Christian Neo-Paganism’s Greatest Hits

Ever since childhood, I have been enthralled by music, especially in its traditional or folk idioms, poetry, God, and Nature. I’ve never grown out of this inclination, and music that combines all of these is that I hold dearest to my heart.

So, given my absolute delight in the music that combines these, here is my list of what I’m calling “Christian Neo-Paganism’s Greatest Hits.” Feel free to recommend others in the comments!

Summer Is Acumin In

Nothing beats a canon (or round) sung in Middle English. Middle English is such a beautiful language. I fell in love with it in graduate school while studying medieval English mysticism (Walter Hilton, The Cloud of Unknowing, my beloved Julian of Norwich, and their contemporaries). This version by Elizabeth Mitchell captures not only the language but the spirit of folk celebrations of the Wheel of the Year.

Meet on the Ledge

Richard Thompson wrote this song for his band Fairport Convention when he was nineteen. Not bad for a rookie! I’ve loved it since I saw Fairport (without Thompson, alas) in about 1985. They end every show with it. I hope when I die I will meet my friends on the ledge to drink one for the road. Here’s Thompson doing a solo version that is chilling. He’s not nineteen anymore. And neither am I.

Tam Lin

There are many different versions of this elfin knight tale, a fine version by Robert Burns among them. Fairport does a great one, but I recently fell in love with this one by Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer. The song is also a great meditation on marriage.

The Pan Within / The Christ in You (counts as one)

Mike Scott, leader and songwriter for The Waterboys, from what I recall, lived at least for a while at Findhorn, the visionary community in Scotland. These two songs, in my take, offer two faces of the Christian Neo-Pagan vibe.

Morning Has Broken

This song was all over the radio in the 1970s. I may have had the single as a kid. It wasn’t until decades later that I discovered the lyrics were written by Eleanor Farjeon, the English poet and writer. I’m writing a chapter on her for my forthcoming book, Sophia in Exile. I love her so much it hurts.

John Barleycorn

Let’s have a nice round of applause for the death, resurrection, and triumph of John Barleycorn. Sir James Frazer and Jessie Weston, represent! Nobody does this one better then Steve Winwood.

The Mummers’ Dance

Loreena McKennitt could sing the phone book and make it sound mystical. I love this song. When I was a Waldorf teacher, by the way, I revised the Mummers’ Play and had my class perform it. It’s a comic take on the death and resurrection motif.

Theme from Harry’s Game

I don’t know what’s in the water up there in Donegal, but pour me glass, will ye? Clannad moved from straight trad music in the early 70s to a kind of atmospheric trad-jazz-New Age amalgam later. They’ve been together for over fifty years. A dreadful consequence of the PANDEMIC™ is that they cancelled their tour and my wife and I couldn’t see them. This is one of those songs that makes people cry and not know why.

Now the Green Blade Riseth

Speaking of death and resurrection—here’s a hymn from the Anglican tradition that more closely than any other ties the death and resurrection of Nature to the death and resurrection of Christ. My family and I do a take on this one I arranged every year during Holy Week. Steve Winwood’s version, which is spookily like mine (I did mine first!) is perfect.

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.

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.

The School for Wisdom: The Sophiological Hedge School

A reader named Eirik recently asked me what I would include in “the perfect reading list, the perfect Canon… to momentarily escape from the difficulties of the new dark age” (how well put!). Actually, I’ve been contemplating this for quite some time, and have been encouraged by John Milbank to do precisely that. In fact, just last week my wife and I were looking at a yurt that we might build on our farm which could function as both a kind of retreat house and place for teaching classes in Sophiology, gardening, beekeeping, and related subjects. So, inspired by this constellation of cosmic hints, below is a preliminary (and I mean preliminary) syllabus for such an undertaking. Please don’t take it as exhaustive.

Literature

Poetry is certainly the most sophiological of literary forms, so I think that’s the place to start. In my anthology The Heavenly Country I include about one-hundred pages of poetry—including selections from St. Francis of Assisi, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Dante, William Everson, David Jones, and Franz Wright among many others. That’s a good place to start, but for an in-depth study of sophiological poetry focused on single authors, perhaps the Metaphysical poets Henry Vaughan (1621-95) and Thomas Traherne (1637?-1674) and the too often neglected Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) are great authors to investigate. The German Romantic poet Novalis, especially his sublime Hymns to the Night, is also eminently rewarding as spiritual nourishment. And one can never go wrong with Wordsworth, whose sophiological intuitions are often clouded by anxieties of the encroaching darkness.

Mysticism

Modern Sophiology begins with the appearance the astounding Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) whose contribution to religious thinking has yet to be fully appreciated. Boehme can be a tremendously difficult read—he had to basically invent a language to convey his mystical insights—but his most accessible work is The Way to Christ. The writings of The Philadelphian Society, particularly those of Jane Lead, John Pordage, and Thomas Bromley, are also worthy, though, with the exception of Bromley’s The Way to the Sabbath of Rest, are notoriously hard to come by in printed form (though I think they can be found in electronic form for free, often in downloadable PDF format). St. Hildegard and St. Francis likewise offer much (notice how Sophiology is preeminently interdisciplinary: I’m afraid it can’t be helped).

illustration from Bromley's 'Way to the Sabbath of Rest'

Theology/Philosophy

Sophiology occupies a space between (metaxu) theology and philosophy (as well as between art and science) so it should come as no surprise that a rich source of Sophiology comes from philosophizing theologians and theologizing philosophers (like your humble servant). The great Russian sophiologists are a great place to start. Just off the top of my head, Vladimir Solovyov’s Russia and the Universal Church, Sergei Bulgakov’s The Bride of the Lamb, Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, and just about anything by Nikolai Berdyaev are full of inspiring sophiological insights. Likewise, the writings of contemporary thinkers John Milbank and William Desmond (and, to some degree, David Bentley Hart) also offer much in way of nourishment.

History

Without a doubt, the most sophiological historian currently working (though I doubt very much she would describe herself as such) is the biblical scholar Margaret Barker, who has single-handedly disclosed the sophiological content of the Bible. All of her work is worthy of consideration, but perhaps her most concentrated exposition of the Sophiology of the Old Testament is her study The Mother of the Lord, Volume I: The Lady in the Temple, published in 2012, although she has been a bit slow to come out with Volume II! Berdyaev’s The Meaning of History is also an important contribution to the way we think about history.

Science

Probably the fountainhead of a sophiological approach to science is J.W. von Goethe and his phenomenologically-informed “delicate empiricism”; and there is probably no better place to start than his Theory of Colours. But it’s important, I think, not only to read about what he has to say, but to actually undertake his demonstrations, at least some of them. Pierre Hadot’s The Veil of Isis and Mary Midgley’s Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning are extremely provocative in their critiques of scientism, the religion of our age. Celia Deane Drumond’s work is also of great theoretical value, as are the contributions of Rupert Sheldrake, Brian Josephson, and David Bohm among many others. In addition, Rudolf Steiner’s profound and often prophetic lectures on agriculture, medicine, and beekeeping are essential reading in a program of sophiological science.

Sacred Mathematics and Geometry

A sophiological curriculum would be impoverished without a study of sacred mathematics and geometry including explorations of the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci series, and the Platonic solids. Math and geometry disclose the beauty of Creation. A quote attributed to Werner Heisenberg concerning natural science is equally true of math and geometry: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

Music

In a sophiological approach to music, I could do no better than to point readers to the work of my dear friend, Therese Schroeder-Sheker in both of her careers as composer and recording artist and as the founder of music thanatology, a therapeutic care of the dying. Likewise, among many other possibilities in the vast history and vocabulary of music, I would point to the Anglican hymn tradition, many examples of which attend to the glory of God shining through Creation: “Morning Is Broken” and “Love Lives Again” with lyrics by the aforementioned Eleanor Farjeon and William Henry Draper’s “All Creatures of Our God and King,” the lyrics of which were adapted from St. Francis’s “Canticle of the Sun” provide only a few examples. There are many more!

Fine Arts

Any program of sophiological education would need to include experience in the fine arts—drawing, painting, movement, sculpture, instrumental and vocal music. The idea isn’t to become a professional; the idea is to become human.

Practical Arts

As with the fine arts, experience in the practical arts is a sine qua non in a sophiological education. Beekeeping, gardening, woodworking, handcrafts such as knitting and crochet, animal husbandry, and so forth—all examples of working with nature or the products of the natural world—allow one to participate in the world of Creation as almost nothing else does. Even more, this work allows one an experiential immersion in the worlds of life and death in ways we might not be aware of without a phenomenological presence to their realities.

I’ve written about much of this in my book, Transfiguration. But there is so much more to be said, so much more to be disclosed and experienced. This is the essence of Sophiology.

Steve Winwood’s version of Eleanor Farjeon’s “Love Lives Again”

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.