Are mystics kooks or valuable disrupters?
A realist’s refreshing take on mysticism
The travails of Christina the Astonishing, a Belgian Christian in the 12th century, were astonishing indeed. At her funeral, Christina, just 21 years old, revived and levitated. She then fled into the wild, ate rubbish and drank her own (virgin) breast milk. Or so it was claimed.
The actions of others may also defy belief. Catherine of Siena, who died in 1380, imagined marrying Christ and wearing his foreskin as a wedding ring. Around a century earlier Agnes Blannbekin had visions of tasting the Holy Prepuce (as it is called) and swallowing it a hundred times.
With such religious peculiarities as these, little wonder mysticism gets a bad rap. Simon Critchley, a philosopher at the New School for Social Research in New York, provides an accessible assessment of the subject that is usually treated in a maddeningly esoteric or academic way.
Today many people are abandoning religion (the bureaucratic institutionalisation of faith) but embracing spirituality (a personal sense of transcendence), so it is a good moment to look at those on the outer fringes of the sacred. As the author wryly puts it: “God might be ineffable, but the mystics are constantly effing the ineffable, for as long as it effing takes.”
The term “mystical” comes from the ancient Greek mystikos, which means hidden. Though the idea is old, the word “mysticism” was coined only in the 17th century, marking a shift in Western attitudes towards religion from a sacred mystery to a practice. A mystic is someone who feels they have had a direct experience of the divine that leads to personal transformation. They “did not see themselves as enemies of reason. Neither did they think of themselves as heretics,” Mr Critchley writes. Though charlatans existed in every age, many self-professed mystics were sincere. Rather than seeking attention with frequent visions, they often had just one or a few that touched them so deeply that they spent the rest of their lives trying to understand the experience.
Mystics challenged the power of the church. By claiming a direct line to God, they threatened to make priests less important. They also usually wrote in the vernacular, not Latin, making their ideas more accessible. Margery Kempe, a British mystic, wrote what is considered the first autobiography in English. Many medieval mystics were women, at a time when only men were theological leaders. Mystics were religious entrepreneurs of their era, rivalling the incumbent powers. It was dangerous work. Marguerite Porete’s writing, for example, was burned twice as a warning before she herself was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310.
Mr Critchley believes “Mysticism lives on in the modern world as aesthetic experience,” found in poetry and notably music, that touches something deep within. Many artists and writers have such encounters. William Blake saw angels as a child; William Wordsworth felt transcendence climbing Mount Snowdon. Mr Critchley displays strong scholarship, citing a letter from T.S. Eliot—whose poem, “Four Quartets”, is as deeply Christian as the poet—in which he acknowledges: “You must not think of me as a mystic or a contemplative. I have had a few flashes during my life, though there must be many people whose experience has taken them further.”
“Mysticism” does a good job of explaining the basics and the arcane, including apophatic theology (where insight comes from the absence of words, since they are from the material world and cannot convey the immensity of the immaterial one). Yet some readers may feel they are left in search of more. The book focuses on just a few Christian thinkers and contemporary writers. It barely mentions other traditions, such as Sufism or Jewish Kabbalah, and there is too little on more modern mystics, such as Carl Jung and Simone Weil. But the book’s power is that it treats the topic with rigour and rationality, even if it does not completely transcend.
For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter