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Monthly Archives: October 2019

Quid es ergo, Deus meus?

27 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by victoriaperpetua in Evelyn Underhill, Mystic, Mysticism, Saint Augustine

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Mystic, Mysticism, Saint Augustine

The Mystic, the Mourner, magnetic and strange
But, be realistic, he isn’t sadistic.

It was somewhat cryptic, particularly to a ten-year-old (or was I eleven?). Either way, I was completely fascinated by this description of my birth sign—Pisces. I found this “definition” of myself on a colorful book of matches and never forgot it. I liked the idea of being mystic (whatever that actually meant) and a mourner and magnetic and even strange. It is true that I am not sadistic but I never really liked the rhymey-ness of that second line.

As the years passed, I continued to be drawn to the mystic aspect of my sign, and, eventually, to the mystics themselves: Saint John and Saint Paul, Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and needless to say, Saint Francis.

Evelyn Underhill, in her book, Mysticism, wrote: “Of all those forms of life and thought which humanity has fed its craving for truth, mysticism alone postulates, and in the persons of its great initiates proves, not only the existence of the Absolute, but also this link: this possibility first of knowing, finally of attaining it.

Attaining knowledge of, and finally, union with, the Absolute is a journey along a different wilderness road. It is a long, and often arduous, pilgrimage and not everyone who undertakes it will reach their final destination.

“Quid es ergo, Deus meus?” asked Saint Augustine.

What art Thou, then, my God? He proceeded to answer with both the vision of the mystic and the genius of the philosopher, which, according to Underhill “combined to hint something at least of the paradox of the intimacy and majesty in that all-embracing, all-transcending One.”

“Highest, best, most potent [dynamic], most omnipotent [transcendent], most merciful and most just, most deeply hid and yet most near. Fairest, yet strongest: steadfast yet unseizable; unchangeable yet changing all things; never new, yet never old. . . . Ever busy yet ever at rest; gathering yet needing not: bearing, filling, guarding; creating, nourishing and perfecting; seeking though Thou hast no wants.  . . . What can I say, my God, my life, my holy joy? Or what can any say who speaks of Thee?”

Underhill said that the mystic knows his task to be the attainment of Union with God; that is, the Unitive Life, which, while it is often lived in the world, is never of it. The self is remade, transformed and has finally unified itself. As Carl Jung might say, the process of transforming one’s psyche by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious being has been completed.

This is clearly not an easy task yet one infinitely worth aspiring to.

Mysticism

20 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by victoriaperpetua in Christianity, Flowers, God, Mystic, Mysticism, Photography, Saint-Martin, spirituality

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Flowers, Mystic, Mysticism, photography

Mystical

I heard flowers that sounded, and saw notes that shone.

~~Louis Claude de Saint-Martin on Union with God.

En Una Noche Escura

13 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by victoriaperpetua in Desert, God, Mystic, Mysticism, Photography, Poetry, Saint John of the Cross, spirituality, Superstition Mountains

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Mystic, Mysticism, photography, Poetry, Saint John of the Cross, Superstition Mountains

SuperstitionSunrise

Sunrise in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona

Upon an obscure night
Fevered with Love’s anxiety
(O hapless, happy plight!)
I went, none seeing me,
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be.

By night, secure from sight
And by a secret stair, disguisedly,
(O hapless, happy plight!)
By night, and privily
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be.

Blest night of wandering
In secret, when by none might I be spied,
Nor I see anything;
Without a light to guide
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.

That light did lead me on,
More surely than the shining of noontide
Where well I knew that One
Did for my coming bide;
Where He abode might none but He abide.

O night that didst lead thus,
O night more lovely than the dawn of light;
O night that broughtest us,
Lover to lover’s sight,
Lover to loved, in marriage of delight!

Upon my flowery breast
Wholly for Him and save Himself for none,
There did I give sweet rest
To my beloved one:
The fanning of the cedars breathed thereon.

~~Saint John of the Cross

Cloud of Unknowing

06 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by victoriaperpetua in Christianity, God, Mysticism, spirituality, The Cloud of Unknowing

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Christianity, God, Mystic, Mysticism, religion

CloudsofUnknowing

Flying above the clouds enroute to Georgia.

BUT now thou askest me and sayest, “How shall I think on Himself, and what is He?” and to this I cannot answer thee but thus: “I wot not.” For thou hast brought me with thy question into that same darkness, and into that same cloud of unknowing, that I would thou wert in thyself. For of all other creatures and their works, yea, and of the works of God’s self, may a man through grace have fullhead of knowing, and well he can think of them: but of God Himself can no man think. And therefore I would leave all that 89 thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that I cannot think. For why; He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never. And therefore, although it be good sometime to think of the kindness and the worthiness of God in special, and although it be a light and a part of contemplation: nevertheless yet in this work it shall be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting. And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but Mistily, with a devout and a pleasing stirring of love, and try for to pierce that darkness above thee. And smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love; and go not thence for thing 90 that befalleth.

~~from The Cloud of Unknowing, 14th Century, Britain

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