A Meditation on Love for Saint Valentine's Day

Saint Valentine

Today is Saint Valentine's Day, and that means that, if you're anything like me, you spent the last day or two scrambling about at the last minute
shopping for your wife.

Saint Valentine appears to have been a 3rd century Roman priest or Bishop, but he may have lived at Terni instead, or there may be two Valentines. Nor does the confusion end there, as there were a number of other ancient and medeival Valentines whose personal histories may have been rolled up into one saint.

Valentinus is also the name of a 2nd century bishop, who seems to have been removed by only two degrees of separation from Saint Paul. His teacher was Theudus, who was a student of Paul's-- this, at least, according to Clement of Alexandria. This is particularly interesting, as Valentinus was the founder of one of the great schools of Gnosticism. You can read about the Valentinian tradition, which I personally find more interesting than the other Gnostic schools, here.

Which Valentine is "really" being celebrated today? Or is the spirit of Saint Valentine's Day a composite being like Santa Claus, superintending a festival of romantic love?

Of course, Rome in its great and unceasing wisdom, removed liturgical celebrations of Saint Valentine in 1969, because they couldn't find historians who could prove its existence. This is how you know that modern Rome is not a Christian institution-- obedience to the opinions of college professors is a key component of the modern ideology of Managerialism, but is not part of historical Christianity.

A Meditation on Eros

Saint Valentine's Day-- or "Valentine's Day," as we know it in the still-Protestant United States-- has become our great celebration of romantic love, or, to say it another way, erotic love. And so we should talk about what Eros means from a spiritual and magical point of view.

By the way, if you're tempted to jump in and claim that Valentine's Day as a celebration of love is an invention of marketing companies, I'd advise you to resist the temptation, and consider what you're saying. Yes, every company in the Western world seeks to make money from Valentine's Day, and many do profit handsomely thereby. But to assume that they created the thing is to believe that marketers and merchants are the creators of reality. The magical worldview is the opposite of this-- If a festival has emerged into human culture, then it is because spiritual forces at a higher level of existence have brought it into being. If a major part of its celebration is commercial, that's because we live in a commercial society; future historians will define "America" as "the name of a large merchant state which ruled much of North America between 1776 and the middle of the 21st century."

Now, of course, it needs to be said that the Catholic Church has had a very fraught relationship with Eros throughout its history. Saint Augustine of Hippo identified sexual desire with original sin. Writing several hundred years later, Pope Gregory in his letter to the Anglo-Saxons considers sexual desire as-- as he puts it-- "somewhat defiling." Gregory is specifically addressing a question from another Augustine, Augustine of Canterbury, who had been sent as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine is wondering whether it's okay to receive communion after having sex. Gregory replies:

A man who has approached his own wife is not to enter the church unless washed with water, nor is he to enter immediately although washed. The Law prescribed to the ancient people, that a man in such cases should be washed with water, and not enter into the church before the setting of the sun...

For there are many things which are lawful and permitted, and yet we are somewhat defiled in doing them. As very often by being angry we correct faults, and at the same time disturb our own peace of mind; and though that which we do is right, yet it is not to be approved that our mind should be disturbed. For he who said, “My eye was disturbed with anger,” had been angry at the vices of sinners. Now, seeing that only a calm mind can rest in the light of contemplation, he grieved that his eye was disturbed with anger; because, whilst he was correcting evil actions below, he was obliged to be confused and disturbed with regard to the contemplation of the highest things. Anger against vice is, therefore, commendable, and yet painful to a man, because he thinks that by his mind being agitated, he has incurred some guilt. Lawful commerce, therefore, must be for the sake of children, not of pleasure; and must be to procure offspring, not to satisfy vices. But if any man is led not by the desire of pleasure, but only for the sake of getting children, such a man is certainly to be left to his own judgement, either as to entering the church, or as to receiving the Mystery of the Body and Blood of our Lord, which he, who being placed in the fire cannot burn, is not to be forbidden by us to receive. But when, not the love of getting children, but of pleasure prevails, the pair have cause to lament their deed.

In other words-- it's okay to have sex with your own spouse, provided you don't do it to enjoy it, but only to beget children. If your purpose is pleasure, then "you have cause to lament your deed."

It's very tempting to dismiss this as just a bunch of puritanical nutjobbery. But didn't I just say that, when an idea manifests itself in human culture, it has a spiritual source? If we apply different standards to different cases we'll be hypocrites, and we won't discovery anything useful.

Sex, Magic, and Church

In my view, there are two different things going on with Gregory's attitude toward sex.

The first is an example of a very common problem in Catholic thinking-- the confusion of magical principles with moral laws. The fact is that sex is always a very powerful magical working. At the highest level, two spirits encounter one another, and join together. In that joining, a third thing is created, which is the union of the two. The union of two to produce three then creates the possibility for another spirit to descend downward, from the plane of Spirit, into manfiestation at the material level.

At the lower levels, sex unleashes a torrent of energies. Some are refined, rarified, "astral"-- these are the higher emotions of love and union. Others are denser and etheric-- this is the all-consuming passion that Gregory terms "unlawful desire." At the physical level, sexual fluids are alive with the life-force at its most concentrated.

Now, the Eucharist is a great and powerful working of ceremonial magic. Ceremonial magic is itself a kind of spiritual technology, and, like all technologies, it has its requirements in order to function correctly. Your computer will not work if you don't plug it in, and you shouldn't set it outside in a rainstorm; if you plug it into a wall outlet that already has 25 chords running into it, you risk a short circuit or even a fire.

Ceremonial magic is similar. A ritual space needs, first, to be purified of outside influences-- this is why the mass traditionally began with incense and holy water (itself a mixture of water and salt). Sexual fluids are, as I said above, highly potent magical substances, and sexual passion is a powerful energetic influence. Thus, Gregory is being perfectly sensible when he suggests that one shouldn't enter a church without purification with water-- cold water removes etheric energies-- and allowing sufficient time to elapse-- to allow the energetic body to stabilize. These are good magical principles, and you'll see them in many other religious traditions also. But they aren't moral laws, any more than it's a moral law not to use your laptop in a rainstorm.

The second thing going on is that Gregory is echoing the terror of sexual pleasure found in teh writings of AUgustine of HIppo. Again, it's easy to dismiss this as puritanical nonsense, but then we have to ask ourselves why this sort of puritanism was allowed to be born into the world and endure for such a long time. Clearly the powers that govern the world had a good reason for it. But just as clearly, that time has come to an end. If you want to demonstrate that to yourself, try this. Read the short story The White People, by Arthur Machen. Written in the 1890s, it's essentially a dramatization of a girl's sexual awakening. And-- this is critical to understand-- it was written as a horror story, and received by its audience as a great work of horror. Read the story-- it's a good one-- and try to feel the least shred of the fear that Machen's audience felt. The fact that you can't shows you that the world has changed.

The Proper Role of Eros

Erotic love is the subject of one of Plato's great dialogues, The Symposium. In the dialogue, a group of dinner guests spend hours discussing the nature of Love, without coming to an understanding. Finally, Socrates shares the teaching he received from a woman named Diotima, who was, he tells us, his initiator into the mysteries of love.

Love, Diotima explains, is neither divine nor mortal, but a mediator between the two. Like mortality, Love partakes of lack and desire, while the Gods Themselves desire nothing. But like the divine, Love leads to fullness and union. Love is a desire for Beauty, and that very desire becomes a step-by-step initiation into divine mysteries. As Diotima explains:

For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me your very best attention:

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

That "vast sea of beauty" is the eternal Beauty, which is the source of all the beauty of the living world. True Beauty is the image of God, the Good. In our own lives, romantic love can be and is meant to be an initiation into the Higher Mysteries of beauty; by joining with the beautiful person which is our beloved, we transcend separation, we experience unity, and in doing so grow ever closer to the source of unity, which is the One itself, the Good-- God.

Prayer for Saint Valentine's Day

The only surviving hymn of Valentine, the Gnostic Bishop, reads thusly:

In the spirit I see all suspended,
In the spirit I know everything held:
The flesh hanging from the soul
The soul held aloft by the air
The air suspended from the ether
Fruits manifest themselves out of the Depth
A child emerges from the womb

This is a vision of creation unfolding from the Highest and descending downward, to the child emerging from the womb. This is the process of Creation-- all creation, whether hte begetting of children, or the creation of works of art or poetry or even great works of the mind.

If you'd like something more orthodox, here's a prayer to Saint Valentine to bless your relationship:

O glorious advocate and protector,
St. Valentine,
look with pity upon our wants,
hear our requests,
attend to our prayers,
relieve by your intercession the miseries
under which we labor,
and obtain for us the divine blessing,
that we may be found worthy to join you
in praising the Almighty for all eternity:
through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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