A Bridegroom Who Needs Not His Bride?

Letter II: The High Priestess

Continuing with the second Letter from Our Dear Unknown Friend, we begin by looking at the following excerpts which are a response to Louise Claude de Saint-Martin’s commentary on duality and illegitimate “twofoldness” of which he states, “the birth of the number two” is “the origin of evil”. Our Dear Unknown Friend brings clarity to the notion of a legitimate twofoldness:

Duality therefore signifies the establishment of two centres of contemplation, two separate and rival principles —one real and the other apparent —and this is the origin of evil, which is only illegitimate twofoldness. Is this the only possible interpretation of duality, twofoldness, the number two? Does there not exist a legitimate twofoldness? . . .a twofoldness which does not signify the diminution of unity, but rather its qualitative enrichment?

If we return to the conception of Saint-Martin of "two centres of contemplation" which are "two separate and rival principles", we can ask ourselves if they must necessarily be separate and rival? Does not the expression "contemplation" itself, chosen by Saint-Martin, suggest the idea of two centres which contemplate simultaneously—as would two eyes if they were placed vertically one above the other—the two aspects of reality, the phenomenal and the noumenal? And that it is by virtue of the two centres or "eyes" that we are —or are able to be—conscious of "that which is above and that which is below"?

Let us leave that where it lay for a moment and bring into the discussion the words of the Master, Jesus Christ, from the following passage:

St. Matthew Ch.6 V.22

The light of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome. ²³But if thy eye be evil thy whole body shall be darksome. If then the light that is in thee, be darkness: the darkness itself how great shall it be!

²⁴No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

These words would appear to speak of Saint-Martin’s notion of illegitimate twofoldness, of duality, of the making of two centres of contemplation that are then necessarily separate and rival principles. However, it is not “God and Mammon” that is the dualism of an illegitimate twofoldness, but instead “to serve” Mammon is to serve, in a strange paradox, that monolith that ever fractures, whereas to serve God is to serve that which ever unifies the many without diminishing the many.

So that, rather, the singleness of the eye, spoken of by our Lord, is synonymous with Our Dear Unknown Friend’s reflection of two centres of contemplation that rival not, but instead are unified through synthesis.

This must needs be the manner in which we understand the words of Jesus because we must contemplate them in light of He who is the Word Made Flesh; that is, in light of the Incarnation. Uncreated and Created. Heaven and Earth. Spirit and Matter. God and Man. Two centres. Two separate and rival principles that are seemingly irreconcilable. Yes?

Yet, we have the Revelation of Christ. God become man. The Incarnation.

St. Maximus says:

“The Word of God, very God, wills that the mystery of his Incarnation be actualized always and in all things.”

It is in the light of the mystery of the Incarnation that all things of creation must be understood. It is, in fact the grand narrative of creation itself.

Truly united are they in Christ, God and Man, yet nothing of Christ’s divinity or His humanity is diminished. Fully God and fully man is He.

And so, to acquire the single eye of Christ is to acquire the ‘twofold vision’ of Our Dear Unknown Friend. Nothing is diminished of the eye of the noumenal, and nothing is diminished of the eye of phenomenal. Contemplating the two aspects of reality they do so in the light of Christ, who is the true light. The light that synthesizes, so that the “whole body shall be lightsome”, that is, so that the phenomenal body and the noumenal body, the manner in which we perceive the two aspects of reality, are one body in Christ. One organ of perception of the Mysterium.

It is impossible to speak of these mysteries except that eventually one must fall silent. For if reality is two, is dualistic, it is so because it is also one, non-dualistic, and visa versa.

The question of twofoldness is the question of “Who am I”? Are we not all of us “the other” next to God? We are told that knowledge of oneself is through relationship with God for we are given “the White Stone Name” at the end of all things and St. Paul tells us that we will “know even as we are known” upon seeing God “face to face”.

Face to face. Duality. Two centres of contemplation but one light of knowing.

We know and are neither unashamed nor unabashed to recognize that in a face-to-face meeting with God we as humans, as the created, would receive, as written in the above excerpt, “qualitative enrichment” … but what of God?

We dare not speculate. Not at the moment at least.

We shall let that lay where it may, also.

What else is this twofoldness?

It is the manifestation of the Luminous Holy Trinity, Our Dear Unknown Friend informs us.

“…these two triangles of the luminous Holy Trinity are revealed in the work of redemption accomplished through Jesus Christ and conceived through Mary-Sophia. Jesus Christ is its agent; Mary-Sophia is its luminous reaction. The two triangles reveal the luminous Holy Trinity in the work of creation accomplished by the creative Word and animated by the "yes" of Wisdom-Sophia. The luminous Holy Trinity is therefore the unity of the triune Creator and the triune natura naturans …”

It cannot be that the mystery of twoness found in the Holy Trinity, Father and Son, (synthesized in Love, that is, the Holy Spirit), is sufficiently encapsulated, for the Holy Trinity is only the masculine polarity of a grander “twoness”. To say “Father” is to imply “Mother” and so within the teaching of the Church there is, beyond the Persons of the Holy Trinity, an “unknowable essence” of God.

Now, to even say as much as “unknowable essence” is to speak cataphatically about that which we are attempting say can only be spoken of apophatically. Of course, a pure apophatic speech is impossible, and again silence is the only satisfactory recourse to this “beyond-being”. For the sake of a cataphatic statement concerning a relationship between the Holy Trinity and “beyond-being” it would be as masculine and feminine respectively. The Mother is the cosmic womb of all. But we shall stop there where the rational brain may attempt to make sense of it all.

Now, if the Son is the Image of the Father, then the Daughter must be the image of the Mother. She is the visible manifestation of the divine feminine and the Holy Soul, then is the feminine counterpart to the Holy Spirit.

But that would be all too simple, that is to say, rational, and therefore a welcome bearing for the rational brain. So again, we must flee from “making sense of it all” and add a little jazz.

Because the relationship at the top of the hierarchy is such that the Mother is the unknowable “beyond-being” and the Father the knowable, that dynamic becomes reversed on the ground so that for us the Mother becomes knowable in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Father becomes unknowable, except by way of the Son. The Son, then being the visible, knowable masculine has His counterpart in the veiled and mysterious Mary Magdalene, the Daughter. The Holy Spirit and the Holy Soul are the synthesis of the universal and the particular in Love. It is only in the particular, in the soul of a man, and his love for his neighbour, another human being (not neighbour as a generalized and abstract term) that the universal love of the Holy Spirit is made manifest.

St Matthew 25

⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ …

⁴⁵Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

We might then plot the following schematic (and be forever repentant for thinking that even for a second God can be bound or even spoken of schematically … nevertheless):

Father (Unseen Face of the Masculine) / Mother (Seen Face of the Feminine)

Son (Seen Face of the Masculine) / Daughter (Unseen Face of the Feminine)

Holy Spirit (Universal Love of God) / Holy Soul (Particular or Personal Love of God)

All this is at play not within the rigid bounds of an abstract schema, however helpful for a time it may be to utilize such a thing, but in the dynamism of a cosmic dance. And so more jazz must make its way in.

For example: In as much as the Son can be the seen face of His Father he must take on human flesh, he must become incarnate, which is inherently feminine in its relationship with the unseen; the Spirit. This is why He has no earthly father biologically speaking. His flesh is strictly taken from His mother, the Virgin Mary.

It may then seem to most, following common logic, that if the flesh is taken only of the female, that Jesus Christ must be born also female, but, as we have said, that is not the Christo-logic of the Incarnation. A logic that from the very beginning to its end is divinely paradoxical in nature. God become man? The very notion is inexplicable no matter how securely the Church’s most lauded thinkers may believe they hold firm grasp on it.

Quite simply, two cannot become one whilst maintaining its twoness, not by force of the human mind, that is.

Not until one allows their two eyes to become single whilst never losing their “twofoldness” that is, not until we allow and be content to let the mystery fall between the grasping fingers of the rational mind and pour into the open chalice of the heart.

For it is with the heart that we enter into the cosmic dance.

And the Eye of the Heart that we see God face to face. Receive the White Stone Name. Know as we ourselves are known.

As for ourselves in readdressing a previous question? We are not so ashamed or bashful to say that God yearns for His creation also. To speculate briefly in closing on those words again from Our Dear Unknown Friend:

“…a twofoldness which does not signify the diminution of unity, but rather its qualitative enrichment?”

For He has given us the image of bridegroom and bride as foremost in communicating His love for His creation.

And what bridegroom has not said to his bride, “My love, I cannot live without you”?

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love.” - Meister Eckhart