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The Bard's Enigma
Oct. 26th, 2023 09:28 am
Continuing the discussion of God in the Barddas, we read the following, in a section entitled the Bard's Enigma:
There is nothing truly hidden but what is not conceivable;
There is nothing not conceivable but what is immeasurable;
There is nothing immeasurable but God;
There is no God but that which is not conceivable;
There is nothing not conceivable but that which is truly hidden;
There is nothing truly hidden but God.
This is then given in several different forms. The point in every case is that God is ultimately utterly unknowable. This is why the sphere of God is called Ceugant, the "empty sphere."
John Scotus Eriugena-- the name means "John the Scot, the Irishman," distinctions among the various species of Gael having been apparently less important at the time than now-- was a philosopher of the Ninth Century. Another way of saying it is that he was the philosopher of the Ninth Century. He seems to have been among the best-educated men in Western Europe and one of the few who could read Greek and thus access many of the Church Fathers in their original language.
Compare Morgwanwg's Bardic Enigma with these passages from Eriugena's homily on the prologue to the Gospel of John:
The voice of the spiritual eagle resounds in the ears of the Church. [The Eagle is the traditional symbol of St. John the Evangelist.] May our external senses grasp its fleeting sounds, and our interior mind penetrate its enduring meaning. This is the voice of the high-flying bird, not hte one that flies above the material air or ether or around the whole of the sensible world, but the bird which soars above all theory, on the swift wings of the most profound theology and with the insights of the clearest and most sublime contemplation, passing beyond all that is and all that is not.
By 'all that is,' I mean those things that do not entirely escape human or angelic knowledge... By 'all that is not,' I mean those things which transcend the powers of all understanding.
By 'all that is,' I mean those things that do not entirely escape human or angelic knowledge... By 'all that is not,' I mean those things which transcend the powers of all understanding.
Later, comparing John with Peter, he tells us:
The one reclined on the breast of the Lord, which signifies contemplation, while the other hesitated, which signifies restless action. ... The power of contemplation, wholly purified, penetrates more keenly and swiftly the profound secrets of the divine letters than does action, which is in need of purification.
For Eriugena, then, "that which is not" is the whole realm of boundless possibility uncomprehended by human or even angelic minds, and it is beyond this that God himself abides. The way of contemplation signified by John is the way of immediate knowing. The word "contemplation" in modern language refers to thinking, and "meditation" to the emptying of the mind. This is one of these oddities that come up every now and then in the history of language, like the transformation of the French word blanc, meaning white, into the English black, meaning black. In former times "meditation" meant thought, while "contemplation," especially in a spiritual context, meant the immediate presence and knowing-ness that is beyond thought.
Eriugena's great source was Dionysius the Areopagite, that mysterious figure of the Sixth Century who wove together Procline Neoplatonism with Christian imagery. Dionysius's Mystical Theology begins with the following oration to Divine Darkness:
TRIAD supernal, both super-God and super-good, Guardian of the Theosophy of Christian men, direct us aright to the super-unknown and super-brilliant and highest summit of the mystic Oracles, where the simple and absolute and changeless mysteries of theology lie hidden within the super-luminous gloom of the silence, revealing hidden things, which in its deepest darkness shines above the most super-brilliant, and in the altogether impalpable and invisible, fills to overflowing the eyeless minds with glories of surpassing beauty. This then be my prayer; but thou, O dear Timothy, by thy persistent commerce with the mystic visions, leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence, and all things not being and being, and be raised aloft unknowingly to the union, as far' as attainable, with Him Who is above every essence and knowledge. For by the resistless and absolute ecstasy in all purity, from thyself and all, thou wilt be carried on high, to the superessential ray of the Divine darkness, when thou hast cast away all, and become free from all.
In the New Testament, Dionysius is the companion of St. Paul. His letters to Timothy were lost in ancient times, but coincidentally rediscovered two years after Justinian's banning of the teaching of pagan philosophy. They then formed a major part of the foundation of Christian theology, east and west, for a thousand years. After this time, someone got around to noticing that Dionysius's writings sounded a lot like the writings of Proclus, the last great pagan Neoplatonist. Here is a sample of Proclus's discussion of the First Cause in his Platonic Theology:Let us now therefore, if ever, abandon multiform knowledge, exterminate from ourselvs all the variety of life, and in perfect quiet approach near to the cause of things. for this purpose, let not only opinion and phantasy be at rest, nor the passions alone which impede our anagogic impulse to the first, be at peace; but let the air be still, and the universe itself be still. And let all things extend us with a tranquil power to communion with the ineffeable. Let us also, standing there, having transcended the Intelligible (if we contain anything of this kind), and with nearly closed eyes adoring as it were the rising sun, since it is not lawful for any being whatever intently to behold him-- let us survey the Sun whence the light of the intelligible Gods proceeds, emerging, as the poets say, from teh bosom of the ocean; and again from this divine tranquility descending into intellect, and from intellect, employing the reasonings of the soul, let us relate to ourselves what the natures are from which, in this progression, we shall considder the First God as exempt. And let us as it were celebrate Him... as more ineffable than all silence, and more unknown than all essence, as holy among the holies, and concealed in the Intelligible Gods.
This, then, is the tradition in which Morganwg is ultiamtely working. It can be seen at once as pagan and Christian, Celtic or Druidic and Platonic. But these are only labels. The enigma remains, the task remains: to abandon multiform knowledge; to leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts; to recline, as it were, against the very heart of the Christ who is the summit of all Intelligibles and, soaring as an eagle beyond all that is and all that is not; to encounter there the Great Mystery hidden in a stillness ineffable beyond all silence, a gloom darker than all darkness.
