Via
Negativa: Occult and The Naked God By Jack Vates
“The light shone in the darkness. He came to his own, and
all who received him became sons of God by reason of power; power was given to
them to become Sons of God.” Jn. 1:5, 11, 12
Recently, I watched an excellent video on YouTube presented
by the Ritman University in Amsterdam about the life and works of Jacob Boehme.
The speaker, Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaf spoke at length about Boehme’s work and
provided a keen understanding of the 17th century mystic. However,
when he spoke of perhaps the most important concept in Boehme’s repertoire, Ungrunde, he moved past it without
barely a remark on what it is or what it entails. But what is it? What is this
strange German word? I researched the term and discovered that Ungrunde is
translated as “groundless”. It is the dark emptiness before creation. Andrew
Weeks describes it as the “uncertainty which precedes the divine Will’s
arousing itself to self-awareness (though in the deity this “happens” in
eternity.”[1]
Ungrunde is an aspect of Via Negativa or darker
paths of experiencing divinity. It may be compared to the Kabbalistic Ein
Sof, the “infinite” in which all union and wholeness are secreted in the
secrecy that cannot be grasped and cannot be known…the only one that knows, yet
without knowing, is the highest desire, concealed of all concealed,
nothingness.[2]
Ungrunde is a terrifying thing. It is a void. True and utter nothingness. A place
the mind really doesn’t want to familiarize itself with. But why did Professor
Hanegraaf refrain from discussing the
nuances of Ungrunde? I believe it is due to the stigma attached to dark or
negative theology. Many are wary to speak of things like left-hand magick, dark
aspects of the godhead, or the Other. They prefer to stay in the light. And this
is understandable certainly in light of the fact that the same legitimacy
afforded to traditional avenues of experiencing God must be afforded dark
theology if any concept of the reality of belief is to be accepted.
Via Negativa has a variety of currents that describe its
processes and method yet many are largely shunned even by practitioners of the
esoteric arts. The concept is made up of cautionary tales, legends of broken
minds, and even death. I call it the conspiracy of Harpocrates due to the lack
of discussion on the subject. But perhaps it’s time to shed a dimming light on
Via Negativa in order to better understand occult interactions that many deem
horrifying. Why? Because the avenues of Via Negativa inhabit the undiscovered
content of the Other. It is truly a landscape of mystery and uncharted oceans. There
are some that have claimed to have explored these areas. They return with
descriptions of opaqueness, scarecrows, unnamed entities, demons, emptiness,
and terror. Via Negativa is without any coherent system at all. It is chaos and
the only way out is to be lost and
manage to find a way back. In addition, describing Via Negativa is no easy
task. Because of the limitations of language, discerning the idea becomes an
exercise in naming. But naming ‘what it is’ doesn’t provide insights into the
concept because by its very nature, Via Negativa is a journey from what the
mind can grasp into something that is hidden and silent. It is sometimes
thought of as the pathless path of contemplating God.
Judaic mystics call it ‘Ayin’ or nothingness. David G.
Abraham ha-lavan in masoret ha-berit (end of 13th century) defined the
Ayin as having more being than any other
being in the world, but since it is simple and all other simple things
are complex when compared with its simplicity, so in comparison it is called
nothing. [3]
Daniel Matt also elucidates the concept when he states that “Ayin is a window
on the oneness that undermines the manifest appearance of the world. The ten
thousand things are not as independent or fragmented as they seem. There is an
invisible matrix, a swirl that generates and recycles being. The ego cannot
abide Ayin, you cannot wallow in nothingness. In Ayin, for an eternal moment, boundaries
disappear.[4]
The dissolution of boundaries is really an ontological emptying of divinity. During
an event of this kind, either by ritual or self-activation, the boundaries of
our and God’s understanding of the
self are dissolved.
Jewish mystics also contemplate Via Negativa in the notion
of the Abyss of Abada. On the Tree of Life there exists what is known as the
Supernal Triad. The triad is made up of the first three emanations on the Tree,
namely Keter, Binah and Chokhmah, Each emanation is a part of God’s and our own
consciousness. The Tree then is a glyph for all of creation. But the Supernal
Triad cannot be grasped due to the absence of duality amongst the three
Sephiroth. Separation from the Godhead or ‘duality’ doesn’t occur until the emanation
known as Chesed. Furthermore, the Supernal Triad is separated from the rest of
the Tree by a double-row of veiled curtains called the Paroket. The abyss is a
liminal space between these veils. And
the abyss is also the unitary experience of being one with the Godhead. It’s
clear why so many religious and occult ceremonies use the ‘veils’ in both
method and symbology. The veils are a way of keeping hidden and secret that
which is beyond explanation.
There is also danger in slipping the veil. This is why there
is a stopping-point or limit that initiates must adhere to. The stop point is
the bifurcation of knowledge and understanding. Those that study Via Negativa
are encouraged to grasp conceptually how the abyss unfolds but to stop before
an experiential discerning of its nature. In many descriptions, the abyss is
called Daath or ‘false Godhead’. A hidden Sephiroth, it is knowledge without
understanding. To occultist Kenneth Grant, Daath is the “outer gateway” to the
Mauve Zone. It is a kind of anti-Sephiroth.[5]
It is also a trap. Daath is everywhere and is
the abyss. Some claim that it is infinities within infinities within
infinities and so on forever.
Insanity or worse can be the end result of traversing the
abyss and there are abundant tales of fragmented minds in both religious
history and folklore. The legend of Rabbi Akiva is testament to this. While he
was able to cross over into the abyss and reintegrate unscathed, he had
colleagues that died, went insane, or became dangerously heretical due to the
process. This is because one cannot bring psychological baggage into at-one-ment
with God. There can be no ego and this is what the lower emanations on the Tree
are designed to prepare us for. Only pure divine love can be brought past the
veils.
With the caveat of danger now discussed, there are also
aspects of Via Negativa that are luminous in their darkness. Boehme’s Ungrunde
encourages an exploration of dark theology as a means to experience sublimity.
He states that “the truth seeking believer stands closer to the divine
indefiniteness of the Ungrunde than to the false personal God who is thought to
have predestined chosen individuals for grace.”[6]
Similar to Gnostic thought, those that
seek Ungrunde i.e. the Abyss have the same potential for unitary consciousness
as anybody in the Bible.
The ontological emptying of divinity that begins with duality
also has peculiar effects on the Godhead itself. As Boehme asserted, “the
conjunction of Will and Desire severs itself into two properties, viz. into joy
and sorrow, light and darkness; for it makes two worlds- a dark fire-world and
a light fire-world…in the shining of the fire in the original the deity in
understood, and in the dark fire the original of nature is understood.[7]
A separation of wills into negative and affirmative wills is also a separation
of wrathfulness and goodness. Wrath is of the self, goodness the unity of God.
The separations though are reflections of one another. There is a mirroring
that reconciles the original separation. Boehme remarks that “although what
grows out of the dark ground is not causally determined by the darkness, the
light-world is a positive mirror image, a sublimation, of the forces operating
in darkness.”[8]
Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart also practiced a form of Via
Negativa in his idea of Durchbrach or ‘Breakthrough’. When we break on through,
our soul penetrates beyond the trinity into divine wilderness. Another liminal
status, this is the Godhead beyond God.
No uniting, no identity. A naked God. For Eckhart, Via Positiva (creation) plus
Via Negativa (letting go) results in Via Creativa. When we let go of fear and
death we are free to be re-conceived into another consciousness. Let’s think on
this. What does it mean to be conceived? We clearly get ideas of birth and
conception and creation of even distillation and extraction. The awakening of
birth then is the ‘breakthrough’ of his theology. Eckhart exclaimed,
“Oh, Lord, where
is the silence and where is the place where this Word was spoken? We
say, as I have already said, that it is the purest place that the soul has to
offer- in its most notable place, in the soul’s foundation; yes, in the soul’s
being, that is, in its most hidden part. There the “means” is silent, for
neither a creature nor an image can enter there. The soul knows in that place neither action nor
knowledge. It is not aware in that place
of any kind of image, either from itself or from any other creature.”[9]
Eckhart shows the inadequacy of trying to describe with
language the ‘Breakthrough’ of being birthed into another consciousness. The
passage also has some of the most important key words to describing Via
Negativa. In words like ‘silent’ and ‘hidden’ and in Eckhart’s distressing plea
to God, we are shown the status-less condition of somebody ‘betwixt and between’.
Eckhart goes on to say “Now note here, finally, the value and fruit of this
secret Word and of this darkness. Not only is the Son of the heavenly father
born in this darkness, but you also are born there as a child of the same
Heavenly Father and no other; and he also gives that power to you.”[10]
Breakthrough is penetrating the door’s that oppose God’s entry. And because God
is “already there”, the breakthrough is one of consciousness.
The reflection or mirroring that leads to re-conception
manifests most importantly in the idea of love-play. As any occultist will
attest, the study of the bride-groom or sacred marriage is an essential aspect
of the initiatory structure. Sometimes we forget that falling in love and renewing that love with talk and play is
the closest thing to divinity. For God, this love-play comes in Sophia. As
Boehme remarked, “As the mirror she generateth
[sic] nothing and is the Chaste Virgin. [11]
Did you catch that? Sophia generates nothingness. She is the abyss the darkness
and also a part of God. It’s in the “delight” of this image that the spirit of
God plays with itself for this is now God’s companion to the Honor and Joy of
God.[12]
I know it seems counterintuitive and a horrid blasphemy to
equate nothingness of the abyss with Sophia but this is Christian mysticism. And
indeed it gets even weirder. Because Sophia is a dark mirror of God. An
examination of Grunewalds’s altarpiece (1515) shows some powerful imagery in
this regard. In the second level of the piece, an alchemical elixir is being blessed
by the ecstatic Virgin with a crown of flames. Purportedly, this liquid has
curative powers and is also the source of Gnosis. In this apotheosis, “Mary has
become identified with Sophia, the personification of knowledge. We can now understand
her bizarre and somewhat demonic union with Satan in the enigmatic scene in
heaven. Sophia and Satan were interpreted as the two S’s, the two contrary
serpents, male and female, entwined on the caduceus staff of Hermes, the Greek
God, who with his Latin name Mercurius presides over the silvery poisonous
metal, the hydagyros, quicksilver or “silver-water.”[13]
With clear alchemic connotations, it’s fascinating to follow this trajectory.
If Sophia is equated with Mary and is
a mirror reflection of God, then not only is the Christ story a hell of a lot more
interesting but so is God’s relationship with Saturnian influence.
It’s become apparent that Via Negativa is much more than its
common misconceptions. The act of naming the methodology is grossly inadequate
and ultimately refutes the idea that epistemology can grant us access to its
secrets. Knowledge and knowing just isn’t the key. The final act is
experiential. A true experience of Godhead requires God himself to acquire
experience. It is a translation. Through a process of making two differing
things equivalent, God as an entity can colonize the undiscovered continent of the Other.[14]
This continent takes form through ontological negation of divinity itself. By
dissolving Being with Un-being, knowing with un-unknowing, light with darkness,
we can annihilate traditional theistic metaphysics and open new doors of
consciousness. And although these experiences are displayed in the alien
darkness of true vacuum, they are rich in liminal impulses and contain profound
exchanges with what I can only describe as Another.
[1]
Boehme. Andrew Weeks. State University of New York Press. 1991. Albany. pp.
148.
[2]
Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment. Trans. By Daniel Chanan Matt Ramsay. Paulist
Press. 1983. New Jersey. pp. 147.
[3]
Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem.
[4] “Ayin:
The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism” Daniel Matt. In Problem of Pure
Consciousness. Ed. Robert K. C. Forman. Oxford University Press. 1990. New
York.
[5]
The Dark Lord. Peter Levanda. Ibis Press. 2013. Lakeworth, Florida. pp. 265.
[6]
Weeks. Ibid. pp. 149.
[7]
Signature Of All Things. Jacob Boehme. 2.17
[8]
Weeks. Ibid. pp. 182.
[9]
Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality In New Translation.
Intro. And Commentaries by Matthew Fox. Doubleday & Co. 1980. Garden City,
NY. pp. 294
[10]
Ibid. pp. 301.
[11] Jacob
Boehme (TLM 5.41) and (TP 14.85).
[12] The
Three Principles of Divine Essence. Trans. John Sparrow. 1948. London. pp.
14.86.
[13]
The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes In European Fairy Tales.
Carl AP. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran, Mark Alwin
Hoffman. Carolina Academic Press. 2007. Durham. pp. 39
[14]
See Nick Lee and Steve Brown. Otherness and the Actor-Network: The Undiscovered
Continent. 1994. American Behavioral Scientist. 36: 772-790.
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