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.

Announcing: The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz

cover art by Emi Shigeno

This day, this day, this, this

The Royal Wedding is.

Art thou thereto by Birth inclin’d,

And unto joy of God design’d,

Then may’st thou to the Mountain tend,

Whereon three stately Temples stand,

And there see all from end to end.

Keep watch, and ward,

Thy self-regard;

Unless with diligence thou bathe,

The Wedding can’t thee harmless save:

He’ll dammage have that here delays;

Let him beware, too light that weighs.

Sponsus Sponsa

Thus reads the invitation Christian Rosenkreutz receives that begins his wondrous journey; and thus begins my invitation to readers of my new edition of Ezekiel Foxcroft’s translation of a seventeenth-century wondertale that has baffled readers, the curious, and esoteric thrill-seekers ever since it first appeared in German in 1616.

As I've written here, I have pondered, puzzled over, and stood bemused by this text ever since my initial encounter with it in my youth. As such, I am very pleased that my own edition is now available. It has been, to say the least, a project with an extra-long incubation period.

As the jacket blurb describeth it:

The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was first published in the seventeenth century and has perplexed, amazed, and entertained generations of readers, seekers, and scholars every since.  Often described as an alchemical romance, the book has also been recognized as a precursor to science fiction, as a satire, and as a storehouse of esoteric knowledge. In his commentary, Michael Martin undertakes an agapeic reading of The Chymical Wedding and finds a text that has been misunderstood from the beginning, a narrative that offers instead of hoped-for secrets something much more useful: physic for the soul.

I am also profoundly appreciative of the following individuals and their words concerning my edition of this extraordinary book:

“Tennyson observed that most who sought they Holy Grail followed will-o-the-wisps into a marsh. In hardly any book is the reader at so great a risk of likewise losing the way and falling into reveries than in the enigmatic Chymical Wedding, perhaps as its author would later say, intended more as a pastiche of alchemical allegory than as a straightforward esoteric text. The book becomes a magic mirror in which the readers patently find their own spiritual concerns and ways reflected. What Martin achieves in his version of Foxcroft’s old and classic translation of the wedding and in his commentary, is to go through the mirror to what is surely the goal of all inner ways, the mysterium coniunctionis, the union of opposites, the inner unity we all seek and which ,on the outer side, society today so urgently needs. Michael Martin’s work becomes then what the work in essence is an invitation to that wedding of unification for which we were brought into being and which can and must be ,as he wisely leaves in Foxcroft’s drumbeat, received ‘This day, this day, this, this...’ ”

~ Bishop Seraphim Joseph Sigrist

“This fine edition makes widely accessible a text probably written by the highly influential German Seventeenth Century Protestant theologian Johann Valentin Andreae. It is one of the most significant works of Christian esotericism, which is at the same time a satirical commentary on that very tradition. Its ambivalent and yet symbolically profound quest for the deepest sense of Christian truth, which can serve to heal violent Christian and human divisions, is entirely relevant for us today. Once more we can resonate with Andreae’s sense that this truth is necessarily most evident and yet most secret, most serious and yet most comic, most urgent and yet most dangerous.” 

~ John Milbank

“Michael Martin’s edition of the 17th-century tale of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, along with his deeply insightful and soulful introduction and commentary, reveals that this poetic metaphysical story wields a transformative power needed now. The intellectual hubris of our present civilization veils the true world with the life of death. The way out—breakdown as breakthrough—exemplified by the very language of the tale, undoes us, baffles us intellectually, while pure poetic Eros opens receptivity of soul and the equation of Life and Love.”

~ Robert Sardello, Director, The School of Spiritual Psychology

“Although several versions of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz are currently available, Michael Martin reframes his new edition in a very useful way— one that answers what is perhaps the fundamental riddle of Rosicrucianism and the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. Namely, that the authors of the texts that revolutionized Western Esotericism in the early seventeenth century between 1614 and 1616 later confessed that it was all just a ludibrium—a game. What they meant —as Martin explains in both his Introduction and his concluding essay on ‘Marriage and the Chymical Wedding’—was not that it was all a ‘joke,’ but rather that it was a most ‘serious game,’ a linguistic or literary game in the same way that so many alchemical texts (and secrets) depend on wordplay of a very serious kind. In other words: this is a valuable edition that opens new ways of thinking about language and esotericism.”

~Christopher Bamford, author An Endless Trace: The Passionate Pursuit of Wisdom in the West

You can order a copy of The Chymical Wedding here.

The Irreducible Gap: The Paradox of Valentin Tomberg

Valentin Tomberg in the 1930s

Recently, I found myself getting pretty excited about the impending publication of Angelico Press’s edition of Valentin Tomberg’s magnum opus, known in English as Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Mysticism. My excitement started when I was allowed a sneak peak and opportunity to copyedit some of the paratexts for the edition. The paratexts—by Ernst von Hippel, Robert Spaemann, and Hans Urs von Balthasar—are practically worth the price of the book. Tomberg’s book, which has inspired many—but which has also undoubtedly concerned many—may be the most radically orthodox (yo, Milbank!) work of the last century.

Part of the wonder embodied in Meditations is how it balances a subtle (if highly idiosyncratic) traditionalism with some theologically daring proposition concerning astrology, reincarnation, and, most central to its message (if subsumed to some degree), sophiology. Spaemann attempts an explanation:

“What lies closest to the author’s heart, however, is opening a path for all seekers after Wisdom, all Hermeticists, Theosophists, and Anthroposophists, to the one Church—that of the apostles, of God-become-Man—as their true spiritual living-space, as the spiritual homeland from which, whether they will or no, they must daily draw life, and without whose prayers and sacraments the realities to which these latter correspond must surely disappear entirely from our world. His gratitude for this God-given spiritual living-space is most stirring in its warmth and depth. From the Catholic Church he does not expect a corresponding gratitude toward Hermetic wisdom-seekers and initiates, but only that it might clear out a humble corner for any who, in accord with their vocation, can do no other than walk the path of analogy and correspondence on the track of the mysteries—both great and small—of Reality, from time to time making most remarkable discoveries.”1

There can be little doubt that Tomberg’s book has done precisely this. I have encountered an extraordinary array of people from all walks of life, from all over the world, who entered or returned to the Catholic Church following their own encounters with Meditations, not least of whom is Robert Powell, the man responsible for translating the book into English. As he once told me, through the act of translating the manuscript, he felt called to enter the Catholic Mystery.

Tomberg’s non-traditional traditionalism (to turn a phrase) resides in his devotion to the dogmas of the Church, his upholding of the papal office, and his veneration for the saints, doctors, and teachers of Catholicism (he’s particularly fond of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Bonaventure, and Bernard of Clairvaux, among others)—while at the same time expressing his admiration for certain figures from the French Occult Revival of the nineteenth century (for example, Joséphin Péladan, Eliphas Levi, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, and so forth). His traditionalism, in fact, goes so far as to question Vatican II (Tomberg died in 1973). In his last book (Covenant of the Heart, also known as Lazarus, Come Forth!) he voices his skepticism about the aims of the Council:

“The combination of an unyielding, unshakable solidity of faith with the patience that can wait hundreds of years makes the ‘rock’ of the See of Peter unconquerable in the confrontation with the streams of time, which are all, indeed, merely temporal winds and waves. For the ‘demands and needs’ of the time are necessarily temporary. Also temporal, therefore, are efforts towards ‘democritization’ of the Church, de-dogmatization of Church teaching through psychological interpretations, and similar endeavors to ‘modernize’ the Church, her teaching, and her rules. They offend against the commandment: ‘Honor your father and your mother’.”2

Needless to say, a good many of Tomberg’s more zealous readers take up this thread—no doubt seasoned by a good dose of the anti-V2 hysteria that afflicts our times—and join in the chorus of Vatican II derision, if not flirting with Sede Vacantism or other varieties of alt-right Catholic bizarreness. But displeasure with Vatican II is not all there is to Valentin Tomberg.

More importantly, Tomberg was also a religious innovator who held a deep admiration for Teilhard de Chardin (which I’m sure feels awkward for the Traddies), Henri Bergson, and C. G. Jung. He also understood reincarnation as a metaphysical reality and recognized the influence of the stars on human life. And much more importantly (in my opinion), Tomberg was one of the first to articulate a Catholic Sophiology (I explore this in The Submerged Reality). But I don’t mean a “Catholic Sophiology” as intellectual construct: I mean a Catholic Sophiology as extension of the Tradition. In addition to other ways, he did this through his “Our Mother” prayer, as well as through his introduction of the Luminous Holy Trinity: The Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Soul (I've written about these here and here). So maybe he wasn’t as traditional as all that. Tomberg’s a paradox.

What Tomberg does, I think, is explode complacent notions of what it means to be “Catholic.” Ironically, the Tombergian Traddies often follow him here initially before trying to pass as the Catholic conservatives of their pre-V2 imaginations. He’s much more important than that. Tomberg, that is, cuts to the core of the Christian Mystery. As Slovoj Žižek explains it, “Christianity is the miraculous Event that disturbs the balance of the One-All; it is the violent intrusion of Difference that precisely throws the balanced circuit of the universe off the rails.”3 If Valentin Tomberg doesn’t disturb the balance of the One-All, nobody does.

It may be that even Tomberg didn’t see the power in what he was proposing. Sophiology, in the context of contemporary Christianity, carries with it a complete paradigm shift. No one likes to change, let alone shift paradigms, but that is clearly what confronts us in the work of Tomberg. Again to quote Žižek :

“...it is possible today to redeem this core of Christianity only in the gesture of abandoning the shell of its institutional organization (and, even more so, of its specific religious experience). The gap is irreducible: either one drops the religious form, or one maintains the form, but loses the essence. That is the ultimate heroic gesture that awaits Christianity: in order to save its treasure, it has to sacrifice itself—like Christ, who had to die so that Christianity could emerge.”4

Michael's latest book is 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, including courses on Sophiology and Valentin Tomberg’s Meditations on the Tarot.

1 Robert Spaemann, “Introduction to Second German Edition,” Meditations on the Tarot, trans. Robert Powell (Angelico Press, 2019), v.

2 Valentin Tomberg, Covenant of the Heart: Meditations of a Christian Hermeticist on the Mysteries of Tradition, trans. Robert Powell and James Morgante (Element, 1992), 197.

3 Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute: Or Why the Christian Legacy Is Worth Fighting for (Verso, 2000), 112.

4 Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (The MIT Press, 2003), 171.