sources from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be sensed in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behavior.

Walking along the points of convergence is where Jung stumbled upon the most basic of spiritual tools: the Sacraments. Jung believed that archetypes heavily influence the human life cycle, propelling a sequence which he called the stages of life. Each stage is mediated through a new set of archetypal imperatives which seek fulfillment in action. These may include being parented, initiation, courtship, marriage and preparation for death. In this sense, the Sacraments can be understood as a permanent dialogue between humans and the source and fullness of existence, or still better the ultimate dialogue with the Self.

From a Johannite perpective, the Sacraments offer vehicles or tools for us to use as we each look to expand the momentary experience of gnosis. Thus we have inherited the imperative of freedom in theological theory and personal practice within the sacramental model. In both orthodox and Gnostic Christian traditions, it seems positive to insist that the Sacraments enjoy the broadest participation and in this way, the Sacraments have the key role, along with the Spirit, of uniting the community.^{^[2]}

To fulfill the tremendous potential energy that the Sacraments represent within us is to channel to the core of what Jung saw as the inborn spiritual language that humans experience and express through symbols, images and rites. Through the mystical process, which he called “individuation,” Jung saw a common thread in all forms of spirituality. In 1944 Jung published Psychology and Alchemy, in which he analyzed alchemical symbols and showed a direct relationship to the psychoanalytical process. His opinion was that the alchemical process was the transformation of the impure soul (lead) to perfected soul (gold), thus a metaphor for the individuation process.

Carl Jung’s conception of archetypes is an elaboration of the apostolic approach to sacramentalism within the context of the Age of Reason and Science. Whether we see the Sacraments as holy and undivided, or as tools passed down to us from our ancestors, they have come to mark the unique human ability to transcend our own limitations. They are incremental, following the natural life of our bodies, and yet they remain outside of time, ready and willing to be doors to us if we choose to open them.

Each of Jung’s archetypes and all of the seven Sacraments are natural agents for change in the here-and-now, and can serve as a link between liturgy and life, indeed showing us that they are the same thing.

***

This paper was prepared as a Lecture and Discussion – 27 June 2009

St. Sarah the Egyptian Parish, Boston

[1] Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization, Vintage Books, New York: 1965, pp. 19.

[2] Statement of Principles, Apostolic Johannite Church. http://www.johannite.org/sop.html

Apolitical agape, or Politics without tears

2011-11-19T08:36:00.002-05:00

There are times, an intermittent madness on my part, when striving for a social, economic or political target seems to beg for clarity and classification. Although all that I have to go on are incomplete notes and a bit of experience, recent events have illustrated that it might be possible for us to move beyond the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and engage in a new sort of public discourse. It’s not all wine and roses, but the politics of conformity is decidedly loosening its grip on the way people choose to manifest their beliefs and desires.

The moment we take up a label and stick it to our lapel, we inspirit a kind of doppelganger of ourselves which surrounds us and our potentialities. As a phantom in broad daylight, this ghostly apparition begins to act in ways that we ordinarily would not, but the deeper we go into political theories, the more herculean the task of breaking out of that unholy placenta of conditioned thought. That is ideology, which forms politics; the very same anti-human specter to be found in hardened theological debate. These walking, talking psychological scaffolds would have us leave the way of love, respect, and social cohesion. They are no friends at all.

By logical extension, this ghost of preconditioned potentials is why I take issue with any elected official who purports to be wise enough to make laws in every field. Democracy should not be a forum of lawyers elected by predetermined political abstractions and rhetoric, but an organic set of relations, beginning in our workplaces and livelihoods, and extending to the community as a whole.

My political views and goals are to live ἀγάπη "agape": unconditional, selfless, active, volitional, and thoughtful love. Admittedly, this kind of love is a very difficult goal to achieve on a large scale. Nevertheless, this starting point does not abrogate my responsibility as a human being to take an active part in building a better community. To the contrary, it is a fundamental principle of honest, constructive, civic engagement. Under this banner, I cannot walk into a debate immediately poised to counter someone else's ideas, but to look beyond the political façade for common ground. In that common spirit of respect we can build the kind of society which will encourage, not merely tolerate, the essential dignity of the human person.

***

The Earthen Cup: The Perpetual Incarnation

2011-11-16T12:21:00.001-05:00

The Eucharist is one of the chief reasons why I choose not to classify Johannite rituals by tradition, because while we might think of Communion as being Christian, it has both Jewish and pagan roots. At the same time, the transmutation at the heart of this very ancient ritual is a classic example of the Hermetic Art of Alchemy.

The word “Eucharist” comes to us from the Greek eucharistia, which means “thanksgiving.” Communion, on the other hand, reflects the Latin word to “commune.” Christian scholars are divided on the origins of the Eucharist, but we know that similar bread and wine rituals had been conducted for centuries by the great Melchizedek, to the Egyptians and Greeks, and particularly for Dionysus, the dying-and-rising god of wine. (1.)

The history and development of the Eucharist was not simply the product of an adapted Greek ritual or the later Catholic bulls and councils aimed at rooting out “heretics.” Quite the opposite, this earthen cup of traditional Mediterranean sacramentality gave a broad structure to a diverse set of practices in an era when the charismatic prophets and saints were dwindling in numbers. More precisely, the structure of the Eucharist itself represents a deeply personal and mystical realization of the constant presence of the divine.

Although the Jewish and Egyptian origins of the sacrifice of animals necessitated the priesthood under the Law, I believe that there is a vast amount of material and tradition to show that in the age of Grace the priest confects “gifts” of the Divine to us. In the Hermetic sense, the polarity of this operation has been reversed or even reconciled. Nevertheless, it is through this confection by the priest that we “celebrate” the mass as the mystery of the Incarnation of the Divine. In this sense, the Eucharist is a real enactment of an ongoing process, and not primarily a memorial of the sacrifice understood by mainstream Christians: the “Last Supper” and the crucifixion of Jesus.

This is not to exclude the possibility of belief, on the part of Johannites or anyone else, in the literal Incarnation of the Logos in the person of Jesus Christ, but instead to place a definitive emphasis on Christ, the Logos as the Exemplar. This seems to be a crucial distinction between the Gnostic and Christian perspectives.

This Gnostic understanding of the Eucharist makes every mass Christmas, replete with the most important gifts of all. Not gold, frankincense, myrrh, or a blood sacrifice, but the union of opposites; the realization of the Spirit in matter. From the grotto of a Marian, the great mystery of the Incarnation is filled with multidimensional luminescence within this Gnostic perspective of perpetual Incarnation. Spirit is the mother of matter, the earthen cup, and the place where masculine and feminine principles come together in the unity of the Xristos and Sophia. This action is seen when a small piece of the Host is dissolved in the “wine of the Spirit.”

Gnosticism is not to be placed in opposition to other religions, but neither are its fundamental principles to be dissolved in the theological speculations of the larger Christian world. While traditionally the Catholic priesthood traces its roots to Melchizedek, who offered bread and wine in Genesis 14, and the sacrifices made by the Levites, the Gnostic and Hermetic traditions also point to the mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood, and the ideas of the Hellenistic Levant. For the 19th century restoration of the Johannite Church, the references to Egyptian and Greek teachings in The Lévitikon: The Gospels According to the Primitive Church come to the fore. Jesus is poignantly questioned about his use of Egyptian and Greek ideas.

Centuries before the Greeks and the cult of Dionysus, the Egyptians had already described the consumption of the divine as “The house of Horus, the house of bread, for the mouth of man, bread from the body of the goddess.” (2.) Still, it seems clear that the Hellenistic ideas which permeated Gnostic circles of Alexandria in the 2nd century were heavily influenced by the Neo-Platonists, and not so much the ancient state religion of Egypt.

We do not need to engage in a theological splitting of hairs, or even a reliance on the Gnostic Gospels, to appreciate that the attainment of Gnosis is the goal of our religious practices, and that there are various ways of approaching that goal. Consider for a moment the supposed words of St. Paul in Greek.

ᾧ μὲν γὰρ διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος δίδοται λόγος σοφίας, ἄλλῳ δὲ λόγος γνώσεως κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ πνεῦμα. “For to one is given the word (logos) of wisdom (sophia) through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge (gnoseos; genitive singular feminine of gnosis) according to the same Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:8)

This goal is worthy of mention within any discussion of the Eucharist, because it radically changes the emphasis of “sacrifice” to fellowship, communion, and celebration. Gnosticism is not heretical Christianity. The Gnostics were fellow travelers, just as we are today. Many of our ideas predate Christianity, just as Jesus chose to be initiated into his community through the pre-existing tradition of baptism.

Whether we are using alchemical images, breathing exercises, or the Eucharist, all of these rituals are meant to bring us closer and closer to the fullness of the Divine. We must always be on our guard not to get caught up with proving historical “truth”, and instead focus on spiritual wisdom – the earthen cup from which we must drink.

In light of that ancient cup of ritual and our ultimate focus on Gnosis, neither the Eucharist nor its celebrants can be crammed into the framework of the operation of “sacrifice” as it was understood by Jewish, pagan and some Christian priests. Just as with the Gnostic and Hermetic image of Ouroboros, the serpent which eats its own tail, the paradox of spirit and matter is reconciled in the mass, and given as gifts to the communicants. This does not lessen the need for the priesthood, but the confection realized at every celebration of the Eucharist remains a divine mystery. The ritual does not empower the priest to offer-up a holocaust to the Divine for the remission of sins, it humbly asks for a demonstration of the Fullness which was present all the time. In this way, we partake of the Real Presence, understanding that we can be what we see in the host and wine, and that we may then receive what we truly are – a part of the Divine.

Still, the Johannite Gnostic tradition and its Apostolic Succession is a valid part of the broad and ancient Catholic rite. Through our understanding of Grace and Gnosis, our study of the many streams of spiritual and ritual experience, and the holy intentions of the living and the dead, our quest for the earthen cup – the Grail of Undefiled Wisdom - takes place in thousands of celebrations across the globe. In those acts of union, the Sacrament helps all of us, Christian and Gnostic, to heal all wounds and let blessings grow.

In the spirit of this earthen cup of sacramentality, we remember Christ the Logos, the Exemplar, whose hands were laid on the Apostles and by them on the other disciples, just as we remember the teachings which Jesus himself received from saints and adepti of his time. And so on through the ages, from bishop to deacon and priest over 2,000 years. Just imagine the spiritual significance, the awesome power of this Communion of Saints. It is a static charge of human and divine community and solidarity with an unbroken bolt of transformative energy which extends from our darkest history to infinity.

***

For an excellent lecture on the topic of the Eucharist, see The Most Rev. Dr. William Behun, Ph.D., Archbishop and Primate for the US of the Apostolic Johannite Church here:

Notes:

(1.) For a thorough discussion of the relationship between the Dionysian rite and the Christian, see: From symposium to Eucharist: the ... - Dennis Edwin Smith - Google Books

(2.) See: Isis in the ancient world by Reginald Eldred Witt

Believe me! I read books! Gnosticism is Wrong!

2011-10-17T17:52:00.003-04:00

Giordano Bruno burns at the stake at Camp dei Fiore, Rome, 1600

As always, this is my naked opinion, and mine alone.

Gnosticism is not an end-all. People are. Some would have us believe that the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern streams of our tradition should be segregated. These theorists would like us to think that these epochs, that inform much of today’s Gnostic church, are to be "purified" only to include the literary prognosticators among the surviving pre-Nicene Gnostic Christian texts (as they have appeared in the haphazard grouping of texts found within the Nag Hammadi codeces, along with Hermetic and Platonic texts).

These new prognosticators tell me that we must forfeit the invaluable contributions of those brave enough to espouse gnosis as a personal experience within a real community if they happened to live after the time of the ancient Gnostics. The likes of Giordano Bruno must therefore be left aside, despite Bruno’s tortured death on a stake planted firmly in the middle of Campo dei Fiore, Rome, the victim of the Roman Pontiff and the curia. Some of Gnosticism’s most fervent opponents are also accepted by Gnostic Catholics as our sisters and brothers, despite the historical abuses that we have suffered. Which is more Christ like?

Sitting in a room alone, or among several Internet friends, one might assume that gnosis can be coaxed by repeating or reading some 2^nd century texts from the “authentic” Gnostics. At an abstract level, any religion can be “practiced” in such a way that it seems to be effective. Following their respective scriptures, all religions could be observed alone, but Gnostic Christianity and its adherents have always found ways to provide tools for learning and sharing, while dodging the many pyres of extermination – mostly set by Rome. Today, thankfully, the Inquisition is left to the court of each person’s judgment. If you don’t want to acknowledge the Johannite Gnostic Tradition, that is your perfect right. Remember, however, that before the publication of the scrolls found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, there were, and still are, communities of people who have kept the Sacred Flame alive – burning without knowledge of the Nag Hammadi texts, much less creating a “new” fundamentalist Gnostic way.

Again, as a person, I have never sought any enemy regarding my religion, but there seems to be a small minority of people, who were once friendly to me, who have decided to attack my beliefs, my church, and the values upon which it rests. My enemy is not the communion of Rome or alternative doctrines or approaches in the Gnostic world. I stand firmly against any entity, person, or group of persons who actively seek to destroy the community of people whose only wish is to fortify their experiences of gnosis with a real and lasting communion of the living and the dead.

Naked Justice

2011-10-10T07:50:00.002-04:00

Gerechtigkeit als nackte Frau mit Schwert und Waage

Justice as a naked Woman with Sword and Scales

by Lucas Cranach (1472–1553

This homily was given at the Parish of St. Sarah-the-Egyptian of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Boston, on the 8th of October 2011.

I am wearing a white stole today because we celebrate the Sunday after the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, a saint who died peacefully and not as a martyr, in which case the color would have been red.

White is the color of joy, purity and purification, it was the color worn at last week’s baptism, and also the color of the flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts – chosen to represent the English Puritans who settled this place in 1630.

As we struggle in the tireless battle between enlightenment and self-deception, things like purity and justice are very often lost to our circumstances, ideals, and identities. True purity, such as that of St. Francis of Assisi, is about selfless love (agape in Greek), and devotion to the Divine Mystery present in every living person and thing. Purity without Love and Compassion, as it turned out for the Puritans, wasn’t very pure.

The same is true for Justice, which, according to the Johannite Liturgy, is the Mass Intent for the Sunday after the Feast of Saint Francis.

Ten Points on Justice

1. We, as people and as a society, often confuse vengeance or self-interest for Justice, and I include myself in that reflection. We see this confusion in the very symbols of Justice today. Blindfolded Lady Justice with the scales in one hand and a sword in the other is a combination of several ancient personifications, with various meanings. The first use of the image of the scales comes to us from the Egyptian goddess Maat, and later Isis. The Greek goddess Themis represented divine law and order, but it was her daughter Dike who carried the scales. The ancient Romans venerated Justitia, whose combined attributes of the blindfold, scales, and sword is a mishmash of the goddesses Fortuna (fate), Tyche (luck), and sword-wielding Nemesis (vengeance).

2. It is our duty as seekers of Gnosis to recognize the difference between these differing meanings, and to understand that Justice without Mercy and Love is not Justice at all, but an empty shell of conformity.

3. Then again, what is “legal” and what is just are not the same things. This we saw in the “legal” execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia a few weeks ago.

That is not Justice.

4. There are principles of Justice which are every day trampled upon by the boots of human law, but those principles stand immortal, regardless of their abuse. It is up to each of us to see that those principles are upheld.

5. The law tells us, and the thousands who are occupying cities across the continent and in other countries, that our tax money is legally spent on bailing-out greed and financing wars, but we as a society cannot feed the poor or provide essential services to those who need them most.

That is not Justice.

6. Conversely, there are members of the occupation movement who laugh at the thought of harming those whom they feel have abused their rights.

That is not Justice.

7. Justice, according to the Divine Mind and Power that gives us all life, finds both of these camps to be in error. While the police are the abusers in the streets of New York and other cities today, the reverse could easily be true tomorrow. History teaches us this lesson.

That is not Justice.

8. The cycle of injustice and violence will not end until we become full participants in our community, serving not only ourselves, but, as our Baptismal Vows recite: “Serving Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.”

That is Justice.

9. May we each strive for Justice and Peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We need to strip off the garments of our preconceptions, petty vanities, and material interests, and find in our nakedness the purity and Justice that has always and ever surrounded us through the life of the Spirit.

10. Without these actions on our part, we will never see purity or Justice.

***

Gnosis & Mystagogy: The Circular Problem of Insight vs. Self-deception

2011-09-29T11:48:00.001-04:00

Ourobouros: “Serpens qui caudam devorat”
(serpent that eats its tail) represents many things, including totality,
the cycle of life, and the “conjunctio oppositorum”- the union of
opposites. In this seal, the motto “Cum patientia” (“with patience”)
sums up the struggle between self-knowledge and self-deception.

How do you know what is real? This question has been asked thousands of times before, and in many different situations. Here, we are asking the question to broaden and enrich the understanding of the transcendental experience known as gnosis; not only that of self-described Gnostics, but for the many peoples and traditions who share this unique type of insight.

As with all things mystical and transcendent, our experiences are difficult to quantify in ways that might make them more accessible to science. For the average person, it is very difficult to prove that we have subjective experiences that are shared by others, but which are nearly impossible to examine from an objective, scientific perspective. Maybe some of this problem is rooted in ourselves, our languages and cultures. Public discourse on ‘objectivity’, as just one example, is relatively new to our social and educational environments.

This is not a philosophical treatise on what is truly ‘real’, so please don’t be frightened. Unfortunately, long words are necessary evils in this particular fumble-through-the-darkness.

If there were simple Anglo-Saxon words for the concepts which we’re about to examine, I would have used them. But how would a 5th century northern Germanic tribesperson have described “objectivity?” They probably would have called it the “truth”, which at that time was written: tríewþ, which in turn comes from the very old proto-Germanic word trewwj, which meant “to have good faith.” But it also meant loyalty, honesty, and a general agreement between the thing that is being called “true” and fact, or reality. (2.)

The purpose of this exercise in early Germanic language is to show two things. First, how our cultural concepts of complex ideas such as “truth” or “objectivity” are products of a long series of linguistic and historical understandings held in common by one people in particular. Second, hopefully now you appreciate that it is actually easier sometimes to use the big, ugly, foreign-rooted words like “intersubjectivity”, than to beat our linguistic ancestors with proverbial dinner bones in an attempt to knock some nuance into their vocabulary.

It is precisely in this cultural and linguistic haze that our minds are constantly trying to translate our experiences into words, symbols, myths, and rituals; in a word, we try to express the inexpressible. Where reason leaves off, emotions and culture take over, and so this might lead us to recognize that our understanding and experience of certain mystical or transcendental feelings is often the result of many influences.

Some excellent theorists have adopted the argument that there is no need to prove or disprove of the existence of a spiritual realm because spiritual knowledge, insight, or gnosis itself needs no explanation for the individual to attain a greater awareness of him/herself and others. This experience has been described as being sort of like poetry – numinous, contradictory, mysterious, and so on.

I suppose that we could leave the question there, but that would be very boring. Many people have struggled with these questions for millennia, indeed science itself was born from the quest for knowledge of the metaphysical as well as the physical universe.

For science, it is not enough to rely on subjective experiences, and that is as it should be. No personal belief can be adequately examined using the hard and fast rules of the scientific method. But that doesn’t mean that there can never be a synthesis of science and spirituality at some level.

Recently St. Sarah's Parish discussion group was introduced to the research of Dr. Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Ring’s work was brought to our attention by St. Sarah's parishioner Dr. Peter Hagelstein, a cold fusion researcher and Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Ring’s research has focused for the past 30 years on near death experiences (NDEs), including hundreds of case studies of people who have clinically been dead and returned to normal physical health. The case studies reveal startlingly similar accounts of the patients’ experiences. Perhaps more shocking than the experiential similarities between NDE events, are the quantifiable changes in these people’s lives afterwards. No matter their religious or non-religious preferences and background, certain psychological, behavioral and even physical changes took place in the vast majority of the cases studied.

These were not simple ideas or religious platitudes, but actual shifts in the daily lives of NDE survivors. Among these were: an appreciation for life, self-acceptance, concern for others, reverence for life, anti-materialism, anti-competitiveness, spirituality, a quest for knowledge, sense of purpose, vanquishing the fear of death, belief in existence after death, and a varied sense and belief in the existence of some form of higher consciousness or divinity. Other changes included a shift in consciousness and paranormal functioning and altered physiology and neurology. (3.)

While these case studies do not answer all the questions about the value or existence of another reality beyond the physical life which we can measure, they certainly open a portal through which a better analysis of transcendent experiences can begin from a scientific perspective. Towards that goal it is probably a good idea to resist the temptation of getting embroiled in theology and philosophy, and focus on some fundamental analysis of mystical and other transcendent experiences and traditions over the long term of human history. But first, we need to agree on some healthy self-criticism. Our focus needs to shift from exclusively reading ancient texts and old, sagely aphorisms, which in turn give imperfect form to our internal experiences as individuals, and often cloud our approach to life. We no longer need to mythologize or create supernatural, anthropomorphic representations to explain complex ideas such as cosmology. Our situation is quite different from that of our ancestors. They, without the proper cultural, linguistic, and scientific tools, understandably had need of those structures. That does not mean that ancient ways and traditions are wrong, or that they should be ignored, but it does mean that we must confront and try to better comprehend our place within the universe on our own terms, and by using all of the tools at hand. That is why we have reason and accountability.

In light of our qualities of reason and accountability, there are at least three questions to be answered:

(1.) How do we know what you and others are experiencing is real and transcendent?

(2.) What happens in the world to show us that this transcendent experience is desirable?

(3.) Assuming the effects of these experiences are desirable, what do you propose to do with them, and why?

Within the next few paragraphs let us look at how both ritual and morality, which have historically followed mystical or transcendent experiences, evolve over time and under specific conditions, and how they are therefore not universal truths, but beneficial expressions of intersubjectivity. Another long, ugly and terribly wonky word, I know. Intersubjectivity simply means “a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced (subjectively) but by more than one subject.” (Wiki)

Just as C.G. Jung held that all humanity shares a common, archetypal “unconscious” unity, perhaps there are ways of approaching this shared notion of transcendent reality in ways that are suitable to our times. Furthermore, it is the point of a transcendental tradition to overcome the apparent contradictions between our sensual and rational lives without rejecting the validity of either one.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
was a Swiss psycho-analyst
and the founder of
Analytical Psychology

1. How do we know what you and others are experiencing is real and transcendent?

You know what you know, but that doesn’t mean that you can sell it to other people as the truth. Your experience, whether it is Gnostic, Jewish, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, neo-Pagan, or what have you, may be real or imagined, and the millions of elements that go into your experience of the world have everything to do with how you perceive and describe it.

The validity and soundness of individual revelation does not prepare or enable anyone to initiate others along a subjective path, nor does it provide us with a group of teachings etched in stone for all eternity. Just because one or a thousand people say that they have direct contact with the transcendent “truth” doesn’t and shouldn’t affect your opinion regarding its validity. Literature and scriptures should have even less bearing on your evaluation because they were written and edited by people who may have lived in entirely different circumstances, with different values, thought patterns, and lives. Everyone has an axe to grind, even me, the person who is writing to you to remind you that everyone has an axe to grind.

The answers to these questions are not universal or static; they follow the contours of our social, cultural, religious and economic environments, and they are also heavily influenced by human psychological traits that are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional products of natural, sexual selection.

Human evolution needs to be given more consideration within the context of these fundamental questions because we know that, contrary to many philosophical and theological arguments from the past, humans do, and have changed dramatically. In fact, human behavioral genotypes have not only changed more than 7 percent in the last 40,000 years, they have done so at an accelerated rate for the past 10,000 years. Our cultures, agriculture, economies and governments have bred a new kind of human behavior. (4.)

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Peter Frost illustrates a convincing argument that the genome has undergone dramatic changes, and that those attributes which have been increasingly purged are those of wildness and aggression. The moral compass of the Roman state, for example, clearly pacified the population through selection. But of course Rome would eventually fall to the barbarian tribes which had not lost their taste for aggression.

All State societies are prone to collapse because their existence depends on the State’s ability to repress individual and communal violence. Such repression permits a higher level of economic output and ultimately a larger population. It also alters the mix of behavioral genotypes by selecting out aggressiveness and selecting in submissiveness. (5.)

This argument opens a fascinating field for speculation and research because the data reveal a real and constant change in human behavior. The selection and sexual success of people who were more peaceful, more docile and subservient to their masters and their culture, clearly procreated more than their counterparts under the influence of human policies. On the flip side, when natural selection meets the state’s monopoly on violence, in Rome it meant hunting ‘undesirables’ down, and from our own recent past it should remind us of 19th century experimentation in eugenics, and the 20th century Nazi horror, or the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia.

The Roman state exterminated all
opposition to its authority,
creating a new kind of ancient person.

The important point to be gleaned from all this talk of evolutionary psychology is simply that people are not the same as they were thousands of years ago. Not only are our social, cultural and economic values blindingly different from our ancestors, our psychology has changed in important ways. As a consequence, I suggest that students of ancient Mediterranean mythologies and scriptures would likely benefit from keeping these stark differences in mind. More specifically, respecting these epochal distinctions gives us reason to stop constantly relying on our own cultural values or ancient scriptures and literature to prove points or coerce matters in the present when simple, honest opinions might suffice. We know that adaptation to meet circumstances and “realities” bears a heavy influence on our collective consciousness, but there is little or no recognition of these evolutionary changes in religious or philosophical discourse. Philosophers and priests often try to explain the nature of being human as if it were frozen in a block of ice throughout the ages.

2. What happens in the world to show us that this transcendent experience is desirable?

First, there is confusion between the validity of spiritual experiences and institutional and/or cultural prejudices. It is very difficult to describe and act on transcendental or mystical experiences when our language and upbringing is so incredibly skewed. Mainstream media and cultural influences would have us believe that if we have an intimate relation or experience with the divine, then we must also reject tolerance, alternative sexualities, science, reason, and nearly every other quality that underpins the development of both human and scientific advancement.

This means that today’s Gnostic or other transcendental practitioner must constantly differentiate between the religious bigotry and superstitious belief in the infallibility of scriptures (and/or institutions) on the one hand, and the inner validity of his or her own path on the other. There is a great need for esoteric Gnostics and other mystics to be mindful that the use of archaic terms, prayers, icons, and liturgical language must be tempered with equal amounts of reflection and outreach regarding our categorical, and indeed, fundamental refutation of the atonement theology that most often permeates those elements.

Our traditions are only as good as their efficacy in describing and stimulating action on core teachings, which in the case of Gnostics, is of course gnosis. For purposes of discussion and explanation, it may be necessary to rethink theistic terms and replace them with more closely identifiable words which describe the desired way of action, and not a supernatural construct or anthropomorphic ideal. John Shelby Spong has written extensively on this subject in his book A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born.

For most contemporary Gnostics, gnosis, the sacraments, and the ecclesia are all defined by their quality of intersubjectivity in the phenomenological sense. From intersubjectivity, we hope that empathy and love will develop. Perhaps this activity is best described as an evolutionary account of morality, in which religion has played a key role as moral innovator. (6.) This evolution is not of course synchronized among the many individuals who make up the body, but it is an ongoing process within and among us. Or so we would like to believe. There may be other, more esoteric meanings to the word “church”, but I do not think that many would argue against the general idea of it being the medium and the means of connecting the ‘gathering’, the very word that it signifies in Greek.

Mysticism is an attitude toward life, and decidedly not a creed about the world. Maybe that understanding is not shared universally, but it is broadly applicable to many spiritual traditions and ways of thinking. To some people, that tension might seem to be contradictory, but the two roles are clearly different. Our short experiences of transcendental knowledge or insight, if we have them, while being subjectively very important, are always untested and unsupported, and should therefore only be shared with others as a subjective experience and not a tool of coercion or influence. And yet the entire body of writings (Gnostic, Christian and Hermetic texts, ancient and modern), drives to do the very thing that it should not under the contradictory conditions which we face.

To reiterate, the core teachings of both esoteric and exoteric doctrines are reflections of a way of life, an approach to the cosmos, and not a code of belief.

This problem is represented in the comparison between reason and intuition. One person’s insight does not the truth make. Obviously in history there were people or groups which considered themselves important enough to impose their attitude about life as a creed about the world. But the alternative to creeds and “official teachings” (Magisterium) in a word, is mystagogy, the foundation of the initiatory traditions which inform many seekers today. For the Johannite Church, this tradition of mystagogy is what puts the “esoteric” in our common self-identification as an esoteric, Gnostic Christian communion. There is a big difference between mystagogy and the kind of “my way or the highway” catechesis which emerged in the Roman Catholic tradition, but also in later Protestant denominations.

The creedal approach to spirituality is likely one of the many reasons why the Gnostics never agreed to adhere to the Nicene Creed (325 AD), nor its subsequent revision at the Council of Constantinople in 381, nor the so-called Apostles’ Creed which dates to 710 – 714, which was more than 600 years after the death of the last Apostle - by tradition, St. John. Although the Johannite Church has employed various statements of principle and general beliefs since the early 1800s, they are not meant to refute the validity of other paths, but to affirm one tradition and frame of spiritual reference as our own.

Hermes Trismegistus, from whom
Hermeticism derives its name,
is perhaps the classic example of both
a mystagogue and an open tradition
that focuses on inner spiritual work

If a mystagogue is an initiator and propounds certain mystical doctrines, then an evolutionary approach to that doctrine is what we read in their core texts and rituals; doctrines and rites which have evolved over time and space. But if we examine the kernels of most mystical teachings, we see that, true to our original statement, they are the description of an attitude towards life, and not a creed about the world, such as we see in the Roman Catholic catechism and in the creeds of mainstream Christianity.

Finally, we may not have mystagogues like Hermes anymore, but what we see our teachers, sisters and brothers doing should be showing us that the transcendent experience is not only real, but desirable. This provision doesn’t require perfection, but a preponderance of intentions and actions. If that is not the case most of the time, then the teachings are probably no longer effective. This is why reformations happen.

Unfortunately, the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe created the conditions whereby the entire text of the Bible was transformed into a creed of sorts, whose many ‘interpreters’ have caused the rise of ever-more fundamentalist factions, each vying for the ‘truer truth.’ The result of this tendency to take the Bible literally, which in theological terms is called the doctrine or principle of Sola scriptura, has produced an even more calamitous culture of spirituality than the creeds of the early Catholic Church. This is not to say that the Reformation was entirely negative, but to point out the historical consequences of literalism.

3. Assuming the effects of these experiences are desirable, what do you propose to do with them, and why?

The first answer to this question is the constant struggle between the discovery of self-knowledge and self-deception. We need to beware that our insights, no matter how beautiful or tragic they might seem, are sometimes illusory. Look at the example of lovers. We cast our eye in a person’s direction, believing through insight that this person is x, y, and z. And yet we deceive ourselves all the time in relationships by projecting our needs and desires onto the other person. In the end, our insight proves to be at least partially illusory. If one believes in one’s insight as absolute truth, without regard for the insights of others, then it has become the very thing one sought to escape – deception and slavery!

This poses something of a circular problem. Perhaps that is why Hermeticism and Alchemy so easily assimilated the ancient gnostic symbol of Ouroboros.

Just as the dragon or the serpent eats its own tail, we are faced with a series of contradictions and cycles:

• Mystical theology is free and not only encourages but demands an appreciation of insight as the source of true knowledge and experience through the ages;

• Self-awareness through rational and ritual practices (study, sacraments, prayer, breathing, etc.) can be enhanced, and hopefully this will lead to an increase in the potential for more insight;

• More insight may or may not lead to actual changes in the psychology and actions of the individual, and therefore the surrounding community – the gathering of others: the “ecclesia of all humanity.”

But if the above is true, then isn’t our mysticism an attitude toward life and a creed about the world? Moreover, after thousands of years of mystical practice, don’t we have a body of creeds about the world based on experience?

Yes we do, these are recorded in scriptures, poetry, etc., but not as codified and complete schematics. If some of the esoteric principles of India made their way to Egypt and from Egypt to Palestine and from there to Rome and so forth, then we start to appreciate the evolutionary entirety of the tradition in question. It is a human body of knowledge that forms the left hand, the initiatory school of life. Ritual and learning are the ways that this body is extended through time. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this way of passing-down rituals and knowledge is that change itself is constant within us and over the long term of human physical and metaphysical development.

In this depiction from the 12th century Hortus Deliciarium

we can see in the center the queen of philosophy throning

over the Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato,

surrounded by the seven Liberal Arts.

(Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music,

Astronomy.) The four scholars at the bottom,

with black crows in their necks,

are supposed to represent the "godless" arts

of poetry and magic. (Hortis deliciarium, anonymous,

created for the abbess Herrad of Landsberg).

The Western Mysteries of the Hermetic and Alchemical schools of renaissance Europe did us a great service when it comes to this body of knowledge and insights. They saved part of human experience that, had the majority of civil and religious authorities had their way, would have been lost forever.

If Christianity gave us utopian ends (agape, pastor-flock relations, etc.) which have wandered their way through the Western mind into lots of totalitarian corners, I think that it can be equally said that the mystagogy of Hermeticism has given us the heritage of humanism. For all three schools: Gnostic, Christian and Hermetic, there might be general agreement today that a moral system is one in which the central value is the well-being of humans as the living vessels of the spirit. But this has not always been true, and in some corners it is still hotly debated. The “right hand” teachings of mainstream Christianity without the left hand are inadequate over the long term. Thus, the esoteric Gnostic Christian tradition contains an emphasis on both left and right.

For us, this combination necessarily means that a dialectical approach to transcendental practices requires us to endure a constant cycle of birth, death, and regeneration that corresponds exactly to the cycles of the seasons and our own lives. Birth, death, and resurrection, are not events to be celebrated as having taken place for one person, or even within our own lifetimes, they are constant reminders of our individual and common evolutionary paths.

Through this sometimes painful process, we learn how to negotiate a place for ourselves which must simultaneously be respectful and nurturing of our individual experiences and those of everyone else. If a historical evolution of the consciousness of humanity requires that we treat others with the same respect which our inherent dignity merits, then that inherent dignity must also compel us as individuals and as a society, to learn to distinguish within ourselves that which is deserving of our own respect. No one can do that work for us. Ω

Notes:

This paper was originally presented for discussion to the members of the Parish of St. Sarah-the-Egyptian of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Boston, June 2011.

(1.) In Gnostic theology, we use the word ‘transcendent’ a lot less than ‘immanent’ because our focus, unlike mainstream Christianity, is not on a divinity uniquely outside of us, but inside and all around us. Still, for the purposes of this discussion, ‘transcendent’ is meant to describe an understanding or communication in, with or from a state of being that surpasses physical existence.

(2.) Oxford English Dictionary on true has "Steadfast in adherence to a commander or friend, to a principle or cause, to one's promises, faith, etc.; firm in allegiance; faithful, loyal, constant, trusty; Honest, honourable, upright, virtuous, trustworthy; free from deceit, sincere, truthful " besides "Conformity with fact; agreement with reality; accuracy, correctness, verity; Consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality; representing the thing as it is; Real, genuine; rightly answering to the description; properly so called; not counterfeit, spurious, or imaginary."

(3.) Ring, Kenneth. Lessons from the Light, Moment Point Press, Needham, Mass. 2006. (125-131)

(4.) Hawks, J., Wang, E.T., Cochran, G.M., Harpending, H.C., and Moyzis, R.K. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 104, 20753-20758.

(5.) Frost, P. (2010) “The Roman State and Genetic Pacification”. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 8(3): 376-389

(6.) Religion as Moral Innovation A review of John Teehan, In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence, Wiley-Blackwell: London, 2010

Assumption in the Dark

2011-08-12T10:37:00.002-04:00

When I was a student I was required to do a field study in a very small village. My assignment was to interview and document the impressions and memories of the townspeople who were young adults in the 1930s. The interesting thing about the village was that most of the houses had been carved into the mountain on which it is built. More than half of each house is actually a cave.

It was winter, and it was dark. I remember retreating to my bedroom in the cave, and, not having any windows, I slept and slept and slept, until one of my hosts woke me up laughing. She gently explained that sleeping in a cave somehow resets our internal clocks sometimes. The lack of light makes us forget.

In order to complete my research, I knew that I had to be disciplined about getting up in the morning, especially because this was an agricultural town and the people were early risers. It took some work, but I managed to get my watch to sound-off. I left the door open so that some light would flicker in. These were little tricks that helped me not to be lost in the luxurious darkness of that cave.

If the lack of light made me forget myself, I can only imagine what we do to ourselves when we forget who we really are, and what we are all capable of doing. Rising from the darkness into the light is certainly a shopworn metaphor, but if it works, run with it. That is exactly the theme that Gnostics commemorate on August 15, which is known as the Feast of the Assumption of the Holy Sophia. This day is arguably one of the most important focal points for contemplation in the entire calendar.

The reason that the Assumption is so important is because it is a powerful allegory of the development of both the individual and humanity as a whole. The upward movement of our aspirations and understandings, the evolution of our material and spiritual lives; all of this is contained in the very ancient, archetypal principle of the assumption of the divine feminine.

The Gnostic myth of Sophia is a prequel to the Genesis story which is more familiar to popular culture and religion. This prequel utterly shifts the focus of the allegory because the “fall” of humanity is actually a step forward. Eden symbolizes the ignorant, childlike (also animal-like) immaturity of humans. The serpent is a sign of both good and evil, slithering its way up the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There are interesting comparisons to be made between this myth and the Kabalistic Tree of Life, but that would be something of a tangent.

According to these myths, long before Eden, Sophia, turns away from the One, and begins a series of events which lead to the creation of the material universe, including her son, the demiurge, and all of us. In short, she struggles with her own creations, the powers or rulers (archons) of the new material cosmos, but she manages to endow the human race with her spirit.

There are several ancient versions of this story which differ in some aspects, but this is the simple storyline. The descent of Sophia into matter is an explanation by ancient people of the existence of ignorance, the urge to go forward in the darkness, indeed a thought process which we see driving the deepest human needs and desires. What could be more human than the urge to explore the unknown, to learn, to move beyond perceived boundaries, while all along being shrouded in ignorance and doubt?

Conversely, the assumption of Sophia also begins in darkness and ignorance, but it rises slowly, just as we do, to new stages of our lives, better understandings of ourselves and our responsibility toward others. Sophia begins her long journey upwards without knowledge of who is guiding her. Upon reaching a certain level, she is suddenly aware that the Logos (the “Word” or “reason”) has been with her all along. In short, the assumption is a noun of action. It calls us to rise above the worries and vanities of living a purely material life.

The path towards our fulfillment as human beings is irrevocably tied to our willingness to walk forward, not only under our own power, but in concert with others. Let’s face it; I couldn’t have done my research without that first wake-up call. We need each other, and sooner or later you will find that no one rises without the help of others. If the mythical Sophia didn’t realize that she was being helped until she got above the clouds, how well do you think we’re seeing in the dark?

***

A Shining City on a Pub Napkin

2011-08-03T11:05:00.010-04:00

One summer afternoon I started scribbling a diagram on a napkin. I was joking around with the famous “Shining City on a Hill” quote from local history. Boston is on a hill. It shines once in a while, but not nearly enough. Returning to the napkin, I wrote "You" in the middle, and around it I penned in all the biggest, scariest questions in our lives. Among the rays pointing towards us are work, education, utilities, housing, health care, food, natural resources, global interdependence, human rights, arts and entertainment, transportation, infrastructure, security and justice.

The cockeyed bit about all of these critical parts of our lives is that we elect or submit ourselves to others to make the big decisions.

Chances are you’re not particularly happy about how that’s working for you. In the shining city on my pub napkin, you would regain the right and responsibility to make the choices you feel are necessary for your life and your community. So how is it that we can build a new society based on autonomy, equality, self-management, mutual-aid, solidarity, diversity, and participation across all spheres of life? Better still, did you know that those values pretty much sum-up the views of most libertarian socialists and anarchists?

Personal responsibility is a key Gnostic principle, and so if it applies to our spirituality, I see no reason to omit it in my own approach to living. That doesn't mean that if you're a Gnostic, you must also be an anarchist or a Guild Socialist, but it does mean that you need to build and understand your community, and address the pressing issues of our time in the best way that you can. There is much to be addressed.

Let’s begin where you work, if you work.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote that he had “a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.” How many of you would disagree with that? The workplace is seldom a democracy, or even a meritocracy, as it is often sold to us. Despite the misinformation and culture of “leadership” which constantly reminds us of how little we know about our work, there are tens of thousands of successful enterprises that disprove that old myth.

Take Cabot Creamery for example. Since 1919 Cabot has become a 1,200-farm family dairy cooperative with members in New England and upstate New York. As a cooperative, Cabot is proud to value community, quality, democracy and local ownership, as well as emulating the Rochdale Cooperative Principles. According to those principles agreed to by the members of the International Cooperative Alliance, “A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise.” While cooperatives aren't a panacea, this model and others like it can be extended to encompass every facet of our communities. The point is that it can be, and is being done.

In the United States, more than 29,000 cooperatives operate in every sector of the economy and in every congressional district; Americans hold over 350 million cooperative memberships. (Source: National Cooperative Business Association www.ncba.coop/ncba/about-co-ops/research-economic-impact) These enterprises include utility companies, heavy industries, booksellers, printers, brewers, schools and colleges, hospitals, airlines, famers, bakeries, grocery stores and other retail shops. These examples prove that it is not only possible to take control of where you work, it is already happening all around us. Right now 1 in 4 people living in the states are working for a co-op. But taking control of our future means that we cannot be passive, we must create our shining city on a pub napkin, and then choose an area where we will devote our efforts and talents. Sometimes that might be confronting big business or the government, other times it might mean building a new enterprise or farm.

With all this talk of change, how about starting with my utility bills?

Yes, I couldn’t agree more. Large, publicly-traded energy utilities make decisions on how they produce gas and electric services, and how much they will charge for them. In reality, these resources are not anyone’s “property”, they are made with naturally-existing resources and powered by machinery built, serviced, and used by workers. Why should our electric bill reflect the huge pay increases and dividends paid to investors? The short answer is there is no answer. Although the New Deal-style rural utility co-ops have lost much of their appeal through mismanagement and stagnation, newer, dynamic public utility districts (PUDS) and municipal utility districts (MUDS) have proven to be highly efficient, in the case of MUDS - democratically controlled – and more affordable for the community they serve. How long these PUDS and MUDS will be able to survive the volatile energy market created by gargantuan private and publicly-traded power companies remains to be seen. But again, this is an area which demands action, not passivity – these decisions should and can be made by the people who pay the bills!

From government to governance

Not many people follow the news in Iceland, but they should. According to recent reports, the Icelanders have kicked the bums out, established a new constitution, and rejected (by a referendum question of over 90% approval) the capitalist status quo. No deals, no backing-down from IMF, British or US threats of retaliation. Read more about how the Icelanders have taken their society back from moral, economic and political bankruptcy here.

It’s worth mentioning that the capital city, Reykjavik is now being run by a self-described anarchist, actor, surrealist, musician and comedian Jón Gnarr. After Gnarr, who regularly quotes Bakunin and Tolstoy, was elected to lead the council, he said:

“The human spirit has been crushed by small-minded people playing politics. We have no agenda and are just fully engaged in trying to do our best. We have no party members and no idea about spin or political punchlines. When we don’t know something, we admit ignorance.”

You can read more about Jón Gnarr and the successes of the anarchists in Iceland here

Anarchist, actor, musician and comedian Jón Gnarr

was elected mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland in June 2011

Here in New England cities and towns are struggling to keep basic resources and services like schools and libraries open, and yet they spend millions of dollars every year on useless, self-promoting propaganda – usually in the form of signs which tell us that our tax dollars are being used “wisely.” These signs, which bear the names of mayors and state officials, are posted to prop-up their names for the next election. No community is defined by its own supposed public servants, and for the shining city on my pub napkin, that kind of “government” will end. We are asked to suffer cronyism, corruption, and ineptitude, but vanity and state worship is literally the last straw.

If we look at the reasons why our communities can no longer provide basic services, we're quickly confronted by several culprits which all share a common mother: systemic reliance on drinking the global Kool-Aid known as neo-liberalism - an euphemism for capitalism. Among these expenditures we can include (1.) wars; (2.) tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations, (3.) bail-outs for extremely large corporate interests and financial firms, and (4.) a systemic reliance on paying into corporate schemes ranging from Haliburton and Blackwater for wars, to big oil, big finance, and big agribusiness / pharmaceutical companies. The federal government isn't the enemy of our communities, it is the perpetrator of our suffocation, and therefore it is to be treated as any other criminal. So-called authorities need to be told to step away from public affairs and allow, as they did in Iceland, the people to take the reigns ourselves.

Promoting community and autonomy

We don’t realize that there are organizations out there which are already practicing good, community-based governance. They do exist, and these are the powerful entities which are the foundations of another way of ordering our society and our economy through Guild Socialism.

Some community colleges provide incredibly important resources for their metropolitan areas. Then there are elder services agencies which operate with some public funding, but they are operated by people who actually know what they’re doing: nurses, social workers, nutritionists, and volunteers – not political hacks. For many students, the elderly, and people living with disabilities, choices ranging from home care or institutionalization, to state and local college education, depend on these local organizations which have very few resources. By keeping local students, older people and younger people with disabilities at home and in the community, there are substantial social dividends, as well as tremendous economic savings. While politicians come and go, agencies and schools remain to pick up the pieces. Take home care for the elderly for example. Let’s see how our “leaders” treat the idea of community choices. From Disabled World:

“Senator Barack Obama was a co-sponsor of the Community Choice Act, legislation that would give persons who receive Medicaid the option of receiving equal access to services in their own communities while not forcing them into institutions such as nursing homes. The Obama administration has recently stated that it would not address the issue as a part of its proposed health care reform. The anger from Disability Rights Advocates has been immense.”

Community care and community education make sense. Consider the impact of allowing older adults the freedom to stay in their homes and receive visiting caregivers. In Massachusetts alone, transferring money spent on nursing homes to community care equaled an average savings of $21,518 per enrollee in 2010. This means the program produces an annualized savings of $19,129,502 for the people of the Commonwealth. The reason that politicians are slow to support community-based care is because they are pressured by the well-heeled lobbyists paid for by nursing homes. For the elderly in Massachusetts in 2010, 66% of long term spending was for institutional care, 34% on community care. For younger disabled people, 19% of long term spending for was institutions, and 81% in the community. Two thirds of all long term care spending on seniors was in institutions. For every $1 spent on elderly community care, $1.97 was spent in nursing homes – almost two to one. (Source: Massachusetts Home Care Assoc. Budget Proposal to the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2011)

Real community choices mean real community-based housing, health care, and educational options.

For students, community-based education can mean the difference between graduating at the expense of outrageous student loans and automatic indebtedness, and being able to begin their working lives with a sound education and an independent footing. It is criminal to subject young people to staggering debts for the sake of a broken system of fees, cushioning reserves and endowments of institutions which are supposedly serving the public.

Wrapping-up the napkin

Communities have and will be the basis of free, independent, caring and compassionate societies. It seems obvious that some things which are claimed to be “owned” by corporations, individuals and the government are patently not the property of these very institutions which create laws to secure their possession.

Our air, fire, water and earth are nobody’s possessions, and by the same token, it seems rather ridiculous to claim that our work as human beings could be “owned.” Each of us gives value to everything that we do. To call the complex, intelligent, life-affirming homo sapiens a “human resource” lays bare for all who care to see the monstrosity that has become of our social and economic relations.

This grotesque state of affairs has developed first from claims of property ownership, when in reality those properties were stolen by force, and protected with the sword. From that barbaric assertion came another: the “efficiency” of the market. Were it a true market filled with the free offerings of our own, that would be something, but a wholesale theft of human and natural value that gives that market its very existence is nothing less than the theft of human dignity and the rape of nature which gives us life.

We need to empower ourselves and our communities to break free from consumerism, corruption, and our reliance on the government, banks and bail-out billionaires to do things for us.

Yes, it was a very big napkin.

***

Shameless Barking Dogs: Cynics, Gnostics and Anarchists

2011-07-27T11:34:00.004-04:00

Diogenes by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)

The best thing about the Cynics is their illustrious name, which means “dog-like.” Barking dogs. Yeah, I like them already. Although Gnostics and anarchists (or libertarian socialists) may not share the Cynic predilection for lifting our legs to pee on someone’s table, or engaging in public flatulence contests, there are deep lines of continuity between all three schools of thought. Anarchists as such were a much later development on the historical timeline, but a wide variety of anarchist thought is informed by Zeno of Citium (c. 334 BC – c. 262 BC), the founder of the Stoics, who was in turn heavily influenced by the earlier Cynics. For purposes of simplicity, I’m going to name Zeno the founder of western Anarchism.

But Cynicism (not with a small “c”) shares more than ancient Greek roots with both Gnosticism and anarchism. In the first place, much like Gnosticism and anarchism, Cynicism is less of a philosophy and more of a way of life, an approach to the world which leads to a deeper human experience.

Some other parallels between the Cynics, Gnostics and anarchist theory include:

1. A general questioning of “reality” and our place in it; refuting norms, conditional thought, and systems and institutions that uphold these constructs. A Gnostic example of this is found in the Treatise on Resurrection: “Suddenly the living are dying - surely they are not alive at all in this world of apparition! The rich have become poor, rulers overthrown: all changes, the world is an apparition.” (48:20-27). (Also see Acts 4:29-30)

2. From this questioning and refutation, we open up to a new way of thinking and relating to ourselves and others.

3. Finally, with this new way of thinking and approaching the world, we simultaneously become truer to ourselves and better able to participate in an honest and self-affirming community (i.e., the allegorical “New Jerusalem”, etc.). Good and evil are rejected as bipolar mirages, and the cosmos becomes an intricate balance between various forces.

The Cynics preached against the social and economic institutions of their day. Diogenes of Sinope adopted a simple lifestyle of self-sufficiency (autarkeia), austerity (askēsis), and shamelessness (anaideia). The same can be said for the ancient Gnostics, and Christian accounts of Jesus’s attitude towards the established order in the bible. (cf. John 4:1-16, Luke 17:21, Matt 25:31-46; 23:8-12, Mark 10:25, etc.) These ideas have clearly influenced anarchist thought throughout the ages.

The Cynics were born out of a pivotal concept introduced by Socrates, and affirmed by the fabled inscription above the Oracle at Delphi: “Know Thyself.” It is ironic that Plato, who delivered almost everything we know about Socrates, could have been so vastly different in his thinking from Zeno. Zeno’s Republic, which he wrote circa 300 BC is the antithesis of Plato’s. It is the very early description of an anarchist society, plain and simple. Unfortunately, Zeno’s Republic has been lost to antiquity, although we know much about it though other writers such as Plutarch and Diogenes Laërtius.

Just as everything that we know about Socrates and Zeno comes to us from others, likewise most of what Western scholarship knew about Gnosticism until the late 20th c. came from apocryphal and critical sources. While scholars tend to argue over the minutia of each Gnostic, Cynic or Anarchist tract, it may be a better approach to accept the obvious: Cynicism, Gnosticism and anarchism must be understood as being views of life and the cosmos written by many divergent authors. We cannot expect to read one Cynic, one Gnostic, anarchist, or libertarian socialist and appreciate the totality of some invented consensus.

There are, however, striking similarities between these schools of thought, beginning with the concept usually termed in the Greek word parrhesia, which is mentioned in Cynic, Stoic, Gnostic, Christian, and anarchist literature. “Mentioned” is too laid-back a word: parrhesia is in fact a key aspect of all of these approaches. To quote Foucault:

The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse.

Michael Hardt wrote an article in the New Left Review last year on the subject of the Cynics, parrhesia, and particularly how they became the focus of Michel Foucault’s research and lectures just before he died in 1984. In this article, Hardt takes pains to show Foucault’s fascination with a series of events that begins with the visit of the great Cynic Diogenes of Sinope, to the Oracle at Delphi. Hardt explains a number of things in Foucalut’s investigation that will no doubt ring familiar to students and practitioners of Gnosticism, anarchism and libertarian socialism. Recounting the revelation given to Socrates by the Oracle, Hardt points out that the great philosopher was named by the Delphic Oracle to be “the wisest of men,” which Socrates interpreted to mean that he was the most aware of his own ignorance.

When Diogenes visited Delphi, the Pythia, or high-priestess of the Oracle, urged him to “falsify the currency.” Both Foucault and Hardt were quick to realize that Diogenes’ father, Hicesius worked in the mint of Sinope, and that the words for “currency” and “norms” or “laws” in Greek are closely related. (Norm = nomos; currency = nomisma.)(158) Thus the mandate of the famous Cynic was to question norms and laws and give new value to them through acts of subversion. The values expressed here by the Cynics do not echo, but predate similar attitudes held by later Gnostics, Christians, and the communism of the anarchists.

For all three schools of thought, the Cynics, Gnostics and anarchists, we can demonstrate several pivotal aspects which are shared in common beyond their mutual mistrust of "reality." The unique aspect of being human creates a kind of “otherness” with nature, and yet affirms the importance of our integration with it and a responsibility that is beyond it. To understand and relate to others and nature we have to take personal responsibility to be able to affect social attitudes (and therefore, affect change) as well as our own. We should not exalt human laws, norms, or institutions, but recreate them through the subversion of their value. True knowledge comes only after we question the validity of our cultures, beliefs, institutions, and other experiential prejudices.

Although our self-awareness needs to be free from the judgment of our peers, society, and economic modes of survival, the ultimate goal of the Cynic, the Gnostic, and the anarchist-communist is to create the conditions for all people to reveal themselves and live their lives to the fullest. That self-revelation means, by definition, that we relinquish the baggage, the properties, possessions, customs, and bigotries that divide people and lead to alienation. Or as the Johannite Gnostic Liturgy recites, "Material things are to be used, and people are to be cherished, and immorality is made manifest when people are used, and material things cherished."

***

Sources:

   Downing, Francis Gerald., Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh, T & T Press, 1992)

   De Acosta, Alejandro., ‘Cynical Lessons,’ The Anvil, (July 2011)

   Hardt, Michael., ‘Late Foucault,’ New Left Review, issue 298, no.64 (August 2010), pp.151-160

Wisdom Holding a Giant Lollypop

2011-07-26T10:34:00.000-04:00

Wisdom holding a giant lollypop

How the Cynics are interesting to gnostics, anarchists and other notable minorities;

Don't get wheezy-ah, it's just parrhēsia.

If you’re looking for wisdom here, please navigate away from this place, hence never to return. This blog is filled with nude, speculative mud-wrestling at its most sordid. Some of you know that there are many days when I think that everything about social networking and blogging is nothing but narcissistic self-gratification.

Today is obviously not one of those days.

In my mind, the most important shred of sanity to which we can cling is the realization of the absurdity of our condition in general, and specifically as it relates to electronic media. It is patently absurd to haggle with people on tiny boxes of light that appear on our computer screens. If I can’t sit down with you over a meal, or annoyingly poke my finger into your ribs, my means of communication with you are insufficient from a human point of view. So in that spirit, I figure why not shovel another load onto the electronic dung heap that we call virtual civilization.

Over the past several years I have been working on simplification. Narrowing-down who and what is important to me, and generally downsizing. This exercise hasn’t been about self-negation or asceticism in its currently misunderstood form, at least. It is about enjoying the people around me, building quality relationships and community, and engaging in work that is meaningful to me, and hopefully useful to others.

The trend towards simplicity hasn’t been easy or without problems. Life always gives us unexpected complications. If I believed in the devil, which I don’t, I’d say that he never stops farting in my face. Thankfully, there remains a little flicker of consistency throughout the past few years which this diabolical flatulence has yet to extinguish. Some might argue that the “flicker” is my insanity, and they might be right. Still, as I recently reviewed some of the things that I have written over the past several years, I noticed that there are themes to which I have remained true, despite huge changes to my perceptions and experiences of things since then.

When I think of simplicity and true nakedness, I still think of the Cynics. In fact, in an article which I wrote a little more than four years ago, I looked at these controversial philosophers and how their attitude towards the world is useful for us today. Since then I’ve come across other sources and references to the Cynics ranging from the later works of Michel Foucault, to more recent social commentary. A few days ago I stumbled on yet another article, much longer and more scholarly than mine, which drew some interesting comparisons between the ideas of the Cynics and anarchist theory.

I suspect that when I have a few days to think about this theme, I might share some ideas on a larger scale. In the meantime, you can read the old one.

***

The Marquise de Créquy on The Lévitikon

2010-12-29T11:52:00.001-05:00

The fourth tome of the memoir of the marquise de Créquy is a veritable goldmine of information for the student of esotericism, the occult, and royal court gossip from late 18th century and early 19th century France. The memoir, which is available in its full form from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, contains detailed anecdotes on nearly every major personage in the French royal court between the years 1710 and 1803.

Although the official attribution of the memoir is given to Charlotte-Victoire de Froullay de Tessé, Marquise de Créquy de Heymont de Canaples d'Ambrières, it was likely assembled by her grandson, Maurice Cousin de Courchamps. Most experts agree that his information was taken from Madame de Créquy’s voluminous notes of her life and times at the courts of Louis XV, XVI and Napoleon I.

Madame de Créquy’s memoir is filled with first-hand accounts of her relations and correspondence with such illustrious figures as the Count of St. Germain, Cagliostro, and many others. In a letter purportedly addressed to her cousin Louis Cardinal de Rohan, the Prince-Archbishop of Strasbourg, Madame de Créquy gives a rather detailed explanation of documents which she read from the collection of her visitor, the Count Cagliostro.

She noted:

The Grand-Master of the Templars, Jacques du Bourg-Molay, who was tortured to death in 1314 and whose family surives to this day in Nivernais, had created, during his capitivity in the Bastille, four mother lodges: for the east, Naples; for the west, Edinburgh; for the north, Stockholm; and Paris for the middle.

The day following the execution of the Templars in Paris, Sir Nicolas of Aumont and seven other Templars disguised as stonemasons came to collect the ashes of their brothers. Fifteen days later, Sir Usquin of Floriau, who had denounced the order, was murdered in Place d’Avignon; Pope Clement V had done him a magnificent funeral and declared him a "Venerable Servant of God"; but it appears certain that the Templars removed his body and deposited it in the tomb of Jacques de Molay. Then the four lodges founded by him began to organize themselves, and all the Templars took an oath to destroy the power of the Pope, to exterminate the Capetian dynasty, and all monarchs; to excite the peoples to revolt, and to establish a universal republic.

Madame de Créquy lived through the French Revolution relatively untouched, apart from a short stay in a convent. Her opinion of Protestants, Alchemists and other “undesirables” clearly illustrates her strong belief in the ruling class structure and the Roman Catholic Church to which she adhered. Still, her memoirs are a fascinating, eyewitness recollection of the inner-workings of France’s last royal court.

In spite of her negative views on esotericism and Johannite theology, Madame de Créquy corroborated the story of the discovery of The Lévitikon. In her Souvenirs de la marquise de Créquy (Tome IV. Chapter V.) the marquise wrote that the 8th century manuscript was discovered at a bookstall on the Quai des Gesvres by Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat. The author goes on to explain that Fabré-Palaprat purchased the gilt volume for 25 francs, and showed it to a certain Monsieur Dacier who dated the vellum incunable to the reign of the Byzantine emperor Constantine V (741 to 775). Although an opponent of the Johannites, the marquise also mentions that “Dr. Fabré-Palaprat at last found a conscientious translator who left everything blank that was no longer legible.” (See p. 125 of the BnF version) In her commentary on The Lévitikon, Madame de Créquy condemns the “Gnostic and Manichean” ideas contained in the manuscript, and falsely claims that it is filled with “hymns in honour of the devil.” Nevertheless, Madame de Créquy is an important, contemporary and independent source which confirms that as a result of the re-emergence of the Templar Order and the discovery of The Lévitikon, the Abbé Châtel was installed as the Primate of the Gauls according to the tradition of the Johannite Church - the Secret Church of John.

Notes:

Many thanks to the Bibliothèque nationale de France for providing digital copies of the primary sources for this article.

A digital copy of Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy from the University of Chicago.

Pimander, sive De potestate et sapientia Dei

2010-12-19T13:36:00.002-05:00

Reprinted from the Brandeis Special Collections Spotlight, Nov. 2009.

Pimander, sive De potestate et sapientia Dei is the title of a Hermetic work in Latin that comprises all of the known Corpus Hermeticum with the exception of the last three tractates. The Corpus (and this translation) is a series of Hellenistic Egyptian mystical works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, whose tradition may have begun with the veneration of the Egyptian god Thoth1; he was later identified with the Greek Hermes. The Corpus is one of the most important sources of inspiration for the Western Esoteric Tradition.

The latter sections of the Corpus were well known throughout Europe and the Near East during the Middle Ages, making Pimander a novelty to Renaissance scholarship when it was first published in 1463. The Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections at Brandeis is home to an example of the third edition, one of the eight editions of the Corpus published before 1500.2 This edition of Pimander, printed in Venice by Lucas Dominici (1481), was rebound in 1700, according to the description and provenance narrative inserted when the incunable was given to Brandeis. This edition was a gift of Bern Dibner, an early donor to the university and chairman of the Society of Bibliophiles at Brandeis.

The content of Pimander is philosophical, theosophical, astrological, magical, and alchemical, and was likely assembled during the second and third centuries CE. In addition to this fifteenth-century translation, Coptic fragments of the Corpus were found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945.3 The provenance of this incunable indicates that it was owned by the physician Georgius Kloss. This copy is in excellent condition, although it appears to have been trimmed to be rebound. The typography is in the Roman style, with spaces left at the beginning of leading paragraphs for illuminations that were never added. There are a number of pages that contain handwritten notes in Italian. The margin notes are likely from before the eighteenth century, given that some of them were lost when the book was trimmed and rebound.
Pimander, also known as “The Divine Pymander” or Poimandres, is a diverse system of mystical writings influenced by Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, Gnostic, and Christian ideas, but commonly accredited to the mystagogue Hermes Trismegistus. In Greek, the name of this enigmatic figure means “Thrice-Great Hermes” (Mercurius ter Maximus in Latin); he is believed to have lived just after Moses, although the fundamental principles contained in these writings may represent a very ancient Memphite tradition dating from at least the eighth century BCE.4
Florentine Duke Cosimo de’ Medici commissioned Marsilio Ficino to translate Pimander into Latin from a Greek manuscript brought from Macedonia. Ficino was a leading force within the newly established Neo-Platonist Academy, a respected scholar, a Catholic priest, and, by his own and other accounts, openly homosexual. It is striking that Ficino was placed in such an important scholarly and religious capacity given his sexuality, and it is noteworthy that the ideas contained within Pimander provide an understanding of humanity that was markedly more inclusive than the prevailing atonement theology of the day.
Ficino finished his translation in 1463. Within a few years Ficino translated several other pivotal texts that would lay the foundations for Humanist studies, including the works of Plato and the Christian Neo-Platonist Dionysius the Areopagite.5
Hermes Trismegistus was respected and referenced by early Christians such as Augustine of Hippo and Lactantius.6 Augustine wrote:

As regards philosophy, which professes to teach men something which shall make them happy, studies of that kind flourished in those lands about the times of Mercury, whom they called Trismegistus, long before the sages and philosophers of Greece, but yet after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and even after Moses himself. At that time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is found to have lived, that great astronomer, the brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson.7

For this reason the translation of the Corpus was given the highest priority by Medici. Ficino named the entire work “Pimander,” a title meaning “Shepherd of Men,” but in fact that name is but one chapter in the entire Corpus.8 Both Medici and Ficino were convinced that the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were far older than those of Plato, whose works were put aside to complete Pimander. Ficino’s translation cultivated a theme within Renaissance scholarship that identified the Egyptian roots of this Hellenistic philosophy. The essence of the mystical teachings contained within Pimander articulates a divinity that may be understood and experienced through nature. Moreover, the spirit of Pimander clearly describes the material universe, including the human body, as a model for a creative process, and not the source of damnation.9 This concept flourished in the new arts and sciences characteristic of Ficino’s age.
Expanded knowledge of the ancients gave rise not only to alchemy, astrology, and, later, to their corresponding physical sciences, chemistry and astronomy, but also to Humanism and the dramatic shift of European thought towards a human-centered perspective on spirituality, science, ethics, and politics. The printing of Pimander, among which this incunable is a very early example, sent shockwaves of conceptual progress throughout the continent, shaping the way we think even today.

Description by Rev. Donald Donato, Rector at the Parish of St. Sarah the Egyptian of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Boston.

1. J. Robinson, ed., “Asclepius,” in Nag Hammadi Library in English, introduced and translated by J. Brashler, P. Dirkse, and D. Parrott (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988): 330.
2. see George Sarton, review of Hermetica by Walter Scott in Isis 8, no. 2 (May, 1926): 343-346, at 345.
3. W. Barnstone and M. Meyer, eds., “Poimandres,” in The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambala Press, 2003), 502.
4. Karl W. Luckert, Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 100-102.
5. Charles Garfield Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 61.
6. Frederick Purnell, Jr., “Hermes and the Sibyl: A Note on Ficino’s Pimander,” Renaissance Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Autumn, 1977).
7. Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God), ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Rev. G. Wilson & Rev. J.J. Smith (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886), Book VIII, 39.
8. Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1972, 1984), 66.
9. Michael Allen and Valery Rees, eds., with Martin Davies, Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 291.

Posted by Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections

The Esoteric Roots of Socialism in Revolutionary France

2010-10-14T13:54:00.003-04:00

"Freemasonry and the Commune", Paris, 1871

In the years leading up to the French Revolution of 1789, several revolutionary groups began to flourish in and around the Palais Royal in Paris. There, in the bustling, filthy streets between the royal complex, with its theatres and grand pavilions, and the city’s old marketplace at Les Halles, one could find the finest artisans, the freshest country produce, bristling fish markets, fragrant spices from afar, and the homegrown politics of revolution - all within six square blocks.

The communism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1.), the humanism of Voltaire, and the empiricist and illuminist ideals of Adam Weishaupt began to take root in practical social theory and the applied ethics of revolution, led by professional revolutionists, Catholic clergy and leading esotericists.

From among the ranks of the Grand Orient de France, the mother lodge of French Freemasons, there came a generation of leaders, propagandists and revolutionaries who each benefited from the patronage of one man. Louis Philippe Joseph, the Duke of Orléans, Grand Master of the Grand Orient Lodge at the time of the revolution (2.), the Order of the Temple, and therefore the Secret Church of John. The Johannite Church would not become public until 1804 under the legal auspices of the Order of the Temple, so the Johannite Tradition’s leadership was none other than this Philippe. (3.)

How could a prince of the royal blood be a supporter of radical revolutionaries? The duke’s risky patronage and work with the revolutionaries clearly illustrate that he strongly believed in the need for his country, and the world, to make a radical change toward social equality. Indeed he dropped his titles and preferred to be known as “Philippe Egalité.” The duke’s residence in Paris was the Palais Royal, which he renamed the Palais de l’Égalité – the Palace of Equality.

Years before the revolution Philippe gave his permission to a group of revolutionaries known as Cercle Social - Les Amis de la Vérité, the Society of the Friends of the Truth, to use his apartments and the amphitheatre at the Palais Royal for meetings, debates and work. To us this may seem very strange: revolutionaries meeting in the royal palace? In a word, the duke’s permission was absolute, and included all the privileges of his status including immunity from royal censors, search, seizure of papers, or any kind of arrest. It must have been a very strange feeling for the rebellious republicans and seditious socialists to walk down the very corridors of power whose regular occupants could have easily (and did, frequently) have their bodies drawn and quartered for treason.

The Society of the Friends of the Truth had more than a few notable members – founders of revolutionary republicanism, early socialism, anarchist communism, and not a few clerics who would later become constitutional bishops after 1791. Among these radical bishops was Msgr. Henri Grégoire, (better known as Abbé Grégoire) revolutionary and abolitionist, who was greatly admired and often quoted by the Johannite Patriarch Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat and was a close friend of Msgr. Guillaume Mauviel, Primate of the Johannite Church of Primitive Christians. (See footnote 9.)

The Friends of the Truth was founded by Msgr. Claude Fouchet and his German-speaking friend and journalist Nicholas Bonneville. Bonneville was a Freemason, and published two works on the Jesuits and Templarism in Freemasonry a few months before the storming of the Bastille.(4.) Claude Fouchet and Bonneville were editors of the society’s newspaper known as La Bouche de Fer (“The Mouth of Iron”). On a regular basis Fouchet was known to deliver spirited homilies and public speeches in favor of the philosophy of Rousseau and outlining the revolutionary socialist concepts espoused by fellow society members François-Noël “Gracchus” Babeuf, and the poet-librarian Sylvain Maréchal, an early source of inspiration for later anarchist communists.

The synthesis of ideas which Fouchet often preached was notably influenced by his friend Bonneville’s own Germanic version of esoteric egalitarianism. Fouchet wrote in La Bouche de Fer: “The first disciples of Christ were equal and free; their republic ought to serve as a model, within the maturity of time, for a universal republic.” Fauchet condemned the greed of the wealthy in the face of misery, called for a political and social revolution which would guarantee economic as well as political liberty. (5.) La Bouche de Fer was a serious paper with contributing editors and bureaus in many French cities and throughout Paris. Its 16-page broadsheet was printed and distributed three times per week between 1790 and 1793. (6.)

Monsignor Fouchet became the Constitutional Bishop of Calvados (Normandy) in 1791, and suffered execution after the June 1793 Jacobin coup. In an age when great abundance was overshadowed by lifetimes of unimaginable misery and ignorance on the part of the sans-culottes, the poor working people of Paris, the warning bells of the Great Terror went unheeded. Eventually, through struggles within the revolutionary factions, Philippe Égalité was also found guilty of conspiracy and sent to the guillotine under Robespierre.

In spite of the terrible miscarriage of justice inflicted on Fouchet and Philippe Égalité, many of their influential comrades remained unharmed and went on to prosper. Sylvain Maréchal continued his life as a poet, lawyer and librarian, unfettered by the political instability of the 1790s. Abbé Grégoire went on to champion the abolition of slavery and racial equality, the social and civil equality of Jews in Alsace and Lorraine, and independence for Saint-Domingue, now known as Haiti. Grégoire’s fellow constitutional bishop, the Norman-born Guillaume Mauviel, also managed to survive the Parisian turbulence and his five years as bishop in Haiti. (7) Throughout Msgr. Mauviel’s career, he embraced the revolution and the equality of all people, making his mark on the clergy of Haiti (1800-1805) and encouraging them to fulfill their calling by spreading the truth of social and economic equality – most especially in the political forum. Msgr. Mauviel, who would later consecrate the Johannite Patriarch Fabré-Palaprat, remained true to his revolutionary heritage until the very end of his life. One year before his death, Mauviel attended the funeral of Msgr. Jean-Guillaume Molinier, along with his friend and co-revolutionary Bishop Henri Grégoire in 1813 – long after the revolution had been swallowed by Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandiose empire. (8) (9)

Msgr. Mauviel died the next year, in 1814, ten years after the opening of the Johannite Church. Many of his revolutionary brothers survived and went on to give birth not only to the 19^th century Gnostic Restoration, but also the movement for social equality, which would spark the imaginations of working people around the world, and no doubt revolutions as yet unfinished.

***

Notes:

(1.) Rousseau is one of the first Enlightenment philsosophes to question the entire institution of property ownership as evidenced in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men (1755), in which he wrote: “The first man who, after enclosing a plot of land, saw fit to say: "this is mine," and who found people who were simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, sufferings, and horrors mankind would have been spared if someone had torn up the stakes and filled up the moat and cried to his fellows: "Don't listen to this imposter; you are lost if you forget that the earth belongs to no one, and that its fruits are for all.”

(2.) Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Albert G. Mackey. Revised. vol. ii. Richmond, Virginia : Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, Inc., 1966. p. 745.

(3.) Gary Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins & The French Revolution (Princeton University Press. 1985).

(4.) Jules Michelet, History of the French Revolution, Paris, A. Lacroix, 1877-1879, t. II, p. 230-232.

Also see “Loge des Neuf Soeurs” from the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/robison-barruel.html

(5.) Bouche de Fer, ser. i, no. 29.

See also: Fauchet, Troisième Discours sur la Liberté Française, Paris, 1789.

Ludovic Pichon, Le Roy des Ribauds: Dissertations de Du Tillet, Claude Fauchet, etc. A. Claudin Editeur, Paris 1878. <http://books.google.com/books?id=5e8JAAAAIAAJ&q=Claude+Fauchet&source=gbs_word_cloud_r&cad=5#>

(6.) Claudine Cavalier, “La Bouche de Fer”, <http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/notes/journaux/bouche_de_fer.htm >, 2005.

(7.) Gabriel Debien, Guillaume Mauviel, évêque constitutionnel de Saint-Domingue 1801-1805, Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, coll. « Notes d’histoire coloniale », n° 105, 1981.

(8.) Auguste Matinee, Anecdotes de la révolution de Saint-Domingue racontées par Guillaume Mauviel, évêque de la colonie (1799-1804), 1885, réédité en 2010 par Kessinger Publishing

(9.) Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, vol. 37, n° 1, 1983, p. 99-101.

Also see : Gabriel Debien, Guillaume Mauviel Évêque constitutionnel de Saint-Domingue (1801-1805). Coll. « Notes d’histoire coloniale », no 105. Basse-Terre, Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1981

< http://www.erudit.org/revue/haf/1983/v37/n1/304132ar.pdf >

General information regarding the Constitutional Bishops is gratefully taken from:
Ruth Graham, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Winter, 1982-1983), pp. 117-140, The Johns Hopkins University Press for the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies(ASECS). < http://www.jstor.org/stable/2738217 >

A portrait of Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat

2010-06-24T19:08:00.002-04:00

Portrait of the young Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat

courtesy of l'Academie nationale de médecine, France.

Since the publication of my translation of The Lévitikon: The Gospels According to the Primitive Church, there is growing interest in the life and times of the Johannite Church’s first Patriarch after the Restoration, The Most Rev. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat.

In 1773 (the document above is incorrect with the date 1775), Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat was born in the town of Cordes, which is in the department of Tarn, within the Midi-Pyrénées region of the historical province of Languedoc, in southwestern France. The nearest prefecture to Cordes is the city of Albi, namesake of the Albigensians: the Cathars.

Today Fabré-Palaprat’s birthplace lies about one hour from Toulouse by car, and two and a half hours to the north of Rennes-le-Chateâu and Montségur. The village changed its name in the 1980s to “Cordes-sur-Ciel” in homage to the skies that surround the idyllic hilltop settlement. It is significant to note that Cordes, which in the old Occitan language of southern France is known as Còrdas, was built and first given the right to be a fortified town by the Cathar Count Raymond VII of Toulouse in 1222. Even now, the principal street in the village is called the “Grand Rue Raymond VII.”

Life for the young, gifted Bernard-Raymond was likely filled with sunny days, steaming pots of the local hearty white bean stew known as cassoulet, and constant reminders of the rich and sometimes mysterious and bloody religious history of the south of France. Given his place of upbringing, it is not difficult to understand why Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat came to play such an extraordinary role in the Restoration of the Gnostic Apostolic Tradition. After all, he was a son of Albi, fabled for its links to the cult of the Black Madonna, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Esclarmonde de Foix, many Templar families, and of course, the Cathar people.

Many Johannite and other Gnostic sources mention that Dr. Fabré-Palaprat practiced medicine at the court of Napoleon I. According to the doctor’s records, still meticulously archived by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, during the siege of Paris, Fabré-Palaprat heroically treated scores of wounded soldiers and civilians under heavy fire. In 1814 he received the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian and military award. You can see scanned originals of his inscription record and other documents at the National Archives of France.

In 1804, the same year in which Dr. Fabré-Palaprat discovered the Greek manuscript containing The Lévitikon, and 10 years prior to his own decoration at the rank of chévalier or “knight” of the Legion, Napoleon I held a great feast and ceremony for new Legionnaires while sitting in the chair of the Merovingian king Dagobert. This spectacle was organized at the encampment of the Grand Army at Boulogne, which was preparing to invade England.

Even if the Merovingians were the first royal house of France, Bonaparte’s choice of furniture, so obviously invoking the ancient House of Merovée, which some contend holds the bloodline of Jesus and Mary of Magdala, was not understood by many of the emperor’s own entourage. Exactly what Napoleon’s thinking was on the use of Dagobert’s throne is unclear given that his own confidant and biographer, the Baron C.F. de Meneval himself did not comprehend the significance of the seat chosen. The ancient chair was doubtless small and uncomfortable compared with the luxurious velvet and ermine thrones of the French Empire period. De Meneval in fact recalled that the use of the chair “held in some ridicule by the popular mind.” (Memoirs of Napoleon, 296)

Whatever the nature of the display of Merovingian regalia at the Legionnaires’ ceremony, a few months later, on 25 November 1804, and a few days before his imperial coronation, Napoleon met with the Roman Pontiff in secret. This was the social and political backdrop of Dr. Fabré-Palaprat’s discovery of the Lévitikon in Paris that same year.

The secretive meeting between Napoleon and the pope took place in Paris, but not as a State visit. During their private talks, the pope reportedly pressed Napoleon to sign a document in which Louis XIV “disavowed the articles of the declaration of the clergy in 1682, which was drawn up by Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet as the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church. Bossuet, although never condemned by the Vatican, held carefully crafted and well thought out ideas on Church-State relations that one might interpret as being Jansenist. The pope promised to keep this act of complaisance secret.” (Memoirs, 310)

Was Napoleon hedging his bets? Was the sneaky little Corsican planning the launch of an established Church of John for his new French Empire - in the face of the See of St. Peter? Perhaps, he was by all accounts a brilliant tactician, but this little intrigue days before the imperial coronation tells more about the events of 1682 than it does about Bonaparte’s religious leanings. The pope was asking that Napoleon sign a document repudiating the authority of the French Monarch to his extraordinary authority over the established Catholic Church in France, which was claimed – and never relinquished legally – by Louis’ successors. Here, it is important to recall that after Louis XIV, his nephew, Philippe d’Orleans, served as regent for Louis XV. This Philippe is the Duke of Orleans who was appointed Grand-Master of the Order of the Temple, and reformer of its statutes. In name alone, but still by intention, this made Philippe and his successors the Johannite Patriarchs – privy to the secrets and the succession of St. John and everything that entailed. With a rewnewed monarchy, such as the one Napoleon was about to create, all of these prerogatives would eventually fall into the imperial lap. And the pope knew it.

Judging from Napoleon’s own writings on religion, it is likely that he was more concerned for the welfare of his enterprises than any religious revolution. While serving in Egypt, Napoleon frequently showed his respect and even preference for Islam over his native Catholicism. By all accounts Napoleon Bonaparte was a well read, disciplined and fairly just person for his time. But he was no mystic, and he knew that cultivating an empire based on the civil code and reverence for France as the cultural leader of Europe must bow to Roman Catholic tradition, if only for convenience.

Fabré-Palaprat no doubt knew of the emperor’s feelings regarding Rome, which enabled the legal beginnings of the restored Johannite Church, but this realization probably greatly dismayed the Johannite imagination of a new kind of Christianity for a new kind of Europe.

Nevertheless, Fabré-Palaprat stayed in good standing at court, and most importantly, he remained in Paris for most of his adult life working on many high-level social and medical projects. Aside from his service as Grand-Master of the Order of the Temple and later as Patriarch of the Johannite Church, Fabré-Palaprat was appointed to the Société Galvanique of the Academy of Sciences which was responsible for identifying and rewarding the best and brightest scientific minds in France, particularly in the quest for understanding and harnessing electricity. See: Un héritage des Bonaparte :Le prix du galvanisme (1802-1815) et le prix Volta (1852-1888)

Throughout his lifetime, Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat excelled in both the society in which he was born, and in cultivating and implementing the sciences which he valued so much: physical, social, and spiritual. While he lived in Paris, Fabré-Palaprat worked within his own community as Director of health and social services for the 9th Arrondissment of the city. (Presse médicale. 1947. 55. pp. 729-730, portr.) Whether as a medical doctor, a public servant, an esoteric practitioner, or as Patriarch of the Johannite Church, he consistently projected the inner meaning of his own spiritual path into service for his community. As much as his writings on ecclesiological and liturgical matters might be seen as rather stuffy for our day and age, make no mistake: this Patriarch and his successor today share much in common. They both work in the world and serve both spiritual and temporal needs as a part of their difficult task as leaders of a unique and very ancient tradition. It is therefore fitting and true to the spirit of the Johannite Tradition that the Patriarchate of +Ioannes IV has ushered in the Lévitikon discovered by +Bernardus Raymondus, now made public to the wider world in English.

Although after his death, the Johannites splintered and perhaps many of Fabré-Palaprat´s dreams were broken temporarily, his indefatigable approach to living the Johannite Tradition gave many gifts to the people of France, and now to all of us.

In his older years the esoteric doctor from the Cathar country left Paris and retired to Pau, a city located in the Pyrenees along the same border with Spain over which thousands of Cathars fled the fires of oppression so many centuries before. According to the City of Pau’s records, The Most Rev. Bernard-Raymond Fabré Palaprat died at the age of 65 on 18 February 1838, 34 years after the Johannite Church and the Order of the Temple were reinvigorated, and ten years after the official foundation of the Johannite Church of Primitive Christians was recognized by the French Government. At the time of his death he was a widower of the late Genviève Blusse. (Archives Nationales, Dossier : LH/922/16)

While there are many criticisms to be made regarding Fabré-Palaprat and his epoch, his service to his fellow citizens clearly illustrates his commitment to this great task which we call humanity.

Egyptian communitarianism and its influence on Christianity

2010-05-26T18:11:00.001-04:00

We have a lot to learn about how to act as a community from very ancient sources. Not just the quotes from the Bible or other sacred texts, but from the advanced societies of Egypt and Greece, who along with Judea, gave birth not only to Christianity – orthodox and gnostic – but to many of the concepts and institutions which we hold near and dear.

These three cultures were of course very different from each other. The blending of the social lines of authority and power, religion, sex, education, etc., have all been intertwined in some very confusing ways over the past 2,000 years. All of this has set the stage for the creation of a false struggle: the individual versus the community, and therefore the State. In ancient Greece, this power struggle would have been ridiculed, and rightly so. The basis of our word for communion and community is communio in Latin, and kinonia in Greek. It is striking that the heart of the Gnostic and Christian religion is the celebration of the Eucharist – communion, and as such I believe that the Greek conception of kinonia represents some important clues to finding and establishing successful politics and a fulfilling society.

Under the Greek system, particularly that of Athens, the participation of a citizen with the other citizens in the provision of needs and the constant perfection of the “truths of life” was the basis for what we would call human rights and dignity. The communal effort that treats not only the abstract rights of individuals, but embraces each citizen as more than the sum total of her parts. Far from perfect, but still an organic harmony evolved which involved civic love and care for others as the moral imperative. There was no distinction between social, religious and moral laws.

Many Gnostic Christians are interested in the logic of Greek philosophers. Christianity itself is heavily influenced by centuries of Greek thinkers from Heraclitus to Plato and Aristotle. As the Greek Orthodox Professor Christos Yannaras wrote:

From Heraclitus to the neo-Platonists, the knowledge of truth was verified as an event of communion: “everything that we share, we know to be true; what we have that is peculiar to us, we know to be false” (Heraclitus, Frag. Diels-Kranz I, p.148, 29-30). Knowledge is proved true, only when it is verified by common experience —only when by its announcement we share with others, understand and are understood, are in tune with the common experiential certitude. (1)

There is an important lesson in this fragment from Heraclitus for all of us who engage in community building, whether it is in the realm of public service, parish work, or advocacy. What Heraclitus wrote is equally true of our own experiences – yes, even spiritual experiences. While no one may know the depths of our soul as we do, the beauty and reunification of ourselves into the broader Mind of Gnosis necessarily involves sharing and articulating our experiences with others. What we may be seeing in our spiritual lives may be distorted by our particular or peculiar vantage. That doesn’t mean that what you are experiencing isn’t real, it just means that you might only be seeing it from one end of the prism. In my own case I greatly value the positions and thoughts of others because they help me to see things in a broader and more inclusive way.

After more than a thousand years of Christian political thought, which only partially continued these Classical Greek values, Western Civilization spit out a new era in human relations. Combining the totalizing nature of Judeo-Christian theology (i.e., the pastoral or “shepherd-sheep relationship”) and the essentially communitarian Greco-Roman ideals of citizenship with raison d’état and nationalism. This mixture proved to be perilous not only for giving birth to the totalizing State, but also for its cousin, our individualistic liberalism. Much has been written about the failure of communism, but the jury is still out on our system, and Nature herself may be the final judge, jury and executioner on that score.

The so-called triumph of political and economic liberalism I think is overblown at best. At worst it is a simplistic notion that totally fails to grasp the consequences of the profound alienation of the human person from her own society, economy and ecology, and most tragic of all, from herself. We face grave shifts in the ecological, economic and political landscapes – mark my words. We don’t have a choice as to whether things are going to change or not. We only have a choice to elect what we are going to do to make that change befit human dignity.

But the beginnings of knowledge, the very roots of Greek social and philosophical advancements, arrived on the shores of the Ionian and Aegean seas from the “Black Land” of Egypt. So too, the European Enlightenment is the product of the rebirth - the Renaissance - of Hermetic/Alchemical and Classical scholarship. In so many ways Egypt’s great legacy lives on, albeit obscured from contemporary appreciation by condescending scholarship.

The Pyramid Code is a very interesting series of documentaries on ancient Egyptian technology which may help us to envision a better society. The five episodes detail recent research on the pyramid complexes and ancient temples in Egypt, taking on issues such as matriarchal consciousness, ancient knowledge and sophisticated technology. The series is based on research conducted during 23 visits to Egypt by Dr. Carmen Boulter of the Graduate Division of Educational Research at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. The first premise is that Egyptian civilization is far older than we have been taught by traditional Egyptology, and that many of the techniques which may have been employed were for the benefit of all people. Using aquifers and shafts under the pyramids, Dr. Boulter’s theory posits that harmonic healing techniques and subtle electricity were distributed for common use, much as Nikola Tesla tried to do in 19th century New York. Mechanical resonance does work, but it does not make a profit for investors if the electricity is freely available to the surrounding public. If these theories prove to be true, here we have a good example of how communitarian values need to be resurrected using advanced, ecologically friendly technologies.

I was privileged enough to have been able to visit the pyramids at Giza and Saqqara, the Egyptian Museum, the Valley of the Kings, Queens and Nobles, as well as the temples of Karnak and Luxor on a family vacation in 1984. Having seen the interior of the pyramids, I agree with the theory that they were not primarily built as tombs. I have also walked around the Great Sphinx, whose water-worn bottom is very obviously older and larger than its current head. I have seen the ancient riverbed where the Nile once flowed around the Giza complex.

These clues to an older and more practical purpose for the pyramids resonate with other arguments concerning the social nature of the ancient Egyptians. If any society was communitarian it was Egypt, and this is reflected in its egalitarian approach to law, property ownership and inheritance for women. This is not to say that ancient Egypt was heaven on earth – far from it. There were rigid social classes, but then again they did invent beer, so I see that as a draw. But I believe that there is a great deal which academic Egyptology refuses to consider – a common history that may give us imaginative adaptations to our own social, economic and cultural problems, as well as clarifying the Egyptian roots of the original Christian religion. Let’s face it, academia in 1944 would have scoffed at the notion that there were detailed and competing Gnostic sects whose literature was about to be found by a shepherd boy at Nag Hammadi.

Hermetic and therefore Johannite and Rosicrucian teachings have long held that the ideals of serving humanity, Trinitarian Theology, virgin birth, etc. are all allusions to the Egyptian beginnings of the teachings of Christ. This heritage predates the Nag Hammadi texts by at least 300 years. Now, after the Enlightenment and an epoch of material science, the time is ripe for human spiritual and scientific relations to surpass mere tolerance, and embrace one another. The separation of Church and State is well and good, but to move forward we need to recognize that spirituality is the mother of our innate dignity, and the midwife of our actions on the social concerns of our time. Neither in the deserts of Egypt, nor in the cold of New England can human existence or individual liberty be sustained outside of the interdependent community in which we live, love, and work.

Unlike laissez-faire ideas of society which assert that our responsibilities are a matter of “personal freedom”, the great civilizations which gave us ways to understand and articulate everything from Gnosis to democracy clearly recognized that responsibilities are anchored in community.

If “freedom” is about not paying taxes or being “free” to neglect my responsibilities and all the while claim my “unalienable rights”, does it address the metaphysical value of the human being from the perspective of these ancient cradles of our beliefs and traditions? Better yet, does that kind of “freedom” correspond to the value we place as Gnostic Christians on the indwelling Divine?

Notes:

(1.) Christos Yannaras, The Inhuman Character of Human Rights, Domos, Athens 1998

Revolution of the heart

2010-05-12T13:02:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to a sister in the Church regarding the indispensable principle of Lex orandi, lex credendi in the Apostolic Tradition. This term often adds the third, and I would argue most important element, lex vivendi. That is to say the law of prayer (lex orandi) also called the Liturgy is the law of belief (lex credendi). The third (lex vivendi) is where the rubber meets the road. What we pray, we believe, and live-out through our actions. From the Esoteric, Gnostic Christian vantage, this means that through our participation in the Sacraments and our other spiritual work, we progress with the help of Gnosis, and thereby mature in our compassion, and service to others. We come to see ourselves in everyone – no matter how horrible that might be at first glance. This is the basis for true material and spiritual liberation. As Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement wrote in 1933: The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? (The Catholic Worker)

Service is more important to living the life of the spirit than a mere statement of belief, a personal preference, or a votive offering to political action in the name of religion. Our shared sense of diakonia – of service to others – is a core element of our own spirituality – Gnostic, Catholic and Protestant. In the Jewish tradition this is called Tikkun olam תיקון, literally to “heal” or “repair” the world. (Gittin 4, Mishnah 2) In many religions, but particularly in the Gnostic Apostolic Tradition, service to others is to live in accordance with our shared appreciation of the inherent dignity of the Divine and therefore, of all people.

This is not charity. I am not suggesting that we employ a paternalistic, top-down approach to social justice work any more than we espouse that sort of spirituality. I recently saw a poster drawn up by the Aboriginal Activists Group of Queensland, Australia which puts this concept into perspective: “If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” The sense of being essentially equal is as vital to our spiritual and pastoral lives as it is to comprehending and executing our work with people. This is our work: to extend our love to everyone (cf. John 15:17) through human solidarity (cf. Luke 22:27); thus to give testimony to the common mind of Gnosis, thereby beginning to fulfill our forgotten potential as sparks of the Divine.

Admittedly this work is easier said than done. We live in a world whose lines of power, belief and authority constantly reinforce the fallacy of separation between the material and spiritual worlds. We deal with institutions and superstitions that would have us believe that the “good vs. evil” dichotomy is an excuse for ignoring and mistreating those we deem to be different, or tainted by darkness. We are all in the darkness seeking the light and how we stumble through the shadows does make a difference.

For those in the struggle against poverty and exclusion, as well as ecumenical work, it is a treacherous task to steer clear of the rock of antagonism and the shoals of oversimplification, both of persons and ideas. As a clergyman, it is as much my duty to encourage individuals to see the Divine within them as to point out and try to correct abuses of all human rights that violate that dignity. By “all human rights” I am not exclusively referring to civil and political rights, but to economic, social and cultural rights: Wholesome food, decent work, safe housing, clean water, sound education, and equal justice under law. Some believe that the status quo of western capitalism, the same structure that imposes crushing poverty on the majority of the planet’s population, is to be respected because it is the ‘right of the individual’ to enrich him/herself. The rationalization of laissez-faire economics, or worse – choosing to throw crumbs to the poor and marginalized when it is convenient – is clearly not part of the Apostolic Tradition, gnostic and catholic.

If we look to the points of convergence in the Gnostic, Christian, Hermetic and Jewish traditions, we see a definite pattern emerge. The Judaic understanding of property, ownership and social justice is made clear by the allegory of unfaithful Jerusalem recorded in the book of the Prophet Ezekiel (16:49): This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride of wealth and food in plenty, comfort and ease, and yet she never helped the poor and the wretched. Notice that it was not homosexuality, but the lack of solidarity with the poor which is seen to be the collective error by Ezekiel’s community.

In the Hermetic texts the good we do, our actions in the here-and-now are valued as the manifestation of the Divine-in-the-world. When we ask if our actions are meaningful, Hermes Trismegistus replies: Mind sees itself in thinking, God in making. (Corpus Hermeticum, “Mind Unto Hermes”, 22) Likewise, the Gnostic community of St. Thomas the Apostle echoes other apostles when they recorded: “If you have money, don’t lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone from whom you won't get it back.” Indeed if we read many ancient Church writings, private property itself is seen as a slap in the face to the new commandment to love. But this sense of serving others does not stop with scriptures or apostles. It begins with Christ and the Saints John, Ignatius of Antioch, Origen, Ambrose, and Francis of Assisi. In just as many ways, service and communitarian values stretch from the monastic orders, including the Templars, to the Johannite and other French Gnostic leaders, many of whom were members of the egalitarian Grande Loge Symbolique Ecossaise and the Grand Orient de France, (also see: Grand Orient de France site in French). Every one of these groups would have condemned any ideology or government system based on selfishness, deceit and usury in the name of ‘individual liberty.’ From French Freemasonry, which held the Johannite Tradition within itself for at least a century, we see the following statement:

For the Grand Orient de France, the project of progress has always been an engine for our reflections and for our actions, to the point that this principle is an integral part our Tradition of obedience. We are the heirs of men and of women that all, in their own manner, worked for the improvement of Humanity: Voltaire, La Fayette, Garibaldi, Louis-Auguste Blanqui, Victor Schoelcher, the emir Abd el-kader, Louise Michel, Bakunin, Jean Zay, Félix Eboué, Pierre Brossolette, and so many others who entrusted us with their knowledge which enriched our Lodges by their presence. This is the reason why the Grand Orient de France is a vigilant defender of the principles of its motto that is also the motto of the Republic: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." This is the reason why the Grand Orient de France is bound to the absolute liberty of conscience that is guaranteed by secular institutions. This is the reason why the Grand Orient de France is opposed to racism and to the enemies of the democracy. (Grand Orient de France, “Our Values” - Nos Valeurs French Only)

It is worth mentioning that the Scottish Rite Grande Loge Symbolique Ecossaise was also among the first and only lodges of Freemasonry to welcome women among their ranks under the name Le Droit Humain (The Human Right) in 1893. So too, in the esoteric strain it was a Gnostic bishop, Martinist and famous esotericist – none other than the Most Reverend Constant Chevillion (Tau Harmonious) - who instituted and insisted upon the initiation of women in the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, among others. But his social activism did not stop with equality for women. The April 1937 issue of «Le Gallican» journal contains an article written by Chevillion while he was Patriarch of L’Église Gnostique Universelle. Under the heading Réflexions sur le Temple social, he wrote:

The material goods of this world, given by nature and transformed by labour, with the help of capital, are the communal property of all mankind…But the owners of industry, commerce and agriculture have forgotten their role. As instruments of God in the redistribution of the fruits of labour, they have carved out the lion’s share, and almost always consider themselves to be the exclusive beneficiaries. All have forgotten the great maxim of the Christ: To each according to his works and needs. (Cf. Rev. 2:23; Matt 16:27). And the world rolls indefinitely towards the same error. They debate within a materialism from which they refuse to escape. Men do not think on their spiritual origin, or on their final end. They have been, are, and will be the game of instincts, passions, and appetites; in one word, of egotism.

Several years after he wrote this article, Tau Harmonious was shot by agents of the Gestapo. He has since been venerated as a Gnostic saint and martyr by several jurisdictions, including the Johannite Church.

Although there are vivid references to social justice and human rights spanning from the Hebrew Bible to Gnostic Christian scriptures and writings, as well as the rich history of solidarity and progress from our French forbears, as a Johannite I do not have to rely on history to see that embracing all human beings as equals demands my attention, respect, love and therefore, action. I need only to listen to our Liturgy and ask: when are material things to be placed above people? Furthermore: what happens as a consequence? Doesn’t this play out in government and policy decisions every day? People still starve or freeze to death, and yet our cities use public funds to build sports arenas. Critics rail against public spending, but rarely look at the severely unbalanced priorities with which we deploy the public treasury. Older members of our society, the weak and disabled – not to mention those who live in extreme poverty outside of our borders – all of these people make up the Mystical Body. When we complain about taxation, perhaps the value-added would be to place a moral emphasis on how our governments make sweeping decisions about prioritizing our tax revenue. That means that we have to look at what politicians are saying to get elected, and determine which one will do the most for those who really need help. Right now, the trend in North America and Europe is to give to those programmes that give back to the businesses that claim they will bring profits to us, and that this will trickle down to the masses. That is what Ronald Reagan said in the 1980s. Now, 30 years later, after radical privatization, deregulation and globalization, the gap between rich and poor is approaching very dangerous benchmarks in so-called wealthy countries like the US. Is that the locus of what has been transmitted to us by any of our traditions, be they Catholic, Jewish, or Esoteric? Pay-for-play politics panders to the egotism that Tau Harmonious mentioned. This is a cover for excusing ourselves to spend public revenue on projects that will titillate and make our lives easier, while leaving the rest of our citizenry, and indeed three-quarters of humanity without the very basics of survival.

Even in the presence of such disgusting injustice, our dealings with the institutions and governments which are responsible for neglecting or abusing human rights must be extremely prudent. As a person in Holy Orders, I need to be ever mindful of my task to bring opposites together, leaving room at the shared table of humanity for rational and even loving discourse.

But this does not mean that moral imperatives should be left aside. Poverty is violence, and ignorance or willful aversion of the needs of other people is a feeble excuse for inaction. I think Ezekiel put a rather sharp point on that idea. If the Sacraments are to effect positive change toward a more loving and just society, then we must be willing to embrace service to others as the outpouring of grace and the fulfillment of human rights for each person imbued with the Divine.

The Annunciation of Love

2010-03-21T09:45:00.000-04:00

The earth and the sun have moved together to welcome the Vernal Equinox, Ostara, Easter – not coincidentally the time which is remembered in the Liturgy as the Annunciation of Our Lady (March 25). It is a time of conception and pregnancy leading to the birth of the Divine Light nine months later at the Winter Solstice. It is celebrating the victory of Light (or life, rebirth, resurrection) over the powers of darkness (death). The Divine goes into the underworld and returns on the third day: “... crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead” (Apostles’ Creed); the ‘rising of the Sun of glory.’

Of course this process is as much internal as it is found in nature, and as such it has been described in both masculine and feminine terms. The divinization of the human person is not only exemplified through Christ the Logos Incarnate, but is seen in the image of Mary who has been made a sharer in the Divine through Christ and the Holy Spirit in her role as Theotokos; the ‘God-bearer’. (See: Twelve Anathemas Proposed by Cyril and accepted by the Council of Ephesus) Some name Mary the “Co-Redemptrix.” Still others, including many Gnostics believe that the Wisdom of God or Sophia was also manifested in a human person in the form of Holy Mary of Magdala (St. Mary Magdalene). These are of course not mutually exclusive in the least; neither would the spiritual reality be diminished if we never prove their historical existence.

In the words of the late pope John Paul II, “[Mary, Mother of God] is an icon of the Church, the symbol and anticipation of humanity transfigured by grace, the model and the unfailing hope for all those who direct their steps toward the heavenly Jerusalem.”

These steps toward the New Jerusalem are the very same steps that we take to work every day. Every door that we pass through, every face that we see can remind us of the progress (or stagnation) of that portion of us which defies description. And it is precisely here, on this path – historically known as the Imitiatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae that I think many gnostics are in danger of confusing two important concepts. The way to theosis is not gnosis. The way to divinization is not the divine knowledge/experience. Gnosis is essential to shedding light on who we are and where we are going, but it is not the verb. Love, charity and solidarity are the actions that get us to where we belong. Monsignor Scott Rassbach recently wrote that gnosis is salvation, and that “It saves us from ourselves. It saves us from the anti-life, anti-humanity, anti-virtue culture.” All true, but still gnosis is a kind of heightened awareness, and not all that is needed. The proof of the pudding is in the eating – we need to exemplify that awareness through action; a point that is certainly not lost on Monsignor Rassbach.

Consider St. Paul, much-maligned in gnostic circles because of the Pastoral Epistles, but if we choose a text which is considered to be original, unredacted Pauline teaching such as the Corinthian letters, we begin to see a definite line of continuity between Pauline teachings and those of the community of St. John the Beloved.

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor. 13:2)

When reading this text, it’s important to remember that the word used for “knowledge” here is γνῶσιν (gnosin) the accusative, feminine form of gnosis. Neither faith nor gnosis is good enough. This is as much a lesson for Gnostics as for mainstream Christians. Your faith isn’t enough, and neither is our gnosis. So if the way to divinization is love, then Christ and Mary are the personifications of love, and this is how we can begin to comprehend what Christ meant when he is supposed to have said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6) He was not saying that if you’re not a Christian you are going to hell. He is describing himself as the perfect model of our path to work every morning. And again love is at the core of the model: This I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:17) It’s interesting to note that in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the original Latin phrase used for the English translation “In the beginning was the Word” (Logos) is the Johannite motto: In principio erat Verbum. This could just as easily have been written: “In the beginning was Love.”

I personally think that any focus on apotheosis as opposed to theosis may be premature in most cases if not outright dangerous. Apotheosis, a word batted about in many gnostic discussions, literally means ‘to become a god’. In ancient Rome the title “Divo” or “Diva” was applied to those humans who were pronounced gods, similar to the Greek and Egyptian concepts of deification centuries earlier. Perhaps I’m limiting myself, but I think that it is enough for me to work on hamartía (missing the mark), beginning with each ‘dawn of the mystical day.’

In the Hermetic texts such as Pimander, there is section which treats the “beginning” and the themes which St. John and St. Paul described in the New Testament.

“Earth was as woman, her water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from ether. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man. And Man from Light and Life changed into soul and mind - from Life to soul, from Light to mind….And straightway God spake by His Holy Word (Logos): “Increase ye in increasing, and multiply in multitude, ye creatures and creations all; and man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love, though Love is all.” (Corpus Hermeticum “Pimander” I.17)

Here we see not only the central role of love, but the added bonus of a hint towards the reconciliation between science and religion. “Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man” sounds very much like an attempt to portray an evolutionary process. Following the contours of nature and recognizing that spiritual and material worlds do possess similar structures leads me to contemplate the importance of humility along the spiritual path. Hierarchies on both planes were evident in the thoughts of Hermes Trismegistus as well as Christian theologians such as St. Dionysius the Areopagite who appreciated and articulated a profound respect for what he termed the “God-becoming beauty” which perfects us through Divine initiation, and in ways that are unique to the seeker’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses. (Dionysius the Areopagite, The Heavenly Hierarchy, III., 1)

On this Annunciation day, we begin the cycle of both physical and spiritual development following the ancient imitation of Christ and “Mary, Mother of the star that never sets, dawn of the mystical day, rising of the Sun of glory, shows us the Light of the East. Every day in the East the Sun of hope rises again, the Light that restores life to the human race.” (Orientale Lumen by Pope John Paul II, 2 May 1995, Based on Akathistos and the Horologion, Sunday Compline in the Byzantine Liturgy).

The Devil and Montségur

2010-03-16T05:26:00.002-04:00

Johannites are not Cathars, but we share some common elements of inspiration, and so an important day in our liturgical calendar is Montségur Day. On 16 March 1244, the armies raised and approved of by the pope in Rome engaged in fratricidal genocide. On this day alone over 200 Cathars were rounded up and set on fire under Montségur, their last stronghold. Needless to say, it was a dark day for Christianity, particularly given the fact that the Cathars, or Albigensians as they are also called, simply wanted to live in peace.

When I gave this homily at last Saturday night’s Mass, I couldn’t help but remember that these are also very dark days for the Church. As a clergyman in collar or out, I cannot escape the piercing questions lately about the sexual and physical abuse scandals which are rocking the Vatican. Although I am not a Roman Catholic, as a Johannite deacon I still minister within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and so it is my responsibility to try to spread the word, console and attempt to remind people of the Golden Rule.

No one takes any pleasure from seeing this kind of horrific event within the Church – whether we are seen as ‘heretical’ to Rome or not. If we want to discuss heresy perhaps it would be better to cast an unflinching eye on the consequences of our differences with Rome: Married clergy, openness to alternative sexualities, and a focus on personal responsibility instead of a culture of guilt and silence.

Over the past few days, in the wake of the Murphy Report on the scandal in Ireland, and this week with more investigations opening in the Netherlands and Germany, some quarters of the Roman curia –and even parish priests- have been indulging in good old fashioned devil-talk in order to explain to themselves and to their flocks why it is that so much abuse was so wide-spread.

In Christian history there have always been two ways of describing this phenomenon: one blames it on the devil and the other uses philosophy to shed light on causality. Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas each integrally conceived of causality - the phenomenon of cause and effect - to be a basic premise for explaining the First Cause – the existence of God and the origins and processes of the known universe. In these philosophies, everything eventually leads back to the point of origin, which is strikingly similar to the Neo-Platonic emanations cosmogony shared not only by Johannites and other Gnostic Christians, but also by many in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics.

The question arises very quickly thereafter: Why do bad things happen? Why do people do heinous things to each other if everything flows from the Divine Fullness? The short answer is that these things are born of ignorance and, after millions of years, social and physical perceptions that do not fit exactly with the spiritual portion of the human person warp and metamorphose into the personal and social ills that plague us. The process goes something like this: Your dad is frustrated by poverty or maybe he’s really gay. As a result, your dad abuses you; you abuse your dog, and then you grow up to abuse your wife or husband. Your dog goes out and bites the postman. Everybody is miserable, and it all came from one series of events. One artificial construct led to another. After successive generations, people become more and more wounded, and able to do just about anything to each other. The perspective of human dignity loses its meaning. Faced with unmet or suppressed physical and emotional needs, you see what happens. Immorality: not the abstractions of the Roman Catechism – the raising of material needs, values and spiritual materialism above people. Someone commands: “Don’t have sex”, and judges your spirituality on your ability to live in an unnatural state: celibacy. It makes no sense at all. This pattern, combined with over a thousand years of misogyny, homophobia, and the codes of shame and silence, has taken a heavy toll on Christendom. This kind of thinking is what accommodated the mass killings of fellow Christians. This is the bloody heart and legacy of Montségur.

In 1988, then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now the pope) wrote: “Morality is not an abstract code of behaviour; it presupposes a community of life within which morality itself is clarified and can be observed. Historically, morality does not belong to the realm of subjectivity but rather it is guaranteed by the community and has reference to the community.” See full text

I find myself in agreement on this point. Morality isn’t a code; it springs from human dignity and personal responsibility as a part of the Divine-in-the-world. Morality is clarified by the relations we have with others in our community, by how much we show our love, compassion and support. But instead, what do we see coming from Rome? This week the Vatican’s chief exorcist blames the scandal on the “Anti-Christ.” The 85-year old Father Amorth, who coincidentally just published his memoirs, told The Telegraph a few days ago: “The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences”

Regrettably, Fr. Amorth is not alone. I have read more than a few references to the devil in recent days. Meanwhile, the German Bishop’s Conference announced that it would look into a landslide of more than 170 students at Catholic schools who have said they were sexually abused decades ago. The Diocese of Regensburg, Germany appointed an investigator to examine complaints of physical and sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, which was led by the Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, the pope’s older brother, from 1964 until 1994. As the former archbishop of Munich, the pope himself had authority over these dioceses during the period under investigation.

For the sake of the universal Church and the countless victims of sexual and physical abuse, it is time to recognize that, as the pope wrote: “morality does not belong to the realm of subjectivity but rather it is guaranteed by the community and has reference to the community.” It is time for the Church in all its jurisdictions to live up to her communities and stop hiding behind the devil.

If there is one lesson to be learnt from our commemoration of the atrocities committed at Montségur, it must be a blazing reminder for us to treat all people –but especially those we call “sisters and brothers” in the Body of Christ- as we would like to be treated. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t criticize when we disagree, but it does open a space for us to love.

If you’re attending Mass this weekend, consider offering a prayer intention:

…For the victims of sexual and physical abuse in Ireland, Holland and Germany, Lord hear our prayer;

…For Benedict, the bishop of Rome and his communion, Lord hear our prayer.

Intercessory Prayers: Drinking from the Grail

2010-03-09T11:41:00.001-05:00

The midnight wind roared through the oaks of

Kildare, And a clang from the round tower at intervals came,

While St. Bride, at the altar, was kneeling in prayer,

And her sisters attended the Mystical Flame;

Her whole spirit wrapt in unspeakable Love,

Immersed and consumed, as in billows of fire,

She seems a young seraph adoring above,

Transfigured in flames of ecstatic desire.

--- The Hymn of Saint Brigid

Saint Brigid’s sisters attending the “Mystical Flame” would no doubt agree that the unity of all things and all people is what counts. Not just the knowledge, but the experience of the Divine-in-the-world. Gnosis. The Holy Grail.

This unifying and empowering experience can be found in almost every element of liturgical and contemplative practice. Most especially, intercessory prayer relies on the combined intentions of the living and the dead. Intercessory prayers have often been refuted by some Protestants as idolatrous, or without basis in the early Christian tradition. And yet the Bible is filled with references - and even commands – to engage in intercessory prayers. Moreover, outside of the early Church’s contentious synods and councils, and long before the existence of the Bible, the life of the average Christian parishioner was filled with the teachings, practices and veneration of her local sages and saints.

As a microcosm of the unity of all things, intercessory prayers foster a sense of family – those for whom we pray are part of the Mystical Body of Christ; being of the same blood and the same spirit. My personal experience with this type of prayer and meditation has always been most effective through Our Lady and the veneration of certain saints (also known as ‘holy ones’) – not as idols but as the ether or spiritual cloud (shekinah) of witnesses who are constantly available to help us. (Cf. Heb. 12:1) It’s difficult to visualize “God.” “Dear God, please make grandpa better, Amen.” Somehow this kind of prayer never works for me. But when we visualize a whole host of spiritual partners or a specialized spirit who has left the physical world, sometimes it’s easier to wrap our heads and hearts around. For those of us lucky enough to have parents who raised us, which one did you go to first? Which one did you turn to when things were really bad? For me, I think the answer to that question is perfectly obvious. Mother. Is that a subjective statement of spiritual fact? Yes. It might not work for you, but I also know a lot of people who could use a good Mother.

Christ is the exemplar; the perfected result, but the entire Body is able and needs to intercede on behalf of other members. All spiritual beings, including us, have a role in focusing our intentions on healing, helping, and inspiring a greater awareness of the awesome size and beauty of the Divine Fullness. After all, what more perfect images of the Divine could be found than the faces of our sisters and brothers? Gnostic and orthodox catholic communions share a common experience in the power of the prayers of the righteous. Some are more effective than others for certain needs and people. (Cf. James 5:16; Proverbs 15:8, 29)

Mediation is the origin and lifeblood of the Church, and is, at its root, both Johannine and Marian. If we use the Gospel of John as an allegorical toolbox, then we can see that Christ’s ministry begins only after Our Lady’s intercession during the wedding at Cana. Jesus may have attained all the degrees of Egyptian initiation and able to work wonders, but it was Our Lady who had to push him into his first recorded ‘wonder’ by stating the obvious: “There’s no more wine.” (Cf. John 2) The Divine might be omniscient, but the active engagement of us all is needed to propel ourselves into the mind of God through our intentions and experiences. The lesson that I take from this story couldn’t be clearer: it isn’t good enough to learn and grow spiritually if you don’t use it for the good of others. Being part of the Divine Family is not a spectator sport. We have to pour the wine into the grail and drink from it.

Experiencing this unity is both the source of spine-tingling inspiration and gut-wrenching disappointment. Just because you are one Body doesn’t mean you don’t lose a limb now and again. That is the nature of Love, that supremely mysterious movement with which we abandon our constructs, our defenses, pretentions and preferences, in order to embrace the Divine Beloved who is present in every single face that we see, and those that we don’t.

The archaeology of the tumultuous relationship between individuals and the group is known as tradition. Tradition, just as any part of history, is difficult to judge sometimes. There has to be a balance between what we hold dearest or most familiar, and our communal obligation to Love. Every word of the Liturgy must reflect the heights to which we claim our theology to soar, and yet maintain the thoughts and intentions of our ancestors and their traditions. Some of our saints are good examples of this paradox. Sometimes the greatest gnostic and other Catholic Mystics, owing to their historical contexts, held the worst sort of dogmatic, racist, bigoted and misogynistic beliefs. Others did not, or at least we don’t have the benefit of knowing that much about them.

A recent article in the Catholic magazine Commonweal outlined the historical Theresa of Avila as one example of this phenomenon. We fly to St. Theresa because of her amazing mystical experiences, practices and writings, and yet we would be repulsed by her views on many other things. On the other side of the coin, we have St. Hildegard of Bingen who managed to write quite a lot without being a product of her time. I personally think that the universality of a saint adds to her efficacy. But by the same reasoning, a local saint, one which sparks deeply subjective spiritual images, might also be a very powerful spiritual medium. The veneration of saints is clearly not an “either/or” type of activity, and if we are instructed to pray for our enemies, what about praying with them?

Maybe that’s where real ecumenism begins – not just as a product of us alone, but of the generations of people who have given their all for the Body of Christ in their own ways.

Much more than ashes

2010-02-16T16:52:00.002-05:00

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, St. Teresa of Avila, in particular, but many others. 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 the Lutheran 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; 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, and 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

Mater Ter Admirabilis: On the Divine Feminine and the Johannite Tradition

2010-01-14T15:39:00.017-05:00

“Mother Thrice Admirable” is a rare but fitting title for a discussion of the Divine Feminine as mother, bride and origin of the human soul, following the Christian, Gnostic and Hermetic currents which underpin the Johannite patrimony. On 22 July 2008, the Feast of Holy Mary of Magdala, the Johannite patriarch addressed a letter entitled Ecce Mater Tua ("Behold, Thy Mother") to our communion and to all people of good will which stated in part, that:

For all the emphasis that we place on early stories of the Holy Saints John and the Holy Saints Mary, these three words often times go without comment, and yet they stand hand in hand with the stories and origins of our traditions.

Over the course of the year that has passed since Ecce Mater Tua was circulated, each of us has no doubt attempted to further apprehend the significance of the Divine Feminine in our own, necessarily diverse spiritual lives. In a brief review of literature, scriptures, life experience and discussions with other Johannite clergy, it seems that there is a healthy and vibrant process of self-questioning as it relates to the Holy Marys. This brief discussion is meant to begin a sensus fidelium to the extent possible.

This encyclical draws our attention to both the symbolic nature of the Saints Mary and meaning of the Divine Feminine in our myths, traditions and perhaps most importantly, in our lives. Mariology is of course not a new topic of theological discussion, indeed it is one of the oldest themes contained within the various traditions and spiritual perceptions of our forbears, be they of the esoteric, orthodox, gnostic or mystical strains. It would be nearly impossible to open a comprehensive study of the Divine Feminine, and maybe more importantly, such a study would merely cover ground which has already been well noted by centuries-worth of meticulous Marian and Sophianic scholarship. Accordingly, the purpose of this reflection is to simply point out the continuous presence and recapitulation of the Divine Feminine throughout the ages and traditions which form the basis of the Johannite Catholic spirituality today.

In lieu of attempting to piece together the various Marian and Sophianic constructs, it might be a better use of energy to commit ourselves to discovering the deeper meaning of the feminine within us all. It is well known to those who have read a bit about Alchemy that the Sun and the Moon are the images used to describe the spiritual and physical distinction between the sexes. In some esoteric circles, it has long been a commonly held belief that each of us has the masculine and feminine attributes, animus / anima, etc. In every tradition that touches the roots of Johannite spirituality these symbols remind us that the concept of the Syzygy and indeed the nature of the divine are manifested in both genders, ultimately being united in the fullness. This is true not only of the ancient Christian and Gnostic scriptures, but also of the Hermetic schools of the west, including the medieval embellishments passed down through the Royal Art of Alchemy.

Both Holy Mary, declared Theotókos, or “God-bearer” by the Council of Ephesus in 431, and Holy Sophia, the Wisdom of God, stand squarely at the convergence of Fall and Redemption, Death and Rebirth; the hierarchies of the spiritual and physical planes, and the literal and figurative Restoration. The mystery of the Divine Feminine is the degree to which the roles of mother, bride and the human soul seemingly overlap.

Largely owing to the cumbersome nature of anthropomorphic ideas of the two Saints Mary, a certain degree of conditioned thought has entered into the exercise of grasping the Marian Mystery. Whether we look at Mary Magdalene as the personification of Sophia or the Blessed Virgin Mary as the literal Mother of the God-Man Jesus, we are still working within the usual limitations of that portion of us which is mortal. It might disturb the sensibilities of the mortal aesthetic if we were to put forward the concept that they are the same entity. Saint Clare of Assisi, companion of Saint Francis, described the tripartite roles very clearly: “See now. You are held tightly in His embrace. Now, you are His beloved, His mother, His sister. For He is your Lover, Your Son, Your Brother.”[1]

One way of looking at this mystery is to remember that in order for nature (including us) to be restored to the fullness, she must first give birth to a creature wholly human and yet also truly divine. As the canticle goes: “Alleluia! Light burst from your untouched womb like a flower on the farther side of death. The world-tree is blossoming. Two realms become one.”[2] This is the reason why to be a Marian is to be a profound Christian, as no doubt the author of that song felt very strongly. But by the same token, to be a Marian is also to be the most strident humanist.

II.

When the Archangel Gabriel bids Our Lady “Hail, full of grace” this is the herald of an inner truth that shines as brightly towards the future as it is legendarily remembered to have done over Bethlehem. The liturgical and epigraphic synthesis of the complex and overarching role that the Divine Feminine has come to represent may be best described through a painting. Die Krönung Mariae Durch die Dreieinigkeit, by the unknown French master cryptically remembered as “J.M.”, painted in 1457, rests in the Basel Museum in Switzerland. Appearing to be something of a western version of a mandala, the picture illustrates:

[T]he crowning of the Virgin by the Holy Trinity is the final divinization of nature, of the created or manifested universe, so that the Trinity becomes in some sense the Quaternity. The central scene is surrounded by an inner ring of angels, and an outer ring of apostles, prophets, martyrs, virgins and other saints. The four corners are occupied by the Tetramorph, the symbolic figures of the four evangelists and the four fixed signs of the Zodiac.[3]

In each of the paths that have diverged and merged again into contemporary Johannite Theology, the power and presence of the Holy Mother is unmistakable. There are rich cross references for the study of Mariology within each of the tributaries that feed into the Johannite world of ideas and devotion: Christian, Gnostic and Hermetic. The idea of the “divinization of nature” mentioned in the context of this painting is actually articulated in the Gospel of Mary in which she recounts the secret knowledge that she shared with Jesus about the nature of the divine, the One, and how “All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots. For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone.”

III.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, founding patron of the Templars and by far the most prolific exponent of medieval Marian devotion, undoubtedly felt the tug of both forms of the Divine Feminine: the Marian and the Sophianic. In his writings we can see that the Burgundian Abbott perceived the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the bridge between two places that were never truly separated.

And do not be surprised to hear that it was by means of Mary’s faith that the Word was united to flesh, because it was from Mary’s flesh Christ’s flesh was taken. Nor is it any objection to this interpretation that, according to the Gospel, “the kingdom of heaven is like to leaven.” (cf. Ps. 105:23) For as it seems to me, the faith of Mary may also be likened to the kingdom of heaven, since it was by her faith the kingdom of heaven has been restored.[4]

If we compare the action described by St. Bernard as the means of Mary’s faith to the indwelling Sacred Flame as it was described by the 19th century Johannites, then the drama of theosis through gnosis clearly appears. Not only is the Divine Feminine necessary to complete the cycle of Redemption, or the “divinization of nature” (and thus, ourselves), Her symbols are to be found pouring out from every corner of our tradition. Saint Hildegard wrote:

O how wondrous is Your love! You gazed on your fairest daughter as an eagle focuses its eye upon the sun; You, the eternal Father, saw her radiance and the Word became flesh in her. [5]

The importance of those words pierce straight through the Marian Mystery to the very symbol which represents the Johannite communion today: the seal or vesica piscis of the Apostolic Johannite Church. The eagle of Saint John’s eye is transfixed on the Sun; beneath him the Sacred Flame burns brightly. All this surrounded by the vesica piscis which is created from the number 153; the number of fish mentioned in John 21:11. “Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.” 265:153 is the ratio of the width and height measurements of the sacred fish shape, and a holy number of the Pythagoreans. The vesica, which when emptied appears in the very obvious shape of a mother’s womb, constitutes the sacred geometrical pattern that is ubiquitous in Gothic architecture. Quite literally the symbols of Our Lady give birth to the forms, stamps and edifices of Western devotion, echoing St. Bernard’s refrain: “Such is the will of God, who would have us obtain everything through the hands of Mary.”[6]

Thus, the perception that Holy Sophia and the Theotókos have been muddled by social and ecclesiastical misogyny and ignorance may not be true at all. Although institutional and social sexism have been and continue to be serious systemic errors in some quarters of the Catholic Church, it is likewise demonstrable that the tripartite nature of the Divine Feminine is nothing more nor less than the trichotomy of human existence as body, mind and spirit. In our own spiritual work we recognize the need to empty ourselves to receive the Divine, and thereby to think and experience with the Divine. In our contemplations of “nothingness” we can find fulfillment of a different type. Thomas Merton was not being derogatory towards the Divine Feminine when he wrote:

Mary’s chief glory is in her nothingness. To know her thus is to find Wisdom. Qui me inveniet vitam et hauriet salutem a Domino. He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord (Cf. Prov. 8:35).[7]

The imagery of the Sun and the Moon shines an uninterrupted light for us, so that we can experience our “Mother Thrice Admirable” in the inspirational disciplines of Christianity, Gnosticism and Hermeticism, and most importantly illuminating our inner paths as we look through the veil and drink from the Graal of Undefiled Wisdom.

Post Script

After reviewing this commentary it occurs to me that I have omitted an important, if not alternative strain of Gnostic speculation, attributed to the Johannites by Eliphas Lévi among others, and that is the legend of Pandera (Panthera). In this story, Miriam becomes pregnant with Jesus after being raped while betrothed to her fiancé. Joseph, in stead of her fiancé, accepts her to be his wife and adopts Jesus upon his birth, then taking him to Egypt where Jesus rises as an adept in the Temple of Osiris. After returning to Judea, Jesus is rejected by the jealous priests of that country, who use this story against him. Not having learned of his true father, Jesus first reacts by asking Miriam "What, woman, have you and I in common?" But afterwards Jesus defends his mother as being pure and holy in every intention and capacity. What began as an attempt to publicly humiliate Jesus became an opportunity for him to extol the virtues and purity of his Holy Mother. You can access the entire account (in French) on page 275 of Éliphas Lévi´s Histoire de la Magie. I'm fairly certain an English translation has been made.

D.D. - 11 Oct. 2011

[1] Saint Clare of Assisi: Her Prayers, Poor Clares of Arundel.

[2] Hildegard of Bingen. Alleluia Verse for the Virgin, Spiritual Writings on Mary. Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, p.96.

[3] Watts, A. Myth and Ritual in Christianity, Beacon Press, Boston, 1968. Pp. 230.

[4] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Second Sermon for Christmas Day on the Three Principal Works of God and the Special Virtue Conspicuous in Each. (Honey and Salt: Selected Spiritual Writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.) J. Thornton & S. Varenne, eds. Vintage Books, 2007, p. 319-320

[5] Hildegard of Bingen. Spiritual Writings on Mary. Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, p.224

[6] In Vigil Nat. Domini, Sermon 3, no. 10, p. 415

[7] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, (1961) 2007, p.170.

Out of Egypt

2009-10-23T08:39:00.001-04:00

Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Luc Olivier Merson, French, 1846–1920
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

When the Johannite Church, then called the “Primitive Catholic Christians” literally came out of the ecclesiastical closet over 200 years ago under the leadership of +Bernard-Raymond Fabré Palaprat in 1804 (1), one of the definitive statements of its tradition was quite simple and remains in our Liturgy: “The Son of God afterwards appeared on the scene of the world. Imbued with a spirit wholly divine, endowed with the most astounding qualities, he was able to reach all the degrees of Egyptian initiation.”(2) And with that rather matter-of-fact sentence, 2,000 years of Johannite secrecy was blown wide open in the spirit of the French egalitarianism which swept the continent.

But the link between Christianity and Egyptian religion was not news in those days; far from it. It is generally accepted that the re-introduction of Hermetic ideas into the European context took place as a result of the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin from Greek by Fr. Marcilio Ficino for Cosimo de Medici. The Corpus itself is a collection of a far greater volume of work patched together most notably by Ficino. There were eight editions of the Corpus before 1500.(3) I have had the good fortune of seeing one fine example of the Corpus published by Lucas Dominici, Venice (1481), in the Special Collections at Brandeis University here in the Boston area. The provenance of the rare edition that I have seen indicates that it was owned by a Jewish physician by the name of Georgius Kloss. Although the work of Ficino, a gay, Roman Catholic priest was important, it should be noted that the last three tractates of the Corpus as it appears now were not in his translation. These include: (XVI.) The Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon; (XVII.) Of Asclepius to the King, and (XVIII.) The Encomium of Kings.

A portion of the Corpus, The Divine Pymander in XVII books (London 1650) was translated by John Everard into English for the first time from the Ficino Latin translation. You can access this edition at my friend Adam McClean’s excellent Alchemy Web Site. The best source of historical information in the world on Hermeticism is doubtless housed in the 20,000-volume Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, in Amsterdam.

Hermeticism’s very close relationship with Christianity can be seen in many historical records, not the least of which is Augustine of Hippo’s criticism of it in his City of God vii.23–26. Giordano Bruno’s De Umbris Idearum (1548) is a reiteration of Hermetic, and therefore Egyptian, memory magic (ars memoria), which is nothing less than the art of maintaining one’s identity after death – in Christian terms, salvation and eternal life. (4)

The compatibility of Christian and traditional Egyptian beliefs was noted in a regrettably degrading way by British Museum archeologist Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge in his introduction to the 1895 translation of the Book of the Dead.

We can gently forgive Sir Ernest’s ticklish terminology and find much that is useful in his analysis that throughout the centuries there is a noticeable coherence between the two religions.

The chief features of the Egyptian religion remained unchanged from the Vth and VIth dynasties down to the period when the Egyptians embraced Christianity, after the preaching of St. Mark the Apostle in Alexandria, A.D. 69, so firmly had the early beliefs taken possession of the Egyptian mind; and the Christians in Egypt, or Copts as they are commonly called, the racial descendants of the ancient Egyptians, seem never to have succeeded in divesting themselves of the superstitious and weird mythological conceptions which they inherited from their heathen ancestors.

St. John the Baptist and St. John the Beloved, Evangelist and Apostle, are the namesakes of the Johannite Church. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Hermetic knowledge of the “all the degrees of Egyptian initiation” is well represented by the tradition of the two Saints John. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “…on 27 May, 395 A.D., the relics of St. John the Baptist were laid in the gorgeous basilica just dedicated to the Precursor on the site of the once famous temple of Serapis.” (5)

The cult of Serapis is of course the foundation of Hermeticism and the Egyptian religion. This is not to say that the followers of the Christ have been these two millennia duped, but that the dogma and doctrine of Christianity incubated in not only the beliefs of the Hebrews, but in the mysteries of what has been called Hermeticism - the religion of Egypt. We need only to look at the etymology of that word to understand its meaning:

Hermetic: 1605 (implied in hermetically), "completely sealed," also (1637) "dealing with occult science or alchemy," from L. hermeticus, from Gk. Hermes, god of science and art, among other things, identified by Neoplatonists, mystics, and alchemists with the Egyptian god Thoth as Hermes Trismegistos "Thrice-Great Hermes," who supposedly invented the process of making a glass tube airtight (a process in alchemy) using a secret seal. (6)

The parallels between the Gospel of John and Hermeticism are, in a word, astounding. But that must be left for another post.

***

Notes:

(1) The Freemason's Monthly Magazine, Volume 1 edited by Charles Whitlock Moore, London, 1848, p. 170

(2) The Johannite Liturgy: The Graal of Undefiled Wisdom, Calgary, revised 2008

(3) Noted by George Sarton, the historian of science, in reviewing Walter Scott, Hermetica, in Isis 8.2 (May 1926:343-346) p. 345

(4) Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition by Glenn Alexander Magee

(5) Souvay, Charles. "St. John the Baptist." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 22 Oct. 2009 . Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

(6) Online Etymology Dictionary, November 2001 Douglas Harper

The Whore and the Holy One

2009-07-21T20:36:00.004-04:00

Maria Maddalena by Daniela Dente

For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.

- Thunder, Perfect Mind (Nag Hammadi Library)

It seems fitting to pay a special tribute to the hundreds of millions of women who have been and continue to be subjugated by the culture of misogyny and ignorance, and to transform that pain and injustice into a celebration of the feminine in the Divine, and the Divine in the feminine.

Whether we believe that Holy Mary of Magdala was the counterpart of Christ and the incarnation of Holy Sophia, or if we see her as a true companion and Apostle to the Apostles, the endurance of her spiritual heritage is with us on this eve of her great feast.

A most blessed Feast of St Mary Magdalene to you and yours.

Consciousness, Light and Inspiration: The Holy Trinity

2009-06-08T10:44:00.005-04:00

The Trinity by Salvador Dali, Vatican Museum

There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three are one. 1 John 5:7-8

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday on the liturgical calendar. We move into the long swath of "Ordinary Time" that takes a journey through the summer all the way until Advent. The vestments are green as is the earth. For the eastern Church, the Trinity is celebrated along with Pentecost. Trinity Sunday does not appear as a regular feast in many lectionaries until the 9th century CE, and it was not ordered for the entire Roman Church until the pontificate of John XXII in the 14th century. (To read more on the history of Trinity Sunday click here>>>)

The Trinity is woven into the fabric of Christian thought and practice from the liturgical Sign of the Cross, normally done with three fingers, to the Trinitarian Forumula “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, taken directly from the “Great Commission”: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”(Matt. 28:19) In the kabbalistic Tree of Life (Genesis 2:9) and the Celestial World of the Aeons (Valentinus) the Trinity appears to head the lower forms and planes of existence. It is the triangle, the three, the strongest form in the cosmos, Thrice Greatest, the union of opposites atop the Ground of All Being.

While the origin of the idea of the Trinity may be as old as the first human thought of the divine, evidenced in the most ancient religious texts known to us from the Indus Valley, it was not elaborated on by the early Christians without heated controversy. Fitting the concept of the Christ as Incarnation and eternal Logos has its pitfalls. The rifts created by the clashing descriptions of the Nestorians and Monophysites, each claiming to depict the nature of Christ, tended to focus on the person of Jesus and his spiritual role without taking into consideration the possibility that the dynamic that unpinned the existence of Christ was itself the most profound reflection of human potential.

No doubt many an early Christian pulled quite a lot of hair out over the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From my viewpoint, I side with neither the Monophysites, who held that Christ had but one nature which developed from human toward the divine; nor the Chaldcedonians (most mainstream Christians today) who see Jesus of Nazareth in terms of having a nature which is dualistic: fully human and fully divine. I do not disagree with the basic premise here, but I think it overlooks some important contingency thinking that I believe is necessary to fully appreciate self awareness. The way in which each one of us relates to the hypostatic union of the Holy Trinity may necessarily need a unique spiritual interpretation as a personal means of filling metaphysical gaps in one’s own mystical experience.

I neither confirm nor deny the many theories presented in the discussion of the Trinity and Christology. I therefore introduce to you the framework put forward by the Oriental Orthodox communions known as Miaphysitism (a.k.a. henophysitism) which basically does a Hail Mary punt and leaves us with the notion that holds that in the one person of Jesus Christ, divinity and humanity are united in one "nature" (physis), they are one. How to interpret that is likely outside the boundaries of rationality.

These are attempts to describe spiritual impulses and realities that, although encompassing our universe, are not limited by it. From my vantage, spending too much time on these things is tantamount to standing on top of a high mountain and trying to draw an accurate map of the entire world – it just doesn’t work that way.

Beyond faith there is another, more human way to make the connections to understand and feel the presence of the Trinity. When we look at the names of the Trinity in Greek, it’s abundantly clear that what is being described is both mystical and practical. The Father is called the “Thought” (Nous); the Son is the Logos which is really more than just a “word”, it is more akin to “reason.” Finally, the Holy Spirit - Pneuma Hagion, sometimes referred to as the primal Queen of Heaven, Sophia – that which binds us all together, and inspires us – the honey that binds our existence in both spiritual and sensual realms.

The Trinity for me is the Nous that gives me consciousness, the Logos, the light to use it; and Sophia, the wisdom of divine inspiration to truly live it.

From Hell to Heaven with Dante

2009-05-14T11:28:00.004-04:00

Dante and Virgil in Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

When Dante Alighieri was born 688 years ago today, the newborn suckled his mother’s breast in a beautiful and yet extremely violent world. As he grew to maturity, Dante lived in a time of incredible genius and dastardly wickedness; not very different from any other time in history except that the geniuses were particularly ingenious, and the villains particularly villainous. His contemporaries were people like da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo - and the not-so-fondly remembered folks who paid their salaries - the infamous Borgia Pope Alexander IV, and his son, the brilliant but rather homicidal Cesare Borgia.

The Divine Comedy is Dante’s best known and best loved work, probably because it can be read as superficially or as esoterically as you’d like. Very much like life itself, in the end you will be entertained and inspired regardless of your tack.

Dante and his wealthy Florentine family were members of the Papal supporters known as the Guelph party, and for that reason he spent quite a long time exiled from his home city when it was under the control of the Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Emperor. Scholars and historians have often theorized that Dante’s exile pushed his limits, and through that adversity he began to discover the value of inner work.

Although little is known about the details of why Dante chose the symbols and numbers that make up the bones of his magnum opus, the parallels with the Christian kabala are just too uncanny to be accidents. In Inferno, for example, there are nine Circles of Hell, and the Well of Giants; (9 + 1) representing the 10 Sephiroth of the kabalistic Tree of Life. In Purgatory there are seven Ledges, and Dante falls asleep three times, so that each Ledge reveals three numbers (3,1 and 3 again) that add up to seven. This formula suggests that Dante was well acquainted with the Western Mystery Tradition, and that he also knew of The Book of Creation, known in Hebrew as Sefer Yetzirah, which bears exactly the same combination in the path of Initiation. Once Dante has proceeded through 33 cantos, he arrives at the Terrestrial Heaven; again pointing to the kabalistic 32 inner paths + 1 external path on the Tree of Life = 33, the number of years from the Incarnation to the Resurrection of Christ. Coincidence? Hardly.

When Dante is brought safely to the Terrestrial Heaven by Virgil, he is then given to the protection of Beatrice, who in my opinion is clearly representative of the Queen of Heaven – the divine feminine who leads us to the Temple of Mysteries.

If you haven’t read The Divine Comedy, why not celebrate Dante’s 688th birthday and treat yourself to a copy of your very own? It might be a good book to tuck into that bag for all of you Johannites who will be traveling to Conclave in Boston next week...

The Mystery of Golgotha

2009-04-10T10:08:00.005-04:00

Christ flanked by St. Mary and St. John

Golgotha, Jerusalem

This Good Friday I looked over the fragments of the Apocryphal Acts of John (c. 150-200) C.E., widely considered to be some of the oldest texts of the New Testament Apocrypha. There are many parallels with the Gospel of Thomas, and therefore the Acts were attacked by some quarters of the Church, and the background and history of the book is filled with inconsistencies.

From the Johannite perspective, it is not altogether difficult to understand why this book of acts was commonly attributed to St. John’s disciple Leucius Charinus, who might later have been a follower of the teachings of Mani. While some of its detractors claim that the Acts’ openly Gnostic theology may have been added (in verses 94-102 and 109)[1], it is odd that the consensus on its authorship remains with Leucius Charinus, who would have been perfectly well at ease with the esoteric message contained within it. If changes to the fragments left in Greek and Latin have been made, it is much more likely that those changes would have been by later redactors to mitigate the importance of the Gnostic Catholic tradition of St. John’s community in Asia Minor.

The reason that this book caused such a stir among some Church Fathers is because Christ meets with John on a mountain overlooking Jerusalem at the very time of his crucifixion.[2] Christ tells John that even as they look on the body of Jesus on the cross, this is nothing but a symbol, and that “it is needful that one should hear these things from me, for I have need of one that will hear.” (98) John then sees a cross of light, which the Master explains:

..Is sometimes called the word by me for your sakes, sometimes mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes door, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes seed, sometimes resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes life, sometimes truth, sometimes faith, sometimes grace. And by these names it is called as toward men: but that which it is in truth, as conceived of in itself and as spoken of unto you, it is the marking-off of all things, and the firm uplifting of things fixed out of things unstable, and the harmony of wisdom, and indeed wisdom in harmony. There are of the right hand and the left, powers also, authorities, lordships and demons, workings, threatenings, wraths, devils, Satan, and the lower root whence the nature of the things that come into being proceeded.

Jesus then shares with John the Mystery of Golgotha:

Thou hearest that I suffered, yet did I not suffer; that I suffered not, yet did I suffer; that I was pierced, yet I was not smitten; hanged, and I was not hanged; that blood flowed from me, and it flowed not; and, in a word, what they say of me, that befell me not, but what they say not, that did I suffer. Now what those things are I signify unto thee, for I know that thou wilt understand. Perceive thou therefore in me the praising of the Word (Logos), the piercing of the Word, the blood of the Word, the wound of the Word, the hanging up of the Word, the suffering of the Word, the nailing of the Word, the death of the Word. And so speak I, separating off the manhood. Perceive thou therefore in the first place of the Word; then shalt thou perceive the Lord, and in the third place the man, and what he hath suffered.

So there are two apparitions of Christ at the same time, in the same city. One which explains the meaning of the Cross of Light, the Tree of Life; and in “the third place the man”, the living water and living bread; the symbol of the unity of spirit and matter within every human being.

St. John is recorded by these Acts as having gone back down the mountain, and “laughed them all to scorn, inasmuch as he had told me the things which they have said concerning him; holding fast this one thing in myself, that the Lord contrived all things symbolically and by a dispensation toward men, for their conversion and salvation.”

This symbolic dispensation is remembered in the Eucharist, which is an outer sign of an inner grace: the Way of Initiation; the Mystery of Golgotha.

Notes:

[1] Geoff Towbridge’s Introduction to the Acts of John, Early Christian Writings

[2] The Acts of John: 97. From "The Apocryphal New Testament", M.R. James-Translation and Notes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924

The Quadrigas of Aminadab

2009-04-02T12:18:00.005-04:00

The Quadrigas of Aminadab, Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, Paris

This Sunday we commemorate the triumphant entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the city and the eternal symbol of humanity at is best and its worst. According to legends and scriptures, St. Mary Magdalene (some insist that Mary of Bethany is a different Mary; I for one do not) had marshaled enormous resources to anoint the Master with spikenard, the cost of which was literally a fortune. St. Mary supplied a train of helpers, pack animals; acting quite literally as paymaster of the first apostolate. Among the apostolic entourage were not only Mary of Magdala, but Mary, Mother of God. Is it a historical fact? I haven’t the foggiest notion. Does it hold profound meaning? Yes, and in the most human of ways. The events leading up to Holy Week and finally Easter repeat their inner meaning right here, right now, where you are sitting. These are not so much events as vehicles for us to ride along the road to the knowledge and experience of the divine within us.

In the language of antiquity the Blessed Virgin Mary was often referred to as the “vehicle” of grace being the mother of Jesus. At first this term seems a bit dismissive until we examine exactly which vehicle is being described. The Abbey Church of St. Denis in Paris, portions of which date from the 5th century, contains a window (above) depicting the Quadrigas of Aminadab, a vehicle rich with meaning. The crucifix is planted in the Ark of the Covenant, which is in turn the chassis of the Chariot of Aminadab mentioned in Solomon’s Song of Songs. Some Catholics might remember that in an alphabetical list of devotional titles of Our Lady, the very first is “Ark of the Covenant.”

The Quadrigas is a four-horsed chariot which was often used as an esoteric symbol of divinity. The mosaic of Christ as Sol Invictus in the crypt of St. Peter’s in Rome is one such example. The etymology of the word is quite simple, coming from two Latin words for the number “four” and “harness”, derived from the verb jungere; literally, "to yoke." Devotion to Our Lady as the vehicle of grace was described by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, founding patron of the Templars, who wrote that Christ “is thy brother and thy flesh…Mary gave him to thee to be thy brother.” If we have difficulty approaching Christ directly, then Bernard wrote: “Have recourse to Mary. In truth there is pure humanity in Mary.”[1]

As I struggled to spiritually perceive the meaning of the number 4, and the often convoluted meanings of the two Saints Mary, it suddenly occurred to me this morning as I looked out into the foggy dawn that this passage in the Song of Songs may hold the key. We have two pairs of spiritual horses pulling our chariot. We, as humans are not the objects of power to be played as pawns in the chess match of some Olympian cosmos. We, as Michel Foucault wrote “are the vehicles of power, not its points of application."[2] Four leading principles, four directions of Classical science; four horsemen of the Apocalypse; four arms of the Cross; and four very special representatives of spiritual meaning in Christianity. Jesus, as the Logos Incarnate; John the Baptist, his precursor and priestly initiator; the Holy Mother, and Holy Sophia, represented by the two Saints Mary. There is something unique about each of these four: traditionally they are not seen as numbering among the Twelve, although Mary of Magdala is called Apostle to the Apostles, still she is not counted among them.

I have to admit getting chills when I read this passage in Solomon’s Canticles:

One is my dove, my perfect one is but one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her. Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valleys, and to look if the vineyard had flourished, and the pomegranates budded. I knew not: my soul troubled me for the chariots of Aminadab. (Douay-Rheims)[3]

The vehicle is a force of unified nature; the vehicle is us. I read it again and asked myself “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?”

I think the answer is within us all.

Notes:

Here are some other translations of the reference to the Chariots of Aminadab:

Young’s Literal Translation: I knew not my soul, It made me -- chariots of my people Nadib.”

King James Version: Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.

American Standard Version: Before I was aware, my soul set me Among the chariots of my princely people.

New International Version: Before I realised it, my desire set me among the royal chariots of my people.

[1] Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo de Duodecim prerogatives B.V.M., I. ii.

[2] Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York, Vintage Books: 1978, p. 98

[3] Song of Songs 6:8-10

Titivillus: The Scribe's Devil

2009-03-21T10:31:00.003-04:00

Writers, editors, researchers and scholars of all kinds have to deal with a missing word, a left out phrase, a misspelling; a mistranslation. It happens.

The prettier the manuscript, the more likely there will be a glaring typographical error. Over the years, I have worked on hundreds – maybe thousands – of reports, articles, books, papers, you name it. Not one was perfect. The more expensive and important the document tends to be, the more chance for a goof-up.

According to medieval folklore, there’s a reason for all those little mistakes, and the naughty little gargoyle’s name is Titivillus. The medievalist Marc Drogin, author of Medieval Calligraphy, Its History and Technique and Biblioclasm: the mythical origins, magic powers, and perishability of the written word, the Oxford English Dictionary made an incorrect reference to Titivillus in its own footnotes in every edition for the past 50 years. Talk about ironic.

So if Titivillus has been hanging around since at least the dawn of the written word, he needs to be soundly spanked today - deep in the age of information. When I Google “Johannite” for example, I get a mishmash of conspiracies and bad information. The “definition” of Johannite in one large dictionary pins us up as being deniers of Christ…oy…not those Johannites, Titivillus! Do your homework!

The Pope, Sex and the Book of Baruch

2009-02-18T10:32:00.006-05:00

A fourth-century Sicilian tombstone records the burial of ‘Guilia Runa, woman priest’

(courtesy of Womenpriests.org)

In early Christianity and the formation of the core Catholic traditions, women held extremely important roles which were later systematically subdued, largely beginning in the 4th century CE. Roman records tell us that in the late 300’s pope Damasus personally undertook a campaign to discredit the influence of women, and consolidate his “apostolic authority” through bloodshed.[1] It should be noted that St. Jerome, a leading proponent of "orthodoxy" and the exclusion of women, was literally on the payroll of Damasus.

Successive Roman bishops attacked the role of women, up to and including St. Mary Magdalene, who was revered at the “Apostle to the Apostles.” It was Pope Gregory “the Great” who slandered St. Mary and placed her in the subservient niche as a repentant prostitute in his temple of misinformation.

But perhaps the fiercest hater of powerful women in the Church was the theologian and Roman “Church Father”, Tertullian, who wrote to Roman Christian women “You are the devil’s gateway, the unsealer of that forbidden tree…”[2] It is a sad and repugnant history which unfortunately relied and redacted all sources of scriptural evidence to ensure that women would be seen as the root of evil. This is not simply a question of the sexism of one pope or one or two theologians. In the Pastoral Epistles dubiously attributed to St. Paul (Timothy 3:6-7) women were already being portrayed as good enough to bankroll the ministries of the Church, but too "gullible" to be trusted with original opinions of their own spirituality. Not merely a theological disagreement among Christians, in 385 CE we see the first martydom of Christians by Christians when the woman patron of the Donatist exponent Pricillian was executed along with him in Spain.

Perhaps this is why Hippolytus spent so much time criticizing the Gnostic Christian Justin’s account of the Hellenistic Jewish text known as the Book of Baruch. Thankfully, Hippolytus copied the text into his heresiological work entitled Refutatio, thus preserving the knowledge that he despised. As the Spanish say, “No hay mal que por bien no venga”, literally “There is no evil from which good doesn’t come.” It has therefore been known to Gnostic Christians and Gnostic Jews throughout history. Baruch was not one of the findings contained in the Nag Hammadi codices unearthed in 1945.[3]

Baruch is a Gnostic myth of creation and of first things, the origins of good and evil. It combines Judaic, Greek and Christian myths and terminology, and is therefore a superlative example of syncretism and the transfer of spiritual knowledge using many cultural and religious “languages.”

The myth describes that from the beginning there were three unbegotten principles of the universe; in every sense, the Trinity. There is no fall of the divine or of humanity. The universe, humanity and human sexuality are therefore not the subject of any sinful origins in need of redemption. Indeed, Justin likens the Good (the One) to the Hellenistic fertility god Priapus.[4]
The serpent, an angel called Naas, is a symbol of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The origin of evil is seen to be the result of the abandonment of Eden (Feminine) by Father Elohim, and not by an error of the female. Father Elohim does, however give a piece of the divine spirit to humankind. This is an allegory for transcending the false impression that there is a division between spirit and matter.

The terms of feminine and masculine are meant to describe the soul (feminine) and the spirit (masculine). Liberation, or ascending to the Good is the path away from the perceived conflict between good and evil. The ascent of Elohim to the lofty realm of light makes him want to destroy the material universe, but he is not allowed to return, instead the feminine Eden is left with its charge.

In a superficial way, Elohim and Eden are symbols of a mystical union and of earthly love between man and woman, but more importantly their love is the union of the feminine and masculine (soul and spirit) within us all as microcosms of the divine, within the divine.

If we are to learn anything from the message contained in the Book of Baruch, it would be that through initiation, the soul and spirit can transcend the dualistic perceptions of this world and unite with the Good. I’m sorry to say that Tertullian, Damasus and Jerome and their legacy of misogyny is still the stronger of the currents within Christianity, but there is always hope that through learning and gnosis, new generations will come to understand the importance of transcending the separation. There is always an opportunity for us to treat all people with the dignity they deserve as sparks of the divine.

Notes:

[1] Denzey, Nicola. The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women, Beacon Press, Boston: 2007: p. 178.
[2] Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, 1.1
[3] King, Karen L. Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, First Trinity Press International, (Ron Cameron’s Essay “Response to Female Figures in the Gnostic Sondergut in Hippolytus’s Refutatio by Luise Abramovski”) Harrisburg, PA, 2000, p. 154
[4] Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol 2, p. 327-328

The Red Alchemy of St. Thomas Aquinas

2009-02-08T11:39:00.004-05:00

Over the past 20 years I have studied the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. He formed the basis of my undergraduate readings in Philosophy; he returned as a champion of scholasticism in my extra-curricular jaunts in medieval thought and history; and his insights, although overtly orthodox, run from a spiritual stream so deep and ancient that its source must lie in the primordial mystery of Gnosis.

When the time is right, and we learn not to look for a magic divinity to judge or save us from itself, when we can quietly admit the bankruptcy of atonement theology and the moral theology of the devil (whether we call it Satan or the Demiurge), I believe that we might have reached a place where little actions can deliver us to awareness and self-learning. These little daily things are known as praxis, and they are not so easy to keep amid the whirlwind of apparently important things that distract our attention. Prayer, meditation, the Sacraments…and yes…Alchemy, are among the things that help us to further reveal our True Self.

Aquinas wrote:

No one can say that he is unable to grasp the teaching of heavenly wisdom; what the Word taught at great length, although clearly, throughout the various volumes of Sacred Scripture for those who have leisure to study, He has reduced to brief compass for the sake of those whose time is taken up with the cares of daily life.[1]

This great Dominican scholastic was heavily influenced by the mystics of the Byzantine world, the Neo-Platonists such as Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Maximus the Confessor. These great theologians believed in the inner divinity of humanity, and of the necessary route of revealing that divinity to a fuller extent through praxis. This process is known as Theosis. St. Maximus had his tongue cut out and his hand chopped off by the authorities of the Imperial Church for consistently refusing to endorse that Christ had only the will of God and not the will of a human. He was later vindicated and remains an important saint in the Orthodox, Roman and Anglican communions. It’s not difficult to see how this idea is the fulcrum of Aquinas’ assertion that “the humanity of Christ is the way by which we come to the divinity.”[2] In the great Greek work Philokalia, Maximus recorded that “A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God himself became man.”

When atonement, human sacrifice and Original Sin are seen for what they are – impossibilities within the context of grace – the humanity of the Christ takes on a much more radical and meaningful dimension. Filling the hole in ourselves; pointing to the metaphorical experiences of the Christ as a model for every child of the Spirit incarnated. The cross becomes the Tree of Life; the greatest sin is the one we commit against ourselves. In lieu of the blood of a sacrificial lamb, red symbolizes vitality, progress, and lasting transformation in our lives.

[1] St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium Theologiae, 2.

[2] Ibid., Compendium Theologiae, 1-2.

A Tradition of Discovery

2009-01-24T10:05:00.006-05:00

Fresco of a female figure holding a chalice at an early Christian Agape feast. Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome

It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists in being yourself and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace. For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self. --Thomas Merton*

If sanctity and liberation lie in self discovery that would mean that I have to face spiritual growth from an experiential platform, and not someone or something else’s. But this idea presupposes that we can all indeed know ourselves and act on that knowledge.

Selfhood is undoubtedly the key to being human and for those who suffer psychological problems stemming from abuse or physiological conditions, the journey is all the more difficult. In my own life, I have been trying to cope with a relationship with someone who suffers from just such a condition as a result of a lifetime of abuse; first as a child, then through nearly 20 years of abusive marriage. In the end, only she can release herself, or at least open herself up to liberation.

I tend to believe that the nature of the true self is a facet of a much greater being. That being, or fullness, is the indescribable essence of the divine that is all, and yet transcends all that we can experience. This experience and awareness in Western spiritualism and in the Catholic tradition is permeated with references to the work of the Holy Spirit, which some mystical and esoteric seekers like me see as embodied in divine wisdom, Holy Sophia.

In the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, which were developed by the Mariologist St. Louis de Montfort in the 18th century, the fruit of the mystery is “openness to the Holy Spirit.”** This is a beautiful expression of the inner meaning of the descent of the Holy Spirit at the Baptism of Jesus – and of every one of us who is a conscious child of light.

If this “openness” is the fruit of a Luminous Mystery, then in my own case I would have to say that gnosis –the knowledge/apprehension/awareness of being-in-the-divine, is what is channeled through that aperture. When opened wide enough, this conduit can literally alter material existence as an extension of the Spirit. This is what is called transmutation, and the paths to achieve it are many. When the energies of the body and mind are transformed through creativity, imagination and self understanding, spiritual awakening can and does happen.

In the Church for centuries the celebration of the Eucharist has long reminded us of the transformative power of the Spirit. For the Alchemists, one test of this ability was to transmute lead into gold, a symbolic parallel to the body and the spirit. Still other adepts have followed sacred sexual practices, mediation, the hesychast techniques contained in the Philiokalia, and many other rituals.

Although hierarchy and tradition do not have to be dogmatic or rigid as in the case of my own communion, unfortunately some communities within the Church have developed in such a way that often ridicules, forbids or condemns these various paths to inner knowledge. This is not only true of mainstream orthodoxy, but also in within Gnostic Christianity.

I recognize that sometimes seekers and clergy need to place limits on whom or what they choose to believe. No one way of discovering the true self could possibly be most effective for the billions of different people on the earth. My only concern is that we learn from the mistakes of the past – the witch hunts, the Albigensian ‘Crusade’, the Inquisition and condemnations of various groups within the Church and outside of our tradition.

I may not understand or agree with many paths to the Spirit and to the true self, but I am able to comprehend that my experiences are different from those of everyone else.

Notes:

* Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, 2007, pp. 31

**Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002

A Sophian Canticle

2009-01-22T05:01:00.004-05:00

O blessed, still one, who speaks everywhere!

We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the merciful

and feminine.

We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,

or non-reprisal.

In her there are no reasons and no answers.

Yet she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His

simplicity.

We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows down

the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy earth.

We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all the people,

and who says nothing.

She smiles, for though they have bound her,

she cannot be a prisoner.

Not that she is strong, or clever,

but simply that she does not understand imprisonment.

The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, the gentle one

will awake: Sophia.

All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him on all

sides in everything, without ceasing.

and he will never be the same again.

He will have awakened not to conquest and dark pleasure,

but to the impeccable pure simplicity of One

consciousness

in all and through all:

one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.

--Thomas Merton

Divine Disclosure

2009-01-05T12:43:00.003-05:00

6th-century mosaic from Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

In very old liturgies, January 6 was the day of Illuminatio, Manifestatio, Declaratio. "Little Christmas", Epiphany, known to our eastern cousins as Theophany, is the last of the 12 days of Christmas, and the day before which we, in my family, take down the tree.

Traditionally this day serves to remind us of the visitation of the three wizard kings of the east who paid homage to the infant Jesus. Whether we call them the Magi, the Three Kings or Persian priests, for some reason the date of their encounter with the Holy Mother and Child celebrates the Incarnation.

We also know that January 6th was an important date in Mithraism, the worship of the Phrygian-capped sun god popular throughout the Roman Empire, right around the turn of the Common Era. Not very ironically, the Three Wise Men known to legend as Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar, are depicted wearing these red caps, which later came to connote liberty. Much later, the caps were donned by French revolutionaries and adorn statues of Lady Liberty.

Beyond the lesson in the fashion trends of 2000 year-old warlocks, there is the omnipresent realization that these things are symbols of an underlying reality. The Illuminatio, Manifestatio, Declaratio, and the freedom that they signify are the essence of our being. This is the celebration not only of the divine manifestation, but of the divine presence in each of us. Epiphany is not only a day to recall God shining forth, but the divine disclosure within.

Archaic, strange, out of place

2008-12-15T14:15:00.007-05:00

Photo from Faces of the Homeless

Spending two hours at Newark’s Pennsylvania Station ought to be a mandatory applied seminary course. Maybe not just Newark, probably lots of other rusting, down-trodden urban relics of the industrial past might do nicely too.

Perhaps it was also the right time and the right place in my mind and experience, but as I returned from a trip to New Jersey, I had a minor epiphany, if we must call it that. I’d like to think that it’s one of those brief glimpses into what it truly means to be human.

Admittedly I was in an emotional state. Of course we’re always in an emotional state of some vintage or another. Some vineyards and seasons bring out strong flavors; others are weak or subtle like the drops of too much rainfall on the fruit.

There must be a score, maybe two, of homeless men and women who frequent that station, hoping for something – anything. A cigarette, a few dollars for a drink; a hot burger with lots of ketchup and mustard – anything.

Standing outside in the cool afternoon breeze, I was adjusting the shoulder strap of my satchel to be able to turn up the collar of my P-coat when a middle-aged man approached me muttering under his breath. His eyes were bloodshot, the color of steel. He told me that he was a veteran and asked me for a some change. I didn't have any. He pressed closer and showed me his hand, which was bandaged and in need of surgery. He needed money – for what I do not know, and it doesn’t really matter.

We looked at each other straight in the eyes. I do not know why, but I said “peace be with you.” Not to get rid of him, it just seemed like the right thing to say. As we stood in the bustle of the station entrance, my words rang out in my ears; they seemed so archaic, strange and out of place; so irrelevant to the goings-on of a 21st century metropolis.

As if in slow motion, the homeless man dropped his bag, came to me and hugged me as if he had never been embraced before. I held him for a moment. As we parted, I spoke to him…I said “remember who you are”. He smiled and walked away. I climbed the stairs to an empty platform to catch my train to Boston. In that darkness I found peace for a moment, my face drenched in tears.

It’s good to be human. If you’d like to try it, I highly recommend Newark Penn Station.

The Gospel According to Newfoundland

2008-12-05T18:59:00.005-05:00

As many of you know, scripture is a thing that is supposed to inspire. I take that to mean that we must understand its limitations; harvest the catch that nourishes and leave the prejudices, xenophobia, sexism, slavery...and homophobia contained within some passages where they belong, which is clearly in the past.

Compassion might be a kind of technology. I say that because it has developed along with our own understanding that all human rights are for all people - always. And so we have seen a demonstrable increase in the universal recognition of human rights, beginning with civil and political rights and now moving into the economic, social and cultural dimension.

As a matter of personal, spiritual development however, there are often writings that have nothing to do with apostles or disciples, orthodox or gnostic, which shed moments of light on my conception of being a human. Some might disagree or fail to see the inspiration, which merely illustrates how different each one of us is. If snowflakes and flames of a fire are each unique, I see no reason why we shouldn't be.

On the boat that I take to work every day, I have some time to read. It's a special time for me, in the early morning and just after dusk, when I can dive into a different context and see with another set of eyes. Right now I'm reading The Iambics of Newfoundland, which turns out to be a magnificent journey through the fisheries, life and times of that island as described by New England writer Robert Finch.

This evening I came across a paragraph or two that I found to be every bit as inspiring as the gospels, precisely because it deals with the here-and-now...with me, and with anyone who lives in this time of technology and change. As he describes the reflections of a New York writer who spent time in Newfoundland, Finch portrays much of the human experience.

No, he said, our modern neuroses have nothing to do with pollution or crowding or the supposed isolation and hectic pace of urban life, but rather with the very fact that technology has made our lives so easy. Our dilemma is that we are constitutionally unable to take satisfaction in that, yet also unable to give up those amenities and conveniences that make true satisfaction impossible. We are, in a profoundly metaphorical sense, caught between a rock and a soft place.

After he (the NY writer) left Newfoundland he travelled all over the world seeking to repeat the experience he had found there. He wrote numerous books about the relationship between animals and human beings, some of which won prizes and became quite well known, but he never found anything else 'so well wrought,' as he put it, to write about as Newfoundland. Nevertheless, his experience there had somehow allowed him to accept his fate and his own death. There he had seen life reduced to its most basic terms, didn't particularly like what he saw, but found a measure of peace in knowing the truth of it. Few of us manage to do as much. (p.170-171)

I think Mr. Finch sums it up nicely. I suppose that is the gospel according to Newfoundland, and of us all in some way or another.

Some Thoughts for Advent

2008-12-02T19:18:00.006-05:00

St. Nick having a snooze in Valhalla

It's much too easy to whip out some clichés for the weeks leading up to Christmas that are important, but not particularly useful to wrapping our heads around the amazing disparity between what is truly important and that which passes itself off as such.

So I'm thinking about what it means to celebrate the Incarnation.

The party in the darkest part of the year that dances the jig of light. The metaphorical origins of each one of us as half-dark-half light babies of an enigmatic mother-father; the confrontation and learning experience of being both animal and spirit.

It's a disconcertingly trippy time of the year that begs us to see something so pure and so light, it requires quite a bit of darkness to appreciate properly. If you're looking for answers here, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place.

Permit me to bask in that chilly, dark corner with a warm cat on my belly, a good book or two at hand, and the presence of wonder that fills my senses like that first night when the snow hushes the streets and reminds us of silence.

There's a lot of conflict, torment, suffering and misery going on right now. Some of it is very close to me, some is within me. Advent reminds me that in order to overcome the petty angst of conditioned thought, there is nothing so great or powerful than the surrender to the common mind and action that some call love.

The Bull of Toulouse

2008-11-29T12:31:00.006-05:00

For anyone interested in all the syncretism to be found in ancient Catholic tradition, and in the cult of the saints in particular, today's stellar example is St. Saturnin. This Greek-born first bishop of Toulouse legend tells us that he was among the 72 original disciples of Christ; present at the Last Supper, concecrated a bishop by St. Peter himself, and sent to southwestern France.

St. Saturnin's martyrology describes him being ritually killed by a bull, dying at the Matabiau, or the place of the killing of the bull venerated by the Roman mystery religion of Mithras, later identified with Sol Invictus - the unconquerable Sun. Many centuries later, under St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, an image of Christ beautifully depicted the Master riding the chariot of Mithras, a religion thought to have originated in Persia, possibly by Zoroaster. There is evidently a close connection between the early Church, it's relations with pre-Christian symbolism, and Tradition. Strong archetypes are useful, particularly when there was no Bible to throw at each other...or to literally interpret.

In any event, there were similar stories of later saints being killed by bulls, including St. Saturnin's own companion, St. Fermin. For those interested in the rich and meaningful history of these ideas embodied through the lives of people and their stories, St. Saturnin is worth further study. He is still remembered in Toulouse with a cathedral and an annual feast which takes place today.

No bull.

Cast solutions not stones

2008-11-20T13:44:00.007-05:00

388 years ago today a little girl named Peregrine White was born to two half-starved English colonists in the Plymouth Colony here in Massachusetts. Peregrine was the first New Englander of European decent born on these shores. She is a reminder to us all that every life is precious and sacred, and that from a handful of children a new society was born. But that society is far from perfect, and it still falls short of its greatest responsibility, which is to care for its own.

Those who most oppose abortion unfortunately feed the problem instead of contributing to its solution. This tragedy flows from ignorance and /or poverty to sexism, unwanted pregnancy and finally to abortion. Sadly, the entrance of clergy into the political season has fueled more controversy over the subject without contributing an iota to solving the issue. Quite the opposite, the more polarization and recrimination that occurs regarding sex and abortion, the less that is accomplished for women’s health and the lives of the unborn.

Through engagement, contraception, education and a real commitment to civil and social protections for women and families, abortion can be made a thing of the past. However, this goal cannot be achieved through criminalization. Quite the opposite, that type of environment stigmatized women and left the impregnators largely untouched and without corresponding responsibility, and contributed to the deaths of untold numbers of women.

The lack of contraception and education, poverty and sexism are the leading causes of abortion. The single most negative factor to the number of abortions globally is access (or lack thereof) to contraception. Ironically, pro-abstinence groups and the Roman Catholic Church actively oppose contraception. According to the World Health Organization:

The number of induced abortions worldwide declined from nearly 46 million to under 42 million between 1995 and 2003. Abortion rates fell most significantly in Eastern Europe, a trend that corresponds with substantially increased contraceptive use in the region.[1]

This data confirms the fact that abortion is least frequent in places that have widespread contraceptive services and where abortion is safe and legal. The lowest rate of abortion in the world is in Western Europe, where sex education, contraception and abortion are accessible and legal in the majority of countries. [2]

If we want to develop the “Culture of Life” that is the very admirable aspiration of Roman Catholic teaching, we must approach this subject from the ground up, beginning with women and their right to equal justice and equal opportunity.

The theological aspects of abortion are less important to its resolution, and seem to take on a polemical role at best. St. Thomas Aquinas offered his understanding that life begins only at the “quickening” of the fetus. This is now at odds with Roman Catholic teachings. Basing his ideas on Aristotle, Aquinas made some assumptions that we now know to be incorrect based on embryology. That is say that Thomas was a product of the Middle Ages, and therefore he lacked some relevant scientific knowledge. Scientific understanding and uncertainties about the nature of ensoulment are two reasons why Roman Catholic teachings on abortion have evolved significantly since the time of its greatest theologian. Thomas put ensoulment at 40 days for males and 80 days for females, which is a reflection of the type of deeply ingrained sexual inequality that marks not only medieval thought, but the development of Roman Catholic teachings regarding sex and gender. This is of course not unique to the Church of Rome; it is pervasive throughout the world to this day. Since the 19th century, the Church has favored the view that, to be certain, ensoulment occurs at conception. This is clearly a safety measure since we have no clue when the soul is formed. It is not, however a hard and fast rule of Tradition or of the Magisterium: it has indeed evolved over time and with science as a leading catalyst for change.

The underlying issue on abortion and sexuality in general is one of severe, historical and pervasive sexism. This is where orthodox and Johannite theology greatly differ. It begins with the concepts contained in our divergent cosmogonies and views on the feminine aspect of God, the Holy Spirit, (in Greek, the Spirit is in fact feminine, Pneuma Hagion) referred to and often equated with Holy Sophia. The prohibition of the ordination of women priests is not historically consistent; in fact there were women Catholic priests well into the 5th century and ordained deaconesses until at least the 9th century[3].

Like all other human errors, abortion can be resolved through knowledge, compassion and a willingness to work to end the conditions that make it a part of our existence. In lieu of expounding a culture of guilt and recrimination, we might do well to read the statistics and build on the knowledge that they contain.

Notes
[1] The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9595, Pages 1338 - 1345, 13 October 2007
[2] Guttmacher Institute and WHO Report, Oct. 2007
[3] Women Deaconesses in Historical Records

The Milkman Cometh

2008-11-15T21:15:00.009-05:00

The son of the divine and unwaning light is the beautiful title given to a stunning man, St. Gregory Palamas…but it could just as easily be a name given to you or me if we learn to trust and listen to ourselves closely. St. Gregory is the father of hesychasm, which I have practiced on and off over the past two or three years. It’s an incredibly strong, emotional and intense method of meditation which is certainly worth a try.

St. Gregory learned much of what he developed in his spiritual life from Dionysius the Areopagite – as many of you know my favorite theologian. When orthodox Church Fathers realized that St. Dionysius’ Mystical Theology not only conflicted with their interpretation of Christianity, but actually underscored the “heretical” positions of the Neo-Platonists, Johannites and other Gnostic Christians, he was demoted with the epithet “Pseudo-Dionysius.”

Be that as it may, he was the student of St. Paul at Athens, a tradition reflected in the orthodox canonical book of Acts (17:43). St. Paul seems to have been quite a bit different than the heavily edited and redacted epistles that most Christians take as gospel today, given that Valentinus, who stood for election as bishop of Rome, also claimed to be a student of Theudas, himself a disciple of St. Paul.

After an evening of repetitive prayer and contemplation on one single and simple subject, St. Gregory felt his soul and body fill with the milk of the Holy Spirit, an experience known among the great mystics such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

The Lactatio is actually a type of spiritual ecstasy which predates the stigmata of St. Francis by almost a century. In his ecstatic state, Gregory felt the milk as it overflowed his bodily and spiritual capacity. He felt the milk being transmuted into wine, and then the wine evaporated into the air, wafting a sweet scent like incense. This deeply sensual revelation impelled Gregory to share what he had found from this meditation and prayer technique, writing several manuals for his brother monks at the Monastery of Esphigmenou.

Ironically, the monks did not understand his vision, and he returned to the seclusion of a mountain hermitage.The apprehension of the divine for St. Gregory was no philosophical abstraction, but the union of material and spiritual awareness through the vehicle of love; direct, personal, peculiar; sensual.

Impish Illuminations

2008-11-09T10:24:00.004-05:00

One of the most beautifully illustrated books ever bound is the circa 1412 edition of John, Duke du Berry’s famous Very Rich Book of Hours (Très Riches Heures.) The work itself was crafted by the Dutch brothers Herman, Paul, and Johan van Limburg, all of whom sadly died of the plague shortly after completing this commission. The three brothers Limbourg, as they are known in French and English, are celebrated to this day by the townsfolk of Nijmegen, in the Netherlands.

In a lesser known work done for the duke in 1416, the noted architectural historian Joseph Rykwert shares some fascinating insights on the ecclesial, astronomical and liturgical tidbits contained in the illuminated vesica piscis (also known as a mandorla, meaning “almond”) depicted above. In his book Dancing Columns, Rywert lists the complex correlations between the astronomical signs around the edges of the vesica (a not-so-subtle element of sacred geometry which represents the womb of the world, and still used in ecclesiastical heraldry) and various organs and parts of the human body. This correspondence between the body and the zodiac is known as melothesis, and it is believed to have come to Western Europe from Egypt in the waning years of the Roman Empire. The figures in the middle are light and dark, both feminine and masculine, reflecting the archetypal and alchemical, microcosmic androgyne.

Beyond the ancient symbolism so incredibly illustrated by these three men, they were masters of miniature painting, leading Europe in the artistic use of perspective, and they had a very naughty streak in them. You can see clearly some funny little erotic details done on a theme of St. Joseph and St. Anthony, where a very well dressed noble lady seems to be copping a feel of her lover.

One final striking piece of knowledge that these brothers give us is a detailed description of daily life in the late Middle Ages. How appropriate that they would bring the seasons of the Church and the realities of human life together in one of the loveliest illuminations of the age.

174 signatures

2008-11-06T20:09:00.005-05:00

On November 7th, 1,328 years ago 174 men - yes men - decided the entirety of what is now called Christianity - and what it would become and believe. More than 300 bishops were in Constantinople that autumn, less than half bothered to have their ideas counted, or were forced to abstain by the emperor's men.

The Roman Catholic records indicate clearly that "The Sixth General Council was summoned in 678 by Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, with a view of restoring between East and West the religious harmony that had been troubled by the Monothelistic controversies, and particularly by the violence of his predecessor Constans II, whose imperial edict, known as the "Typus" (648-49) was a practical suppression of the orthodox truth. "

What we learn here is that orthodoxy was not the accepted norm, as it pretends itself to be today, and that we as non-Roman or non-Orthodox, were once allowed to enter the halls of decisionmaking ...once called true Ecumenical Councils of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

With learning...on all parts...we will have yet another true ecumenical council. One that embraces the importance of the human being and her right. One that sees itself as equally the child of earth and spirit.

Incognito: Curing dualism with imagination

2008-10-19T09:54:00.005-04:00

People once wore masks to play out their myths, some still do. Fancy dress and costumes relieve us of the tyranny of predictability, and create a new dimension of imagination, charm, magic and sometimes chicanery.

Invariably these little drops of whimsy make us feel free, make us laugh…and above all remind us of what it means to be humans instead of production facilities.

For me, the imagination is the sweet smoke of our spiritual essence at its purest. I see it not only in us, but also in animals sometimes. When the seagulls play, not survive, but play at gliding: that is a show of the wisdom that underpins their being.

A quick wit is another example. I’ve never met a dullard with a good sense of humor. Being amusing requires very sharp analytical skills; they show us how ridiculous the rat-race of life can be if we don’t pay attention to what we're doing.

Imagination has even better applications in education. A recent paper given by Thomas William Nielsen, PhD to the International Conference on Imagination in Education outlined in phenomenological terms the pedagogy of imagination following some of the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, noted Austrian Theosophist and founder of the Anthroposophical Society, among other things. Nielsen writes:

Imagination is not simply another ‘ingredient’ in teaching, useful in making learning enjoyable – according to Steiner’s educational philosophy, the grounded theory of this study, as well as admirable students of imagination. It is the very ‘road’ upon which the other dimensions of the human being are joined and find their meaning. Moreover, as imagination appears ‘secular’ and inclusive to both ends of the human experience, ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’, ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’, imaginative teaching stands as a most practical and applicable solution to the problem of finding common ground between earlier and present times’ preferences for either ‘scientific’ or ‘religious’ schooling, ‘vocational’ or ‘liberal’ education, ‘materialism’ and ‘spiritualism’, and so on.

Even though Halloween has become about as shameless a commercial holiday as Christmas, that doesn’t change the positive influence it can have on us. This is the dark time of the year when our ancestors felt closer to the other side…of course some understand that the ‘other side’ is always here...just waiting for us to see it. Like that old song… "With imagination, I’ll get there…”

Christ the Magician

2008-10-06T13:47:00.004-04:00

Johannite engraving (16th c) of Christ as Adam Kadmon,

the Cosmic Christ corresponding to the Sephirotic Tree of Life.

The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. (Matt. 13:10-14)

Anyone who saw the recent archaeological discovery in Alexandria, Egypt will no doubt be wondering exactly why the earliest reference to Christ yet found was scribbled on a piece of pottery somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE, praising him in no uncertain terms as “Christ the Magician” (Dia Christou o Goistais) in Greek.

In my tradition this is not news, but I can understand why it might be a bit confusing for other Christians who have taken history’s word for it that there is somehow a difference between what Jesus Christ and a sorcerer might have done in those days – or today for that matter.

From a balanced point of view, it might be an issue of semantics on one side, and historical importance on the other. From a spiritual perspective however, I think this new evidence gives us a healthy forum to discuss what it all might mean. It’s not so common knowledge that some of the ancient followers of St. John the Baptist, now known as the Mandaeans of Mesopotamia accuse Jesus of being a wizard, and that his incredible powers and ability to reach total unity with the Ineffable came as a consequence of the sacrifice of the Baptizer, with malicious hints to Jesus’ use of his cousin’s relics in some sort of ritual.

Since the first Roman Catholic missionaries encountered the Mandaeans or “John Christians” as they were mistakenly called, there has been a muddling of the Johannite Tradition with the Mandaean which continues to reach epic proportions. Yes, Johannites claim our roots through both St. John the Beloved Disciple and his former master, St. John the Baptist, and yet no, I’m afraid that we do not and never espoused cutting off the Baptist’s head for use in ritual magic. Some followers might have wanted that, frankly it’s not important because this is substantively not the message of Christ to whom the Johannites give the liturgical epithet “Master.”

Notwithstanding this rather dull disappointment for conspiracy theorists, authors and inquisitors alike, there is quite a lot to be said for the plurality of methods, sacred and profane which littered the countryside of Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria in those years. We know that there have always been and shall no doubt continue to be many interpretations of the work of Christ and the Church. I mentioned in a previous article that in St. Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians (12:8) even the most orthodox interpretations recognize that ‘there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.’

I cannot point to one shard of pottery or even to a two-millennium tradition of writings to counter the fact that there has always been a plurality of teachings and interpretations by a wide variety of teachers and interpreters. We can unearth “proof” that Jesus was a great many things; I think to engage in that sort of debate is well and good, but any reasonable scientist can tell us that we really don’t know the answers. We can’t even prove that Jesus lived, although through Roman records we at least know that his cousin was something of a troublemaker.

If we learn anything from the parables given in Matthew we can see that Jesus and St. Paul after him clearly taught that there were two ways of spiritual learning: the exoteric (orthodox) and esoteric (gnostic). Both Christ and Paul also stressed that they were not teaching about laws, catechism or doctrine, but specifically the apprehension of a real and present knowledge (gnosis) that can lead to a fundamental change in our consciousness. There were always several schools of thought, especially among the apostles, and Catholicism was all-encompassing, malleable, and diverse.

It should come as no surprise then that the earliest reference to Christ was as a magician. Today we all strive to find in the teachings of Christ the path towards that new consciousness which allows us to see the kingdom here and now, all around us. If that isn't magic, I don't know what is.

We're all in the same boat

2008-09-28T15:50:00.006-04:00

I recently finished A New Christianity for a New World by The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. I’ve read some of Bishop Spong’s other books, but this one is unique because it deconstructs some fairly sacred cows, but also promotes a vision and some possible next steps. Bishop Spong’s ideas on a New Reformation are timely, though I differ with him on liturgics and mysticism. I think we can have a progressive, non-theistic Christianity that is sacramental, mystical and liturgically traditional. I don’t think that the bishop would disagree in principle, most especially if he had the chance to interact with the ancient band of incense-wielding mystics to which this seminarian adheres.

But on the meaty issues, Bishop Spong has articulated in rational, 21st century language much of what my own communion has espoused for centuries. I know that he is controversial, and that he is even reviled as the devil by some of his more enthusiastic detractors. Frankly, the invocation of the devil proves its own point. As Thomas Merton, perhaps the most influential Catholic writer of the 20th century deduced, “according to the moral theology of the devil, the devil is god.”

Therefore the devotional life of those who are “faithful” to this kind of theology consists above all in an obsession with evil…The Cross, then, is no longer a sign of mercy (for mercy has no place in such a theology), it is the sign that Law and Justice have utterly triumphed, as if Christ said “I came to not to destroy the Law but to be destroyed by it.”(New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 90)

Religion and morality in our society are at odds. This creates inner pain for all of us. It is a kind of internal alienation from ourselves and from the world around us. What is truly moral is scorned, and what is grossly immoral is often praised. We’re taught to pay lip service to the letter of the law, and then to be cunning in our “business” sense. We’re told that this or that is a venial sin or a mortal sin, and then we see the Church rocked by scandal, misogyny and hypocrisy (and not just the Church of Rome.) Backwards, homophobic and paternalistic prejudices gleaned from the many conflicted authors of the Bible are seen to be more important than love, respect and grace. Rules set up in the confusion of ignorance contradict our sense of self-worth. Our experience and value as children of God-in-the-flesh needs to be better respected. Not a free-for-all, but a sober assessment of our value, and our inability to love others as we love ourselves until the day that we truly do love ourselves and take personal responsibility for ourselves. We cannot be good partners, colleagues, spouses or seminarians without developing a sensitive ear to our own hearts. So as we reach out into the broad avenue of Christianity, esoteric folk like me need to have a clear image of how we can help the universal Church heal its millennial wounds and be once again complete.

So what do we have to offer?

The Johannite tradition might help heal and contribute to a new Christianity through its esoteric interpretation of first things, its embrace of the mysteries of the divine, and the inner-divinity of all things and all people. If portions of the mainstream, sacramental Church openly call for a non-literalist approach to cosmogony, there is an exciting new place for us to build together. The primitive Christians had no choice but to view the mish-mash of scriptures then available, as inspirational – not perfect – descriptions of myth and the histrionics of our ineffable origins. Cosmogony - the story of creation, original sin and the resulting inadequacies of understanding the full picture of light and dark, in short the problem of evil, has succeeded in destroying much of the Christian message. In the twisted heap of guilt and the myopic vision of divine love that has become the norm rather than the exception the Sacred Flame remains. Original sin, “evil” and their ugly companion, self-flagellation, has grown very subtle roots, deep into the life of even the most progressive communions. Sacrifice is often mistaken as superior to life. There is a fine line between self abuse and asceticism. In an era when we know that feeding the hungry is about priorities, technology, economy and logistics, I’m sorry to say that fasting for the hungry smacks of ‘coming not to destroy the law, but to be destroyed by it.’ If we want to feed the hungry, let’s eat and give ourselves the necessary strength to feed even more children of God. I guarantee that you and I will be dished out enough suffering in life without us helping.

History has given Johannites a pivotal place between the mainstream catholic traditions and the esoteric and mystical traditions of the early Gnostics, Neo-Platonists, Freemasons and Rosicrucians. This is the legacy of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved; the Apostle of Fraternal Love, protector of the two Saints Mary, and the receiver of revelation. It’s not easy to be in that very tight spot, largely because the outer and inner traditions mistrust each other for understandable reasons. Johannites are unique in the sense that we embrace Catholicism, Esotericism, Mysticism and Gnosticism, in the tradition of St. John and Valentinus.

This tradition is not merely a reinvention of what once existed, but a continuum from Apostolic times through the Middle Ages and into the modern era. The collective work of Catholic and Orthodox clergy, the great Christian mystics, and a cadre of the Poor Soldiers of Christ who brought knowledge of early Christianity back into the mainstream of Western scholarship. The person-to-person lessons and perspectives emphasized by the tradition of St. John the Baptist is the heritage that bridges the past and the future.

This is the human chain of exploration and self-realization that resulted in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the gifts that make a new era in both the spiritual and material celebration of the unity of life.

Spelt Mother

2008-09-19T09:20:00.006-04:00

The Motherland, William-Auguste Bouguereau

There is an undeniable chill in the air this morning. Winter is on its way.

The Athenians celebrated the Eleusinian Mysteries at this time of the year, paying homage to Demeter, goddess of agriculture. Her name means "Spelt Mother;" spelt being a kind of wild wheat popular among the Greeks which was sown in September. The winter was seen as a time a separation, when Persephone laments her daughter's season in the underworld with Hades.

The union of Demeter and Hades was approved of by Zeus, but when the earth got cold and crops withered, the other gods were alarmed and asked Zeus to intervene. Demeter had eaten a pomegranate seed with Hades...symbolizing the seed that encompasses the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Since she partook of something from the underworld, she had to remain true to Hades, returning every Autumn.

Among the secret initiations and ceremonies practiced during this week was the Vision of the Holy Night, which probably used a torch to symbolize the Sacred Flame. It's interesting to see the parallels. Mother, the Holy Spirit, misses Sophia as she descends into matter. Our physical life, our sustenance and our spirit are both contained in Demeter's pomegranate seed, and yet it remains a defiant symbol of the unity of all things.

The image of Ceres, Demeter, the Virgin Mary, even Lady Liberty...all of these point to the cycles of nature and the mysterious and often ambiguous origins of our existence as children of light living under the dark skirts of wisdom.

Dance Macabre: The Universality of Revelation

2008-09-12T10:41:00.005-04:00

Angel of Death and a Skelton Dance around the Sacred Flame

17th century, Granary Burying Ground, Boston

Sometimes I scare people with my view that death should be the context of life. Not out of fear of the unknown, but out of the realization of our ultimate unity with everything else. That feeling of proximity comes to many people when those close to them die, or when we learn that we ourselves have numbered days. For many good reasons this starting point opens channels we thought never existed. Enemies pale in their foreboding and the flame of our life and that of others burns brighter.

There is another lesson that can be learned from the baseline of death, and that is the value of respecting and embracing the universality of spiritual revelation. Is it possible that Zarathustra, the Buddha, and Christ (among many others) were all trying to tell us the same thing? Better yet, didn’t they all tell us to do the same thing…to reach inside of ourselves and find what is within us?

The universal nature of our direct encounter with our higher self; the brief moments of clarity when we feel divine knowledge and experience revealed, these gifts have been described by many spiritual leaders. Stoking the Sacred Flame happens in many ways. The lesson for the 19th Sunday after Trinity in the Johannite Lectionary contains a passage from the Prophet Mani.

From time to time wisdom and good deeds have always brought to mankind messengers of God; in age after age have messengers been sent by the infinite king of light; Seth-el, Zarathustra, the Buddha and the Christ.”

Mani was of course spurned as a heretic by St. Augustine, who was himself a Manichaean before converting to orthodoxy. You can read Augustine’s disputations with Mani which the former presumptuously called De Moribus Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, literally, “On the Morals of the Catholic Church.” What of course is most interesting about these diatribes is not that there was disagreement over fundamental principles, but that this argument is seen to be taking place within one entity: the Church universal.

Although these inspirational words from Mani have been corroborated in contemporary times by progressive Christians and other ecumenical and interfaith leaders from many religions and denominations, it helps to remember that the seeds for this were always contained within the Christian tradition. Later editors may have changed the letters of St. Paul, for example…a theory that is now held by a great many biblical scholars. The so-called Pastorals, were probably collected by the proto-orthodox, following a more legalistic and literal path. But the kernel of Paul’s writings is left intact, and it is profoundly esoteric and universalist in content.

In Greek, the thoughts of St. Paul are recorded (1 Cor 12:8): ᾧ μὲν γὰρ διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος δίδοται λόγος σοφίας, ἄλλῳ δὲ λόγος γνώσεως κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ πνεῦμα, “For to one is given the word (Logos) of wisdom (Sophia) through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge (gnoseos; genitive singular feminine of gnosis) according to the same Spirit.”

This is in short, the gift of gnosis. These gifts are underscored as accessible to all, and the root of ecumenism, interfaith understanding and human solidarity. Not just tolerance, but the embrace of the truth that St. Paul’s letter mentions: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

From Charity to Obligation: Health Care Reforms 1518-2008

2008-09-09T17:04:00.007-04:00

Henry VIII grants the charter of the Barbers'-Surgeons Company to Thomas Vicary, 1540

The care of souls and the care of the body have gone hand-in-hand for a very long time, and these were both the charge of larger-than-life monarch Henry VIII, holder of the title Defender of the Faith given by the pope, and father of the autocephalous Church of England.

But the health care reforms and endowments made by Henry VIII, more famous for his matrimonial pursuits than his support for things theological or medical, started a ripple that would end on the shores of the New World.

In 1518 Henry VIII chartered the Royal College of Physicians of London and in 1540 he granted a charter to the united Barbers’-Surgeons Company and endowed the Regius Professorships at Cambridge and Oxford; the first endowed chairs of medicine in the English-speaking world. Certainly not by accident, Cambridge University was the site of the 1953 landmark research of James Watson and Francis Crick, which described the structure of the DNA molecule for the very first time.

But in the area of treating the sick and taking care of the poor and elderly, the role of Church and State has evolved along with our collective understanding of human rights. What was once the responsibility of Christian charity began to be seen in a clearer light: the light of our obligations to each other as fellow human beings.

It would take a long time for the system of health care in North America to reflect that dignity and justice...even longer in the U.S., where there are still significant violations of that charge. In 1621 two surgeons arrived aboard the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts; one of them was Mayflower Commander and Royal Army Surgeon Miles Standish, who settled in Duxbury, Mass. Standish, like most of his contemporaries, learned to hack and fiddle at the wounds of his comrades by watching others do the gruesome work.

Much of the health care of Colonial New England, just as the mother country, was handled by women in the towns and villages. A recent review of the folk medicine practiced by Colonial women is contained in the book The Healer's Calling: Women and Medicine in Early New England by Rebecca Tannenbaum.

The first public institution of a hospital in northern North America was in 1639. Known as the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec it was funded by Cardinal Richelieu’s niece, staffed by three Augustinian monks, and given it’s first physician Robert Giffard de Moncel under a charter granted by Louis XIII of France. This underscores the catholic concept of the pastoral health ministry as a core calling of the Church.

But in largely Protestant British North America, hospitals would soon pop up in the post revolutionary period. 1751 saw the construction of the “Pennsy”, the oldest hospital in the U.S.; opened by Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. It still operates today under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The 1796 "Boston Dispensary," now known as Tufts-New England Medical Center was opened as the third such facility in the U.S., using donations from famous Bostonians such as the silversmith Paul Revere.

Although the Canadian Medical Association was born in Québec City in October 1867, it would be in the great prairies of Saskatchewan that universal health care would serve as a beacon for the realization of health care as a right and not a privilege. In 1946, actor Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather, Premier Tommy Douglas' Government passed the Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act, which guaranteed free care for the majority of the population. Douglas was a Protestant minister and an outspoken defender of the right of every person to medical treatment in the wake of severe shortages of doctors in his province. By 1957, the Canadian federal government passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act to fund 50% of the cost of health care systems in the 10 provinces.

My country has been very slow to act, weighing the positives and negatives, while padding the pocketbooks of some who gain from human suffering. That's unfortunate, but not the end of this 490-year story of health care in the English-speaking North Atlantic. At the encouragement of some brave women and men in my home Commonwealth of Massachusetts, our legislature which is known as the Great and General Court, passed the Health Reform Act of 2006, making it the first U.S. state to require all citizens to have health coverage and establishing the Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program (Commonwealth Care).

2008 is the first full year of the Health Care Reform here, and it comes just in time to subsidize the health costs of 491,000 Massachusetts residents who were uninsured beforehand. The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy reports that: "Of the 439,000 newly insured, 191,000 found private (or non-government) coverage, and 159,000 of the people who enrolled in private health insurance did so through an employer-subsidized plan. Payments to hospitals and health centers for "free care" services are down by 41 percent."

All-in-all, it seems that fulfilling the obligation to provide adequate, quality health care is not the ideological quagmire many feared. From Henry VIII to Richelieu's niece and today's Massachusetts legislators, there seems to be a continuum of the realization that health care for all is a cherished human right, and not simply a perk of the powerful.

Womanhood

2008-09-05T18:10:00.007-04:00

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere. (1)

I am a man, and so I am uniquely unqualified to describe the feelings, spiritual and temporal, which must course through the experience of mothers around the world when we try to understand the heart and meaning of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th of this month, which is her birthday.

And yet her meaning to me is so incredibly strong that I can’t keep my silly trap shut. Out of my solemn reverence, I will not post from today until after the Feast of the Nativity of our Holy Mother on the 8th of September. In the Johannite tradition we officially refer to this event as the Descent of Holy Sophia. In our Lectionary, there is a beautiful ode to the divine mother:

Let us call upon Hagia Sophia, the supernal mother of our souls, and celestial bride of our spirits: Daughter of Infinite Light, born of enlightened love; merciful and compassionate, embodiment of perfect wisdom; begotten in Eternity, beyond Time and Space, With what words shall we praise Thee, or with what thoughts comprehend Thy majesty? Utterance must profane Thee; silence itself can bear witness to Thee. How shall we extol Thee? In what shall we shadow forth Thy great glory among us?

This day to me is so filled with beauty that it takes pains to translate into any cute phrases that I might be able to write here. Our Lady has so many epithets; each one better than the next. So instead of blabbing about why the energy and presence of the feminine aspect of the divine seems to pierce my own thick heart and skull, I would like to share a few of the names which touch every sensibility; indeed at some level, touching every person born of a woman. I ask only one thing: that we live our admiration and devotion to Holy Mary in our lives, with the women in our lives…and that we never cease in our respect and awe.

Holy Mother of God,
Mother of Christ,
Mother of divine grace,
Mother most amiable,
Mother most admirable,
Mother of good counsel,
Mother of our Creator,
Mother of our Savior,
Virgin most prudent,
Virgin most venerable,
Virgin most renowned,
Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most merciful,
Mirror of justice,
Seat of wisdom,
Cause of our joy,
Spiritual vessel,
Vessel of honor,
Singular vessel of devotion,
Mystical rose,
Tower of David,
Tower of ivory,
House of gold
Ark of the Covenant,
Gate of Heaven,
Morning star,
Health of the sick,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Queen of Angels,
Queen of Patriarchs,
Queen of Prophets,
Queen of Apostles,
Queen of Martyrs,
Queen of Confessors,
Queen of all Saints,
Queen assumed into Heaven,
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary,
Queen of Peace

(1) English Translation
Mother of Christ, hear thou thy people's cry
Star of the deep and Portal of the sky!
Mother of Him who thee made from nothing made.
Sinking we strive and call to thee for aid:
Oh, by what joy which Gabriel brought to thee,
Thou Virgin first and last, let us thy mercy see.

The Honey-Sweet Doctor

2008-08-19T13:32:00.004-04:00

The Vision of St. Bernard of Clairvaux by Juan Correa de Vivar

Recently I’ve been reading a collection of devotional works by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose native Burgundy and former residence at Cîteaux Abbey I had a chance to visit a few months ago with my god daughter and her family.

Bernard is not an easy abbot to like. He was a testy, opinionated, and radically mystical defender of that which he felt was holy. He attacked Peter Abelard and with him the scholasticism that would give way to the marriage of Greek rationality and Christian theology later articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. I happen to like reason sometimes…but I have also found that it is very boring to argue against irrationality.

Conflict, necessary friction, and the intense power of fervent love through the divine femininity of his beloved Queen of Heaven characterize Bernard. He is not easy to like, but very dearly loved. This greatest of Cistercians preached for the first and second crusades, and yet he saved the lives of hundreds of Rhineland Jews during the anti-Semitic riots which came in the aftermath of those wars. He was enigmatic, full of life, zeal, foibles; in every way a reflection of anyone of us who feels strongly for better and for worse.

He’s not remembered for his nasty skirmishes with Abelard, his fascination with bees, his fabled reception of miraculous milk from the breast of the Blessed Virgin, or even his patronage of the Templar knights. That Bernard of Clairvaux is remembered to the extent that he is today can probably be blamed on the unmitigated chutzpah that seethes from his voluminous collection of devotional writings, many of which brought people closer to the source of spiritual growth. After reading some of his works, it is clear to me that this man had an exceptional inner life; a connection to the way of Christ through Our Lady that was nothing but exceptional.

As one of the most prolific medieval writers, he was given the title Mellifluous Doctor, a nickname that nicely remembers Bernard as the “honey-sweet doctor.” For over 830 years Bernard the great bee-keeper has been remembered on August 20th, the date that marks his death in 1153.