The beginning of the liturgical year is dedicated to the idea of idea of ‘Epiphany’, i.e. revelation, a ‘tearing away of the veil’, and thus we want to shortly attempt to take a peak beyond this ‘veil’ to see what it is that Holy Mother Church gives us to contemplate.
Of course the primal epiphany from which all the other feasts flow is the Nativity of the Lord itself; here the Divine Ray transpierces the horizontal and the divine Sun is born from the ‘waters’ (= maria), coming into His own through the janua coeli that is the Most Blessed Virgin. In fact the whole cycle of Epiphanytide can be seen as tracing the course of this Sun which, as we know (cf. Guénon, The Two Saint Johns), is, in the macrocosm, indicated by the two St. Johns: Johannes Evangelista, whose Feast (27. of December) is righty after Christmas (viz. the winter solstice), shows us the ‘birth of the sun’ and it’s ascension in which it is more and more ‘unveiled’: from the revelation to the Magi as the first fruits of the pagans (6. of January), to the Circumcision (Octave of Christmas) and the Presentation of the Lord (40 days after Christmas), to the Finding in the Temple (1. Sunday after Epiphany) and His first public miracle at the Marriage at Cana (2. Sunday after Epiphany), until it finally rises to its zenith at the Baptism in the river Jordan (13. of January) where the “heavens were opened” (Matt. 3:16) and a voice from above revealed the Sun/Son of God plain in the open for all men to see.
Here we meet Johannes Baptisma (whose Feast is at the 25. of June, around the time of the summer solstice, i.e. the janua inferni) who points us to the descending of the Sun, for the liturgical season that follows Epiphanytide is of course Lent, which ends with the total eclipse of the Divine Sun (“darkness came over all the land”, Mk. 15:33) and its sinking into the water of death (descendit ad infernos) – to rise again on the third Day in Glory.
We could thus resume that the Epiphanies pertaining to the ‘ascending movement’ traced by the Evangelist (Christmas, Epiphany, Presentation etc.) might be called ‘secrets’ or ‘mysteries’[1], whereas those pertaining to the descending ecliptic of the Baptist (Baptism, Transfiguration, Palm Sunday etc.) are ‘revelations’, wherein the Lord actively proclaims Himself ad extra.[2] The Evangelist pertains to the (centripetal) ‘right hand’ which ‘moves inwards’ and ‘gathers’, and that the Baptist is standing on the ‘left hand side’ who goes out and preaches to all nations (a symbolism with is obviously also found in the celebration of Holy Mass where the Epistle is read on the right and the Gospel on the left side of the altar).
In the former Christ remains ‘hidden’, we find Him covered in swaddling clothes lying in the manger at Bethlehem[3], or behind the walls in the Temple at Jerusalem, only found by the few who are ‘simple in spirit’ (the shepherds) or those who have penetrated deeply into the mysteries (the Magi), whereas in the latter Christ steps out of His hiddenness and is “proclaimed from the rooftops” (Matt. 10:27); here miracles are worked and the heavens open to reveal the Son with whom the Father is well pleased.
The first could thus say to represent the ‘esoteric’ side of Revelation (which has also sometimes been linked to the ‘Marian mysteries’ and by extension to Christ’s infancy), that what is “told in the dark”, whereas the second pertains the ‘exoteric’ side “spoken in daylight” (ibid.), and it is no coincidence that the ‘esoterica’ are preached by Johannes Evangelista, the Apostle of the ‘inner Church’ and beloved Disciple who rested at the very heart of the Lord (and who, according to some traditions, was initiated into the esoteric teachings of Christ Himself, together with Ss. James and Peter).
Now as we have said, at the heart of Epiphany stands the theme of ‘unveiling’, which is repeated in numerous variations. Let us only consider the Gospel reading of the 1. Sunday after Epiphany and “ponder them in our heart” (Lk. 2:51). If the soul wants to find Christ in the Temple, the divine ‘Centre’, she must “seek Him with sorrow” (Lk. 2:48) and, in a true metanoia, “turn back to Jerusalem” (Lk. 2:45), the City on the Hill, and abandon the multitude of men who walk aimlessly down into the valley of this world (Lk. 2:43-44). Once she has ascended to the Holy City she must enter the Temple, i.e. into its own self (for “don't you now that you are God's sanctuary yourselves and that the Spirit of God lives in you?”, 1. Cor. 3:16) and penetrate there into the Holy of Holies wherein the dwells the Presence of the Lord (the Shekinah).
As such she must proceed by a process of ‘unveliing’, or kashf as the Sufis say, for, according to the Prophet, “God has covered His radiant Face with seventy-thousand veils” and thus “one must, through discrimination, separate the pure an inmost Self from the sheaths by which It is covered, as one separates a rice-kernel from the covering husk” (Shankara, Âtma-Bodha, XV).
This ‘discrimination’, a peeling away of the sheaths to get to the ‘inner core’, is of course closely linked to the notion of ‘circumcision’[4] (which is, as we may recall, likewise celebrated in Epiphanytide); what is needed is thus the ‘spiritual circumcision’ the Apostle talks, a “putting off of our sinful nature” (Col. 2:11), i.e. shedding the ‘garments of skin’, like Moses taking off his sandals before ascending the Holy Mountain of God (Ex. 3:5): For thus saith the Lord: “I will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live (Deut. 30:6).[5]
Now these ‘veils’ (or ‘garments’) are also the 36 tattvas through which Lord Shiva manifests the entirety of his divine ‘play’ (lîla) through his creative ‘vibrations’ (spanda), from the highest unqualified Reality (Paramshiva) down to the individual jiva, as well as the five ‘sheathes’ (koshas) that, according the Vedantins, conceal the unlimited Reality of Âtman, namely gross materiality (anna-maya-kosha), the subtle sheath (prâna-maya-kosha), that of mind or manas (mano-maya-kosha) and intellect or buddhi (vijnâna-maya-kosha), and lastly ânanda-maya-kosha, the sheath of Bliss, which is the highest reflection of the supreme Âtma in manifestation (corresponding to Shakti-tattva of the Shaivites).
We find these koshas also in Meister Eckhart who speaks to us of the ‘five veils’ of the Godhead (while keeping in mind that “God in Himself, in His nudity, is in no way affected by these conditions of being – or veilings – and does not on this account cease to be unconditioned”).[6]
The outermost veil is constituted by gross corporeity, i.e. the “physical modality whereby the souls (as vital principles) of all living things and the souls of men are covered by a corporeal form which, being gross with materiality, is most inferior and most potential to all that is superior and to being”.
The second veil is that of the subtle or ‘psychic’ modality, “the garment of the outward self, that is, sensitivity”, but which is also “the veil of the collective sense, of anger and concupiscence”.
“The veil of abstractions, concepts, ideas, and all mental images”, i.e. that of analytical reason, is the third veil, “whereby the intellect understands rationally the images and structures of all things with distinctions” and the fourth veil (intellect) is “constituted by the directly reflected light of the Logos, who is infinite Intellect itself … Though the intellective soul most truly dwells in God, God is here under this covering regarded as dwelling in the ground of the soul and veiled as grace present to the soul”.
Finally the soul touches on the fifth veil, where she may taste the pure Bliss of the Deity.
Though ‘God is transcendent isness (esse) itself, transcending all human understanding, He first assumes the veil of truth or intelligibility … an indwelling in his own pure essence.’ The initial and innermost veil is simply the ‘essence of God,’ or the possibilities of manifestation that God comprises in His eternal actuality in the principial and undifferentiated order. It is ‘the realm of blessedness,’ for it is by this first veil that God manifests His fullness in actuality. Comprising all ‘structureless manifestation,’ inasmuch as it is in no way really distinct from God Himself, it is prior to all contingent being that presupposes it. With this first veil we are therefore in the structureless order of truth, goodness, beauty, and unity; the manifestation as such of the undifferentiated triune Godhead itself; the transparent ‘quiddity disclosing God’s superessential nudity’ – all of which are directly subsisting in all-inclusive God.
These micro/macro-cosmic veiling (which can also be subsumed under the classic trichotomy of nous, psyche, soma) are of course mirrored in the structure of the Old Temple (as well as our most of our Churches).[7] The ‘Outer Courtyard’ (viz. the nave) to which even woman and animals had access corresponds to the body and the lower psyche. From here one had to pass through the exterior veil (called masak) which separated the Court from the ‘Holy Place’. Now the Holy Place (which, in the Church, might be linked to the sanctuary, separated, in the East, from the nave by the ‘veil’ of the Iconostasis) is the intermediary realm (the higher psyche in the microcosm) which housed the seven-candled Menorah, corresponding, as already Philo noted (cf. De Vita Moy. II.103), to the seven planets in the macrocosm, viz. the seven ‘heavenly spheres’ Dante traverses on his way to Heaven (hence why the priest on his way up the altar steps could truly be said to ascend through the heavens up to the Throne of God).
We might also point to the seven lower sefirot of the Kabbala in this context, as well as the seven sacraments (the seven rungs on our ladder to Heaven), and the seven liberal arts, i.e. quadrivium and trivium (which are also traditionally linked to the four cardinal and the three theological virtues), that have to be mastered by the adept before ascending to realm of pure philosophy/theology.
However as St. Maximus says, we should neither worship “in the atrium of sensory knowledge”, nor in “the temple of reason” but “in the inmost sanctuary”, i.e. by the “supernatural activity of the intelligence” (noesis) and as such we cannot linger in the psychic realm but have to penetrate deeper.
And thus, lastly, we meet with the interior veil (paroketh) which leads to the Holy of Holies (the nous or intellect) in which the Shekinah dwelled (i.e. the “castle of Brahman in the Lotus of the Heart”).[8] In the Church this paroketh is constituted by the veil in the tabernacle (the new Ark of the Covenant) in which the Lord is truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist (the Eucharistic species being yet another ‘veil’ by which God hides his radiant Face). [9]
The Kabbalist refer to this veil also as the ‘Abyss’ which stands between the manifested and the unmanifested[10] (what the Sufis call barzakh, the ‘isthmus’) and link it to the ominous sefira Daath (i.e. gnosis). Now Daath has a twofold aspect: it is both a terrible abyss and a darkness, as well as a ‘bridge’, and thus it reveals the ambiguity of the mediator (or pontifex) who “separates the wheat from the chaff” (3:12).[11]
In the Old Covenant it was only the High Priest who could, once a year, pass through this veil and enter in the Holy of Holies. And so we can only enter there through Christ, the eternal Gnosis (daath) of the Father and “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebr. 9:15), who, as the true High Priest, has “entered once for all into the Holy of Holies” (Hebr. 9:11) and “rent the veil of the temple in twain” (Matt. 27:60): “Therefore, brethren, let us have confidence in the entering into the Holy of Holies by the blood of Christ; by a new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil” (Hebr. 10:19-20). Amen.
[1] Now of course strictly speaking all events of the Gospel are ‘mysteries’ for “All the He (Christ) wrought among men, all that He said and suffered, He disposed in such wise that not a single moment was passed without mystery” (St. Bernard) and as St. Augustine adds: “Factum audivimus, mysterium requiramus” (St. Augustine), the facts are revealed to us but it is on us to search out the ‘mystery’ that lies hidden in them.
[2] We might also say that the Evangelist pertains to the (centripetal) ‘right hand’ which ‘moves inwards’ and ‘gathers’, and that the Baptist is standing on the ‘left hand side’ which goes out and preaches to all nations (a symbolism with is obviously also found in the celebration of Holy Mass where the Epistle is read on the right and the Gospel on the left side of the altar).
[3] The Christ-child in the manger is, like boy Jesus in the Temple (“in my Father’s House”, Lk. 2:49), a symbol of the ‘heart’ or the ‘centre’ (cf. Abbé Stéphane, Le Symbolisme de la Crèche) We should note that, according to Tradition, the ‘stable’ in which Christ was born was actually a ‘cave’ (as also shown in traditional iconography), which even further enhances this symbolism.
[4] According to Jewish tradition, the qlippoth (shells) that resulted from the Fall are especially pronounced in the genital area, the ‘seat of the passions’ (hence why sexuality is also one of the things most wounded by the Fall); so it is no coincidence that the ‘peeling away’ of the shells is effected in this area. But circumcision is of course also ‘sacrifice’, a blood sacrifice to be exact, for “the soul (the vital principle as distinct from spirit) is in the blood”, says Moses (Lev.17:11), which makes the letting of blood also a purification of psyche: Sine effusione sanguinis, nulla redemptio (cf. also De Maistre’s Éclaircissement sur les Sacrifices). This sacrificial symbolism also gives us the key the ‘foreskin wedding ring’ (like that St. Catherine received), where the foreskin (also: our shell/fallen nature/our ego) i.e. that which we traditionally render unto God, is now being given back by God in a nuptial gesture: “He who loses his life will find it” (Lk.9:24), i.e. in sacrificing our ‘self’, we will be given our true Self by the Celestial Bridegroom.
[5] Commentating on this verse Nachmanides writes: “In the days of the Messiah, the choice of their genuine good will be natural; the heart will not desire the improper and it will have no craving whatsoever for it. This is the ‘circumcision’ mentioned here, for lust and desire are the foreskin of the heart, and circumcision of the heart means that it will not covet or desire evil. Man will return at that time to the what was before the sin of Adam, when by his nature he did what properly should be done, and there were no conflicting desires of the will”. We thus see that the notion of circumcision is (like Baptism) deeply linked to the restoration of the primordial state hence why it’s done on the ‘eight day’, the ‘day of the Messiah’ (hence why the Circumcision of our Lord is also celebrated on the Octave of Christmas).
[6] All the following quotations of the Meister have been taken from C.F. Kelley Divine Knowledge, V.1.
[7] These correspondences between church, microcosm and macrocosm have also been thoroughly developed by St. Maximus in his Mystagogia.
[8] St. Ephrem sees these two veils also recurring in the story of Paradise, where Tree of Knowledge (duality) is interpreted as the ‘veil’ that stands in front of the Tree of Life (cf. Hymns on Paradise).
[9] Moving further in we find another ‘threefold veiling’, namely that of altar, chalice/ciborium, and Eucharist (corresponding to the ternary of stable, manger, and Christ-child in the Nativity scene).
[10] The sefira Daath is also microcosmically linked to the larynx (or to the ‘speaking organ’ more generally) thus corresponding to the Vishuddha-chakra (located in the throat) which symbolizes the element ether (akasha) that stands between the four elements and the unmanifested.
[11] We were once told that some Rabbis also explicitly link Daath to the Messiah, however from our own research we weren’t able to definitely confirm this thesis.
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