'For them, the world of the spirit and the world available to our senses were not alien, but polarities of one integral whole. It doesn’t get any more Christian than that. What was different with them, though, is that they tried to prove this scientifically (and alchemy, astrology, and magic were scientific disciplines going back to the ancients). You’d think Davis and Mirus (even Kingsnorth) would like this kind of thing. Being charitable, I would assume they probably don’t know about it.'
I always appreciate charity!
I studied Hermeticism myself back in my Wiccan days. The mythical Hermes is very much admired by the witches, of course. I read the Corpus, and indeed 'Meditations on the Tarot.' I loved my tarot cards back in the day. I got rid of them all when I became a Christian, as advised, and I don't regret it.
What's interesting to me about this discourse is how Western it is. You write yourself here about the difficulty, or impossibility, of finding 'mysticism' in the post-Vatican 2 Catholic church. This is essentially why I became Orthodox - well, that and the fact that I felt it was where I was led in prayer. You joke that 'Orthobros' would be horrified by the Hermeticist mosaic in the Sienna Cathedral. Actually I think it would make them smirk. That's a Catholic mosaic, after all.
Much of this search for so-called 're-enchantment' in the West is a search for something that was once probably here but seems to have fled. Where is the Christianity of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing in the Christianity of the West today? Maybe it is hiding, but I couldn't find it. In the Orthodox Church, for all of its faults, this strain is still central. To say that is not to be an 'Orthobro' who wants a theological dog-fight. That's almost the opposite of the correct response.
I'm hoping that Orthodoxy can help return a genuine Christian mysticism to a parched West, so that we don't need to turn to tarot cards or the Kabbalah for what we are stumblingly seeking. We'll see, I suppose.
Thanks for chiming in, Paul. I agree with you about so much.
I've always understood neopaganism as a desire for a kind of embodied Christianity that is not really available to seekers: people who have a hankering for the reunion of the liturgical and agricultural (and, therefore, literally) cosmic year. As a result, I have always had a lot of affection for those I've met on that path. It's not my path, of course, but I still have a lot of love for some of those people. Back when I first became a Byzantine Catholic and worked as a gardener, one of my clients, a neopagan, after seeing some of the tricks I could do with plants, told me I was the most pagan person she knew. I took it as a compliment.
As for Meditations on the Tarot, it was a big influence on me as a young man, and was certainly part of what drew me back to the Church. Unlike you, I grew up in the Church--Catholic school, altar boy, the whole bit. Meditations brought something back to me: the intuitions I had about the Church as a child, but did not find all that often in my experience of it. And, as you know, Tomberg quotes liberally from John of the Cross and Teresa, as his project, I think, was precisely to restore mysticism to its rightful place in Catholic culture (which was certainly still obvious in the Latin Mass of his conversion).
But let's talk about that smirk. I think this is a very real problem in Orthobro culture (and it really is a culture, online at least). It's essentially a study in smirk--all the more maddening because most of the people practicing it have lived through relatively few liturgical cycles (I've been through over 30), so to pontificate (note the metaphor) about "the Latins" (they're the only people who use that term) really amounts to very bad cosplay. I get that people, usually dudes, get fired up after their conversion and want to convert everyone else (I was as guilty of this as anybody). I also know that they will do one of two things: 1) they'll mellow out and stop being so annoying; or 2) they'll move on to something else. I've seen it happens dozens and dozens of times. I also think there is a tinge of Orientalism in Westerners being attracted to Eastern Christianity. Face it, we don't know about all the problems in a Church so exotic to our sensibilities. Most Orthobros can tell you all about the Sack of Constantinople (amazing how upset they get about something that happened "to us" 800 years ago), for example, but don't know anything about the Slaughter of the Latins that preceded it. I think the fundamentalism of iconoclasm runs deep in the Orthodox psyche, especially in a certain variety of convert, almost like an mRNA vaccine. It's a phenomenon almost never seen in cradle Orthodox.
As an aside, I don't get why Orthobros would call me out as a heretic (other than that it's "what they heard"), as my books have been endorsed by a number of Orthodox priests, theologians, and even bishops. But people are more interested in polemics than in actually finding out what someone thinks.
What drew me to the Eastern Liturgy was both the beauty of it and the smallness of the parishes. And that was enough until the churches all, East and West, offered incense to Caesar during Covid. I was also once hopeful--and prayed for--the union of the Churches. But I have put away such childish things.
There are many kinds of neopagans. A lot of them are motivated by a dislike for, or even a hatred of, Christianity. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don't. I have not seen any desire for 'embodied Christianity.' Much of that scene is an explicit repudiation of this faith. Christianity is often seen as a problem to be overcome - a view I used to hold myself. 'Old gods' are worshipped in a slapdash way that is spiritually dangerous. It certainly was to me. I was lucky to be rescued from it. Incidentally, Michael Warren Davies is also a former neopagan. I suspect this motivates some of his strength of feeling about magic and the church. There are dark things out there and I think he has experienced them. I have too.
What I do see in that scene is a desperate desire for meaning and spiritual connection. The problem is that none of it holds together. It is very pick and mix.
I don't know what 'Orthobro culture' is, and I think we should be careful using terms of dismissal like this. Personally, I don't have anything to do with online Orthodox culture, so I don't see much of it. My parish is very multinational, largely Romanian with some converts and many cradle Orthodox from many countries. I have met many young men seeking truth in the Orthodox church, but I've never met an 'Orthobro.' I don't doubt they exist, but it's an Internet phenomenon as far as I can see: the usual sound and fury and desire for a fight. It's irrelevant to the actual practice of Orthodoxy.
We were lucky in Ireland, in that the Orthodox church did not offer that incense during the pandemic. You could still take communion any day of the week. Seeing this was perhaps the clincher in deciding for me where I belonged.
I'm not much in the online circles (online "communities" never really held my attention), but I have for sure met one of the "Orthobro" types in real life. I could see it in his high interest and knowledge of Church politics and systems/structure, the way he talked about potential women to date, and just the way he talked and carried himself. My thoughts after just a few minutes of listening to him talk were "this guy definitely gets into fights on the internet."
I looked up if there was some way to deactivate Notes altogether and get them off the home screen, but alas, there is not. O brave new world, where businesses no longer give a damn about the actual wants of customers, so long as our eyeballs remain sufficiently glued to the feed.
Many world leaders do not want peace, but we are still obliged to pray for the peace of the world; I did not particularly want to repent, but I'm sure the saints still prayed for me!
Besides, the unity of the churches is a difficult thing to work; all the different communions are "fearfully burdened by infallibility", to quote David Hart, and reunion cannot be accomplished, in many cases, without one side admitting that they were wrong. For instance, as much as I would like to be in communion with the Catholics, I cannot, in good conscience, accept historically falsifiable dogmas as divinely revealed (such as more or less everything in Pastor Aeternus, the dogmatic bull declaring papal supremacy and infallibility). As much as I like Protestants, I can't go into communion with someone who believes something else about communion's very nature. And so on.
Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts: Instead of “Orthobro” think Proud Boys, Alt-Right, or neo-fascism. But don’t think this stupidity has anything to do with spiritual matters. And for fascist larp’ers they sure do disdain the mystical elements of religion. Haven’t they heard of the Vril?
Essentially, Orthobros are the Orthodox version of a “Nick Fuentes”-style Catholic--as if being Catholic has anything to do with “white nationalism.”
From an NPR Article: “But Riccardi-Swartz also found strong strains of nativism, white nationalism and pro-authoritarianism, evidenced by strong admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Do bear in mind that NPR are hardly an unbiased news source on this matter. Doubtless some people like this are coming into the church, but so are a much larger number of genuine seekers. Calling people 'Orthobros' doesn't reveal much, it just creates something else to argue about on the Internet.
I'll never ever understand how westerners of any kind let alone Orthodox Christians can admire Putin and his lot. He is a creature grown by the machine that decapitated traditional culture in Eastern Europe and for decades intentionally poisoned and disrupted Western culture. Putin is very openly proud of his career in the same structure that tortured priests, tore down churches and sent countless innocents to gulag. Do they think it's a coincidence that cult of Stalin emerged during Putins rule? Or are they able to close their eyes for the tiny fact of complete inversion of values? Babushka carrying an “icon” of Stalin and voting for Putin for the nth time can be forgiven for her inability to see the big picture simply because she is deep inside it, but surely, people in the West shouldn't have the same blind spot?
I tend to think the problem in the Western church (and wherever lack of mysticism is a problem) is a deficient esteem and practice of the monastic and contemplative life. If people are never encouraged to follow Christ entirely (or indeed, are discouraged from it!), then it makes sense that people continue to yearn for something more. John and Teresa make perfect sense in a world where people still set themselves aside for God and God alone.
Even so: The excellence of the apostolic life (as the Apostles lived, but you might say as intended by St. Dominic for his order) is that it is activity that spills over from a perfect contemplative life. The problem now is that active life is idealized without this basis in contemplation. The apostles had to live with Christ for three years. Ideally, bishops were taken from among the monks as from those who had a mature life of prayer and virtue.
I have! And the best ones are those that have an authentic life of prayer and see the importance of religious life in the Church. Absent that, you get an effective manager at best, and something much, much worse on the other end.
I've met a few Orthodox Bishops and have admired them. Doubtless many are not admirable, but drawing them from the monasteries is one thing that makes Orthodoxy strong, I believe.
I think there is a lot to this. I certainly think that the destruction of monasticism in England, my home country, doomed Christianity there. Monasticism is not for most people, but without a core of people devoted explicitly to contemplation, Christianity seems to become either worldly/political or just so vague that it becomes nothing at all.
There is a lot of truth to that. However I have seen more interest in mysticism from Merton, to Keating, Rohr, and many others. Contemplative prayer is somewhat back in vogue. I wouldn’t underestimate this revival of the mystical in post-V2 Catholicism. At least I see it, and have tried imperfectly to live it.
This is the result of christianity losing its 'totalitarian' position in the Western world. It now purity spirals because it has merely become an optional position among many, many others.
Badly understood, adherents now wonder why they would cater to the odd ducks, while their turf is perceived as being under attack. Why would this weirdo align with my personal optional position if he doesn't adhere exactly to every dogmatic proposition it states? "Aren't there other places you should be?" people wonder.
If it still were all-encompassing, it should cater to the odd balls, the weird, the marginal, the erratic, the eccentric, otherwise it wouldn't be all-encompassing. It no longer is all-encompassing. It has been repurposed as a scaffold and wall to protect 'the normal' against the deconstruction.
At the end of the day; the collapse of cosmology that took place in modernity has people clinging to any flotsam they can get a hold on to keep their head above water; politics, identity, rainbowflags, religion, popculture, some kinetic conflict far away. Whatever keeps them from getting washed away in the ocean of meaningless nihilism or total aporiatic chaos. Thus whatever their flotsam of chose is, it has become a lifeline to be defended at all cost. It can't be shared with the erratic, otherwise the flotsam will also turn out to be little more than dust.
I suppose an aspect of this controversy would be something that could be called Natural Magic, the nonmaterial effects of and relationships with aspects of the physical creation. Varieties of life and sentiences. An example - I know a sweet gravitas and awareness in oak trees of a more advanced age and they know me, but they’re awake In of themselves no extra dryad needed. These effects and awarenesses are not detectable by dead scientific instruments but can be discerned and known by the living human frame. This knowing was a part of the medieval sensibility as in Hildegard of Bingen.
I'm glad you wrote this. I've been casually reading Davis since he appeared here, curious what an ex Catholic would be doing, writing about Orthodoxy so soon after converting (indeed, I called him out about that in an early post of his purporting to explain orthodox opinions. He took it down without comment, but has not apparently learned any restraint.) I agree, there is something very Protestant (and western) in this kind of opinion: rigid, juridical, incurious; written by SERIOUS PEOPLE. Nice here to see that Substack has alternative viewpoints.
You're a professional writer, and a good one; so why shouldn't you write? That, I presume is also on the mind of your bishop and priest. But that decision in isolation does not address the context of online Orthodoxy: We're awash in new converts telling us all what Orthodoxy is -- bringing ideas from afar that they don't even know they have; hence fundamentalist orthobros preaching fire and brimstone like it was 1607. The church has been slow to offer any counter-weight. Because sadly, the most religious and mystical people often decide they have little to say. Does adding your voice to the fray really help?
That's a fair question, J.M. I didn't think so, which is why I stopped writing after I became Orthodox. But my spiritual father urged me to get back into it, specifically apologetics. And I did! But I still didn't feel right, so I asked my bishop. He thought it was a good idea, too. So, here I am.
I'm always grateful for feedback, disagreement, etc. But I haven't heard any of that yet. Just a bunch of ad hominems and snark. If you want to have a serious conversation about Christian Hermeticism, etc., feel free to drop a comment on op post. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know which "ideas from afar" I've brought into Orthodoxy (magic is bad?) and I'll see if I can find a source to back me up.
You should stop writing about certain things until you’ve improved your scholarly grasp of them. Nestorius, for example. The impulse of converts to become apologists for their new faith while the oil is still wet on their brows is understandable, but misguided.
Forgive me. The internet invites snark and ill will, as we all know, including in myself. I have no dog in the fight on hermeticism. Indeed, as a recent convert, I do not feel equipped to offer any substantive opinions on Orthodoxy (or Christianity), and surely will not for many years. Instead, I think I will take up the Gaskovski’s challenge of a tech hiatus for the summer.
Great article, I really enjoyed Paul Kingsnorth’s recent talk on humanity and Nature in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, it is replete with excellent quotes and insights from Eastern saints that talk about seeing and reading God and Christ in creation, which is what I believe we are talking about as Christian Hermeticism in the west, obviously we have the great Western mystics such as St. Francis and St. Bonaventure who write so beautifully about these themes but we would have to include the Christian Hermeticists such as Tomberg and Louis charbonneau-lassay and all you have mentioned here. How beautiful it is to find and read God and Christ in creation.
Also in regard to the artwork of Hermes in the Cathedral of Siena, in the Vatican there is the Borgia Apartments that contain many beautiful murals, one of which includes Isis besides Moses and Hermes, to think many a great Pope such as St. Pius X and Pope Leo XIII would have looked upon such a painting, maturely and without disdain, upon Sophia flanked by Hermes and Moses. Beautiful.
Now, Hermeticism—in its life and soul—is the millennial-old current in human history of knowledge for the sake of the glory of God, whilst the corpus of today’s official sciences is due either to utility or to the desire for knowledge for the sake of knowledge (curiosity).
We Hermeticists are theologians of that Holy Scripture revealing God which is named “the world”; similarly, theologians of the Holy Scriptures revealing God are Hermeticists in so far as they dedicate their effort to the glory of God. -Valentin Tomberg
"Therefore, whoever is not enlightened by such great splendor in created things is blind; whoever remains unheedful of such great outcries is deaf; whoever does not praise God in all these effects is dumb; whoever does not turn to the First Principle after so many signs is a fool. So, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, unlock your lips, and apply your heart that you may see, hear, praise, love, adore, magnify, and honor your God in every creature, lest perchance the entire universe rise against you.”
This is beyond fascinating for someone who, as a Greek Orthodox, mystically-inclined person with more than five brain cells, just started reading (and loving) Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot. I find it so entertaining how people (usually males) with likely zero academic training in theology or Church or Patristic history, who have been Orthodox or Catholic converts for about 15 minutes morph into the loudest, most self-assured "experts" on the Christian faith. And if it makes you feel any better, I would also be burned on a pile of smoldering faggots if most of the completely bananas converts saw half of my art. And don't even get me started on the hysterical American converts pushing for female head coverings in Church.
I will soon be publishing an article about discursive meditation (contemplation), the lost tradition of Catholics. Maybe if your critics did more of it, they wouldn’t be missing so much historical knowledge about their own religion.
Excuse me, did I understand you to imply that this Mirus fellow associates me with perennialism or esotericism, two things I heartily dislike? I am, I admit, quite an opportunistic syncretist in intellectual sources, happy to draw on Vedantist or Sikh thought as much as on Neoplatonism; and God bless the Italian Renaissance hermeticists and Cambridge Platonists and all their kith; but I regard Guénon and Schuon as halfwits who invented a nonsense religion of their own, and Tomberg bores me stiff (I hope that’s all right). Anyway, you should ignore these things. Pop apologists are always ignorant of the history they think they’re defending, and trying to get them to think in anything other than childish absolutes is a fool’s errand.
I describe myself as a Christian perennialist, in the sense that I believe the Logos who is Jesus speaks through His holy Sophia across all places and cultures and times. Never read Schuon or Guénon or any other -ons; barely even heard of them. To me it’s more in the sense of Huxley, and I’ve found it useful for distinguishing my view from “Jesus was just another teacher” stuff.
Come on, now: TradCaths’ heads don’t “explode,” they just make a pleasant little popping sound as they collapse into themselves.
Also, yikes: I think this all just confirms how there really are a couple different actual religions riding under the label of this thing called “Christianity.”
I read the posts and was pleased to discover Angelico Press and Os Justi Press, ordered Morello's book and then one on Sophiology, a subject that has interested me for a long time.
The following from Yankee Athonite resonates with me. With my comments following.
“Morello then gives a few examples:
In terms of my own “magical” practices, they are these: I go to Holy Mass at least weekly and to Confession fortnightly; I begin each day by chanting the Benedictus, I say grace before each meal, I pray the holy Rosary everyday with my family, I regularly say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day, I sing prayers with my children before they go to bed, and I frequently give thanks to God for His love for us. (All that is quite magical enough for me.)
That’s all very wholesome! As I’ve said more than once, Sebastian strikes me as someone whose friendship I would enjoy.
And here is where I may have to revise my critique. Morello is right: I began my review with a certain presupposition. He claimed to be a perfectly normal layman, utterly devoted to Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And it’s true: I didn’t believe him. My response was essentially this:
Were that the case, then what’s the point of this book? Is it possible that Morello would introduce all of these Hermetic terms and concepts if he had no intention of introducing their Hermetic meaning? If he did, that would make his entire project just one big language game. And it’s a pointless game at that. After all, does anyone really think that Catholicism will suddenly become popular if it dressed up in Hermetic drag?”
I don’t know about Morello but sophiologist you seem to be sincerely heterodox as I am also as a hardened protestant charismatic with tree hugging experiences. Seraphim Rose would look quite askance at me and perhaps you also. Straight up “unto thee O Lord I lift up my soul” is the magic, after all it clearly states if you draw near to God he will draw near to you. Jesus said “come to me to have life” from John 5 and he followed that up with “I will never drive away any who come to me” from John 6. This effective magic seems too simple and childish for many so they think complexities are the ticket. My heroine of the faith is the woman with the issue of blood who knew all she needed to do was to go to Jesus. My other heroine is the Syro-Phoenician woman with the demonized daughter who knew her dogliness was next to Godliness.
This reminds me of the time I was giving a Theology on Tap talk about Dante, and there was a guy on his phone checking that everything I said was in accord with the Catechism. Much like Davis and Mirus do, I found that that kinda harshed the mellow.
I see a lot of what is coming up is what I started to call the Cat Stevens effect, where when somebody takes on a new religion, they become more zealous than the people raised in it. I saw it when I was dabbling around eastern practices, where white westerners acted more Tibetan than the Tibetans, or more Japanese than the Japanese. I see it now in the little OCA church I attended where it is the new converts wearing head coverings and growing out beards and looking serious and solemn in their venerations while the cradle folks look and act like they are hanging out in their own homes. I think that is what happens when a faith gets truly embodied. I am curious to see how many orthobros in the coming years pick up their guitars again, like Yousef Islam eventually did, and get back to playing their old hits. To me, that is a good example of integrating an authentic faith into life.
Another struggle I have noticed in myself that seems to be coming up in these criticisms is the Orthodox view of the imagination. Some church fathers warn against using the imagination. It makes sense in a way if you are living in a desert cave. I wouldn’t want to be mucking around in my head in that situation either and would be praying my ass off. I know myself from past experiences and practices in the “occult” that there are real dangers, but it is something we need to work with and contend with in the modern world and it can actually be safe and productive when Christ is at the center of it. For a good example of someone who really goes far with some Hermetic/esoteric stuff but somehow keeps it grounded in the Orthodox Christian faith he was raised in, check out https://open.substack.com/pub/galahaderidanus.
I think a lot of these "experts" don't realize we are surrounded by magical operations (mostly negative) and that their capitulations to the TradCath or Orthobro egregores are precisely that.
I have always admired your ability to trudge into the sludge of academic writing. It takes a special kind of attack mentality, kinda like MC5 and their bludgeoning into the music business. It is commendable in a didactic way.
In regards to your recent essay:
I see two approaches to understanding the Alexandrian School. 1) Hard-Rock Mining: where the seeker goes into the dark stony cavern of the Past with pick & shovel & dynamite and digs into the old texts with all the gangue of unreliable translations and junk analysis from paid university toadies embedded deeply into various dogmas and ensconced into the mine wall. Yes there is gold in there but at what price to the searchers?
2) Placer Mining: In a small scale this is also called panning for gold. Usually done by independent researchers and other self-didacts who ply the great slow rivers of history that cut back and forth in vast braided trails picking out those bits that have stood the test of time tumbling along until the seeker plucks them up and puts them in their sample bag. To the trained eye even contemporary culture yields results among the clash and detritus to be used by the creative mind.
Many wonderful ideas are found by method #2 but they are rarely cited by the scholarly troglodyte who dwell in method #1. It is a pity.
It was that sort of pedantic bore that kept me away from Christianity for much of my adult life. Studying Hermeticism is what finally sparked a curiosity in the Church for me, and from there lead me to reading books by and about Thomas Merton and Saint Francis and eventually delving into the mysticism of Orthodoxy.
To expand on your explanation of Hermeticism, for anyone curious and not overly wary of the word "occult," this site did a great twelve-part series on the "Spiritus Hermeticum":
I imagine the authors were aware of that. I think it was simply a creative choice to emphasize that the series is expounding on the true spirit of the Hermetic tradition and not the dead letter. I’m not well versed in Latin, so I don’t know if there was a better way to title it, but that’s my simple explanation.
No, they aren’t aware of that. They could have entitled the series Spiritus Hermeticus and everyone would have known what it was about. What happened is that, in their ignorance, they borrowed the adjective from the title Corpus Hermeticum, not grasping that “corpus” is a third declension neuter and “spiritus” a fourth declension masculine. This is schoolboy Latin.
True story. Hermeticists tend to be deluded, psycho, twisted, depraved, and above all, CRINGE AF. They are so far up their own asses that they're hopefully on the way back out again. The longer they "practice", the worse they get. It's embarrassing to watch. No one wants them around, not even each other.
I'm quite fond of all of you (at least of your writings), and can't help but feel that the tone of this discussion would be much cooler if it were to take place in-person, and not in the form of long-form delayed ripostes. Anyhow, I appreciated reading both your response and Sebastian's.
'For them, the world of the spirit and the world available to our senses were not alien, but polarities of one integral whole. It doesn’t get any more Christian than that. What was different with them, though, is that they tried to prove this scientifically (and alchemy, astrology, and magic were scientific disciplines going back to the ancients). You’d think Davis and Mirus (even Kingsnorth) would like this kind of thing. Being charitable, I would assume they probably don’t know about it.'
I always appreciate charity!
I studied Hermeticism myself back in my Wiccan days. The mythical Hermes is very much admired by the witches, of course. I read the Corpus, and indeed 'Meditations on the Tarot.' I loved my tarot cards back in the day. I got rid of them all when I became a Christian, as advised, and I don't regret it.
What's interesting to me about this discourse is how Western it is. You write yourself here about the difficulty, or impossibility, of finding 'mysticism' in the post-Vatican 2 Catholic church. This is essentially why I became Orthodox - well, that and the fact that I felt it was where I was led in prayer. You joke that 'Orthobros' would be horrified by the Hermeticist mosaic in the Sienna Cathedral. Actually I think it would make them smirk. That's a Catholic mosaic, after all.
Much of this search for so-called 're-enchantment' in the West is a search for something that was once probably here but seems to have fled. Where is the Christianity of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing in the Christianity of the West today? Maybe it is hiding, but I couldn't find it. In the Orthodox Church, for all of its faults, this strain is still central. To say that is not to be an 'Orthobro' who wants a theological dog-fight. That's almost the opposite of the correct response.
I'm hoping that Orthodoxy can help return a genuine Christian mysticism to a parched West, so that we don't need to turn to tarot cards or the Kabbalah for what we are stumblingly seeking. We'll see, I suppose.
Thanks for chiming in, Paul. I agree with you about so much.
I've always understood neopaganism as a desire for a kind of embodied Christianity that is not really available to seekers: people who have a hankering for the reunion of the liturgical and agricultural (and, therefore, literally) cosmic year. As a result, I have always had a lot of affection for those I've met on that path. It's not my path, of course, but I still have a lot of love for some of those people. Back when I first became a Byzantine Catholic and worked as a gardener, one of my clients, a neopagan, after seeing some of the tricks I could do with plants, told me I was the most pagan person she knew. I took it as a compliment.
As for Meditations on the Tarot, it was a big influence on me as a young man, and was certainly part of what drew me back to the Church. Unlike you, I grew up in the Church--Catholic school, altar boy, the whole bit. Meditations brought something back to me: the intuitions I had about the Church as a child, but did not find all that often in my experience of it. And, as you know, Tomberg quotes liberally from John of the Cross and Teresa, as his project, I think, was precisely to restore mysticism to its rightful place in Catholic culture (which was certainly still obvious in the Latin Mass of his conversion).
But let's talk about that smirk. I think this is a very real problem in Orthobro culture (and it really is a culture, online at least). It's essentially a study in smirk--all the more maddening because most of the people practicing it have lived through relatively few liturgical cycles (I've been through over 30), so to pontificate (note the metaphor) about "the Latins" (they're the only people who use that term) really amounts to very bad cosplay. I get that people, usually dudes, get fired up after their conversion and want to convert everyone else (I was as guilty of this as anybody). I also know that they will do one of two things: 1) they'll mellow out and stop being so annoying; or 2) they'll move on to something else. I've seen it happens dozens and dozens of times. I also think there is a tinge of Orientalism in Westerners being attracted to Eastern Christianity. Face it, we don't know about all the problems in a Church so exotic to our sensibilities. Most Orthobros can tell you all about the Sack of Constantinople (amazing how upset they get about something that happened "to us" 800 years ago), for example, but don't know anything about the Slaughter of the Latins that preceded it. I think the fundamentalism of iconoclasm runs deep in the Orthodox psyche, especially in a certain variety of convert, almost like an mRNA vaccine. It's a phenomenon almost never seen in cradle Orthodox.
As an aside, I don't get why Orthobros would call me out as a heretic (other than that it's "what they heard"), as my books have been endorsed by a number of Orthodox priests, theologians, and even bishops. But people are more interested in polemics than in actually finding out what someone thinks.
What drew me to the Eastern Liturgy was both the beauty of it and the smallness of the parishes. And that was enough until the churches all, East and West, offered incense to Caesar during Covid. I was also once hopeful--and prayed for--the union of the Churches. But I have put away such childish things.
Thanks for this, Michael.
There are many kinds of neopagans. A lot of them are motivated by a dislike for, or even a hatred of, Christianity. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don't. I have not seen any desire for 'embodied Christianity.' Much of that scene is an explicit repudiation of this faith. Christianity is often seen as a problem to be overcome - a view I used to hold myself. 'Old gods' are worshipped in a slapdash way that is spiritually dangerous. It certainly was to me. I was lucky to be rescued from it. Incidentally, Michael Warren Davies is also a former neopagan. I suspect this motivates some of his strength of feeling about magic and the church. There are dark things out there and I think he has experienced them. I have too.
What I do see in that scene is a desperate desire for meaning and spiritual connection. The problem is that none of it holds together. It is very pick and mix.
I don't know what 'Orthobro culture' is, and I think we should be careful using terms of dismissal like this. Personally, I don't have anything to do with online Orthodox culture, so I don't see much of it. My parish is very multinational, largely Romanian with some converts and many cradle Orthodox from many countries. I have met many young men seeking truth in the Orthodox church, but I've never met an 'Orthobro.' I don't doubt they exist, but it's an Internet phenomenon as far as I can see: the usual sound and fury and desire for a fight. It's irrelevant to the actual practice of Orthodoxy.
We were lucky in Ireland, in that the Orthodox church did not offer that incense during the pandemic. You could still take communion any day of the week. Seeing this was perhaps the clincher in deciding for me where I belonged.
Good to see you two talking. Warms my heart.
I'm not much in the online circles (online "communities" never really held my attention), but I have for sure met one of the "Orthobro" types in real life. I could see it in his high interest and knowledge of Church politics and systems/structure, the way he talked about potential women to date, and just the way he talked and carried himself. My thoughts after just a few minutes of listening to him talk were "this guy definitely gets into fights on the internet."
I'm starting to think that Substack is kinda like *Beetlejuice*, in that if you say someone's name three times, they will come.
lol
Only if you tag them! This is why I don't like Substack Notes. I pine for the days when this was just a blogging platform.
I looked up if there was some way to deactivate Notes altogether and get them off the home screen, but alas, there is not. O brave new world, where businesses no longer give a damn about the actual wants of customers, so long as our eyeballs remain sufficiently glued to the feed.
Yes, I tried that ages back, but no cigar. Substack seems determined to turn itself into yet another social media site. Monetise those divisions ...
We still should pray for the unity of the churches! That is a command (and done in most every litany).
I don't think the ecclesial powers really want unity. So those are not the most sincere of prayers.
Many world leaders do not want peace, but we are still obliged to pray for the peace of the world; I did not particularly want to repent, but I'm sure the saints still prayed for me!
Besides, the unity of the churches is a difficult thing to work; all the different communions are "fearfully burdened by infallibility", to quote David Hart, and reunion cannot be accomplished, in many cases, without one side admitting that they were wrong. For instance, as much as I would like to be in communion with the Catholics, I cannot, in good conscience, accept historically falsifiable dogmas as divinely revealed (such as more or less everything in Pastor Aeternus, the dogmatic bull declaring papal supremacy and infallibility). As much as I like Protestants, I can't go into communion with someone who believes something else about communion's very nature. And so on.
Like I said...
Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts: Instead of “Orthobro” think Proud Boys, Alt-Right, or neo-fascism. But don’t think this stupidity has anything to do with spiritual matters. And for fascist larp’ers they sure do disdain the mystical elements of religion. Haven’t they heard of the Vril?
Essentially, Orthobros are the Orthodox version of a “Nick Fuentes”-style Catholic--as if being Catholic has anything to do with “white nationalism.”
From an NPR Article: “But Riccardi-Swartz also found strong strains of nativism, white nationalism and pro-authoritarianism, evidenced by strong admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1096741988/orthodox-christian-churches-are-drawing-in-far-right-american-converts
Do bear in mind that NPR are hardly an unbiased news source on this matter. Doubtless some people like this are coming into the church, but so are a much larger number of genuine seekers. Calling people 'Orthobros' doesn't reveal much, it just creates something else to argue about on the Internet.
I'll never ever understand how westerners of any kind let alone Orthodox Christians can admire Putin and his lot. He is a creature grown by the machine that decapitated traditional culture in Eastern Europe and for decades intentionally poisoned and disrupted Western culture. Putin is very openly proud of his career in the same structure that tortured priests, tore down churches and sent countless innocents to gulag. Do they think it's a coincidence that cult of Stalin emerged during Putins rule? Or are they able to close their eyes for the tiny fact of complete inversion of values? Babushka carrying an “icon” of Stalin and voting for Putin for the nth time can be forgiven for her inability to see the big picture simply because she is deep inside it, but surely, people in the West shouldn't have the same blind spot?
I tend to think the problem in the Western church (and wherever lack of mysticism is a problem) is a deficient esteem and practice of the monastic and contemplative life. If people are never encouraged to follow Christ entirely (or indeed, are discouraged from it!), then it makes sense that people continue to yearn for something more. John and Teresa make perfect sense in a world where people still set themselves aside for God and God alone.
I no longer share that view, but I once did. As Solovyov observed, Jesus sent the Apostles into the world, not the desert.
Even so: The excellence of the apostolic life (as the Apostles lived, but you might say as intended by St. Dominic for his order) is that it is activity that spills over from a perfect contemplative life. The problem now is that active life is idealized without this basis in contemplation. The apostles had to live with Christ for three years. Ideally, bishops were taken from among the monks as from those who had a mature life of prayer and virtue.
Have you met any actual bishops? 😅
I have! And the best ones are those that have an authentic life of prayer and see the importance of religious life in the Church. Absent that, you get an effective manager at best, and something much, much worse on the other end.
I've met a few Orthodox Bishops and have admired them. Doubtless many are not admirable, but drawing them from the monasteries is one thing that makes Orthodoxy strong, I believe.
I would look forward to a drawing of Catholic bishops from the monasteries.
I think there is a lot to this. I certainly think that the destruction of monasticism in England, my home country, doomed Christianity there. Monasticism is not for most people, but without a core of people devoted explicitly to contemplation, Christianity seems to become either worldly/political or just so vague that it becomes nothing at all.
Somewhat, but I think the absence of contemplation in contemporary western Catholics can be largely overstated.
Isn’t that one of Morello’s main arguments? Not that I’ve read his book yet but from what he says in his interview with John Vervaeke.
There is a lot of truth to that. However I have seen more interest in mysticism from Merton, to Keating, Rohr, and many others. Contemplative prayer is somewhat back in vogue. I wouldn’t underestimate this revival of the mystical in post-V2 Catholicism. At least I see it, and have tried imperfectly to live it.
This is the result of christianity losing its 'totalitarian' position in the Western world. It now purity spirals because it has merely become an optional position among many, many others.
Badly understood, adherents now wonder why they would cater to the odd ducks, while their turf is perceived as being under attack. Why would this weirdo align with my personal optional position if he doesn't adhere exactly to every dogmatic proposition it states? "Aren't there other places you should be?" people wonder.
If it still were all-encompassing, it should cater to the odd balls, the weird, the marginal, the erratic, the eccentric, otherwise it wouldn't be all-encompassing. It no longer is all-encompassing. It has been repurposed as a scaffold and wall to protect 'the normal' against the deconstruction.
At the end of the day; the collapse of cosmology that took place in modernity has people clinging to any flotsam they can get a hold on to keep their head above water; politics, identity, rainbowflags, religion, popculture, some kinetic conflict far away. Whatever keeps them from getting washed away in the ocean of meaningless nihilism or total aporiatic chaos. Thus whatever their flotsam of chose is, it has become a lifeline to be defended at all cost. It can't be shared with the erratic, otherwise the flotsam will also turn out to be little more than dust.
Ah, but it's ALL the "Abrahamic" religions that will be going down, and a lot of others.
Belief systems and clubs, institutions, establishments, empires... Goin DOWN.
Power and control over others. Done.
Only waited LIFETIMES for the STURCH to end. Thats all.
I suppose an aspect of this controversy would be something that could be called Natural Magic, the nonmaterial effects of and relationships with aspects of the physical creation. Varieties of life and sentiences. An example - I know a sweet gravitas and awareness in oak trees of a more advanced age and they know me, but they’re awake In of themselves no extra dryad needed. These effects and awarenesses are not detectable by dead scientific instruments but can be discerned and known by the living human frame. This knowing was a part of the medieval sensibility as in Hildegard of Bingen.
Ah, man -- a quintessential BeardTree comment -- so true! So lovely! Good to hear your voice here, brother.
Glad you re-surfaced. Was wondering when you would show up.
I'm glad you wrote this. I've been casually reading Davis since he appeared here, curious what an ex Catholic would be doing, writing about Orthodoxy so soon after converting (indeed, I called him out about that in an early post of his purporting to explain orthodox opinions. He took it down without comment, but has not apparently learned any restraint.) I agree, there is something very Protestant (and western) in this kind of opinion: rigid, juridical, incurious; written by SERIOUS PEOPLE. Nice here to see that Substack has alternative viewpoints.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Probably to avoid a lecture about how great Seraphim Rose is.
I think you're thinking of Paul Kingsnorth. BTW if it makes you feel better I'd never heard of you either.
To arrogantly smuggle a Catholic phronema into Orthodox writing?
My spiritual father and my bishop both gave me their blessing to write. But go ahead, stranger on the internet. Judge me.
lol
You're a professional writer, and a good one; so why shouldn't you write? That, I presume is also on the mind of your bishop and priest. But that decision in isolation does not address the context of online Orthodoxy: We're awash in new converts telling us all what Orthodoxy is -- bringing ideas from afar that they don't even know they have; hence fundamentalist orthobros preaching fire and brimstone like it was 1607. The church has been slow to offer any counter-weight. Because sadly, the most religious and mystical people often decide they have little to say. Does adding your voice to the fray really help?
That's a fair question, J.M. I didn't think so, which is why I stopped writing after I became Orthodox. But my spiritual father urged me to get back into it, specifically apologetics. And I did! But I still didn't feel right, so I asked my bishop. He thought it was a good idea, too. So, here I am.
I'm always grateful for feedback, disagreement, etc. But I haven't heard any of that yet. Just a bunch of ad hominems and snark. If you want to have a serious conversation about Christian Hermeticism, etc., feel free to drop a comment on op post. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know which "ideas from afar" I've brought into Orthodoxy (magic is bad?) and I'll see if I can find a source to back me up.
You should stop writing about certain things until you’ve improved your scholarly grasp of them. Nestorius, for example. The impulse of converts to become apologists for their new faith while the oil is still wet on their brows is understandable, but misguided.
Michael,
Forgive me. The internet invites snark and ill will, as we all know, including in myself. I have no dog in the fight on hermeticism. Indeed, as a recent convert, I do not feel equipped to offer any substantive opinions on Orthodoxy (or Christianity), and surely will not for many years. Instead, I think I will take up the Gaskovski’s challenge of a tech hiatus for the summer.
In Christ,
JML
Great article, I really enjoyed Paul Kingsnorth’s recent talk on humanity and Nature in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, it is replete with excellent quotes and insights from Eastern saints that talk about seeing and reading God and Christ in creation, which is what I believe we are talking about as Christian Hermeticism in the west, obviously we have the great Western mystics such as St. Francis and St. Bonaventure who write so beautifully about these themes but we would have to include the Christian Hermeticists such as Tomberg and Louis charbonneau-lassay and all you have mentioned here. How beautiful it is to find and read God and Christ in creation.
Also in regard to the artwork of Hermes in the Cathedral of Siena, in the Vatican there is the Borgia Apartments that contain many beautiful murals, one of which includes Isis besides Moses and Hermes, to think many a great Pope such as St. Pius X and Pope Leo XIII would have looked upon such a painting, maturely and without disdain, upon Sophia flanked by Hermes and Moses. Beautiful.
Now, Hermeticism—in its life and soul—is the millennial-old current in human history of knowledge for the sake of the glory of God, whilst the corpus of today’s official sciences is due either to utility or to the desire for knowledge for the sake of knowledge (curiosity).
We Hermeticists are theologians of that Holy Scripture revealing God which is named “the world”; similarly, theologians of the Holy Scriptures revealing God are Hermeticists in so far as they dedicate their effort to the glory of God. -Valentin Tomberg
"Therefore, whoever is not enlightened by such great splendor in created things is blind; whoever remains unheedful of such great outcries is deaf; whoever does not praise God in all these effects is dumb; whoever does not turn to the First Principle after so many signs is a fool. So, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, unlock your lips, and apply your heart that you may see, hear, praise, love, adore, magnify, and honor your God in every creature, lest perchance the entire universe rise against you.”
-St. Bonaventure
Thanks for this
This is beyond fascinating for someone who, as a Greek Orthodox, mystically-inclined person with more than five brain cells, just started reading (and loving) Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot. I find it so entertaining how people (usually males) with likely zero academic training in theology or Church or Patristic history, who have been Orthodox or Catholic converts for about 15 minutes morph into the loudest, most self-assured "experts" on the Christian faith. And if it makes you feel any better, I would also be burned on a pile of smoldering faggots if most of the completely bananas converts saw half of my art. And don't even get me started on the hysterical American converts pushing for female head coverings in Church.
I will soon be publishing an article about discursive meditation (contemplation), the lost tradition of Catholics. Maybe if your critics did more of it, they wouldn’t be missing so much historical knowledge about their own religion.
Excuse me, did I understand you to imply that this Mirus fellow associates me with perennialism or esotericism, two things I heartily dislike? I am, I admit, quite an opportunistic syncretist in intellectual sources, happy to draw on Vedantist or Sikh thought as much as on Neoplatonism; and God bless the Italian Renaissance hermeticists and Cambridge Platonists and all their kith; but I regard Guénon and Schuon as halfwits who invented a nonsense religion of their own, and Tomberg bores me stiff (I hope that’s all right). Anyway, you should ignore these things. Pop apologists are always ignorant of the history they think they’re defending, and trying to get them to think in anything other than childish absolutes is a fool’s errand.
I describe myself as a Christian perennialist, in the sense that I believe the Logos who is Jesus speaks through His holy Sophia across all places and cultures and times. Never read Schuon or Guénon or any other -ons; barely even heard of them. To me it’s more in the sense of Huxley, and I’ve found it useful for distinguishing my view from “Jesus was just another teacher” stuff.
I do love Huxley’s anthology. I am referring only to the particular school that calls itself Perennialism.
It would be an easy mistake seeing both you and those in the traditional school of perennialism share a non- dualist ontology.
Come on, now: TradCaths’ heads don’t “explode,” they just make a pleasant little popping sound as they collapse into themselves.
Also, yikes: I think this all just confirms how there really are a couple different actual religions riding under the label of this thing called “Christianity.”
I read the posts and was pleased to discover Angelico Press and Os Justi Press, ordered Morello's book and then one on Sophiology, a subject that has interested me for a long time.
Angelico Press is the best.
The following from Yankee Athonite resonates with me. With my comments following.
“Morello then gives a few examples:
In terms of my own “magical” practices, they are these: I go to Holy Mass at least weekly and to Confession fortnightly; I begin each day by chanting the Benedictus, I say grace before each meal, I pray the holy Rosary everyday with my family, I regularly say the Jesus Prayer throughout the day, I sing prayers with my children before they go to bed, and I frequently give thanks to God for His love for us. (All that is quite magical enough for me.)
That’s all very wholesome! As I’ve said more than once, Sebastian strikes me as someone whose friendship I would enjoy.
And here is where I may have to revise my critique. Morello is right: I began my review with a certain presupposition. He claimed to be a perfectly normal layman, utterly devoted to Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And it’s true: I didn’t believe him. My response was essentially this:
Were that the case, then what’s the point of this book? Is it possible that Morello would introduce all of these Hermetic terms and concepts if he had no intention of introducing their Hermetic meaning? If he did, that would make his entire project just one big language game. And it’s a pointless game at that. After all, does anyone really think that Catholicism will suddenly become popular if it dressed up in Hermetic drag?”
I don’t know about Morello but sophiologist you seem to be sincerely heterodox as I am also as a hardened protestant charismatic with tree hugging experiences. Seraphim Rose would look quite askance at me and perhaps you also. Straight up “unto thee O Lord I lift up my soul” is the magic, after all it clearly states if you draw near to God he will draw near to you. Jesus said “come to me to have life” from John 5 and he followed that up with “I will never drive away any who come to me” from John 6. This effective magic seems too simple and childish for many so they think complexities are the ticket. My heroine of the faith is the woman with the issue of blood who knew all she needed to do was to go to Jesus. My other heroine is the Syro-Phoenician woman with the demonized daughter who knew her dogliness was next to Godliness.
This reminds me of the time I was giving a Theology on Tap talk about Dante, and there was a guy on his phone checking that everything I said was in accord with the Catechism. Much like Davis and Mirus do, I found that that kinda harshed the mellow.
Thank you for another great article Michael.
I see a lot of what is coming up is what I started to call the Cat Stevens effect, where when somebody takes on a new religion, they become more zealous than the people raised in it. I saw it when I was dabbling around eastern practices, where white westerners acted more Tibetan than the Tibetans, or more Japanese than the Japanese. I see it now in the little OCA church I attended where it is the new converts wearing head coverings and growing out beards and looking serious and solemn in their venerations while the cradle folks look and act like they are hanging out in their own homes. I think that is what happens when a faith gets truly embodied. I am curious to see how many orthobros in the coming years pick up their guitars again, like Yousef Islam eventually did, and get back to playing their old hits. To me, that is a good example of integrating an authentic faith into life.
Another struggle I have noticed in myself that seems to be coming up in these criticisms is the Orthodox view of the imagination. Some church fathers warn against using the imagination. It makes sense in a way if you are living in a desert cave. I wouldn’t want to be mucking around in my head in that situation either and would be praying my ass off. I know myself from past experiences and practices in the “occult” that there are real dangers, but it is something we need to work with and contend with in the modern world and it can actually be safe and productive when Christ is at the center of it. For a good example of someone who really goes far with some Hermetic/esoteric stuff but somehow keeps it grounded in the Orthodox Christian faith he was raised in, check out https://open.substack.com/pub/galahaderidanus.
Thanks, Chris, some great thoughts here.
I think a lot of these "experts" don't realize we are surrounded by magical operations (mostly negative) and that their capitulations to the TradCath or Orthobro egregores are precisely that.
Hello! How does he keep it grounded in orthodox faith? He seems to be praying to abraxas and doing some really weird things?
I have always admired your ability to trudge into the sludge of academic writing. It takes a special kind of attack mentality, kinda like MC5 and their bludgeoning into the music business. It is commendable in a didactic way.
In regards to your recent essay:
I see two approaches to understanding the Alexandrian School. 1) Hard-Rock Mining: where the seeker goes into the dark stony cavern of the Past with pick & shovel & dynamite and digs into the old texts with all the gangue of unreliable translations and junk analysis from paid university toadies embedded deeply into various dogmas and ensconced into the mine wall. Yes there is gold in there but at what price to the searchers?
2) Placer Mining: In a small scale this is also called panning for gold. Usually done by independent researchers and other self-didacts who ply the great slow rivers of history that cut back and forth in vast braided trails picking out those bits that have stood the test of time tumbling along until the seeker plucks them up and puts them in their sample bag. To the trained eye even contemporary culture yields results among the clash and detritus to be used by the creative mind.
Many wonderful ideas are found by method #2 but they are rarely cited by the scholarly troglodyte who dwell in method #1. It is a pity.
Kick Out the Jams
John Sinclair RIP
I played a gig with him not long before he died.
What a blessing! I think he was as much an urban poet as a muscian.
I think I have a photo of the MC5 taken by his wife somewhere.
And I should tell you about the time I talked myself onstage with Rob Tyner someday.
That would be an awesome story.
It was that sort of pedantic bore that kept me away from Christianity for much of my adult life. Studying Hermeticism is what finally sparked a curiosity in the Church for me, and from there lead me to reading books by and about Thomas Merton and Saint Francis and eventually delving into the mysticism of Orthodoxy.
To expand on your explanation of Hermeticism, for anyone curious and not overly wary of the word "occult," this site did a great twelve-part series on the "Spiritus Hermeticum":
https://occult-mysteries.org/hermes/hermes-intro.html
Well, they should learn their Latin genders. Spiritus is masculine, not neuter.
I imagine the authors were aware of that. I think it was simply a creative choice to emphasize that the series is expounding on the true spirit of the Hermetic tradition and not the dead letter. I’m not well versed in Latin, so I don’t know if there was a better way to title it, but that’s my simple explanation.
No, they aren’t aware of that. They could have entitled the series Spiritus Hermeticus and everyone would have known what it was about. What happened is that, in their ignorance, they borrowed the adjective from the title Corpus Hermeticum, not grasping that “corpus” is a third declension neuter and “spiritus” a fourth declension masculine. This is schoolboy Latin.
Okay, then. Their site makes it clear that they're open to correction and feedback on content and/or grammatical errors, typos, etc.
This is my kind of comment.
Hermeticism is greasy gutterdog nonsense
as many leading intellectuals have said
True story. Hermeticists tend to be deluded, psycho, twisted, depraved, and above all, CRINGE AF. They are so far up their own asses that they're hopefully on the way back out again. The longer they "practice", the worse they get. It's embarrassing to watch. No one wants them around, not even each other.
Truth nuke. They’re all luciferian self-worshippers. Narcissistic.
I'm quite fond of all of you (at least of your writings), and can't help but feel that the tone of this discussion would be much cooler if it were to take place in-person, and not in the form of long-form delayed ripostes. Anyhow, I appreciated reading both your response and Sebastian's.