The One True Church™

some thoughts on recent experiments in apologetics (not mine)

The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones

Well, that last post about Christian Hermeticism certainly blew up. I had more comments, more “likes,” more hits, and more complaints about that post than anything else posted to The Druid Stares Back. Even David Bentley Hart and Paul Kingsnorth joined the conversation. I also earned more subscribers, both paid and free, from that one post than anything I’ve ever posted here. So, to my detractors, I have but one thing to say: I owe it all to you.

One consequence of this was my being invited to do a livestream interview on the YT with Father Deacon Ric Ballard, a Byzantine Catholic deacon, father of eight, and my friend. He wanted me to unpack Christian Hermeticism for his audience, which, as much as I was able, I tried to do. You can watch it here:

The thing with Christian Hermeticism is that some people seem to think it’s my religion or something. My son, Aidan, for instance, must have looked me up on the internet some months ago and asked if I were a Christian Hermeticist. My answer was that it depends on what you mean by the term. Though I deeply appreciate Valentin Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot, I would not describe his religious aesthetic or intuitions as my own, at least not entirely. As with any other thinker, there are some things that resonate with me and some that don’t—but my focus is always on what resonates. What doesn’t resonate will take care of itself. Unfortunately, in our internet-driven culture of ALL POLEMIC, ALL THE TIME, if a guy says, “I like Tomberg (or Ficino, or Yeats, or whomever)” he’s expected to be all in, 100%. That’s not how intelligent people behave—but I never said the internet was filled with intelligent people. And I’ll be damned if I will have some random guy on the internet with no wisdom but a big mouth correct me on my own religious intuitions which I have taken a lifetime of study and reflection to realize. (And you internet Christo-fascists are free to run with the “I’ll be damned” metaphor in which way you will).

As far as Christian Hermeticism goes, my own intuitions are much closer to those found in the Metaphysical poets Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne (both influenced by Jacob Bohme to a degree), than in Tomberg. Especially in Vaughan, scripture, Creation, and God are bound together in a kind of beautiful braid (a metaphor he also uses for the Virgin Mary in his poem “The Knot”). But this is not ideology. Vaughan, a Paracelsian physician, knew science as well as religion, not to mention art. I am an upholder of those three—but I am not a big advocate for the institutional science, religion, and art now prevailing. All three are rotten to the point of absolute collapse. And good riddance.

In my interaction with Kingsnorth on the comment thread of my post, I mentioned how, when I first changed rites from Latin to Byzantine Catholicism thirty years ago, one of the things I prayed for regularly, no doubt inspired by the writing of Vladimir Solovyov, was Christian unity, but that I no longer pray for such a thing. I have put away childish things. Because, let’s face it, Christian unity—at least between Rome and Constantinople—is not a matter of God’s intervention. It’s more a human problem. That is, though popes and patriarchs often issue statements and proclamations about the need for “Christian unity” they don’t really want it. Nobody does. People are fine with Christian unity—“as long as you join my side.” Surely, Christians pray for peace and an end to war—and those are good things to pray for—but churches don’t have any power over secular governments (as Covid has shown, quite the opposite). However, churches have all kinds of power when it comes to unity. Despite all the pretty words, they just don’t want it (for Christ’s sake, it’s been 800 years). It’s very much like what Jacques Derrida had to say about the (non)arrival of the Messiah:

“There is a possibility that my relation to the Messiah is this: I would like him to come, I hope that he will come, that the other will come, as other, for that would be justice, peace, and revolution—because in the concept of messianicity there is revolution—and at the same time, I am scared. I do not want what I want and I would like the coming of the Messiah to be infinitely postponed, and there is this desire in me.”

This is really what’s lurking behind Christian pleas for the (non)arrival of unity. Derrida was one of the most honest men ever to address this psychological mechanism. Everybody wants Christian unity—but on their own terms. And they have millennia of “apologetics” (re: propaganda) to argue against it. A plague on both their houses.

As I mention in the interview with Fr. Dcn. Ric, the poetry of Henry Vaughan articulates something very close to my own spirituality—the union of the Divine and Creation (though not postponed indefinitely to some amorphous future moment). This sensibility is all over Vaughan’s book Silex Scintillans, as in this poem (a little of which I read to Fr. Dcn. Ric), “Cock-Crowing,” the first line of which is a direct quote from James 1:17 (I mention that for you, Beardtree!)

Cock-Crowing

Father of lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day hast Thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray Thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night,
And dreams of paradise and light.

Their eyes watch for the morning hue;
Their little grain, expelling night,
So shines and sings as if it knew
The path unto the house of light.
It seems their candle, howe’er done,
Was tinned and lighted at the sun.

If such a tincture, such a touch,
So firm a longing can empower,
Shall Thy own image think it much
To watch for Thy appearing hour?
If a mere blast so fill the sail,
Shall not the breath of God prevail?

O Thou immortal Light and Heat!
Whose hand so shines through all this frame
That, by the beauty of the seat,
We plainly see who made the same,
Seeing Thy seed abides in me,
Dwell Thou in it, and I in Thee!

To sleep without Thee is to die;
Yea, 'tis a death partakes of hell:
For where Thou dost not close the eye,
It never opens, I can tell.
In such a dark Egyptian border,
The shades of death dwell, and disorder.

If joys, and hopes, and earnest throes,
And hearts whose pulse beats still for light
Are given to birds, who but Thee knows
A love-sick soul’s exalted flight?
Can souls be tracked by any eye
But His who gave them wings to fly?

Only this veil which Thou hast broke,
And must be broken yet in me,
This veil, I say, is all the cloak
And cloud which shadows Thee from me.
This veil Thy full-eyed love denies,
And only gleams and fractions spies.

O take it off! make no delay;
But brush me with Thy light that I
May shine unto a perfect day,
And warm me at Thy glorious eye!
O take it off, or till it flee,
Though with no lily, stay with me!

So I am not pleading for anything close to Christian unity. Nor am I pleading for a renewal to happen in the church into which I was born, or anybody else’s church, for that matter. My only plea is that the only hope for human beings is to learn how to orient themselves to the Real. This has nothing to do with “enchantment.” An enormously inadequate word, enchantment suggests someone might be captivated by a spell—and we are: by the spells of modernity, materialism, and ideology. I don’t have a lot of hope that this will change to a significant scale anytime soon, because, as Plotinus observed, “People like being enchanted.” I’m much more interested in being oriented to the Real.

At best, our situation might be compared to the passage of King Arthur to the Isle of Avalon, where he will be healed from his wounds and one day return. But he also has failed to make a return visit thus far. Nevertheless, we now wander in the Wasteland awaiting the arrival of the Once and Future Church. In the meantime, may the Good One brush you will His light.