The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (42 page)

And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.236

There were many routes by which the Arab poetic traditions came to Europe, and

especially to Provence and Poitou in France, the birthplace of courtly love and the troubadour tradition.237 In addition to coming back with the Crusaders, these poetic traditions came across the Pyrenees from Spain, which had learned them from the Arabs in Andalu-sia. Thus it is not too surprising that half of the surviving songs of the first known troubadour, William of Poitiers (1071–1127), agree with a certain form of Arab mystical poetry (the
zajel
) in their detailed metrical structure and conventional expressions.

William, sixth Count of Poitiers and ninth Duke of Aquitaine, was a descendant of Agnes of Burgundy, who established connections with the Neoplatonic academy at Chartres in the early eleventh century. Among other Platonic ideas, this school viewed the Cosmic Soul as a force pervading the universe, a source of inspiration and wisdom, whom they personified as divine Wisdom (Sophia, Sapientia). They also identified the Cosmic Soul with the Holy Spirit (as explained in Ch. 9), an idea that was considered heretical.

Also influential was Catharism, the “Church of Love,” which had Manichaean roots.

Beginning in the third century these ideas spread across Europe and as Far East as China, but they were especially welcomed in the Languedoc region. The Cathars had a good

God of Love, but also an evil Creator (or “Great Arrogant”), who had created the material world, which they considered evil. They said their Church of Love was the opposite of the Church of Rome: AMOR vs. ROMA. (Indeed, according to legend, when Aeneas, the

son of Venus, founded Rome, he gave it three names, as was customary: a common name

Roma
, a sacral name
Flora
, and a secret name
Amor
.)

the path of love 209

According to the Cathars, salvation could be won from a female divinity, existing from the beginning of time, known by various names: Maria, Wisdom, Faith (
Pistis
), etc. She had born Jesus to show souls the way to escape from matter and to reunite with their angelic spirits, who had remained in heaven. This divine feminine figure, who was also called the Form of Light, resided in the believer’s spirit as well as in heaven (consistent with the Neoplatonic Nous). She met the believers’ soul after they died, and greeted them with a kiss and salute.

Catharism was apparently quite popular among the nobility of southern France and

Cathar themes pervade the troubadours’ songs. No doubt some of the troubadours were

practicing Cathars, while others were simply reflecting the values of their patrons. The Cathar belief system was poetic rather than rational, and so music played an essential role in maintaining the faith of the believers.

In addition to an increasing appreciation for the feminine principle, both mortal and divine, the eleventh century saw a revaluation of physical love. Some poets had discovered that being in passionate love could change their consciousness, and so they began to see love and sex as means of spiritual illumination. Ancient texts such as Ovid’s
Art of Love
and
Cure of Love
, which dealt with love’s transformative power, were read with new appreciation, but the empire was officially Christian, and so these ideas had to be fit into a more or less orthodox Christian framework.

The Cathars considered themselves Christian, but the Roman Church considered many

of their beliefs heretical. Furthermore, there were competing, but more orthodox, movements within the Church, which attempted to accommodate the improved social status of women and growing recognition of the divine feminine. For example, Joachim of Fiore

(c.1132–1202) prophesied the dawning of an “Age of the Spirit” in which the Holy Spirit would incarnate as a woman. Also, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090?–1153) taught the mystical ascent of the soul through Love in his sermons on the
Song of Solomon
and transformed the Cistercian order, emphasizing mysticism devoted to the Virgin Mary and divine Love.

In 1170 Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122?–1204) established her Court of Love in Poitiers

(where William, the first known troubadour, had lived thirty years before); it became a hotbed of courtly love. She was patroness of Chrétien de Troyes, who wrote the earliest versions of the Arthurian stories, including the Grail quest; he claimed to have heard the story from Countess Marie of Champagne, Eleanor’s daughter.

The Cathars presented a doctrinal threat to the medieval Church, which declared

the Albigensian Crusade against the Church of Love in 1208. Lasting until 1229, it was a systematic massacre culminating in the destruction of the Cathars’ mountain-top castle 210 the path of love

Montségur, in the south of France. Montségur is traditionally identified with Monsalvat, the Grail Castle, and with the Venusberg (Venus Mountain) and its legendary subterranean temple of Venus. After Montségur fell, 211 Cathar men and women were executed by

burning. This catastrophe forced the Cathars underground, but it scattered the troubadours and their heretical ideas throughout Europe. Although the Cathar leaders had been exterminated and many of their congregations destroyed, their ideas did not vanish, but reappeared in many sects and movements. These had in common an ambitious spirituality incorporating a doctrine of “radiant joy,” praise of poverty, anti-clericalism, vegetarianism, and an egalitarian attitude that sometimes verged on communism. Heretical beliefs, especially denial of the Trinity, were also common.

These influences converged on Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the author of the
Divine
Comedy
, which presents an Ascent by Love. He belonged to the
Fedeli d’Amore
(The Faithful of Love), a group of poets practicing a spirituality based on love, which can be seen as an application of chivalric ideas (including courtly love) to the regeneration of society. The Fedeli were expected to write only about their own mystical experiences, so actual practice was mandatory, and they apparently had a system of degrees representing the levels of spiritual progress.

Their system was based on psychological and spiritual doctrines, probably including

an Ascent by Love based on the six stages of St. Bonaventura, who divided each of Plato’s three stages in two. They correspond to Dante’s six guides in the
Comedy
(Virgil, Cato, Sta-tius, Matilda, Beatrice, St. Bernard). The Fedeli’s practice also included training the imagination to hold the image of the divine Beloved in the form of one’s lady, since the pure light of The One would be too much to bear. Some of the group’s doctrine was set forth by their leader, Guido Cavalcanti (1250–1300), in his long and elaborately structured poem
Donna me prega
(“A lady bids me …”). Ficino and other members of the Platonic Academy considered it to be “a supreme Neoplatonic statement of love.”238 Some scholars regard
Donna me prega
as the manifesto of a secret group devoted to divine Sapientia (Wisdom).239

Dante attempted to contact the Fedeli in 1283 by writing a poem to them, as was com-

mon practice. In it he described a dream in which Amor (Love) appeared with his beloved Beatrice, and he invited the Fedeli to interpret the vision. Several people responded, including Guido Cavalcanti, who replied in identical meter and rhyme to Dante’s poem. (Such exchanges of poetry were also common among the troubadours.) Subsequently Dante

was invited to join the Fedeli d’Amore, and he accepted. This is one of Cavalcanti’s poems, in which the Beloved, accompanied by Love, is addressed as a deity:

the path of love 211

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon,

Who makes the air all tremulous with light,

And at whose side is Love himself ? that none

Dare speak, but each man’s sighs are infinite.

Ah me! how she looks round from left to right,

Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon.

Lady she seems of such high benison

As makes all others graceless in men’s sight.

The honor which is hers cannot be said;

To whom are subject all things virtuous,

While all things beauteous own her deity.

Ne’er was the mind of man so nobly led,

Nor yet was such redemption granted us

That we should ever know her perfectly.240

The Ascent by Love was also popular in the Renaissance, and we have versions by,

among others, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), founder of the Platonic Academy in Florence, his friend Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), and the diplomat Baldassare Castiglione (1478–

1529), the author of
The Courtier
. Ficino coined the term “Platonic love” (
amor platonicus
), which originally referred to the ascent described in Plato’s
Symposium
. In his
Dialogues of
Love
, Judah Leon Abrabanel (c.1465 – after 1521, also known as Leone Ebreo) presented a comprehensive philosophy of love, which includes an Ascent by Love, incorporating

Platonic, Jewish, and Islamic elements.241 The two characters of the dialog are Philo (Love) and Sophia (Wisdom); their union would be Philo-Sophia. Courtly love was revived in the court of Henrietta Maria of France (1609–69), Queen consort of Charles I of England. It inspired the plays of Sir William Davenant (1606–68), whose
Platonic Lovers
introduced that term into English (with a certain amount of irony). So you see the Path of Love has a long pedigree; let’s see what it’s about and where it can lead you.

Purpose of the Ascent by Love

Before explaining the purpose of the Ascent by Love, I need to mention a grammatical convention. For convenience I will use the pronoun “she” for the Lover, who is the philosopher, and “he” for the Beloved, but it will become apparent that the genders are irrelevant. In the
Symposium
, for example, they were both “he”s. It doesn’t really matter, of 212 the path of love

course, but traditionally the soul is grammatically feminine and God masculine, and it is the philosopher’s soul that ascends to God. Listen now, as Hypatia explains the powers and energies that you use in the Ascent by Love.242

“What is the Triadic Principle?” Hypatia asks.

Athanasius eagerly raises his hand and answers, “Each level of reality
abides
in itself,
proceeds
outward to lower levels, and
returns
as these levels look to their source.”

“Good. Notice how this applies to the Love of The One. Of course it abides in The

One as one of its aspects, but it also proceeds outward as
Providential Love
, which the Cause has for its effects. Providential Love is the natural perfecting and maintaining power of The One, not a desire or choice to do good. It generates a reciprocal
Returning Love
, the intense desire of everything to love its source and return to it. In the Ascent by Love, you withdraw into your soul and follow the ray of Returning Love

up toward The One, drawn upward by divine Beauty. In each case—Providential and

Returning—Love is the intermediary between the lover and the Beloved. It is one of

connecting ‘rays’ between the human and the divine. This eternal ring of love binds

the Cosmos into one, like Empedocles’ Sphere of Love.”

Hypatia might have explained that each of the ascents is under the guidance of a goddess and a god. For the Ascent by Love, they are Aphrodite (Venus) and Eros (Amor, Cupido), goddess and god of love. We are familiar with cute images depicting Cupid as a cherub, but the ancient world treated him much more seriously, understanding him as a potent deity, to whom even the gods are vulnerable. His swift and silent shafts were able to instantly turn a life inside out, opening and exposing the soul, for good or ill. Indeed, in the
Symposium
Plato has Phaedrus say, “Eros is a great god, a marvel to both people and gods”; he is “the oldest of the gods.”243 He quotes both poets and philosophers in support. For example, in Hesiod’s
Theogony
(eighth century BCE), beginning with the line that convinced Epicurus to study philosophy, we read:

First Chaos, next broad-breasted Earth was made,

the ever-sure foundation seat of all

immortals on Olympus’ snowy peaks,

dim Tartaros in depths of wide-pathed Earth,

and Eros, fairest of the deathless gods,

who loosens limbs of every god and man,

their minds and clever counsels conquering.244

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Diotima has a different opinion, for she says Eros is a “great daimon,” intermediate between humans and gods and attendant on Aphrodite:

He acts as an interpreter and means of communication between gods and

people. He takes requests and offerings to the gods, and brings back instruc-

tions and benefits in return. Occupying the middle position he plays a vital

role in holding the world together. He is the medium of all prophecy and

religion …245

This daimon possesses the lover, imparting a divine madness, that is, an intense, all-consuming desire for the beloved. The two views are not inconsistent, for in psychological terms, Hesiod’s god Eros is the archetype and Diotima’s daimon is the complex generated by it. Gods and their descendant daimons are often known by the same name.

In a well-known story from the
Metamorphoses
or
Golden Ass
, by the Platonist Apuleius (c.125–c.180), Eros saves Psyche (Soul) and carries her away from the ordinary world. It is an allegory for the salvation of the soul by love. After various trials she is elevated to divinity and united with Eros. Here again we see Eros’ ability to capture the soul and transport her to the divine realms; this is the goal of the Ascent by Love.

The lover does not see her beloved in the same way as other people do. We all know

this. Certainly, other people may think he is attractive, charming, and so forth, but to the lover, her beloved is
numinous
, radiant with allure, imbued with supernatural charm, charisma, and beauty. The beloved possesses
glamour
in the original senses of that word: magic, enchantment, spell, magical or fictitious beauty, delusive or alluring charm.246 This transformation of perception and mental state is evidence of possession by Eros, or in psychological terms, of activation of the Eros archetype.