A Mini-Sabbatical…
Continuing my journey through 111 of the great western mystics that I began in late 2004, recently I’ve been plodding through the A. C. Ionides translation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, and — in all candor — have been hating almost every minute of it. Meanwhile, I’ve also been reading Brian Hines’ cleverly executed introduction to Plotinus crafted specifically for spiritual seekers, Return to the One: Plotinus’s Guide to God-Realization. Compared to Proclus’ overly mechanistic and abstract (to the point of desiccation) mapping of the cosmos, I’m finding Hines’ commentary on Plotinus to be thoroughly fun by comparison. Most enjoyable of all, I’m learning how the intellectual story of mysticism unfolded in the early church, thanks to Andrew Louth’s magisterial (and all too brief) The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Next up on my reading schedule is a true warhorse of the contemplative tradition; a five-star, major-hitter mystic: Pseudo-Dionysius, aka Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, aka Denys (as Louth and others in the tradition call him). Denys/Pseudo-Dionysius, an unknown Syrian mystic theologian writing around the year 500 CE, crafted the ancient world’s most finely honed integration of pagan Neoplatonism and Christian spirituality in his few short treatises and letters; his corpus of writings therefore became massively influential throughout the church both east and west, with the author of The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross among his disciples. So needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to the day when I would sit down and savor the Dionysian corpus, even if only in translation.
Well, as that day looms nearer, my anticipation has suddenly grown cold. In fact, I’m thinking I’m going to delay reading the works of Pseudo-Dionysius for several months, perhaps even a year.
Why? (more…)
