Friday, June 17, 2005
UNPACKING THE AFTERWORD concluded...
I'd like to quote a longer section because it seems to indicate that von B is giving the seeker permission to approach angelic and fallen angelic powers. He indicates this is possible because all have been brought to heel before Christ, and so the author of MEDITATIONS "is able to enter into all the varieties of occult science with such sovereignty, because for him they are secondary realities, which are only able to be truly known when they can be referred to the absolute mystery of divine love manifest in Christ." If that is true, the question yet remains why would he in essence give his permission to dabble in occultism and seem to indicate you can do so with impunity?
Here is the passage:
Repeated attempts have been made to accommodate the Cabbala and the Tarot to Catholic teaching. The most extensive undertaking of this kind was that of Eliphas Levi [a defrocked French priest. Aleister Crowley claimed to be the reincarnation of Levi - ct] (the pseudonym of Abbe Alphonse-Louis Constant), whose first work (Dogma et rituel de la haute magic) appeared in 1854. The author knows the work of Eliphas Levi well and in the MEDITATIONS deepens the often naive expositions of the latter. There have also been other spiritual streams--such as the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" [a magical fraternity. Crowley was a member and formed the HOGD's inner order, the A.'.A.'. - ct] - which have worked partly to hinder the realisation of the Christian aspect of the Tarot symbols. (Arthur Edward Waite, who published in 1910 THE PICTORIAL KEY OF THE TAROT, was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn".) Among numerous other attempts to interpret the Tarot cards, that of the Russian author P. D. Ouspensky [protege of occultist G. I. Gurdjieff, who created the Enneagram - ct] could be mentioned. Like the anonymous author [Tomberg], who refers to him critically in the MEDITATIONS, Ouspensky was a Russian emigrant, and was also an influential teacher. In his work A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE, he expounds the game of Tarot according to the general outline of his world-view, partly in the framework of Eastern religion and partly in that of depth psychology imbued with erotic elements.
Allow me to break in here for a moment. Fr. Richard Rohr promotes the Gurdjieff Enneagram. He has been on a seminary program with Fr. Ron Rollheiser, the promoter of sacramental sex. Here in von B's words we see that a student of the creator of the Enneagram attempted to interpret the Tarot, and that the Tarot has erotic elements. Is it any wonder that thoughts of clergy sexual abuse are going through my head right now?
Back to the Afterword.
It is not necessary to enumerate here the many authors--occultists, theosophists and anthroposophists--with whom the author of the MEDITATIONS enters into dialogue. There are those whom he rejects as lacking competence, and others, in contrast, from whom he borrows a thought that appears valuable to him, which he then incoprporates into his meditations--whether an interpretation of the Sephiroth (from Cabbala), or a thought from Jacob Boehme [German Protestant mystic - ct] or Rudolf Steiner, from Jung or Peladan [a Catholic occultist - ct], from Papus [Gerard Encausse, prominent member of the Paris occult revival - ct] or Maitre Philippe [contemporary of Eliphas Levi - ct], or whoever it may be. Often he refers also to the great philosophers and theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, Neitzsche, Bergson, Solovieff, Teilhard de Chardin, or to dramatists and poets, such as Shakespeare, Goethe, De Coster, Cervantes, Baudelaire, and many others.
The basic spiritual direction of the author is recognizable by the fact of who--in the spiritual tradition--stands close to him: Whom does he frequently refer to, often with loving reverence? Again and again the names of St. Anthony the Great, St. Albertus Magnus and St. Francis of Assisi appear; and he quotes extensively above all from the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.
He immerses himself lovingly and with deep earnestness in the symbols of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. They inspire him; he allows himself to be borne aloft on the wings of his imagination, to behold the depths of the world and of the soul. Thereby a memory of something known or read in the past may spontaneously occur to him; and occasionally the various lines of thought intertwine and cross threads. The formidable power of his spiritual vision lies less in the detail than in the ineluctable certainty that at the depths of existence there is an interrelationship between all things by way of analogy. This lends his vision a unifying power of surveyance, which holds the remotely scattered individual insights magnetically in place and enables them to be appropriately ordered. For him this "magical" capacity has nothing to do with the human being's despotic nature--the commonplace, magical will-to-power, which seeks by way of world forces to gain dominion in the realm of knowledge and in the sphere of destiny. Rather, it is something very different. One can only call it the "magic of grace", the magic of which issues forth from the very heart of the mysteries of the Catholic faith. Since this faith itself neither is nor aspires to be magical, the magic amounts to the content of faith: that all cosmic "mights and powers" are subject to the sole rulership of Christ. The New Testament depicts this subjugation of the cosmic powers to Christ as a process which--although achieved in principle--will continue until the end of the world. Thereby a dangerous possibility emerges: the temptation--through curiosity or the desire for power--to prematurely give oneself up to the cosmic powers instead of approaching them by way of the triumphant victory of Christ. The right approach is only possible through faith and, ultimately, through truly Christian wisdom.
Insight into this is of decisive importance for a proper assessment of the MEDITATIONS (a work that many a reader certainly find confusing). The author is able to enter into all the varieties of occult science with such sovereignty, because for him they are secondary realities, which are only able to be truly known when they can be referred to the absolute mystery of divine love manifest in Christ.
Opposed to that I would place CCC 409: "The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity."
That passage from the CCC is hardly a blessing to dabble in occult powers! Neither is it an indication that doing so is safe because Christ has conquered sin and death.
Curiosity and the lure of evil powers is a temptation that draws people in. We hardly need the sanction of a prominent theologian to go seeking out these powers. Fallen angels retain their free will and continue to temp man until the end of time, yet von B seems to disregard this fact while treating the occult powers as though they are nice tame household pets. Is this the result of his experiences with von Speyer?
What purpose did he intend his endorsement of this book to serve? How did he and Valentin Tomberg come to be on terms that would induce Tomberg to request such an endorsement?
There are multiple unanswered questions here.
