Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 3

O G.o.d, whose Spirit in the very beginning of the world moved over the waters, that even then the

1 Genesis z: r-2. 2 The Nicene Creed. 3 John 3: 5.

nature of water might receive the virtue of sancti, fication.... By a secret mixture of thy divine virtue render this water fruitful for the regeneration of men, to the end that those who have been sanctified in the immaculate womb ofthis divine font, being born again a new creature may come forth a heavenly offspring.z

In the beginning the Spirit conceived, the waters gave birth, and the world which was born from their conjunction was the first material image of the Word, of G.o.d the Son, the Logos who was the ideal pattern after which the creation was modeled. After the world had been corrupted by Satan, the Spirit conceived again, and that which was born from the immaculate womb of the Virgin Mother Mary, Star of the Sea, was the Word himself in human flesh. Yet again the Spirit conceives, and that which is born again from "the immaculate womb of this divine font" is a man christened, a member of the Body of Christ, an alter Cbristus-for "to them gave he power to become the sons of G.o.d".2 The story goes on to tell us that when G.o.d had created Prima Materia, Chaos, the Earth Mother, he formed the universe from her in six days-days, it may be, by divine reckoning, which are periods of "a thousand years" in the Hebrew tradition, and 4,320,000 years in the Hindu.

On the first day, he created light, material light which must be distinguished from the spiritual and uncreated light of the i Prayer for the Blessing of the Pont, from the Liturgy of Holy Sat.u.r.day in the Roman Missal.

2 In the same way the texts of Mahayana Buddhism describe the world of things as the waves raised on an ocean by the wind. Cf. Bribbadaranyaka Upanishad, iii. 6, it is asked, "Since all this world is woven, warp and woof, on water, upon what is water woven, warp and woof?" And the answer, "On wind". So also Cbandogya Upanishad, vii. to. x, "It is just water made solid that is this earth, this atmosphere, this sky, that is G.o.ds and men, animals and birds." The significance of this symbolism will be discussed in ch. III, when we come to consider the role of the Virgin Mary.

Trinity, as well as from the supernatural light of the angels. At the same time he divided light from darkness and day from night.'

On the second day, he created the firmament of Heaven, the colossal dome (or sphere) of bra.s.s within the midst of the waters of chaos, so that it divided the upper waters from the nether waters-the waters above the firmament from those below.2 On the third day, he created the earth in the very centre of the firmament, and divided it from the waters so that the former became the dry land, and the latter the oceans. And on the underside of the earth at the Antipodes he created the seven/storey mountain of Purgatory. Within the earth, like a vast funnel reaching down to its very centre, he created the pit of h.e.l.l, surrounded with its nine rings of "pockets" or valleys, corresponding to the nine orders of the heavenly choirs above. Into the very depth of this pit he cast Lucifer and his angels, and some say that the mountain of Purgatory was made when the earth itself shrank from the falling Devil.3 On the same day, he created all trees, plants, flowers, and gra.s.ses to bear fruit for men and beasts, and herbs for the healing of diseases.

a The important symbol of division, of G.o.d setting his compa.s.s (dividers) upon the face of the deep, is discussed below, ch. III.

2 Water has a dual role in mythology, for sometimes it is the fountain of life and at other times "the depths" into which one should dread to fall. Thus to fall into the "nether waters" is to regress to a prehuman state, to be swamped by unconscious contents and to lose all rational control. For there are two ways of becoming ego/less or un..self~ish: to descend into the lower waters so that one is not even an ego, and to ascend into the upper waters by the increase of con/ sciousness, thus outgrowing the illusion of individual isolation.

3 The Mediaeval picture of the universe is not quite that of Genesis. In the former the firmament was spherical, since it was known that the earth is a globe, but in the latter it is a dome, and the dry land of the earth is divided from the nether waters. The brazen firmament is the Hebrew'Christian equivalent of the World Egg, originally laid by the Divine Bird upon the primaeval waters, as in the Egyptian, Orphic, and Hindu mythologies. It is of interest that the Devil lies at the very centre of the created universe-indicative, perhaps, of the feeling that the individual ego is the true centre of man, since, as we shall see, "I-ness" is what the Devil primarily represents.

FIG. I THE CREATION OF THE ANIMALS.

Woodcut from

the Meditations of Turrecremata, Rome 1473

On the fourth day, he created the sun, moon, and stars, and set them within seven crystal spheres, within the firmament and around the earth. In the first sphere he set the Moon, as a light for the night, in the second Mercury, in the third Venus, in the fourth the Sun, as a light for the day, in the fifth Mars, in the sixth Jupiter, and in the seventh Saturn. And round and about the outside of the seventh sphere he set the stars of the Zodiac, so that on this day the Sun lay under the Sign of the Ram, where it lies also at Easter, when the world was redeemed by the Sacrifice of the Lamb of G.o.d.

On the fifth day, he created all fish and birds.

On the sixth day, he created the beasts of the earth, and, finally, Adam-the man. He formed Adam from the dust and clay of the earth; he made him in his own image, and breathed the breath of his own divine life into his nostrils so that the so Myth and .Ritual in Christianity man became a living soul.' He made Adam the ruler of the earth, the head of nature, commanding all beasts, birds, fish, and plants to be subservient to him. One by one, G.o.d brought all those creatures into Adam's presence, and to each one Adam gave a name.

On the seventh day, Sat.u.r.day, the Sabbath, G.o.d rested, and rejoiced in the knowledge that everything which he had made was good. According to Clement of Alexandria, the six days of creation and the seventh of rest are to be understood as a kind of simultaneous radiation from a centre.

There proceed from G.o.d, the heart of the world, indefinite extensions-upwards and downwards, to right and left, backward and forward. Looking in these six directions, as at a constant number, he completes the creation of the world, of which he is the beginning and end. In him the six phases of time have their end, and it is from him that they receive their indefinite extension. And that is the secret of the number seven.'

For the number seven signifies G.o.d himself, the heart or centre of the six rays, sometimes called the Seventh Ray. In other words, in the six days G.o.d manifests himself outwardly, but on the seventh he returns back into himself. And this is a day of rest because the heart and centre of G.o.d is "unmoved", just as in a wheel the spokes turn but the hub remains fixed.3 i G.o.d's breath (roach Adonai) is the spirit, and is thus G.o.d himself residing within the vessel of clay, the two together const.i.tuting a living soul (psyche, nfesb). The symbolism indicates that Adam is the first incarnation and Christ the second, for as Christ is conceived of the Spirit and born of the Virgin Mother, Adam is the creation of the Spirit breathed into virgin matter.

2 Stromafa, vi. 16.

$ What Clement actually describes is the thremensional cross, which, when represented on a plane surface appears as the six,pointed star*, and this, curiously enough, is the earliest form of the Christian monogram for Christ, made by the superimposition of the initials of the Greek name IscoYc XPicTOC. It is for this reason that symbols of the sun-the astronomical The tradition maintains that Adam, the primordial man, was the perfect man as G.o.d originally designed him. He was physical and yet immortal, and all creatures of the earth obeyed him. The animals served him and the plants fed him, and there was no need for him to labour for his livelihood. He was thus in perfect harmony with his natural surroundings, and constantly aware of the presence of G.o.d. For this material image of himself G.o.d planted a garden-Eden-in the centre of the world, which was to be the earthly counterpart of Heaven, since all things which were below were to mirror those which were above. In Heaven there is "a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of G.o.d.... In the midst of the stream of it, and (branching out) on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bare twelve fruitings, and yielded her fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."' So also in Eden, "The tree of life (was) in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden."2 However, Eden was not quite like its heavenly prototype. There was the extra tree, the Tree of Knowledge. Yet this must be taken to represent the same risk which was taken in the creation of the angels with free will. For Adam, too, was endowed with this freedom, and the Tree of Knowledge may perhaps be regarded as a kind of materialization of the negative potentiality within that freedom-the very real possibility that Adam might choose his own will rather than G.o.d's. "And the Lord G.o.d commanded the man, saying, Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the Tree of the Knowledge imago Del-may be either four, or sixrayed stars, according as to whether the sun is shown in two or three dimensions. Thus the creation of the world in six directions and three dimensions is the primordial crucifixion of the Logos, the slaying of the Lamb at the foundation of the world (Revelation r3: 8). Creation is a sacrificial act in the sense that it is G.o.d's a.s.sumption of finite limitations, whereby the One is-in play but not in reality-dismembered into the Many.

r Revelation 22: r-2. 2 Genesis of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."t After this, the Lord G.o.d took another risk. He decided that it was not good for Adam to be alone, for of all the beasts of the field, none was sufficient to be a companion for him. So he put Adam into a deep sleep, and, taking out one of his ribs, fas.h.i.+oned from it the Woman, Eve. In this manner, then, was completed the creation of the First Parents of our race-immortal, free from all conflict and sorrow, innocent, naked, and unashamed.2 It was then that Lucifer entered the garden. He a.s.sumed the form of a serpent, and entwined himself about the Tree of Knowledge. In due time, Eve came to the part of the garden where the Tree was standing, and there beheld the golden fruit and the splendid snake with s.h.i.+ning scales, twisted around the trunk of the Tree. And the Serpent Lucifer murmured to Eve, saying, "Yes? Hath G.o.d said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden?" And Eve replied, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the Tree which is in the midst of the garden, G.o.d hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

"Ye shall not surely die," answered the Serpent. "For G.o.d

Genesis a: 16-17.

2 After "going to sleep" Adam became divided, no longer androgyne, but two s.e.xed. It was this that made it possible for him to fall. For when G.o.d first entered (breathed his spirit into) Adam, the indwelling spirit was "awake" and aware of its proper divinity, of its substanual unity with G.o.d. But this putting of Adam into a deep sleep is the Spirit's voluntary selfforgetting-a further extension of the sacrificial character of the creation, as when an actor, playing a part, forgets his proper ident.i.ty and identifies himself with the persona he has a.s.sumed. In the actual myth the generation of Eve and the Fall succeed one another, but myth extends in narrative what is simultaneous in reailty. (Note that in Plato's Symposium the order is reversed-division into two s.e.xes is the penalty for the fall.) It need not be supposed that this division of man refers to the biological origin of two s.e.xes. In mythology male and female, yang and yin, signify duality rather than s.e.xuality, and the Fall is the subordination of the human mind to the dualistic predicament in thinking and feeling-to the insoluble conflict between good and evil pleasure and pain, life and death.

knows that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil. So when Eve saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a Tree to be desired in that it would make one wise, she took and ate the fruit, and then went and gave some to Adam, so that he ate as well. At once the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. In the shame of this discovery they plucked fig/leaves, and, sewing them together, made ap.r.o.ns.

It was, at this time, the cool of the day, and apparently it was G.o.d's custom to descend from Heaven at this hour and walk in the garden. Hearing him coming, the pair went and hid themselves amongst the trees, fearing that he would see them in their nakedness. But G.o.d called them out of their hiding/ place, and, seeing the ap.r.o.ns of fig/leaves, demanded, "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the Tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?" And Adam, searching rather desperately for an excuse, replied, The woman thou gayest to be with me-she gave me of the Tree, and I did eat. Whereupon G.o.d turned to Eve-" What is this that thou hast done?" "The serpent", she answered, "beguiled me, and I did eat."

Hearing all this, the divine wrath of the Lord G.o.d was aroused, and he p.r.o.nounced a solemn and terrible curse upon the Serpent, and upon Adam and Eve-a curse which affected the whole realm of nature because Adam was its head and lord. He condemned the Serpent to go always upon its belly in the dust, and to be in perpetual enmity with the human race. He condemned Eve, and all her female offspring, to bring forth children in pain and sorrow, and to be subject to her husband. As for Adam, for Adams sake the Lord G.o.d cursed the very earth so that it would no longer bring forth fruit for him without sweat and toil, so that it would bring forth not only fruit but also thorns and thistles. And finally, he p.r.o.nounced the curse of death and of expulsion from the garden-"For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. ... Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever. . . ." Without a further word the Lord G.o.d expelled the pair from the garden, to till the ground from which they were taken. And at the eastern entrance to the garden, to guard the way to the Tree of Life, he set a Cherub with a sword of fire which turned every way.

From this moment death, suffering, and evil entered the material world-the outward and visible signs of something still worse, of the Fall of the world from Grace, of separation from the divine life of G.o.d, incurring the sentence pa.s.sed upon Lucifer-the sentence of everlasting d.a.m.nation.

Tradition, not scripture, adds a further word to this story. In the course of time one of the sons of Adam, named Seth, procured a branch of the fatal Tree. Versions of this story differ very much, for some accounts say that Adam himself brought it from Eden when he was expelled, and used it throughout his life for a staff: Others say that what Seth acs quired was not a branch of the Tree of Knowledge, but seeds from the Tree of Life, given to him by the angel sentinel 1 But despite the differing details, the theme is clear-a portion of one of the Trees came out of the garden, and subsequently had a most miraculous history.

It became the famous rod of Moses, which turned into a serpent to confound the Egyptian magicians, with which he divided the waters of the Red Sea so that the children of Israel could flee the hosts of Pharaoh in safety, upon which he hung nehushtan, the brazen serpent, so that all who beheld it were delivered from a plague of snakes, and with which he struck the rock in the wilderness so that it gave forth water. It became a beam in the at temple built by Solomon the Wise. It For the various versions see A. S. Rappoport, Mediaeval Legends of Christ (New York, i935), ch. rr.

3. THE TREE OF JESSE.

(British Museum, Nero MS., c. twelfth century.) From the phallus of the rec.u.mbent Jesse springs the Tree of Life, with its stem consisting of David, St. Mary, and the Christ. The many.petaled flower at the top contains the Hove of the Spirit. and the figures on either side are two prophets, perhaps 4. THE ELEVATION OF THE HOST AT HIGH Ma.s.s.

Taken in a monastic church, this photograph shows the solemn moment when the Host (the sacred Bread) has been consecrated as the Body of Christ and is raised for adoration. The three monks at the altar are the Priest (standing, and wearing the chasuble), the Deacon (kneeling by the Priest, wearing the dalmatic), and the Subdeacon (kneeling behind the Priest, wearing the humeral veil over the tunicle).

The four monks kneeling to the right of the altar are (left to right) the Thurifer in the act of censing the Host, the Master of Ceremonies, and two acolytes, one of whom is ringing the Sanctus Bell. The two in the fore/ ground are acolytes with candles.

In the Beginning 55 pa.s.sed, in time, to the carpenter's shop of Joseph, the foster, father of Jesus, and from him it was acquired by Judas the Betrayer, who, in the end, turned it over to the Roman soldiers who used it for the Cross upon which they crucified the Christ-for the Cross which became the Tree of Salvation.

Herein we discover one of those marvelous networks of correspondences which do so much to illumine the sense of the myth. For Eden is not only the mirror of Paradise above: it is also a reflection of Christ, wherein all the events of man's Redemption are seen in reverse. Over against the Tree of Knowledge, from which came death, is the Tree of the Cross, from which came eternal life. The parallel is brought out in the Proper Preface for the Ma.s.s at Pa.s.siontide:

Who didst set the salvation of mankind upon the Tree of the Cross, so that whence came death, thence also life might rise again, and that he who by the Tree was vanquisher might also by the Tree be vanquished, through Christ our Lord.

The Theme of the Cross as the true Tree of Life is taken up again in the Ma.s.s of the Presanctified on Good Friday Crux (delis, inter omnes Arbor una n.o.bilis: Nulla Silva talem profert Fronde, fore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulces clavos, Dulce pondus sustinet.

Faithful Cross, the one Tree n.o.ble above all: no forest affords the like of this in leaf, or flower, or seed. Sweet the wood, sweet the nails, sweet the weight it bears.

Over against Adam stands Christ, the Second Adam, for "the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam a

5.

s6 Myth and Ritual in Christianity quickening spirit.' For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive:' Over against Eve stands Mary, who bore the fruit of Life as against the fruit of death, and the Breviary hymn Ave, marls stella plays on the very reversal of Eves name: Sumens illud Ave Gabrielis are, Funda nos in pace, Mutaru Evae Women.

Receiving that Ave from the mouth of Gabriel, establish us in peace, changing the name of Eva.'

Opposite the Serpent Lucifer, entwining the Tree, there stands, again, Christ-a type of whom is seen by Christian symbolism in the nebusbtan-the Serpent of Bronze which Moses hung upon his staff for the healing of the plague, and which was kept for many years in the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple.

With the Fall of Adam and his expulsion from Eden, the Christian story has stated its problem. It has represented the whole plight of man and of the created universe-the sense that things are not as they should be, that death and pain are imperfections, the sense of separation from the divine, of conflict with nature, of guilt, anxiety, and impotence of will, since "the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do". From now on the story turns to the extrication of man from the tangle in which Lucifer has involved him, to his Salvation from Death and h.e.l.l.

i r Corinthians Is: 45. 2 r Corinthians rs: zz. 3 Vesper hymn in the Common of Feasts of the B.V.M.

CHAPTER II.

G.o.d and Satan B E C AU S E the foregoing story is the Christian account both of the very beginnings of the universe and of the origination of the great lifeproblem, evil, we cannot go further without trying to understand something of the meaning behind the story. For there really is no more important story in the whole history of Western civilization. It is not only the genesis of the Christ*'an myth as such: it is also a clue to the entire mentality of Western culture, which, for more than fifteen hundred years, regarded it as the serious and sober account of the worlds origin.

From the start, Christian mythology involves some problems of interpretation which are hardly found elsewhere. These are due to the fact that the myth proper contains a large admixture of theology, which, in the Western world, is a strange con/ fusion of two types of knowledge-metaphysic and science. Any attempt to describe and interpret the world/view of $7.

58 Myth and Ritual in Christianity Christianity is doomed to hopeless confusion if we do not begin with some distinctions between different types of knowledge--distinctions which have almost entirely escaped the Western mind.

Myth itself is simply a "numinous" story. Theology is an intrusion into the story of certain interpretations and comments, and of morals drawn from the story-as that the story itself is fact in the historical sense, or that the Lord G.o.d is the Ultimate Reality in the philosophical or metaphysical sense. The Hebrew Bible does not contain a.s.sertions of this nature, but Catholic doctrine most certainly does. To understand what theology has done to the myth, we must first try to see the distinction between the oddly a.s.sorted components of theology--science and metaphysic.

It is now generally agreed that science-a legacy of the Greeks-is the knowledge of events, things, or facts, and is thus essentially a history, a record of what has been as a basis for the prediction of what will be. Furthermore, "events" or "things" are parts of experience, of sense/data, which have been isolated, named, and cla.s.sified by the process of reflective thought which, because it involves memory, perceives certain regularities and orders in the manner wherein experience is presented to us. Thus the language of science consists of positive statements of fact: it is an a.n.a.lysis of past experience.

Metaphysic,' on the other hand, is the apprehension of a reality prior to any facts. We have suggested that, of the many valid interpretations of myth, the metaphysical is the most basic. In the words of Joseph Campbell: The singular form is used to distinguish it from the "metaphysics" of Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, which const.i.tute a viciously circular attempt to make factual statements about that which transcends facts-in other words, to make that which is metaphysical an object of scientific knowledge. In modern Western thought, something of an approach to a true metaphysic may best be found in the "meta.linguistics" of B. L. Whorf and others. See his "Language, Mind, and Reality" in ETC (Chicago, Spring 1952).

All mythology, whether of the folk or of the literati, preserves the iconography of a spiritual adventure that men have been accomplis.h.i.+ng repeatedly for millennia, and which, whenever it occurs, reveals such constant features that the innumerable mythologies of the world resemble each other as dialects of a single language.

Thus far, however, we have described the nature of metaphysic in somewhat traditional terminology which is peculiarly foreign to the modern mind. But the vast importance of the subject to a proper grasp of mythology requires an attempt to define it in a manner more suited to present ways of thinking. As a "prefactual" knowledge it is concerned with what we know directly and immediately, as distinct from what we know by reflection, inference, and abstraction. This is not to say that its concern is with uninterpreted sense data. It is far more fundamental. For the very notion that the foundations of experience are sense data is already an opinion, an interpre, tation of experience based upon memory and reflective thought. The word metaphysic itself is the clue to its meaning: it is the knowledge of that which is beyond" (meta) "nature" (physis)-that is to say, of the way in which we experience before we ascertain the nature of our experiences by reflection-by remembering, naming, and cla.s.sifying. Strictly speaking, then, metaphysic has no language, and its content is in communicable or ineffable.

In one sense, however, there is no need to communicate metaphysical knowledge because it is already the ground of what every man knows-what he knows before he knows anything else. It is the origin, the sine qua non, the basis of all other knowledge. But it is at the same time a neglected know ledge, because the mind is distracted by things that come after-somewhat as considerations about the past and future I In his Foreword to Maya Deren's Divine Hors.e.m.e.n (London and New York, 1953n p. I ~o Myth and Ritual in Christianity distract us from the immediate present. Therefore metaphysical knowledge is communicated, not by direct description, but by a removal of distractions and obstacles. When these are out of the way, it is possible for the mind to attend one pointedly to the only reality which it knows, veritably, immediately, now.

Nearly every great culture of the world has held this type of knowledge in the highest esteem, even when it was enjoyed only by an elite minority. For knowledge of this kind is the essential corrective, the "balast of sanity", for a species whose chief instrument of adaptation to the world is memory and reflective thought, the power of abstraction. It preserves the human mind from slavery to, as distinct from mastery of, the conventions of thought, and from the anguish and confusion which follow from treating certain abstractions, such as the ego, as realities. It keeps our consciousness in touch with life itself, and preserves it from the emotional frustrations which attend the pursuit of such purely abstract mirages as pleasure, the "future", or the "good".