Celtic Christianity and Sophiology

John Duncan, St. Bride (1913)

Celtic Christianity has haunted my soul since my early youth, from at least the time when at the age of eighteen I bought a Celtic cross from the gift shop of The Detroit Institute of Arts and which has hung about my neck for most of the intervening forty years. That cross was the seed. Over a decade later, my wife and I chose Claddagh rings as wedding bands—for one, because they were relatively inexpensive and we were poor, and, more importantly, because Celtic spirituality spoke to our souls in a profound way. In addition, my five eldest children all have Celtic names—Brendan, Dylan, Thomas Gwynn, Mae, and Aidan—and Brendan was baptized with water from the Chalice Well in Glastonbury.

Inspired by the lives of the Celtic saints, in my first or second year as a Waldorf teacher I wrote a play, The Journey of St. Brendan the Navigator, for my students to perform. Our school’s eurythmy teacher, Brigitta (Bridget to us Celts) helped me turn it into a kind of Miracle Play, with my class performing the parts of Brendan and his monks, another class as the whale upon whose back Brendan and his companions celebrated Easter Mass, another class as the island of birds, and so on. The teachers even participated, and my dear friend Mary Jo played the role of the wise hermit Brendan met on the Isle of the Blessed. I still recall her face and gestures as her character told Brendan and his crew the time had not yet come to settle upon those shores. I wrote the play out in long hand, and I’m not even sure if I still have a copy, alas. Nevertheless, the entire thing was one of the most beautiful moments in my thirty years of teaching. It felt as if light filled the room. No one was untouched.

Certainly, among other things, what really appealed to me then (and continues to) is the synergy between the angelic and natural orders in Celtic spirituality. The Celtic churches, so difficult to perceive clearly through the mists of history, moved in such an awareness. The legends of the Celtic saints—Patrick, Brendan, Brigid, and Columba for example—are rich with a natural world barely touched by agriculture. It is also interesting to note that Celtic monasticism with its extraordinary emphasis on asceticism and learning arose in a geographical area almost complete devoid of urban centers. It may be precisely because of this that Celtic monks participated in the wildness of Creation in a manner almost entirely unknown in other contexts. The exquisite Welsh “Litany of the Creation” (c. 7th century) voices this beautifully:

I beseech the people of heaven with bright-armed Michael; I beseech you by the triad of wind, sun, and moon.

I beseech you by water and the cruel air; I beseech you by fire, I beseech you by earth.[1]

This sensibility inhabits so much of the liturgical, devotional, and mythic language of Celtic Christianity that it is hard to miss, as in this excerpt from one of the more powerful prayers in the Christian tradition, St. Patrick’s Breastplate, also known as The Deer’s Cry:

I arise today Through the strength of heaven; Light of sun, Radiance of moon, Splendour of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth, Firmness of rock.

In Celtic spirituality, all of Creation participates in Divinity. As Christopher Bamford writes in the introduction to his outstanding collection (edited with William Parker Marsh), Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness, what we find in Celtic spirituality is “a continuity in cosmic process, that extended from its inception, Creation, to its conclusion, Deification.” [2]

When St. Patrick was asked by the Irish pagan royalty who this God he spoke of was, he had this to say:

“Our God is the God of all men, the God of heaven and earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountain and the lowly valleys, the God above heaven and in heaven and under heaven; he has his dwelling round heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is. He inspires all, he quickens all, he dominates all, he sustains all. He lights the light of the sun; he furnishes the light of the light; he has made springs in the dry land and has set stars to minister to the greater lights. [3]

The Celtic Church was its own unique individuality, not Roman and not Byzantine, and not encumbered by the bureaucratic complications of hierarchical administration and the annoyances and interferences of ecclesial busybodies. (Those interested in this topic may want to check out F. E. Warren’s The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, first published in 1881). The Irish Church, in particular, had no martyrs to speak of and was characterized by “its pastoral way, its uncomplicated fervour, the dislike of its representatives for all manner of officialdom and organization [which] was precisely what the men of Rome so disliked.” [4] The Celtic ethos took seriously Christ’s admonishment to “Preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). That sounds like my kind of church.

This all sounds a lot like Sophiology, too, of course, and for good reason (and I haven’t even mentioned the important place of women in Celtic religion and culture). And Sophiology, I claim, is the default position for Judeo-Christian ways of being—ways of being long since compromised by the designs of religious politicians and ecclesial people of power to the point of almost absolute disfigurement. As Margaret Barker argues, in the context of First Temple Judaism, “Those with the ‘biblical’ way of thinking saw the creation as the work of God, and felt that people who saw it in any other way were not liberated but deprived.” [5] Furthermore, “the covenant of creation bound everything in one system: the material world, living beings, human society, and the invisible forces they called angels or powers.” [6] I was right: this is Sophiology.

This is also, I claim, the Kingdom Christ proclaimed.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Oliver Davies, trans. with Thomas O’Loughlin, Celtic Spirituality New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 298.

2. Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness (Lindisfarne, 1982), 12.

3. In H. J. Massingham, The Tree of Life (London, 1943), 37-38.

4. Gerhard Herm, The Celts: The People Who Came out of the Darkness (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 268.

5. Margaret Barker, Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 26.

6. Ibid., 111.

The Sophianic Reset

Edward Robert Hughes, Night with her Train of Stars (1912)

So it seems we are in the middle of The Great Reset. Don’t call me a conspiracy theorist. This plan has been out of the closet for some time, and the guys and dolls over at The World Economic Forum see the pandemic as the opportune time for its implementation. I’ve read their plan (you should, too), and though its rhetoric is equal parts alarmism and idealism, what lurks behind is a technocrat’s wet dream. The tragicomedy of NGO’s simultaneously lamenting and capitalizing on a pandemic with such a relatively low mortality rate is hard to take seriously—but take it seriously. The Great Reset isn’t about care for humanity; it’s about who retains power.

Not to be that guy, but I predicted this in my book Transfiguration. Now, I didn’t predict the coming of the pandemic (though others did), but I did predict the coming collapse and the attendant machinations of those in power (and I don’t necessarily mean politicians) to not only hold on to their power but to increase it. In discussing forms of distributism in light of our current economic environments, I had this to say:

“The challenge for any attempt at distributism, however noble and good, is that it (at this point in history) can transpire only within the contexts of monetary systems already corrupted: and this is as true for the communist and socialist contexts as it is for the capitalist. And none of these systems will ever give distributism room to breathe and grow. Not ever.” [1]

And one would have to say that, in general, the planetary Archons—BigTech, BigPharma, and other initiates into the Temple of the Corporate-Pharmaceutical-Military Complex—have more power eight months into the pandemic than they ever did before. If you don’t believe me, just think about how fear has turned so many of us into willing accomplices for The Great Reset. We wouldn’t be afraid without the constant messaging provided and promulgated by these postmodern demigods. But we are.

My message and hope, both as I was writing Transfiguration and now, is that, instead of The Great Technocratic Reset we could affect a Sophianic Reset: a reset grounded in sophiological reality, the of reality Man, Nature, and Divinity in harmony. The Real.

Of course, that preached by The World Economic Forum and its clergy is not the first reset ever to appear. The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century is certainly a great example of an earlier reset, as are the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the Digital Revolution. And while those things may have brought some benefits, they also wrought untold damage: to the environment and thereby to our relationship to Nature; to communitas; and even to the soul.

The way the WEF, the WHO, and other agencies and polities look at this virus is as if it were an attack perpetrated by hostile aliens and not as the kind normal viral phenomenon we experience regularly and perpetually as part of a naturally occurring reset to the environment. But you’d never know that from the hysteria constantly inundating us.

But I think this pandemic is a fitting metaphor for our fear of and hostility toward Nature. We want to (and hubristically think we can) kill the virus. We can’t. We also think the god Science will save us. It can’t. If the story about this virus as one engineered and escaping from the laboratory in Wuhan is true (and I doubt we will ever know for sure), then science is killing at least some of us—just as environmental pollution, chemically-enhanced “food,” and opioids are killing some of us. But “trust the science,” right? Right. And even if it isn’t true in the case of Wuhan, laboratories all over the world routinely monkey with the genetic makeup of viruses—as is the case in Wuhan—so one escaping and wreaking havoc on populations is not outside the realm of possibility. But it’s a risk scientists, governments, and NGOs are willing to take. Risk is implicit to human life, though some risks are avoidable. Mishaps due to genetic editing and splicing are avoidable; seasonal viruses, for example, and the inevitability of death are not.

One way I think of activating a Sophianic Reset is to live our lives as if the sophianic were already the Reality (because it is). I say we live in communitas with other human beings and stop treating them as possible agents of infection (I mean, how psychologically damaging is that gesture going to prove in the long run?). I say we return to Nature and engage practices that treat her in reverence (Goethe, represent!) as a Co-Creatrix with us and Divinity in a project of sustainable life and not as matter (mater) to be abused and exploited. I say we awaken to the sophianic splendor that shines through the universe, “Born of the One Light Eden saw play,” in Eleanor Farjeon’s glorious phrase. This as if, the way I picture it, would awaken us to a kind of holistic version of the alternate-parallel societies Philip K. Dick writes about in his science fiction, or even in the way Amish communities operate. I deal with a lot of Amish people through my farm—and they are not as “other” as you might think. They use the same currency the rest of us are forced to use, they engage with “the world” as much as necessary but as little as possible—yet still maintain their vision of what a Christian life should be. [2]

I know this seems challenging—and the pandemic and its technocratic agents are challenging enough. But fear not, little flock. In ending, allow me to share the closing words of the chapter entitled “Oikonomia: The Household of Things” from Transfiguration:

“Nevertheless, the daunting prospect of such a magnitude of change might cause even the stoutest heart to quail. This is especially the case considering the massive resistance respectively opposed by our societies’ academes, public habits and vested interests.’ [3] (Can we imagine an NPR segment on perishable currency?) Such a project does not need to be realized all at once, but could be implemented gradually as people more and more respond to an as if approach to our circumstances. If we were to live as if a sophianic oikonomia were a reality, even while we live in a world and are surrounded by a culture oblivious if not hostile to such an idea, the sophianic oikonomia would nevertheless come into being, as it already has being. Only by our attention to it, we would awaken it from slumber. Indeed, the call to economic activity, when considered in this light, is not the call to domination and exploitation, but the call ‘to return to life in Sophia.’ [4] And all of us privileged to have been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity are thus called; there is simply no other way. The responsibility terrifies, as an angel terrifies, but we are summoned nonetheless.” [5]

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything (Angelico Press, 2018), 99.

2. I discuss all these things at length in Transfiguration and throughout this blog.

3. Guido Giacomo Preparata, “Of Money, Heresy, and Surrender, Part II: A Plea for Regional and Perishable Currency,” Anarchist Studies 18, no. 1 (2010): 8-39, at 35.

4. Segius Bulgakov, Philosophy of Economy (Yale University Press, 2000), 153.

5. Transfiguration, 101.

Jesus the Imagination V: The Divine Feminine--call for submissions

But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart (1888, detail) by Alice Havers

Jesus the Imagination, Vol. 5: The Divine Feminine

Jesus the Imagination is now inviting submissions of poetry, essays, photography, and artwork for volume V, “The Divine Feminine.” We are also interested in translations! Send no more than 3-5 poems, one essay, or 2-3 works of art (in a file, of course). The deadline is 1 January 2021.

Send submissions to: Michael Martin