The Cosmic Priesthood of the Verdant Heart of Jesus

My own reflections on so-called "re-enchantment" and what I think is really welling up from beneath the surface of a scorched and disenchanted earth.

The following began as a short one or two paragraph post to the Substack feed in response to a comment from a fellow stacker on the notion of “re-enchantment” other than of a mere change of perception. It quickly expanded into much more than I initially envisioned, which is both positive and negative. It gives me an opportunity to write at greater length on a topic dear to my heart, but it inevitably leaves more questions asked than answered, such that perhaps only a future book might attempt to do justice. God willing.

O most honoured Greening Force,

You who roots in the Sun; You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel that earthly excellence fails to comprehend.

You are enfolded in the weaving of divine mysteries.

You redden like the dawn, and you burn: flame of the Sun.”

– St. Hildegard von Bingen, Causae et Curae

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St. Hildegard von Bingen. Pray for Us.

St. Mary Magdelene. Pray for Us.

Blessed Virgin, Full of Greenness. Pray for Us.

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I have, indeed, come to think that the view of “re-enchantment” as simply a mindset, a different perspective, or in its best expression, new eyes in which to see the world, is a mistaken one, or at least an incomplete one and, perhaps, even to perpetuate the very Cartesian split that is at the fore of the current wave of disenchantment. This thought has given me charge to write my own article on what re-enchantment might mean. Certainly, what takes hold my heart when I hear or read the brilliant work being put forth by those such as Loup des Abeilles, The Druid Stares Back’s Michael Martin, The House of Beasts & Vines ’s Dr. Martin Shaw, El Antiguo’s Ross Arlen Tieken, to name only a few.

I do not doubt that it can, and likely more often than not, be a noble line of thought of which the main driving point seems to be the reluctance to see nature as in any way disenchanted.

Even as I am writing this an excellent post by Ross Arlen Tieken addresses his perfectly understandable stance that perhaps we, those of the Verdant Heart of Christ as I am wont to name it, are not advocating a “re-enchantment” per say, but a standing against the culture of disenchantment. He has articulated it so well that it gave me pause for thought and I shall quote the post in full here:

I think I’m not interested in “re-enchantment.” I think that I hate “disenchantment.”

Disenchantment never worked. The world is already alive with the Glory of God, but we’ve done everything we can to hide it from our eyes. We’ve worshipped at the altar of other gods, most especially ourSelves.

The “re-enchantment project” sounds like we’re trying to put something back in to the world.

But in truth, it is a project against idolatry. The idol-worship of abstraction, of limited human reason, of emotion, of the Self, of perverted science and scientism, of identity, of “progress,” of the machine.

I don’t want to place something back into the world that we discarded. I want to discard the blinders that we’ve put on, the blinders that give us the truly idiotic impression that we are the authors of our own existence.

“Most probably we are in Eden still; it is only our eyes that have changed”.

I just want to walk away from the Tower of Babel, which everyone seems to pretend is the whole world, and into the Temple, which is in fact a symbol of the entire cosmos, and in which the author of the entire cosmos is waiting for us, to be received and to receive us.

This isn’t “re-enchantment.” It is an invitation to receptivity of Divine Life. An invitation to Greening.

I will not walk to the altar of my death for any idol. But I will gladly go for Him who blessed my dead flesh with His Life.

It is meet and right so to do.

As I have said, I have nothing but sympathy for this view and coincidently enough I recently stumbled upon a post from the past of my own, which I put up on a certain other platform:

It is not that I completely disagree with myself here, simply that I now believe that there is a sense in which the rest of creation “needs to hear” the Evangelium pronounced through human witness. I will address this in greater detail further down.

Ultimately, I believe the work is, for the most part, the same either way. It is to stand against disenchantment, against modernity, in as much as modernity is understood in the Traditionalist School sense as that which opposes Tradition, that which opposes the transcendent principles at the centre of all things, and for those of us who follow the living Christ, it is that which opposes Him; it is anti-Christ. This is truly the disenchantment we should oppose and to take this view is to align it with the cosmic scope of the salvific work of Christ. For this is what I will argue; that the re-enchantment movement is nothing less than the reestablishment of the Revelation of Christ in its call to Cosmic Priesthood, that is, Gardeners of the Cosmic Eden.

Though I will use certain terms interchangeably for ease of understanding I will also be making the effort to replace the terms “re-enchantment” and “disenchantment” with “Viriditas” and “Ariditas” respectively. The same, for the most part can be said of what is understood of the terms “Tradition” and “Modernity” as mentioned above. Put simply, Tradition is that self-same vivifying force, the wellspring and life-giving rivers that brings about the greenness of nature in fullness of life i.e. Viriditas. Modernity is that which dries out, breaks apart and crumbles a thing in on itself, that is, Ariditas. The fittingness of these terms, in my mind, is that though they are in a sense opposed to each other, understood through the lens of Revelation of Christ, even that deathly Ariditas becomes a rejuvenated and cultivated soil ready to spring forth into new life.

For the time being, however, this article will be less “what needs to be done”, less “how to call forth that life giving green flame of Viriditas into your life”, than it will be “the spirit in which re-enchantment should be approached.” It will be my vision of re-enchantment. Re-enchantment as I understand it. So, I must forge on and insist upon an understanding that sees the created world as in some way suffering a disenchantment corelative to the fall and the disenchantment of man. For as Christians we do indeed have the doctrine of the fall, and the fall is said to have affected all of creation as far I as I have understood it. The manner in which creation is affected, what it means for creation to be fallen in relation to man will be touched upon in this article. Let us first address the notion that creation might lose some of its lustre of enchantment in response to the fall of man.

Now, some would see that as the utmost gall to proclaim the sin of man would ripple out into the furthest reaches of the cosmos, and it often goes hand in hand with accusations against Christianity that it places humanity in a superior, by which is meant dominating and subduing, position in relation to our brothers and sisters from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. Christianity has done little to dissuade from such a stigma and often upholds it.

However, Christianity’s actual positioning of man, as previously mentioned, is that of Cosmic Priest and does indeed place him in, if not a superior position, let us say a unique position. A position that is foreign to the nature religions that hold man to be merely one creature among many, and of which the many would do perfectly well if we, as humans, were to suddenly disappear. A position of false humility in my estimation. Humility, from the word 'humus' meaning earth, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “the earth which is beneath us,” is certainly to take stock of our position as creatures with our feet firmly planted on the earth. In that sense we are a creature amongst many.

Our priesthood, though, sets us apart even amongst our non-human brothers and sisters of whom we share the earth, and of whom we are indeed the same, yet different. For that is the Christic Revelation, is it not? Union of God and Man, of whom the differences between the one and the other is a yawning abyss - yet a union enacted all the same. Herein lies the key to relationship with all that is “other”, whether human, God, animal, plant, stone, even the earth herself. The Christic Revelation is union via difference, via particularity not despite. A mystery indeed to the hyper-rationalism especially of the modern man whose constant fracturing into myriad categorizations is to construct its own yawning abyss between things. Union, however, not in the monism of a nebulous blob via the finding of our lowest common denominator, but in Christ who is alpha and omega, heights and depths, God and man, self and other. He who is becoming “all in all”. He who is the very unity of the one and the many without confusion. He who speaks thus:

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself.” - John 12:32

And let it not be thought a mistake or whim that it as incarnate man that the Son draws all creation to the nexus point of His Sacred Heart raised up and exposed on the Cross of Calvary Hill. That perfect act of divine love established “before the foundation of the earth” unto the salvation and adoption of men as Son’s of God, as inheritors of all that is Christ’s (let that sink in) most importantly His office of Cosmic High Priest in the Order of Melchizedek.

We should not therefore confuse ourselves with the plant, or vegetable, or animal (to say nothing of those creatures of more “subtle” forms) though we share kinship. Though we be one body in Christ.

The true test of humility then is not in denouncing the importance and uniqueness of your place amongst creation. Far from it. Such would be an afront to the bestowal of a great gift given by the Father. Humility lies in the resounding “Yes!” given in response to the great privilege of Cosmic Priesthood even in the midst of fallenness and brokenness, for it is to put ones trust completely in the wisdom of the Father. The example of this, par excellence, of course, is Our Blessed Virgin’s Mother’s Fiat. She who is foremost of the Cosmic Priesthood at her Son’s side. She the High Priestess.

²⁶And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, ²⁷To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. ²⁸And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. ²⁹Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. ³⁰And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. ³¹Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. ³²He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. ³³And of his kingdom there shall be no end. ³⁴And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? ³⁵And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. ³⁶And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: ³⁷Because no word shall be impossible with God. ³⁸And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. - St Luke Ch. 1

Of the great and privileged role bestowed upon her, a gift like no other in the history of all creation, Our Lady first and rightly shows the restraint necessary of a blossoming humility. Of course we should show such restraint in the light our gifts, for we as humans both collectively and individually have a long and dark history, not to mention a propensity due to the fall, of squandering those gifts. Of rearing the ugly head of humility’s bane; pride. Though I have called it previously a false humility, that which is a restraint in the fear of pridefulness, I do not do so accusatorily. It is nothing less than perfectly understandable those who would choose to flee as far as possible from such a mindset that has led to the damage, the suffering caused, the evil no less, of man in his pride laying hold of his privileged position as if it were something of his own making. Such a view is born from the restraint that gives form to a blossoming humility. It is to come face to face with an angel extending his hand with a heavenly gift and having the self-reflection and foresight to know that in our pride such a gift will be squandered.

But such restraint, if not lifted eventually, stifles the fullness of a blossoming humility. If followed through with unto the denial of the gift from the Father, moreover the denial of His grace sufficient to overcome all pride and accomplish all that is “impossible for men,” it is a squandering itself and perhaps a squandering far worse. To do such is to bury the talent in the field.

¹⁵And to one he gave five talents, and to another two, and to another one, to every one according to his proper ability: and immediately he took his journey. …

²⁴But he that had received the one talent, came and said: Lord, I know that thou art a hard man; thou reapest where thou hast not sown, and gatherest where thou hast not strewed. ²⁵And being afraid I went and hid thy talent in the earth: behold here thou hast that which is thine. …

²⁹For to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall abound: but from him that hath not, that also which he seemeth to have shall be taken away. - St. Matthew Ch. 25

And so, I would urge those who seek re-enchantment, who seek the life fulfilling Viriditas, to not hide their talent in the field out of fear, however well founded that fear may seem. There is certainly a place for discernment and proper prudence in the face of the cold hard facts of man’s fallen nature, not to mention the forgivable but misguided view that the presence of man in the garden of nature is as a pollutant in otherwise pristine waters.

Jesus Christ, our High Priest, has called us to life and life to the full. This must be a life lived without a fear that stifles the gifts we have been given. In fact, such a squandering of our gift of Cosmic Priesthood in the face of the fear of our fallenness is the very thing that hinders the re-enchantment of the cosmos, the indwelling green flame of Viriditas that gives life and gives it with lustre, freshness, gives the fullness of life that we desire. It gives new vision to all of creation washing clear the scales of the inner eye that distorts and leaves dry and arid and, yes, certainly allows us to see creation as it really is.

“Most probably we are in Eden still; it is only our eyes that have changed”.

Yes, indeed, but more. There is also a manner in which the cosmos sees through our eyes and so it also allows us to see creation as it really can be. Shall be. For this is the role of the Priest, the Pontifex, the bridge-maker. The Poet who connects heaven and earth. The rest of creation does not need us to get out of the way but to take up our vocation. In fact, it cries out for us in anguish to do so:

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time. ²³Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. - Romans Ch. 8

We groan together, man and creation as one, awaiting deification. And it is because God, through His incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension, is becoming “All in All”, that the fall of man was forthwith the fall of the rest of creation, as the salvation of man is salvation of the rest of creation. The incarnation, which it must be understood was always the plan of God and His creation, is the deification of man through the God-man Jesus Christ unto the establishing (now reestablishing) of the Cosmic Priesthood, and through man the Cosmic Priest, the deification of the whole of the cosmos.

Only man divinized though Jesus Christ can uphold his office as Cosmic Priest and stand steadfast as bridge between heaven and earth, presiding over that sacred marriage. If he takes on the disenchantment of modernity, if he becomes dried out of the life-giving waters, succumbing to Ariditas, he loses the fidelity of both heaven and earth, and both are the poorer for it. In fact, there are some schools of thought regarding the fall that it happened up and down the great chain of being simultaneously, not just the creation “below” us but “above” us also, for the tradition tells us that a contingent of angels in heaven, with Lucifer as their lead, fell as well. Man stands in the middle of this great chain of being, this cosmic drama, dwelling forevermore at the centre of all things, the Sacred Heart of Christ.

So again, I say that the fall of man, including the disenchantment of his worldview, does not happen in isolation, for man does not exist as an island unto himself separate from creation. Contrary to the post of my own quoted above, if we are implored to speak the Gospel unto all creatures there must be something of the good news unknown to the animal, plant and stone folk. It is said that the Fae Folk, those who embody the spirit of earthly nature, when they gather around their fires tell stories of us, of mankind, so that if our lives are not interesting, there are no stories for them worth telling. Let us say, if we do not lead full lives, lives overflowing with the greenness of Viriditas, then they will not know of the Gospel through the witness of man.

However, let us place this into context, our witness of the gospel to creation, lest we do fall into pride, with the state of a humanity who has fallen and fallen so that he is less than beast. It would indeed be hubris then on our behalf to suppose we can simply walk out amongst those non-human persons and pronounce the Gospel as if we spoke a mystery hidden from those furred folk and creeping ones, winged of sky and finned of the sea, bark-face and sage stones. Because of our fallen state we are missing something of the Gospel if we have not “loved our neighbour,” which would mean first sitting at the feet of the rest of creation and listening. Listening long. Listening deep. Finding out where our story intertwines with theirs. Finding out where in our story we have suffered amnesia. Approaching creation in wonder and awe. Taking responsibility for our own sinfulness and corrupt mind state. Here, indeed, it matters little whether you believe the rest of the cosmos suffers any disenchantment or not; the initial work is the same. The soil must be cultivated first to make ready for the return. Of what?

It is no less than the return of and to the Garden.

It has been said by some that a return to the Garden is no longer our destination since that paradise has been barred to us, we are now destined for the Eternal City through the salvific actions of the incarnate God-man. And so, we have two countering views, both born of good intent, that must needs be married into the spirit of union. A short-sightedness that refuses to account for the destination for fear of the arduous impossibility of the journey and a far-sightedness at expense of the work that lay directly before our feet. We must then take account of the latter, as we have done so for the former, and caution that if the Eternal City be drawn down from the heavens it is because the Paradisical Garden be lifted up. We are certainly destined for the Eternal City, that much cannot be argued against, but the foundation of that city is the Garden. The river of the water of life that flows with the tree of life either side, spoken of in St. John’s Apocalypse concerning the New Jerusalem must needs be understood as the very Viriditas that is being discussed. That primal greenness that must first be established before the Eternal City can descend from the heavens.

We take recourse here to two visions of God’s salvific work, the first being that of Dante Alighieri in his Commedia, in particular Purgatorio where he describes his entering into the Garden of Eden at the top of Mount Purgatory, the gateway through which he will be lifted into Paradise. The Garden is the inheritance of man upon completion of the purifying that takes place in purgatory. Which is to say that once man has become again man, raised from beastliness, he is gifted once more the Garden and along with it the verdant liturgical garments of his Cosmic Priesthood. Those garments are the self-same as the veil of Our Lady in her perfect humility and fullness of grace. A green veil of immaculate potency now ready to conceive the Word of God within.

“Hildegard’s Mary is not gratia plena (full of grace) but viriditate plena (full of greenness and greening), or, better, she is gratia plena insofar as she is viriditate plena. Her plenitude graciously and gratuitously wells over in the material and maternal form of viriditas.” - Michael Marder, Green Mass: The Ecological Theology of St. Hildegard of Bingen

For this is the culmination of the annunciation in which the Blessed Virgin after showing humble restraint then, heart emboldened by the grace of God and His vision of the seemingly impossible for humanity, gives her fiat. Not “I must get out of the way” but “be it done unto me according to thy word” and “my soul doth magnify the lord …”

See how Dante describes the Garden upon arrival with a stupendous vision of what is surely both the inner landscape of the purified man and the world which he now inhabits:

Now keen to search within, to search around

that forest—dense, alive with green, divine—

which tempered the new day before my eyes,

without delay, I left behind the rise

and took the plain, advancing slowly,

slowly across the ground where every part was fragrant.

The second recourse is to no less than the vision of God’s salvific work in the incarnation of Jesus Christ particularly upon His resurrection from the dead where He appears to St. Mary Magdelene, she that type of Eve, outside the upon tomb in the surrounding gardens. The gardens no less. Whereupon the Magdelene “mistakes” Him for the Gardener, though it must be said a Gardener He is. The Gardener. The High Priest of the Cosmic Eden.

¹¹But Mary stood at the sepulchre without, weeping. Now as she was weeping, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, ¹²And she saw two angels in white, sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid. ¹³They say to her: Woman, why weepest thou? She saith to them: Because they have taken away my Lord; and I know not where they have laid him. ¹⁴When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing; and she knew not that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus saith to her: Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, thinking it was the gardener, saith to him: Sir, if thou hast taken him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. ¹⁶Jesus saith to her: Mary. She turning, saith to him: Rabboni (which is to say, Master). - St. John Ch. 20

If you would allow me to wax symbolic for a moment, I say that the Magdelene was not only there in the tomb gardens, but indeed is the gardens. In this moment, when Life, Himself, rises from the tomb to greet the bride of His creation, she is embodied in the Magdelene. She, who has turned herself away, as if a flower who feels not the warm embrace of the rising sun, but then upon the call of her name by Him who is Light if the World, she turns now, toward the risen sun of righteousness, and exclaims “Rabboni!” Perhaps, we may even take poetic licence to say that the tomb gardens surrounding them, until that moment, lay bleak and overcome with Ariditas, and then as the Magdelene exclaims “Rabboni!” … !Oh that moment of ecstatic blossoming! … so also, the gardens become overwhelmed in green, with the glory of many flowers dwelling in amongst that lush verdancy. Of them, St. Mary Magdelene the most beautiful of all, flower of delight and crowning glory.

Here the realms of the Sophianic and the Verdant Heart of Jesus intertwine, and it lay beyond the scope of this article to discuss further. There is much more to be said and in time, I pray, a book. In closing we shall only repeat in summary what has already been said.

The importance of new eyes in which to see the world that already lay before us, yes. Also, a world which has also been bound by the shackles of sin, via the fall, up and down the great chain of being. Not a cosmos wretched, evil at its core, corrupt beyond restitution, to blame for the weakness of man, to be his scapegoat, and for him to deny her goodness and seek freedom from a material prison so that he is not infected by her temptress-like nature. Neither, though, has she come into the fullness of her glory, for she suffers the fall in such a way that she is hindered from her destiny also. A destiny that is urged onward and upward in relationship with man, the Cosmic High Priest. Her deification is our own deification and our own is hers.

The seeking of Viriditas, the re-enchantment that has begun creeping to the surface as the green shoot from the cracks of the cityscape pavement, is the memory of Eden that dwells in the hearts of man. And the memory of Eden is also the memory of the future.

“Certainly, there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

It can be no mere sentimentalism, such memory, no mere wind-born longing for yesteryear that stifles the bones and sinews, paralysing any attempts of hand to the plough and feet on the earth. It is too much to speak of memory in full here. Our Dear Unknown Friend, Valentin Tomberg is as important a visionary as any when it comes to such things. Suffice it to say that to speak of memory is to speak eucharistically, such that when Christ speaks “do this in memory of me,” on the night He is betrayed, it is the willingness of those who follow Him to do so, and to live with the sacred and eucharistic heart of the one, he who makes cruciform deadwood alive with greenness, as their centre, it is they that calls Him from the tomb. From the black soil of the earth. From the depths of the humble human soul. Ready then, they shall be, to keep watch. Keep watch and temper the bright burning green flame of viriditas, that igneous water and incombustible fire of the Cosmic High Priesthood that then calls all of creation to life and life to the full.

Life in the Sacred and Verdant Heart of Jesus Christ.