Occultism, Witchcraft & Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religion by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Spirituality, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion
ISBN: 9780226203928
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1976-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6

Spirit, Light, and Seed

In an article written in 1957, I discussed a number of experiences, mythologies, and speculations related to “mystical light.”1 My main design was to establish a morphology that would facilitate a relevant comparative analysis. Essentially, the essay had a methodological intention, namely, to show that only by comparing similar religious phenomena can one simultaneously grasp their general structure and their particular, specific meanings. I have chosen to investigate the experiences and ideologies of “mystical light” precisely because of their extensive distribution in space and time. Indeed, we have at our disposal a large number of examples from different religions, not only archaic and Oriental but from the three monotheistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What is even more significant, there also exists a rich documentation relating to spontaneous or “natural” experiences of inner light, that is, experiences undergone by individuals without any ascetic or mystical preparation and apparently even without religious interests.

I do not intend to summarize here the results of my investigation. As could be expected, the morphological similarities and differences among such experiences point to distinct, but comparable, religious or theological meanings. If I may quote from my concluding remarks, all types of light-experiences have this factor in common:

they bring a man out of his profane universe or historical situation, and project him into a universe different in quality, an entirely different world, transcendent and holy. The structure of this holy and transcendent Universe varies according to a man’s culture and religion. Nevertheless they share this element in common: the Universe revealed through a meeting with the Light contrasts with the profane Universe—or transcends it—by the fact that it is spiritual in essence, in other words only accessible to those for whom the Spirit exists. The experience of Light radically changes the ontological condition of the subject by opening him to the world of the Spirit. In the course of human history there have been a thousand different ways of conceiving or valorizing the world of the Spirit. That is evident. How could it have been otherwise? For all conceptualization is irremediably linked with language, and consequently with culture and history. One can say that the meaning of the supernatural Light is directly conveyed to the soul of the man who experiences it—and yet this meaning can only come fully to his consciousness clothed in a preexistent ideology. Here lies the paradox: the meaning of the Light is, on the one hand, ultimately a personal discovery; and, on the other hand, each man discovers what he was spiritually and culturally prepared to discover. Yet there remains this fact which seems to us fundamental: whatever will be the subsequent ideological integration, a meeting with the Light produces a break in the subject’s existence, revealing to him—or making clearer than before—the world of the Spirit, of holiness and of freedom; in brief, existence as a divine creation, or the world sanctified by the presence of God.2

The different light-experiences discussed in my essay, with the exception of the few spontaneous ones, were constantly valorized in their traditional contexts.

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