Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 15

And then he takes the Paschal Taper and plunges it thrice into the Font, singing each time on a higher note:

May the power of the Holy Spirit descend into the fulness of this Font.

And breathing thrice upon it once more, he goes on:

And make the whole substance of this water fruitful for the effecting of regeneration.

And the Taper is finally lifted out of the water.'

1 Water and wine are symbols of the human and the divine, the union of the two being signified in the mixture or transformation of the one into the other.

2 The symbolism of the immersion of the Taper in the "immaculate womb" of the Font is very obviously phallic, though, just as obviously, this is the form r8o Myth and Ritual in Christianity The chant continues: Here may the stains of all sins be washed out: here may human nature, created in thine image, and reformed to the honour of its Principle, be cleansed from the entire squalor of the old man: that every one who enters into this sacrament of regeneration may be reborn into the new childhood of true innocence. Through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son: who shall come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. Amen.

When the consecrated water has been sprinkled over the congregation, the priest takes vessels of the two holy oils called the Oil of Catechumens and the Oil of Chrism-one for the anointing of catechumens and the other for conferring the power of the Holy Spirit-oil being a symbol of healing and mercy. These he pours into the Font in the form of a cross, and finally spreads the oil over the whole surface of the water.'

All is now ready for the initiation of the catechumens, for whom the whole liturgy has thus far been a kind of final instruction in the arcana of the Faith. The rite of the Blessing of the Font has sufficiently explained the mystery of Baptism rather than the content of the symbol. Mediaeval artists were not afraid to represent the conception of Christ by the Spirit in the figure of the Dove with its beak in a tube which pa.s.sed under the skirts of the Virgin. Once again, mythology is not s.e.xual, but s.e.xuality is mythological, since the union of the s.e.xes prefigures the transcending of duality, of the schism whereby man's experience is divided into subject and object, self and other.

Thereby, incidentally, insulating the water from air, as it is to remain in the Font for the whole succeeding year. It was usually necessary in the Middle Ages to keep the lid of the Font locked, since the water was frequently stolen for magical purposes. The same precaution was observed in regard to the Host kept in the tabernacle of the altar, so as to preserve the Body of Christ from the desecration of the Black Ma.s.s offered in honour of the Devil. This diabolical rite was celebrated with a stolen Host by an unfrocked priest upon the body of a naked woman. The text of the Ma.s.s was read backwards, and the Host ritually defiled.

that little more needs to be said of it. Clearly, it involves the most extraordinary complex of symbols, since the water is all in one the Womb of the Virgin, the stuff of the world, the emblem of Purity or Voidness in which the past leaves no stain, and the depths into which the neophyte descends with Christ in his death, and from which he rises with Christ in his Resurrection. All in all, Baptism represents the involution and evolution of the Spirit, the descent into and ascent from the waters being the whole "play" of G.o.d in disrmembering and remembering himself, in dying into multiplicity and rising into Unity.

Fully celebrated, the rite of Baptism is an impressive ceree mony, involving not only the actual immersion of the candi, dates but also a preliminary anointing upon the "gates of the senses"-the eyes, ears, nose, lips, hands and feet-and the placing of "the salt of wisdom" upon the tongue. Strictly speaking, the candidates should be thrice immersed in the Font so that the water covers their heads, and at the same time the priest gives them the new Name, which is "in Christ", conjoining it with the Name of the Holy Trinity, saying, "N, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." After immersion the "new Christs" are again vested in white, and given candles lit from the New Fire.2 Official Catholicism takes the position that the reception of the physical sacrament, with certain exceptions, is the sine qua non of salvation and confers regeneration "automatically" (ex opere operato) whether the candidate actually understands x However, it has long been considered ritually sufficient to pour the water thrice upon some part of the body, usually the forehead.

2 Since ancient times this sacrament has suffered a great deal of curtailment in the richness of its symbolism. The inevitable prudery of the early Church soon made an end of the proper custom of plunging the candidates into the waters naked-signifying the castingroff of every possession to which the mind has clung, every device for the protection of the ego. For the ego is, as a matter of fact, nothing but "clothing"-that is, habit, the repeated meeting of the present and the "new" with a mind conditioned wholly by the past.

what is happening or not. This doctrine is a strange twisting of a marvelous insight-the insight that no man, no ego, can possibly attain the G.o.dhead by its own effort or acc.u.mulation of knowledge. That the true Self of man is the divinity is an "automatic truth"-which is to say that it is so, whether it is realized or not. What is necessary for Baptism is not at all the acquisition of knowledge but rather the getting rid of it-"knowledge" in this sense meaning the taking seriously of the conventional vision of life. It requires, too, not the making of an effort, but the giving up of every effort-in the sense of effon made to cling to the past, to hold on to death. But the tragedy of merely formal Baptism is not that it is given to people with, out understanding, but that it is given without ununderstand, ing, and remains the empty enactment of a myth to which the keys have been lost.

When the initiations have been completed, the priest and his ministers return to the high altar, and, prostrating themselves before it, begin the Litanies Kyrie eleison Cbriste eleison Kyrie eleison calling upon the Holy Trinity for its mercy, and upon all the angels and saints for their prayers of intercession. About halfway through the Litanies, the sacred ministers leave the sanctuary to vest themselves in white for the celebration of the Ma.s.s. Since the ceremonies began a little before midnight, The exceptions being the Baptism of Blood (i.e. the martyrdom of an unbaptized person on behalf of the Faith) and the Baptism of Desire, said to have been received by such as would have accepted Baptism had they ever had the opportunity of receiving it, or of being exposed to the teaching of the Faith. A sacrament is said to be effective and valid ex opere operato, by the deed done, as distinct from ex opere operands, by the deed of the doer. Thus the validity of the sacrament depends neither upon the personal sanct.i.ty of the priest nor upon the full comprehension of the recipient. This is, of course, a shadow of the metaphysical principle that however much the universe may seem to be divided into parts, its Reality remains undivided.

FIG. II THE RESURRECTION.

Spanish woodcut, c. Isth century it would now be close to dawn, and the rising sun would be greeted by the bells of the church pealing out once more, as the priest begins the Ma.s.s intoning GIoria in excelsis Deo!

For the newly initiated this is the first Ma.s.s in which they have ever panic.i.p.ated. Having descended with Christ into the dark waters and risen again from them, they are now ready to partake of the mystery which represents their ident.i.ty with the Risen Body-projected out of eternity into time as the Bread and Wine forming human flesh and blood.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church the solemnity and glory of Easter is stressed even more than in the West, though the Liturgy lacks the formal and structural interest of the Roman rite. However, what it lacks in this respect is made up in the sheer splendour of a celebration which turns night into day, converting the church into a veritable image of heaven by the brilliance of gold vestments and icons s.h.i.+ning in the light of innumerable candles. As in the ancient Vest, the rite begins at midnight. It starts with the symbolic act of opening the Holy Door which, in the Eastern Church, closes off the entrance to the sanctuary and the altar. For in the Eastern Rite it is still very clear that the Ma.s.s is a mystery; it is not, as in the West, celebrated in open view but behind the icanastasis, the screen which divides the sanctuary from the main body of the church. The Holy Door stands at the centre of this screen as a type of the janua coeli, the Gate of Heaven which, viewed from the opposite direction, is also the Jaws of Death and Hades, and thus the Active Door of the entrance to Paradise, guarded by the Cherubim, as well as the Narrow Gate of the needles eye.

At the moment of the Resurrection it is thrown on, and remains on throughout the whole week of Easter. Thereupon a procession of the priest and people, all carrying lighted candles, pa.s.ses out of the church, makes a circuit of the building, and returns to the porch outside the main entrance doors. The priest tenses the doors in the form of a cross, singing with the choir:

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and bestowing life upon those in the tomb.

Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shall they vanish, and like as wax that melteth at the fire.

Even so let the unG.o.dly perish at the presence of G.o.d, but let the righteous rejoice.

This is the day which the Lord bath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Upon this day those who are in the tomb, in the past, vanish like smoke and melt like wax-a dissolution which, to the unG.o.dly, is peris.h.i.+ng" but to the righteous" life and joy.

From Easter to Pentecost i8$ The doors are then opened, and all return into the church for some hours of continuous singing and rejoicing before the actual commencement of the Ma.s.s.

Let us purify our senses and we shall behold Christ, radiant with the light ineffable of the Resurrection... .

Now are all things filled with light: heaven and earth, and the places under the earth. All creation doth celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, on whom also it is founded.

Yesterday, 0 Christ, I was buried with thee, and today I rise again with thy rising. Yesterday I was crucified with thee: do thou thyself glorify me, 0 Saviour, in thy kingdom.

O Christ, who didst not break the Virgins gate by thy birth, having kept intact the seals; thou hast opened unto us the gates of Paradise.

O . . . sacrifice living and unslain! When, as G.o.d, thou hadst of thine own will offered up thyself unto the Father, thou didst raise up with thee also Adam, the father of our race, in that thou thyself didst rise from the grave.

We celebrate the death of death, the annihilation of Hades, the beginning of a life new and eternal 1 As Easter is preceded by forty days of sorrow-Lent-it is followed by forty days of rejoicing, leading up to the Feast of the Ascension. Christmas and Ascension mark the beginning and the end of the appearance of Christ on earth, and as the former is the mystery of the birth of G.o.d in man, x From the Canon of the Easter Liturgy, amibuted to St. John of Damascus. For a translation of the full text, see Hapgood, Servke Book of the Holy Orthodox, Catholic Apostolic Church (New York, 1922), pp. 226-4x.

the latter is the mystery of the birth of man in G.o.d-for the point of the Ascension is always that Christ carries back into heaven the human body which he received from the Virgin. The myth also makes the point that the further purpose of the Ascension is the sending of the Holy Spirit, which is to be celebrated ten days later at Pentecost, an event which cannot occur until Christ himself has "gone away". For this reason Ascension and Pentecost are so closely related that the two must understood together, for they illumine one another mutually.'

The Old Testament "andryp" of these events is really the building of the Tower of Babel, the story in Genesis of the attempt of men to build a tower whose top would ascend to heaven-an arrogance which the Lord G.o.d punished by the "confusion of tongues", which is ordinarily held to be the origin of the fact that men speak different languages. Contrari wise, when Christ truly ascends to heaven he sends upon his Apostles the Holy Spirit with the "gift of tongues"-the power to speak a language which all men will understand. The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit are traditionally said to be Wisdom, Understanding, and Counsel, and in general the reception of the Holy Spirit is connected with the actual realization, the inward experiencing, of all that the myth signifies in an external and figurative way. Babel is hybris-pride-the futile attempt of the ego to reach heaven, to comprehend reality, by its own efforts and in its own terms, which is to say by verbal know, ledge. The attempt to define reality conceptually and verbally leads, then, to nothing but confusion, since whatever is described or conceived is "by definition"-that is, finite and conventional.

The Ascension of Christ and the carrying of manhood into heaven with his own Body involves, of course, an extension of the truth already signified in the Resurrection-that what has. .h.i.therto been known as the material, bodily universe of

1 For the consecutive story, see Acts xt x to z: zr.

FIG. I2 THE ASCENSION.

Spanish woodcut, c. Isth century "things", is, in the light of the Eternal Now, divinity itself. But this transfiguration of the world is not realized while it remains "in symbol" only-that is to say, so long as the myth is not realized, so long as the Resurrection and Ascension seem to have happened only to Jesus of Nazareth. It is for this reason that the Spirit, the real understanding, cannot come until Jesus departs. The mission of Christ is not, therefore, fulfilled until the historical Jesus has vanished into eternity, until man finds G.o.d supremely revealed in the Now, and no more in the mere record of the Gospels. It is really astonis.h.i.+ng that official theology should have failed to see this point when the myth itself points it out with such marvelous clarity, telling that the Apostles receive Wisdom and Understanding, and the gift of interpretation, only in the moment when the historical Jesus has disappeared.

z 88 Myth and Ritual in Christianity This may explain the fact that to this day the Holy Spirit has played a very minor part in Christian symbolism as compared with the Father and the Son, remaining, as it were, the submerged and occluded Person of the Trinity. Patristic writers speak frequently of the "divine economy whereby the Three Persons of the Trinity have different functions-as that the Father is G.o.d above us, the Son is G.o.d with us, and the Spirit is G.o.d "in" us. For the Third Person of the Trinity is precisely that "breath of G.o.d", the roach Adonai, which was breathed into the mouth of Adam, so that to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit is to realize the divinity and eternity of the true Self, of that which one is, as distinct from that which one was. But before such an understanding comes to pa.s.s G.o.d is apprehended in the letter rather than the spirit, in the mythical image rather than the actuality.'

Pentecost, coming fifty days after the Pa.s.sover, was the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the celebration of fruition, of the harvest. Now the Pa.s.sover celebrated not only the deliverance from Egypt, but also the first/fruits of the harvest, for which reason Christian imagery refers constantly to Christ as the "first/fruit of the New Creation. The first to rise from death rises in the very season when the buried grain first rises again into fruition. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first,fruits of those that slept. "2 At Pentecost all the fruits are gathered in, and the work of Christ is complete because the Resurrection is now inclusive of all men and of the total universe. Ascended into heaven, Christ is no more Jesus but "all,in.all", for when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he t For the more strictly theological aspects of the identification of the Holy Spirit with that ruacb or puma which is the third component of the Pauline trichotomy of man, see my Supreme Ident.i.ty (London and New York, 195o), esp. pp. 79-84.

2 I Corinthians 15: ao.

ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lowest parts of the earth ? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.'

Since, then, Pentecost is the time of "gathering in" we may well expect to find that "when the day of Pentecost was fully come" the Apostles "were all with one accord in one place", because "I, ifI be lifted up, will draw all men unto me". And then, because the great awakening is always "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye",-"""suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rus.h.i.+ng, mighty wind; and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.2 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit "3 The immediate result was that there descended upon them the "gift of tongues" glossolalia--so that when they spoke every man heard them in his own native language. This gift is the sign that all which has. .h.i.therto come to pa.s.s, the entire mystery of Incarnation and Atonement, is now no more understood "in the letter" but "in the Spirit". For when the mind is no longer spellbound, the confusion of tongues gives place to the gift of tongues the power to use the Word without being enthralled by it. But, of course, this power belongs only to him who is the Word, so that the sending of the Spirit is the realization of Christ not merely with us but in us. His Ascension into Heaven is his "withdrawal" from the circ.u.mference of things, from the external world, to the centre-to be the inmost reality of all.

It is for this reason that Pentecost is regarded as the origin,

r Ephesians 4: 8-1o.

2 The tongue of flame just above the had is immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the symbolism of Kundalini.Yoga as the final liberation in which the spirit ascends out through the Sundoor in the dome of the skull-architecturally represented in East and west alike as the point, spire, or other ornament surmounting the dome. See Coomaraswamy, art. "Symbolism of the Dotne' in Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. xiv, 3 (1938).

3 Acts z: 1-4.

the birthday, of the Church-Eeclesia-those "called forth" from the world by the Word and "gathered together" in union with him to be "one Body" with Christ. For the proper sense of the word Church" is not a building or inst.i.tution: it is the comm.union of saints, of those who realize themselves to be the One Christ in present truth, and many selves in past seeming only. Thus the Church is also known as the Mystical Body of Christ, for which reason Catholicism has always insisted that spiritual authority resides in the living Church rather than in the "dead letter" of Scripture. But the Church has authority only in so far as it remains truly the Church, the company of those who realize effectively that they are one with the Author by whose Word the universe of time, s.p.a.ce, and duality is exfoliated from eternity. Apart from this, the Church remains no more than a myth, a form or image of a truth which is unrealized, so that its authority becomes conventional rather than actual.

Because the Church is a Body it has members, which is to say a structure or organic form. It is a confusion to speak of the members of Christ's Body as the mere individuals who "belong" to the Church, for, strictly speaking, one cannot belong to the Church and remain an individual. The members of the Body are therefore the various orders" of the Church. These orders are the various vocations or "callings" of men, which, in the Church, become so many different works performed by the hands of Christ. Basically there are two types of Order-Holy and Secular, clerical and lay, for whether priest or artisan every Christened person regards his work as that which he does as Christ, so that the work must always be worthy of its Author. It is in this sense that, on the one hand, :he priest is said to have authority and, on the other, the artist is said to have originality, since the work of both is to be done by the Author and Origin of the world.

The primitive Church existed in a non/Christian society, rnd it was not until after the time of Constantine that the full structure of a Christian society could be developed clearly. For when Church and State are united, it appears that the Order of the Church is threefold rather than twofold. For the Secular Order is then funher separated into Rulers and People, so that three groups formed the structure of mediaeval Christian societies-Lords Spiritual, Lords Temporal, and Commons-corresponding precisely to the three castes of Hindu society, Brahmana, Kshatriya, and Vaishya, as well as to the threefold nature of man--spirit, soul, and body. The Christian rites for the coronation of kings make it very clear that the temporal monarch is in some sense being ordained, for he is sacramentally anointed and has the hands of the bishop laid upon him in the same manner as at the ordination of a priest. Thus the office of a "Most Christian King, ruling by Divine .Right under G.o.d" is to be an instrument of the divine ordering of the natural world.

In the full concept of a Christian society there is, therefore, no real division of Church and State. The whole society is incorporated within the Church, and its visible structure is conceived as an earthly image of the Holy Trinity, or-perhaps more correctly-of the Incarnate Word. For, as we saw, the Christ has two natures, divine and human, the latter being further divided into soul and by. From still another point of view the Second Person of the Trinity is threefold in that his divine nature comprises male Logos and female Sophia, in which case the human nature would count as a single element -the Flesh. Thus it is not uncommon in mythology to find conceptions of the Spiritual and Temporal powers as respect ively male and female, with the union of Church and State regarded as a marriage.'

As to the Holy Order of the Church, it consisted from On this whole theme see Coomaraswamy's Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power, American Oriental Series XXII (New Haven, 1942). Also Rene Guenon, Autoi*i spirituelle et Pouvoir temporelle (Paris, 1930). On the threefold structure of society compare, too, E. J. Urwick, The Message of Plato (London, 1920).

ancient times of seven distinct offices, generally held to comprise the following: Major Orders: r. Bishops Priests Deacons

Minor Orders: 4. Subdeacons

Exorcists Readers Doorkeepers For many centuries, however, the It three have fallen into abeyance, and in the Roman Catholic Church both the Diaconate and Subdiaconate are usually no more than steppingstones to the Priesthood. Each order is held to include the powers of every lower order, and the whole hierarchy const.i.tutes a series of steps corresponding, like the cous of a temple, to various levels of insight or degrees of initiation. Thus the Doorkeeper protects the Church from the profane, and admits only those who sincerely desire that preliminary instruction represented by the office of Reader. The Doorkeeper has his "type", in divinis, in the Keeper of the Gate of Heaven-St. Peter-who opens the needles eye only to those small enough to enter, to those who are "no longer anyone". When, upon seeking admittance, St. Peter asks who it is that applies for entrance, the answer must always be, "No more I, but Christ".

Having made up his mind, on the basis of preliminary instruction, to enter the mystery, the applicant must next be purified-so that the office of Exorcist stands for the cutting off of his past, of his devil with its barbed tail which is still caught in the narrow door. Thus initiated, he may ascend the steps to the altar. At Solemn Ma.s.s the Subdeacon stands upon the floor of the Sanctuary, at the foot of the altar steps, while the Deacon stands above him on the first step itself. Their office is to serve the Priest, standing on the top step or pavement, in his offering of the Sacrifice. The Subdeacon sings the Lesson and pours the water into the Chalice; the Deacon sings the Gospel and pours in the wine.

The Priest's order represents ident.i.ty with Christ himself, since it is the Priest alone who may actually celebrate the Ma.s.s and grant Absolution from sin. I tly the Bishop is a sort of

Chief Priest, who has the special function of conferring the several orders and of ruling the Church as a whole. In the Sanctuary, his proper place is the throne behind the altar, facing the people.'