Gnosticism | Contemplative Inquiry

August 24, 2015

SOPHIAN CONTEMPLATION

I have begun a series of Sophian contemplations. They are built around brief passages from texts that I treat as being in her tradition, passages that have drawn and excited me and continue to resonate beyond their initial impact. This is the first.

I am the light within the light.

I am the remembrance of Forethought.*

I sit, eyes closed. I say: I am the light within the light. I get the image of someone holding up a lantern. It’s like the Hermit’s lantern from Tarot, except that Sophia is holding it. Then there’s the image of the candle inside the lantern, and I briefly become the flame. I am surrounded by protective walls of glass, safe and steady. I know that the glass will enhance my radiance.

Back outside, I as observer notice that the lantern offers a pool of light in a deep twilight setting. This light is not aggressive or overwhelming. It hardly disturbs the magic of the gloaming, which is also somewhat lit by moon and stars. The contribution of the lantern is that it helps to illuminate a path. Sophia is holding up the lantern so that people can walk somewhere a bit more easily.

Sophia holds the light and points the way. Sophia does not ask for prayers. She does not ask to be loved, though love is in the air. She does not even ask to be followed, or for a path to be followed. Rather she says to me, in my observer position, “now you do it”. To become a lantern bearer, a lantern, and the flame within, is her worship. It begins with the flame within, or there is no light. At a level, it also ends with the flame. From the perspective of the lantern there is no path; just illumination. From the external perspective, there is a path, and a role of lantern bearing guide. Yet there is only one experience, which can be seen in different ways.

I continue to sit, eyes now half open, soft focus, panoramic vision. I say: I am the remembrance of Forethought. I notice that I feel very comforted by the word ‘remembrance’. I’ve always had a sense of memory beyond memory, predating me and beyond personal. I am not thinking in terms of past lives or other forms of existence. But I do think that if those had a meaning and I could access them, this ‘remembrance’ would be there too. It’s not a memory of any identity or event – it’s just ‘remembrance’. It’s a very deep intuitive sense, and I believe that I share it with others, though the specific experience and ways of attempting to language it will vary. It has the feeling-tone of home. The old Gnostics used the term Pistis Sophia (faith-wisdom), which is the wisdom of deciding to have faith in the value of experiences like this, rather than dismissing them. There’s a decision to build life and meaning around them and to stand by the images, words, metaphors and practices that emerge – though not without examination and inquiry. ‘Forethought’ also has its own special resonance. In this context it’s anything so concrete of definite as ‘forward planning’. Rather, it derives its meaning as a contrast to ‘the Word’. It suggests a prior latency before the beginning that was the Word – a bit like the ain soph of the Kabbalah. As such, I can appreciate that language is being stretched beyond its reasonable reach and is dissolving into Mystery. Yet somehow, all the same, it stands for something I can recognise and assent to. Sophia’s invitation to me is to take ownership of these lines, and taste their reality as fully as I can.

I am the light within the light.

I am the remembrance of Forethought.*

*These lines come from a Gnostic text called The Secret Book of John. The book is a Nag Hammadi text and now available in a number of English translations. This one is taken from The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels translated with an introduction and notes by Marvin W. Meyer, New York: Vintage Books, 1986.

August 21, 2015

SOPHIA (HOKHMAH) AND WHERE SHE CAME FROM

In my understanding, Sophia has walked with us on a long cultural journey. We first discover her paradoxically placed within monotheist and patriarchal Judaism. She is named Hokhmah, which like the Greek Sophia translates into English as Wisdom. Her subsequent journey has often been through difficult and dangerous territory in the apparent world. It always marks a drive to awaken from toxic and delusional ‘realities’ and it has sometimes had a markedly pessimistic tone. This journey continues into our own times, and with it Sophia’s gift for what the old Gnostics called ‘continuous revelation’: “I will again make instruction shine forth like the dawn, and I will make it clear from far away. I will again pour out teaching like prophecy, and leave it to all future generations. Observe that I have not laboured for myself alone, but for all who seek wisdom”. (1)

Anne Baring and Jules Cashford point out (2) that although Wisdom in Jewish sacred literature was technically an abstract and transcendent quality, associated with the divine, it was always referred to as ‘she’, though without any image to support the personification. However the poetry of Hokhmah reveals her emergence from the earlier Great Mother. Wisdom speaks as Inanna and Isis spoke before her, powerfully, authoritatively and sensuously, making abundant use of natural imagery to come into full presence.

I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon,

And like a cypress on the heights of Hermon.

I grew tall like a palm tree in Engedi.

And like rose bushes in Jericho;

Like a fair olive tree in the field,

And like a plane tree beside water I grew tall.

Like cassia and camel’s thorn I gave forth perfume,

And like choice myrrh I spread my fragrance,

Like galbanum, onycha, and stacte,

And like the odour of incense in the tent.

Like a terebinth I spread out my branches,

And my branches are glorious and graceful.

Like the vine I bud forth delights,

And my blossoms become glorious and abundant fruit.

Come to me, you who desire me

And eat your fill of my fruits.

For the memory of me is sweeter than honey,

And the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb.

Those who eat of me will hunger for more,

And those who drink of me will thirst for more,

Whoever obeys me will not be put to shame,

And those who work with me will not sin. (1)

Baring and Cashford suggest that the greatest legacy of the goddess culture in the eastern Mediterranean is “the idea that the earthly, visible order of creation participates in the invisible source of being”. This is the foundation of the Wisdom traditions of Mesopotamia and Egypt, some 2,000 years older than Greek or Hebrew civilisation. “In Greece, whose great philosophers visited Egypt, it is the foundation of Plato’s Great Chain of Being. Israel’s own ‘Wisdom Teaching’ is woven with the thread of these older traditions, although the name, person and representation of the goddess could find no place” (2).

I am drawn to Sophia because for me she is fully in and of nature yet not locked in to the role of earth mother. She stands for every part of Plato’s chain: matter, life, mind – soul and spirit too if you want to make further distinctions. She doesn’t stand for a dream of bliss within the womb, or in an over-managed garden. Reading the old Jewish myths through a Gnostic lens she, under the name of Eve, puts a stop to all that. She will not accept a reign of ignorance and false consciousness. Sophia stands for awareness, which includes a willingness to see the world as clearly as possible and a capacity to hold and manage a measure of self-aware suffering. In my universe Sophia is pneuma, the very breath and spirit of awakened and relational life, and as such she represents the energies of creativity and love as well as of wisdom. For none of these fully blooms without the others.

Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach 24, 13-32,The Apocrypha: the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament, New Revised Standard Version Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1992
Baring Anne and Cashford Jules The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image London, England: Penguin, Arkana Books, 1993

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August 17, 2015

SOPHIA, GNOSTICISM AND CONTEMPLATION

When I wrote Contemplative Druidry I said that “in many ways this is a story of neo-Pagan sensibility and its growth since World War Two”. In addition to their Druidry, many of the book’s contributors reported involvement in Witchcraft and/or the indigenous Shamanism of other lands.

I also said in many cases this sensibility was modified by other influences, “most notably Buddhist philosophy and meditation, Christian mysticism and other Western Way paths with Gnostic and Hermetic traditions specifically mentioned”. I made the point that such influences are significant for contemplative practice, because to an extent they provide models. In the book I mostly focused on Buddhist influences, because they were the most common. I also paid attention to the Christian ones, notably the Ceile De, Anglican mysticism in the tradition of Evelyn Underhill, and the partly Franciscan inspiration behind the (Druid and Pagan) Order of the Sacred Nemeton. I didn’t say much about other Western Way traditions, though I mentioned R. J. Stewart as a personal influence on me and also my training at the London Transpersonal Centre. This was essentially Jungian and thus based on a modern Gnostic psychology.

The key images from my last post, Sailing to Byzantium, were images of Sophia and the Holy Fool from The Byzantine Tarot. They made an intense and (in common sense terms) disproportionate impact on me. For they reminded me of my own Gnosticism, a current that qualifies and modifies my Druidry. I am talking about modern Gnosticism, “based in an affirmation of nature and the world and a positive relationship to embodiment, not the classical Gnosticism of world-denial or pure transcendentalism. It is a gnosis based on bringing the world fully to life, while also enjoying the state of embodiment and sensual pleasure, without excess or obsessive appetite”*. Thus far, I could be talking about modern Druidry without any need to look elsewhere.

But, to follow Irwin further, Gnosticism also talks of “visionary awakening” through the power of archetypal imagery. From such a perspective, affirmation of the world also requires an affirmation of the World-Soul as “the primary ground of a living and animate nature”. This can inspire “states of unity and participation in the creative founding of human experience”. The key is the “animating vitality” of images, which can arouse “a cascade of energy and potential surpassing the image and leading into a more luminous condition of being and seeing”.

According to Irwin, the traditional fields for study and practice in Western Gnosticism are neo-Platonism, hermetics, alchemy, kabbalah, mystical theology, comparative theology and meditative disciplines: quite a curriculum. But the essence is quite simple. We are invited to work with Being as embodied (through exercise, body awareness and energy work), imaginal (connected to the mundus imaginalis, open to its power) and illuminated (through contemplative practice and insight). Much of this is offered within Druidry – for example, to anyone who takes full advantage of the OBOD distance learning course. Yet for me, here and now, once again, it is the image and name of Sophia that gives me my orientation and guides me on my path. I’ll explain that resonance and consequences more fully in later posts. In practical terms, for now, I’ve made two small adjustments in my morning practice. One is to cast my circle specifically in the sacred grove of Sophia. The other is to begin sitting meditation, or contemplative communion, by saying “I open my heart to the Light of Sophia”. It doesn’t seem much, but it shifts my centre of gravity to a place where a feel more empowered and more at home.

Irwin, Lee Gnostic Tarot: Mandalas for Spiritual Transformation York Beach, ME, USA, 1998 (There is no pack of cards with this book. It’s a set of interpretations emphasising “spiritual transformation and illumined states of awareness”. The Universal Waite Deck and the Ravenswood Tarot Deck have been used as points of reference.)

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August 14, 2015

SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

This post is inspired by The Byzantine Tarot, a collaboration between two notable talents – John Matthews as writer and Cilla Conway as artist. It’s an excellent piece of work, but this post is not a review. It’s about two of the major trumps and their effect on me.

I impulse-bought the pack about a month ago. I didn’t get it for divination. I wanted it for the iconography of the major trumps, though in fact all the cards are carefully chosen and beautifully rendered. Part of the integrity of this tarot is that the images are drawn from the culture they reference – a culture itself very busy with sacred images, though at times its ruling circles reacted against them. Cilla Conway’s work is a wonderful evocation of this culture and its imagery, an imagery consciously crafted in the service of Christian Orthodoxy*. It’s an interesting subject for a tarot pack, since the tarot form itself introduces an element of gnostic subversion into the work.

In the Byzantine Tarot, Sophia appears as the Papesse/High Priestess. She mediates “between the higher and lower realms of creation, watching over the Holy Fool on his journey and guiding those who seek her blessings to find their own path through the world”. In the apparent world, Byzantine Orthodoxy had no vacancy for a Papesse/High Priestess, and was not in business to encourage people to find their own way unless it was also the Churches’ way. The Fool of this tarot is a Holy Fool and draws on the history of the Desert Fathers, though the specific image is from Moscow, for the Slav world inherited the Orthodox tradition and the role of the Holy Fool. There is a happy reframing of these formidable world-renouncing ascetics in the text. A naked, haloed man steps outside his cell raising his hands towards the dove of the Holy Spirit and “prepares to step off into the air above the sea, asking without words to be allowed to access the joy and wonder of the world”. He is said to represent ‘crazy wisdom’, also known to Sufi and Buddhist tradition.

I feel engaged with these images, but not close to the Orthodox Church. Fortunately good images transcend doctrine. They have a larger suggestive power. I see a Goddess, depicted in one card as an angelic intercessor and in the other as a dove. I see a devotee who is a completely opened up. I’m learning how development works in spirals. A few years ago I was taken up with the image of Sophia and this modified my experience of Druidry. It was initially her influence that got me to explore meditative disciplines and see through the eye of contemplation more systematically. When my exploration took me further East, my specific sense of Sophia began to diminish.

Two tarot images have brought her back into my life. Now that she’s in my life, I have to move on from the specific images, for all their potent catalyst role. In relation to my life and practice, the Sophia depicted is too hierophantic and static. I like the Holy Fool icon, but the ‘Crazy Wisdom’ references in the text open up unwelcome possibilities of dogmatic intuitionism and licensed abuse-by-Guru that we find in Crazy Wisdom Masters from many traditions.

If I want to orient myself to the ‘Holy Fool’ archetype, there are lines within W. B. Yeats’ poem Sailing to Byzantium, which act as a better guide. He starts with the complaint “That is no country for old men” – Ireland, but more essentially the world of “whatever is begotten, born and dies, caught in … sensual music”. Then he says:

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress.”

On my reading the world of begetting, birthing and dying – with all its sensual music – is absolutely fine and to be celebrated. It’s the being “caught” in it that’s the problem. For there is another dimension. The seven directions operate vertically as well as horizontally, with eternity at the centre, within, around and throughout. Sophia reminds me of this, and it changes everything.

* Early in the 4^th century C.E. the Roman Emperor Constantine began the Christianisation of the Empire and moved the capital eastwards from Rome to the old Greek city of Byzantium which he rebuilt and modestly renamed Constantinople. Two hundred years later when Orthodox Christianity was dominant and enforceable, a new Cathedral of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) became the greatest building of the city. It still is in some ways, having survived two conversions since the fall of the city in 1453, first into a mosque and later into a museum in today’s Istanbul.

Matthews, John & Conway, Cilla The Byzantine Tarot: Wisdom from an Ancient Empire London: Connections Book Publications, 2015

Yeats, W. B. Poems of W. B. Yeats London: MacMillan & Co, 1964 (Selected with an introduction and notes by A. Norman Jeffares)

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December 1, 2012

DIVINE REMEMBERING

I was moved yesterday by a post made by Rosamonde Ikshvaku Miller to her Gnostic Sanctuary group.

“God manifesting in any type of flesh suffers from amnesia, but only God can remember God. The human mind only deals with symbols and those may lead to remembrance. We think it is us, but it is the awakened God spark in us that may awaken and “remember” through an act of anamnesis (although somewhat different from Plato’s definition of the word). That spark doesn’t care what names we give that knowledge (gnosis) and what hair-splitting distinctions we use. There is chaos and confusion outside and stillness and clarity in the central aperture of the “eye.” What are we listening to? The outer, with its words and erudition may give us tools of communication with which we may illustrate what we try to convey or distract us, so we forget and continue going in circles chasing our tails.”

In a way this reads rather dryly, and I even had to check Wikipedia for the different meanings of anamnesis*. Yet I was affected almost to the point of overwhelm, before moving into a calmer period with an undertow of ecstasy. The triggers were the words about forgetting, remembering and the awakened spark (in me). I was beyond belief and skepticism alike. Just very at home. And I sat with it, this morning, in the nurturing dark. And I seemed to experience a new centre of gravity, in my sitting. Words are tricky, as the piece above makes clear. Yet, for me, they can and do matter – when they truly evoke something that is ready to be called.

*Plato says that in the shock of birth, the soul forgets its previous incarnations and everything it has learned. Anamnesis is the recovery of knowledge. In Christian traditions, including Gnostic ones, anamnesis is the memorial aspect of the Eucharist, and of the passion, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

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Tag: Gnosticism