Wednesday, June 22, 2005
DANIIL ANDREEV
In reading The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Cornell University Press, 1997, the essay by Mikhail Epstein was by far the most disturbing. Titled "Daniil Andreev and the Mysticism of Femininity", the essay discusses Andreev's philosophy.
It begins:
Though Daniil Andreev's works began to be published only in 1989, thirty years after his death, his legacy is already a major factor in Russian intellectual life. His many admirers regard his treatise Roza mira (The rose of the world, 1950-58) as one of the highest peaks of twentieth-century Russian spirituality....His legacy belongs to those historiosophical and cosmosophical movements of Russian thought which attempt to synthesize natural sciences, social utopias, and religious inspirations in a kind of occult super-knowledge that claims the power to transform the world.
This combination of religion and science was a primary feature of the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who also claimed the occult super-knowledge of the Akashic Record accessed through clairvoyant encounter. Steiner called Anthroposophy spiritual-science. It is also noteworthy that at that link Anthroposophy is described as "phenomenological reduction" and it is claimed that Steiner's work anticipated the work of Edmund Husserl--the man credited with the formulation of phenomenology--by ten years. Phenomenology was the philosophical system of John Paul II. In one of Scott Hahn's lectures, he states: "Cardinal Ratzinger once said that theology is a spiritual science." Yet CCC 2116 clearly forbids clairvoyance, mentioning it specifically. Channeling is forbidden to a Catholic. It is a sin against the First Commandment.
An article about URI at Catholic Culture, written by Lee Penn, quoting Futurist Richard Kirby, states:
"Therefore the stock-in-trade of the spiritual scientist or esoteric futurist -- the terms are almost synonymous in many ways -- is to make sure that the spiritual sciences of the world are brought to the roundtable of discussion of exoteric philosophies and their bearing on the civil governance of the world. All the spiritual philosophies of the world are coming to the great Moot, the roundtable of world religions in dialogue. The United Religions Initiative is one of many associations promoting this dialogue. ... The Theosophy of the east and the Anthroposophy of the west are summoned to the great Conclave of spiritual science."
Masonic author W. L. Wilmshurst also speaks of spiritual science, indicating that the real purpose of the Craft of Masonry is "to enshrine profound truths of spiritual science beneath its veil of allegory."
Where does it lead? The Crosscircle website shows us. It leads to a destruction of the priesthood, and with it the sacraments. Through mysticism we have direct access to God. We no longer need an intermediary in the form of a priest. On another webpage, we are told "we are not the limited, fearful, sinful individuals that orthodox religion would have us believe we are." It tells us something else: "We have the right to our sexuality, to speak our feelings and to follow our own truth for that is the universal truth encoded into our divine essence. If our bodies are the pure temples where "God" can live, then why not love and worship it?" Did the priests who abused the laity's children believe that? The website shows us where the source and shows us its intolerance for Catholicism. At the bottom of the page there is a link for "A Rebirth of Spiritual Science. The Church, and the priesthood in particular, is a target. The Eucharist must be eliminated for Satan to reign. Why are Her members helping the opposition?
Returning to the Epstein essay:
Rose of the World is an "'interreligion of the future', uniting all existing churches as 'petals'." It relies on "long-standing traditions of European and Russian mysticism, especially 'sophiology,' which treats the Eternal Feminine as the Wisdom of God and the soul of the universe."
Andreev's description of the Rose of the World is a "universal theocracy" which "ends with the accession of the Antichrist who makes use of the 'interreligious' doctrines, including the worship of the Eternal Feminine, to perpetuate his own power and to eliminate the Rose of the World." (p. 326)
Sources of his thought include Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai Fedorov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Nikolai Berdiaev, Pavel Florensky, Andrei Bely, Velimir Khlebnikov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the cosmists, and the Eurasians (p. 327). Some of these philosophers are the same who influenced John Paul II according to George Weigel's biography (see Weigel pp. 568-569) .
In prison, "Daniil began to hear the voices that dictated his masterpiece, Roza mira. Andreev spent these years 'communicating' with the highest spirits in Russian and other national 'metacultures' (his term); Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Blok 'guided' him in his wanderings through other worlds. During this time, he wrote on tiny scraps of paper, which were invariably confiscated, but he restored his prose and verses from memory and continued to write." (p. 329)
The language of Roza mira cannot be identified with any known language but "one sometimes discerns Russian and especially Sanskrit roots. To Andreev's admirers the very fact that these neologisms are from no real language indicates the genuine source of this mystical inspiration, comprehensible only through spontaneous contact with the highest spirits." (p. 331-332) Did the language in any way resemble John Dee's Enochian, one wonders?
The doctrine of Sophiology was rejected because "it seemed to pattern the Trinity after a trivial family union and it introduced seductive sexual elements into the dogmatic core of Christianity." (p. 337) I note that the newest Catholic theology claims that the Trinity is mirrored in the family, according to the discussion on sacred sex that took place between this blog and Bettnet. Does this come out of THEOLOGY OF THE BODY?
"For Andreev, the replacement of the Holy Spirit by the female aspect of divinity is the 'decisive thesis' of his book, though he acknowledges that he dares to break with the 'foundation of foundations,' the Holy Trinity preached by the Christian churches." The idea of World Femininity can but grow into the idea of the Female aspect of Divinity..." (p. 344)
"Femininity, as a new dogma crucial for the religion of the Rose of the World, is also realized in the specific hierarchy of the female priesthood which reflects the second hypostasis of the Trinity." (p. 344)
"Unconsciously Andreev reveals the demonic side of his utopia: his reverence for a sexually bipolar divinity lays the foundation for the sacrilegious practices of the Antichrist and the eventual doom of the Rose of the World. The Antichrist's main project, and the source of his power over humanity, is sexual permissiveness, for which he will offer religious justification..." (p. 344) That is unnerving in light of Fr. Ron Rolheiser's reference to sex as sacrament. Intrusions such as this, Andreev believed, "lead to the darkening of spirituality with [the loosening of] the sexual element, to the blasphemous identification of cosmic spiritual marriage with sensual love and, in the final analysis, with ritual debauchery." (p. 345)
The Agni Yoga Center discusses Andreev (click the "What is your attitude toward Daniil Andrees" link where you can read:
We consider Daniil Andreev one of the great mystics who foresaw World Brotherhood based on Divine Ethics practised by the enlightened rulers of the future "Rose of the World", a poetic name for Maitreya Sangha. His book "Rose of the World" was intended to reconcile the ideas and message of the Brotherhood with the Russian Orthodox Christianity. It tenderly introduces basic concepts of the Oriental thought, such as reincarnation, karma and Divine Hierarchy to someone accustomed to traditional Orthodox dogmas. This was a very difficult mission that required downplaying ideas which are in apparent conflict with the Church and emphasizing the commonalities.
Daniil Andreev's mission of a Translator from the Teaching of Life into the language of Orthodox Christianity was quite successful. "Rose of the World" might bridge somewhat the spiritual gap between India and Russia, East and West.
The Epstein essay is online here if you care to read all of it.
In light of Andreev's Rose of the World concept of all religions being like the petals of the rose and his divine feminine aspect of the Rose of the World, take a look at this Rosa Mystica website, where "Rose of the World" is one of the names given to the "Our Lady - Alma Lopez" corruption of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Ros of the World appears near the bottom of the prayer. The terminology in Andreev is Catholic. The meaning behind the terms is anything but as this website demonstrates.
As I said, this essay, of all of them in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, was the most unnerving. Is something like this lurking in the back of the mind of Mikhail Gorbachev?
Here is mysticism but not Christianity. Here is mysticism decoupled from doctrine which Gershom Scholem says leads to mystical nihilism. The essay demonstrates where it can lead. Consider then that our monks are proposing interreligious mysticism through the John Main Seminars, with the idea that it can blend all religions into a syncretistic unity. How is that different from the Rose of the World? Is it out of this amorphous mysticism that our sexual abuse crisis arose?
Our Lady of Fatima, plead for our rescue!
