Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions And The Roots Of Christian Mysticism (Numen Book Series, 70) by Guy G. Stroumsa

Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions And The Roots Of Christian Mysticism (Numen Book Series, 70) Reviews

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  Latoni Latinon Lantion Laiton Lionta & Lotina

  An interesting piece of intellectual history that makes an attempt at interpreting the transition from traditional conceptions of esotericism to mystical and personal practices of Christianity Proper. The author contends that Christians from Augustine onwards took the esoteric aspects and words(mystery) of, say, Pauline letters, themselves leftovers from his Jewish heritage, and re-interpreted them as pertaining only to interior qualities of each man. References to elite doctrine became transformed into conflicts solely inside each man and his own understanding. Bizarrely, this move was necessitated by the universalistic ethos of Christianity, which was in tension with the early Christian elements even if Gnostics were excluded. In this roundabout way, they became, with Augustine, the inventors of the modern self and pre-psychologists of sorts, in stark contrast to the earlier conceptions of souls. What was once conceptualized as a band of initiates became a faculty inside all of us; the city became man, the esoteric knowledge a mystical theology.
  
  While this move obviously has a positive inclusive aspect to it, I find it a bit worrying in that it reduces the horizon of knowledge while claiming to open it. It seems to offer a pseudo-replication of the earlier esoteric mystery completely inside one's self, seemingly so as to render any effective investigations as laughable from the outset, as vain curiositas. Its is, after all, entirely possible that the truly esoteric side, instead of the fake mystico-theological one, never really disappeared. It stands to reason that the anti-esotericist, pro-psychological, mystical texts are precisely the most suspicious ones. Still, one can sympathize with Augustine's denigration of the many using esotericism as a sort of advertisement to their teachings: after all, it seems there were all too many people that were incredibly eager to share to the world that they have something to withhold. Is this the whole story, though? It made me think about the dynamics between the religious elites of every society and its masses: the contempt the elites feel for the masses must make it very hard for them to witness that at some point the masses actually start deriving some kind of happiness from their fake teachings. There would actually be a sort of impulse to reveal the mystery, to further torture the masses that are already being tortured by engineered catastrophes, secret tech and the like. The culmination of the elite scorn would be the moment of revelation, of all the secret technology and the causes of wars, at a point where absolutely nothing can be done. So, that's one theory to explain why the elite religious societies would try to hint about the truth, but not daring to reveal it fully. With mystical theology, it seems that ideally a solid wall of ignorance could be built which the consciousness of the brutal, queasy structure of every society could not breach. However, it's somehow rather hard to celebrate such an achievement with too much enthusiasm.
  
  Obviously, this transformation of esotericism to interior mysticism has inevitably had huge effects on later intellectual history. The most striking thing is that it renders the mythic dimension absent from the core solar mytheme of sun's descent and ascent as exemplified by Jesus Christ: not just absent through ignorance, but categorically absent, as in, it has to be understood within one's own experience: no matter that the "it" is highly specific, and conceals within it a veritable bricolage of early mythologies, the proverbial perennial philosophy. In a sense, it seems that the sola scriptura of Martin Luther has earlier roots than I have thought: Christians such as Irenaeus referred to the Scripture as a "body of Truth" and following this line of interpretation, combining it with the Septuagint reference to Jesus as Logos, and noting that parchments were usually made of sheep or goat, the division of the Book of Revelation, of whom goat is the solstitial sign in the age of Pisces with Aries being the earlier era of Moses, we can see that God was literally made flesh with parchment technology. In this sense, the Bible and specifically the New Testament can be seen not only as a commentarial hybrid, consisting on the commented and the commenter, but also as a commentary on the structure of the medium itself, much like the discovery of folding in to solve theretofore unsolvable mathematical problems: this is supported by the fact that the process of drying parchment mirrors crucifixion and earlier sacred grove posings. The text is somehow pointing at its own existence: as a solid entity for anyone to approach, outside of the shroud of secret ceremonies, in actuality, built on the sufferings of animals. Considering the importance of parchment in book preservation, should vegans even read books, considering that in their preferred world modern book culture would not exist. Even today, though, in the age of Pisces, we are hurting the fish instead of the lambs in order to transmit information on the internet by means of an extensive network of sub-marine cables. Talking of the parchment object, it would be literally true that the animal died in order to ease the bad consciences of the readers.
  
  Of course, what's also interesting is the Plotinian undercurrent in the interiority of mystical practice, noted even by the author, who moreso stresses the roots of the esoteric aspects of Christianity in Jewish esotericism. It is strange because I've also skimmed books which pit the Hellenic wisdom of Plotinus against the Gnostics. Even if Plotinus exemplifies curiositas, the interior focus is still there: and even with his reverence of Plato, one could argue that by his systematizing method alone he departs radically from him in that Platonic texts are definitely poetic and veiled, but playfully self-referential about it, much in the way the Scriptures are about their materiality. Yet some people say Gnostics are the ones who carry forward the spirit of Hellenic paganism and esotericism and are more anti-judaizing, which is understandable given their affinity towards Marcionite conceptions. Maybe it should be noted that Hellenes, or Greeks, should be distinguished from the nascent Christian civilization along with the Jews, although nowadays only Jews and Christians remain, the latter supposedly representing Athens, although Plotinus or Gemistos Plethon would probably not agree with that.
• 
  Toby

  While this book may be sufficient as a reference text, it is certainly not aimed at the lay-person. The writing is overly scholarly (honestly, I wish people wouldn't throw latin phrases in simply for the sake of it! It doesn't make you look smart, it makes you look like a bad writer), and the content dry and lacking. I can't say I particularly learned anything from this book other than not to read anything else by this author.