Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
Home
Guidelines
Reading
Alternative Grail
Psychonautics
Lydia's Well
Gnostique
Gaia-Sophia
Magdalene
Living Myth
Sky Lore
2012 S h i f t
Rite Action
Site Guide
Both in its historical origins and its literary dimensions, Arthurian legend is
a reflection of the survival of knowledge and practice from the Mysteries,
though not of the Mysteries themselves. The Mysteries were institutions of
initiation and education derived from a long tradition of shamanic practices
in Europa and the Near East. In structure and function, they may be
compared to a modern university system. Imagine that all the classrooms,
libraries, educational and training facilities, laboratories, lecture halls,
faculty offices, etc. of such a system were destroyed. The collegial network
for higher education in the classical world was totally eradicated with the
rise of Christianity. With it went the ancient network of Mystery cells, and
the method of shamanic initiation practiced in those cells.
1 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
Some people who carried the sacred knowledge that informed and guided
the Mysteries did survive, however. At the very moment when the Roman
Empire was crumbling, a Druid in Wales advised a local chieftain to set up
a militia to protect the diaspora of initiates from those ancient institutions.
The refugees had been arriving for some time. They first fled the ruined
sanctuaries in the 3rd century, and the diaspora continued for 200 years.
With the murder of Hypatia in 415 AD, the plight of the refugees
intensified. 415 is a threshold date, denoting a precise moment of abrupt
and profound change, a momentous shift.
The nodal dates 281 and 453 are also important in the parallel history
concerning the diaspora of the Mystery initiates. By contrast to a threshold
date like 415 AD, which marks a vast and abrupt shift, a watershed, a
nodal date is a vortex moment around which contrapuntal developments
occur. In the tumultuous swirl of the nodal moment, certain events and
conditions dissolve, sucked away into the depths of time, and other events
and conditions unfold, forming new patterns of experience. We will
occasionally apply the concept of nodal dates and nodal timing as these
lessons proceed.
Feudal Shutdown
Chivalry illustrates in a vivid manner the dissolving and upbuilding
currents of a nodal moment in history. Chivalry was the product of a new
cultural order, feudalism, that emerged in Europe with the breakdown of
the Roman Empire and the reversion of social organization to local levels.
With the invasions of the 5th century, law and order could no longer be
maintained by totalitarian measures proceeding from a central controlling
authority. The defenses of the Empire were breaking down, Huns and
Goths poured across Europe, and people in each region had to fend for
themselves. Landholders took up arms or hired men to protect their
property. Roman slavery broke down and underwent a conversion into
serfdom. With the new military organization came the idea of fealty to a
feudal lord. The knight who swore fealty vowed to protect the material and
familial interests of his lord and master.
At the nodal moment of 453, the old imperial structures of command and
control were dissolving, and a new social order taking shapesuch is the
contrapuntal dynamic of nodal timing. Simultaneous breakdown and
build-up of social and cultural patterns was evident all across the former
Empire. In this turbulent swirl of events the Dark Ages began.
Feudalism is not a particularly interesting subject, but it may soon become
more relevant if certain parts of the "global community" plunge into chaos
comparable to the last years of the Roman Empire. (It is fascinating to
consider that the "New World Order" which seems intended to create a
global totalitarian system is in fact driving the world more and more into
feudal-like fragmentation. It shatters rather than unites the global
community. But might that be precisely what it is intended to do?) The
organization of patriot groups in the US is a feudalistic trend. Gangs in
urban ghettos are feudalistic units. The tendencyindeed, the
necessityof the rich to confine themselves in walled compounds
protected by surveillance cameras and battalions of security guards is
2 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
3 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
The opposition of sexuality to spirituality is an anomaly of JudeoChristian-Islamic religion not found in many other cultures and
spiritual orientations. (The Temptation of Saint Hilarion,
D. L. Papety, 1843. Wallace Collection, London)
In fact, the Dark Ages were all about shutting down. Feudal shutdown was
evident in all aspects of the life of those times, but especially in sexual
mores. The amorous, hedonistic lifestyle of Pagan Europa was literally
"foreclosed," as happens when property is reclaimed. Christianity seized
upon womanhood as material property, but made women the least valued
property of the mundane order ruled by the Church. This takeover of the
feminine followed from the repression of the Sophianic vision of the
Mysteries, and the wholesale destruction of Pagan civilization.
Feminine sexuality was the primary target of feudal shutdown. But it was
also the issue on which the Pagan spirit rallied valiantly and tapped deep
inner resources to resist the repression of salvationist religion.
Unrequited Love
Chivalry arose during the breakdown of the command and control systems
of the Roman Empire, as noted. The inceptive nodal moment was 453 AD
(second half of the 5th Century, Arthur the warrior chieftain, formation of
the "Round Table"), and the concluding nodal moment was 1456 (Malory,
Le Morte d'Arthur)almost exactly a full millennium. During these ten
4 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
5 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
6 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
7 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
Buraq, the cult of the Beloved in Persian poetry," Wilson concludes that
"women are simply repressed" in Islam, now as then (p. 71).
In amour courtois, women were not only not repressed, they were the
inspiration for the spiritual liberation of the "armored" men who adored
them. Nothing comparable exists in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition,
except perhaps the Song of Solomon. This is a psalm of sacred love perhaps
inspired by the Queen of Sheba, who figures as a representation of the
Divine Feminine in Arabian mysticism. (The Queen of Sheba from
Bellifortis, by Conrad Meyer, Bohemia, c. 1405.) There may be some great
love stories in Arabian folk lore, but, on the whole, Islam does not permit
the concept of romantic love with a religious dimension, such that it could
become a religion in its own right.
Evidently, there is something murky in the Sufi connection that makes it
deeply incompatible with the model of heterosexual chivalric love.
Mystical-Erotic Ambiguities
Homosexuality is a capital crime in Islam, but this fact only adds to its
heretical appeal, Wilson observes. How to account for the homoerotic
element in Arabian mystical tradition? It is well known that the Arabs
preserved Greek science during the Dark Ages. It may well be that they
also inherited the Greek tradition of pedagogical homosexuality, the cult of
beautiful, smart young boys. To my knowledge, no scholar has so far
proposed this connection, but R. K. Dovers incomparable study, Greek
Homosexuality, supports it. Dover showed that the erastes, the beautiful
boy beloved of the older man, represented not only a lure of sexual purity
but a pristine intellectual ideal. (The lure was attainable, but not always
claimed, Dover explained. Even when it was claimed, custom required that
intercourse was "intercrural," between the thighs.) The atmosphere,
esthetics, and ethics of classical Greek homosexuality fit the Witness Game
rather neatly, I would say.
Moreover, lets bear in mind the lesson more recently illustrated by the life
of T. E. Lawrence, namely, that Islam is a male warrior feudal society. And
always has been. The date of the Hejira, the founding moment of Islam, is
622 AD. This is a nodal moment, but not merely for the rise of militant
religion. It is also the time of the first chivalric romance, Antar, written in
Andalucia in the first half of the 7th century, according to Reni Nelli, the
leading scholar of Occitanian literature. The feminist idealism of chivalry
arose simultaneously with Islam, but I do not advise that we regard these
phenomena in any sense as twins.
Wilson says that the Witness Game "was perfected in the centuries after
Ibn 'Arabis death" (p. 61), which puts it into the 13th century. The nodal
date of 1136 AD, cited by de Rougemont and others, marks the initial
flowering of troubadour poetry with Guillaume IX of Poitiers, grandfather
of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Ibn 'Arabi was born a generation later and thrived
at the time Wolfram von Eschenbach was writing Parzival, and Gottfried
of Strasbourg was writing Tristan. Of all the Iranian, Arabian, Persian and
Sufi mystics, Ibn 'Arabi came closest to the theology of romantic love
celebrated in the West. His mystical devotion to woman began at the Kaaba
8 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
9 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
10 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
Unrequited love did not demand carnal intercourse, but it did not deny and
exclude it, either. This is what "sexual freedom" meant to some people in
the Middle Ages.
Now it might be protested that I am making amour courtois out to be what
I want it to be, regardless of the evidence. The fact is, many troubadour
poems insist that the poet does not have the intimate favor of his lady. She
belongs to another. He can't even touch her with a ten-foot pole. The
troubadours both lament and celebrate the unattainability of their supreme
object of desire, it seems. Time and time again, the poets tells us that the
Lady they celebrate and adore is unattainable. L'amour de loitain, love at a
distance, is the recognized mark of troubadour poetry.
Scholars have taken the poets on their word, but I propose that scholars
have been duped, just as the people of the courts where the troubadours
sang were duped. The point of singing praises to the unattainable lady was
to make her husband and his courtiers believe that she had not given the
poet exactly what he lamented not getting from her. It was the obvious way
to protect the illicit, extramarital passion celebrated in amour courtois.
There was nothing ethereal and unconsummated in troubadour romance,
but the sexual encounter had to be disguised. In short, the bards were
faking it.
Yet this tactic was not initially required. The first surviving troubadour
lyrics, attributed to Guillaume IX of Poitiers, around 1136, convey the
ethos of the locker room. The sexual drive is raw and undisguised, and the
poet gets exactly what he goes for. Then he goes elsewhere for some more.
Guillaumes notorious exposition of the lois de conI wont translate, this
essay is probably already too dicey for some tastesreflected the sexual
appetites of medieval machismo infatuated with variety and conquest. Only
with later poets does refinement occur, and genuine religious sentiment
toward sex comes into play.
Yet amour courtois never lost its erotic edge. The alba, or dawn poem, is
one of the most beautiful forms of troubadour lyric. It celebrates the
moment when the poet must part from his lady in secrecy, so that their
all-night liaison is not suspected. Surely, this precaution would make no
sense if they had not been sexually intimate. Some poems openly celebrate
the beauty of woman's body naked in the dawn light. The soft luminosity
of the adored form exudes mystical radiance, as if embedded in a
supernatural glow. Ezra Pound, who translated many troubadour poems,
noted that "the 'Lady' in Tuscan poetry has assumed all the properties of the
Alchemist's Stone" (The Spirit of Romance, p. 90). In the cult of amor the
ladys body was regarded with the same wonder as the Grail. In some way,
and not just metaphorically, the carnal form of woman was an epiphany of
the Sacred Light.
In some moments, in some moods, the Girl and the Grail were one.
*****
For troubadours and Arthurian knights alike, a particular woman was
always the catalyst to the experience of the Divine Feminine, but in being
11 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
so, that woman was not merely the lens for a theophany. She was not
merely a means to an end. Love for her was an end in itself. It was, if not
the equivalent, then surely the perfect complement to spiritual love for
Sophia, whose name is Wisdom, whose body is the Earth.
In some subtle way discovered in the Middle Ages, which we are still in
the process of exploring, love for the physical beauty of the Earth
commingles with the love that may be felt in carnal intimacy. Tantrics in
Asia assert that the Godhead of Nature, Shakti, manifests spontaneously in
the sexual embrace. The cult of amor seems to have been an inheritance
and deepening of the Asian Tantric experience, rather than a modification
of Sufi theophany. Yet it may have passed via the Sufi connection from
East to West. By an amazing transposition, the Tantric mystique of Asia
inseminated the religion of romantic love in the West. In an even more
amazing twist of history, this heretical religion was nurtured in the cult of
the warrior, the Arthurian knight.
In Sacred Love, Sacred Light found its reflecting ground. In some manner,
the Organic Light of the Mysteries played around the figure of the Lady,
and rayed out from her physical aura. This aura of carnal luminosity is
truly mysterious, and may not be fully explained in written form because it
belongs to an unspeakable and inviolable dimension of the Sophianic
revelation.
jll: May-June 2006, Flanders-Andalucia
Home | Reading | Guidelines | Sky Lore | Alternative Grail | 2012 S h i f t | Gnostique | Lydia's Well | Psychonautics | Living Myth | Gaia Sophia | Rite
Action | Site Guide
Material by John Lash and Lydia Dzumardjin: Copyright 2002 - 2015 by John Lash.
12 of 12
10/20/15, 4:10 PM