wonderingstill

November 28, 2023

But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. – Matthew 5:34-35 (RSV-CE)

Beyond the moral exhortation, what captivates me in scripture like this is the relationship between Heaven, Earth, and the Holy One. Here Earth and Heaven are connected in the one who rests on them both.

As the throne of God, the invisible realm of Heaven enjoys primacy over God's footstool, the visible earthly realm. Yet both are a manifestation of God's reign and bear his presence each in a way appropriate to its nature.

It echoes the Hermetic Philosophy sounding then from out of Roman Egypt into the whole of the Hellenistic world.

As above, so below. That is the key to all mysteries.

That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above, to achieve the wonders of the one thing. The earth is a reflection of the macrocosm of the universe. – Hermetica, The Emerald Tablet

The eye of faith sees in the physical a reflection of the immaterial. It does not reject the physical, as the gnostics did then. Nor does it worship the material as a statement of God's favor, confusing gift for the giver as American Christians do now. Rather, a Christianity informed by the Hellenistic worldview into which it was born simply learns from the visible world about the invisible Father in order to love him rightly.

What does the turning season say about the nature of the Father? The leaves returning to the soil, do they not speak of the Son? And contemplating both, is it not the work of the Spirit to write the lessons of the Book of Nature onto the tablet of the human soul?

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

November 26, 2023

By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear. – Hebrews 11:3 (RSV-CE)

Planets moved through the icy night. Jupiter rose in the East while Uranus hid beneath the moon. Saturn lay low in the South as if biding its time. The November chill swept away all moisture from the air like a curtain, revealing a silent cinema of sky.

Reading esoteric Christianity alongside my Catholic faith, I've gained a new love for the Ptolemaic universe, not as a scientific worldview but as a living metaphor. The cosmos after Copernicus is our teacher, but its subject is limited to the sensory world of movement and matter.

I find it's not only possible but necessary to hold the original worldview alongside it in my imagination: a world of growth and decay, nested lovingly beneath the moon, in the center of concentric spheres of planetary intelligences, beneath the ring of fixed stars, each governed by angelic hierarchies, all descending into visible reality from the invisible Father through the Logos, God the Son. That is the world of the Early Church, the world in which the Incarnation makes sense: the Logos descending into his Creation as the Christ, permeating it like a ferment, distilling it like a spirit to reclaim its true nature and return it to its source.

Original Christians inhabited a pagan cosmos. We can't be moved by the one who moved them without actively imagining the realm in which he moved. The visible world is real and beautiful, yes, because of the invisible world of spirit it reflects.

Where Copernicus and Galileo reveal a cosmology of knowledge, Ptolemy and Hermetic philosophy preserve an anthropology of wisdom. Nights like this deliver the rest of the lesson.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

November 21, 2023

The works of the Lord have existed from the beginning by his creation, and when he made them, he determined their divisions. He arranged his works in an eternal order, and their dominion for all generations; they neither hunger nor grow weary, and they do not cease from their labors. – Sirach 16:26-27 (RSV-CE)

It is Spirit as cause that moves me, not matter as effect. This world of form and change is full of goodness and beauty, despite its human detractors. Still, that beauty is reflection only, its source overlooked by a faithful trained to see in Jesus only guru or teacher or judge before Wisdom or Logos or Lord.

I seek the faith that rests on cosmic things, on unspoken Word woven into the very fabric of matter and cycles of the natural world. When Wisdom, the image of the unseen, is spoken as Word we become incarnate. Wonder is the only prayerful response, the needful precursor to faith.

The song of a sunrise. The cadence of wandering planets. The weeping of tides. The sleep of trees. The Logos, God the Son, moves through all things. Faith, the study of divine motion, studies that book of nature for signs of the same spirit forces at work in the human soul.

God is in the Mind, the Mind in the Soul, the Soul in the Matter, all things by Eternity. – Hermetica 10:36

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.