The Book of Ceremonial Magic (A.E. Waite) · 11 of 175 · tr. Arthur Edward Waite
Page 5 (part 4)
Blessed and Holy are those who receive the experience of God in the dilucid contemplation, but sanctity and benediction and all in all is that state wherein contemplation is ineffably unified, by a super-eminent leap over of love, with that which is its object; and in that love and in that joining together there is no passage longer from subject to object.
But this is the Godhead.
These considerations have got so far beyond even The Cloud of Unknowing , that it seems almost a fall into matter to speak, as I had intended, of Molinos and his Spiritual Guide , which is in no sense really comparable to the older work.
It is a more ascetic treatise, and by its asceticism is a little hindered; it is a less catholic treatise, and it suffers here and there from the particular sense.
Yet it bears the same testimony of a full and complete intention--much too complete and too full to carry anything of the concerted air--to maintain the veils of doctrine, to speak the high and orthodox language of the official Church; but again it is like a moving, yet all remote, echo from a world which has almost passed out of knowledge.
What is there left to the soul that it should say of the Holy Humanity, of the Precious Blood, of the five wounds, of the dolorous death and passion?
It is not that all this has been swallowed up in the glories of resurrection, but that those who have entered "where God keeps His Throne and communicates Himself with incredible intensity"--and those who have obeyed the last precept "to be lost in God"--have entered into a new order; the ships that carried them have dropped out of sight with the tide, with the breeze, in the sunshine.
Now, the secret of this is--not that Dionysius and Ruysbroeck, with all their cohæredes et sodales , had become unitarians, but that the term of the Christian dispensation, to each of them personally, had been fulfilled in each.
Christ had been born and lived, had taught and suffered and died, had risen and ascended and reigned in them.
So that Divine life, in fine, carried them to its last stage.
It was not Dionysius or Ruysbroeck, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, or the soul of the poor imprisoned Jesuit Molinos, but the Christ nature within each and all of these, within ten thousand times ten thousand of their peers, in all ages and nations and faiths and climes, which entered into the incredible intensity; and that which is termed the act or state of being lost in God is that which I have elsewhere described in a perfection of all similitudes--which is of my adaptation but not of my making--when Christ delivers up the Kingdom of each soul to His Father, and God is all in all.
This is the state which is beyond the state when it is said that "they shall see His face." Hereof is the mystic tradition in Christian Time; it has been perpetuated in an unbroken line from the beginnings of the new dispensation until this now.
It is of course in itself the most secret, exotic and incomprehensible of all languages, though at the same time it is the most open, universal and simple.
The understanding of it is a question of experience, and the experience is attained in sanctity, though--as I have said, but also elsewhere--the intellectual light concerning it belongs rather to the dedication out of which sanctity may at length issue than to the state of saintship itself.
Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.
References to 'The Cloud of Unknowing' and the state being 'ineffably unified' and beyond speaking suggest a via negativa approach where God transcends ordinary categories.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The passage emphasizes that understanding is a question of experience rather than intellectual light, aligning with salvation through direct experiential knowledge.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage refers to the mystic tradition as 'the most secret, exotic and incomprehensible of all languages' yet universal, suggesting esoteric teachings reserved for experience.
The divine spark or luminous quality residing within the human person, potentially recognisable through introspection.
The passage speaks of the 'Christ nature within each and all' which enters into incredible intensity, indicating a divine presence residing within the human person.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The passage mentions a 'super-eminent leap over of love' that unifies contemplation with its object, suggesting love as the motive force for ascent.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
The passage centrally describes the state wherein contemplation is unified with its object through love, where there is no longer a passage from subject to object, termed 'lost in God' and 'God is all in all'.
Critique of outward religious observance that lacks inner transformation; form without substance.
The critique of maintaining 'veils of doctrine' and speaking 'high and orthodox language' while the true state is beyond suggests a preference for inner reality over outer form.
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
The text describes the soul entering a new order where ships drop out of sight and Christ delivers up the Kingdom to the Father, implying a return or completion of the divine journey.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text describes the Christ nature within the soul entering into incredible intensity and God becoming all in all, reflecting the transformation of the human person into a partaker of the divine nature.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The description of a state where there is 'no passage longer from subject to object' and 'God is all in all' reflects the doctrine that existence is ultimately one divine reality.