On Supernatural Evil

detail from Rudolf Steiner's sculpture 'The Representative of Man'

This blog entry appeared once upon a time on my old blog at Angelico Press.

"Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." ~ 1 John 5:21

Much of my scholarly work has been invested in a retrieval or at least recognition of the supernatural in a positive sense. Indeed, Sophiology is a philosophical/theological discourse interested in the disclosure of the Glory of God in nature, the arts, liturgy, and the sciences (among other things). But not all of my work on the supernatural has been concerned with such an optimistic and beautiful milieu of Creation. Not every encounter with the spiritual is tinged by grace.

In Literature and the Encounter with God in Post-Reformation England, for example, alongside John Donne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas and Henry Vaughan, and Jane Lead—all concerned in one way or another with an experience of God marked by truth, beauty, and goodness—I explored the career of the Elizabethan magus and polymath (his was a multifarious genius) John Dee and the “Actions” (conversations) he had with spirits and took to be from God. In the chapter entitled “John Dee: Religious Experience and the Technology of Idolatry,” I argue that Dee, an occasional counselor to Elizabeth I, deluded himself into thinking the spirits with which he and his assistant, Edward Kelley, discoursed were of divine origin (they clearly were not) and that, even though he was in his essence a very good and pious man (if a little vain), he let himself be talked into the danger of mortal sin.

The sin in question was adultery. But not just any adultery. The primary spirit, identified as Madimi, in fact, ordered Dee and Kelley to swap wives. As I write in the chapter:

On 17 April 1587, a series of very bizarre Actions began which encouraged Dee to think he and Kelley were “above the law.” That day, Kelley reported, “I saw Madimi, Il, and many other that had dealed with us heretofore, but shewed themselves in very filthy order; and Uriel appeared, and justified all to be of God, and good.” In the crystal, Kelley saw a globe covered all over with writing. One message read, “Souls joined toward the better.” The session ended with a shocking pronouncement: “All sins before me in this are disregarded: having been made mad for my sake, he is wise: on the contrary, committing adultery on my account, he is blessed in eternity and he will be touched by a heavenly reward.” The injunction must have caused Dee and Kelley no little amount of anxiety.

The spirits appeared the next day en force, as Kelley reported: “There appeared Madimi, Il, and the rest.” The majority of the spirits, however, straightaway vanished, leaving Madimi alone. She at this point exhibited some uncharacteristic behavior. According to Kelley, “she openeth all her apparel, and her self all naked; and sheweth her shame also” which was definitely outside the norm, even for the Actions. The vision unsettled Kelley and a fascinating exchange between the physical and spiritual participants of the dialogue ensued:

E.K. Fie on thee, Devil avoid hence with this filthiness, &c. Mad. In the name of God, why finde you fault with me? ∆. [ Dee identified himself by the Greek letter delta] Because of yesterdayes doings, and words are provocations to sin, and unmeet for any godly creature to use. Mad. What is sin? ∆. To break the Commandment of God. Mad. If the self-same God give you a new Commandment taking away the former form of sin which he limited by the Law, What remaineth then? ∆. If by the self-same God that gave the Law to Moses, and gave his New Covenant by Christ, who sealed it by his blood; and had witnesses very many, and his Apostles instructed by his holy Spirit, who admonished us of all cleanness in words and works, yea and in thoughts, if by the same God, whose former Laws and Doctrines be abrogated, and that sufficient proof and testimony may be had that it is the same God: Then must the same God be obeyed: For only God is the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, and Governour of all things.

Dee knew he was walking into tricky theological as well as legal territory, and we can see by his response to Madimi’s question that he knew he had to be completely clear about what was at issue. Madimi capitalized on his anxieties and avouched for the trustworthiness of her message: “The Apostle Paul abounded in carnal lust: he was also offensive unto his brethren so that he despaired, and was ready to have left his vocation, untill the Lord did say unto him, My mercy and grace sufficeth thee. Beleeve me, that we are from above.” Madimi was right, Dee would have agreed, God’s mercy should be enough (2 Corinthians 12: 9). Paul had transgressed the law in order to maintain the intergrity of his vocation, and Madimi commanded Dee to do the same:

Behold you are become free: Do that which most pleaseth you: For behold, your own reason riseth up against my wisdome. Not content you are to be heires, but you would be Lords, yea Gods, yea Judgers of the heavens: Wherefore do even as you list, but if you forsake the way taught you from above, behold evil shall enterprise your senses, and abominations shal dwel before your eyes, as a recompence, unto such as you have done wrong unto: And your wives and children, shall be carried away before your face.

This was rather a threat.

Even though Dee knew what the spirits were asking was against God’s mandates—he articulated as much—he nevertheless went along with the spirits’ demands, compromised as he was by the pride and promise of being God’s new messenger.

Most of us don’t compromise our principals as a result of direct communication from spirits. We have our culture for that. But that’s not to say that we aren’t led into these compromises by more indirect spiritual means.

Indeed, it doesn’t appear to me that we are appropriately aware of the presences of spiritual evil around us. The medieval period and Renaissance had precise taxonomies of the demonic realms: we have, in general, psychologizing or a sort of bland, generic affirmation that diabolical entities are “out there” somewhere. The cartoonish antics of SNL’s “The Church Lady” and The Temple of Satan aside, I think it’s almost as important to be cognizant of supernatural evil as it is to be aware of the sophianic glory that also abides in Creation.

I have found Rudolf Steiner’s conception of Lucifer and Ahriman very useful in diagnosing our own struggles with the Spirit of the Age. Though I disagree with Steiner on certain aspects of his Christology and the persistence of Blavatskian theosophy in his, especially earlier, work, I think he’s on to something with Lucifer and Ahriman.

For Steiner, Lucifer is the principle (or spiritual being) that tempts us with promises of “freedom,” the desire for self-expression, individualization, and an absolute creativity. Ahriman, on the other hand, is the principle (or spiritual being) that promises order and a kind of technological and corporatized efficiency that enslaves us to the subhuman, turns us effectively into machines. Between these two polarities, Steiner points to Christ as that principle which guides us through the perils of the promises made by Lucifer and Ahriman and helps us abide in the real.

When I look at our own culture, I can’t help but think that Lucifer (however one wants to understand the term) tempts us to a freedom of expression and selfhood that inevitably delivers us to Ahriman. That is, in order to “become who we really are” (or so we think) we turn to technology and scientific/medical interventions which enslave us to a lifetime of injections, prescriptions, surgeries, and technologies that inure us from the Real that inheres Creation. This is most obvious in some of the diabolical interventions foisted upon certain children in the name of freedom, but it also acts in subtle ways upon all of us.

Even though demonic possession as often depicted in film (The Exorcist, The Rite, Deliver Us from Evil, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) is certainly a reality, in general, the fallen angels work in much more invisible ways to lead us away from reality and, therefore, from Christ. It’s easier that way. I know this from experience. But, as St. John tells us, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

A traditional protection against evil:

Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face. As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. (Psalm 67:2-3)

Natura Pura, the Horror Vacui, and Our Estrangement from the Real

from Robert Fludd, 'Utrisque Cosmi Historia...' (1617-1621)

In The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics, I argued that natura pura, a nature absolutely outside of God’s grace, is an impossibility, even though theologians and philosophers from the early modern period to our current moment have held it to be true. However, I would now like to modify that assertion. That is because AI and other productions of the computer revolution, or so they seem to me, are as close to pure nature as is possible. I do not believe they are absolutely outside of God’s grace (nothing could be), but, at least in many cases, they are as far away from it as is possible. Bestowed with a capacity for “intelligence,” AI and its iterations participate, at best, in the being and consciousness of their creators just as any other creative works do; but because of this “intelligence” (which is in truth a simulacrum of intelligence) which takes on a “life” of its own (in movements across the internet in the case of viruses or bots, for example) it likewise imitates human agency (though far more efficient) and influences people far more intrusively (if, in general, subconsciously) than can a poem or a musical work, even in virtual form. What is the “world” in which AI operates? We all use it, all participate in it—but what is it? What, as Heidegger would say, is it in its essence? Does it even have a reality? Does it belong in any way to a natural order? AI’s distance from a natural order is precisely what implicates it in the virtual reality of natura pura.

What I am inquiring into here is the phenomenology of AI. What are we present to when in the presence of an AI? When we are present to a poem, a musical work, liturgy, or the natural beauty of a sunset, for example, we are simultaneously present to a presence “behind” it which illuminates both the phenomenon and its beholder and awakens one to a consciousness of another, potentially of the Other. But what are we present to in the presence of AI?

I would even suggest that the rage and tribalism so characteristic of social media (which so often degenerates into “anti-social media”) are intrinsic to the virtual medium itself. That is to say that a “connection” (which is not a true connection) to the unreal produces an inner disturbance that results in a kind of anxiety (or at least angst) which is then projected back into the medium of the unreal (and also onto the Real). If the medium is disconnected from the Real, it nevertheless interfaces with our consciousness as if it were real. Our consciousness, then, engages with the unreal as if it were the Real, further distancing us from the Real and entrapping us ever more deeply in the unreal world—like Sophia in the Gnostic mythos.

Furthermore, our virtual experiences (what a strange term) can also be considered from the point-of-view of two conceptually different but phenomenologically congruent ideas: the horror vacui characteristic of much primitive and medieval art and aesthetics and Edmund Husserl’s observations on intentional experiences and their contents.

The idea of the horror vacui (fear of empty space) consists in the simple notion that to leave a space unoccupied or empty (especially in art) is to invite (or at least risk) demonic participation in the work.[1] Thus, for example, in medieval illuminated manuscripts, especially those created in Ireland, every space is filled in with detail. A similar notion is at work in medieval and Renaissance magical practices: the drawing of the magic circle, for example, both protects the magician from malefic interference while simultaneously allowing him to call spiritual beings forth (or at least that was how it was supposed to work). The space is filled and set apart from chaos. Another example of the horror vacui appears in the medieval belief in the “noonday demon,” the spirit of temptation to sloth, avarice, and so forth that rushes in when prayer and work (ora et labora) momentarily leave the monk alone. Is not the internet such an empty space? And while social media or Google searches or even online banking may occupy us with somewhat meaningful (or at least necessary) occupation, is it not also true that that most of our time on the internet is taken up with the noonday demon of (post)modern acedia—only now extended to 24/7 (as Jonathan Crary[2] so astutely observes)? And are we not also compelled to ask ourselves what the spiritual impulse is behind such a phenomenon? “We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves; everything is conducted by Spirits, no less than Digestion or Sleep.”[3] I don’t think any aspect of human culture or endeavor is void of spiritual participation, even of those spirits that would like to convince us no spirits exist.

In addition, the idea of the horror vacui seems to have some relationship to Plato’s belief that the world soul informs the entire Cosmos. The horror vacui, that is, points to the anti-type of the world soul (Sophia): natura pura, in other words. The idea of God’s absolute absence from any part of his Creation is truly a cause for horror.

When applying Husserl’s concept of intentional experiences and their contents to “virtual experiences,” on the other hand, we find ourselves in a very different world. Husserl uses the example of a cigarette box: even though we can see (or imagine) only one perspective of the box at a time, our imagination fills in the details about that which is not available as percept.[4] This is the content. But what is it that is not available to our perception in the case of the virtual experience? I would suggest that we automatically assume that it is not unlike that which we experience of objects of content in the “real world.” But that is a false and easily, even dangerously, deceptive assumption. In written content—say an email or other electronic communication from a friend or associate—we perceive the being behind the content. But as we cycle through the myriad number of contents available to us in virtual platforms—news stories, video, translation, and so forth, running the span from institutional and bureaucratic data-gathering to popular entertainment to pornography to critical analysis to high art—that which is invisible is less obvious to us. As a result, we simply accept a content as given—but given by whom? by what? And we accept it as it presents itself to us. But what is it in its essence?

On the other hand, it is also incumbent upon us to ask just what these virtual environments are doing to us, not only physically and mentally, but also spiritually. At the very least, we all know, either intuitively or from experience, that overexposure to these virtual environments is not good for us. We have also been warned—by the very people who designed some of these platforms—that they were designed with tech addiction in mind and with the intention to monetize our attention and, more nefariously, with the aim of social manipulation and control. [5] Again: what are these things in their essence? Curiously enough, the theosophy of the early modern German mystic Jacob Boehme offers us a way to think about our current predicament.[6]

For Boehme, the fallen world in which live and move and have our being is characterized by darkness and light, strife and love, permutations and manifestations of the realms of Satan and Sophia, realms that interpenetrate in our experience (though not in their actuality). Sophia, according to Boehme, wishes to bring us to regeneration in Christ and seeks to awaken us to our true being in God; whereas Satan offers us fear, selfishness, rage, stagnation, doubt, confusion, and death. Sophia and Ahriman offer us two different ways of seeing, two different ways of being. One, however, takes intentionality and the activity of the ego; while the other relies on an absence of intentionality and a surrender of the ego to materialism and technics. Needless to say, Boehme lived long before the Industrial Revolution, let alone the Information Age; yet his picture of things illuminates our current situation perfectly.

Sophia calls us to a true recognition of the Real. A good place to start, then, is in the Creation, through which the glory of its maker shines:

So the Matter of this World, as also the Stars and Elements, must not be looked upon, as if God was not therein. His Eternal Wisdom and Virtue [or Power] has formed itself with the Fiat in all Things, and he Himself is the Master-Workman; and all Things went forth in the Fiat, everything in its own Essence, Virtue and Property…. Thus every Essence became visible, and God manifested his manifold Virtue with the manifold Herbs, Plants, and Trees, so that every one that does look upon them, may see the eternal Power, Virtue, and Wisdom of God therein; if he be born of God, he may know in every Spire of Grass, his Creator in whom he lives.[7]

Such an attention to nature, however, must needs be contemplative: without a contemplative engagement with the world, we may be unware of the splendor that shines through the Creation and therefore unable to discern its source, though such an experience bursting through unexpectedly cannot be discounted. (It’s happened before.)

Unfortunately, even many Christians (as well as those of other faiths) have such an extraordinarily buffered relationship to nature that even the possibility of such a sophianic theophany remains almost unimaginable. This is particularly the case with the unfortunate dualism that often infects religious thinking, even Christian religious thinking, as if Creation is “not our real home” and “heaven” is. This fundamentalist and Gnostic way of thinking compromises religious being-in-the-world to a profound degree, and to our shame. Creation is our real home: acting as if it is not is one of the sources of the cavalier, utilitarian, and abusive manner in which we treat it. Even though we often confuse the World of Sophia with the World of Ahriman—certainly a repercussion of the Fall—let us not be led astray into believing Creation is simply some waystation or proving ground we have to put up with prior to our entrance into the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not “over there” or “yet to be.” The Kingdom is at hand (Matt 3:2); it is always/already present. If the Creation were not fundamental to salvation, it would by no means be groaning for regeneration (Romans 8:22). The Lord says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 22:1). Why bother making them new, if they’re merely perfunctory, created only to be discarded?

clip from Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2015)

This is an excerpt from Michael Martin's Transfiguration: Notes toward the Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything, due this Fall from Angelico Press.

[1] See, for example, Babette Hellemans, “Horror Vacui: Evil in the Incarnated World of the Bibles Moralisées” in Demons and the Devil in Ancient and Medieval Christianity, ed. by Nienke Vos and Willemien Otten, Supplements to Vigilae Christianae (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011), 231–48.

[2] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (London: Verso, 2013).

[3] “To the Public,” Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman with notes by Harold Bloom, revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

[4] Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Volume II, trans. J. N. Findlay, ed. Dermot Moran (1970; reprt., London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 123–27.

[5] See Olivia Solon, “Ex-Facebook President Sean Parker: Site Made to Exploit Human ‘Vulnerability,’” The Guardian (9 November 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-sean-parker-vulnerability-brain-psychology Accessed 28 June 2018.

[6] See the chapter entitled “Jacob Boehme’s Sophianic Intuitions” in The Submerged Reality.

[7] Jacob Boehme, The Three Principles of the Divine Essence: Of the Eternal Dark, Light, and Temporary World… [trans. John Sparrow] (1648; reprt., Chicago, IL: Yogi Publication Society, 1909), 76–77.

Sophia and the Technological Colonization of Reality

Immaculate Heart

The movements of celestial bodies, the sprouting of life from a seed, the intricate social structures and behaviors of a bee colony, the wondrous unfoldment of gestation—all reveal a wisdom that speaks to more than the randomness of cosmic and evolutionary accidents. Likewise, the unmistakable beauty of the natural world, its colors and forms, discloses an inherent goodness in Creation. But all of these would be for nothing were there not beings to receive and contemplate them. Sophia is the agent as well as the catalyst inhering, disclosing, and inviting participation in these wonders, for her delights are with the children of men.

This understanding of Sophia has much in common with the classical concept of the anima mundi, the world soul. Plato describes the world soul in the Timaeus: “Now the body of the heaven has been created visible; but she is invisible, and, as a soul having part in reason and harmony, is the best of things brought into being by the most excellent of things intelligible and eternal.”[1] As Louis Dupré observes, Christianity has had a complicated relationship with the idea of a world soul (almost indistinguishable from God in Plotinus in Enneads 5.1.2, for example), though it was comprehensively jettisoned in the West following the burgeoning influence of Aristotle upon Scholasticism, neither of which had need of a world soul.[2] During the seventeenth century, Hermetic philosophers such as Robert Fludd and Thomas Vaughan, faced with the nihilistic proposals of natura pura and the materialism of Baconian and Cartesian science, maintained the philosophical and theological integrity of the world soul (and the spiritual dimensions of natural science). Despite their protestations, the juggernaut of modern science rolled on without them.

In the Jewish mystical tradition (kabbalah), the Shekinah, a feminine being associated with God’s presence (glory) who was at times said to be in exile (a notion probably derived from Gnosticism), was popularly regarded as “a providential guide of Creation.”[3] This idea has much in common with Sophia. Turning to Margaret Barker’s thesis, it is important to consider whether the exile of Wisdom from the Temple, the exile of Sophia in the Gnostic mythos, and the exile of the Shekinah not only evoke the same historical and metaphysical reality, but also speak to a movement in the human soul that intuits Sophia’s presence despite her absence, that seeks a more complete picture of the cosmos, that hungers for wholeness. We sense a disorder in how things are, even down to a metaphysical level. And metaphysical disorder begets other disorders.

The Eastern Church, which has never had much use for Scholasticism, has been a little less lukewarm to the idea of the world soul, but has not generally expounded upon it. But the maverick theologian Sergius Bulgakov was intimidated neither by his critics nor by a lazy understanding of what constitutes “Holy Tradition,” and freshly examined the notion of a world soul in his work.

Bulgakov argues that the innate search for integrity characteristic of human beings indicates a sophianic drive and, furthermore, that such an integrity actually exists in the cosmos: that is, it is not merely a psychological need, but an ontological and cosmological superstructure. “And this unifying force,” he writes, “this cosmourgic potency is nothing else but the creaturely Sophia herself, who is the image of divine being, the force of ‘integrity.’ She is, in this sense, the world’s soul and entelechy, who is being actualized, or becoming in the world. She is the life of the world.”[4] Here, as elsewhere, Bulgakov—like Vladimir Solovyov and Pavel Florensky—points to the Virgin Mary as emblematic of the sophianization of the world, existing, as she does, “at the boundary of heaven and creation,”[5] the metaxu.

My claim is that this sought-for integrity, in all truth a metaphysical desire, is a desire to see things as they truly are, to know them in their essence. And this is as true for the desire to find an authentic way to live as it is for the desire to know God; or, in the words of St. Paul, it is the desire to know even as we are known (1 Cor 13:12). But it is not possible to know things as they truly are without knowing reality as it truly is. And the only way to approach knowing things as they truly are is through a contemplative engagement with them.

A contemplative engagement, in some sense at least, awakens Sophia. And this is where the Gnostic mythos, the Shekinah of the kabbalah, and the Sophia of Proverbs all coalesce. Sophia is not in exile. Not technically, at least. Nevertheless, one of her attributes (as seen in the Virgin Mary) is absolute humility: she will never intrude upon our experience uninvited, but, like the Virgin in the upper room at Pentecost, patiently waits for a movement towards her. In this, her metaxological office is manifest. That is, as at Pentecost she awaited the movement of the Holy Spirit, presently she awaits a movement from us. She was the catalyst for the Apostles; she is also our catalyst. So, we can say, she is in exile until our attention awakens her. At least that’s how it feels. In truth, she is not in exile: we are. The reciprocal movement in this awakening, indeed, reveals the sophianic reality implicit in our own being.

Curiously, the way in which we awaken Sophia exactly corresponds to this Pentecostal mood. That is, if we pursue the sophianic through the will, it eludes us. On the other hand, by cultivating a disposition of patient attention—without any attachment to a reward or “payoff”—we allow the sophianic to arise from phenomena. In phenomenology this is called “epoché,” which, to a significant degree, is the setting aside of one’s ego when present to phenomena, be they works of art, objects found in the natural world, or liturgical practices. Another way to say this is to say that when confronted with phenomena we awaken Sophia by mirroring her patience and humility. We awaken the sophianic already latent in our own being, and the sophianic in phenomena responds through disclosure. But this does not mean that every phenomenon has an equal potential to disclose the sophianic, or that we are at all times awake to the proper disposition to perceive it.

Works written corporately—as in advertising or in governmental or business writing—for example, do not seem capable of disclosing the sophianic in anything like the way that is possible (though certainly not assured) in poetry and other literary works, or even film. This is due in part to the grasping intentionality characteristic of the “creative teams” involved in marketing: without the safeguard of the epoché, the will and the ego insert themselves into the process by way of conquest. Likewise, liturgical forms, especially those that try to habituate themselves to the supposed tastes of a congregation (really, to be honest, an audience), may move the feeling but without disclosing anything sophianic. Such are rhetorical moves, rank manipulation, which, at best, are simulacra of the sophianic. Indeed, an ultimately pornographic quality inhabits these desires to influence: they titillate with a promise of erotic satisfaction (however directed, however well-intentioned), but ultimately fail to create an opening into the beautiful. But they open into something.

iHuman

What, then, of manufactured or otherwise manipulated objects? Is a phenomenological reduction (epoché) even possible with them? Can an AI, for instance, open to transcendence? What happens when we attempt a phenomenological reduction of those afflicted with gender dysphoria and who have reached the point where they turn to medical interventions to “change” their genders? Do we discover that these, too, are rhetorical moves having more to do with marketing of a self than ontology? Or do we find something else? We certainly find a human person in a state of suffering. But, other than this, what is disclosed? And when this rhetorical gesture becomes ideology (or fashion) as, for example, when children are given hormone blockers to delay the onset of puberty while they (and/or their parents) try to decide what gender they are, what then? What can be disclosed?

Similarly, are not GMO foods quite literally other than they appear? Are they not simulacra? Are not fields sprayed with glyphosate images of thanatos rather than of zoë? Are “three-parent babies,” surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and other intrusions into the realm of human fertility not only marvels of scientific ingenuity but also of manufacturing genius? Natural processes are increasingly “liberated” from nature; and, as they are, are they not more and more rendered products in need of government regulation and corporate protection and thereby become means of control?

This encroaching and, in the main, uninterrogated acceptance of “technological reproduction” in all of its forms delineates a movement away from Sophia and her illumination of the united natural and supernatural realms and toward Ahriman and the darkness of a natural realm subordinated to subnature. When we can no longer differentiate between the Real and the simulacra, we have already compromised our connection to the spiritual in the universe, to God by way of Sophia. And when differentiating between the Real and the simulacra invites ridicule, hostility, and ostracization, we can then be sure that we have entered the realm of the demonic, of Ahriman; that culture has been lured into subnature; and that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Ahriman’s genius is that it has convinced us that spiritual forces, of any kind, do not exist, and that science and technology hold the keys to prosperity, health, and happiness. In this, it is we who are imprisoned and isolated from the Real, as Sophia is in the Gnostic mythos. It would appear that only a god can save us.

[1] 36E. See also Francis M. Cornford’s classic discussion in Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (1957; reprt., Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 57–104.

[2] Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 59–61.

[3] Gershom G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), 105.

[4] Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI/Edinburgh, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company/T&T Clark, 2002), 80.

[5] Ibid., 414. Bulgakov’s emphasis.

This is an excerpt from Michael Martin's forthcoming book, Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything, set to appear this Fall from Angelico Press.