Sacred Love, Sacred Light

Sacred Love, Sacred Light
http://www.metahistory.org/GRAIL/SacredLoveLight.php
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Both in its historical origins and its literary dimensions, Arthurian legend is
a reflection of the survival of knowledge and practice from the Mysteries,
though not of the Mysteries themselves. The Mysteries were institutions of
initiation and education derived from a long tradition of shamanic practices
in Europa and the Near East. In structure and function, they may be
compared to a modern university system. Imagine that all the classrooms,
libraries, educational and training facilities, laboratories, lecture halls,
faculty offices, etc. of such a system were destroyed. The collegial network
for higher education in the classical world was totally eradicated with the
rise of Christianity. With it went the ancient network of Mystery cells, and
the method of shamanic initiation practiced in those cells.
Typical Mystery School campus with central temple, classrooms,

hostel, gymnasium, auditorium, and studios. (Reconstruction of the
Greek temple of Jupiter Olympus, c. 350 BCE)
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Some people who carried the sacred knowledge that informed and guided
the Mysteries did survive, however. At the very moment when the Roman
Empire was crumbling, a Druid in Wales advised a local chieftain to set up
a militia to protect the diaspora of initiates from those ancient institutions.
The refugees had been arriving for some time. They first fled the ruined
sanctuaries in the 3rd century, and the diaspora continued for 200 years.
With the murder of Hypatia in 415 AD, the plight of the refugees
intensified. 415 is a threshold date, denoting a precise moment of abrupt
and profound change, a momentous shift.
The nodal dates 281 and 453 are also important in the parallel history
concerning the diaspora of the Mystery initiates. By contrast to a threshold
date like 415 AD, which marks a vast and abrupt shift, a watershed, a
nodal date is a vortex moment around which contrapuntal developments
occur. In the tumultuous swirl of the nodal moment, certain events and
conditions dissolve, sucked away into the depths of time, and other events
and conditions unfold, forming new patterns of experience. We will
occasionally apply the concept of nodal dates and nodal timing as these
lessons proceed.
Feudal Shutdown
Chivalry illustrates in a vivid manner the dissolving and upbuilding
currents of a nodal moment in history. Chivalry was the product of a new
cultural order, feudalism, that emerged in Europe with the breakdown of
the Roman Empire and the reversion of social organization to local levels.
With the invasions of the 5th century, law and order could no longer be
maintained by totalitarian measures proceeding from a central controlling
authority. The defenses of the Empire were breaking down, Huns and
Goths poured across Europe, and people in each region had to fend for
themselves. Landholders took up arms or hired men to protect their
property. Roman slavery broke down and underwent a conversion into
serfdom. With the new military organization came the idea of fealty to a
feudal lord. The knight who swore fealty vowed to protect the material and
familial interests of his lord and master.
At the nodal moment of 453, the old imperial structures of command and
control were dissolving, and a new social order taking shapesuch is the
contrapuntal dynamic of nodal timing. Simultaneous breakdown and
build-up of social and cultural patterns was evident all across the former
Empire. In this turbulent swirl of events the Dark Ages began.
Feudalism is not a particularly interesting subject, but it may soon become
more relevant if certain parts of the "global community" plunge into chaos
comparable to the last years of the Roman Empire. (It is fascinating to
consider that the "New World Order" which seems intended to create a
global totalitarian system is in fact driving the world more and more into
feudal-like fragmentation. It shatters rather than unites the global
community. But might that be precisely what it is intended to do?) The
organization of patriot groups in the US is a feudalistic trend. Gangs in
urban ghettos are feudalistic units. The tendencyindeed, the
necessityof the rich to confine themselves in walled compounds
protected by surveillance cameras and battalions of security guards is
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feudalistic. So is the reduction of regional populations (in India, for

instance) to serfdom in the IT industry. And, of course, the greater part of
the Islamic world is still innately, rigidly feudal.
The aspect of feudalism that interests us most in parallel history is the
sexual morality that arose within it. Because the Dark Ages in Europe were
the dawn of Christian civilization in the West, feudal society was deeply
molded by narratives of sin and guilt. A hateful and condemning view of
sex and nature marks the Christian tradition in Europe. It is a truism that
people in the Middle Ages were told to believe that woman, represented
mythologically by Eve, was the instrument of the Devil, and that nature
was evil. The proposition sounds so ridiculous that we tend to dismiss it,
but to do so is a serious mistake. It would be no exaggeration to say that
Christian mores poisoned human relations in the feudal age, and
condemned every spontaneous instinct that connects humanity to the
natural world.
The condemnation of nature as demonic was especially nefarious.(Read the
entry on the Dark Ages in The Womans Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets by Barbara Walker to get some idea of this mindset.) In the Pagan
sense of life, nature was sacred and animated. In Chapter 3 of Not in His
Image, I wrote:
In its reverence for nature the Pagan religious outlook honored and
encouraged empathic bonding of person to place, not divinely
ordained possession of the land. Mountains, hills, grottos, wells,
rivers, all were sacred, not because any doctrine declared them to be,
but because the experience of the peoples native to a particular locale
was grounded in a direct and sensuous revelation of divinity. Theirs
was a mystical participation in the Other, free of intellectual or
doctrinal filters. Ancient bioregionalism, in Europa as well as in the
Americas, was not superstitious folly, but a genuine, lived animism.
Theirs was a world in which, as the initiate Plutarch wrote in his
essay, The Sign of Socrates, every life has its share of mind and
there is none that is wholly irrational or mindless.
Pagans participated in the "complementarity of mind and nature," and the
"pattern that connects," to borrow a couple of terms from Gregory Bateson.
Empathic connections between the indigenous Europans and their
environment were not instantly shattered by the imposition of Christian
values, of course. In fact, there was enormous resistance among Pagans to
the imposition of a nature-hating mindset. Policies of repression introduced
in Hypatias time (375 - 415) led to the Inquisition and the Witch Hunts a
thousand years later. Christian values ran so violently against human
inclinations that they had to be continually and brutally reinforced. The
ages-long Christian war against nature finally triumphed in the
Enlightenment when science totally desacralized the natural world. Roszak
has pointed out that the scientism of the 17th Century is totally consistent
with the religious dogmas that preceded it. All the pioneering men of the
Enlightenment, such as Descartes and Newton, were devout Christians.
Ecofeminism asserts that the view of nature and the social treatment of
women are always intertwined. In the Middle Ages, women were regarded
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on the one hand as property, and on the other as dangerous animals to be

feared, confined, and controlled. The image of women in feudal times is a
cliche, but not an entirely inaccurate one. Chastity-belts were more than
symbolic icons of the day. We are told that women were locked into these
devices when their husbands went off to the Crusades. This happened of
course rather late in the Middle Ages. The Crusades were mounted around
a nodal moment, 1202. In preceding centuries, the confinement of women
had not been so extreme, but it became more and more brutal and rigorous
as the power of Christianity advanced.
The opposition of sexuality to spirituality is an anomaly of JudeoChristian-Islamic religion not found in many other cultures and
spiritual orientations. (The Temptation of Saint Hilarion,
D. L. Papety, 1843. Wallace Collection, London)
In fact, the Dark Ages were all about shutting down. Feudal shutdown was
evident in all aspects of the life of those times, but especially in sexual
mores. The amorous, hedonistic lifestyle of Pagan Europa was literally
"foreclosed," as happens when property is reclaimed. Christianity seized
upon womanhood as material property, but made women the least valued
property of the mundane order ruled by the Church. This takeover of the
feminine followed from the repression of the Sophianic vision of the
Mysteries, and the wholesale destruction of Pagan civilization.
Feminine sexuality was the primary target of feudal shutdown. But it was
also the issue on which the Pagan spirit rallied valiantly and tapped deep
inner resources to resist the repression of salvationist religion.
Unrequited Love
Chivalry arose during the breakdown of the command and control systems
of the Roman Empire, as noted. The inceptive nodal moment was 453 AD
(second half of the 5th Century, Arthur the warrior chieftain, formation of
the "Round Table"), and the concluding nodal moment was 1456 (Malory,
Le Morte d'Arthur)almost exactly a full millennium. During these ten
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centuries Europe saw the development of the code of knighthood, and in

the later centuries, the technology of warfare emerged. With the invention
of firearms in the 15th century, the reign of chivalry ended. The first
cast-iron gun was introduced in 1430, and Malory wrote his classic around
1470. (The key developments associated with a nodal moment may occur
precisely at that moment, but more often they arise around it, the way
ripples spread around a stone thrown in a pool.)
What is truly remarkable about chivalry is how it provided a vehicle for a
revolution of sexual mores at the same time that it served militaristic ends.
But not exclusively militaristic ends, of course. We know from Lesson 6
that the Round Table had in addition to its military function a spiritual
mission: to protect the survivors of the Mysteries, the guardians of the
Sacred Light. The Arthurian matter reveals the continuation of the
Mysteries, and, at the same time, it reflects the culture of amour courtois,
courtly love.
So, in Lesson 7 of this course we come to a great and compelling
triangulation: Grail - Warrior - Woman. This correlation implies the
mystical identification of the Grail and the Girl. In the cult of amor, the
warrior-lover moved between the lure of the Wisdom light emanating from
the Grail and the alluring radiance of Woman. In parallel history, the
preservation of the Sacred Light was intimately linked to the experience of
Sacred Love, consecrated passion that unites man and woman in a deathtranscending bond.
Amour courtois has been praised as a revolutionary and revelatory shift in
social mores unparalleled in history, but such praise is usually tinged with
damnation. The single most comprehensive book on the subject, Love in
the Western World by Denis de Rougemont, constantly emphasizes the
negative character of "unrequited love." De Rougemont goes all out to
prove that the devotion of the knight to his lady, or of troubadour
(wandering minstrel) to chatelaine (the lady of the castle), was
unconsummated, and could not be consummated in this world, because it
represented a transcendent relation only to be achieved in death, i.e., in
disembodiment.
But de Rougemont got it badly wrong, as I now wish to show.
To clarify this issue, I would offer an initial correction concerning
"unrequited love." I propose that it may be understood, not as love that is
not returned and so remains tragically unreciprocated (de Rougemont's
pitch), but as love that does not ask to be returned. Love that does not need
to be returned. What kind of love neither asks nor needs to be returned?
Might this not be called self-fulfilling love? It is the kind of love that
transforms the one who loves, regardless of how it effects the beloved. If
transformation of the lover was the true dynamic of "unrequited love,"
rather than the non-reciprocation so often proposed, then it must have been
a transcendent force of immense power in society and spiritual life. A
purely secular power, intimate and transcendent, personal and
transpersonal at once. All the evidence of the revolution of sexual mores
the Middle Ages indicates this to be so.
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In parallel history it is this transformative force, Sacred Love, that

humanized the European world in the Middle Ages, not the repressive
salvationist morality that Christianity forced on that world. Repression
cannot elevate; it perverts what it would improve. Sublimation cannot
transform; it merely substitutes a less genuine experience for a more
genuine one. From the time of Saint Paul, Christian religion demanded the
separation of sexuality and spirituality for the salvation of the soul, but
amour courtois defied and reversed this taboo. In unrequited lovenot
excluding the face-to-face sexual embrace, as we shall seehumanity in
the West acquired soul. amour courtois was the alchemy of soul-making.
Both the passionate gaze (or even the glance) and the carnal embrace
fostered intimacy and nurtured the authentic sources of humanitas. I
maintain that almost everything that has been attributed to Christian
religious tradition by way of elevating and refining the human spirit was
actually achieved by the experiment of Sacred Love in the Middle Ages.
The cult of amor was the hidden tap root of Renaissance humanism. The
inspirational model for Sacred Love developed in the same social genre as
the Grail Legend: the Arthurian world of knights in shining armor and
damsels in distress, and the closely associated world of troubadours,
jongleurs, and conteurs.
Sacred Love eventually produced the humanist spirit in Europe, but the
phenomenon itself did not originate in the medieval European setting. The
cult of amor that flowered in the world of the troubadours and the Round
Table originated in far-distant Asia. Its roots were Oriental, and ultimately
Tantric. The immense and subtle cultural-spiritual transmigration required
for the Asian love sacrament to pass from East to West is one of the most
exciting chapters in parallel history.
The Sufi Connection
No scholar so far has traced this far-reaching feat of transmigration.
Despite its frustrating negative tone, De Rougemont's book did present
some tentative clues. He suggested that the cult of amor in Europe was
inspired or inseminated by "Arabian mysticism." This is a puzzling notion,
however. The gist of it seems to be that early in the Middle Ages Moorish
culture in Spain produced the first troubadours as a secular offshoot of
contemplative mysticism centered on "the Beloved," i.e., the Divine
Feminine. This obscure development stems in some manner from the Sufi
movement, a heretical or underground aspect of Islam. It is more than
likely that Sufi is an Arabic version of the Greek Sophia. Sufism, then,
would be (or would have been, originally) a devotional or bhakti path
centered on the figure of the Divine Sophia.
This is intriguing, of course, because the goddess Sophia is the central
figure in the Western Mysteries. Was there then, in some manner, a
fortuitous collision of Eastern-Arabian devotionalism centered on Sophia
with the telestic tradition of Sophianic Mysteries that had taken refuge in
the Western Isles? Whatever the case, the setting for this linkage was
Moorish Spain, particularly Andalucia. The time was the 7th Century. This
much is known, but it remains to be seen how this wonderful convergence
took shape.
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Needless to say, it is rather difficult to imagine a resurgence of the Divine

Feminine coming out of Islam. If this is actually what happened, no scholar
can say exactly how it happened. It seems that an Arabian practice of
blissful contemplation of "the Beloved" (read: Divine Feminine, Divine
Wisdom, Sophia) morphed into a cult of woman-worship in Southern
France. De Rougemont established the notion that Sufi theophany stands
behind the cult of amor in which troubadours lavished extravagant praise
upon a woman they could not touch, and many have followed his lead.
But there are several kinks in this theory.
In the first place, Arabian sexual mysticism was largely, if not entirely,
homosexual. In theory, the mystic may have contemplated a virginal young
woman who represented the Divine Sophia, but in practice it was beardless
boys who caught the eye of the adepts. In Sacred Drift, Peter Lamborn
Wilson explains the arcane spiritual practice called the "Witness Game,"
which used "imaginal yoga to transmute erotic desire into spiritual
consciousness" (p. 61, his emphasis). The point being, that physical desire
is not denied or overcome, but transmuted, as lead into gold. The practice
included "poetical and musical improvisation, dance, and 'gazing' chastely
at beautiful boys (whence the practice was also known as "Contemplation
of the Beardless")."
All these elements occur in troubadour and chivalric romance, but strictly
free of homosexual connotations. The troubadours were masters of poetic
and musical improvisation, and even borrowed Arabian musical forms
(much later preserved in Flamenco riffs). The motif of the gaze (which
Loomis shows to derive from Celtic lore) occurs prominently in Parzival
when the hero sees three drops of blood in the snow and falls into a trance,
contemplating the color of his beloved's complexion. In some cases, the
gaze is merely a glance, the most famous instance being Petrarchs
encounter with Laura. For Dante, the gaze of Beatrice becomes like a
guiding beam that leads him to spiritual heights. In the poetry of John
Donne, the gaze on which the lovers are "threaded" assumes all the
potency of carnal intercourse. Donnes poem, "The Ecstasy," is the
consummation of a long tradition of amorous gazing that runs back through
Parzival to archaic Celtic origins.
If we rely on the Sufi connection, it
would appear that the troubadour gaze
derives from the Witness Game. But
Wilson pointedly notes that "the 'Feminist
Principle' is notoriously hard to locate in
Islam" (p. 71)I would add, even in the
esoteric or underground Islam of Sufism.
"From the essentially masculinist view
that permeates the Koran...women are
seen as themselves with individual souls,
but as virtual property in relation to
men." Moreover, "although all sorts of
hints and echoes of the Anima are
found," for example, in "the cult of
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Buraq, the cult of the Beloved in Persian poetry," Wilson concludes that
"women are simply repressed" in Islam, now as then (p. 71).
In amour courtois, women were not only not repressed, they were the
inspiration for the spiritual liberation of the "armored" men who adored
them. Nothing comparable exists in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition,
except perhaps the Song of Solomon. This is a psalm of sacred love perhaps
inspired by the Queen of Sheba, who figures as a representation of the
Divine Feminine in Arabian mysticism. (The Queen of Sheba from
Bellifortis, by Conrad Meyer, Bohemia, c. 1405.) There may be some great
love stories in Arabian folk lore, but, on the whole, Islam does not permit
the concept of romantic love with a religious dimension, such that it could
become a religion in its own right.
Evidently, there is something murky in the Sufi connection that makes it
deeply incompatible with the model of heterosexual chivalric love.
Mystical-Erotic Ambiguities
Homosexuality is a capital crime in Islam, but this fact only adds to its
heretical appeal, Wilson observes. How to account for the homoerotic
element in Arabian mystical tradition? It is well known that the Arabs
preserved Greek science during the Dark Ages. It may well be that they
also inherited the Greek tradition of pedagogical homosexuality, the cult of
beautiful, smart young boys. To my knowledge, no scholar has so far
proposed this connection, but R. K. Dovers incomparable study, Greek
Homosexuality, supports it. Dover showed that the erastes, the beautiful
boy beloved of the older man, represented not only a lure of sexual purity
but a pristine intellectual ideal. (The lure was attainable, but not always
claimed, Dover explained. Even when it was claimed, custom required that
intercourse was "intercrural," between the thighs.) The atmosphere,
esthetics, and ethics of classical Greek homosexuality fit the Witness Game
rather neatly, I would say.
Moreover, lets bear in mind the lesson more recently illustrated by the life
of T. E. Lawrence, namely, that Islam is a male warrior feudal society. And
always has been. The date of the Hejira, the founding moment of Islam, is
622 AD. This is a nodal moment, but not merely for the rise of militant
religion. It is also the time of the first chivalric romance, Antar, written in
Andalucia in the first half of the 7th century, according to Reni Nelli, the
leading scholar of Occitanian literature. The feminist idealism of chivalry
arose simultaneously with Islam, but I do not advise that we regard these
phenomena in any sense as twins.
Wilson says that the Witness Game "was perfected in the centuries after
Ibn 'Arabis death" (p. 61), which puts it into the 13th century. The nodal
date of 1136 AD, cited by de Rougemont and others, marks the initial
flowering of troubadour poetry with Guillaume IX of Poitiers, grandfather
of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Ibn 'Arabi was born a generation later and thrived
at the time Wolfram von Eschenbach was writing Parzival, and Gottfried
of Strasbourg was writing Tristan. Of all the Iranian, Arabian, Persian and
Sufi mystics, Ibn 'Arabi came closest to the theology of romantic love
celebrated in the West. His mystical devotion to woman began at the Kaaba
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in Mecca where patriarchal and masculine values dominated, needless to

say. But for the love-hungry Persian all that mattered was the glance he got
of a young girl who was circumambulating the shrine. When he published
The Interpreter of Desires, a book of poems celebrating his unrequited love
for this unknown damsel, the mullahs cried blasphemy. The poet
immediately fled to Syria (ever a stronghold of Gnostic and Sophianic
diehards, by the way), where he "defended his mystical-erotic ambiguities
with dazzling scholasticism" (Wilson). All this happened in the near East
while chivalric literature was blossoming in France. The heretical cult of
amor was peaking.
Ibn 'Arabis troubles with heresy went on for decades. Authorities in Egypt
banned his writings. Scholars and mystics of orthodox Sufism blamed him
for ruining their tradition. He was a heretic even to the heretics! Wilson
summarizes Ibn 'Arabis blasphemous message:
Love is declared the equivalent or perhaps even superior to religion;
the human beloved becomes a Witness (shahed), a theophany of the
Real. Again, the poets received from Ibn 'Arabi a language of
discourse with which to expand their comprehension of a complex
already central to their very being: eros, desire, and the borderland
between erotic and mystical consciousness.
The same elements were expressed in troubadour poetry and the chivalric
code, and lived out dramatically in the sexual and social mores of the
real-life exemplars of Arthurian legend. Gottfried of Strassbourg barely
escaped the Catholic enforcers for comparing the passion of Tristan and
Isolde to the sacrament of Holy Mass. (He went into hiding and left the
completion of his story to another poet, Thomas of Britain.) The idea that
personal and carnal love is a religious force superior to any religion is the
ultimate heresy on this planet, not to mention the ultimate challenge to the
Paternal Lie. If we can realize through personal love all those assurances
that religious faith alone can give us (so its proponents claim), what use
would we have for religion and all that comes with it? If the religion of
love carries a transcendent power superior to what is found in religious
doctrines and institutions, why would anyone bother to uphold those
doctrines and institutions? With human love for a divine sacrament, who
needs a massive hierarchy to perform Holy Mass?
For human love to assume a religious
dimension, the transactions of power
between the sexes had to be totally
renegotiated. In the code of the Arthurian
knights, the warrior went to tournament
or to battle after requesting that his
beloved witness his act, and by doing so,
legitimate, and even consecrate, his use
of violent force to demonstrate his moral
worth. His actions were only real if seen
by the Witness. This is why the knight
often looked toward the spectator gallery to be assured of the gaze of his
lady when he went into the joust. (Lady handing a lance to a knight.
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Manasseh Codex, colored illustration on parchment, Zurich, c.1310.

University Library, Heidelberg.)
At the same time that woman acted as the empowering agency for the
warriorthis motif first occurs in Antar, according to Reni Nelli in
LErotique des Troubadoursshe was also the object of his mysticalerotic longing, and, on some occasions, the source of its carnal satisfaction.
Arthurian knights such as Gawain traditionally went into contest with some
article of clothing of the Lady attached to his armor. A scarf or her "shift,"
the medieval text usually informs us. I reckon it was more likely to have
been a rather more intimate accessory of the Ladys wardrobe.
Sexual morality in the Middle Ages played out in the battle-ridden zone
between the wasteland of the chastity belt and the wonderland of wet
panties.
Dawn Song
"Ordinary morality" may be felt as simply a mask for sexual
hysteriaa burden which no human deserves to bear. "Sexual
freedom" within an ethics of love would then be seen as a gift
bestowed on all true lovers of the true beloved.
- Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sacred Drift
Introducing the theme of "unrequited love," I proposed a new spin on the
widely held view that it represented male sexual-mystical obsession with
an unattainable woman. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and
troubadour poetry attests to my interpretation far better than it does to the
conventional view.
Love that seeks no return fulfills itself. It transforms the one who loves, no
matter what it does for the Beloved. Such is the power of the Beloved, who
is both the recipient and the reflecting lens of loves own transformative
power. This transaction has to be deeply personal so that it can take its
participants beyond personality. It has been argued that in the Sufi
theophany of the Beloved the individual woman was merely a lens for
Divinity. But this was certainly not the case in amour courtois. In his
lecture of 1967, "The Mythology of Love," Joseph Campbell indicated the
difference:
In the various contexts of Oriental erotic mysticism, whether of the
Near East or India, the woman is mystically interpreted as the
occasion for the lover to experience depths beyond depths of
transcendental illuminationmuch in the way of Dante's
appreciation of Beatrice. Not so among the troubadours. The beloved
to them was a woman, not the manifestation of some divine
principle: and specifically, that woman. The love was for her.
If, in any instance, devotion to that particular woman was unconsummated
sexually, the transformative dynamic of unrequited love still applied. The
lover did not ask his love to be returned by intimate favors. But when the
lovers passion was consummated, the dynamic applied in yet another way.
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Unrequited love did not demand carnal intercourse, but it did not deny and
exclude it, either. This is what "sexual freedom" meant to some people in
the Middle Ages.
Now it might be protested that I am making amour courtois out to be what
I want it to be, regardless of the evidence. The fact is, many troubadour
poems insist that the poet does not have the intimate favor of his lady. She
belongs to another. He can't even touch her with a ten-foot pole. The
troubadours both lament and celebrate the unattainability of their supreme
object of desire, it seems. Time and time again, the poets tells us that the
Lady they celebrate and adore is unattainable. L'amour de loitain, love at a
distance, is the recognized mark of troubadour poetry.
Scholars have taken the poets on their word, but I propose that scholars
have been duped, just as the people of the courts where the troubadours
sang were duped. The point of singing praises to the unattainable lady was
to make her husband and his courtiers believe that she had not given the
poet exactly what he lamented not getting from her. It was the obvious way
to protect the illicit, extramarital passion celebrated in amour courtois.
There was nothing ethereal and unconsummated in troubadour romance,
but the sexual encounter had to be disguised. In short, the bards were
faking it.
Yet this tactic was not initially required. The first surviving troubadour
lyrics, attributed to Guillaume IX of Poitiers, around 1136, convey the
ethos of the locker room. The sexual drive is raw and undisguised, and the
poet gets exactly what he goes for. Then he goes elsewhere for some more.
Guillaumes notorious exposition of the lois de conI wont translate, this
essay is probably already too dicey for some tastesreflected the sexual
appetites of medieval machismo infatuated with variety and conquest. Only
with later poets does refinement occur, and genuine religious sentiment
toward sex comes into play.
Yet amour courtois never lost its erotic edge. The alba, or dawn poem, is
one of the most beautiful forms of troubadour lyric. It celebrates the
moment when the poet must part from his lady in secrecy, so that their
all-night liaison is not suspected. Surely, this precaution would make no
sense if they had not been sexually intimate. Some poems openly celebrate
the beauty of woman's body naked in the dawn light. The soft luminosity
of the adored form exudes mystical radiance, as if embedded in a
supernatural glow. Ezra Pound, who translated many troubadour poems,
noted that "the 'Lady' in Tuscan poetry has assumed all the properties of the
Alchemist's Stone" (The Spirit of Romance, p. 90). In the cult of amor the
ladys body was regarded with the same wonder as the Grail. In some way,
and not just metaphorically, the carnal form of woman was an epiphany of
the Sacred Light.
In some moments, in some moods, the Girl and the Grail were one.
*****
For troubadours and Arthurian knights alike, a particular woman was
always the catalyst to the experience of the Divine Feminine, but in being
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so, that woman was not merely the lens for a theophany. She was not
merely a means to an end. Love for her was an end in itself. It was, if not
the equivalent, then surely the perfect complement to spiritual love for
Sophia, whose name is Wisdom, whose body is the Earth.
In some subtle way discovered in the Middle Ages, which we are still in
the process of exploring, love for the physical beauty of the Earth
commingles with the love that may be felt in carnal intimacy. Tantrics in
Asia assert that the Godhead of Nature, Shakti, manifests spontaneously in
the sexual embrace. The cult of amor seems to have been an inheritance
and deepening of the Asian Tantric experience, rather than a modification
of Sufi theophany. Yet it may have passed via the Sufi connection from
East to West. By an amazing transposition, the Tantric mystique of Asia
inseminated the religion of romantic love in the West. In an even more
amazing twist of history, this heretical religion was nurtured in the cult of
the warrior, the Arthurian knight.
In Sacred Love, Sacred Light found its reflecting ground. In some manner,
the Organic Light of the Mysteries played around the figure of the Lady,
and rayed out from her physical aura. This aura of carnal luminosity is
truly mysterious, and may not be fully explained in written form because it
belongs to an unspeakable and inviolable dimension of the Sophianic
revelation.
jll: May-June 2006, Flanders-Andalucia
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Sacred Love, Sacred Light

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