Heidegger's Elucidation of St. Augustine's Distentio

            In his massive and uncompleted masterpiece, Being and Time, Martin Heidegger provides an insightful and faithful phenomenological explication of St. Augustine’s Confessions, including in his use of St. Augustine’s concept of distentio.  Just as St. Augustine explores the depths of his own soul in order to reach down through memory into the depths of the God Who created him, so Heidegger also explores memory and time as being the fundamental meaning of the soul.  In outlining his project at the beginning of Being and Time, he promises that “we shall point to temporality as the meaning of that Being of that entity we call Dasein” (Sein und Zeit 38); here, I shall show that his entire work is an extended commentary on St. Augustine’s concept of distentio - one which is limited by its phenomenological approach, but which nonetheless is faithful to the Augustinian tradition.

            The phenomenological starting-point or primordial experience which is the fundamental datum that both Heidegger and Augustine draw their insights from is memory, and the intuition that memory is a form of extention, or distentio, across both space and time.  By his memory, St. Augustine’s soul could stretch back into the past and make his mother once again present; within the “vast court of [his] memory [became] present to me sky, earth, and sea, together with all things that I could perceive in them, aside from all the things I have forgotten” (Confessions 237) - all times and all places thus become present to the soul. 

            Heidegger likewise saw as an essential function of the soul’s act of being (Dasein) a stretching-out or “de-severing” across both space and time, a function which lies at the heart of both remembrance and knowledge.  “The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the ‘true world’ - of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside” (Heidegger 141; his italics), and we are disposed to commit this act of de-severing by our human nature, or almost by instinct - “In Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness.  All the ways in which we speed things up, as we are more or less compelled to do today, push us on towards the conquest of remoteness.  With the ‘radio’, for example, Dasein has so expanded its everyday environment that it has accomplished a de-severance of the ‘world’ - a de-severance which, in its meaning for Dasein, cannot yet be visualized.”  (Heidegger 140)  By “de-severance” Heidegger means simply making the remote object present to the consciousness, just as St. Augustine’s “distentio” means not just extending the soul out to the object, but pulling the object out of the “treasures of countless images of things of every manner” and making them present to the soul.  “The great cave of memory,” St. Augustine says, “and I know not what hidden and inexpressible recesses within it, takes in all these things to be called up and brought forth when there is need for them… When I am in that realm, I ask that whatsoever I want be brought forth.” (Augustine 236-7, 236)  Heidegger saw at the heart of this act of bringing-forth the removal of distance of the object from the soul doing the remembering: “De-severing amounts to making the farness varnish - that is, making the remoteness of something disappear, bringing it close.” (Heidegger, 139)

            Although Heidegger viewed it as being a less primordial element in the phenomenological constituency of Dasein - since the fundamental datum of experience is sense-impression and not memory - distentio across time is nonetheless an authentic human act, one which proceeds from the act of Dasein, and which itself is the phenomenological foundation for the study of time.  Temporality itself for Heidegger is the fundamental reality of Dasein, or in his words, “the primordial ontological basis for Dasein’s existentiality” (277), and “the meaning of that Being of that entity which we call Dasein” (38).  By temporality Heidegger means that Dasein remains actual through time, and not just in any individual point in time - as Augustine and the Scholastics generally thought - but through all of its time at once: “its own Being is constituted in advance as a stretching-along” (426).

            Heidegger’s conception of Dasein as actual through the totality of its times (which he calls historicality) is not found in St. Augustine, for whom “the past no longer exists, and the future is not yet in being” (Augustine 288), but it is eminently Augustinian for it is the fruition of Augustine’s introspective epistemology of the soul.  St. Augustine sought the truth of his soul by looking inward, towards his own soul’s distentio across the vast courts of memory and the depths of time, to an eternal God for Whom all is present.  Heidegger was uncomfortable with the religious terminology that this analysis implied, yet inconsistently tried to incorporate Augustine’s divine Present into his conception of Dasein.  “Dasein does not exist as the sum of the momentary actualities of Experiences which come along successively and disappear.  Nor is there a sort of framework which this succession gradually fills up.  For how is such a framework to be present-at-hand, where, in each case, only the Experience one is having ‘right now’ is ‘actual’, and the boundaries of the framework - the birth which is past and the death which is only oncoming - lack actuality?”  (Heidegger 426)  It is in God, the Eternal Present, in which all times can exist in order to be made present to the soul, Augustine would teach us, and insofar as this eternal Present is making-present time to the soul and is found in the soul, then memory is the dwelling-place of God.  “Truly, you dwell in my memory, since I have remembered you from the time I learned of you, and I find you there when I call you to mind” (Augustine 254), and it is in this way that the Being of Dasein - Who is God, the source of all being - achieves actual historicality.

            Dasein is not for Heidegger however the eternal Present, but rather in the eternal Present, for it is through the temporal Present that historizing occurs.  “Presence” or Anwesenheit is the only mode through which something can be made-present to Dasein - “Entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence’; this means they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time - the Present [die Gegenwart]” (Heidegger 47).  Heidegger clearly distinguishes the mode of time in which entities are made-present and the ‘connectedness of life’ or eternal Present which permits the possibility of making-present:  “The movement [Bewegtheit] of existence is not the motion [Bewegung] of something present-at-hand; it is definable in terms of the way Dasein stretches along” (Heidegger 427).  By making this distinction, Heidegger rescues his system from pantheism and brings himself into full conformity with St. Augustine’s thought, despite Heidegger’s arbitrary and irrational avoidance of explicit theological phraseology.

            Reading Heidegger in this manner, an ontological-existential explanation can be made of Augustine’s description of the process of memory as found in chapter 8 of book 10 of his Confessions.  Augustine paints memory with a rather crude analogy with to a filing-cabinet, which we store in and then draw from at will.  Everything is brought into the memory according to “its own proper entrance” (p. 236), and are then recalled with varying levels of difficulty when needed.  St. Augustine believes that by exploring the recesses of his memory he can find God; Heidegger explains the ontological reasons why this is possible.  It is the meaning of the soul or Dasein to be extended throughout space and time by residing in the eternal Present; the eternal Present is the very act of being of our soul.

            Heidegger’s secular bias unfortunately hinders his description of the intentionality of memory.  What Augustine ultimately finds as the object of his memory is God, and his memory is motivated by love; but memory is not the ultimate reality but rather the passage of his love to God, or even the motion of the soul towards God, and which like all motions must be terminated in its end - and so, Augustine “will pass beyond even memory” (246) to find God, “who abides in my memory” (253).  Heidegger sees the intentionality of Dasein only in terms of the triple acts of ‘care’ (Sorge), ‘concern’, and ‘solicitude’, which even of themselves can only understood through the unifying act of love which these acts presuppose, and their intentionality (when viewed only in and of themselves) is consequently that only of being-towards-Death.  In and of itself, being-towards-Death is still a very real description of the intentionality of Dasein because of the God to Whom we go at death, but it is a very incomplete description, since God is present to the soul in the eternal present and not just the future.  If we are being-towards-death, in other words, it is because we are eternally dying, and encountering God.

            If God can be encountered through memory which is knowledge of the past, then how much more should He encountered by the Dasein’s distentio in the present in that act of intelletual union called ‘knowledge’.  Thus knowledge, for Augustine, eminently deserves the name “memory”, and several chapters in book 10 of his Confessions are devoted to the exploration of learning as anamnesis.  Thought itself is nothing but the bringing together of memories in an act of union, in a sublime analogy to the union of the divine ideas in the Godhead; this is because while memory qua memory is distentio across the medium of time, knowledge qua knowledge is distentio to the object known, which exists in a multitude of modes and times known simultaneously qua knowledge (thereby uniting the across-nesses in which the object exists, which is to say the same thing as uniting memories).  The intellect, therefore, is necessary to the very act of memory itself, for it is the intellect which is the agent that makes memory present-at-hand and therefore intelligible (since if intelligibility is union of the idea with the Dasein, then the act of knowing is identical to the act of making-present-at-hand).  As Heidegger teaches us, Dasein’s act of making-present is actual in the eternal Present, and in a very real way it is within the mind of God that all knowledge takes place, insofar as our being is in the Being of God and our logoi within the divine Logos; thus it is known that we subsist in God because in knowledge our souls dis-tend across eternity.  Knowledge, as St. Augustine’s and Heidegger’s insights suggest, is a participation in God’s own knowledge, and to rephrase this insight in a paradoxical manner, Gestalt psychology (making-present and rendering-intelligible) presupposes the Beatific Vision.

            Because he did not describe Heidegger’s ontology of Presence, St. Augustine himself does not explicitly tell us in what manner learning can be a form of anamnesis as I have attempted using Heidegger’s philosophy.  St. Augustine’s concern is theology and not phenomenological, so he does not attempt to provide a systematic and complete phenomenology of making-present as Heidegger does, nor overtly extend his description of memory as distentio to include knowledge as a more general case; however, viewing the matter phenomenologically from within Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein, this would be a consistent and enlightening step to make.  Had St. Augustine been a phenomenologist, he would have provided this analysis himself, so it is proper to say that Heidegger’s treatment of knowledge as anamnesis resides virtually within the Augustinian system itself.

            Knowledge through memory is then a making-present of reality to the soul through a distentio of the soul through the eternal Present to its delimitation as the temporal present; by describing distentio, Augustine and Heidegger have thereby implicitly described the ontological essence of time itself - an essence which cannot be described explicitly, and which will always remain a mystery to the human mind.  Augustine describes the mysteries of memory in time in quasi-apophatic terms, calling memory “an inner chamber, vast and unbounded” (238), through which - and through which alone - an infinite reality is contemplated, an “awesome thing, deep and boundless and manifold in being!  And this thing is the minds, and this am I myself” (246).  Temporality, which is the only frame in which the term “Dasein” or “soul” has any sense - the “horizon for the understanding of Being” in Heidegger’s terms (Being and Time 39) - cannot even be talked about qua itself in explicit terms in any way that is helpful for understanding it: “If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I do not know” (Augustine, 287).

            Time is incomprehensible because it can only be understood in reference to eternity; is is the “ever present eternity” (Augustine 287) in which God created time, and in which Dasein is distended across times.  Time itself, considered as the temporal present qua temporal present, is nothing for Augustine; “the past no longer exists, and the future is not yet in being” (288), but “the present has no space” either (289); the only time that exists is an ever-fleeting moment of no duration.  “If any point of time is conceived that can no longer be divided into even the most minute parts of a moment, that alone it is which may be called the present.  It flies with such speed from the future into the past that it cannot be extended by even a trifling amount.  For if it is extended, it is divided into past and future.” (289)  Time then, can only be spoken of from within eternity; and therefore Augustine proposes as a solution to the problem the fundamental role of Dasein or the soul as making-present all times to itself, within the soul’s own present:  “Perhaps it might properly be said that there are three times, the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things future.  These three are in the soul, but elsewhere I do not see them: the present of things past is in memory; the present of things present is in intuition; the present of things future is in expectation.” (293)  Heidegger reaches this conclusion from the opposite angle; while for Augustine, the fact that we speak of the past and future indicates an eternal Now, for Heidegger, the fact that we speak of a now indicates the presence of time.  “When we say ‘now’, we always understand a ‘now that so and so…’ though we do not say all this.  Why? Because the “now” interprets a making-present of entities.”  (460-461)  When these entities are made-present, the “past” no longer means a time which has ceased to exist, but rather a time made present to Dasein which the Dasein can reference, or what Heidegger calls its “datability”:  “The structure of the datability of the ‘now’, the ‘then’, and the ‘on that former occasion’, is evidence that these, stemming from temporality, are themselves time.”  (461)

            What makes Heidegger’s “datability” differ from the non-existent past that Augustine describes, and makes it correspond to the true “present of things past” in the memory, is that the datability of events can only be known through their making-present; that is, we do not know anything in the past through the past, but only through their presence to the soul.  As with Augustine, there is no past as past or future as future, but only present of past and future.

            To clarify the phenomenological chain of reasoning that both Augustine and Heidegger are using, it must be kept in mind that when they consider the duration of time and its infinitessitude, they are still working quite heavily within the idea of memory of experience of time as distentio, and it is this notion of distentio which logically implies both Heidegger’s “datability” and Augustine’s three “presents” as being within the soul.  It is significant that it is not until Heidegger describes the three “presents” of temporality that he explicitly and unequivocally states his doctrine of distentio, twenty pages after he identified “making-present” as the root of our experience of temporality, by quoting St. Augustine for the first and only point in his entire work:  “Inde mihi visum est, nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentio; sed cuius rei nescio; et mirum si no ipsius animi.”  “Hence it seemed to me that time is nothing else than extendedness; but of what sort of thing it is an extendeness, I do not know; and it would be surprising if it were not an extendedness of the soul itself.”  (Confessions 298, quoted in Heidegger 480)  Time is the ordering of eternity; or in Hegel’s words quoted by Heidegger, “time is the ‘truth’ of space” (quoted in Heidegger 481); and all truth qua truth exists solely in the human soul.

            Though Heidegger’s analysis neither extends nor attempts to extend beyond the phenomenology of the human soul, like St. Augustine he has looked within himself and discovered ultimate truth, for we now have all the data we need to solve the centuries-old problem of describing the difference between time and eternity; but rather than begin with time and describe eternity analogously to it, we must - even as a phenomenological necessity - begin with eternity and describe time analogously.  It is eternity, Heidegger suggests with Augustine, that we know more immediately.  Eternity is the state in which all things are made present to the soul, which is nothing other than a restating of Boethius’ definition of eternity as the “total, perfect, and simultaneous possession of unending life” (paraphrased by Maurer 33); the negation of eternity is a single point of time, in which the totality of life or things-made-present is excluded in favor of a fleeting, non-existent instant; this moment or instant Heidegger calls “punctuality” because of its infinitesimal or point-like nature.  The negation in turn of this instant is the sum of successive non-existent moments, or the “negative unity of Being-outside-itself” (Heidegger 482), and this reconstituted and disjointed series of moments, this “negation of a negation” (Heidegger 484) is what we call time.

            We have seen in the above pages that Heidegger’s analysis of time and Dasein in Sein und Zeit provides an insightful and faithful philosophical explication of St. Augustine’s description of time and memory in his Confessions.  Underlying the Augustinian description of time and memory is an introspective journey within the human Dasein in which the inquirer discovers that memory and knowledge is a form of distentio, in which the soul stretches itself out to that which it knows, making the object of memory present to Dasein, thereby revealing that the act of knowledge occurs not in time, but that time itself occurs in the eternal present of Dasein.  Eternity, then, is the underlying reality in which time flows, and which forms the Being of Dasein and the fullness of that which is merely a negation thereof.

Works Cited

Augustine, St.  The Confessions, trans. John K. Ryan.  New York:  Doubleday, 1960.

Heidegger, Martin.  Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson.  New York:       Harper and Row, 1962.

Maurer, Armand CSB.  Medieval Philosophy: An Introduction.  Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of        Medieval Studies, 1982.

The Martyrdom of St. Philonedes

The Catholic Church has always been careful to make a clear distinction between suicide and martyrdom, upholding the latter as a "baptism of blood" and condemning the former as a mortal sin.  However, just as today suicide bombers claim for themselves the glory of martyrdom, in past times the line was often blurred by Christians as to what constituted martyrdom and to what degree the amount of provocation they elicited from the Romans constituted suicide.  Adherents of the Montanist heresy, which prided itself on being the "Church of the Martyrs" were known to leap from buildings to their death rather than lose their virginity at the hands of their captors in prison, after going out of their way to make it known to the authorities that they were Christian.  Traditionally this would have been considered suicide in the Catholic Church.  However, the case of St. Philonedes, a Catholic saint, gives one pause to reconsider where the difference actually lies.  The Church, at any rate, has been generous in assuming the best of one's intentions.  From
http://noctoc-noctoc.blogspot.com/2012/06/saint-philonides-bishop-of-curium.html:

Saint Philonides was bishop of Curium during the early Christian years. In the Synaxarium of Constantinople his memory is celebrated on August 30. It states that Philonides, bishop of Curium found martyrdom during the reign of emperor Diocletian, at the beginning of the fourth century. He found martyrdom along with three other Christians, Aristoklis, Dimitrianos and Athanasios.

In the Synaxarium of Nicodemus it is also stated that Philonides, bishop of Curium, found a martyr's death, but his memory is indicated as been celebrated on June 17 and not the 30th of August.

In the Synaxarium of Nicodemus it is stated that Philonides chose death, when informed of the killing of the other three martyrs and learned that the Gentiles had been ordered to attack the Christians in obscene ways, such as rape. In order to avoid this shame he went to a cliff, prayed, and jumped into the empty space, setting his own life into an end. Shortly after his death, according again to the same Synaxarium, the saint appeared as a vision to two travelers, naked, bathed in perfume, holding a palm branch and having a crown on his head. The vision led the two men to the spot where the dead body of the saint was lying. However, the Gentiles took the saint's body and threw into the sea in order to disappear. But the sea washed the corpse on the shore from where eventually the Christians took it and buried it with honors.

Philonides is the first known bishop of Curium (late third and early fourth century). His death is placed in the period between 303 -305.

Ibn al'Arabi on Religious Diversity

Religious pluralism and diversity is a topic that has attracted much attention since Vatican II and the age of ecumenism.  Views on other religions tend to be classified as "exclusivist" (more traditional views verging to the fundamentalist), "inclusivist" (still traditional but more open-minded), "pluralist" (usually unorthodox) or as somehow transcending these three categories (at which there is an impasse).  The Fathers of the Church tended to hold but should best be classified as an "inclusivist" view, the view also promulgated by the Church in documents like Dominus Iesus - the Church is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, being the only means of salvation (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus), but that elements of truth and sanctification and even divine revelation are found outside the visible boundaries of the Church.  The Church subsists fully in the institution known as the Catholic Church, but while we know where the Church is, we don't know where it isn't.  Furthermore, the presence of a natural knowledge of God and prayer to or communion with Him has been dogmatic (against the "fideist" error) since Vatican I.  Consequently, "other religions" or thought-systems (be it Aristotelian philosophy, the Vedanta, or Mahayana Buddhism) can be "ancillae theologiae", the "handmaidens of theology" (as a recent "Mahayana Christology" by John Keenan termed it) and "spoliae Aegyptorum" (the rightful "spoils of the Egyptians" that are the proper inheritance of the Church, as all truth is).

In this post I want to present an argument more from the pluralist perspective, one which I do not necessarily agree with but which is intriguing.  It presumes the fact that God does work outside the visible bounds of one religion, and that He reveals Himself - whether through natural or supernatural means, it does not matter - to all men.  It is given by Ibn al'Arabi, in Chapter 48 of al-Futuhat al-makkiyya, and translated by William Chittick, in Imaginal Worlds:  Ibn al'Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany:  State University of New York, 1994), pp. 158-160.

The revealed religions are diverse only because of the diversity of the divine relationships.

[A Christian must interpose that the only religions that are truly revealed in the fullest sense are Christianity and Judaism - but various orthodox theologians, such as Fr. Roch Kereszty in the journal Communio, have tried to explain how the Providential role of God has lead people in other religions through a "revelation to the heart" (my phrase).]

If the divine relationship demanded that a particular thing be lawful in the revealed law, ofr if the relationship demanded that something be forbidden, then divine rulings could not change, but it is established that divine rulings do change.  And if divine rulings do change, then God's words would be incorrect:  To every one of you [messengers] We have appointed a right way and a revealed law [surah 5:48].  [While I do not accept that the Qur'an as a whole is the revealed Word of God, this saying does seem to be true, and therefore the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  God has left nobody without prophets and revelation - this is the Catholic dogma of the "natural law".]  But every community does in fact have a right way and a revealed law brought to it by its prophet and messenger.  So abrogation [of rulings] does take place.

We know for certain that God's relationship to Muhammed in what He revealed to him as religion is different from His relationship to any other prophet.  Were this not so and were the relationship one in every respect - that is, the relationship that demands revelation of the specific law - then the revealed religions would be one in every respect.  [One may question how much Muhammed - who seems to have started at genuinely seeking God, but corrupted into impurity by carnal attachments - understood of the workings of the Holy Spirit in his heart.  But it is true that God related to him differently than He related to Moses, to St. John the Baptist, to Hermes Trismegistus - regarded as a prophet by the Church Fathers - and to the Roman sybil.]

If you ask:  Why then are the divine relationships diverse?  We will reply,

The divine relationships are diverse only because of the diversity of the states.

One person has the state of illness.  He calls out, "O Cure-giver, O Healer!"  Another is hungry and calls out, "O Provider!"  Still another is drowning and calls out, "O Helper!"  Hence the relationships are diverse because of the diversity of the states.  [Yet Christianity is universal because we are all sinners - "all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.]  This is indicated by God's words, Each day He is upon some task... We shall attend to you at leisure, O mankind and jinn! [surah 55:29-31]  It is also indicated by the Prophet's words while describing his Lord with the scales in His hand:  "He lets down and lifts up."  Because of the state of the Scales, God is called "Uplifter" and "Downletter".  In the same way these various relationships become manifest in the diversity of the states of the creatures.

The states are diverse only because of the diversity of the times.

The cause of the diverse states of the creatures is the diverse times in which they dwell.  Their state in the time of spring differs from their state in the time of summer, their state in the time of summer differs from their state in the time of autumn, their state in the time of autumn differs from their state in the time of winter, their state in teh time of winter differs from their state in the time of spring.

One of those who is learned in the way in which the times act upon natural bodies says that you should expose yourself to the air in the time of spring, because it does to your bodies what it does to your trees.  [Not quite, but biology was in a rather primitive state back then!]  And you should protect yourselves from the air of winter, because it also does to your bodies what it does to your trees.  [That indeed it does - it freezes you!]  And God has stated explicitly that we are among the growing things of the earth, for He says, God has made you grow out of the earth as growing things [surah 71:17]...

The times are diverse only because of the diversity of the movements.

I mean by movements the movements of the celestial spheres, for these movements give rise to night and day and delineate the years, months, and seasons.  All this is what is known as "the times".  [He's getting dangerously close to astrology here, and his argument's rather weak.  How does the change in seasons justify different divine revelations for different tribes and peoples?]

The movements are diverse only because of the diversity of the attentiveness.

I mean by attentiveness God's turning His attention toward the movements to bring them into existence.  [This is the philosophical doctrine of occasionalism, rejected by Christianity since it denies the subsistent existence and order of the universe and natural laws.]  God says, Our only speech to a thing, when We desire it, [is to say to it "Be!" and it is] [surah 16:40].  If the attentiveness toward the movements were single, the movements would not become diverse, but they are diverse.  This proves that the attentiveness that moves the moon in its sphere is different from that which moves the sun in its sphere or those which move the other planets and spheres.  Were this not the case, the speed or slowness of all of them would be the same.  God says, Each of them floats in a sphere [surah 21:33] [Unfortunately they fall in ellipses - astronomy was also in a primitive stage, and allegedly there are Muslims to this day who will reject modern astronomy because the Qur'an revealed that there are spherical orbits.]  Each movement has a divine attentiveness, that is, a specific divine connection to it in respect of the fact that He is the Desiring.

The attentivenesses are diverse only because of the diversity of the goals.

[This is flatly wrong - teleological physics.]  If the goal of the attentiveness that causes the moon's movement were the same as the goal of that which causes the sun's movement, no effect would become distinct from any other effect.  But the effects are diverse, without doubt.  Hence the attentivenesses are diverse because of the difference in goals.  Thus God's attentiveness with good pleasure toward Zayd is different from His attentiveness with wrath toward 'Amr, for His goal is to chastise 'Amr and to give bliss to Zayd.  So the goals are diverse.  [Perhaps one can salvage this by pointing out that all that happens in natural processes happens according to divine providence - Providence gave the Earth the mass and orbit that it did, without detriment to any scientific explanation.  However, since earlier "the times" were linked with the heavenly bodies, the chain of reasoning is broekn when we apply these "goals" to earthly people, unless and only unless we accept the pseudoscience of astrology.]

The goals are diverse only because of the diversity of the self-disclosures.

Were God's self-disclosures one in every respect, He could have no more than a single goal.  But the diversity of the goals has been established, so every specific goal must have a specific self-disclosure that is different from every other self-disclosure.  [Are we talking about the heavenly bodies as theophanies, the self-disclosure of God in the heavens, or on earth?  Without astrology to link the two, the argument is broken.]  For the divine Vastness demands that nothing be repeated in existence.  [Why?]  It is this fact upon which a group of the Sufis depend, even though The people are in confusion as to a new creation [surah 50:15].  Shaykh Abu Talib al-Makki, author of Heart's Food, and other men of God have said, "God never discloses Himself in a single form to two individuals, nor in a single form twice."  That is why effects are diverse in the cosmos.  [Yet there is much homogeneity.]  These have been alluded to as "good pleasure" and "wrath" [yes, all human souls are unique and individual, but we have commonalities and God sometimes does repeat Himself, calling us to repentance over and over again - though the parable of Dives and Lazarus provides an example of God refusing to repeat Himself].

The self-disclosures are diverse only because of the diversity of the revealed religions.

[Certainly not if we are talking about God's self-disclosure in "the times" and heavenly movements, which have nothing to do with religions and were around for 13.74 billion years before the first religion was.]  Each revealed religion is a path that takes to God, and these paths are diverse.  Hence the self-disclosures must be diverse, just as divien gifts are diverse.  Do you not see what happens when He discloses Himself to this community at the resurrection, while within it are hypocrites?  Moreover, people's views of the revealed law are diverse.  Each possessor of independent judgment [mujtahid] has his own specific law that is a path to God.  [Some paths may not lead to God, however, and He has revealed to us The Way - as Christianity was called in the Apostolic era - in which He wants us to take, the narrow way or royal way as it is called.]  That is why the schools of law are diverse, even though each is a revealed law, within a single revealed religion.  [Example where al'Arabi's point is true:  the different rites of the Catholic Church.]  And God has established this for us on the tongue of His messenger.

So the self-disclosures are diverse, without doubt.  Each group has believed something concerning God.  If God discloses Himself to them in other than that something, they will deny Him.  But when He discloses Himself in the mark that they have established for God in themselves, they will acknowledge Him.  Thus, for example, when God discloses Himself to the Ash'arite in the form of hte belief of his opponent, whose knotting concerning God is opposed to his, or when He manfiests Himself to his opponent inf the form of the Ash'arite's belief, each of hte two groups will deny Him.  And so it is with all groups.

Then, when God discloses Himself to each group in keeping with the form of their belief concerning Him - and that is the "mark" mentioned by Muslim in his Sahih, quoting from the Prophet - then they will akcnowledge that He is their Lord.  But He is He, none other than He, so the self-disclosures are diverse because of the diversity of the revealed religions.

As for our words, "The revealed religions are diverse only because of the diversity of divine relationships," that has already been discussed.  Thus the circle is closed.  [It seems that this deliberately circular argument should have not included this step - the diversity of the self-disclosures is the fundamental starting point, and not really epistemologically justified by appeal to the plurality of religious forms.  However, al'Arabi wanted a self-enclosed circle, and a circle he got.  I leave it to the reader to judge the merits or unsoundness of his argument, considering my critiques.]  



St. Nikolai Velimirovich on the Praeparationes Evangeliae

All the prophets have from the beginning cried out to my soul, imploring her to make herself a virgin and prepare herself to receive the Divine Son into her immaculate womb;

Imploring her to become a ladder, down which God will descend into the world, and up which man will ascend to God;

Imploring her to drain the red sea of sanguinary passions within herself, so that man the slave can cross over to the promised land, the land of freedom.

The wise man of China admonishes my soul to be peaceful and still, and to wait for the Tao to act within her.  Glory be the memory of Lao-tse, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The wise man of India teaches my soul not to be afraid of suffering, but through the arduous and relentless drilling in purification and prayer to elevate herself to the One on high, who will come out to greet her and manifest to her His face and His power.  Glorious be the memory of Krishna, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The royal son of India teaches my soul to empty herself completely of every seed and crop of the world, to abandon all the serpentine allurements of frail and shadowy matter, and then - in vacuity, tranquillity, purity and bliss - to await nirvana.  Blessed be the memory of Buddha, the royal son and inexorable teacher of his people!

The thunderous wise man of Persia tells my soul that there is nothing in the world except light and darkness, and that the soul must break free from the darkness as the day does from the night.  For the sons of light are conceived from the light, and the sons of darkness are conceived from the darkness.  Glorious be the memory of Zoroaster, the great prophet of his people!

The prophet of Israel cries out to my soul:  Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, whose name will be - Theanthropos.  Glorious be the memory of Isaiah, the clairvoyant prophet of my soul!

O heavenly Lord, open the hearing of my soul, lest she become deaf to the counsels of Your messenger.

Do not slay the prophets sent to you, my soul, for their graves contian not them, but those who slew them.

Wash and cleanse yourself; become tranquil amid the turbulent sea of the world, and keep within yourself the counsels of the prophets sent to you.  Surrender yourself entirely to the One on high and say to the world:  "I have nothing for you."

Even the most righteous of the sons of men, who believe in you, are merely feeble shadows which, like the righteous Joseph, walk in your shadow.  For mortality begets mortality and not life.  Truly I say to you:  earthly husbands are mistaken when they say that they give life.  [St. Nikolai here is playing on the traditional of the soul as the feminine bride to the divine Bridegroom, and so "earthly husbands" refers to earthly gods, idols, like money or "success" or a career.]  They do not give it but ruin it.  They push life into the red sea and drown it, and beforehand they wrap it in darkness and make it a diabolical illusion.  There is no life, O soul, unless it comes from the Holy Spirit.  Nor is there any reality in the world, unless it comes down from heaven.

Do not slay the prophets sent to you, my soul, for killign is only an illusion of shadows.  Do not kill, for you can slay no one but yourself.

Be a virgin, O my soul, for virginity of the soul is the only semi-reality in a world of shadows.  A semi-reality - until God is born within her.  Then the soul becomes a full reality.

Be wise, my virgin, and cordially receive the precious gifts of the wise men of the East, intended for your Son.  Do not glance back toward the West, where the sun sets, and do not crave gifts that are figmental and false.


From A Treasure of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality Volume 5:  Prayers by the Lake, Prayer 48.

A Teilhardian Rhapsody from St. Nikolai Velimirovich

I feel mute and inarticulate, my Luxurious Lord, when I want to express Your stability and all Your fullness.  Therefore, I beseech the entire universe to kneel down with me and speak in my stead, since I am incapable and inarticulate.

I build stone altars for You, O stone Foundation of my hope.  And the arrogant sons of the world, who pretend to be nearer neighbors to You than Your saints, ridicule me:  "Look at the pagan, who would rather worship stone than the Lord!"

Truly, I am not worshiping stone, but rather I, together with stone, am worshiping the Living Lord.  For stone is also distant from the Lord and is in need of salvation.  Sin has made me more impure than stone before the face of Heaven.  May the stone be saved together with me, and may it, as a symbol of stability help my feeble words to express the stability of God's justice.  Therefore, I embrace stone as a companion in the Fall and as a companion in prayer and salvation.

I light oil and wax on the stone altar, O Inextinguishable Light.  And the arrogant puff themselves up and exclaim, "Look at the superstitious man, who does not know that God is spirit!"

Your servant, O Lord, knows that You are spirit, but he also knows of Your mercy towards all flesh.  And so when I see the radiant oil and fragrant wax, I say to myself:  "How are you better than oil or wax?  Oil and wax at midnight, like the sun at noon, represent the glory of the Lord more clearly than your tongue.  Let them be your help in prayer.  Let them be your companions in prayer and salvation."

I adorn Your altar with wooden icons, golden crosses, silver seraphim, silk brocades, and books of salvation bound in leather.  And I prostrate myself before Your embellished altars.  But the arrogant laught at me and say:  "Look at the idol-worshiper, who does not worship the Lord but mute objects!"

Nevertheless, You know, my only Idol, that I am worshiping You alone.  But so that arrogance may not engulf my heart and delay my salvation, I call upon tree and plant, resins and animals, to cry out together with me to You, each in its own language.  Indeed, all creatures and all creation are in need of salvation, therefore, all also need to join in prayer with man, who led creation into sin and leads it to salvation.

I consecrate bread and wine on Your altar, and I nourish my soul with them.  Let the arrogant ridicule me to the end of time, and I shall not be ashamed of my desire to have You for my food and drink, O my Life-giving Nourishment.

I worship before an altar of stone, so that I may learn to consider the entire universe the altar of the Most High.

I nourish myself with consecrated bread and wine at Your altar, so that I may learn to consider everything I eat to be Your holy body, and everything I drink to be Your holy blood.

I pray with all creation and for all creation, so that I may learn humility before You, and so that I may express all the mystery of my love for You, O all-embracing Love.


Source:  A Treasure of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, Volume 5:  Prayers By the Lake, Prayer 28

Rules of the Salon de la Rose+Croix

In the last post I gave a manifesto by the eccentric French Catholic occultist, Josephin Peladan, calling for the creation of a Salon dedicated to the exhibition of beauty through Symbolist art with a specifically Christian, Catholic identity.  In this post I shall give the twenty-seven rules that artists of the Salon de la Rose+Croix were obligated to abide by.  Some of these rules are mundane and financial, given for business purposes; others (the interesting ones) contain aesthetic, philosophical, and theological principles.  The source as with the last post is Robert Pincus-Witten's dissertation Occult Symbolism in France:  Josephin Peladan and the Salons de la Rose+Croix, Appendix II.

I

The order of the Rose+Croix du Temple is now enlarged to encompass the Rose+Croix esthetique in order to restore the cult of the IDEAL in all its splendor, with TRADITION as its base and BEAUTY as its means.

II

The Salon de la Rose+Croix wants to ruin realism, reform Latin taste and create a school of idealist art.

III

For greater clarity, here are the rejected subjects, no matter how well executed, even if perfectly:

1 - History painting, prosaic and from a textbook, like Delaroche; [yet why would we want to part with the magnificent - and, one might point out, quite idealized and iconic - productions of Jacques-Louis David?]

2 - Patriotic and military painting, such as by Meissonnier, Neuville, Detaille;

3 - All represetantions of contemporary, private or public life;

4 - The portrait - except if it is not dateable by costume and achieves style [one would presume that Delacroix's magnificent portrait of Chopin would pass the test of acceptable art, for example - especially given Peladan's praise of Delacroix in the manifesto] 

5 - All rustic scenes;

6 - All landscape, except those composed in the manner of Poussin; [May we include those of Caspar David Friedrich?]

7 - Seascape; sailors;  [Hospodi pomilui!  I need my Caspar David Friedrich!]

8 - All humorous things;

9 - Merely picturesque orientalism; [i.e. kitsch]

10 - All domestic animals and those relating to sport;

 11 - Flowers, still life, fruits, accessories and other exercises that painters ordinarily have the effrontery to exhibit.

V

The Order favors first the Catholic Ideal and Mysticism.  After Legend, Myth, Allegory, the Dream, the Paraphrase of great poetry and finally all Lyricism, the Order prefers work which has a mural-like character, as beign of superior essence.

VI

For greater clarification, here are the subjects which will be welcome, even if the execution is imperfect:

1 - Catholic Dogma from Margharitone to Andrea Sacchi;

2 - The interpretations of oriental theogonies except those of the yellow races; [racist idiot - the Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese traditions are my favorites]

3 -  Allegory, be it expressive like "Modesty and Vanity", be it decorative like a work by Puvis de Chavannes; [may we include the allegories of Bouguereau, and exclude the hideous ones of the Neo-Classical period?]

4 - The nude made sublime, the nude in the style of Primaticcio, Coreggio, or the expressive head in the manner of Leonardo and of Michelangelo.  [The nude is more sublime, in my opinion, in Jules Lefebvre and in Bouguereau, in Ingres and Cabanel, in Gauguin]

VII

The same rule applies to sculpture.  Ionic harmony, Gothic subtlety, and the intesnity of the Renaissance is equally acceptable.

Rejected:  Historical, patriotic, contemporary and picturesque sculpture, that is sculpture which only depicts the body in movement without expressing the soul.  No bust will be accepted except by special permission. 

VIII

The Salon de la Rose+Croix admits all forms of drawing from simple lead-pencil studies to cartoons for fresco and stained glass.

IX

Architecture:  since this art was killed in 1789, only restorations or projects for fairy-tale palaces are acceptable.  [I have seen many beautiful buildings built recently - churches in the Gothic and Byzantine and Russian styles, homes in the Tudor and Victorian styles, mansions in the old castle and "fairy-tale palace" style, and modern skyscrapers and libraries which are stunning in their modernity.]

X

The theocratic nature of the Order of the R+C in no way entails the artists; their individuality remains outside the character of the Order.

They are only the Invited, and consequently are in no way in solidarity with the Order from a doctrinal point of view.

XI

The artist who produces a work conforming to the program of the R+C will be accepted even though his earlier work was of a different or realist nature, as the Order bases its judgments on what it is presented with and not with the development of a talent.

XII

The artist who lives abroad and who wishes to exhibit with the R+C must send a photograph, on the basis of which his work will be accepted or rejected.

Kindly indicated dimensions of the work.

XIII

As the Order, despite its solicitude, may be ignorant of the existence of idealist artists, it is permissible to whosoever believes that he has created a work conforming to the program of the R+C, to present it on the first of March to the Archonte of Fine Arts at the Gallery Durand-Ruel, 11, rue Le Peletier.  He will be informed of an admission or a refusal on the seventh, in which case the sender will see to it to remove his work before the ninth.

XIV

Artists who might be prevented from framing their pictures may send their canvasses on stretchers.

XV

For the Order of the Rose+Croix the word "foreign" has no meaning.

This Salon assumes an international character in the highest degree.

XVI

It will officially open the 10th of March, 1892, and will terminate the 10th of April.

XVII

From the 25th of February to the third of March, the artists invited to exhibit who live in Paris wil receive the visit of the Sar and the Archonte to whom they will remit a signed notice stating name, first name, subject of work, dimensions and selling price.

XVIII

The invited artists who live in the provinces or abroad must send their works between the first and fifth of March (at the very latest), carriage paid, to the Archonte of the Salon de la Rose+Croix, Gallery Durand Ruel, 11, rue Le Peletier.

XIX

The work must bear a label on which is clearly written the name of the artist and subject of work.

XX

In the case of loss or damage the Order declines all financial responsibility.

XXI

Works must be picked up in the three days following the closing of the exhibition.

XXII

From the 8th of March, 1892, beginning at 11 o'clock, the critics will be admitted on presentation of special cards which will already have been given them.

On the same day, at 8 p.m., a reception will be held for the Ambassadors and for the Minister of Public Instruction and the Fine Arts.

XXIII

The 9th of March, exhibition by named invitation.

The 10th, Opening Day.  (Entry fee:  20 francs.)

XXIV

The following days the entry fee will be 2 francs from 10 a.m. until noon, 1 franc until 6 p.m. - except Sunday which is 50 centimes.

XXV

Paris school children, accompanied by their teacher will be admitted with no charge on Thursday afternoons.

XXVI

There will be five kinds of cards:

the white card of the critic

the red card of exhibition (by name)

the permanent green card (exhibitors)

the blue card, good for only one visit

the yellow card, good for the whole month and permiting one to escort a lady (price: 5 Louis)

XXVII

A Solemn Mass of the Holy Ghost will be celebrated on the 10th of March at 10 o'clock in the morning at the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois.

The  Prelude, the Last Supper of the Grail, the Good Friday Spell and the Finale of the Redemption from Parsifal by the super-human Wagner will be played.

The Mass will be preceded by the three fanfares of the Order composed by Erik Satie for harp and trumpet.

All participants will hold reserved seats.  [This is a bad idea - the Mass is not a concert, and should not have reserved seats.]

P.S.  Following Magical law, no work by a woman will ever be exhibited or executed by the Order.  [I challenge the truth of this "Magical law", if one considers what C. S. Lewis called the "Deeper magic from before the dawn of time".]

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Manifesto of the Salons de la Rose+Croix Catholique, by Josephin Peladan

There is a fine line between mysticism and occultism, a line which has been blurred or crossed many times.  The confusion - or ambiguity - was less known in the Ages of Faith, where the authority of orthodoxy kept a firm check on deviation, and where history - written by the victors - has quietly forgotten the magi.  (A few scattered records of spurious credibility grounded in polemical motives remain - Coptic monks were accused of witchcraft by their Orthodox opponents during the first generations of the Christological controversies, the Templars were accused of magical practices, etc.)  With the resurgence in pagan learning brought by the Renaissance, the Qabbalah was re-introduced in a Christianized form (in the Kabbalah denudata of Christian von Rosenroth), and Hermeticism (the legacy of Hermes Trismegistus, venerated as a prophet by Lactantius and other Fathers of the Church) was restored in the form of alchemy.  The religious chaos brought by the Protestant Revolt opened the door for further developments, as Protestant theosophy - propagated by the likes of Jacob Boehme, John Pordage, and Emmanuel Swedenborg among many others - could be classified either as occultism or mysticism.  Together with the philosophical currents of German idealism, these theosophers were strong influences on the Romantic movement, which sought a return to medieval Catholicism, mediated through the universal magic of art (cf. Novalis, Tieck, Brentano, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Wackenroder, von Schlegel, and others).  Romanticism took a quick turn to the chthonic (cf. Praz, The Romantic Agony), while preserving its attachment to Catholicism - and two developments served to fuse the attachment between the seemingly contrary currents.  Symbolism reliably explored the dark and satanic sides of human nature and of the psyche, always with a latent Catholic undercurrent, especially in Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, all of whom died at peace with the Church after living long lives of sin.  Joris-Karl Huysmans and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam were both openly Catholic Symbolists, with strong occultist undercurrents running through their work.  The painter Vassily Kandinsky and the composer Alexander Scriabin were both members of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, with strong artistic commonalities to the Symbolist movement.

The second tie forged between mysticism and occultism was the turn towards ritual in the Anglican Church, a turn away from Protestantism and toward Catholic mysticism.  One of the seminal works on mysticism, read and respected by orthodox Catholics as well as by Protestants, by was by the Anglican Evelyn Underhill, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which maintained a temple in London.  (She was also the author of a biography of Bl. Jacopone da Todi, and a spiritual daughter of the Catholic modernist Baron Friedrich von Hugel.)  The Golden Dawn also counted among its members the novelist Arthur Machen (notorious for his definition, in the essay Hieroglyphics, that "literature is the expression, through the aesthetic medium of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, and that which in any way is out of harmony with these dogmas is not literature"), and the Inkling theologian Charles Williams, companion to C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and J. R. R. Tolkien.  The Golden Dawn was also the home to the non-Christian occultist Arthur Edward Waite, author of studies on the old Martinist Order, a mystical Jewish-Christian movement which kept the core of Catholic dogma (the Incarnation of Christ and theosis through divine love) but replacing the Catholic sacraments with theurgic rituals.  (The Martinists were jeered at as being "Jesuits" at a pan-Masonic conference in the 18th-century heyday of Masonry.)  Finally, the Golden Order was eventually headed by a rather unsavory character - the satanist Aleister Crowley.

The past two paragraphs were given by way of introduction to the common heritage shared uneasily between Catholicism and the occult.  Occultism is certainly dangerous ground for a Catholic to be treading on - but this does not a priori rule out all similarities to the occult as automatically evil, or as being examples of prelest.  The occult touches on both the psychic and spiritual realms, which can be either good or evil.  Evil by its nature is only a perversion of good, so especially in its more mystical and less satanic forms occultism is capable of redemption - of transfiguration into true sacramentality.  One must approach the phenomenon of occultism free of both a fundamentalist hostility to "the work of Satan" and also a gullible susceptibility to spiritual delusion. 

In this post I shall present a manifesto by a little-known occultist, the writer and novelist Sar Josephin Peladan, who lived from 1858-1918.  He lived within the context of French occultism, which tended towards the silly - the "Sar" was laughed at for his outragous robes and costumes - and towards the practice of magic (a product of the same environment that produced Papus, born Gerard Encausse, as well as Rene Guenon and Eliphas Levi, the former Abbe Adolphe Constant).  This manifesto is found as Appendix I in a dissertation on Peladan, Occult Symbolism in France:  Josephin Peladan and the Salons de la Rose-Croix, submitted by Robert Pincus-Witten to the University of Chicago Department of Art in 1968.  It is presented with neither the intention of endorsement nor rejection by this blogger, but rather as food for thought and exposure to a movement the revival of which - albeit one would hope in a modified or more purified form - would serve the renaissance and restoration of all things in Christ called for by the Holy Catholic Church.  This movement was a French fraternity of artists similar to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, championing abstract Symbolist art against the photographic perversions of the Realists (who reduced art to imitation), and one with the specific intention of being a Christian academy of the arts, wedding beauty to the institutional Church and its Faith.  No claims are made to any superior literary quality here; Sar Josephin Peladan is not, after all, a bestselling novelist.  But it is something interesting and rare to find.

In a subsequent post, I shall print Appendix II from the same dissertation, the twenty-seven Rules of the Salon de la Rose+Croix.

The Manifesto of the Rose+Croix

Le Figaro, September 2, 1891

How could an insertion in the Petites Affiches so arouse the press?  Why does teh annoucnement of a third Salon excite such streams of malevolence?  By what obscure foreboding did the press, more clamoring than the Cassanire of Berlioz, denounce to the public as inauspicious a work of peace worthy of Pallias?

The Rose+Croix du Temple.  For a week these simple words have been counterpointed and fugued by the kappelmeisters of journalism.  Such a fuss bears witness that our Will, blessed by Providence, will polarize Necessity with Destiny.

The Salon de la Rose+Croix will be the first realization of an intellectual order which originates, by theocratic principle, with Hugh of the Pagans; with Rosenkreutz by the idea of individualistic perfection.

The infidel today, he who profanes the Holy Sepulchre, is not the Turk, but the sceptic; and the militant monk with his motto "ut leo feriatur" can no longer find a place for his effort.

On the black and white standard, sign of theocracy, we inscribe the Rose+Croix, Symbol of Beauty manifesting Charity.

For ten years we have awaited a comrade in arms who burned with the same artistic piety and at last we have met such a one impatient to undertake the same crusade:  Antoine de La Rochefoucauld.

In only citing after the Grand Prior the Commanders Elemir Bourges, that admirable spirit, Count de Larmandie, that valiant knight, Gary de Lacroze, that subtle esthete, and the three others still pseudonymous, one can predict that, transposed to its intellectual meaning, the proud thought of Saint Bernard will be justified.

The Politicians and clergy who have accepted the constitution can be reassured:  until next Spring the entire order will be exclusively esthetic.

The artist and the public need not ponder on what the Temple meditates, what the Rose+Croix prepares: simply the victorious manifestation of the Norms of Beauty which for twelve years we have offered.

The Salon de la Rose+Croix will be a temple dedicated to Art-God, with masterpieces for dogma and for saints, geniuses.

In all periods, the arts reflect letters.  Delacroix, the greatest French master, incarnates Romanticism.  Now for twenty years the arts have reflected the hackwork of Medan.  Through his ignorance and base instinct, the author of La Terre has cast a spell on Manet; and Seurat, near death cried:  "Huysmans led me astray!"  [As an admirer of Manet, Seurat, and Huysman, I must respectfully disagree - but this was quite a common sentiment back then, and they should only be taken as intermediate stages in the development of art, since they were precursors to greater artists. - Seraphim]  Imagine making a picture after Un coeur simple by Flaubert!  one would fall into the inanity of Bastien Lepage and under the terrible judgement of Blaise Pascal:  "What vanity that painting would have us admire the representation of what one disdains in reality."

The sentiment of Pascal is that of the Rose+Croix.  We said in our last Salon:  "I believe that the aim of all arts is the beautiful... I will defend the cause of Art against the palette workers and the sculpture practitioners."

"The Jury of the Champ-de-Mars is as hostile to abstract, religious, or simply artistic ideas, as that of the Champ-Elysees.

"Whosoever is practitioner, whosoever is mystical has nothing to hope for, neither from Carolus Duran nor from Bougeureau.  [Though it is still fashionable to scoff at Bougeareau's bondage to the Academy, this really is unfair to Bougeureau - there is much mysticism in his works, and his Birth of Venus remains unparalleled by any other female figure in art. - Seraphim]  Officially, the Ideal is vanquished!  Oh well!  sed victo Catoni, next Spring will witness a manifestation of Art against the arts, of the beautiful against the ugly, of the Dream against the real, of the Past against the infamous present, of Tradition against the hoax!"

Above all schools, without technical preference, admitting optical mixture as well as the Italian method of Desboutin, the Rose+Croix only insists upon the ideality of its works.

Among the eighty artsits already elected and practically all adherents at this hour, it suffices to name the following: the great Puvis de Chavannes, Dagnan-Bouveret, Merson, Henri Martin, Aman-Jean, Odilon Redon, Khnopff, Point, Seon, Filiger, de Egusquiza, Anquetin, the sculptors Dampt, Marquest de Vasselot, Pezieux, Astruc and the composer Erik Satie.

We will go to London to invite Burne-Jones, Watts and the five other Pre-Raphaelites; we will invite the Germans Lehnbach and Boecklin.

The Order grows through invitation and the invited only have to observe the rule of ideality.

It banishes all contemporary, rustic or military representation; flowers [had he known Monet he should have changed his mind about this - Seraphim], animals, genre treated like history-painting, and portraiture like landscape [Caspar David Friedrich should be enough of a refutation here].

It accepts all allegory, legend, mysticism and myth and even the expressive head if it is noble of the nude study if it is beautiful.

You have to create BEAUTY to get into the Salon de la Rose+Croix.  [Yes, but not all beauty is delightful to behold.  Picasso's Guernica contains some of the deepest beauty known to art.]

One may wonder, in view of the small number of confirmed idealists as Lagarde [?], de Egusquiza, Antoine de La Rochefoucauld, how we will recruit our exhibitors.

In selecting ideal work, frequent in the production of the realists themselves, like the triptych of Saint Cuthbert of a Duez or the Meneuse de Cygnes and the Charmeuse d'Etoiles by Besnard.

As for landscape, it must be in teh manner of Poussin, composed and subordinated to the figures [No! Caspar David Friedrich!]; as to portraiture, excellence of execution will not suffice - the Order must also desire to honor the sitter.  The 10th of March 1892, Paris will be able to contemplate, at the Durand-Ruel Gallery, the masters of which it is unaware; it will not find one vulgarity.

The Rose+Croix does not limit its sollicitude to painting and sculpture; the Soirees de la Rose+Croix, held in the same place as the Salon, will be devoted to the fugues of Bach and Porpora, the quartets of Beethoven to recitations of Parsifal.  An evening will be set aside to the glorification of Cesar Franck, the greatest French musician since Berlioz.

Among the idealist composers that the Rose+Croix will shed light on, it is proper to mention Erik Satie again, of whose work one will hear the harmonic suites for le Fils des Etoiles and the preludes to the Prince de Byzance.

Certain radical Leftist newspapers, believing in obligatory calumny against Christian artists, have denounced the Salon de la Rose+Croix as a speculative venture.

Should there be profits they will be used for reedition - so necessary to artists - of the Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci, the divine Leonardo.

It has been proposed to the Council that the Order buy works to make gifts of them to provincial museums; but this point, like several others, must remain in abeyance until October whne the Regle esthetique des Rose+Croix will appear.

Opinion forestalls our preparations and forces us to more immediate declarations which were unforeseen.  Contrary to what one reads in the Papers, no work by a woman will be accepted because in our renovation of esthetic laws we faithfully observe magical laws.  [Silly superstitions.]

In 1886 we wrote:  "Merodack, Nebo, Alta, Tammuz, these Orphic figures, I have raised them in my work to foretell of the solemn day when the Rose+Croix, cleansed of Masonic contamination, purified of all heresy and blessed by the Pope, will be welded to the key of Peter, urbi et orbi."  [Emphasis mine.  This is the heart of the project - to promulgate the arts, wedded to the Faith, preaching the Faith through Beauty, and claiming Beauty as our spiritual inheritance.]

This solemn day will be the 10th of March, 1892:  The day will begin with festivals of the mind as noble as those celebrated at Bayreuth; this day the Ideal will have its temple and knights and we, the Maccabeans of Beauty, will bring to Our Lady, lay at the feet of our Suzerain Jesus, the homage of the Temple and the genuflection of the Rose+Croix.

We believe neither in progress nor salvation.  For the Latin race which is about to die, we prepare a last splendor, in order to dazzle and soften the barbarians who are coming.

We desire to add some statues and frescoes to its Latin cathedral before it crumbles.  Last enthusiasts, we arrive, amidst the braying of the Marsellaise and the cabarets, to entone a supreme hymn to Beauty, which is God, and thus one day earn the right to contemplate the mystical Rose through the achievements of Our Lord's Passion.

Ad Rosem per Crucem.  Ad Crucem per Rosam.  In ea, in eis, gemmatus resurgam.

-Sar Peladan