Mysticism

The etymology of the word mysticism traces back to the Greek verb myein (to close), employed by the ancient mystery cults when prohibiting initiates from disclosing the contents of the secret rites. In this context the verb suggested silence and secrecy. Later, the second- and third-century Greek Christian fathers used the adjective mystikos to describe arcane cognition such as the allegorical interpretation of scripture in contrast to the literal, or spiritual knowledge in contrast to carnal knowledge. The fifth- or sixth-century Syrian monk who wrote under the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite adapted the adjective and gave it a use that brings it considerably closer to the modern concept of the mystical. In "The Mystical Theology" Dionysius pursues the consequences of a negative theology, a theology that denies the adequacy of any proposed predication of God. Elsewhere, in his "The Divine Names," pseudo-Dionysius distinguishes the predicatespertaining to the trinity from other predicates used to describe God. Whereas the multiplicity of the other predicates (e.g., light, life, good) does not reflect differentiation within the unity of God, the predicates pertaining to the father, son, and spirit do refer to a differentiation within the unity of God. Even these gendered predicates must, nevertheless, be negated as inadequate to describe God's ineffable transcendence. God, pseudo-Dionysius insists in "The Mystical Theology," is not light, life, or goodness, but neither is God sonship or fatherhood. Dionysius's negative theology ultimately leads to paradoxical results. He asserts, however, that one can attain extraordinary cognition of truths about God that defy rational articulation. "Mystical theology" is, for Dionysius, a form of cognition that paradoxically knows about God "by knowing nothing."

For Dionysius mystical theology refers to a kind of extraordinary knowing, an extraordinary kind of cognition. After around 1200 ce, however, the mystical became more affective, less elite, and more experiential. Prior to this period mystical writing was largely speculative or theoretical. After, it became more devotional, confessional, and biographical. Previously, mystical theology concerned extraordinary cognition; now it increasingly concerned extraordinary consciousness. Although the substantive term mysticism did not appear until the seventeenth century, Bernard McGinn (1998) has labeled this development "the new mysticism." The modern concept of mysticism is the descendent of the new mysticism. Mysticism has come to denote a peculiar and ineffable state of mind that purportedly conveys private, intuitive, higher knowledge of the divine or ultimate. Experiential awareness of an ultimate unity is frequently ascribed to mystical consciousness. Mysticism is viewed, furthermore, as a source of insight that stands in uncertain relationship to institutional and dogmatic authority. In the nineteenth century, apologetic attempts to render religion intellectually respectable seized on mysticism. In many quarters mysticism was viewed as the universal, primordial basis for religion. The notion that various religions are expressive responses to ineffable mystical experience insulated religion against criticism aimed at doctrines.

MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM

The "new mysticism" of Western Christendom arose in the context of profound changes to the structures of authority in the church. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the salience of the priestly office changed considerably. The authority of the (now celibate) priesthood as religious teachers and mediators of salvation grew. At this time whatever limited institutional authority to preach or participate in pastoral affairs that women had previously enjoyed was strictly curtailed. The orders of friars, founded as preaching orders, likewise excluded women. Caroline Walker Bynum (1982) argues that the thirteenth-century mystical visions of the nuns of Helfta (Mechtild of Magdeburg, Gertrude of Helfta, and Mechtild of Hackeborn) served to authorize these women mystics as teachers and pastoral counselors. The nuns' mystical communion with Christ granted them an authority—explicitly bestowed by Christ in the visions them-selves—that was not based on their office within the church hierarchy. In medieval Europe mysticism provided women with a path to power and authority, but women mystics needed male approval or sponsorship to succeed. That Christ would appear to women, perceived as weaker and less rational than men, seemed congruous with Christ's ministry in the Gospels to the humble and meek. This supposition counteracted somewhat the suspicion that these experiences were delusory because women were more susceptible to natural infirmity and the devil's wiles.

Bynum contends that the exclusion of women from clerical and pastoral authority accounts for the prominence of women mystics at this time, and that their spirituality extensively influenced high medieval piety. They contributed to a heightened attention to the interior life and to paranormal experience. They emphasized the humanity of Christ and the devotional significance of incorporating the body of Christ during the Eucharist. Women mystics also made a tropological interpretation of the biblical Song of Songs central to medieval Christianity. They interpreted the nuptial imagery of the biblical poem as an encounter between the soul and Christ. Christ, the bridegroom, unites the soul, the bride, to him in spiritual marriage, a union of love. Significantly, this gender imagery did not imply equality between the soul and God. Rather, the imagery conveys that the loving soul conforms its will to God's will for it, as the bride submits her will to her husband's will.

MEDIEVAL JEWISH CABALA

Medieval Christian mysticism is not alone in reinscribing gender hierarchy in symbolism that seems to collapse gender dualisms. Elliot R. Wolfson (1995) has argued, for instance, that medieval Jewish Cabala employs masculine and feminine symbols to convey the idea of a primordial diremption (division into two) of the Godhead. Through symbolic gender transformations in which the masculine becomes feminine and vice versa, human ritual activity aims to restore the unity that transcends gender dichotomies. That ultimate unity, nevertheless, has masculine associations. Wolfson claims that in cabalistic thought God can be mythically described as a "male androgyne." This notion is symbolically captured by the image of the "androgynous phallus." The feminine aspect of God is represented as the corona of the penis. These gender relationships are recapitulated in the cabalistic interpretation of human sexual intercourse, an act that, properly undertaken, contributes to the restoration of the male androgyne. In the reproductive act, the male and female are united, but in such a way that the male's ability to procreate is made complete and the female is transformed into masculine potency. In Cabala, redemption consists of the subsumption of the female in the male rather than the transcending of gender altogether.

TANTRIC BUDDHISM AND HINDUISM

In a controversial 1994 book, Miranda Shaw arrives at conclusions about sex and gender in Tantric Buddhism that invert the sex and gender relationships found in medieval Christian mysticism and medieval Jewish Cabala. Like other forms of Mahayana Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism (eighth through twelfth centuries) prescribes rituals, teachings, and meditation exercises in order to achieve an enlightened, nondual state of awareness. Unlike other forms of Mahayana Buddhism, which view the passions and desires solely as dangerous fetters tying one to conventional, dualistic consciousness, Tantra exploits passion and desire as techniques of enlightenment. In this context human sexuality takes on special ritual and symbolic importance. Shaw claims that despite the emphasis on nondualism and gender equality in Mahayana Buddhism, Tantric cosmology, Tantric theory, and Tantric practice privilege women and femaleness. Cosmologically, the powers of the universe flow through female deities. Ritually, the female is the foundation and generating source of spiritual progress. As the font of enlightenment, women Tantric practitioners did not need the patronage or approval of men. Rather, the male practitioner courted the favor of the woman and worshipped her. At its most esoteric, this worship consists of ritual coitus. By offering his sexual fluid, which mingles with hers to produce bliss, the man in effect makes the woman an offering of sexual pleasure. The woman uses this pleasure as the basis for a meditation on the emptiness of all things, and comes to experience her desire as mere illusory dualistic consciousness. If the cabalistic ritual sex act was essentially androcentric, Shaw claims that the Tantric ritual sex act was gynocentric.

Arising in the same historical context, Hindu Tantra bears great similarity to Buddhist Tantra. In contemporary India a small proportion of female Hindu ascetics are Tantric ascetics. There is no uniform or universal set of activities among Tantric ascetics, but yoga is common. Their yogic practices aim to elicit a vision of a deity or to attain samadhi, a trancelike consciousness that transcends material existence and the individual ego. In classical yoga theory, samadhi is the blissful awareness of one's purusha (literally, "male"), or non-individuated inner spiritual essence, transcending prakriti, the feminine gendered material process. Tantric ascetics may also engage in notorious "left-hand" practices. These ritual activities consciously flout purity rules, moral codes, and social conventions. Female Tantric ascetics renounce women's traditional religious duties (stridharma), may use intoxicants, and may meditate at polluting cremation grounds. Ritual sexual relations with a male fellow ascetic is the "left-hand" practice most prominent in the popular mind. The ascetics' wantonness and freedom with respect to social norms, which they believe evidences their spiritual power and freedom, causes them to be viewed with suspicion by others.

In many contexts mysticism has suggested the possibility of freedom from gender. Women have celebrated this possibility, but men reflecting on women mystics have noted it too. Rabi'ah al-'Adawiyah, the eighth-century Sufi from Basra, is a well-known example. Rabi'ah is often credited with introducing the notion of selfless love to Sufism. True love of God, she insisted, must not have its basis in hope of paradise or fear of hell. Her love for God was all consuming. Indeed her love was ecstatic, annihilating the self in perpetual union with the beloved. Farid od-Din 'Attar, the great thirteenth-century Sufi, wrote apropos of Rabi'ah that united in love to God, the mystic transcends gender identity altogether.

see also Celibacy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1982. "Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta." In Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Denton, Lynn Teskey. 1991. "Varieties of Hindu Female Asceticism." In Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. Julia Leslie. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Luibhead, Colm, trans. 1987. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. New York: Paulist Press.

McGinn, Bernard. 1998. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350. New York: Crossroad.

Schimmel, Annemarie. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Shaw, Miranda. 1994. Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wolfson, Elliot R. 1995. "Crossing Gender Boundaries in Kabbalistic Ritual and Myth." In Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

                                          Matthew C. Bagger