Wayne Teasdale
(Article on Meditations, reproduced here by kind permission of the author).
Brother Wayne Teasdale is a member of the Benedictine Priory of Montreal, having completed his doctoral studics at Fordham University on Dom Bede Griffiths, Cam. O.S.B. This work has now been published under the title "Toward a Christian Vedanta: The Encounter of Hinduism and Christianity according to Bede Griffiths" (Asian Trading Corp. 150 Brigade Road, Bangalore-560025, 1987).
The Hermetic Tradition (or traditions) is an integrative esoteric discipline that is as remote from the understanding of most scholars, monks and contemplatives as philosophy, theology and political economy are from the average person on the street in our civilization. [1] Even among spiritual writers, theologians and thinkers, Hermeticism often mistakenly carries the connotation of occultism. Most draw a blank when it is mentioned, and when a rare writer discusses or alludes to it, it is usually only in a far-distant historical context. There is, it would appear, a near-total ignorance of the nature, value and place of Hermeticism in our time. Just as there is little appreciation of Hermeticism today, there is virtually no awareness of the existence of a Christian Hermetical Tradition. Again, where there is some vague recognition of it as an historical fact, it is known only as a name, a term that conjures up magical and alchemical associations. Very few thinkers would know that there exists a Christian Hermeticism at all. And it is certainly not a mainline monastic interest either. This whole situation is in some respects dangerous because it leaves out of the larger tradition a more integral approach to the Christian mystery and the spiritual life. To ignore or neglect Hermeticism is to impoverish Christian spirituality because it denies to the Church vital resources contained in Hermetic wisdom. Something as noble and profound as Hermeticism must be rescued from the clutches of a shadowy occultism, and given a recognized home in the Church.
This is precisely one of the aims of the anonymous author of this extraordinary document. In the introduction to the earlier German edition, Hans Urs von Balthasar expresses a deep respect for the unknown author, and praising him, declares: "...in our author we meet old Christian wisdom in a new form" [2]. He was a Russian émigré, who lived in Paris, a layman but one who reminds us that he is himself a hermeticist, one who has studied these mysterious subjects for some forty years; his vast erudition and sapience attest to this. He wishes to remain anonymous so that curiosity about his identity and life does not obstruct the communication of his unique message, and his mission of handing on an in-depth understanding of Christian Hermeticism. In a very real sense, however, the entire work is "autobiographical" because one intuits the depth of personal experience behind each page. The unknown author addresses the book to the "Unknown Friend", whom we discover is anyone who happens to aspire to the totalistic approach of Hermeticism, who desires to follow in his footsteps as a hermeticist.
The roots of Hermeticism are quite ancient, and seem to go back to Egyptian sources, though having connections with Greece and Asia as well. From the Egyptian sources there are eighteen treatises. These are called the Corpus Hermeticum [3], forming the sacred writings of a mystical school associated with the cult of the Egyptian deity Thoth. The writings are attributed to the mythical Greek figure Hermes Trismegistus, the "thrice-greatest" (one), from whom their name derives. Hermes is identified with Thoth. These treatises are believed to have originated from the end of the first or early second century A.D. They were well known to the Fathers of the Church. The Hermetic work to which our author frequently refers is called Kore Kosmu [4], which treats in a metaphysical way all the major issues found in the biblical tradition. So impressive and wide-ranging is this work that Lactantius praises it for its comprehensive quality in examining virtually the whole truth. [5]
The literary structure of the present volume by our unknown Russian friend takes the form of twenty-two "letters" to the "unknown friend" (us), but each one of these letters is a meditation on one of the twenty-two Major Arcana of the Tarot cards. These are twenty-two pictures or symbolic images which embody certain spiritual laws and principles. They suggest numerous ideas and practical insights. The origin of the cards themselves is a mystery. Some have regarded them as Egyptian or Chaldean, but this theory is seriously flawed, and von Balthasar calls it a fantasy, though he does see their spread to Europe by the gypsies as credible. [6] The author doesn't have an answer either, but views some of the ideas as definitely originating in the Egyptian esoteric tradition, especially as later taking form as the Corpus Hermeticum.
The important point is that these twenty-two Major Arcana are all intrinsic, genuine symbols which conceal and reveal at the same time. These symbolic images or arcana are: (I) the Magician, (II) the High Priestess, (III) the Empress, (IV) the Emperor, (V) the Pope, (VI) the Lover, (VII) the Chariot, (VIII) Justice, (IX) the Hermit, (X) the Wheel of Fortune, (XI) Force, (XII) the Hanged Man, (XIII) Death, (XIV) Temperance, (XV) the Devil, (XVI) the Tower of Destruction, (XVII) the Star, (XVIII) the Moon, (XIX) the Sun, (XX) the Judgment, (XXI) the Fool, and (XXII) the World. These primary images or arcana are neither allegories nor secrets, but are authentic symbols; they have meaning in them. Their profound truth is hidden, but also suggested or revealed at the same time. It is meditation which reveals the inner depth of each arcanum. They point to mysteries and to the mystery.
An arcanum is something absolutely essential to know for our spiritual growth and awareness, and this knowing is more than mere intellectual understanding. We have to know it with our whole being and we have to will the truth of it, of each truth that an arcanum expresses. The arcana make us fertile and capable of fruitfulness in our spiritual lives and creative efforts. They stimulate in us new ideas, insights and discoveries, opening up new horizons of experience. They put us in touch with the depth dimension of life and reality, the subtle mystery present in everything. Each arcanum acts as a "ferment" or an "enzyme" stimulating our inner lives, the psychic and spiritual dimensions of our being. Symbols are the vehicles of these "ferments" or "enzymes"; they communicate them to us if we are ready morally and intellectually to receive them, if we are open and receptive. They stimulate and guide us.
Our unknown author tells us that Hermeticism itself is an arcanum, for it is something precious and useful to humanity's continued spiritual, moral and intellectual development. It acts as a "ferment", a stimulant or an "enzyme" in humanity's spiritual body, and is the arcanum of the "Mystery of the Second Birth or the Great Initiation" (p. 7), which is itself symbolized in the Eucharist. The "Second Birth" is the incorporation into the life of God. The arcana of the Tarot are a school for meditation, of really lectio divina which is comprehensive and integral. This meditative school becomes the environment of our learning the art of divine matters, the place of practical study and spiritual effort, all of which is related to our journey to the Divine.
In the first arcanum, "the Magician", which is the basis and method of all the other arcana, the "ferment", "enzyme" or principle is that of "the rapport of personal effort and spiritual reality " (p. 7). He teaches us what "it is necessary to know and to will in order to enter the school of spiritual exercises" (ibid.) of the Tarot. He is demonstrating the way of rapport with and experience of the realm of the Spirit. The principle can be further formulated as: "Learn at first concentration without effort,. transform work into play. . . " (p. 8). By "concentration without effort" he means a kind of contemplative rest in God, an awareness of the stillness similar to Centering Prayer and Christian Meditation, but in the latter cases using a sacred word or mantra. The above illustrates the practical purpose of the arcana, that they are spiritual exercises, and in the case of the Magician, what has to be learned is this ease, equanimity, calmness of manner, thought and speech, this concentration without effort in everything, especially in contemplation, knowledge and wisdom, and in personal works in which one is a channel of Divine grace.
Concentration without effort requires the silence of the mind and the heart, the suspension of our thoughts, plans, daydreams and desires. Mastering this arcanum, we put unity into practice; we live out of it and in it: the unity of the divine, natural and human worlds. The metaphysical doctrine that establishes the above practical teaching is this recognition and experience of unity, that the totality is a unified reality in God. Everything is related and open to everything else. This insight allows a corresponding method to emerge, the method of analogy, which makes the progress of knowledge possible. Our author draws on the formula for analogy from the Tabula Smaragdina, or The Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus: "That which is above is like to that which is below and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracles of (the) one thing" (p. 13). [7] Analogy, in one form or another, is presupposed in all branches of knowledge; it is the ability to see relationships and correspondences between and among different things and orders of being and reality. When one has mastered this method of the first arcanum, one is able to grasp analogous correspondences without effort. It is a kind of intuitive seeing. The unity of beings is understood in immediate perception by seeing correspondences in the mode of consciousness or concentration without effort.
The Second Major Arcanum of the Tarot is the High Priestess who symbolizes gnosis or mysticism become conscious of itself; it is the pure act of intelligence, which reflects the pure act of Love or God Himself. This is Divine Wisdom, the representation of the inner nature of the Godhead in the Book, in Revelation. The inner reality of God is Love, the boundless Love of the Persons Who is the Spirit. He is Love-Wisdom itself. This arcanum is concerned with teaching the necessity of walking the mystical path as the way to transcendent knowledge (gnosis) and the experience of the intense Love that God is, that the Trinity is. Gnosis is the descent of this revelation, its formulation.
The author speaks of mysticism as the source or seed of all true religion and the seed of all gnosis or esoteric theology. Mysticism is spiritual touch (contact) or intuition, and it is transformed into tradition; it is essential to tradition, and a hermeticist has to be a mystic, because contact with God is the source of his knowledge, of gnosis. Thus, the second Arcanum, the Priestess points the way to the emergence of the gnostic or contemplative sense, which leads us into the dimension of depth. And silence is the way to develop this gnostic sense, the way into contemplation, into true depth. It is necessary to be able to listen in silence with keen attention, that is, to meditate. Also, each arcanum, in our author's view, is a spiritual exercise that aims at awakening depth in us, a depth whose language is symbolism. Hermeticism is life in depth; it is transcendent consciousness. Passing through these spiritual exercises we activate aptitudes, for any arcanum that is worked at along time as a spiritual exercise becomes an aptitude. It disposes the person to acquire further knowledge, and makes one an initiate.
In the sixth Arcanum, the Lover, the author treats of the nature of love, also presenting his understanding of Christian love. Love itself is an arcanum which opens us up to relationship with ourselves, with others and with God. What is love? It is "to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality" (p. 126). To love others is to see them as real as oneself. Love is never abstract, but always concrete; it is both substance (substantial) and intensity (spiritual presence). In order to radiate the substance or concrete reality of love and its intensity, its concentrated presence as actual, one has to have first loved at least one other person. Then one has the capacity to emanate it to others, to refract it like a prism. Once love has achieved substance and intensity in us it naturally tends to spread and multiply its radiance. Love is itself the very being of God, the substance and intensity of the Divine nature which subsists in the triune identity, and which was communicated to humanity first in the gift of creation itself which made the human race possible, then in the Incarnation when Love became embodied in Jesus, and finally in the Holy Spirit Who is this Love in its ultimate form. "As above so below". As God is Love in its very quintessential reality beyond all limitations, and has given us in Christ the way of love on the human level, so we must be the carriers of this love in our lives and actions. In all of the situations of life we must apply the arcanum of selfless love, the affirmation of the reality; worth and place of others.
The whole thrust of these meditations as spiritual exercises is to lead one into the fullness of mystical life, or the union of the soul with God in the intimacy of Divine Love. For our author, the term "mystical" connotes the mystical and gnostic experience, but the latter is the noetic content of transcendental consciousness; it is what one has been able to comprehend from the encounter with God. Christian Hermeticism is what he calls "crystallized mysticism", because its heart is centered in this unitive level of experience which then draws conclusions for the rest of knowledge, life and action. Gnosis is actually mysticism's crystallization, since it is its self-conscious understanding of its content and the application of its implications for the general range of human experience.
Our author begins to unfold his profound insight, an insight that I believe comes from his own experience, of what mystical experience is, what the nature of mysticism is as such in its complete form. In its actual formulation, his teaching is heavily inspired by John's Gospel, Neo-Platonism, Origen, the pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila especially, the Cabbala and others. Although he draws on non-Christian sources of contemplative wisdom, his understanding is thoroughly, if indeed radically, Christian and astoundingly refreshing. In the twelfth Major Arcanum of the Tarot, the "Hanged Man", an arcanum quite appropriate for all contemplatives whatever their station in life, and especially for monks, the author gives detailed accounts of what is involved in the ascent to God, particularly the process of the will's transformation and its effect on the other faculties of thought and imagination or memory.
The Hanged Man represents the spiritual person, one who has authentic faith, and this arcanum is a meditative exercise in how to acquire such faith. Authentic faith means essentially a will enlightened from above, a will that is infused with grace which illumines it. It is a will enlightened by infused revelation. The unknown author says of the spiritual man (or woman) that "his will is connected with heaven and is found in immediate contact (not by the intermediary of thought and feeling) with the spiritual world. This happens in such a way that his will 'knows' things that the head -- his thinking -- still does not know..." (p. 316). The spiritual man or woman is a person of the future, because the designs of heaven operate in and through his will, transforming it, rather than memory and present or future experiences. The spiritual person is not motivated by the goods of this world, but by the will of God alone.
In explaining his position, the author quotes liberally from Teresa of Avila, especially from The Interior Castle and her autobiography. And he advances his understanding of the will enlightened by infused revelation on the basis of Teresa's description of the will's role in rapture and union. It is the will which keeps the contact with God in these mystical encounters, and it does so by always engaging itself in the act of loving Him. The will is united with God and is absorbed in the embrace of loving contemplation. Thought, imagination and memory become suspended in this ecstatic union, and enjoy the bliss of transcendental consciousness. They "keep company with the will", but they do not know or understand what is happening.
Now, our author maintains that there is a way in which the faculties cannot only enjoy the beatitude of the will's rapture in God, but can also bring back from the encounter a positive knowledge of the inner content of the experience. It is here that we come to the distinctive contribution of Christian Hermeticism to the Mystical Tradition, in the author's opinion. It is an eminently practical contribution. Let me cite his exact words:
Practical Hermeticism therefore applies itself to educating thought and imagination (or memory) to keep step with the will. This is why it requires constant effort of thought and imagination combined in order to think, meditate and contemplate in symbols -- symbolism being the sole means of rendering thought and imagination capable of not being suspended when the will submits to revelation from above, and enabling them to unite with it in its act of receptive obedience, so that the soul not only has a revelation of faith but also participates in this revelation with its understanding and memory (pp. 319-320).
The author goes on to say that though this process is difficult for thought and imagination in the beginning, and requires great effort or a kind of inner asceticism, in time the gap between the will and the other two faculties narrows, and they "become more and more capable of participating in the revelation of faith to the will -- until the day arrives when they participate in it on (an) equal footing with the will" (p. 320). With this teaching, in a broad stroke, the author supersedes, or rather improves on the apophatic tradition of the pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross and The Cloud of Unknowing, etc., and refers to this spiritual event, i.e. the equal sharing of the will, imagination and thought in the mystical union, as Hermetic initiation. We can then discern, in relation to God on this mystical plane of consciousness, that practical hermeticism, through the various spiritual exercises of the arcana, is oriented to this Hermetic initiation, where it becomes possible to have an expanded transcendent union in which the three faculties participate as equal partners. This means that the mystical union is seen to engage the soul in a more integrative way, and not just the will standing alone in ecstatic rapture.
The discipline of the symbol then becomes the vehicle of this event of Hermetic mystical initiation. This is not so terribly difficult to follow because the symbol is a kind of abbreviation of spiritual reality, a summing-up in the image, much as a mathematical formula sums up, indeed symbolizes a complex function or set of functions. For one highly skilled in mathematics the formula itself might be sufficient to awaken in an intuitive flash the solution and implications. It is all contained in germ-form in the equation. Similarly, in the symbol certain principles are present in seed-form, so that a complicated process of reasoning can be dispensed with. This is an operation of the intuitive faculty, and it works with brilliant leaps of insight. Symbolism could thus be the linking mechanism that permits a creative-receptive role for thought and imagination with the will in mystical consciousness.
Our author accepts the traditional stages of purification, illumination and union, especially as discussed by John of the Cross, as the structure of the way of arriving at being united with God. He calls the path of the stages the only way of "eternal mysticism", and defends its universal validity. It is found in the Hermetic writings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, especially that of The Divine Pymander, in pagan treatises and in ancient Egyptian wisdom. All illumination, enlightenment and revelation originates in a contact with God, according to the author.
Christian Hermeticism is based on mysticism; it is rooted in the eternal. Hermetic wisdom strives after totality in knowledge which is granted in mysticism and gnosis. Hermeticism expresses this total or integrative approach by presenting the fruit of its labors: the synthesis of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic. For Hermeticism is this very synthesis of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic. Each of these are related and derive from the same source. Mysticism in its highest form is the condition of the soul (the will) united with God in love. This presents the human sphere with contact or experience of the source of Truth and the ultimate value of the mystical life. It gives the human a taste of the eternal, and becomes constitutive of the religious quest. We seek God because God is there to be sought and found, and there is memory of such contact in the unconscious depths of the soul.
Our author elaborates his conception of the second term of the Hermetic synthesis, gnosis, with eloquence and great precision in Letter XIII, Death or the thirteenth Arcanum. His view of gnosis is as inspiring as it is profound. Gnosis is really the self-consciousness of mysticism, of the union of love between God and the soul, which takes place because of the transformed will. Gnosis is what mystical experience gives to intellect and memory. It is not the same as pure mysticism, which is ineffable because it involves only the will in unitive relationship with God. Since intellect or understanding and the memory are excluded from direct participation in the pure mystical event in which the will alone participates, the experience is essentially incommunicable and inexpressible. But our author tells us that gnosis changes this situation by introducing the understanding and the memory into the experience with the will by way of the use of symbolism. This is how he describes the process:
Gnosis... is the same mystical experience (as that of the pure mysticism of the will) with the participation of understanding and memory, which pass the threshold together with the will and remain in a state of wakefulness. It is schooling by means of symbolism which renders them capable of participating in the mystical experience of the will without lapsing. They participate only as witnesses, i.e. they maintain complete silence and only play the role of a mirror. But the result or their presence as witnesses to the mystical experience of the will is the ability to express and communicate this experience. This is because understanding and memory have received an impression or it. And this impression is what we understand here by "gnosis". A mystic is a gnostic in so far as, and as much as, he can express and communicate to others his experience (p. 368).
The third element in the Hermetic synthesis, that of sacred magic refers to the realm of action, action towards one's neighbor and towards Nature. Sacred magic is the fruit that arises from mysticism and gnosis, or from the participation of the will, understanding and memory in the unitive experience as it bears on one's neighbor and the domain of Nature. This makes the mystic not only a gnostic, but a magician as well. Our author remarks: "Every mystic is a mage in as much as and in so far as he acts, being inspired by his mystical experiences. Sacred magic is the putting into action of what the mystic contemplates and what the gnostic apprehends through revelation" (p. 369).
The synthesis of all three, mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic is Hermetic philosophy, which develops the implications of these for life in the world and for the sciences concerned with this life. The one who presides over this fascinating and spiritually fruitful synthesis is a hermeticist. [8] The synthesis itself is then crystallized mysticism, and is a work best pursued in the concentrated atmosphere of solitude. This is the work of the hermeticist, who is the guardian of humanity's universal tradition, which takes all that is true and valuable and relates it to the Church. It is the hidden, depth dimension of the Church, and so is intrinsically part of her inner life and nature. It is a work requiring authentic faith, profound humility, openness, the willingness to serve, and as the seventeenth Arcanum the Star emphasizes, a commitment to growth rather than the construction of rigid systems. It is a recognition of and a commitment to the necessity for the process of becoming which is the reality of spiritual transformation, of flowing steadily into the mystery and eternal life of God, the fontal Source of all love. This is what growth is.
It is impossible to do justice to the author of this truly inspired work in the limited space of this essay. It is my conviction that he is a genuine mystical philosopher, one who has something rare to contribute to the living tradition of the Church, especially as she faces the challenges ahead: her encounter with the East; her assimilation of its authentic values; her proclamation of the Gospel in the heart of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, etc., and her emergence into a new sense of her universal identity that includes these faith systems without compromise of her nature as the wisdom and truth of Christ, the Incarnate Son of Infinite Love, that wisdom and truth this desperate world needs more than anything else in our time and always. On a more practical note, let me conclude by quoting from Thomas Keating who aptly evaluates Meditations on the Tarot in this way:
This book, in my view, is the greatest contribution to date toward the rediscovery and renewal of the Christian contemplative tradition of the Fathers of the Church and the high Middle Ages. With its firm grasp of tradition, its balance, wisdom, profundity, openness to truth, and comprehensive approach to reality, it deserves to be the basis of a course in spirituality in every Christian institution of higher learning, and what would be better, (to be) the point of departure and unifying vision of the whole curriculum. [9]
Benedictine Priory, 1475 Pine Avenue West Montreal, Quebec H3G IB3, Canada
FOOTNOTES
[1] Actually there are numerous works on Hermeticism, some of which are classics. These include: Court de Gebelin, Monde Primitif. analyse et compare avec le Monde Moderne, 8 vols. (Paris, 1781); Eliphas Lévi (the abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant), Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 2 Vols.(Paris, 1854), and his H1stoire de la Magie (Paris, 1860), La Clef des Grands Mysteres (Paris. 1861), Le Livre des Splendeurs (Paris, 1894), Le Grand Arcane, ou l'occultisme devoile (Paris, 1898); Papus, Le Tarot Divinatoire: Clef du tirage des cartes el des sorts (Paris, 1909) and his Le Tarot des Bohemiens (Paris, 1889), and Traite elementaire de science occulte (Paris, 1888). This latter work is also in English, The Tarot of the Bohemians (New York: Arcanum Books, 1958); also in English are, Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot; Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1959); Eden Gray, A Complete Guide to the Tarot (New York: Bantam Books, 1972); Lynn M. Buess, The Tarot and Transformation (Marina del Rey, CA: De Vorss, 1973); Barbara G. Walker, The Secrets of the Tarot; Origins, History. and Symbolism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984); Gareth Knight, The Treasure House of Images: An Introduction to the Magical Dynamics of the Tarot (Rochester, Vermont; Destiny Books, 1986).
[2] Die Grossen Arcana Des Tarot (Basel: Herder, 1983), p. XIII.
[3] Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Greek and Latin editions), ed. G. Parthey, (Berlin, 1854); Hermetica, ed. Walter Scott, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1924).
[4] Kore Kosmu, Hermetica, vol. 1. ,
[5] Lactantius, Institutes, IV, 9. See I, 6; II, 8; II, 10; VI, 25; VII, 13, 18.
[6] Die Grossen Arcana, p. XI.
[7] Tabula Smaragdina, 2, trans. R. Steele and D. W . Singer, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, XXI, 1928, p. 42.
[8] Now, in a certain modified sense, the contemplative is pre-eminently a hermeticist, because he is seeking God; is always seeking a unitive relationship with Him; is seeking to know Him in thc most intimate way. And he is always trying to allow the spiritual values of that relationship to penetrate his life through thc monastic practices of lectio, liturgy, work, study and community, so that the relationship with God and others matures in wisdom or gnosis. Finally, the contemplative becomes a channel of grace and love, which is sacred magic. The contemplative then has the Hermetic synthesis.
[9] Quoted in Theophane Boyd's review, "Dealing from a Full Deck", Commonweal, Vol. CXIII, no. 10, May 23, 1986.