My last post observed that there seems a greater sense of the divine presence in churches when there is no service going on and no congregation in attendance. I was pleased to see that J.M. Smith of the Orthosphere agreed, and he wrote a splendid poem expressing the same sentiment. The obvious thing to ask is why is this?
Some people are solitary types who simply don't like crowds. I am one but this is not the whole answer though it may be part of it. Others find a greater closeness to God in silent contemplation than in public worship. This also is a partial explanation but, again, it does not satisfy as the full reason. It may always have been the case that the tall pillars, lofty roofs, statues of saints and stained glass depictions of episodes from the Bible spoke more loudly to the visitor when there was no human distraction but I believe that there is a deeper reason for this today than simply that a more inwardly focused nature feels closer to God in quietness and solitude.
The key lies in understanding Matthew 7:21-23. How many people who profess Christianity really are followers of Jesus Christ? I know one cannot presume to judge the state of another person's soul but one must ask how many believers really believe? Christianity is a supernatural religion, one whose whole purpose lies in what is beyond this world but these days it is often reduced to a form of secular humanism with some added on spiritual trimmings. There is a social aspect to Christianity but it is vanishingly small compared to the spiritual. Love your neighbour as yourself must be one of the most misunderstood teachings. It does not mean love everyone. It does not even mean love your neighbour in the generally understood sense. If it did then God clearly does not love us. It must be seen in the light of the commandment to love God. That is primary. Then, loving your neighbour means acting and behaving for his spiritual good. To reduce this love to the material plane is to radically misunderstand it. The material plane is not excluded but it is very much subsidiary to the spiritual.
If the people performing an act of worship are not stretching with their whole being towards the divine is it any wonder that the resultant worship is spiritually sterile? They may mean well but if their hearts are not really oriented to the true God and if their minds are not clearly focused on the meaning of the divine message and its overwhelmingly spiritual sense then the atmosphere that is created by their worship will be flat, literally so for it will lack the multi-dimensional quality of a spirituality that aspires up to the heavens. If worship is not animated by love of God and a real yearning for Him then it has no flavour. You might say this has always been so but at one time we would have been less distracted by the world and the reduction of the religious message to the field of human relationships. We looked up instead of around us or towards the altar instead of towards our neighbours.
Christianity has been brought down to earth and many Christians follow a religion in which there are no towers or spires stretching heavenwards. It is a religion that has a flat roof and does not rise. If we enter a church in which the architectural features pull us away from the earth and towards the heavens then we are temporarily uplifted and ennobled. If the hearts of the worshippers are in tune with that then all is well. For an effective ritual needs a proper form to give it expression but it also requires that the hearts and minds of its participants are fully open to the higher worlds. Without that there is no material for the divine spark to ignite.
I have been reading an excellent book called An Introduction to Ritual Magic, by Dion Fortune, with each chapter having a supplementary chapter by Gareth Knight (both, as you know, Christians). It is very wise on the phenomenon of ritual, and what is required to make it work, and powerfully. Their arguments makes it clear why the current Western churches rituals have become so spiritually- in feeble, and why they fail to produce any "vertical" sense of contact with the divine.
ReplyDeleteI found a free PDF version online, if you are interested in taking a look:
https://pdfcoffee.com/knight-gareth-fortune-dion-introduction-to-ritual-magicpdf-pdf-free.html
Thanks Bruce. This sounds like one of the books Gareth Knight brought out from unpublished writings of Dion Fortune and then added his comments. I have read a couple of them but not this one. I expect they say something along the lines of intention and motivation must be right for any ritual to work. I like the idea of ritual but would be too much of a modern person to be able to put myself into it entirely unselfconsciously. Part of me would always be hanging back not taking it seriously but then I believe you have written that the time for such activity is past (though it may come again) and I would agree.
ReplyDelete@William "one of the books Gareth Knight brought out from unpublished writings of Dion Fortune and then added his comments. "
ReplyDeleteYes, that is correct.
"something along the lines of intention and motivation must be right for any ritual to work"
Yes, but I knew that already! It was interesting on the *specifics* of how formal ritual used to work, when it worked.
Clearly religious and spiritual ritual was of central human importance for 1000s of years, but - just as it was beginning to dwindle towards its current near-extinction (due partly to loss of effectiveness from our detached self-consciousness, as you say); it was as if Dion Fortune could look back on it, and perceive how it operated. Self-consciousness had increased to the point where ritual became understandable as "a thing", but the self-consciousness had not got quite to the point when it interfered with the ritual.
In his later life, from about the age of 60 (1990) Gareth Knight seems (from his autobiography) have gradually ceased to participate in formal rituals, and instead worked in private with his wife, or alone.
Even before this, from the 1970s, he tended to focus his efforts on semi-improvised rituals rather than prescribed ones - perhaps because an element of spontaneity and surprise were necessary to maintain power.
So, starting from DF's formal and scripted ritual magic of the 1920s onwards - and her full trance mediumship as a way of contacting spiritual guides; to Gareth Knights last writings around 2010, when he was describing something very like "direct knowing" and in full consciousness - we can see something like a microcosm of the development of Western (English) consciousness over the past century.