Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions

402 Pages·1993·10.994 MB·English

by  Dan Merkur

SUNY SERIES IN WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS
DAVID APPELBAUM, EDITOR
Gnosis
An Esoteric Tradition
of Mystical Visions and Unions
Dan Merkur
State University of New York Press
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1993 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Merkur, Daniel.
Gnosis: an esoteric tradition of mystical visions and unions /
Dan Merkur.
p. — cm. — (SUNY series in western esoteric traditions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-1619-4 (hard : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-1620-8
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Visions—History. 2. Mysticism—History. 3. Gnosticism-
-History. 4. Imagination—History. 5. Psychoanalysis and religion.
6. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961. I. Title. II. Series.
BF1101.M47 1993
291.4'2—dc20
92-35390
CIP
10 987654321
Incredulity is given to the world as a punishment.
—Elias Ashmole, “Prolegomena”
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652)

Contents
Preface ix
Part One: Jung, Active Imagination,
and the Gnostic-Alchemical Hypothesis
1. The Study of Mystical Experiences 3
2. Jung, Silberer, and Active Imagination 37
Theories of Spiritual Alchemy 55
(4) The Alchemical Production of Gold 77
Part Two: A History of Gnosis
5. Defining Gnosis 111
6.. The Gnostic Journey to the Ogdoad 117
The Recital of the Chariot 155
1/ 8. Muhammad and his Mi'raj 181
9. Islamic Gnosis and the World of Imagination 199
10. The Passage of Gnosis to the Latin West 237
Notes 269
Works Cited 339
Index 379
vii

Preface
In 1913 Carl Gustav Jung developed a procedure for inducing
visions that he termed “active imagination.” He combined hypna­
gogic states with visualization techniques in order to induce waking
imaginations that were autonomous, as are dreams, and not con­
sciously directed, as are daydreams. Jung’s procedure has since had
a variety of successors. Related practices have also been developed
in Western occultism and New Age spirituality.
The significance of active imagination for the history of religion
remains to be assessed. Several intriguing speculations have been
offered. Jung alleged the use of active imagination in gnosticism, al­
chemy, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. Henry Corbin made a case for
active imagination in the Islamic gnosis of medieval Isma'ilism, Avi­
cenna’s Neo-Aristotelian mysticism, and theosophical Sufism. An­
toine Faivre has suggested that a blend of gnosis and active
imagination has been part of Western esotericism since its system­
atization in the Italian Renaissance.
The present study is, to my knowledge, the first systematipjiis-
tory of active imagination in Western culture. As I am not a Jun-
gianri have reconceptualized the topic in terms of both method and
perspective. My historical findings remain exploratory. I hope to
have identified the major trends of the history, but at this stage in
the research all results must be considered provisional. I have cited
the data that I have happened to find; there must be oversights,
small and large.
It is my thesis that a paired use of visionary and unitive expe­
riences, dependent for the most part on active imagination, consti­
tuted the gnosis, “knowledge,” at the mystical core of the gnostic
trajectory in Western esotericism from late antiquity to modern
times. No one has previously written a history of visionary practice
in the West. Much less has anyone suggested that Western mystics,
ix
x Preface
some of whom are known to have experienced both visions and
unions, ever made a tradition of the dual practice. Evidence that
scholars have often treated as marginal or peripheral to the general
history of Western mysticism or, at best, have discussed as minor
curiosities or oddities have here been presented as a discrete tra­
jectory. My demonstration that there has been such a tradition is,
in many ways, as significant as its identification as gnostic.
The gnostic uses of active imagination were transmitted, I ar­
gue, by much the same routes as Greek philosophy and science:
through early Islam, where they were considerably developed before
passing through medieval Judaism, which made important contri­
butions before passing the tradition onward to the Latin West,
/.where gnosis entered alchemy for the first time.
For reason, in Melville’s phrase, of “Time, Strength, Cash, and
Patience,” I have deferred discussion of one of the most interesting
episodes in the history of gnosis: the origin and early development
of the kabbalah. The omission will be repaired as circumstances
permit.
Most of this book was written from 1990 to 1992 when I was a
Research Reader at the Centre for Religious Studies, of the Univer­
sity of Toronto, Canada. At different points over the years, this
project has profited from the help of Antoine Faivre, Ithamar Gru-
enwald, David J. Halperin, Moshe Idel, Todd Lawson, June
McDaniel, Jordan Paper, Richard Pero, Robert A. Segal, Charles
and Dena Taylor, Steven M. Wasserstrom, Elliot R. Wolfson, and the
members of the Alchemical Society of Canada. I extend my thanks
to all. An earlier version of chapters 3 and 4 was published in Ambix
37 (1990), 35-45.
Part One
Jung, Active Imagination, and the
Gnostic-Alchemical Hypothesis