THE GREEK MYSTERIES

The Dutch theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof, observes that "Indeed, as Western Christians we cannot take over the Eastern conception of the liturgy; we would experience it as a flight from reality or a trance. It has its background in the Greek mysteries and it takes place in a collectivistic experience of life which is not ours" (Hendrikus Berkhof, _Christian Faith An Introduction to the Study of the Faith_, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979 [1973] [trans. Sierd Woudstra]. What does this mean for Orthodoxy?

PLATONIC FORMS, IDEAS, DEMONS

Note that the immanent deep-structure of Platonic/Neoplatonic philosophy is isomorphic to that of trance mediumship, which remains a possibility for any person who participates in this tradition, even in its Orthodox Christian reformation into Hesychasm. "Neither country people nor most spiritualists", writes Kathleeen Raine, "have any knowledge of the philosophic tradition of Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, the Cabbala, Vedantism---which supports their own isolated experiences" (Kathleen Raine, _Hades Wrapped in Cloud_, in George Mills Harper (ed.), _Yeats and the Occult_, London and Basingstake: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1975, 1976, p.89).

"We have seen how, in the *Phaedo*, the Platonic `Forms' or `Ideas' are declared to be objects of the same kind with souls. But the Ideas... are not individual souls, but groups or classes of things called by their names. They are, in fact, descended from entities of the same order as the daemons...The Idea is a group-soul, related to its group as a mystery-daemon, like Dionysius, is related to his group of worshippers, his *thiasos*. The worshippers of Dionysius believed that, when they held their orgiastic rites, the one God entered into each and all of them; each and all became *entheoi*; they `partook' of the one divine nature, which was `communicated' to them all, and `present' in each" (See F.M. Cornford, _From Religion to Philosophy_, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1st Harper Torchbook edition, 1957, 5th printing, Dec.1965, (F.M. Cornford, ca.1912), pp.253-256 on *participation*). This motif of collective spirituality is very prominent in Orthodox ecclesiology. An indication of just why this "mystery model" of worship must be handled with care is to be found in an analysis of the novels of the English writer, Charles Williams, by Mary Carmen Rose. It is also a hint that genuine philosophy and spirituality are about much more than mere abstractions (unless we take "abstraction" in its older sense that it is when we are abstract from the body that we are best fit to behold the Divine Light -- and whatever else might be out there).

<< In seven novels [Charles] Williams explores the relation of Christianity to pagan gnostic, Jewish, and Muslim beliefs, practices, and mysticism. Also, Williams' *Taliessen through Logres* and *Descent of the Dove* express his Christian convictions...Williams' *The Place of the Lion* relates the spiritual awakening of Damaris Tighe, a graduate student in philosophy doing a dissertion on medieval Platonism without realizing the intellectual and spiritual import of the texts she studies. Anthony, like [C.S.] Lewis' Lord Digory loves Damaris and reflects on her thus:

She would go on thoughtfully playing with the dead pictures of ideas, with names and philosophies, Plato and Pythagoras and Anselm and Abelard, Athens and Alexandria and Paris, not knowing that the living existences to which seers and saints had looked were already in movement to avenge themselves on her. "O you sweet blasphemer!" Anthony moaned, "Can't you wake?" Gnostic traditions, medieval rituals, Aeons and Archangels---they were the cards she was playing in her own game. But she didn't know, she didn't understand. It wasn't her fault; it was the fault of her time, her culture, her education---the pseudo-knowledge that affected all the learned, the pseudo-skepticism that infected all the unlearned, in an age of pretense, and she was only pretending as everybody else did in this lost and imbecile century [p.73].

Also, in his preface to *Essays Presented to Charles Williams*, Lewis warns against the error of taking Williams' novels as only exciting fantasies. Lewis says that Williams' novels present

some of the most important things Williams had to say. They have, I think, been little understood. The frank supernaturalism and the frankly bloodcurdling episodes have deceived readers who were accustomed to seeing such "machines" used as toys and who supposed that what was serious must be naturalistic [p.8].

Also, Lewis expresses himself on the importance of Damaris' discovery of the reality of the archetypes:

And the frivolously academic who "do research" into archetypal ideas without suspecting that these were ever anything more than raw material for doctorate theses, may one day wake, like Damaris, to find that they are infinitely mistaken [p.9]." >>

(Pp.204,205 of Mary Carmen Rose, _The Christian Platonism of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams_, in Dominic J. O'Meara (ed.), _Neoplatonism and Christian Thought_, Norfolk, Virginia: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies / Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982, pp.203-212,289-290).

Of course, Orthodoxy is not Platonism or Neoplatonism, but has transformed them. What we have here is an indication of the nature of the Greek spirituality that Orthodoxy transformed, and of the transformed mystery structure of Orthodox liturgics. For a detailed history of this transformation: Vladimir Lossky, _The Vision of God_, Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1983 [First in English 1963]. Charles Williams was an Anglican, and more Orthodox than Platonic or Neoplatonic in this same transformational way. His writings are "imagist", and are an excellent introduction to Orthodox modes of consciousness, including Orthodoxy's "gothic" dimensions.

April, 1995

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