IT IS hard to give an account of what is, in the end, impossible to describe. But many of our practitioners of mystery in a long, rich, and unbroken tradition have, thank heavens, made the attempt, and in so doing have shown the rest of us the way by wakening something in us that will take us deeper.
In Dazzling Darkness — and doesn’t the book’s title phrase in and of itself pique the mystic in us all? — James Harpur has himself done something remarkable, by succeeding in telling us about our mystics, in their historical and geographical contexts, their lives, visions, teaching, and actions, with sufficient particularity for us to experience, not just to think about, their wisdom. The book is a proper tasting menu. And so it should be; for Harpur himself is a mystic, experiencing an extended “implosion of light” after a debilitating illness and constancy in meditative practice.
The reader should not necessarily simply start at the beginning and read through to the end, as I have been obliged to for this review. Rather, dive in, anywhere. The chapters are pithy, you will gain a good sense of a particular mystic and know if she or he is for you. And when you dive, as Harpur counsels, dwell for a while: “their words are not to be read, appreciated, and moved on from, but are spiritually psychoactive. . .” His poems in response to some of the mystics demonstrate this.
Read from start to finish, the book is a chronological retelling of our story, from Jesus Christ to the present day, through the deeply seeing eyes of those to whom God, Christ, is really present. Second-century Perpetua dreamed of a ladder with a writhing fearful serpent at its base and knives and daggers alongside its rungs, at the top of which, when she dared to climb it, she met a Christ figure milking a ewe, who offered her this sweet milk to drink.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers include Syncletica, who renounced great wealth and lived a life of asceticism, and as she approached death was “illuminated by ineffable light, and the land of paradise”; and Simon Stylites, who took the act of ascension to heaven literally, and inspired other solitaries to set themselves up on their own pillars. Fourth-century Evagrius Ponticus’s souls in their state of union with God are “always satisfied in their insatiability”. Sixth- century Columba and the Irish peregrins were in constant pilgrimage: for them, God was to the left and the right, in front and behind; so it did not matter which direction they took.
Eleventh century Eastern Orthodox Symeon the New Theologian said that ecstasies were for beginners on the path of perfection, and saw his soul in God’s light as in a mirror in which the tiniest imperfection was evident, drawing him into the depths of humility. Fourteenth-century Marguerite Porete was “heedless of threats and sublimely confident of her divinely revealed wisdom over theologians’ book learning”. John Tauler’s soul made itself a “haven of quietness and peace” so that God would come to birth in it.
Then there were those who experienced God when all around them the Enlightenment asserted that such things did not stand to reason. And, in the 20th century, Simone Weil “regarded herself as an outsider looking in on the church but . . . with the depth of spiritual feeling and commitment of an insider”. Oh, how that resonated with me!
Not everyone appears: how could they? Our mystical tradition is a wider and deeper river than any book can tell. It is a river that we can all join, as Harpur emphasises again in his epilogue: “The greatest mystics . . . demonstrate what it is to be fully Christian — and therefore fully human.” Their way is not (necessarily) “clouds of joy and ecstasy and angelic choirs, but through the deepening of love”.
Dr Claire Gilbert is the author of I, Julian: The fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich (Books, 6 April 2023), now available in paperback.
Dazzling Darkness: The lives and afterlives of the Christian mystics
James Harpur
Hurst £25
978-1-911723-90-5
Church Times Bookshop £22.50