Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 18

He adds that the physical fire of h.e.l.l differs from natural fire in this respect, that its flame is not the result of a natural, chemical process, but is sustained by divine power, and therefore does not dissolve the body which it envelops, but preserves it forever in the condition of burning agony.'

Such is the measured philosophical language which justifies the hideous fantasies of Matthew Paris, St. Salvius, Cranach, 1 Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity. Tn. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (London and St. LOU, is1947), pp. 692-3.

Bosch, and Breughel in every respect save their insufficiency of realism and the grotesque humour of the Flemings. For the imagination may descend to what depths of s.a.d.i.s.tic fantasy it will, yet always fail to portray the ultimate and concrete ghastliness of the reality. With Cranach the Elder one may visualize the d.a.m.ned in their fits of convulsion upon flaming rocks, being gnawed and l.u.s.ted upon by doglike fiends. Or with Bosch and Breughel one may simply suggest outrages of unimaginable depravity by depicting the d.a.m.ned half. transformed into the obscene gargoyles which infest thembat/winged bladders with barbed spines for noses, crossbreeds of ape and horseshoe crab, reptilian birds with suckers in place of beaks, armed fish with rotting sides and drooling mandibles, writhing deformities of misplaced limbs with mouths between the b.u.t.tocks-a whole world of animated slime and orgiastic cruelty as yet, I believe, unplumbed even by modern Surrealism. One may go this far and, if possible, farther, yet still hardly begin to suggest a state of punishment both spiritual and physical which highly intellectual and cultured people even now believe to be a certain reality.

This conception, with which the Western mind has tormented itself for many centuries, is admitted by most theologians to be the necessary consequence of its opposite-the everlasting and supernal bliss of the saints.' The justice, the logic, of a G.o.d who is absolute and eternal Goodness and Love requires that there should be the visitation of a proportionably absolute and eternal Wrath upon those who are not on his side with the fullest sincerity and enthusiasm. Nothing of a middle way is contemplated, since "he who is not with us is against us". This is, indeed, straight and realistic thinking in comparison with the strictly sentimental conception of the 1 This is the view of Scheeben, ibid., p. 692, "The miraculous resuscitation of the body and its permanent conservation for eternal punishment is in' separably related to the resurrection and conservation of the body for the exception of everlasting reward. If the latter did not occur, the former would not occur either." (Italics mine) The Four Last Things 223 Last End as a state of pure Goodness which simply annihilates its opposite, or includes all souls in its bliss.

For the whole significance of this part of the myth is that Absolute Goodness of necessity implies Absolute Evil, not merely logically but psychologically. This is the law of "enantiodromia" whereby every extreme turns into its opposite, whereby Satanism is actually created by Puritanism and deviltry by sanct.i.ty. Thus the conception of the everlasting Heaven of goodness, love, and delight is no less monstrous than that of h.e.l.l. For it is essentially the same conception. We should not, then, be surprised to find theologians admitting that the sufferings of the d.a.m.ned in h.e.l.l are contemplated with delight by the blessed in Heaven, who see all things in the mirror of G.o.d's omniscience. Of course-because psychologi, cally the sterile monotony of unalloyed pleasure or of unremitting saintliness must have its compensation. This is why the conception of h.e.l.l had to be invented by men who bent the full force of their conscious energies towards "being good". Not in Heaven, but here on earth, the inhumanly "good" already regard the torments of the d.a.m.ned with secret delight-a fact which comes out so clearly in Mediaeval art where the depiction of h.e.l.l shows far more creative imagination and life than that of Heaven.

An instructive example is the painting of the Last judgement by Breughel the Elder (1s58). To the right of the Judging Christ goes a procession of the blessed which is for the most part a mult.i.tude of heads as characterless as an army at drill and as dead as a cobbled street. But to the left, where the d.a.m.ned are shoveled into the gulping maw of h.e.l.l the picture is alive in rather the same sense as the earth beneath a large stone: it crawls and swarms with strange organisms. One may admit that Breughel may have had satirical intentions. One may invoke the glowing mosaics of Monreale and the luminous glory of Chartres to protest the real triumph of Mediaeval mans depiction of the Absolute Good. But the triumph, like the permanent bliss of Heaven, could not be sustained. By the end of the Middle Ages the "beautiful" art of the Church-of Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, and Rafael-was concerning itself with the beauty of a world relative and natural rather than a world absolute and eternal. So far as the Christian imagination produced truly iconographic and devotional images at this time, they were not the marvelously anatomical studies of Michelangelo but the tortured Christs of Grunewald and the Baroque.

For piety could not sustain itself at the level of the formally sublime. By the time of the Renaissance and the Catholic Counter/Reformation Christian devotion was less and less inspired by the radiant, unearthly images of Christ and the Saints in glory. It turned to feast itself upon vivid, realistic images of the Pa.s.sion. It produced the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, with their concentration of the imagination upon the horrors of h.e.l.l and the sufferings of the Saviour. It turned from the sublimely intellectual mysticism of the Victorines and St. Bonaventure to the mysticism of desolation typified in St. John of the Cross. It let loose the full fury of the Inquisition. And the turnabout was not only Catholic, for the Protestant piety ofthe same period was just as preoccupied with morbidity, and its inquisitions upon Papists no less cruel. For this was also the period of Calvin's d.a.m.nation by predestination, of the fascination with death in the piety of Tudor and Stuart England, of Paradise Lost, and of the Puritans' unprecedented revel in spiritual gloom.

As an historical movement this was really an exaggeration, a breaking.loose, of a tendency which had existed throughout the Middle Ages, where there is already sufficient ill.u.s.tration of the truth of the ambivalence of psychic energy, of the fact that the perfectly good G.o.d necessarily creates the perfectly evil Devil by way of unconscious compensation, which, just because it is unconscious, is the one thing that theology cannot admit. Thus we may return, for example, to the end of the The Four Last Things aas thirteenth century and consider the sculptured Last Judgement on the tympanum of Bourges Cathedral as a peculiarly vivid ill.u.s.tration of this ambivalence. One must bear it in mind that, to a very considerable extent, the attainment of perfect sanct.i.ty was identified with a suppression of l.u.s.t. However, this does not go along with a simple avoidance of or indifference to l.u.s.t and its objects. It requires a positive and energetic opposition to so great a natural force, leading to a kind of fury, of divine wrath, against everything that incites to l.u.s.t. Yet as this increases it becomes l.u.s.t. The blessed delight in the punishments of the d.a.m.ned because the infliction of pain is the symbolic, unconscious subst.i.tution for s.e.xual conquest.' Thus the sculptor of Bourges can outwardly edify but secretly delight, because convention permits him to show the bodies of the d.a.m.ned naked. What is ostensibly a scene of the punishment of the lost by devils is in fact a portrayal of satyrs about to begin a s.a.d.i.s.tic orgy with a group of nymphs. By such a roundabout course a sculpture which might have adorned one of the more depraved Roman brothels turns up in the guise of ecclesiastical art.

Taken literally, the state of the blessed in Heaven is actually no less frightful than that of the d.a.m.ned in h.e.l.l. Here again we must remember that really profound theological minds have taken it literally, expecting in all seriousness a future resuscitation of the decomposed body to be the instrument of the soul's enjoyment of perpetual bliss. They maintain that the life of the soul,andbody in Heaven will be at once eternal, in the strict sense, and everlasting. For the supreme delight of Heaven is to be the Beatific Vision of G.o.d himself. Looking into the immeasurable depths of this Vision, the soul will see time as G.o.d sees it-all at once, past, present, and future embraced in a single moment of perception. Yet because the 'It should be added-not necessarily an unconscious subst.i.tute, for it is sometimes just another form of the same thing, a conscious exaggeration of s.e.xual activity.

soul,andbody remains by nature finite and creaturely it will continue to dwell in the dimension of time, though by reason of its intimate union with the supernatural power of G.o.d it will not perish in time. It will contemplate the moment of eternity for an everlasting time. The body, with its senses inconceivably sharpened and amplified, will experience thrills of ecstasy and rapture beyond the wildest dreams of imagination, and wi11 remain thus transported for always and always and always.

It will enjoy not only the infinitely satisfying Vision of G.o.d itself, but also the loving companions.h.i.+p and the incomparably varied beauties of the Saints and Angels, as well as everlasting fellows.h.i.+p with those whom it has loved upon earth.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were pa.s.sed away; and there was no more sea. . . . Behold, the tabernacle of G.o.d is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and G.o.d himself shall be with them, and be their G.o.d. And G.o.d shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are pa.s.sed away.'

For the life of Heaven is by no means to be that of a disem bodied soul floating through a radiant sky. There is to be "a new heaven and a new earth", a recreation of the original Paradise Garden the Rose Garden of Our Lady-a world of skies and landscapes, of intensities of light and colour, scent and texture, beyond anything yet seen under the fantastic spell of hemp and poppy. For out of his inexhaustible omnipotence G.o.d will create beauty upon beauty, wonder upon wonder, playing for ever with his children around the Tree of Life as if it were perpetually Christmas Day.

This is a beautiful conception--so long as one does not 1 Revelation zr: i, 3-4 think or feel about it too deeply, so long as one takes it just as a glimpse and then turns away. It can, perhaps, be supposed that the divine omnipotence will arrange some miracle to prevent the terrible monotony of everlasting pleasure, and to make it possible for the mind to acc.u.mulate memories indefinitely without going mad. Yet it would seem that such miracles belong in the cla.s.s of creating square circles, a cla.s.s of jeux d'ornnipotence of which the better theologians have never approved. In fact the delightful shock of wonder and the possibility of everlasting newness depend upon the miracle of forgetfulness. To be entranced eternally the blessed would have to forget eternally, so that the dance of omnipotence would not wear out the floor of memory with its tracks, so that the writing would not become illegible by reason of the crowded page. Now to forget is to die, since what we call physical death is above all else the destruction of a system of memories, of an I.Such considerations lead us to a profounder under standing of the myth of the Four Last Things.

The everlasting Heaven turns out to be no more than another form of h.e.l.l for the very reason that it is everlasting and is const.i.tuted by one of a pair of opposites. It never attains to Cod, to the Hand which holds the Dividers at the Pivot. Endless, it never reaches man's True End. The farther those on the Right are separated from those on the Left, the sooner they swing around the Pivot to find h.e.l.l beyond Heaven. For the End lies nowhere on the circle, nowhere in time, but only at the Pivot itself. Because we speak in figures of time and s.p.a.ce it must seem that beyond the duality of Right and Left there is a further duality of Pivot and Circ.u.mference, Eternity and Time. Yet this is the illusion of language, for whatever is described is of the Circ.u.mference, described about the Centre. Some angel has taught us to use the circle for zero, for apart from, away from, its Centre the Circ.u.mference is nothing. And perhaps the same angel has led us to see that the Point of the Centre is no mere infinitesimal abstraction of a position without magnitude, but the very concrete necessity of an undefined Principle-without which nothing can ever be defined. Hence St. Bonaventure's inspired notion of G.o.d as the "circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circ.u.mference is nowhere".

The difficulty of geometrical mythology is that its abstract quality seems to deprive its meaning of rich reality, for it is had to feel that a mere point can be creative. The living myths say more because they say it with living, concrete images; yet they say the same thing. Consider St. John's vision of the Heavenly City:

Her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;' and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. On the East three gates; on the North three gates; on the South three gates; and on the West three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb .2 And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.3 And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed,

1 Austin Farrer in his Rebirth of Images relates the jasper stone to the Zodiacal sign of Virgo, so that the whole city ("her light") is an emblem of the Virgin Mother, who is also the Void ("clear as crystal") in which the past leaves no stain. Cf. Rev. 21: 27, "There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth."

2 Though, as we shall see, the city is conceived as a cube it is divided twelvefold as the circle. The common mythological motif of the mandala or "tragic circle" very frequently combines circle and square.

3 Again the measuring of the Mother with the Golden Rod of the Stem of Jesse. As life, creation, comes from the putting of the phallus to the womb, which is said to be "knowing" a woman, so, at the deeper level, the Void appears as the intelligible world of things by measurement, division, description -by the Word.

twelve thousand furlongs. The Length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.' ... And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, Like unto clear gla.s.s. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the founh, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolyte; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth (hyacinth); the twelfth, an amethyst.2

And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl:3 and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent gla.s.s. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord G.o.d Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it .4 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to s.h.i.+ne in it: for the glory of G.o.d did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.5

Perhaps the full force of this pa.s.sage lies in the last lines, describing the disappearance of the luminaries marking the years and months and days. Time has gone. The opposites have likewise gone, for it is a common mythological image to ewise the Holy of Holies was a cube, symbol of completion or per# fection. Interestingly enough, the cube unfolded becomes the Latin Cross!

2 With some variations these are the twelve stones of Aaron's breastplate, representing the twelve tribes and the twelve zodiacal signs. St. John's jasper" is presumably a very clear amber--image of a void filled with light.

$ A strange image indeed, unless one considers the gates as the minute holes through which pearls are strung. Thus we should have here another form of the "needle's eye". Hindu imagery likens the lives of men to pearls or beads upon a string, the string-which alone can pa.s.s the gate-being the atman, the true Self which is not this T.

4 For in the state of eternal life there is no further necessity of the Church, of the symbol communicating life to the dead.

5 Revelation 2I: 11-23.

let the sun and the moon stand for the right and left eyes, whereby the ordinary man sees the world as dual. On the other hand, the divine man sees life with the Third Eye, revealing it to him as non-dual". Thus, "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light". Furthermore, the whole image of the city is of the form of a mandala-that is, of a foursquare circle or sphere, which, though a universal symbol, appears most commonly in Buddhist art as a figure of the reconciliation of Al opposites in the "Void" (sunyata)-symbolized in Buddhism by the vajra or diamond, and in the Apocalypse by the jasper,stone.

The mandala form appears likewise in the vision of Dante, for whom the company of the blessed is the Mystic Rose, imaging the triple circle of light in which he finally beholds the Trinity -the Point in the midst of the Rose, which seems to be em-braced by what it embraces. Visually as well as symbolically, the obvious function of the mandala is to "frame" its own centre, like the rings around the bull's eye of a target, or to indicate a centre sending forth effluence like the sun or a flower. The streets from the twelve gates, the four arms of the Cross, and the petals of the rose lead the eye to the centre at which they meet, and from which they originate. Where it is not satisfied with the human form itself, man's imagination everywhere tends to represent the Ultimate End by this encircled Point, this beginning and end of rays point in that it endlessly escapes definition, circle (or square, or cube) in that it embraces the world in every direction.

This, then, is the image of the Centre of Heaven-the Beatific Vision ringed about with the nine choirs of angels and the transfixed hosts of Patriarchs and Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs, Doctors and Confessors, and the whole company of blessed ones-all together making up that Mystic Rose which is, in tum, the Virgin of Virgins, Matrix of the World, May, radiating from and returning into its Origin. Imagery

1 Matthew 6: 22. 2 Pqradiso x.x.x. to.

8. CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

("Die Kronung Mariae durch die Dreicinigkeit." French (?) Master J. M.

1457. Basel Museum.) A mandala representing the ultimate fulfilment of the

drama of creation. The 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 a Quarternty. The central scene is surd

rounded 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 %gures of the Four Evangelists and the Four Fixed

Signs of the Zodiac.

describes this Centre as a destination, an end, towards which man travels through time, and which lies beyond the Last Day of the future when the arrow of the soul will either plunge into its Mark, or miss it for ever. But we must not mistake that which is beyond the future for that which is in the future. Only h.e.l.l is in the future, for the more effectively man is able to prognosticate, the more he must be anxious and tremble. For the future has no other content than the disappearance of the past, which is what we think we are; it is by definition a time in which the past has no place. And thus the more accurately and realistically men consider the future, the more they are depressed.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.... Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.'

Nevenheless popular Christianity has always been an expression of the hope that, in the future, beyond "the days of darkness" there will lie "the life of the world to come". In Heaven G.o.d is central, but on earth he is extreme--far out on the edges of time, the First Cause and the Last End. We have come from G.o.d in the forgotten past, and are on our way back to him in the distant future, so that here and now our life is one of exile and pilgrimage.

To thee we exiles, childrei. of Eve, lift our crying. To thee we are sighing, as mournful and weeping, we pa.s.s through this vale of sorrow.... Hereafter, when our earthly exile shall be ended, show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, 0 gentle, 0 tender, 0 gracious Virgin Mary.2

Ecclesiastes xi: 4, 7-8. 2 Final Antiphon B.V.M., Salve Regina.

I6.

Whether in the poetry of the Salve Regina or the doggerel of There is a happy land, far, far away", this is the dominant myth of Western culture both Christian and Humanist-the myth of the impoverished present, empty of content. The significance of life is felt to lie in its past history and its future promise, so that the time in which we live seems almost to be nothing-a hairline at most, fleeting, momentary, ever beyond our grasp. As time goes on and, with the pa.s.sing centuries, Heaven recedes so far as to be implausible, we are forced against every habit of will and imagination to see that time takes us nowhere, so that-as always-the opposites change places and hope becomes despair.

At the present time it is hard to say whether the Christian myth is to stay with us as an effective power. Certain signs of revival do not warrant hasty conclusions, for there is all the difference in the world between genuine faith in G.o.d, on the one hand, and the tormented intellectual's faith in faith, on the other. As I have observed elsewhere,' much of the present "return to religion" is based, not upon a veritable trust in G.o.d, but upon the feeling that faith in the Christian G.o.d is a social and psychological necessity. But Christianity cannot survive in the role of a "therapeutic illusion", nor as a mere refuge of authority and certainty for those who shrink from the bleak consequences of logical thought, and still less as a nostalgic selfindulgence for those who need it as a pretext for the physical beauty of the Liturgy.

I do not feel that the Christian myth has anything left to tell Western man unless he understands it outside/in. He must discover that what seemed to be the far/offedges of time, where G.o.d is Alpha and Omega, are the present, and that the pilgrimage from earth to Heaven is not a journey into the future but into the Centre. He must realize that the death" through which we must pa.s.s before G.o.d can be seen does not lie ahead of us in time. "Death" is the point at which "I" come to an end,

1 The Wisdom of Insecurity (New York, 1951), ch. i.