Hearing Ancient Voices

Last updated on: January 6, 2020 at 9:00 pm by Elias Crim

Hearing Ancient Voices 2020-01-06T21:00:09-05:00 Elias Crim

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image via Angelico Press

I spent part of the Christmas break this year in the (virtual) company of a wonderful tour guide, Michael Martin, whose YouTube series on the metaphysical poets he had made available without paywall “until Candlemas” (that’s Feb 2, to you paynim ).

In the videos, Martin (whose work I’ve written about elsewhere) introduces us to poets we thought we knew — or even disliked — in order to help us hear them for the first time. Beginning with John Donne, the series moves through George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, and (the figure who drew me initially to the series) Thomas Traherne. By the time I’d finished, I could appreciate the comment of Sir Philip Sydney that poets, like God, make worlds.

Thinking of Donne and William Blake in particular, Martin points out that some poets require decades or more before they find their readers — or their readers even begin to comprehend them. But there is something beyond mere comprehension.

These poets, if we give ourselves up to them, attempt to awaken us through a range of strategies, from Donne’s sometimes violent and paradoxical energy (“This is joy’s bonfire, then, where love’s strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts”) to Traherne’s blissed-out landscapes (“Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys”).

As it happened, I was also reading over the break a review copy of Martin’s new edition of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, a very curious specimen of … 17th-century fantasy literature? Proto-science fiction? Rosicrucian satire?

As in his brilliant work revivifying the golden thread of sophiology throughout Western tradition, Martin’s commentary here helps us understand how alchemy was once a truly Christian science of regeneration, physical and spiritual. He also points out that the Chymical Wedding is, curiously, a terrible guide to understanding alchemy, given the author’s parodic intentions in concocting this bizarre dream vision.

The text’s larger and more important vision, in Martin’s reading, lies in its meditation on the coniunctio oppositorum that is marriage — between the Bridegroom and the Bride, between God and Sophia, between man and woman. Viewed from a metaphysical angle, the world itself, Martin finally suggests, is a wedding.

If you’re one of those people wondering whatever happened to the Catholic imagination, you may want to skip next year’s inevitable academic conference somewhere on that lugubrious topic to look elsewhere: such as toward the visionary work of Michael Martin.

Art

Catholic imagination

Elias Crim

Previous Post

December 31, 2019

Remembering a Black Catholic Cooperativist: Fr. Albert McKnight

Next Post

January 19, 2020 What is Catholic Economics? An Upcoming Conversation with John Medaille

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Alternative economics, worker and family empowerment, the spirituality of work, the economy of sharing Art Care for Our Common Home Catholic imagination Catholic Social Teaching Christian Friendship Christian Persecution Community building, models or forms of community, radical hospitality Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy Daniel Schwindt Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, CW aims and means, spirituality Elias Crim Grace Potts Greg Guest Josh Brumfield Mark Gordon Matthew Cooper Mercy Michael Stafford Paul Grenier Peace, nonviolent resistance, conscience and conscientious objection Pope Francis Poverty, economic inequality, consumerism, unemployment, underemployment, living wage Racial Reconciliation Radical Christianity Stan Goff Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, while six-winged beings called out 'Holy, holy, holy.' What were these creatures?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Cherubim Leviathan Angels Seraphim