Prophets of the Paradox - Castille - late C13th

Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon, Isaac de Latif and Joseph Gikatilla begin a mystical midrash, based on the Talmudic story of the four sages who enter the orchard (pardes). PaRDes was an anagram of the four senses of scripture: literal (peshat), allegorical (remez), moral homiletic (darash) and mystical (sod).

These four gentlemen gave birth to the practice of the Kabbalah. Drawing on the emanatory creation principles of Ptolemy's universe - the three fixed stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon descending from God to the material world, the Kabbalah becomes a scripturally-based mysticism through the Book of Splendor (Zohar), a second-century novel that describes the wanderings of R. Simeon ben Yohai, discussing the Torah as he travels with friends, an exegesis that opened directly onto the divine world.

The Kabbalists agreed with the philosophers that God could not be known, but also thought that God could be experienced by the symbols of scripture.

The innermost essence of God is incomprehensible and 'without end' (En Soph). The abstract qualities of philosophy - Power, Wisdom, Beauty, Intelligence, become dynamic potencies, inner dimensions of the divine psyche called 'sephirot'.

The story of Genesis parallels the emergence of the sephirot. Bereshit (the beginning) represents the moment that Kether Elyon (Supreme Crown) breaks through the unfathomable En Soph as a dark flame. This cannot be recognised by mere mortal humans until a hidden supernal light shone forth under the impact of the final breaking through. This was Hokmah (Wisdom), the divine masterplan that represents the limit of human understanding. Hokmah penetrates Binah (Intelligence) whose 'unknowable radiance' is less subtle and translucent than Wisdom. Binah is the Supernal Mother, whose womb once penetrated by the primal point gives birth to the lower sephirot, symbolised as the seven days in Genesis:
Tiphareth (Grace)
Din (Judgment)
Hesed (Mercy)
Netzach (Patience)
Hod (Majesty)
Yesod (Stability)
Malkuth, the Shekhinah, the Kingdom

At the three highest Sephirot - 'it' becomes 'he'
At the next six Sephirot - 'he' becomes 'you'
At Shekhinah - 'You' becomes 'I'.

God is present in each and every individual. The ex nihilo is not outside the Godhead, but is the abyss that is overcome in creation. The Kabbalists noted the two Adams in Genesis - in Ch. 1 there is adam kadmon - primordial humanity, and in Ch. 2 the mundane Adam is created from dust. This Adam was expected to contemplate the Godhead on the Sabbath, but only contemplates Shekhinah, and so he sins, separating the Tree of Life from the Tree of Knowledge. The Kabbalists have the power to reunite Shekhinah by performing the tasks that Adam did not - so Abraham's binding of Isaac shows how Din and Hesed (Judgment and Mercy) should act together to temper each other). The story of Joseph overcoming sexual temptation to provide food in Egypt shows restraint (Din) is always balanced by grace (Tipereth).

Ref: Armstrong, K. The Bible: A Biography, London, Atlantic Books, 2008. pg 146 - 152

Daughters of Wisdom

Wisdom has built herself a house,
She has erected her seven pillars,
She has slaughtered her beasts, prepared her wine,
She has laid her table.
She has sent out her maidservants
And she proclaimed from the city’s heights:
Who is ignorant?
Let him step this way’
To the fool she says,‘Come and eat my bread, drink my wine I have prepared!

(Proverbs 9, 1-5)

‘Wisdom calls…On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand;
Beside the gates of the city,
At the approaches to the gate she cries aloud:
O humans, I am calling to you;
Listen, I have noble things to tell you…’

(Proverbs 8:1-4, 6)

An unseen God

"This notion of the unseen is an essential component in the vast majority of religious traditions. When you can grasp something - like God - with your everyday senses, you cannot dissect it in any ordinary way. Thus you cannot quantify God or reduce God into separate parts. Nor can God, at least according to the ancient Hebrew texts, be named. But to refrain from naming God interferes with the abstractive function that is designed to label every object in the world. If you can't perceive something, then how can it exist? A young child might say "It just does", and a priest might say "You need faith."

But the brain will still strive to solve such paradoxical thoughts by creating rational explanations of how such realms can exist. The Vatican library, for example, contains thousands of treatises that have attempted to categorise, label, and reduce the mysteries of the spiritual realm to fit our everyday understanding of the world. We introduce dualistic and oppositional notions such as heaven and hell, or good and evil, and we attempt to impose causal reasoning on how they will affect our lives. For example, some people come to believe that if you pray with sincerity, God will listen and respond to your concern. But if God works in mysterious ways, as most religious texts imply, how can we ever know? And so we search for miracles, or other evidence or proof, because it is far more difficult, at least as far as the normal functioning of the brain is concerned, to simply have faith in the unknown.

As long as God remains a mysterious concept, seekers will be drawn to what they do not understand, questioning and imagining what the reality or truth might be. In this sense, religious believers struggle with God in much the same way that physicists struggle with quantum mechanics, or a teenager struggles with love. Unfortunately, every attempt to grasp the totality of life from a cognitive perspective is bound to fall short, because the brain is limited in how it perceives the world. We may try to fill in the gaps with intricate beleifs, but ambiguities and uncertainties remain, and these are the very things that pull us deeper into our biological quest for knowledge, meaning and truth. Around and around we go, for whereever there is a mystery, our brains are destined to explore."

Ref: Newberg, A., Waldman, M.R. Born to Believe, New York: Free Press, 2006. pg. 98-99

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree

In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety

On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

In the hollow round of my skull. And God said

Shall these bones live? shall these

Bones live? And that which had been contained

In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

Because of the goodness of this Lady

And because of her loveliness, and because

She honours the Virgin in meditation,

We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

It is this which recovers

My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn

In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten

And would be forgotten, so I would forget

Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only

The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping

With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulness

Exhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied

End of the endless

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,

Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye

Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair

I turned and saw below

The same shape twisted on the banister

Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair

I left them twisting, turning below;

There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,

Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair

Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit

And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green

Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,

Lilac and brown hair;

Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,

Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair

Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy

Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet

Who walked between

The various ranks of varied green

Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,

Talking of trivial things

In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour

Who moved among the others as they walked,

Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand

In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,

Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing

Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring

One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.

The new years walk, restoring

Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring

With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem

The time. Redeem

The unread vision in the higher dream

While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue

Between the yews, behind the garden god,

Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

Redeem the time, redeem the dream

The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent

If the unheard, unspoken

Word is unspoken, unheard;

Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,

The Word without a word, the Word within

The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Not on the sea or on the islands, not

On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,

For those who walk in darkness

Both in the day time and in the night time

The right time and the right place are not here

No place of grace for those who avoid the face

No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for

Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,

Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between

Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray

For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot pray:

Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender

Yew trees pray for those who offend her

And are terrified and cannot surrender

And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks

In the last desert before the last blue rocks

The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again

Although I do not hope

Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss

In this brief transit where the dreams cross

The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things

From the wide window towards the granite shore

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices

In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices

And the weak spirit quickens to rebel

For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell

Quickens to recover

The cry of quail and the whirling plover

And the blind eye creates

The empty forms between the ivory gates

And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

Between blue rocks

But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away

Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

The Circle

In the centre of your inner circle is stillness.

Here is your known world. It's safe in the centre.

In the reflection of the mirror at the centre of the circle, everybody else is just like you. They sound the same, they eat the same food, have the same political views, read all your favourite books and definitely talk your language. Undifferentiated. By the light of the lamp in the centre you have a strong, safe conception of yourself, an inkling of eternity captured in the loves of the personality.

You're you and they're you.

On the outside of the circle is the reactivity, the chaos prompted as response to the stillness at the core.
In the reflection of the mirror held from the outside, the Other, at the centre, generates a bile-laden reaction. You oppose every principle, you trounce every argument, you object to the way that the eating is done and those books they read in that inner circle are absolutely pulp material. The language of the centre is incomprehensible, and it would be reprehensible to think of it being any other way. By the light of the lamp on the outside, strength and purpose, and will and fight come from negation of the centre, (ironically) completely beholden to relationship.

You're you and they're definitely them, not you.

On the periphery, you stand knowing you're own, inner circle, but are willing, ready and able, to explore the perspective on the outside of the circle. The want to know drives you out. In the reflection of the mirror, you see your self surrounded by foreign, unknown territory, but this doesn't initiate reactivity, it initiates investigation. By the light of the lamp, the damnations of the outside and the cloistered intimacy of the inside meet, and marry.
You stay because you recognise the shreds of truth that make up the All, you stay because you recognise the strands of the Divine that make up the All, you stay because you're comfortable enough within your own skin to take the time out to think of your neighbour as yourself, and well, check out the view from the other side. Whatever She looks like. Cos....

You're them and they're you.

And you know it.

Preachers of Paradox - Origen c.185

"Divine wisdom has arranged for certain stumbling blocks and interruptions of the historical sense...by inserting in the midst of a number of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the narrative might, as it were, present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along the pathway of ordinary meaning."

In the prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs, Origen pointed out that the three books of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs were representative of the body, psyche and spirit of scripture that goes beyond our mortal nature.

Proverbs is a book of the body. It represents the literal sense of scripture, while Ecclesiastes works on the level of the psyche, the natural powers of the mind and heart. By pointing out that earthly things are vain and empty, Ecclesiastes reveals the futility of placing hope in the material world, and thus represents the moral sense of scripture, requiring no supernatural insight.

An initiate into the higher mysteries of Scripture could appreciate the allegorical sense of the Song of Songs - the love of the Bride for the celestial Bridegroom, that is, of the perfect soul for the Word of God.

Origen takes us through the three stages within the Song of Songs itself - there is the earthly love of the bride in 'let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth', the literal beginning of an epithalamium where the bride awaits her bridegroom in longing. Origen picks up the allegory used by Paul to refer to the dowry that has been sent as symbolic of Israel, receiving the Law and the prophecies, but awaiting the coming of the incarnate Logos, who will complete them. The moral sense is represented in shewing the Bride as a model for all Christians, who must train themselves to yearn without ceasing and so transcend their nature, to achieve union with God.



Ref: Armstrong, Karen. The Bible: A Biography, 'Charity', Atlantic, 2007, pg 112 - 115

"Blessed is the one who on no occasion caused a soul harm. 

That person is Jesus Christ.

He came to the whole place and did not burden anyone.

Therefore,

blessed is the one who is like this,

because he is a perfect man.

For the word tells us that this kind is difficult to define.

How shall we be able to accomplish such a great thing?

How will he give everyone comfort?

Above all, it is not proper to cause anyone distress - 

whether the person is great or small, unbeliever or believer

and then give comfort to only those who find satisfaction in good deeds."

The Gospel of Philip

 Nag Hammadi Library, J.M. Robinson (ed.), Leiden, Brill, 1978.