Last night we looked at William Blake - some of the symbolism and the Neoplatonic themes in his work.
We also touched on John Scotus Eriugena (c.800 - c. 877 A.D.), philosopher and theologian, and his startlingly profound writing on the correspondence between the seen and the unseen worlds:
For everything that is understood and sensed is nothing else but -
the utterance of the unutterable
the access to the inaccessible
the understanding of the unintelligible
the body of the bodiless
the essence of the superessential
the form of the formless
the measure of the measureless
the number of the unnumbered
the weight of the weightless
the materialization of the spiritual
the visibility of the invisible
the place of that which is in no place
the time of the timeless
the definition of the infinite
the circumscription of the uncircumscribed
- The act of creation is the self-manifestation of the hidden transcendent God
Wednesday 11 February 2015
Wednesday 28 January 2015
Session 7 Symbolism in the mystical life
Last night we looked at various aspects of symbolism. We reflected on symbols used in the titles of well-known mystical works, such as 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and 'The Interior Castle'.
We also looked at characteristic symbols used to describe spiritual progress ('ladder' 'maze' 'path'), and our multi-faceted relationship with the Ineffable: Hildegarde's 'a feather on the breath of God', St Teresa's 'spiritual marriage', and or even being hounded, as in Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' - 'Whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit'.
We mentioned in passing the idea of the complementary paths: the Via Affirmativa and the Via Negativa, which we'll come back to later in the course. Meanwhile, here is a quote from Damascius: 'The universe is double: that which is seen and that which is not seen - the world within the world we see. The seen is a symbol of the unseen, the material a parable of the real. The visible world is the garment and drapery of God.' We'll pick up next time with what we really mean by the unseen - it refers to more than that which just happens to be invisible to the eye. It is that which can only be approached by intellect in its fullest sense.
The next session will be at 7.00pm Tuesday 10th February.
We also looked at characteristic symbols used to describe spiritual progress ('ladder' 'maze' 'path'), and our multi-faceted relationship with the Ineffable: Hildegarde's 'a feather on the breath of God', St Teresa's 'spiritual marriage', and or even being hounded, as in Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' - 'Whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit'.
We mentioned in passing the idea of the complementary paths: the Via Affirmativa and the Via Negativa, which we'll come back to later in the course. Meanwhile, here is a quote from Damascius: 'The universe is double: that which is seen and that which is not seen - the world within the world we see. The seen is a symbol of the unseen, the material a parable of the real. The visible world is the garment and drapery of God.' We'll pick up next time with what we really mean by the unseen - it refers to more than that which just happens to be invisible to the eye. It is that which can only be approached by intellect in its fullest sense.
The next session will be at 7.00pm Tuesday 10th February.
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