Recent Work on Mysticism Author(s): Steven T. Katz Reviewed work(s): Source: History of Religions, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Aug.

, 1985), pp. 76-86 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062599 . Accessed: 07/11/2011 12:21
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REVIEW

ARTICLE

RECENT WORK ON MYSTICISM'

Scholarly interest in classical mystical traditions continues to be strong, generating a steady stream of monographs, collections, and translations. The individual results, as the new works here under review amply demonstrate, are uneven but on the balance do make a positive input in a number of directions. The two monographs in our batch of materials, by Philip Almond and S. H. Nasr, make the most sustained contributions. Almond's is a revision of his
I Philip Almond, Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine (Berlin and New York: Mouton Publishers, 1982); Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (New

Other Essays on Women and Spirituality (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1982); Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Michael A. Williams, ed., Charisma and Sacred Biography (Chambersburg, Pa.: Journal of the American Academy of Religion Studies, 1982); Charles Crawford, ed. and trans., The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises by

York:CrossroadPublishingCo., 1981);MaryE. Giles,ed., TheFeministMysticand

Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1982);

of Lao Tzu (New York:CrossroadPublishingCo., 1982);and John Ferguson,Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions (New York: Seabury Press, 1977). Page references to these works will be in the text in parentheses.
O 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/86/2501-0004$01.00

Crossroad Publishing Co., 1981); Tolbert McCarroll, trans., The Tao: The Sacred Way

MargeryKempeand Others,SpiritualClassicsSeries(New York:CrossroadPublishing Co., 1981);John Griffiths,ed. and trans.,A Letterof PrivateDirection,Spiritual ClassicsSeries(New York:Crossroad Co., 1981),and A LetterfromJesus Publishing Christ,SpiritualClassicsSeries(New York:CrossroadPublishing Co., 1981);Charles Crawford,trans., A Mirror for Simple Souls, SpiritualClassics Series (New York:

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Ph.D. thesis, while Nasr's is the text of his Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1981. The bulk of Almond's thesis is an informed and clear exposition and critique of the main scholarly interpretations of mysticism, notably of the relationship between experience and interpretation, that have been offered in the last twenty-five years. This-means a detailed discussion of Walter T. Stace, R. C. Zaehner, Ninian Smart, and Rudolf Otto, with glances in various side directions and at less central figures. Though my own predilection is to be more critical of this scholarly inheritance than is Almond, he has been a fair and intelligent critic; and others, especially students, will find these chapters a useful introduction to the secondary literature and the debates that are central to the current discussion. But Almond intends something more than a recapitulation of old material. In the final two chapters of the book, he seeks to construct, from the currently existing and competing models, what he takes to be the correct paradigm for interpreting mystical sources across cultures and epochs. Toward this aim Almond outlines five alternative theses that have been advocated as ways of accounting for the variety of mystical claims advanced in the various traditions. Of these, he finds two particularly suggestive. The first, which he associates primarily with the exegesis of Ninian Smart, he states as follows: "All mystical experience is the same, but the various interpretations of the experience depend on the religious and/or philosophical framework of the mystic." The second, which he identifies most closely with my work, argues that "there are as many different types of mystical experience as there are incorporated interpretations of them" (p. 128). In Almond's opinion both these views, Smart's and my own, contain important insights, but neither is totally satisfactory, and in place of both he offers what he believes to be a new "model of the relationship between mystical experience and its interpretation which hopefully takes the insights [of Smart and Katz] ... and points towards a fresh synthesis" (p. 172). Almond would like us to consider seriously the proposition that "there is nothing logically incoherent about the notion of contentless experience. And it is therefore logically possible that there are experiences in which there is no incorporated interpretation" (p. 174). As his only "evidence"for this proposition, he draws an analogy between "a contentless dream state" (pp. 173ff.) and mystical experience. But the analogy is inapposite on many levels, not least because (a) the notion of "experience"in the two contexts is different, that is, dreams are not intentional, worked for, demanding experiences, nor do they carry any ethical imperatives for waking consciousness, and (b) dreamless states make no ontological claims about external reality, that is, reality outside of oneself. As no further evidence is given, the case seems highly dubious. Furthermore, the few actual comparative examples cited in defense of his position are altogether unconvincing. Discussion of those examples is highly theoretical and does not really emerge from a deep familiarity with mystical sources, the analysis of which takes a total of six pages (pp. 175-80). For instance, Almond cites Martin Buber as an illustration of a Jewish mystic who had a contentless experience. But this is simply an error. First of all, Buber was not a Jewish mystic if one means by that a trained Kabbalist. When he had his youthful experience referred to by Almond, he did so under

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the influence of Christian and Asian mysticism, not Hasidism, that is, authentic Hasidic teaching (an interest Buber developed subsequently), and thus this experience bears no implication for generalizations about what counts for authentic Hasidism or Kabbalism.2 The experience to which Almond refers is not one of a contentless state akin to dreamless sleep. For example, in Between Man and Man (Boston, 1955), Buber speaks of "an undifferentiable unity of myself without form or content" (pp. 24-25); but Buber's claim, common to many mystical traditions and here advanced by him but not to be taken at face value, of a sense of unity is not equivalent to contentlessness a la dreamlessness: the sense of unity is a content. Buber has an ontological experience of a highly specific kind (and one that Buddhists, for example, would of necessity deny). Still more generally, given the examples cited by Almond from Buddhism and the experience of Saint John of the Cross, it must be asked, Does the term "contentless" mean the same thing when, as in Theravada literature, it means the absence of either a personal soul or a divine being in nirvana-even the locution "in" nirvana is problematic-while in John it means at least the experience of God's being; and usually in Christian mystical contexts, though I will not try to argue the case of John's Dark Night here, it also means the continued awareness of the existence of one's own soul (despite incorrect, popular generalizations to the contrary)? Put another way, even the term "contentless," when used of actual mystical experience, is rooted in contexts and is not immune from the claims context makes. In fairness to Almond he does recognize that the "pure" state he wishes to argue for is not the norm in every (or even most!) mystical experience, and context for him is more important than it has been for most previous scholars. Yet, insofar as his proposed synthesis of Smart and Katz in favor of pure experience breaks down totally, the positive situation for interpreting mysticism is little changed by Almond's work. S. H. Nasr's Gifford Lectures are an altogether different sort of enterprise. They are primarily a presentation of Nasr's own mystical doctrine, which belongs to the tradition of the philosophia perennis. For Nasr there is one truth embodied in all great religious traditions (see, e.g., chaps. 1, 4, 10). Though symbols, images, and doctrines vary (see his brief and unconvincing discussion, pp. 74-83, 280-303), the authentic mystic breaks through these barriers and is able to discern the One that is the cause, sustainer, and essence of all partial truth. Nasr's advocacy of this perspective is as much by way of testimony as by way of analytic or historical scholarship, though it includes a good deal of the latter. For Nasr here is attempting to sketch his own image of the One rather than restrict himself to an independent and coolly distanced reading of the material. His aim, despite its scholarly form, is more in keeping with traditional
2 For more on this issue, see my "Martin Buber's Misuse of Hasidic Sources," in Post Holocaust Dialogues: Critical Studies in Contemporary Jewish Thought (New York: New York University Press, 1983).

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first person accounts of experience or traditional manuals of the philosophia perennis rather than with "disinterested,"secondary, scholarly perusals. Thus the book must be read and judged on two levels, as a new mystical or gnostic tract (in the generic sense of "gnosis") and as an academic summary. As to the personal vision, I am impressed as always by such accounts, for I lack such experience and such certainty of the unity (or even disunity) of things. As to the academic statement, however, I have a far more mixed reaction. For example, I find Nasr's discussion of the history of the term philosophia perennis on pages 69-70 informative and impressive, but I find his argument that "maya is always the same as the Islamic rahmah" (p. 141) extremely problematic. Maya and rahmah inhabit different theologies, exist in alternative metaphysical schemata. And this questionable use of the apposite data relating to maya and rahmah is symptomatic of a hermeneutical procedure that is altogether too casual in respecting the meaning of religious symbols, terms, and the like. Most specifically, the nub of my objection to Nasr's appealing but misguided syntheses can be described as a fundamental disagreement over the nature of the evidence provided by the world's mystical traditions. I read these data as pluralistic rather than as expressions of one common and essential point of view. The same may be said, too, of the related use of modern scientific theories by which Nasr is rightly fascinated. His discussion of them as evidence for a new synthesis of science and religion stretches the scientific material out of all recognition. All the analyses of these data in the second half of the present work suffer from this failure. Despite Nasr's truly broad, even polymathic, learning in several key cultures and languages, he has not provided any convincing arguments for the philosophia perennis; testimony (whether his own or that of others), no matter how authentic, is not an argument. Nasr's work, it seems to me, stands next to that of F. Schuon and other theosophists of our century, such as Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, all of whom Nasr speaks of approvingly.3 Perhaps because I lack the theosophist's soul or the mystic's experience, I am uncomfortable with the tendency of this circle of writers to substitute a priori and nondisconfirmable intuitions for reasoned, defendable theories or generalizations. Nasr has done us a real service by reminding historians of religion of an ancient and modern tradition that he calls "gnosis." But I can see no reason for championing that tradition. Moving away from monographs, we come to three very different collections of essays. The first is The Feminist Mystic, edited by Mary E. Giles, whose contributions belong more to the category of "women's studies," or some suitable subcategory of that discipline, rather than to the serious study of mysticism. The only exception is the opening essay by the editor, who tries to make a case for Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila as "feminists." But the essay never establishes how and in what sense, other than that they were
3 Nasr'srelationto Schuonis one of faithfuldiscipleship. of See, e.g., his description Schuon'sworkon p. 107.

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women, they were feminists. The subject of the particular nature of women's mystical experience, if indeed there is something specific and individuating, is one of great interest, given the large role women have played in mystical, especially Christian mystical, traditions. Unfortunately, Giles's essay contributes nothing toward its deconstruction. Caroline Walker Bynum's collection of five essays is of a different order. The essays are work of high quality, reflecting both methodological sophistication and a sure mastery of a wide range of medieval Christian materials, especially as they bear on the status of women and the impact that broader social currents had on the religious roles and self-understanding of women. All five, especially the essay on "Jesus as Mother and Abbott as Mother," contribute substantially to a broad understanding of the social and theological context of medieval Christian spirituality, of which mysticism is only one part. Regarding this more narrow focus on mysticism, one essay in particular needs to be commented on. This is the last, as well as the latest and longest, essay in the collection, entitled "Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta." Bynum's research here turns up a series of intriguing patterns. For example, in the thirteenth century "women were more likely than men to be mystics, to gain reputations based on their mystical abilities, and to have paramystical experiences (such as trances, levitations, stigmata, etc.). Moreover, these women mystics were primarily responsible for encouraging and propagating some of the most distinctive aspects of late medieval piety: devotion to the human, especially the infant, Christ and devotion to the eucharist (frequently focused on devotion to the wounds, blood, body, and heart of Jesus)" (pp. 171-72). But why does the mystical experience of females in the thirteenth century take this form? Bynum wisely rejects the widespread view that locates the reason in the claimed excessive "emotionalism" of women or their need for certain images. Instead, she argues that the outpouring of striking mystics in the thirteenth-century was the result of changes in the church at large, which denied to women certain roles and curtailed their direct access to salient religious experiences (pp. 189ff.). Having stated her thesis, Bynum then defends it through a close reading of the works of the three key figures of the Helfta circle, Gertrude of Helfta, Mechtild of Hackeborn, and Mechtild of Magdeburg. Her exposition of their views is both thorough and fascinating, not least because it stresses the completely monastic and medieval context of the experiences described. These female mystics learn primarily, though not exclusively, by experience the truth of the church's teaching, grasping existentially the propositions known heretofore "by description," that is, as inherited dogma and learned doctrines (see pp. 201-3, 222, 237-38). This conservative element, that is, one that affirms, experiences and supports religious authority, is an essential factor not only at Helfta but also in mysticism more generally, though it is usually misunderstood or misrepresented. Not so here.4 4 For more on this notion, see my "TheConservative Character MysticalExpeof

versityPress, 1983),pp. 3-60, esp. pp. 20-23.

rience," in Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. S. Katz (New York: Oxford Uni-

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Yet Bynum's analysis, for all its insightfulness, must still be asked to answer one elemental question. Was thirteenth-century church policy vis-a-vis women so different-that is, so much more exclusionary-from previous policy as to account for this remarkable efflorescence of feminine spirituality? The answer is almost certainly no. Though the Church was increasingly antifeminine, the change was a matter of degree, and one that does not explain in itself the phenomenon under study. The reluctance to allow women to mediate the sacraments and to share church authority existed earlier and, if Bynum's thesis is correct, should have expressed itself in significant, if not equal, female mystical expression before-but this is largely not the case, except for some notable twelfth-century figures such as Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schonau. Ultimately, it would appear that the single case of the nuns of Helfta is too narrow a base for such broad generalizations as those advanced by Bynum regarding the thirteenth century. This is shown, moreover, by the fact that even Mechtild of Magdeburg, one of the central figures of the Helfta circle, preferred a very traditional understanding of the mediating role of women in the Church and outside of it. There is a strong critical sense in Mechtild of Magdeburg, as well as a sense of mission, but as Bynum herself acknowledges, her "prophetic" quality is more reminiscent of twelfth-century figures such as Hildegard of Bingen than of the spirituality at Helfta understood as a "type" (p. 245). If so, what becomes of Bynum's historical-contextual thesis about the peculiar influences of the thirteenth century? Moreover, Bynum finally has to appeal to individual psychological factors to explain Mechtild of Magdeburg's theology (pp. 246-47), thereby introducing a methodological contradiction to her expressed concern with the broader currents of social history. The same puzzlement arises when we broaden our view across the spectrum of all thirteenth-century female mystics, that is, when we consider that "deprivation of opportunities for evangelism" (p. 253) for women and the denial of other forms of mediation do not appear as central motifs causing (for Bynum's account is actually of the functionalist variety) certain specific mystical experiences. Bynum herself wavers on just how much social context does cause mystical states (cf., e.g., p. 254), and in the end one is frankly confused when one reads this conclusion: "The mysticism of Gertrude and Mechtild of Hackeborn cannot, of course, be explained as a direct reflection of aspects of the social structure that produced the convent of Helfta. It found its major support in their theology" (p. 254). But then where are we? Alas, the whole game, methodologically, seems now to have been given up. In summary, though Bynum's historical reconstruction is of a high order, representative of the detailed, text-based labor needed, her broader conclusions are subject to doubt because of her methodological inconsistency; and hence defensible synthetic judgments about medieval women mystics as a class remain a desideratum. The third collection of essays before us grew out of a seminar on sacred biography at the University of Washington. It contains eight essays by different authors on the theme expressed in its title, Charisma and Sacred Biography, with an informed introduction by the volume's editor, Michael A. Williams, who aims, admirably, to transcend the rather empty Weberian

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categories for the analysis of charisma. The opening essay, also by Williams, analyzes Athanasius's The Life of Antony. Its concern is to show, by a subtle reading of this text, that its author was intent to sculpt a picture of a charismatic authority that had been "domesticated," that is, self-consciously subordinted to the authority of bishops and the church establishment. Williams's deconstruction is nuanced and effective, showing clearly how Anthony must be understood and in turn pointing the way for a more informed, situational reading of other religious/mystical biographies. The second essay, by Bruce Lawrence, on "The Chishtiya of Sultanate India" is equally valuable, as it significantly extends our knowledge of the institutional structure of Indian Sufism. That Sufism (and mystical movements elsewhere) have a basic institutional dimension is regularly ignored or forgotten, with Sufis and other mystics pictured as archindividualists working outside all structures, a picture as false as it is common. In particular, Lawrence devotes most of his effort to sketching a description of the regnant ideological model operative in Islamic spirituality, to which the Sufi saint attempts to conform and which Lawrence discusses under the rubric of "sacred biography." In this case, for example, Lawrence offers a learned, if brief, description of the life of Nizam ad-din, one of the most well known of Indian saints. And on the basis of his reconstructed biography, he offers the following summary judgment, which accurately reflects the dialectic of traditional and spontaneous, conservative and novel forces in the lives and biographies of great mystical figures: "At the very least, one can assert that the biographical process initiated among the Chishtiya emphasized both individual achievement and recurrent patterns of expected behavior. Neither Nizam ad-din nor his successors were the mere metaphors whom Clifford Geertz (25-35) observed in Indonesian and Moroccan biographical narratives. The 'enacted biography' outlined an ideal, but it did not serve as a rubber stamp or blueprint imposed retrospectively on all saints" (p. 65). Just how much novelty and how much tradition go into the mix in each individual case requires a case-by-case study. Lawrence has set a good example of how this work should be done. No extended commentary on Eugene Webb's essay on Luther and Zen and Pamela T. Amoss's anthropological study of the Pacific Northwest Indian Shaker Church is necessary. Neither author is an expert in religious studies. However, whereas Webb reworks well-known material, Amoss adds some interesting new details using the analytical categories established by Geertz, Turner, and, in particular, Mary Douglas. Karl Potter's essay "Samkaracarya:The Myth and the Man" is the work of a scholar in control of his subject, which in this case is the contrast between the historic Samkara and the hagiographical tradition surrounding him. While not directly focused on the theme of charisma, his informed conclusions are interesting: the standard hagiographies "ought to be construed rather as apologies for Samkara as the creation of a symbol-the ideal of a Vedantic swami" (p. 121); and "the hagiographies remake Samkara. The philosopher acquires charisma by virtue of adulation based on a completely erroneous assessment of his philosophy" (p. 121) (i.e., "erroneous" because it attributes

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to Samkara a social concern and the role of a social organizer that Potter claims he did not have).5 And the reason for this reworking is that "the details of a particular life are of no great importance unless they serve some profound didactic purpose" (p. 122). This acute observation forces to the fore fundamental hermeneutical questions concerning the intersection of history, philosophy, theology, and "sacred biography." We are once again reminded that religious (in the broad sense) texts are never quite what they appear. We are also reminded that the techniques of critical reading and "form criticism" (in all its forms) are not yet common tools of Asian studies. The final two essays, Frank F. Conlon's "A Nineteenth Century Indian Guru," dealing with Pandurangashram Swami, and Charles F. Keyes's "Death of Two Buddhist Saints in Thailand," which describes the deaths of Khruba Siwichai (d. 1939) and Acan man Phurithatta (d. 1949), are primarily historical descriptions of the events surrounding specific Asian holy men. Conlon makes almost no methodological contribution. Keyes, by contrast, is more methodologically sophisticated, but in large part his essay is an attempt to demonstrate that the biographer of each Thai saint is "always faced ... with the problem of showing that surface appearances (that is, actual events) notwithstanding, the underlying structure of the life is that found in the path of the Buddha" (p. 152). In the main, his essay aims to document this correct thesis borrowed from Frank Reynolds and D. Capps's earlier investigation of sacred biography;6 Keyes adds another informative case in point. Taken as a whole, this is a rich collection of essays that constitutes a significant, if not uniform, contribution to the sifting and deciphering of the related notions of charisma and sacred biography. Among the most important features of the present renewal of interest in mysticism is the issuance,7 and, in some cases, the reissuance of primary texts. Crossroads Publishing Company has done its part by bringing out the Spiritual Classics series, which comprises six titles to date, five of which have so far appeared. In the first of these, Charles Crawford has adapted and translated a volume entitled The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises, a work based largely on Henry Pepwell's collection of short mystical writings published in London in 1512. Crawford alters the original by substituting two short pieces by Richard Rolle for an essay by Richard St. Victor, revised by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, which has been published in the Classics of Western Spirituality 5 Potter writes of this attributionof social activityand concernto Samkara,"The Samkara to philosopher appears havebeena prophetwithouthonorin his own country until he was identified,severalhundredyearsafterhis death,as a social organizer [in the hagiographical literature]" 122). (p. 6 F. Reynoldsand D. Capps, TheBiographical Process(The Hague:Mouton, 1976). On the issuesraisedby Lawrence, analAmoss, Porter,and Keyes,see also my further and in ysis in "Models,Modelling Mystical Training," Religion12(1982):247-75. 7 The most wide-rangingand influentialprojectof this kind is undoubtedlythe

Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality series. I am currently preparing a review essay on this series for Numen and for this reason have chosen not to discuss any of its titles in the present review.

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series (New York, 1981). All the material has been adapted or translated into readable modern English. To this series of original essays Crawford has appended a brief, nonscholarly introduction locating each author in his or her historical and biographical circumstances. While none of these writings is a central work,8 they do add to our knowledge of medieval English spirituality in its totality, that is, insofar as the major texts are available in modern English, and for this we are appreciative. Three additional Western titles in the series deserve mention. Two are little known since they have not appeared before in readable modern prose. More familiar is A Letter of Private Direction, by the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing. A translation/adaptation was prepared by the general editor of the series, John Griffiths. And he must be given both good marks and demerits, depending on one's point of view, for his method of adaptation. It is certainly a more readable text that he puts before us, but its readability derives in part from an editorial decision to delete material that seemed repetitive or "confusing" to "modern readers" (p. 11). One can judge the strengths and weaknesses of this looser method of "updating"by comparing the present version with the 1944 edition of this work published by Phyllis Hodgson under the better-known title The Epistle of Privy Counselling (London: Oxford University Press, 1944). For students and general readers Griffiths's translation "works";for scholars it is defective. Griffiths's adaptation of A Letterfrom Jesus Christ by John of Landsberg (Joannes Justus Lansperguis [1489-1539]) is, on the whole, a more successful effort. To begin with, there is no modern translation of the text known to me. The antique English translation prepared in 1595 by Philip Howard from the Latin original (Alloquia Jesus Christi adfidelem animam [Cologne, 1555]) while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for his Catholic belief was reissued but not updated early in this century. Second, while Griffiths once again "modernizes" the work by deletions and adaptations (and this is still regrettable in a technical work), leaving out the abstruse doctrinal content of the original does add to the readability of this edition. Of course, the deleted material, from a scholarly perspective, is perhaps the most important because it situates the work as a medieval Catholic document. That is, it represents that very Catholicism, for all its rigorous Trinitarian doctrine, that provides the metaphysical center of the author's spirituality yet that is all too often passed over by modern interpreters who want mysticism to be "ecumenical" in character, facts notwithstanding.9 In this case the modernizing, ecumenical editing produces a text that overemphasizes the bridal-nuptial theme. 8 For example, the Book of MargeryKempe, recentlypublishedas Mystic and Pilgrim:The "Book"and the Worldof MargeryKempe,edited by C. W. Atkinson outlook, Press, 1983),is a bettersourcefor Kempe's (Ithaca,N.Y.: CornellUniversity as is the Cloud for that anonymousauthor or the Incendium Amoris (ed. Margaret Green& Co., 1915]) RichardRolle. for Deanesley [London:Longmans, and of medievalEnglishmystics in "Experience Dogma in the EnglishMystics,"in Katz,ed., pp. 148-62.
9 See here Hugh P. Owen's apposite observations on the thoroughly Christian nature

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The anonymous thirteenth-century French treatise A Mirror for Simple Souls, translated by Charles Crawford, is our last Western entry in the series to date. An almost unknown text, only published once before in an English edition in 1927,10this work is a minor example of the apophatic tradition rooted in Pseudo-Dionysius and given original dimensions by the Victorines. In itself it does not make any new departures, being highly derivative theologically. This pedestrian fact, however, reminds us of two salient truths: (1) that mystical writings are influenced by "schools," "doctrines," et cetera and are not just, or even usually, about first-person experience per se and (2) that all we have vis-a-vis the great mystical traditions, for all our passion for experience, are texts! The translator of A Mirror, consistent with the purpose of this series, has considerably modernized and shortened the text. This, however, is a particularly unfortunate decision, for the work has little to recommend it as great mystical literature and is notable primarily for what it adds to the scholarly primary source literature; lay readers and amateurs would do better with many other texts, particularly ones chosen from the non-Pseudo-Dionysian tradition. Thus, if one has to leave out the essence of the Pseudo-Dionysian thrust of the argument and the later Victorine christology added to it, there is little point in the labor of translating this treatise. Of the fourth volume, The Tao: The Sacred Way of Lao Tzu, the less said the better. Nothing about this volume is to be recommended: I would say of it what the editor wrote in what passes for an introduction about the Tao Te Ching: "What is not written is equal in importance to what is written" (p. vi). To conclude, we turn to the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions by John Ferguson. Produced single-handedly, this volume seeks to explain briefly all the major terms, phrases, ideas, historical events, and personalities in all the major mystical traditions, with illustrations! As with all such works, the key to gauging its success is how much one knowsthe more uninformed the reader, the more useful the project; the more learned the reader, the less useful, even mistaken and misguided, the work appears. Then, too, there is the insoluble problem of allocating space, and, of course, the knowledge of the author is not to be forgotten. In evaluating these items in reverse order, it seems fair to say that Ferguson's learning is wide but neither novel nor deep. The explanations of most terms and the like seem culled from other secondary sources, and as the author admits in his foreword, "[I] have drawn widely on secondary sources." As to allocation of space, William Blake gets twice as much space as Bodhidharma or Bodhisattva and about eight times as much as Bhakti, while Martin Buber is missing altogether. This brief perusal of b's suggests a Western Christian bias, an inexpert knowledge of Eastern sources, and very little knowledge of Jewish themes. On balance, these observations hold for the work as a whole. Thus, for example, underf, Fana gets twelve lines and Fichte fifty-nine, while neither
10ClareKirchenberger, trans.,TheMirror SimpleSouls(London:Orchard Books, of 1927).

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Jacob Franck nor Manachem Azariah Fano makes any appearance whatsoever; and again under s, Sikhism gets only ten lines and Shiva seven, while Shelley receives twenty-nine lines and Israel Sarug goes unmentioned. A mixed collection of items, all in all. But given much current (and past) writing in this area, "for what we have been given let us be thankful." STEVEN KATZ T.

Cornell University