The Robe of Glory- The Hymn of the Soul

Christian Waller

THE HYMN

When, a quite little child, I was dwelling
In the House of my Father’s Kingdom,

And in the wealth and the glories
Of my Up-bringers I was delighting,

From the East, our Home, my Parents
Forth-sent me with journey-provision.

Indeed from the wealth of our Treasure,
They bound up for me a load.

Large was it, yet was it so light
That all alone I could bear it.

II

Gold from the Land of Gilan,
Silver from Gazzak the Great,

Chalcedonies of India,
Iris-hued [Opals?] from Kushan.

They girt me with Adamant [also]
That hath power to cut even iron.

My Glorious Robe they took off me
Which in their love they had wrought me,

And my Purple Mantle [also]
Which was woven to match with my stature.

III

And with me They [then] made a compact;
In my heart wrote it, not to forget it:

"If thou goest down into Egypt,
And thence thou bring’st the one Pearl--

"[The Pearl] that lies in the Sea,
Hard by the loud-breathing Serpent,--

"[Then] shalt Thou put on thy Robe
And thy Mantle that goeth upon it,

"And with thy Brother, Our Second,
Shalt thou be Heir in our Kingdom."

IV

I left the East and went down
With two Couriers [with me];

For the way was hard and dangerous,
For I was young to tread it.

I traversed the borders of Maishan,
The mart of the Eastern merchants,

And I reached the Land of Babel,
And entered the walls of Sarbug.

Down further I went into Egypt;
And from me parted my escorts.

V

Straightway I went to the Serpent;
Near to his lodging I settled,

To take away my Pearl
While he should sleep and should slumber.

Lone was I there, yea, all lonely;
To my fellow-lodgers a stranger.

However I saw there a noble,
From out of the Dawn-land my kinsman,

A young man fair and well favoured,
Son of Grandees; he came and he joined me.

VI

I made him my chosen companion,
A comrade, for sharing my wares with.

He warned me against the Egyptians,
’Gainst mixing with the unclean ones.

For I had clothed me as they were,
That they might not guess I had come

From afar to take off the Pearl,
And so rouse the Serpent against me.

VII

But from some occasion or other
They learned I was not of their country.

With their wiles they made my acquaintance;
Yea, they gave me their victuals to eat.

I forgot that I was a King’s son,
And became a slave to their king.

I forgot all concerning the Pearl
For which my Parents had sent me;

And from the weight of their victuals
I sank down into a deep sleep.

VIII

All this that now was befalling,
My Parents perceived and were anxious.

It was then proclaimed in our Kingdom,
That all should speed to our Gate--

Kings and Chieftains of Parthia,
And of the East all the Princes.

And this is the counsel they came to:
I should not be left down in Egypt.

And for me they wrote out a Letter;
And to it each Noble his Name set:

IX

"From Us--King of Kings, thy Father,
And thy Mother, Queen of the Dawn-land,

"And from Our Second, thy Brother--
To thee, Son, down in Egypt, Our Greeting!

"Up an arise from thy sleep,
Give ear to the words of Our Letter!

"Remember that thou art a King’s son;
See whom thou hast served in thy slavedom.

Bethink thyself of the Pearl
For which thou didst journey to Egypt.

X

"Remember thy Glorious Robe,
Thy Splendid Mantle remember,

"To put on and wear as adornment,
When thy Name may be read in the Book of the Heroes,

"And with Our Successor, thy Brother,
Thou mayest be Heir in Our Kingdom."

My Letter was [surely] a Letter
The King had sealed up with His Right Hand,

’Gainst the Children of Babel, the wicked,
The tyrannical Daimons of Sarbãg.

XI

It flew in the form of the Eagle,
Of all the winged tribes the king-bird;

It flew and alighted beside me,
And turned into speech altogether.

At its voice and the sound of its winging,
I waked and arose from my deep sleep.

Unto me I took it and kissed it;
I loosed its seal and I read it.

E’en as it stood in my heart writ,
The words of my Letter were written.

XII

I remembered that I was a King’s son,
And my rank did long for its nature.

I bethought me again of the Pearl,
For which I was sent down to Egypt.

And I began [then] to charm him,
The terrible loud-breathing Serpent.

I lulled him to sleep and to slumber,
Chanting o’er him the Name of my Father,

The Name of our Second, [my Brother],
And [Name] of my Mother, the East-Queen.

XIII

And [thereon] I snatched up the Pearl,
And turned to the House of my Father.

Their filthy and unclean garments
I stripped off and left in their country.

To the way that I came I betook me,
To the Light of our Home, to the Dawn-land.

On the road I found [there] before me,
My Letter that had aroused me--

As with its voice it had roused me,
So now with its light it did lead me--

XIV

On fabric of silk, in letter of red [?],
With shining appearance before me [?],

Encouraging me with its guidance,
With its love it was drawing me onward.

I went forth; through Sarbãg I passed;
I left Babel-land on my left hand;

And I reached unto Maishan the Great,
The meeting-place of the merchants, 

That lieth hard by the Seashore.

XV

My Glorious Robe that I’d stripped off,
And my Mantle with which it was covered,

Down from the Heights of Hyrcania,
Thither my Parents did send me,

By the hands of their Treasure-dispensers
Who trustworthy were with it trusted.

Without my recalling its fashion,--
In the House of my Father my childhood had left it,--

At once, as soon as I saw it,
The Glory looked like my own self.

XVI

I saw it in all of me,
And saw me all in [all of] it,--

That we were twain in distinction,
And yet again one in one likeness.

I saw, too, the Treasurers also,
Who unto me had down-brought it,

Were twain [and yet] of one likeness;
For one Sign of the King was upon them--

Who through them restored me the Glory,
The Pledge of my Kingship [?].

XVII

The Glorious Robe all-bespangled
With sparkling splendour of colours:

With Gold and also with Beryls,
Chalcedonies, iris-hued [Opals?],

With Sards of varying colours.
To match its grandeur [?], moreover, it had been completed:

With adamantine jewels
All of its seams were off-fastened.

[Moreover] the King of Kings’ Image
Was depicted entirely all o’er it;

And as with Sapphires above
Was it wrought in a motley of colour.

XVIII

I saw that moreover all o’er it
The motions of Gnosis abounding;

I saw it further was making
Ready as though for to speak.

I heard the sound of its Music
Which it whispered as it descended [?]:

"Behold him the active in deeds!
For whom I was reared with my Father;

"I too have felt in myself
How that with his works waxed my stature."

XIX

And [now] with its Kingly motions
Was it pouring itself out towards me,

And made haste in the hands of its Givers,
That I might [take and] receive it.

And me, too, my love urged forward
To run for to meet it, to take it.

And I stretched myself forth to receive it;
With its beauty of colour I decked me,

And my Mantle of sparkling colours
I wrapped entirely all o’er me. 

XX

I clothed me therewith, and ascended
To the Gate of Greeting and Homage.

I bowed my head and did homage
To the Glory of Him who had sent it,

Whose commands I [now] had accomplished,
And who had, too, done what He’d promised.

[And there] at the Gate of His House-sons
I mingled myself with His Princes;

For He had received me with gladness,
And I was with Him in His Kingdom;

XXI

To whom the whole of His Servants
With sweet-sounding voices sing praises.

* * * * *

He had promised that with him to the Court
Of the King of Kings I should speed,

And taking with me my Pearl
Should with him be seen by our King.

The Hymn of Judas Thomas the Apostle,
which he spake in prison, is ended.

-Translated by G.R.S. Mead
http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_robeofglory.htm

http://www.gnosis.org/library/hymnpearl.htm

Commmentary by Rafael Vargas From the book Encounter with Samael Gnostic Society Rome, 1999

The Hymn of the Pearl of the Apostle Thomas.When I was a little child living In my fathers palace in his kingdom, Happy in the glories and riches Of my family that nurtured me, My parents gave me supplies And sent me out on a mission From our home in the East.The memories of Innocence in the bosom of our Being are pleasing, but Innocence is not enough. It is necessary to have consciousness of it, and it is the transmigration of the soul through matter which will grant this sorrowful opportunity.

From their treasure house they made up a cargo for me it was big though but light enough so I could carry it myself. It held gold from the highest houses and silver of Gazzak the Great and rubies of India and opals from the land of Kushan. In order to create spiritual gold and silver it is necessary to have a small quantity of gold and silver. The same with Rubies (Ruby: from the Latin "rubeus," red, defined in European and Indigenous cultures as the "sun stone;" a symbol of force, interior fire, love or passion). These precious stones of vibrant red colour represent very well the potential spirit; also the agates, which are a wide variety of quartz, considered protector stones and bringers of fortune, where the spirit is enclosed in its beautiful and different forms.

---

And they girded me with adamant that can crush iron. The diamond, the precious gem par excellence, indomitable and hard, with which the Philosophical Stone will be created later, the Resurrected Christ of the Great Work. The name of the diamond derives from the Greek "adamas," invincible. This precious stone is associated with the image of Venus, which is why it's said that it liberates from demonic influences, becoming a symbol of force, valour and invulnerability.

They took off my bright robe of glory, which they had made for me out of love, and took away my purple toga, which was woven to fit my stature.It has already been said, we must acquire Innocence through Gnosis, which is the doctrine of the "Salvator Salvandus", or he who saves himself through knowledge of the Being, because self-knowledge of Oneself is extra and superhuman. It is a superconscious knowledge that depends on the Being, that has nothing to do with the human.

They made a covenant with me And wrote it in my heart so I would not forget: "When you go down into Egypt and bring back the one pearl that lies in the middle of the sea and is guarded by the snorting serpent, you will again put on your robe of glory and your toga over it, and with your brother, our next in rank, you will be heir in our kingdom."Egypt is our Philosophic Land, in whose interior stretches a river, also internal, which we must learn to navigate. This secret Nile in each of us is the dorsal spine with its lower, middle, and upper Egypt, and in its spermatic waters dwells the serpent-dragon, who foaming with desires conceals from us the One Pearl, the conscious Soul. The next in rank to our interior father is the second logos, the Intimate Christ.

I left the east and traveled down To Egypt with my two royal guides, Since the way was dangerous and harsh And I was very young to walk alone.The east is the electronic or solar world, the dwelling of the spirits. Descending from the solar east, the One becomes Two and continues to multiply, as it descends from dimension to dimension. Then the last and first Mystery, the Father, becomes the twenty-fourth Mystery which are the parts of the Being, so that later a lost Soul or primogenial Essence can travel the dangerous path of mechanical laws.

I crossed the borders of Maishan, The gathering place of merchants of the east, Came into the land of the Babylonians, And entered the walls of Sarbug.Merchants from whichever place are always merchants, but what is important is that they represent the interior of our temple: "the merchants of the east," who trade in energetic solar values, deposited in our organic machine, so necessary for self-realization.

The land of Babylon, that of the Babylonians, which if at one time was one of the most glorious for Chaldean wisdom, would later see the birth of the "confusion of tongues," since man, separating from his Being, wanted to conquer the exterior without his help, and so gave way to the confusion of the mind, in which we still continue. Babylon, land of the savage demons of Sarbug or of the "pluralized I".

When I went down into Egypt My companions left me.Companions which are Two initially, Twenty-four parts of the Being later, and as much as Forty-nine fires of the Being, which synthesize into Twelve Parts, if we abide by esoteric Christianity, but which without self-realization will then be in contradiction with each other, until their integration may become possible.

I went straight to the serpent And settled close by him in an inn, Waiting for him to sleep So I could take my pearl from him.The serpent or the dragon is the cosmic fire which in a spiral and particular manner underlies all organic and inorganic life. Fire that palpitates in the nucleus of each atom and each sun, and which in us is associated intimately with sexual potency, mental energy and the innermost fires of the tranquil heart. But plunging down by cause of desire, it is the fire, which hypnotizes the consciousness; however, when ascending, it is the fire that awakens and illuminates it.

Since I was alone I was a stranger to others in the inn, Yet I saw one of my own people there, A nobleman from the east, Young, handsome, loveable, A son of kings-an anointed one, And he came and was close to me. And I made him my confidante With whom I shared my mission.It is difficult but not impossible, to find "free men," masters of the white brotherhood, self realized beings, who are forever guides of humanity, whose mission it is to keep alive the flame of the tradition and revelation.

I warned him against the Egyptians And of contact with the unclean ones. Then I put on a robe like theirs, Lest they suspect me as an outsider Who had come to steal the pearl, Lest they arouse the serpent against me.These "unclean Egyptians" are the men who are slaves of themselves; the "free men: offer us the doctrine, the word of salvation, but it is not enough to hear the word, it must be made flesh and blood.

Somehow they learned I was not Their countryman, dealt with me cunningly, And gave me their food to eat.In truth, the mind is always the principal cause of the fall, in generation and degeneration, and for this reason the "I," separativity, will always resurrect. Meanwhile, the Being never eats "garbage," never drinks anything "unclean" for its nature.

The mind however, as mercury is voluble and unknown to itself, it is restless and therefore unstable, and like a mirror reflects the surroundings in itself and to itself. For this reason it begins to forget the Being, thus losing its participation with the unity, which is the food that does not contaminate.

So what ensues from the mind is its mechanical capacity to react in imitation, duplication, separation, division, justification, condemnation, etc., which is the nature of the "I" it will therefore result in being vain, envious, jealous, prideful, curious etc.

But every cloud has a silver lining; it is this falsehood in which the mind is apt to deviate continuously which gives birth to the possibility of the consciousness to be able to confront the mind with its own contradictions, to know it, to comprehend it, and to eliminate from the mind that which is false, and to apprehend what of ultimate truth truly remains; although this model is not the general rule in everyone.

I fell into a deep sleep. I forgot that I was a son of kings And served their king. I forgot the pearl For which my parents had sent me. Through the heaviness of their food I fell into a deep sleep.Once the "I" is resuscitated, its separativity hypnotizes the consciousness. Much time will have to pass before the battle of interrelation; confrontation, comprehension and elimination of the subjective can commence.

When all these things happened My parents knew and grieved for me. I was proclaimed in our kingdom That all should come to our gate. And the kings and princes of Parthia And all the nobles of the east Wove a plan on my behalf So I would not be left in Egypt.Fortunately, fallen bodhisattvas sooner or later rise from the mud of the earth, and this would surely be the concrete case of the apostle Thomas, who by decree of his Being, that is the Donum Dei or "Gift of God," the grace or gnosis which makes possible the comprehension and realization of the Great Work, was called to become part of a very important mission...

And they wrote me a letter And every noble singed it with his name: "From your father, the king of kings, And your mother, the mistress of the east, And from your brother, our next in rank, And to you, our son in Egypt, peace!The hour had arrived in which he should awaken in order to be a vehicle of his Being.

Awake and rise from your sleep And hear the words of our letter! Remember that you are a son of kings And see the slavery of your life. Remember the pearl For which you were sent into Egypt!Only continuous messages from the Being will be able to help multiply the great longings of the lost soul; no one would survive in the path without them.

Remember your robe of glory And your splendid mantle, which you may wear When your names is called in the book of life, When it is read in the book of heroes, When you and your brother inherit our kingdom."For each dimension exists a vehicle, an existential body, the only method of penetrating the diverse dimensions of nature and of the cosmos, but only the vestment that our celestial Father bestows from on high will permit us to participate in the unity of free life in his movement.

And serving as messenger, The letter was a letter sealed by the king With his right hand Against the evil children of Babylon And the savage demons of the Sarbug labyrinth.A message of compassion from the Father is the absolute guarantee of triumph of the Great Work. The father always seals his works by tracing the divine ray of the Rune Sig, which corresponds with the last letter at the end of some alphabets.

It rose up in the form of an eagle, The king of all winged fowl; It flew and alighted beside me And became speech.The bird is, and always will be, among many other attributes, the Holy Spirit, the great healer, the giver of illumination.

At its voice and the sound of its rustling I awoke and rose from my sleep. I took it, kissed it, broke its seal, and read. And the words written on my heart Were in the letter for me to read. I remembered that I was the son of kings And my free soul longed for its own kind. I remembered the pear For which I was sent down into Egypt, And I began to enchant The terrible and snorting serpent.There exists no manner of enchanting the serpent of our cosmic fire other than changing its magnetic polarity, in the mind with self-observation, in the heart with superior emotions, and in the sex with alchemical transmutation.

I charmed him into sleep By calling the name of my father over him And of my mother, the queen of the east. I seized the pearl And turned to carry it to my father. Those filthy and impure garments I stripped off, leaving them in the fields, And went straight on my way Into the light of our homeland in the east.On my way the letter that awakened me Was lying like a woman on the road. And as she had awakened me with her voice So she guided me with her light As if she were an oracle. She was written on Chinese silk And shone before me in her own form. Her voice soothed my fear And its love urged me on. I hurried past the labyrinth walls of Sarbug And Babylon on the left And came to Maishan, the haven of merchants, Perched over the coast of the sea. My robe of glory that I had taken off And the toga over it were sent by my parents From the heights of Hyrcania. They were in the hands of treasures To whom they were committed Because of their faith, And I had forgotten the robe?s splendor, For as a child I had left it In my father?s house. As I gazed on it, suddenly the garment Like a mirror reflected me, And I saw myself apart As two entities in one form.The treasures are the administrators of destiny, the lords of the Great Law. And when we neither owe the Law nor the law owes us, then, all the truth of the Being is revealed and is objectively reflected in the translucence of a mind, heart, and sexuality purified by the light of the truth.

The treasures had brought me one robe, Yet in two halves I saw one shape With one kingly seal. They gave me wealth, And the bright embroidered robe Was colored with gold and beryls, With rubies and opals, And sardonyxes of many colors Were fasted to it in its high home. All its seams were fastened With stones of adamant,As we already said at the beginning, the beryls, agates, diamonds, sapphires, etc., as well as the rest of the precious stones represent virtues conquered by the soul, with which the Divine Mother makes the vestments of the soul. However, it is not too much to repeat what specialists say about Beryls: it was already known in antiquity that these crystals detoxified and fortified vision, for which reason they came to be used for the production of lenses. Of the Sardonyz it is said that it was the symbol of abundance, virtue, courage and eloquence. Of the Sapphire, whose name comes from the Sanskrit "sani," Saturn, is considered in European and Indian cultures, as the stone of Saturn, in so much as it represented the heavens, angels, magic, trust and friendship.

And the image of the king of kings Was embroidered on it As it rippled with sapphires Of many colors. I saw it quiver all over, Moving with gnosis, in a pulsing knowledge, And as it prepared to speak It moved toward me, Murmuring the sound of its songs. It descended and said, "I am the one who acted for him. For him I was brought up in my Father?s house. I saw myself growing in stature In harmony with his labors."With regal movements The robe was spreading toward me, Urging me to take it,Certainly, the vestment of the soul consists of the consciousness of nature and of the cosmos, which now is offered to the triumphant soul.

And love urged me to receive it, And I stretched forth and received it And put on the beauty of its hues. I cast my toga of brilliant colors All around me. Therein I clothed myself and ascended To the gate of salutation and adoration. I bowed my head and adored The Majesty of my Father, who sent it to me. I had fulfilled his commands And he fulfilled what he had promised. At the gate of his princes I mingled with his nobles. He was happy through me and received me, And I was with him in his kingdom, And his slaves praised him resoundingly. He promised me that I would journey soon With him to the gate of the King of Kings, And with my gifts and my pearl I would appear with him before our king.End of the Hymn that the apostle Judas Thomas sang in Prison.

The Kernel of the Heart

There used to be a story of a crypt which did conceal the seed of an ancient tree. The deceased had been sealed in a leaden case, the seed still contained in his hardened fist. The tree, of which it was but a germ, was to be of great worth as a preventative and as a remedy to many ills: afflictions that caused death and grief to old and young.

It is a rather long tale, but the upshot of it was, that eventually the seed was prised from the corpse and put to the rich soil with vast and hopeful expectation. However it did fail to take. There was no bonded union and the seed remained intact, refusing to sprout.

As the seasons turned over, they did pluck it back out from the ground and replant it in firmer, then looser soil; with water and then without, and so forth; but still the seed remained seed.

Disgusted and with disappointment, it was eventually surmised that there was no value to be had, and that either by corruption or inadequacy this marvel of a tree was not to be brought forth into the world.

And so it became a worthless curiosity which was commissioned to sit upon a plaque within a glass cabinet, along with several hundred other oddities for public display. There became the standard one line joke - "A dead man's remedy that will not subscribe to life!" And it was soon forgotten.

However, as with most famed articles, there was a presence of truth about this tiny seed, which had been invested with much conjecture. For all around the country there became a new variety of tree sprung up, and each and every one of them were ethereally bound to this precious seed. In point of fact, the owner from whose hand it was taken, knew of its remarkable link to life at a distance - dependent on it - and for reasons of security, planned to conceal it with his burial after long provision for care during his life.

However, the trees for which this seed was the parent, did go unnoticed by those who sought their properties, and flourished neglected. Came maturation, pods popped and birds pried, plucked and pecked the precious seed-peas. The birds as a result of this, became so overfull with life that the motion of the wings sweeping across the breast would enliven the currents around them.

You see, there may be mighty activity coming into and through the smallest of beings. These birds fed from the revivifying tree, and in turn gave out all that was not required, for them to be. Their tiny presence would alight at a distance a man, or to a child who was dejected or ailing miserably; and then in a passion of sympathetic understanding their need would be answered by the movement and presence of this empowered friend, for they knew also of the related properties and their purpose of prescription.

This is the nature of Love. It finds its way through mediums that will have it, go to it and give it. The men would not have profited similarly by scalding the leaves or boiling a brew, this was not the case, for the special nature of this tree was in relationships as ethereally supported from one to another, and by such we are suckled and sustained.

The tree would not be owned selectively to this or that community privy to its properties. And the men could not determine which foliage and what bough bore the effervescent vitalities, as the birds did see it a’ blazing, as if on fire.

Now the seed that was in the hand is one and the same which is kernel to the heart. All effort made manifest in the world, Love's efforts, are linked to that kernel. The offspring is always for the greater world and for so many who are as strangers to us, and yet dependent on our safekeeping of love's seed and our tenuous relationships without. Personal maturation does come after death, by which we truly come to eternal life.

The greatest affliction is a loveless life (and in life after death also) - the remedy being the giving freely, cultivating loving itself.

-B.Hive

God & the Religious Life

Spiritual Science endeavours to penetrate behind the mysteries of the spiritual conditions in the world. Religions are facts in the historical life of humanity. Spiritual Science can of course go so far as to consider the spiritual phenomena which have appeared as religions in the course of the world's evolution. But Spiritual Science can never desire to create a religion, any more than natural science surrenders itself to the illusion of being able to create something in nature. 

Hence the most various religious confessions will be able to live together in the profoundest peace, and in complete harmony within the circle of the view of the world taken by Spiritual Science, and will be able to strive together after knowledge of the spiritual — so to strive that the religious convictions of the individual will not thereby be in any way injured. Neither need intensity in the exercise of a religious belief be in any way lessened by what is found in Spiritual Science. Rather must it be said that natural science, as it has appeared in modern times, has very often led people away from a religious conception of life, from the exercise of true, inner religion. It is an experience which we have in Spiritual Science that people who have been alienated from all religious life by the half-truths of natural science can be brought back again to that life through Spiritual Science. 

No one need be in any way estranged from his religious life through Spiritual Science. For this reason it cannot be said that Spiritual Science, as such, is a religious belief. It desires neither to create a religious belief, nor to change a man in any way with regard to the religious belief which he holds. 

Nevertheless it seems as though people were talking about the religion of the Anthroposophists! In reality such a thing cannot be said, for all religious beliefs are represented within the Anthroposophical Society; and no one is prevented by it from practically exercising his religious belief in the fullest, most comprehensive and most intense way. It is only that Spiritual Science desires to include the whole world in its survey; it desires to survey historical life, together with the highest spirituality which has entered historical life. That for this reason it also takes a survey of religions is absolutely no contradiction of what I have just said. And thus it comes to pass that the view of the world taken by Spiritual Science must in a certain respect deepen a man, even with regard to the objects of religious life.

But when, for instance, it happens that Spiritual Science is accused of not speaking of a personal God, when it is said that I prefer to speak of the Divinity, not of God, when it is asserted that what is called “the divine” in Spiritual Science is of a similar nature to that which is so designated in the pantheism of the Monists or Naturalists, this is all the opposite of the truth. Through the very circumstance that in Spiritual Science we are led to real spiritual beings, and to the real being that man is after death, just because we are led to concrete, real spiritual beings, we arrive at being able completely to understand how unreasonable it is to become a pantheist, how repugnant to commonsense to deny personality in God. One arrives, on the contrary, at seeing that one may speak not only of the personality, but even of a super-personality of God. The most thorough refutation of pantheism may be found through Spiritual Science.

Can it be a subject of reproach that the spiritual investigator only speaks with deep reverence when, out of the feelings which his knowledge arouses in him, he points the way with awe to the divine? How often it is said in the circle of our friends, “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” And one who wishes to comprehend God with one idea, does not know that all possible ideas cannot comprehend God, because all ideas are in God. But the recognition of God as a being who has personality in a much higher sense even than man, in a sense which even through Spiritual Science cannot be fully perceived, becomes quite, I would say, natural to people, specially through Anthroposophy. Religious conceptions are not made misty, in the pantheistic sense, through Spiritual Science, but, in accordance with their nature, become deepened. If we say that God is revealed in our own hearts and souls, this is surely the conviction of many religious people; and it is again and again said in Spiritual Science that there can be no question in this of wishing to deify man.

I have often used the simile that a drop taken out of the sea is water — do I therefore say that the drop is the sea? If I say that something divine speaks in the individual human soul, a drop out of the ocean of the infinite divine, do I therefore say anything which deifies the individual human soul? Do I say anything which unites nature with in a pantheistic way? Far from it. And finally, if from certain deeply-seated feelings which are aroused by Spiritual Science itself, the name “GOD” is, in reverential awe, not named but paraphrased, should this be a subject of blame from the religious point of view? I ask, is not one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?” May not Spiritual Science stimulate to a faithful fulfilment of this command, if the name of God is not perpetually on the lips of its followers?

-Rudolf Steiner, Mission of Spiritual Science & of Its Building at Dornach, Switzerland



" Through an immoral conception of life we deprive ourselves of forces of attraction in the Mercury sphere. Through an irreligious disposition of soul we deprive ourselves of forces of attraction in the Venus sphere. We cannot draw from this sphere the forces we need; which means that in the next incarnation we shall have an astral body that in a certain respect is imperfect." 

-Rudolf Steiner, GA 140

Elisabeth Wang

Finding Strength 'Within'

Although it is common for people to talk of finding strength 'within' in Western culture today, previously in centuries before, people would look 'outward' to find the strength required for certain things.

For example: courage is an accessible virtue, however excessive nervous energy can thwart the courage you might otherwise experience. If we invoke the consoling powers from without to bear down upon the excess energy and curtail their disruption, we are then free to experience the courage that comes most naturally to us.

Asking the powers without can be a way to define the powers within. Ancient cultures looked to the vapors, to the smoke and fire, to the elements of nature and supernature, to 'normalize' the great powers within.

Our being, our own nature within, holds the same essence, power and velocity of the purest and fiercest forces universally known. There are not many different lesser varieties, but rather each bearing that of the same - same forces also that drive the world as well.

-B.Hive  

Courage must be developed. I have told you that courage is all around us. Air is an illusion; it is courage that is everywhere around us. If we are really to live in the world in which we breathe, we need courage. If we are timid or cowardly, if we do not live together with the world but exclude ourselves from it, we breathe only in semblance. What is above all things for medicine is courage, the courage to heal. It is indeed so: if you confront an illness with the courage to heal, this is the right orientation which in ninety percent of cases leads you right. These moral qualities are most intimately connected with the process of healing.

-- Rudolf Steiner, Course for Young Doctors, LECTURE VII, Dornach, January 8, 1924

Chapman & Dürer on Inspired Melancholy- Frances Yates- condensed

The argument has to begin by gazing for a long time at a picture of Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving, the "Melencolia I"....

The Galenic theory of the humors locked man's psychology into the cosmos, for the four humors corresponded to the four elements and four planets as follows:

Sanguine--Air--Jupiter

Choleric--Fire--Mars

Phlegmatic--Water--Moon

Melancholy--Earth--Saturn

The most unfortunate and most hateful of all the four humors was Saturn--Melancholy. The melancholic was dark in complexion, with black hair and a black face-the facies nigra or livid hue induced by the black bile of the melancholy complexion. His typical pose, expressive of his sadness and depression, was to rest his head on his hand. Even his "gifts," or characteristic occupations, were not attractive. He was good at measuring, numbering, counting -- measuring land and counting money -- but what low and earthy occupations were these compared with the splendid gifts of the sanguine Jupiter -- man, or the grace and loveliness of those born under Venus.

Dürer's Melancholy was the livid hue, the swarthy complexion, the "black face" of the type; and she supports her pensive head on her hand in the characteristic pose. She holds compasses for measuring and numbering. Beside her is the purse for counting money. Around her are tools, such as an artisan might use. Obviously she is a melancholic, characterized by the physical type, pose, and occupations of the old, bad melancholy. But she seems also to express some more lofty and intellectual type of endeavor. She is not actually doing anything, just sitting and thinking. What, moreover, do these geometrical forms mean, and why does a ladder rise heavenward behind the polyhedron?

There was a line of thought through which Saturn and the melancholy temperament might be "revalued," raised from being the lowest of the four to become the highest, the humor of great men, great thinkers, prophets, and religious seers. In this view, to be melancholy was a sign of genius; the "gifts" of Saturn, the numbering and measuring attributed to the melancholic, were to be cultivated as the highest kind of learning which brought man nearest to the divine. This radical change in the attitude to melancholy had results in effecting a change in the direction of men's minds and studies.

This change was brought about through the influence of a text, the authorship of which was attributed to Aristotle, but which is more safely described as Pseudo-Aristotelian. The thirtieth of the Problemata physica in this Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise discusses melancholy as the humor of heroes and great men. The argument is very detailed and medical, but the main point is that the heroic frenzy, or madness, or furor -- which, according to Plato, is the source of all inspiration -- when combined with the black bile of the melancholy temperament produced great men. It is the temperament of genius. All outstanding men have been melancholics, heroes like Hercules, philosophers like Empedocles or Plato, and practically all the poets.

The theories of Pseudo-Aristotle on melancholy were not unknown in the Middle Ages, but in the Renaissance they attracted general attention. Assimilated into Neoplatonism through the Platonic theory of the furores, the notion of the melancholy hero whose genius is akin to madness became familiar to the European mind.

Ficino knew the Pseudo-Aristotelian theory and mentioned it in the De Triplici Vita, the work in which he sets forth his astral magic. Addressing students who were thought to suffer from melancholy through solitariness and concentration on their studies, he advises that the Saturnian or melancholic man should not avoid the deep study to which he is prone by temperament, but should take care to temper the Saturnian severity with Jovial and Venereal influences. The ingenuity of Klibansky-Saxl-Panofsky has proved that Dürer's engraving shows knowledge of Ficinian theory, for they demonstrate that the square on the wall behind the melancholy figure, containing an arrangement of numbers, is a magic square of Jupiter, calculated to draw down Jupiter influences through its numerical arrangement. Thus the severe influences of Saturn and his inspired melancholy are being tempered in the engraving with Jupiter influences, as Ficino advised.

Dürer's immediate source for the inspired melancholy was, however, not Ficino, but Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia. The date of the engraving is 1514, that is, nearly 20 years before the publication of the printed version of Agrippa's work in 1533. It is therefore assumed that Dürer must have used the manuscript version of 1510, which was circulated in manuscript copies and was certainly available in the circles in which Dürer moved.

Agrippa quotes the definitions of inspired melancholy from Pseudo-Aristotle and classifies the inspiration, or demonic power which emanates from it, into three types, or grades, or stages. The first stage is when the inspired melancholy fills the imagination, producing wonderful instruction in the manual arts, through which a man may suddenly become a painter or an architect or some outstanding master in an art. The second stage of inspired melancholy is when the inspiration seizes on the reason, whereby it obtains knowledge of natural and human things; through the inspired reason a man becomes suddenly a philosopher, or a prophet. But when, through the melancholic inspiration, the soul soars to the intellect, or the mens, it learns the secret of divine matters, the law of God, the angelic hierarchies, or the emergence of new religions.

This classification accounts for the curious fact that the title of Dürer's engraving is "Melencolia I." It must be one of a series, the first in the series described by Agrippa, concerned with the inspired imagination of painters, architects, and masters in other arts. In fact, we see in the engraving the tools, the geometric figures, alluding to the traditional occupations of Saturn, his skills in number and measurement, but transmuted in an atmosphere of inspired melancholy to become the instruments of inspired artistic genius. The only active figure in the engraving is the putto, and he appears to hold an engraver's tool.

The book Saturn and Melancholy proves with immense learning the concern of Dürer's engraving with the melancholy humor in its inspired form and it points to Agrippa's work as a basic source for Dürer's thought on the subject. Yet, after all the brilliance and learning of the book, Panofsky's actual interpretation of the engraving comes as something of a disappointment and an anticlimax...

The part played by Cabala in Agrippa's book is emphasized all through as a guarantee of safety, that the magic described is a good and white magic, guided by angelic forces which ensured protection from evil powers. The three stages of inspired melancholy described by Agrippa would seem to be much in need of such protection since the inspiration is definitely said to be of a demonic nature. Dürer's "Melencolia" with her angel's wings expresses, I believe, the Agrippan combination of Magica and Cabala. Surrounded by Saturnian allusions, she magically invokes the inspiring influence of the highest of the planets, and is protected from harm by the angel of Saturn. Her angelic character is suggested not only by her angel wings but also by the ladder behind her, leading, not to the top of the building, but generally upwards into the sky -- Jacob's ladder on which the angels ascend and descend.

Dürer's "Melencolia" is not in a state of depressed inactivity. She is in an intense visionary trance, a state guaranteed against demonic intervention by angelic guidance.

The starved dog is an important key to the meaning. This hound is not another indication of a depressed mood of failure. It represents, I believe, the bodily senses, starved and under severe ascetic control in this first stage of inspiration, in which the inactivity is not representative of failure but of an intense inner vision. The Saturnian melancholy has "taken leave of the senses" and is soaring to worlds beyond worlds in a state of visionary trance. The only sense which is alive and working is the artist's hand, the hand of the putto recording the vision with his engraving tool -- the hand of Dürer himself recording his psychology of inspiration in this marvelous engraving.

Diana & Acteon, Lucas Cranach the elder

The classic moralization of the senses as hunting dogs is that given by Natalis Comes in his interpretation of the Actaeon fable, where Actaeon's dogs are the senses. The melancholy temperament was supposed to subdue the senses. One theorist on the humors defines Melancholy as "the sweet sleep of the senses." Or, we may turn to John Milton, who gave in "Il Penseroso" the supreme poetic expression of the theory of inspired melancholy.

"Divinest Melancholy," whose black face hides a saintly visage too bright for human sense, is accompanied by an ascetic "spare diet," and in her soaring vision she escapes from the senses:

Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook.

This is what Dürer shows, the trance in which the immortal mind is released from the senses-Milton's forsaken "fleshly nook" corresponds to Dürer's starved and sleeping dog of the senses.

Milton's melancholy inspiration of the imagination connects with higher realms of prophecy and angelic hierarchies. The three Agrippan stages can be clearly discerned in Milton's poem. His Melancholy mounts to the vision of

Him that yon soars on golden wing

Guiding the fiery wheeled throne

The Cherub Contemplation.

Dürer's "Melencolia I" represents the first of Agrippa's series, the inspired artistic melancholy. There was also a stage relating to prophetic inspiration, and a stage in which the inspired intellect rose to the contemplation of divine matters. All three are included in Milton's Melancholy, the saintly dark figure who descends from Reuchlin via Agrippa. And all three are intimated in Dürer's "Melencolia I" through the angelic wings which he had given to his black-faced figure.

In the same year in which he engraved the "Melencolia I," Dürer produced his famous engraving of St. Jerome in his study. Panofsky, in his book on Dürer, suggests that Dürer must have thought of the "St. Jerome" as a counterpart to the "Melencolia I" since he was in the habit of giving these two engravings together to his friends. No less than six copies were disposed of in pairs, while only one copy of the "Melencolia I" was given away singly.

Gazing at the two engravings side by side, as Dürer intended his friends to do, it is clear that there is an intended parallel between them.

The holy man is seated at his desk profoundly absorbed in his inspired writing. His cell is described by Panofsky "as a place of enchanted beatitude" informed with geometrical truth. The construction of space in the engraving is impeccably correct from the mathematical point of view. Panofsky contrasts this holy order with the disorder surrounding "Melencolia I" the tragic genius in her frustrated despair. This erroneous interpretation of "Melencolia I" prevents us from understanding that Dürer is representing different stages of inspired vision. The inspired imagination of the artist shown in "Melencolia I" is on a lower rung of the ladder of vision than is Jerome in his ordered surroundings, though the ladder is leading upwards. Jerome might be on the third grade of the Agrippan classification, in which the mens "Learns the secret of divine matters as for instance of the Law of God, the angelic hierarchy, and that which pertains to the knowledge of eternal things."

Where then is "Melencolia II," the second grade or phase of the inspired melancholy according to Agrippa, concerned with reason, with moral or philosophical matters, with prophetic insight into the state of the world or the state of society?

I come now to a surprising part of this discussion, making what may seem an impossible transition from Dürer's engravings to the poetry of that most obscure Elizabethan writer, George Chapman. So far as I know, no one has ever attempted to show an influence of Dürer on the Elizabethans. Yet such an influence is not impossible, and, in the case of John Dee, it is a fact. When Dee in his mathematical preface to Euclid is discussing the theory of proportion he refers to Dürer's De Symmetria Humani Corposis, Dürer's famous book on proportion which Dee cites in the same breath as Agrippa's treatment of proportion in the De Occulta Philosophia. (I have discussed Dee's references to Dürer in my book Theatre of the World.) Thus Elizabethan disciples of Dee, the major philosopher of the Elizabethan age, had been referred to Dürer as the leading theorist on proportion, on artistic application of mathematical principles.

And it is not impossible that Dürer engravings were known in Elizabethan England. Unlike paintings, engravings could easily travel. Robert Burton had seen the "Melencolia I," which he describes in his Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton's book was not published until 1621, yet his mention of the engraving shows that it could travel to England and might have done so earlier. So, after these preliminaries I make my surprising transition from the study of Dürer's "Melencolia" to an analysis of one of the most obscure poems of the Elizabethan age, George Chapman's Shadow of Night.

This mysterious poem, published in 1594, opens by describing a "humour of the Night," a sad and weeping humor but one devoted to abstruse studies. The poem is in two parts, Hymnus in Noctem and Hymnus in Cynthiam. Many have been the attempts to unravel the hidden meanings of this most strange work. What is that darkness and that weeping humor through which the poet arrives at his moonlit visions?

Bent on concealing rather than revealing his meaning, Chapman nowhere uses the key word which would have put enquirers on the right track, the word "melancholy." Chapman is describing the inspired melancholy and its stages, as set out in Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia. Moreover, as I hope to show, Chapman was influenced by Dürer's visual imagery in his formulation in poetic imagery of the theme of the inspired melancholy.

In his letter before the poem, Chapman speaks of certain noblemen and others who have devoted themselves to deep studies. They and their friends are devoted with exceeding rapture of delight to the deep search for knowledge. Shod with the winged sandals of Mercury and "girt with Saturn's adamantine sword," they are bent on cutting off the head of ignorance and on "subduing their monstrous affections to most beautiful judgement." That Saturn, the Saturn of the Renaissance, star of highest and deepest learning and of profoundly ascetic life, is the guiding star of this group gives the clue to their place in the history of thought. These Elizabethan noblemen and their learned friends are "Saturnians," following the "revalued" Saturn of the Renaissance in their devotion to deep scientific studies and lofty ascetic and religious aims.

Once the Saturnian character of the deep search for knowledge is realized, we again have the clue to the meaning of Chapman's poem as concerned with Melancholy, the Saturnian humor. The following analysis will attempt to show that the inspired Melancholy herself appears painted by Chapman in word pictures which recall Dürer's engraving, "Melencolia I."

Chapman's sad humor of the night is the source of inspiration; she presides over the court of skill; through her all secrets are reached:

now let humour give

Seas to mine eyes, 
That I may quicklie weepe

The shipwracke of the world: or let soft sleepe

(Binding my senses) lose my working soule,

That in her highest pitch, she may controle

The court of skill, compact of misterie,

Wanting but franchisement and memorie

To reach all secrets . .

Chapman is invoking a melancholy humor to lead the "working soul" through inspired furor (the senses being asleep) to reach her highest pitch when she controls the court of skill. The entranced figure of Dürer's Melancholy, freed from the sleeping senses (the sleeping dog), reaching her highest pitch in the court of skill, presents in visual images the theme which Chapman translates into poetic images.

The extraordinarily intense atmosphere of Dürer's engraving finds a parallel in the intensity of Chapman's words. He appeals to all serious poets to steep themselves in the Humour of the Night, the humor of inspiration:

All you possest with indepressed spirits,

Undu'd with nimble and aspiring wits,

Come consecrate with me, to sacred Night

Your whole endeuors, and detest the light . . .

No pen can any thing eternal write,

That is not steept in humour of the night.

The pen wielded by the poet in the night of inspiration, as described by Chapman, may be compared with the engraver's tool wielded by the artist in the Night of inspired Melancholy, as depicted by Dürer. Chapman's words, "the court of skill," used to describe the surroundings of his Melancholy Night figure, would describe admirably the setting of Dürer's "Melencolia I," surrounded by instruments and figures referring to learned activities and meditations. The man of genius, whether the artist or the poet, is the inspired melancholic. This is the theme of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemanta, reflected by Agrippa in the De Occulta Philosophia. Dürer's engraving depicts the melancholic inspiration of the artist-scientist. Chapman's poem describes in terms of very similar imagery the melancholic inspiration of the poet.

Night and Melancholy have in common that both are dark. Chapman's Night is personified as a female figure with a black face, the facies nigra of melancholy:

Mens faces glitter, and their hearts are blacke,

But thou (great Mistresse of heauens gloomie racke)

Art blacke in face, and glitterst in thy heart.

There is thy glorie, riches, force, and Art.

This dark figure with the black face, secretly imbued with power and wealth and all force of Art, has a Düreresque intensity. We think of Dürer's "Melencolia I," with her swarthy face, her moneybags, and the symbols of her mental power.

There is another curiously close parallel to Chapman's melancholy imagery in a painting which the authors of Saturn and Melancholy reproduce as among the compositions which have obviously been influenced by Dürer's engraving. This is the painting attributed to Matthias Gerung and dated 1558 and now at Karlsruhe. It shows in the center a winged female in the melancholy pose, head on hand. Her dark robes mingle with the patch of darkness within which she is seated. Immediately in line with her, near the lower edge of the picture, is a philosopher measuring with compasses the globe of the world and surrounded by darkness. Indubitably these figures reflect Dürer's "Melencolia" and her characteristic interest in abstruse studies. The influence of Dürer's engraving is also apparent in the rainbow in the background.

In other respects Gerung's composition would seem to have no relation at all to Dürer's engraving or to the theme of melancholy. It is filled with quantities of figures engaged in many kinds of activities -- soldiers exercising near their tents, people at banquets, having baths, engaged in many kinds of sports and pastimes. These active figures seem unrelated to the two meditative, melancholy figures. As the authors of Saturn and Melancholy observe in describing this picture:

we see every possible activity of urban, rural and military life. . .but these representations seem to have no connection of any kind with each other or with the notion of melancholy.

George Chapman can throw light on this picture, for after his word picture reflecting "Melencolia I" he paints a word picture in which the busy occupations of the Day are contrasted with the meditative Night of Melancholy. At the coming of Day, all sorts of men come forth and engage in their various activities:

All sorts of men, to sorted taskes addrest,

Spread this inferiour element: and yeeld

Labour his due: the souldier to the field,

States-men to counsell, Judges to their pleas,

Merchants to commerce, mariners to seas:

All beasts and birds, the groues and forrests range,

To fill all corners of this round exchange,

Till thou (deare Night, o goddesse of most worth)

Lets thy sweet seas of golden humor forth

And Eagle-like doth with thy starrie wings,

Beate in the foules and beasts to Somnus lodgings,

And haughtie Day to the infernall deepe,

Proclaiming silence, studie, ease and sleepe.

These lines are a poetic counterpart to the Gerung picture. They explain the sorted men to sorted tasks addressed of the picture as the occupations of the Day, or of the active life, which are contrasted with the Night of contemplation and study. Like the Gerung picture, Chapman's lines describe Night as the inspired Melancholy, contrasted with the empty and uninspired occupations of the Day. The theme is related to the conventional debate between the active and the contemplative lives.

For Chapman, the followers of the Night with its studious peace, as opposed to the noisy bustle of the Day, its pure contemplative visions as opposed to vulgar activities, are the followers of virtue, who reject the "whoredoms" of the painted light. So in the Gerung picture the gentle melancholy Night, and her attendant the deep student who is measuring the globe, are marked off by Night and darkness from the "fooleries" of the Day, and pursue their meditations undisturbed.

In the Gerung picture, a conflict is going on in the sky between some not very clearly defined mythological figures. One of these is shooting at the Sun, thereby hastening the advent of Night, which is spreading in gloomy clouds. In Chapman's poem Hercules is urged to shoot at the Sun to stop his lustful activities and to cleanse the beastly stable of the world by descending from heaven:

Fall Hercules from heauen in tempestes hurld,

And cleanse this beastly stable of the world:

Or bend thy brasen bow against the Sunne. . .

Now make him leaue the world to Night and dreames.

Neuer were vertues labours so enuy'd

As in this light: shoote, shoote, and stoope his pride

Suffer no-more his lustful rayes to get

The Earth with issue; let him still be set

In Somnus thickets; bound about the browes,

With pitchie vapours, and with Ebone bowes.

How strangely close this seems to the Gerung picture, where someone is shooting at the Sun, where dark tempests are spreading, overcoming the sunlight, where the vanquishing of the Sun and Day brings in the melancholy Night of study, contemplation, and virtue.

The resemblances in imagery between this picture and Chapman's poem are so close -- the sorted men to sorted tasks addressed, the conflict between Night and Day, the shooting at the Sun -- that it seems probable that Chapman had seen something like the Gerung picture. I am not suggesting that he had seen the Gerung painting itself. What I am suggesting is that the Gerung painting is perhaps a copy of a lost engraving by Dürer, the lost "Melencolia II." Chapman saw the "Melencolia I," which we know, hanging beside "Melencolia II," lost except for the copy of it by Gerung. This is the Hypothesis.

We have arrived at the extraordinary result that the obscure Elizabethan poet, Chapman, can actually be of assistance to students of Dürer's engravings by indicating that the Gerung picture may be a copy of "Melencolia II."

I suggest that this is indicated by the way in which Chapman in his poem passes from his word picture of "Melencolia I," the dark-faced figure in the Court of Skill, to his word picture reflecting "Melencolia II," as copied by Gerung. The first stage in the Agrippan classification was the melancholy of the inspired artist. The second stage was concerned with moral insight, the political melancholy of the utopian dreamer, profoundly dissatisfied with the world as it is, hating Day with its meaningless activities compared to the contemplative dreams of Night. The Gerung picture, understood as "Melencolia II," would correspond in the world of Elizabethan melancholy to the malcontent humor, the "nighted humor" of Hamlet with which the Prince of Denmark surveys the lustful activities of the Day.

Chapman's Hymnus in Noctem begins in the imaginative stage of inspired melancholy and moves into the moral or political stage at about the middle of the poem, though images from both poems overlap throughout.

There was a third stage of Agrippan melancholy, when the melancholic saw visions of a religious nature, prophetic insights into coming religious changes. Where is this third stage in Chapman's poems?

The overall title of the poem is The Shadow of Night, but it is divided into two parts. The first part has the title Hymnus in Noctem, and it is this first part which contains the two melancholy visions we have been studying. The second part is called Hymnus in Cynthiam, Hymn to the Moon. In this part, the moon of revelation arises in the Night of Melancholy.

The Moon is already rising at the end of Hymnus in Noctem. She ascends as a glorious bride; associated with her "enchantress-like" is the "dreadful presence of our Empress." A note by Chapman states that this alludes to Queen Elizabeth's "magicke authority." In the Hymnus in Cynthiam the magic moon has fully risen in her "all purging purity." She does not banish Saturn. On the contrary, Cynthia's chastity performs the same "adamantine" function as Saturn's sickle. Through a parallel between the castration of Saturn and the chastity of Cynthia, the Moon, the latter becomes identified with the Saturnian theme of the poem.

The greater part of the Hymnus in Cynthiam is taken up by the description of a shadowy hunt. The nymph Euthemia (Joy) takes the forms of wild beasts who draw after them a pack of hunting dogs. The names of the dogs are taken from the account of Comes' Actaeon fable, in which the dogs of Actaeon are moralized as the senses . In the shadow hunting, the dogs of the senses hunt after false joys. The hunt lasts during the Day, but ends when Night returns. Thus the dogs, or senses, are once again the evil forces of Day, sleeping in the Night of inspired Melancholy.

The moonlit visions of the Hymnus in Cynthiam belong to the politico-religious aspect of inspired melancholy, its aspirations after Saturnian golden ages, its messianic expectations . This prophetic grade of the inspired melancholy (the third in the Agrippa formulation) is brought into line with the cult of Queen Elizabeth I as the Virgin of the imperial reform. This part of the poem is full of Elizabeth symbolism, Elizabeth as virgin of the imperial reform such as I have analyzed in my book Astraea, the relevant parts of which I need not repeat here, though I will just mention the very definite link with the Elizabeth symbolism disclosed in the lines recalling the device of the Emperor Charles V that was constantly used of Elizabeth and her imperial reform:

Forme then, twixt two superior pillars framed

This tender building, Pax imperii named. . .

Here is the familiar image of the two columns of the famous imperial device used as the framework for the vision of Elizabeth as the Moon of the Empire to which Chapman's series of visions of the inspired melancholy have been leading.

She appears in bridal attire, as a mystic bride, and the portrait is full of recondite allusions. It has been described as "Queen Elizabeth in Occult attire." It may be suggested that the atmosphere of this portrait is similar to that evoked by Chapman in the third part of his poem, on the third stage of melancholy inspiration, in which he refers to Elizabeth as a "bride of brides" exercising a "magicke authority."

The discovery, as so I believe it to be, of the connections between Chapman's poem, The Shadow of Night, and Agrippa's analysis of inspired melancholy into three stages introduces a new dimension into the mysteries of Elizabethan symbolism and imagery. If this poem is inspired by Cornelius Agrippa on the inspired melancholy, and if its imagery is influenced by Diirer's presentation in imagery of Agrippa's theme -- then we have an altogether new source suggested for the themes and images of Elizabethan poets and dramatists. Chapman's poem is indeed of central importance for the Elizabethan age and its poetry, as has long been recognized, and many have been the efforts to discover its meaning.

One line of enquiry has suggested that Chapman may allude in his poem to the so-called "School of Night," perhaps a group of noblemen and their friends engaged in abstruse studies. The phrase "School of Night" is used by Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost. The King is taunting Berowne for loving a dark-complexioned woman. "What zeal what fury hath inspired thee now?" cries the King, who has surely recognized the furor of inspired melancholy in Berowne's words. A few lines later, the King criticizes Berowne's extravagant praise of "blackness," with the words

O paradox. Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeones and the school of night. . .

words which have been interpreted as referring to some group of students of the abstruse, of which Chapman was one.

However, I suggest that the new approach to Chapman's night imagery lifts it out of the world of personal allusion, or allusion to small cliques of courtiers and poets, into a larger European world -- the world, for example, of the Emperor Rudolf II, with its deep interest in the occult. Rudolf was a passionate admirer of the works of Dürer, and the tracing of a probable influence of Dürer's imagery on an important Elizabethan poet-George Chapman -- suggests the importance of influences from the imperial court on the Elizabethans.

These are very large questions, awaiting further enquiry. My concern in this lecture has been first of all with re-interpreting Dürer's engraving as alluding to the trance of melancholy inspiration, not to a depressed mood of failure; and secondly, with attempting to unravel the influence of Agrippa's definition of the stages of melancholy inspiration in other representations of this theme, and above all in Chapman's Shadow of Night.

These minute enquiries may lead eventually to far-reaching results, some of which I have suggested in my last book, where I argue that the occult philosophy of which Agrippa was such a notable exponent was a leading influence on the Elizabethan age, profoundly affecting the poets and their imagery.

What I have said here, and in my book, is obviously only a first attempt at breaking new ground. I leave these problems with you and with the scholars of the future.

--DAME FRANCES YATES (speech given at the University of Rochester on September 18, 1980)

Full lecture

NOTES

"Dr. Dee's Enchanted Palace," review of "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age," The Listener, 10 Jan. 1980, pp. 90-91.