In this series I want to introduce the work of Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) to share perspectives about how to think about divine transcendence versus divine immanence. I think Palamas’ work, while not wholly uncontested within the Christian tradition, provides a helpful lens for reflecting on how God is both transcendent and immanent.

To start, I want to share a bit of the history behind Palamas' writing of The Triads, focusing on the controversy that prompted him to articulate his famous contrast between God's essence versus God's energies.

The controversy started in the 1330s when Barlaam of Calabria, a monk and scholastic theologian, visited Mount Athos. There, Barlaam encountered the hesychasts. Inspired by the desert fathers, the hesychasts were monks devoted to stillness and continual prayer. The name hesychast comes from the Greek hesychia, meaning “quiet.” By the 14th century, the hesychasts had brought their ascetic practices to Mount Athos.

The hesychasts shared with Barlaam mystical experiences in which they beheld the "Uncreated Light" emanating from God's very Being. This was the "Light of Tabor" that flashed out during Christ's transfiguration.

These claims startled Barlaam. Barlaam felt that no human could gaze upon God directly. The Bible seems clear on this point: as God said to Moses, "For no one may see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). 1 Timothy 6:16 and John 1:18 also clearly state that no one has ever seen God. Consequently, whatever the hesychasts were seeing, it couldn't be God. Barlaam contended that the light the hesychasts were reporting was a created light, something generated by their own imaginations, perhaps symbolic of the Uncreated Light, but not the actual Uncreated Light. In claiming to see God directly, the hesychasts were skirting blasphemy.

In response to Barlaam’s criticism of the hesychasts, Palamas set out to defend their mystical experiences. In his For the Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude, Palamas argued that the hesychasts were having a real and direct experience of God. The light they beheld wasn't imagined or symbolic but was, rather, a genuine encounter with divine reality.

At the heart of Palamas' defense was a distinction he made between God's essence versus God's energies.

The controversy between Barlaam and Palamas eventually made its way into the broader church, culminating in the series of councils held in Constantinople between 1341 and 1368. These councils officially affirmed Palamas' teaching and formally recognized the experiences of the hesychasts as authentic. As a result, Palamas' defense of hesychasm, with its contrast between essence and energies, became a cornerstone of Eastern Orthodox theology, spirituality, and liturgical practice. Hesychasm continued to thrive on Mount Athos, shaping Orthodox spirituality to this very day.

With this history now in front of us, in the next post we'll turn to Palamas' The Triads and his essence versus energies distinction.

"The Road to Damascus"

Tracing the fissures,
fingering the shards
of a fractured life.
And you,
the thrown stone.
The cause of my cracking.
It was not a gradual waking,
dully, from sleep.
Our meeting, rather,
sharp and irreversable.
Beholding what I took to be myself
rendered beyond mending.

Last summer, visiting the chapel in the castle at the top of St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, I was interrupted by a statue of St. Michael created by Lyn Constable Maxwell, commissioned in 1989.

The Mount was named after the archangel due to its history of apparitions. St. Michael would appear to Cornish fishermen during storms to save them from being dashed on the shoals.

In the iconography of St. Michael, most of the imagery is martial and is pulled from Revelation 12:

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

In light of this text, Michael is often depicted with a foot on Lucifer's neck and thrusting a sword or spear at him. Some examples:

Basically, you expect to see violent imagery, the archangel as the Spear of God, associated with St. Michael. This is why Lyn Constable Maxwell's sculpture interrupted me. Here's a picture I took:

Notice two things. First, Michael isn't stabbing down with the sword. Instead the sword is held upside down to create a cross. The sword is inverted to become a sign of grace, mercy, pardon, and forgiveness. Second, Michael's hand is held out and is upturned. Michael is extending an invitation. Of help? Of grace? Of return? It was that open hand which interrupted me.

Grace for the devil. Now that is a provocative idea! In all the debates about hopeful eschatological visions this is an issue that rumbles in the background. The arguments are pretty exclusively focused upon if all of humanity will be saved. The eschatological focus is anthropocentric. Rarely do these discussions tackle the issue of angelic redemption or to ask the verboten question, "Is mercy extended, even to Lucifer?"

And yet, this question about an illicit grace is asked by a statue at the top of St. Michael's Mount.

"Now bless the Lord"

Psalm 134 brings a conclusion to the Psalms of Ascent. Recall, these were the suite of songs that pilgrims sang as they journeyed to Jerusalem and the temple. Psalm 134 is very short, and scholars believe it functions as a concluding doxology and benediction. There also seems to be a call-and-response structure. Verses 1–2 appear to be imperatives directed to the priests and Levites tending the temple during the night watch:

Now bless the Lord,
all you servants of the Lord
who stand in the Lord’s house at night!
Lift up your hands in the holy place
and bless the Lord!

In response, the priests and Levites offer back a blessing upon the people:

May the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion.

Back in September, I joined Chris Green on his Speakeasy Theology podcast, where I used the phrase “the difference is doxological.” In that conversation, I was describing how God has gifted the world an intrinsic logic and rationality and has made that logic transparent, to a certain degree, to the human mind. The logos of the human mind can attune itself to the Logos upholding and sustaining the cosmos. The rationalities, human and divine, can synchronize. And this is grace, a grace available to every human person.

In my conversation with Chris, the point I was making concerned behavioral and psychopharmacological technologies related to our mental health. Such technologies can appear to be “secular,” “medical,” and “scientific.” But that is wrong. These technologies are spiritual and supernatural grace. The only difference between the “sacred” and the “secular,” when it comes to the technologies of human flourishing, is doxological. There are those who recognize these technologies as gifts and give praise, and those who do not.

I bring up my conversation with Chris to connect back to Psalm 134 and the doxological coda of the Psalms of Ascent to make this point. In so much of life, the difference is doxological. Growing up, I had a very narrow definition of “worship.” Worship was singing on Sunday morning. Everything else in life was “not worship.” Today, by contrast, this has completely flipped. I now see that everything is doxological.

Spiritual practice is being alert to grace, an alertness that flows over into gratitude, thankfulness, and praise. If all is grace, then doxology is everything.

And that makes all the difference.

"Nativity" (revisited and revised, from 2023)

A baby, yes.
Unto us, a child given.
But more.

Behold the Implication.

Intimate detonation
in swaddling clothes.
The vast,
the particular,
the cosmic and mundane.
All interrupted.
Each thing atilt,
unmade, askew.

Hush now,
and listen.
Infinity echoes
in this infant's cry.

In my daily reading of the Psalms I was interrupted by this passage from Psalm 19:12 (NRSV):

But who can detect one’s own errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.

The CSB renders it this way:

Who perceives his unintentional sins?
Cleanse me from my hidden faults.

In the background of this passage is the Levitical concern about "unintentional sins" described in Leviticus 4 and 5. There are ways in which we go against God's will without even knowing it. 

What interrupted me about these concerns over "unintentional sins" and "hidden faults" was the question of my own self-assessment. Just how blind am I to my sins and faults? And what is the source of that blindness?

While I can be critical of Sigmund Freud, one of this great contributions, in my estimation, was his description of how we are masters at self-deception. We hide from ourselves. Much of this is due to defense mechanisms, ways we obscure or twist the truth to avoid a clear confrontation with ourselves. 

And if this is true, just how large is that blind spot of mine? And how to bring more of it into view?

To be sure, this sort of soul work isn't what everyone needs at a given moment. People struggling with depression shouldn't be seeking out self-criticism. But moral hygiene requires some effort in taking honest reckonings of oneself. This brings to mind an image from Amos 7, a vision of a moral plumb line:

He showed me this: The Lord was standing there by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand. The Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”

I replied, “A plumb line.”

Then the Lord said, “I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel..."

A plumb line, as I expect you know, is a weight attached to a line. You drop a plumb line from the top of or alongside a wall to see how far the wall is from vertical. Amos uses the image of a plumb line to describe the Lord's moral assessment of Israel. The plumb line is dropped among the people to reveal how "off" Israel is from vertical alignment. 

In a similar way, if we want to bring our hidden faults into view, we can drop a plumb line in our lives. We can engage with the Ignatian practice called the examen of conscience. We can seek the input of those closest to us, opening ourselves to their feedback. We can embrace confessional and humble postures and practices. 

Still, things will be missed. We'll never be wholly transparent to ourselves. As Psalm 19 says, "Who can detect one's own errors?" And so we continuously pray: "Lord, cleanse me of my hidden faults."

At the start of Hunting Magic Eels I share Thomas Merton's famous 4th and Walnut experience. It was a pivotal moment in Merton's life, one that participated in his "outward turn" toward the world. As he recounts:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness…

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

I bring up Merton's experience, seeing people walking around shining like the sun, because I've been thinking a lot about light. Specifically, I've been reading Gregory Palamas' Triads. Palamas was a significant figure in Orthodox Byzantium. In the Triads Palamas is defending the practices and experiences of the hesychasts. Hesychasm, from the Greek word hesychia meaning "quietude," has its roots in early Egyptian monasticism. The distinctive practice of hesychasm is achieving inner stillness through repetition of the Jesus Prayer--"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on my, a sinner."--and would became the dominant monastic expression on Mount Athos.

During their experiences of prayer and contemplation the hesychasts reported beholding God's "Uncreated Light." As 1 Timothy 6 says, God dwells in "inaccessible light." Given that inaccessible apophatic distance, some theologians raised questions about the claims of hesychasts, arguing that no human can behold God directly. It was claimed that the light the hesychasts were beholding was, rather, a created light or a symbolic light. It wasn't God's own Uncreated Light. Palamas stepped into this debate to defend the hesychasts, arguing that the light was indeed uncreated and divine. 

In his defense of the hesychasts Palamas connects God's Uncreated Light to "the Light of Tabor." This was the light that shines forth from Christ during his Transfiguration: 

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

Palamas argued the light seen by the hesychasts in prayer was this same light, the Light of Tabor. In contemplation the hesychasts were beholding God's own Uncreated Light. And more importantly, this light can be seen by every believer as they moved closer and closer to God in the union of theosis and divinization. 

Now, turning toward the Bible, it is noteworthy how prominent is the theme of light. Consider 1 John 1.5:

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light...

The message of the gospel can be expressed in three words: "God is light." God is called "the Father of Lights" (James 1.7). Christ is called "the light of the world." Children of God are also light: "now you are light in the Lord" (Eph. 5.8). Note the strength of the statement: Not "you are in the light" but "you are light." Because of this we are called "children of light." 

So, I want connect the threads here. God is light. The hesychasts behold the light. All Christians should behold the light. Thomas Merton saw people shining like the sun. What I'm wondering here is if seeing the light isn't the mystical expectation of the Christian experience. Psalm 36: “In your light do we see light.” Matthew 5: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." And seeing God is beholding Light, for God is Light. 

Consider, as another example, the experience I share in The Shape of Joy from Francis Spufford's book Unapologetic. Spufford is describing sitting contemplatively in a quiet church, and when he grows attentive and still he sees this:

What's in front [in view of my senses] is real; what's behind is the reason for it being real, the source of its realness. Beyond, behind, beneath all solid things there seems to be a solidity...it seems to shine, this universal backing to things, with lightless light...It feels as if everything is backed with light...And that includes me.

Is this the Light of Tabor? Is this the light that flashes out at Thomas Merton? I'm inclined to say yes. Though I expect the hesychast tradition might object that this light is not so readily accessible and can only be achieved after much effort and spiritual purgation. But maybe Gerard Manley Hopkins is also correct:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...

Perhaps the Uncreated Light flames out everywhere, shining like shook foil. As Marilynne Robinson has shared:

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. 

The Light of Tabor shines everywhere. The Uncreated Light flames out. 

I expect you might have come across, or read, some of the appreciative commentary about the portrayal of Christianity in Rian Johnson's most recent installment in the Knives Out whodunit movies, Wake Up Dead Man, now streaming on Netflix. If you haven't seen the movie, no spoilers will follow.

There are, in fact, two portrayals of Christianity on display in Wake Up Dead Man, one ugly and the other beautiful. Amazingly, the beautiful portrayal of faith is the faith of the movie's protagonist, the young Catholic priest, Jud Duplenticy. The faith of Father Jud shines through the film, start to finish.

As for the ugly portrayal of faith, that of Msgr. Wicks, this is the dark Christianity we've seen weaponized in the culture wars. In an interview with the magazine America, Johnson described the Christianity of Wicks as "all about 'us against them' and speaks in the language of war and talks about being persecuted and building the walls of the fortress in spiritual warfare."

In short, Wake Up Dead Man presents two visions of Christianity. One vision is ugly and false. The other is beautiful and true.

And the contrast is so, so startling. A light shines out in the darkness. This is such a rare choice in Hollywood, to paint Christianity as beautiful. Typical portrayals of Christianity are cynical, deconstructive, and ethically murky. Wake Up Dead Man paints only with the ugly and the beautiful. And when you behold the beautiful, your heart surges and soars. Johnson even lets the beauty existentially interrupt the skepticism and unbelief of Benoit Blanc, the purported hero of these stories. In fact, you can make a good argument that the "dead man" of the title is Blanc. The dead man could also be the American church.

Here's my comment.

I recently wrote a post about how faith exists between idolatry and nihilism. To recap, the dominant expressions of faith within a culture will be idolatrous and fake. Here in America, that means most of the Christianity we behold is idolatrous and fake. Given how ugly and noxious American Christianity has become, many Christians head for the exit doors. They reject the idolatry and embrace nihilism, a worldview evacuated of the sacred and the holy. They become secular, liberal humanists. Angry, sad, and despairing. Were you aware that political liberalism is negatively correlated with mental health?

And so, it seems like there are no good options. Christianity, in its mainstream expression, is toxic. But embracing the void is no good either. So, what to do?

I’ve seen a lot of Christians, friends of mine and members of my church, stuck between this rock and hard place. They feel that the Christianity they know to be true to Jesus is suffering a hostile alien takeover. The church is experiencing an invasion of the body snatchers. Wanting to separate themselves—in protest, prophetic rebuke, and social distancing related to their own version of purity culture—they publicly reject Christianity, walk away from church, and wander off into the spiritual-not-religious fog.

I totally get this angry departure. Truly, I deeply sympathize. But I’m here today to say that I think the better option is what I’ll call “The Father Jud Option.”

What is the Father Jud Option? It’s simple. First, in the face of the toxic witness of all the Msgr. Wickses, don’t leave the church. Don’t jettison the faith. Don’t renounce Christianity. Next, as you remain, don’t be angsty, conflicted, wavering, doubtful, embarrassed, cynical, angry, bitter, resentful, hopeless, and despairing. Stay, instead, and shine. Don’t abandon the faith to the ugly. And don’t let the ugly in the church curdle your peace and joy. Point, rather, to the beautiful. Be like Father Jud.

This, then, is the Father Jud Option. Remain, and be beautiful. For when we behold the beautiful, just as Benoit Blanc does, it is a Damascus road experience.

"Incarnation"

Unexpected proximity,
this nearness interrupting,
yet digestible.
Our minds able to wrap
    this arrival.
Incomprehensibility not
     our complaint.
It is the scandal, rather,
    of straw and blood.
The offense of ancestry.
A pungent odor
    of manure and sweat.
A condescension intolerable
so convergent
     upon flesh and bone.

"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!"

Psalm 133 is a short psalm of praise for the blessings of close-knit family and community. This is a blessing increasingly rare these days. As I describe in The Shape of Joy America is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. So much so in 2023 the Surgeon General released a health advisory warning about the lethality of social isolation. Loneliness is just as likely to kill you as being a pack a day smoker. We've reached the social end game that Robert Putnam predicted when he wrote Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community in 2000.

What's especially sad about all this his how we're actively choosing this unhappiness. Also in 2023 the Wall Street Journal polled Americans about what they believed was "very important" in life. Here's some of the findings:

Notice the trends on religion, having children, and community involvement. Americans are valuing these things less and less. Compare that to the trend regarding the importance of money. That trend is going up.

To be sure, the economy is rough right now. We're all concerned about affordability. Money is important. But relative to past generations, globally, and world-historically, we doing okay. And yet, we're increasingly valuing money over community, connection, and relationship. No wonder our collective mental health is fraying. 

I'm put in mind of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote that I've shared many times before concerning how community mediates grace:

Help must come from the outside...God has willed that we should seek and find God’s living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings. Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God’s Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened because, living by their own resources, they cannot help themselves without cheating themselves out of the truth...The Christ in their own hearts is weaker than the Christ in the word of other Christians. Their own hearts are uncertain; those of their brothers and sisters are sure.

This semester I shared a lecture with my students that had its origins in a series I did here in 2023 concerning clashing expectations we have about God's actions in our lives when it comes to our pursuit of mental health and well-being. 

Here's the basic thesis. Much of our imagination about how God works in our lives has been shaped by soteriology, our beliefs about salvation. That is, when we talk about God's actions in the world we mostly talk about how God saves us. This creates a habit of mind, an imagination about the shape and nature of God's actions in our lives. But this imagination, while appropriate for talking about salvation, isn't always the best for thinking about mental health and well-being. Basically, we import a soteriological imagination into therapeutic contexts where it is ill-suited. 

This is especially so in Protestant spaces where the soteriological imagination tends to focus on justification, God saving us by declaring us righteous. Justification becomes a template for how God works in our lives, and this creates unrealistic and triumphalistic expectations about divine action within our mental health journey.

What might that template of divine action look like? Salvation-as-justification has these characteristics: 

1. Immediate


2. Complete/Total


3. Permanent/Irreversible


4. Passive


5. Spiritual/Gnostic

Let's walk through the list. 

By "immediate" we experience justification as an event that happens in a moment. Justification is instantaneous. 

Relatedly, justification is total and complete. We aren't 34.7% justified. We're 100% justified. 

Salvation is also considered in Reformed and Calvinistic spaces to be permanent and irreversible. And if not permanent, then pretty durable and hard to lose. We don't move in and out of salvation. 

We also experience salvation passively. We cannot justify or save ourselves. Salvation is wholly the work of God and we are its passive recipients.

Lastly, salvation is experienced as "Gnostic." By "gnostic" I mean the event is largely invisible and spiritual. Justification is something that transpires in my relationship with God. Justification doesn't affect my physical body. 

So, that is what I mean by a "template" of divine action. Because we mainly think about justification when we think about God's impact upon our lives, the list above comes to shape our imagination regarding how God acts in the world. When God acts in our lives those actions and effects are immediate, complete, permanent, passively received, and Gnostic (affecting the spiritual rather than the physical). 

And yet, while these descriptions are perfectly legitimate for soteriological conversations about justification they are wholly unrealistic when it comes to our pursuit of mental well-being. Consider how we experience our mental health journey. Our pursuit of mental wholeness is experienced as:

1. Slow


2. Incremental


3. Faltering


4. Effortful


5. Embodied

As should be obvious, this list is pretty much the exact opposite of our soteriological expectations in regards to justification. Healing takes time, often over many years. It's an incremental, step by step journey. We can also stumble and fall. We experience setbacks. The process is hard and effortful. There's no silver bullet, just the work. Finally, well-being and wholeness are embodied. There are biological aspects that need to be examined and addressed.

Here’s the big implication. Many of the desolations we experience with our mental health struggles, I would argue, are due to clashing expectations related to the lists above. A lot of the confusions about how God relates to our mental health happen because we are importing soteriological expectations into our mental health journey. When facing something like severe depression our expectation is that God will act in our lives immediately, completely, permanently, passively, and Gnostically to resolve that depression. These soteriological assumptions create the triumphalistic expectations about mental health that we find within prosperity-gospel spaces. Mental health issues can be “fixed” in exactly the same way God justifies sinners. Say a prayer and your depression will go away. The Sinner’s Prayer becomes the paradigmatic model of divine action and the sole approach for addressing mental health.

This isn’t to say God has no impact upon our mental health. Just that God’s influence in our lives in regards to our mental health will be experienced as slower, more effortful, incremental, and embodied. People dealing with mental illness will be better equipped if they have these sorts of expectations. By contrast, importing soteriological assumptions into this domain sets people up for disappointment. The person might turn away from God, feeling that God has abandoned them. Or the person might come to blame themselves for not having enough faith.

But slowness isn’t a sign of God’s absence. Taking it step by step doesn’t mean God has failed you. Having a setback doesn’t mean God isn’t with you. Doing the work isn’t a lack of faith. Using medication isn’t a spiritual failure. Thinking otherwise means you’re mis-imagining how God acts within our lives on our journey toward wholeness and well-being.

Last spring I wrote about how, in addition to orthodoxy ("right belief") and orthopraxy ("right practice"), the Christian life demands orthopathy--"right passions," "right emotions," and "right affections." 

The emotional, passionate, and affectional life of the Christian has a particular shape, character, and orientation. So many of the imperatives of the Christian life address our emotions. The arena of spiritual formation is internal and affectional. The ask is for orthopathy. 

For example:

Fear / Anxiety
Do not be anxious about your life (Matt 6:25)
Do not be anxious about anything (Phil 4:6)
Cast all your anxieties on him (1 Pet 5:7)
Do not fear those who kill the body (Matt 10:28)

Joy / Rejoicing
Rejoice and be glad (Matt 5:12)
Rejoice in the Lord always (Phil 4:4)
Rejoice always (1 Thess 5:16)

Love / Compassion
Love your enemies (Matt 5:44)
Love one another (John 13:34)
Put on compassionate hearts, kindness... (Col 3:12)

Gratitude
Give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:18)
Be thankful (Col 3:15)

Peace / Contentment
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts (Col 3:15)
Be content with what you have (Heb 13:5)

Hope / Courage
Do not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13)
Be strong in the Lord (Eph 6:10)

Anger / Wrath
Be angry and do not sin (Eph 4:26)
Put away anger, wrath, malice… (Col 3:8)

Envy / Covetousness 
Put away envy (1 Pet 2:1)
Keep your life free from love of money (Heb 13:5)

Forgiveness / Mercy
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36)
Forgive one another (Eph 4:32)

Zeal / Desire
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit (Rom 12:11)
Earnestly desire the higher gifts (1 Cor 12:31)

As should be clear from this list, spiritual formation has to address our inner emotional life. Many of our virtues are affective in nature, virtuous emotional responses toward life circumstance. And yet, orthopathy is a daunting challenge. By and large, our emotions are triggered by events. We react to life. Consequently, emotions don't seem to be very much in our control. 

However, as I describe in The Shape of Joy, can we gain control of our emotional lives through meaning-making, a top-down rather than bottom-up process. As I've shared here before, through this top-down process of meaning-making we acquire emotional dispositions, habits of the heart, that predispose us toward virtuous emotional responses. Forming our hearts doesn’t happen in a moment, it requires prior acts of preparation that reshape our deepest values. This prior work creates a capacity for emotional autonomy and control amid the vicissitudes of life. Simply stated, the story you're telling about your life determines your emotional reactions to the events of the day. And there is a story you can tell that traces the shape of joy, a story that can make you less anxious, more joyful, more loving, more grateful, more peaceful, more hopeful, more brave, less angry, less envious, more forgiving, and more passionate for the things of God.

For most of this series we've been thinking of egregores as an emergent phenomenon arising from a social collective that comes to exert downward causation upon the group. This approach to egregores is disenchanted. One doesn't need to believe in anything supernatural or occult going on to recognize that macro-level and trans-personal forces can arise from groups and organizations and that these forces can have significant moral effects upon the individuals within those groups. 

And yet, in esoteric and occult spaces there is a more spooky and enchanted view of egregores. A group can, with collective magical intent, will an egregore into existence. And by "existence" we mean a real entity--psychic, astral, or spiritual--possessing purpose and will, albeit an entity dependent upon the group. This raises the question, are egregores real? Real in the spooky sense. This more enchanted and occult perspective of egregores is controversial in Christian circles, so I'd like to take this final post to explore it.

In Meditations on the Tarot Tomberg leaves open the possibility that egregores are real, that groups can intentionally conjure, in his words, an "artificial demon." "Artificial" as opposed to the real demons we read about in Scripture, the fallen angels or spirits who had been created by God. As Tomberg was quoted in the last post, esoteric orders and fraternities try to create these entities to gain a magical ally. This would be a "positive" egregore, an entity that aids and helps the group. And on this point Tomberg is clear and firm: There is no such thing as positive egregores. As he writes, "good 'artificial demons' do not exist, i.e., one cannot engender positive egregores." Also: "If there are egregores of initiation orders and religious--and other--communities, they are always negative."

In short, if you're messing around with this stuff you're messing around with demons. 

Still, can a group manifest an "artificial demon"? Can such an entity be "created" by humans? 

Tomberg seems to think so (e.g., "one can certainly engender demons"), but that belief is controversial. Only God, it will be maintained, can create something out of nothing. Humans cannot magically conjure spiritual entities into existence. A safer, more orthodox view of egregores would be that a group trying to engender or conjure an egregore is, in the end, only summoning a demon, not creating one. Of course, the dark entity that shows up might let you think you created it to do your bidding, but the purported servant will, in the end, flip the script to become the master. The group will become collectively and individually possessed.

An esoterist might want to push back and say that humans, via biological processes, give birth to persons. So why couldn't some merging of consciousnesses on the astral plane give birth, via some metaphysical logic, to another sort of "person," an egregore? Why couldn't the egregore be real? 

For my part, I can't answer that question. And nor do I want to expose myself to the world where such a question could be explored. I think curiosity here is a temptation. Because I think Tomberg, who is a good guide on these sorts of topics, is exactly right. Even if artificial demons are real, you're still dealing with a demon. 

And there are no good demons.

I've mentioned that this series was prompted by encountering Valentin Tomberg's discussion of egregores in Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. I had never heard the term.

For the first three posts in this series, I've described egregores as an emergent phenomenon related to group psychology. However, that's not how occultists view egregores. In occult circles, the egregore is a psychic or astral entity that is created by the group. The goal of this effort is to create an astral, psychic ally. 

Here's how Tomberg describes this, in light of his history with occultists and esotericists:

[A]s well as bad egregores good ones can equally well be engendered through collective will and imagination, i.e. "good demons" are engendered in exactly the same way as evil ones. According to this thesis, all depends upon the engendering will and imagination: if they are good, they engender positive egregores; if they are bad, they engender negative egregores. There are, according to this thesis, good "artificial demons" as well as bad ones--just as their are good and bad thoughts.

From a practical point of view this thesis gives rise to a practice where one endeavors to collectively create an egregore for this special purpose: as a "group spirit" or a spirit of the fraternity concerned. This egregore once created, it is believed that one is able to rely on it and that one has an efficacious magical ally in it. It is believed that every group has an active "group spirit" which renders it influential with regard to the outside world as well as with regard to its members. It is believed that real and effective traditions are, in the last analysis, only strong and well-nourished egregores, which live and act across the ages. 

As Tomberg goes on to say, even churches have egregores which are "generated by the collective will and imagination of the believers." 

This view of egregores is more controversial than what I have been describing over the first three posts. Specifically, people may be willing to admit that there are top-down, emergent properties that affect human groups, collectives, and cultures. But the occultist believes more than that. The occultist believes that the egregore is a real conscious entity. That's a much stronger and more controversial claim. I'll turn to that controversy in the next post. But before I do I want to make some connections between how Tomberg describes egregores and the work of the late Walter Wink. 

As I've shared many times before, Wink argues that the dualism of the ancients, where spiritual powers are believed to exist above or over physical powers below on earth, is difficult to maintain for many modern disenchanted believers. To keep us tethered to the ancient imagination, Wink suggests we retain the spiritual/physical dualism by trading in the Up/Down spatial metaphor of the ancients for an Inside/Outside metaphor. That is, social, cultural, institutional, organization, and political structures have an inner spirituality that animates, holds together, and perpetuates the collective structure. Here is Wink describing this:

What I propose is viewing the spiritual Powers not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power...the "principalities and powers" are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the "demons" are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that "gods" are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain...and that "Satan" is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values. 

This sounds very similar to Tomberg's description of the egregore. As Wink puts it above, demons "are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations." In fact, like Tomberg, Wink argues that the "angels" of the seven churches of Asia who are addressed in Revelation are examples of this phenomenon. That is, the "angel" of the church is the "good egregore," the collective spiritual power created and emanated from the church. As Wink writes:

It would appear that the angel is not something separate from the congregation, but must somehow represent it as a totality. Through the angel, the community seems to step forth as a single collective entity or Gestalt. But the fact that the angel is actually addressed suggests that it is more than a mere personification of the church, but the actual spirituality of the congregation as a single entity. The angel would then exist in, with, and under the material expression of the church's life as it interiority. As the corporate personality or felt sense of the whole, the angel of the church would have no separate existence apart from the people. But the converse would be equally true: the people would have no unity apart from the angel. Angel and people are the inner and outer aspects of one and the same reality. The people incarnate or embody the angelic spirit; the angel distills the invisible essence of their totality as a group. The angel and the congregation come into being together and, if such is their destiny, pass out of existence together. The one cannot exist without the other.

There's a lot here, in Wink's description of the "angel" of a church, or any organization, that fits with the esoteric description of the egregore. Just like there can be good versus bad egregores there can be good versus bad "angels" inhabiting groups, organizations, and nations. 

That said, there is a key ontological distinction between Wink's description of "angels" versus the esotericist's egregore. Wink seems to think that the angel/egregore comes into existence spontaneously and as an emergent property with the formation of the group as a collective. With the esotericist egregore, by contrast, at least in some conceptions, the entity is "summoned" or "manifested" by the group though an act of intention and will, as a practice of occult magic. Again, we'll talk about this ontological issue in the final post. 

Another connection between Tomberg and Wink is how both connect "collective spirits" with ideologies. For example, Tomberg describes Marxism as an egregore (and it's helpful to note that Tomberg was writing in the midst of the Cold War):

With respect of generation effected collectively, the demon--which in this case is known by the term egregore--is likewise the product of will and imagination, which in this case are collective. The brith of such an egregore in modern times is known to us:

"A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism"--such is the first phrase of the Communist Manifesto...

What I am saying here concerning the generation of the most imposing modern egregore is in perfect accord with Marxist teaching itself. Because for Marxism there is no God or gods--there are only "demons" in the sense of creations of the human will and imagination. This is the foundational Marxist doctrine of the so-called "ideological superstructure"... And this method of production of ideological superstructures on the basis of will is precisely what we understand by the collective generation of a demon or egregore.

Now, there is the Word, and there are egregores before whom humanity bows down: there is revelation of divine truth, and the manifestation of the will of human beings; there is the cult of God, and that of idols made by man. Is it not the diagnosis and prognosis of the whole history of the human race that at the same time that Moses received the revelation of the Word at the summit of the mountain, that the people at the foot of the mountain made and worshipped a golden calf? The Word and idols, revealed truth and the "ideological superstructures" of the human will, operate simultaneously in the history of the human race. Has there been a single century when the servants of the Word have not had to confront the worshippers of the idols, egregores?

Walter Wink makes similar observations about "the principalities and powers":

None of these "spiritual" realities has an existence independent of its material counterpart. None persist through time without embodiment in cellulose or in a culture or a regime or a corporation or a megalomaniac. An ideology does not just float in the air; it is always the nexus of legitimations and rationales for some actual entity, be it a union or management, a social change group or the structure it hopes to change. As the inner aspect of material reality, the spiritual Powers are everywhere around us. Their presence is real and it is inescapable.

Consequently, battling against these powers and advocating for change demands focusing upon the inner and invisible spiritual dynamics that keep powers structures animated and intact. And as Tomberg has pointed out, this resistance is fundamentally a struggle against idolatry. 

Along with Walter Wink, the lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow powerfully described how demonic powers, the egregores of collectives, are at work in social movements and ideologies. Here is Stringfellow:

According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,” “destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist…

And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.

And following both Tomberg and Wink, Stringfellow goes on to describe how these powers, dark angels and egregores, become locations of idolatry: 

People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…

Again, while there are ontological issues here I want to talk about in the next and final post, there are remarkable convergences between Tomberg, Wink, and Stringfellow in how they describe the spiritual powers that emerge from social collectives, from organizations to churches to nation states to ideological movements. 

Dark angels haunt the world.