The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience / Edition 2

by Matthew T. Kapstein

Overview

There is perhaps no greater constant in religious intuition and experience than the presence of light. In spiritual traditions East and West, light is not only ubiquitous but something that assumes strikingly similar forms in altogether different historical and cultural settings. This study examines light as an aspect of religiously valued experiences and its entailments for mystical theology, philosophy, politics, and religious art.

The essays in this volume make an important contribution to religious studies by proposing that it is misleading to conceive of religious experience in terms of an irreconcilable dichotomy between universality and cultural construction. An esteemed group of contributors, representing the study of Asian and Western religious traditions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, suggests that attention to various forms of divine radiance shows that there is indeed a range of principles that, if not universal, are nevertheless very widely occurring and amenable to fruitful comparative inquiry. What results is a work of enormous scope, demonstrating compelling cross-connections that will be of value to scholars of comparative religions, mysticism, and the relationship between art and the sacred.

Contributors:
* Catherine B. Asher
* Raoul Birnbaum
* Sarah Iles Johnston
* Matthew T. Kapstein
* Andrew Louth
* Paul E. Muller-Ortega
* Elliot R. Wolfson
* Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan
* Hossein Ziai

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226424927
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/03/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Matthew T. Kapstein is the Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and directeur d’études at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is the coauthor of The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory and Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought.

Read an Excerpt

THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT
Divine Radiance and Religious Experience

---

The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2004 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-42492-7

---

Chapter One
Fiat Lux, Fiat Ritus: Divine Light and the Late Antique Defense of Ritual

Sarah Iles Johnston

Describing a mystical experience is difficult. Unions between the human and the divine resist expression precisely because the divine is unlike anything that mortals experience in everyday life-God does not belong in the same category as cars and potato chips. By the same token, anything that can be understood and described with perfect clarity smacks of normal life; abstruseness may help to validate a mystical experience. This is why narrations of mystical experiences so often rely on simile: union with God is "like" being filled with warmth; the sight of God is "like" gazing at a fire. Or, to use Tennyson's words,

Moreover something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams- Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare.

There are some mystics, however, who feel compelled to describe and explain their experiences a little more exactly than Tennyson did. Neoplatonic mysticism, which developed in the Greek-speaking world during the first few centuries CE, embraced qualities shared by many other mystical systems, including a tendency toward abstruseness that arose from the belief that God was transcendent and therefore, finally, unknowable. And yet, as a product of Platonic philosophy, it was born into a tradition of investigating the cosmos and describing the relationships amongst the divine and mortal entities who dwelt within it. A Platonist-even a mystic Platonist-could never completely overcome the desire to understand what he was experiencing-nor could he trust his experiences until he understood them, at least in part.

This was particularly so during late antiquity, when the philosophers whom we now refer to as Neoplatonists argued among themselves as to which method of communing with divinity, and thereby improving one's soul, was best. The main dividing line fell between those who, like Plotinus, recommended using only the rational powers of the human intellect (i.e., theoria: philosophical discussion and contemplation) and those who, like Iamblichus, believed that rituals were necessary as well. As significant as it was in itself, below the surface of this debate lay even more vital issues. For example, the belief that rational endeavors alone were adequate was supported by, and in turn supported, the premise that human souls did not completely descend from the divine sphere into incarnation, whereas those who believed that ritual was a necessary adjunct argued that souls did descend into human bodies-and thus, that rituals performed in the material world, using material objects, were therapeutic to the soul. Those who espoused rational approaches rejected the material world and portrayed it as a source of pollution; those who embraced ritual believed that even the smallest and lowest portions of the material world were charged with divine power that, when properly deployed through rituals, could improve the individual soul. Each side, interestingly, was able to use statements from Plato's dialogues in support of its views.

In this essay, I will comment on the way in which one group of Neoplatonic mystics, the theurgists, resolved the tension between their belief that divinity was transcendent and their desire to understand their mystical experiences by developing the idea that divinity consisted of fiery light. I will also show how, by doing so, the theurgists were able both to defend the general position that ritual was a necessary part of communing with the divine and to explain how specific rituals worked: in the final analysis, divine light was put to work to save not only the theurgist, but also the metaphysical and soteriological doctrines in which the theurgists believed.

If its broadest implications were explored fully, the topic I have just sketched could fill an entire book. This, combined with the fact that Neoplatonic theurgy in general is a complex subject (made even more complex by the fragmentary nature of some of our most important sources), demands that I focus on only a single aspect of the topic. I will do so by addressing a question that particularly intrigues me and that I perceive to be central to this volume's theme: namely, the manner in which the observable properties of light influenced both the development of theurgic mysticism and the manner in which one theurgist defended ritual. As a result, I will have to skim over many of theurgy's central ideas only cursorily; the reader may pursue these further by consulting works cited in the notes. For the same reasons, I have decided to limit myself largely to examining material taken from two of our most detailed sources of information for theurgic mysticism: the Chaldean Oracles, poems in dactylic hexameter that supposedly were dictated by the gods to two holy men, a father and son named Julian the Chaldean and Julian the Theurgist, in the late second century CE (hereafter referred to as the Oracles); and Iamblichus's treatise Concerning the Mysteries, which was written in the fourth century and which was significantly influenced by the Oracles. Concerning the Mysteries was written in response to the challenge of one of Plotinus's students, Porphyry. Although Porphyry did not completely dismiss the value of ritual, as his teacher had, he challenged Iamblichus to defend its use in the pursuit of higher soteriological goals.

Occasionally, I shall also use materials from some of our other sources for theurgy, including the writings of the emperor Julian (fourth century CE), and two exegetes of the Oracles, Proclus (fifth century CE) and Psellus (eleventh century CE). Although the two latter sources must be used with caution, separated as they are from the Oracles by three and nine centuries, respectively, the fact that Proclus and Psellus could consult complete copies of the Oracles and other, now missing works such as a commentary on the Oracles that Iamblichus wrote makes their exegeses important supplements to our knowledge. The emperor Julian's work must be used with caution as well; because he wished to incorporate theurgy into his larger project of reviving "traditional" paganism in the then Christian empire, he sometimes collapsed theurgical ideas together with those from other cults such as Mithraism. Nonetheless, Julian's devotion to the sun as his primary god makes some of his comments on the role of light in ritual important for our topic.

THEURGIC METAPHYSICS

The theurgic identification of divinity and light did not come out of nowhere-the general association between divinity and fire or light was old. Already in archaic Greek literature, for example, gods glowed with brightness: in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when Demeter throws off her mortal disguise "light shines out from the goddess's immortal skin." Platonic metaphors, such as that of the Cave in the Republic, were implicitly built on this association: the transmission of the Good into the material world is represented as sunlight entering darkness. Later Platonists, most notably Plotinus, were inspired by this passage to use images of sunlight as similes, to illustrate the way in which the One transmitted the Good into lower portions of the cosmos or the soul. Heliolatry had entered the Greco-Roman world from the east by the Imperial period; other new religions, such as Mithraism, gave a special place to the sun. But the notions that divinity was fire or light and that mortals might somehow interact with or receive it were uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean. In the eastern part of the Mediterranean world, at about the same time as theurgy was developing, the prophet Mani made Light the supreme principle of Good and Darkness the supreme principle of Evil in his dualistic system; Manichaean soteriology, moreover, included incorporating particles of Light into the individual human. There are enough parallels between Manichaeism and theurgy, and especially between their treatments of light, to justify a closer comparison between the two than scholars have offered. But for the moment we must restrict ourselves to the theurgists. Let us begin with a look at the way that identifying divinity and light affected their metaphysics.

The Chaldean Oracles referred to the highest divine principle by several names: the Father, the Source of Sources (Pege Pegon), the First Fire That Lies Beyond (Pur Epekeina to Proton), and the Uniquely Beyond (Hapax Epekeina) were among them. As the two latter names imply, this divine principle was transcendent, beyond the reach of mortals, daemones, angeloi (angels), and even gods. This transcendence was crucial because only by remaining transcendent could the divine principle remain perfect. And yet both the metaphysical and the soteriological doctrines of the theurgists required that the creative and salvific forces of this principle should reach even the lowest realms of the cosmos in some way-if they did not, the cosmos would remain an inert and chaotic mass of physical material, and mortals would have no chance of rising above it.

The theurgists solved this problem by positing that the divine principle, being itself a fire, could penetrate the strata of the cosmos with fiery light and thereby enliven them. Thus, for example, fragment 34 of the Oracles says:

From [the Source of Sources] leaps forth the genesis of complex matter. From there a lightning bolt, sweeping along, becomes less distinct as It leaps into the cosmic wombs. For from there, all things Begin to stretch forth wondrous beams towards the place below.

Fragment 37 further describes the Platonic Ideas as flashing (straptousai) around in the wombs of the cosmos after having been shot forth from the Father. In the theurgic system, just as in Plato, these Ideas were understood to impose order upon physical material and thus to create the cosmos as we know it. As divine fire or light descended, it also brought to birth and continuously invigorated lesser divinities: gods (the lower rank of whom operated under their familiar Greek and Roman names), archangeloi, angeloi, daemones, and heroes. Some of the distinguishing characteristics of these types will be discussed in a later section of this essay; for now, however, I will use the term "divinities" to refer to them collectively (Iamblichus similarly uses the term theoi to refer to them collectively at times).

These divinities used the paternal light or fire that they received from the Father to perform their own cosmogonic duties. For example, after Hecate received the paternal light into her womb, she sent forth a light-engendered warmth (therme) that animated the material world. Most importantly for the current topic, the god Aion received the Father's light and passed it on to Helios, who passed it on to the sun; the sun, finally, converted it into sunlight in order to perform his duties.

Iamblichus makes it clear that, even as fiery light descends from the Father, the source of that light (the Father himself) remains separate from and untouched by any of the strata or divinities that his light encounters. Moreover, as each stratum or divinity passes the light further down the line to the strata and divinities below it, it too remains separate and untouched. The passage that follows, which is one of Iamblichus's fuller expositions of the idea, specifically addresses the journey of light downward from the realm of the divinities to the material world. It should be noted that although the sun itself receives light from Helios, one of the divinities, and thus is itself a link in the chain of divine emanation that Iamblichus is discussing, here he refers to the sun apart from its role as a link, in order to draw comparisons between its familiar light and the divine light that he is trying to describe:

[The divine sphere] illuminates certain parts of the cosmos-the sky and earth, sacred cities and regions, certain groves or sacred statues-from the outside, just as the sun irradiates all things with its rays from the outside. Just as the [sun]light surrounds all things that it illuminates, so does the power of the divinities embrace from the outside all things that partake of it. And just as [sun]light is present in the air and yet does not mingle with the air-this is obvious from the fact that there is no light left in the air once the source of light has departed, despite the fact that there is still warmth-so, too, the light of the divinities shines forth separately [from those things that it illuminates] and, being established in itself, proceeds throughout all of existence in a unified manner. Moreover, just as the [sun]light that we see is a unity, continuous and everywhere the same so that it is impossible for any part of it to be cut off from the whole, or be encircled, or be separated from its source, so too does the whole cosmos divide itself around the light of the divinities, which is itself indivisible. This light is everywhere one and the same and indivisibly present in all the powers that partake of it; from its own, perfect power it fills up everything, and in its superior causality it brings all things to accomplishment within itself.

By accepting the premise that divinity is a type of light, and by assuming that it behaves like the most familiar sort of light, sunlight, Iamblichus has resolved the conflict between transcendence and interaction. He simultaneously has resolved another knotty issue of the time: the conflict between belief in a single divine principle and an apparent multiplicity of divine forces that are spread throughout the world. He argues that, because it ultimately emerged from a single source of illumination (the Father), divine light remained unified even as it seemed to be dispersed infinitely throughout the cosmos; similarly, all the light cast by the sun remains part of the same whole even as it shines, for example, through a window into a room and illuminates different objects within it. Moreover, just as sunlight is always essentially the same whether it falls upon a tree or a house, Iamblichus argues that divine light is always the same even when it seems to take on the characteristics of lower divinities through which it works to specific ends. He returns to this premise again later in his treatise, when he discusses the ways in which the divine principle manifests itself in visible "symbols" that have been planted in the material world, and stresses that the multitude of appearances presented by symbols suggests not that the divine principle itself varies in nature from time to time or place to place, but rather that the materials from which the symbols are made, or the times and places in which they exist, vary. In sum, Iamblichus's belief that divinity was light, combined with his observation of the ways that light behaved in the visible world, enabled him to defend a metaphysics in which divinity was simultaneously transcendent and yet omnipresent, remotely pure and yet intimately involved with the material world.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from THE PRESENCE OF LIGHT Copyright © 2004 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Part One: The Divine Presence of Light
Introduction
1. Fiat Lux, Fiat Ritus: Divine Light and the Late Antique Defense of Ritual
Sarah Iles Johnston
2. Suhrawardi on Knowledge and the Experience of Light
Hossein Ziai
3. Luminous Consciousness: Light in the Tantric Mysticism of Abhinavagupta
Paul E. Muller-Ortega
Part Two: Transformative Visions and Their Vicissitudes
Introduction
4. Light, Vision, and Religious Experience in Byzantium
Andrew Louth
5. Hermeneutics of Light in Medieval Kabbalah
Elliot R. Wolfson
6. The Strange Death of Pema the Demon Tamer
Matthew T. Kapstein
Part Three: In the Sight of the Eye
Introduction
7. A Ray from the Sun: Mughal Ideology and the Visual Construction of the Divine
Catherine B. Asher
8. Light in the Wutai Mountains
Raoul Birnbaum
9. The Eyes of Michinaga in the Light of Pure Land Buddhism
Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan
Part Four: Concluding Reflections
10. Rethinking Religious Experience: Seeing the Light in the History of Religions
Matthew T. Kapstein
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

The Presence of Light is a significant contribution to the history of religions and the study of mysticism. This is a rich collection of essays and an exemplary model of comparative inquiry.”—William Darrow, Williams College

William Darrow