Lapis Magazine

Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition by Arthur Versluis

Book Review by Christopher Bamford, co-director of Anthroposophic/Lindisfarne Press and the author of many articles on the Western Mystery Tradition.

Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition by Arthur Versluis. Published by State University of New York Press, 1999.

One of the great revolutions occurring unnoticed today is the field of spiritual history. The past half century has witnessed the progressive unveiling of a multitude of lineages, schools, and spiritual movements that were previously either systematically excluded by the dominant patriarchal — materialist paradigm or simply hidden and unknown because the evidence — the texts — were lost or unavailable. I am thinking of such phenomena as the work of feminist historians in uncovering the women mystics of the middle ages — Mechtild of Magdeburg, Mechtild of Hackeborn, Beatrice of Nazareth, Hadewich, Margaret of Porete, Gertrude the Great, Juliana of Cornichon and so on — whose presence radically revises our notion of Christianity; of Dame Frances Yates recovery of the importance of Hermeticism, Kabbala, and Rosicrucianism in the Renaissance; of the work of such as William Newman in uncovering the history of alchemy; of Henry Corbin's work in giving the world the riches of the Persian Theosophers of Light, the Ishraki; of the consequences of the discovery of the library of Nag Hammadi for our understanding of gnosticism and early Christianity; of the vast number of Mahayana Buddhist texts now available and commented on; of the discovery of such world philosophers as Nagarjuna, Ibn Arabi, Dogen. These are just examples; the list could go on. The point is that these things change our consciousness of who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

Arthur Versluis' marvelous and accessible introduction to Protestant theosophic mysticism is a significant contribution to this ongoing process. Not only does he give us a valuable biographical history of the chief protagonists of this important movement of Sophianic spirituality most of whom are known only to a handful of specialists — figures like Jacob Boehme, Johann Georg Gichtel, John Pordage, Jane Leade, Dionysius Andreas Freher, William Law, Johannes Kelpius and Christopher Walton — but he also situates them theosophically, cosmologically, and theologically. Versluis' book is thus part history, part philosophy. The history is fascinating, anecdotal, outrageous — these theosophers lived according to the conventions of heaven, not of earth. Its is also extremely interesting, especially to Americans, for there is a deep strain of theosophic mysticism embedded in American spirituality. From this point of view, the chapter on “Johannes Kelpius and Pennsylvania Theosophy” is worth the price of admission alone. The heart of the book, however, lies in Versluis' account of the foundational theosophical teachings and the approach to sacred or “hiero-” history implicit in it. He explicates the principal doctrines — the Divine Nature, the Emanation of Worlds, the Fall, Spiritual Regeneration, and Angelology and Paradise — from an understanding situated within the mystical universe itself. Here Jane Leade's notion of “the college of the magi” is particularly revealing. Namely, on December 15, 1678, Mrs. Leade was “cast into as into a trance and had all outward senses drowned, and was brought by the Spirit into such a place that was as the scene of another world.” This place was the “Magic-School” — or “theosophic college” — which exists in a realm as clear as crystal, inhabited by angelic beings with “clarified” bodies. It is above time and space and is entered, as Versluis explains, by going into the “Watchtower of the silent Mind.” It is like a 'Holy Island' beyond the 'Coast' of this world. Entering it, one understands magically and is taught the “new Science” of the “Angelical philosophy.” From this “Wisdom School” or “High and Celestial University” all theosophers in some sense have drawn and may still draw, since it is an ever-present reality. Without making any claims beyond those permitted by scholarship, Versluis nevertheless inspired in this reader the hope that the College of the Magi might teach us all still, if we would only bend ourselves in its direction.