The earliest instances of the word “mystic” appear during the first century, in Pseudo-Denys the Areopagite,5 sharpened to a fine point of Neoplatonism with Plotinus’s aphelepanta (“Leave everything behind!”)6 and even Aristotle’s theôria in contemplation of the One,7 separate from what can be apprehended by the senses.
And yet, far predating this lexical appearance, hints of “mysticism” abound throughout the Bible. Moses finding God in the midst of the burning bush,8 Ezekiel with a vision of God’s chariot, receiving a scroll he must eat in order to deliver its message;9 these are scenes in which reason is overturned in the clearest light of day. Indeed, mysticism filters into the apocalyptic scriptures (the books of Enoch and Esdras), into Essenian convents, the Pharisee world, and the thought of the Jewish Mishnah masters — all these being focused on the knowledge and contemplation of God and his throne (Merkabah), goal of the mystical progress through the heavenly palaces. Various aspects of the Torah (oral revelation) and the Talmud contain mystical tendencies. Thus the subtle reasonings, like “mountains hanging from a hair,” of the Torah’s inspired scribes; the thirty-two logical rules defining the ways of acceding to Talmudic wisdom and developing the dialectics of reason, aim to elicit visions with the supreme goal of man’s identification with God. Then, from the first century B.C.E. to the tenth C.E., the Kabbalah comes to swell this biblical and Talmudic initiation. It calls the earthly world into being through the operation of twenty-two originary letters in the air, creative entities whose permutations express every idea and every thing. Pharisees, Essenians, the journey through the Hekhalot—palaces of Heaven, which Teresa will call moradas, the seven dwelling places of her Castle — the mystical impulse reemerges in thirteenth-century Spain and Germany. Contemplation, based on a scriptorial combination and practiced by means of techniques recalling those of yoga (breathing, positions of the body, musical notes), culminates in prophetic ecstasy, supernatural illumination, identifying man with the Torah, with the Word, and with God. Cross-fertilization with Islam and Christianity enriches these mystical currents, while Islam and Christianity in turn absorb the wisdom of visionary Kabbalists, despite and throughout the vicious persecutions, expulsions, and exterminations suffered by the Jews.
During the Middle Ages, a full-blown “medieval Jewish philosophy” flourishes in counterpoint to Arab philosophy. Unacquainted with Greek metaphysics, Talmudic thought that could be described as a monism of thought and action nonetheless developed a rich ambivalence between abstract speculation and mystical experience. Theological ignorance of God, who is undefinable by definition, does not rule out a loving knowledge of Him based on the Alliance: through the concept of shekhinah, God accompanies the exiled Jew on earth. The medieval gaon—a spiritual master such as Saadia Gaon, the political leader of the eastern diaspora — links rationalistic interpretation with enthusiasm for revelation; the commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah,10 that germ of the Kabbalah, with the moderate religious philosophy followed by the Muslim Kalâm. As part of the same opening toward philosophical reflection, Jewish mysticism evolves with Judah Halevi11 and Maimonides,12 preceded by Ben Joseph of Fayum,13 Solomon Ibn Gabirol,14 who looks deep into his affinities with Plato,15 Philo of Alexandria,16 and Gnosticism. Not forgetting Bahya Ibn Paquda,17 who stands at the intersection of these tendencies, or Abraham Abulafia,18 who takes up the theory of the mystical power of the alphabet to explore the “unknotting of the soul” by means of musical experiments with arpeggios, transpositions, canons, and fugues. At last comes the surpassing step that is the Zohar, in the second half of the thirteenth century: the Sefer ha-Zohar, or Book of Splendor, whose presumed author, Moisés de León, insisted on attributing it to a second-century Mishnah scholar.19 Reprising the Sefer Yetzirah, the Zohar drops the distinction between “spirit” and “letter,” condensing them instead into an indivisible unit. And gathering the diverse components of Jewish mysticism into one harmonious structure, it graces the exile of Israel with the ultimate meaning of releasing the “divine sparks” and completing the work of redemption.20 Translated into French by Jean de Pauly,21 the Zohar went on to influence no less a figure than Marcel Proust!22
Such a wealth of tendencies, however, can never overshadow the Torah and the Talmud, writings that destined the Jewish people — committed to biblical exegesis and free of major mystical interferences — to a ceaseless study of the texts, so as to imbue themselves with the spirit of God’s Law and put it into practice, thus assuring the salvation of the chosen community.
Bruno is far away, it would be untrue to say I ever think about him, and yet I feel him alongside me, inside me, for example when I’m leafing through the Beguines catalog. My readings of the past few weeks are arranged in my mind like the surrealist collages of those bygone pious women who piled bits of string and handfuls of rose petals around the figure of Baby Jesus. The Sovereign Infant was liable to disappear altogether under the cumulative passion of those tender sisters. He merged with the huge heart they embroidered for him in cross-stitch or molded out of crushed, colorful butterfly wings, a heart that was the real theme and focus of the work. Was it Jesus’s heart, or was it theirs?
It would be wrong to assume that contemporary artists have transcended this kind of reiterative, magpie accumulation. I see a lot of it in the galleries, and most often the artist is a woman. One, Annette B., trusted me enough to lie down on my couch. Her wary, piercing eyes seem cloned from Picasso’s. As a rule her words do not get past her lips, or only in spurts of dulled, futile complaint, abruptly doused. A long, frozen silence ensues. When the artist can no longer bear her own speechlessness, she brings me some “beguinesques,” as she calls her confections of twisted threads, mounted letters, screws of paper, beads, buttons, leaves, and a series of tiny cut-up photographs, skillfully embedded in the vortices of this kaleidoscope of mega-significant nothings. Photographs of her dead children. Impossible icons of impossible loves. Annette’s “beguinesques” succeed in making such impossibilities visible. At least to people who enjoy looking. And who’ve been through a vortex like hers.
I cut out my data, I sort, I glue, I amass. My canvas is taking shape. No, it’s lost me. Later on I will set Teresa into it and she will resorb the picture, all that will be left is her very own heart, her style, her beat.
Might it be because Muslim mysticism slumbers in the form of “Koranic seeds” within the values, if not the formulations, of the dogma? Or is it down to the Neoplatonic influence? In any case, the first mystics appeared in eighth-century Iraq, as bands of ascetics who cultivated trust in God (tawakkol). They “repeated” God’s name and began to believe in a prior communication between God and His creature. A little later, clad in white woolen garments (suf), the Sufis gathered into spiritual circles and concerts, bent on a loving union with God. Schools sprang up in the cities of Basora and Baghdad, then across Afghanistan, India, and Egypt, until the advent of the Master, al-Hallaj, a mystic who was martyred in 922 C.E.23 The Hellenic origins of this mystical experience, which took the form of a poetic quest, are not in doubt. It was a “science of the heart” that sought to transform the sensible body into pure “spirit” (in philosophical terminology) through the burning love that consumes the saint, disposed to “isolate himself before the One.” “Legal war” thus mutates into “inner war,” and the Seal of Saints embodied by Jesus is set against Muhammad’s Seal of Prophets; God is henceforth to be sought within, and the mystic, rather than overthrow the Law, transcends it. “I have become the One I love and the One I love has become me. We are two spirits infused in a single body,” wrote al-Hallaj.