Esotericism, Metaphysics and Gnosis: Some Elements

The esoteric approach is very widespread and seems to have always existed in various forms, from protohistoric eras—of which the remains of megaliths, for example, may bear witness—to the New Age and to contemporary philosophical or scientific gnosticisms. Over just the last 2,500 years, several hundred such currents can be identified. Here are a few examples: the Orphism and Pythagorism of pre-Christian Antiquity; the Hermetica (Alexandrian Hermetism with the legendary Hermes Trismegistus); Neopythagorism; “gnosis” (Clement of Alexandria, 160–215; Origen, 185–254) and the various gnosticisms; the Manichaean current (3^rd century), later reappearing in Bulgarian Bogomilism (10^th century) and then in Catharism (12^th century); Neoplatonism followed by the Dionysian tradition; the Sepher Yetsirah of the 5^th or 6^th century foreshadowing medieval Kabbalah; visionary and spiritual alchemy (4^th to 7^th centuries); and the three major works of the 9^th century: The Book of the Secrets of Creation (c. 825), containing an early version of the Emerald Tablet; the Periphiseon (c. 865) of John the Scot; and the Arabic Epistles (9^th-10^th centuries) of the Brethren of Purity…

We may stop at this 10^th century, but it should be noted that esotericisms have proliferated even more up to the present day. Let us at least mention St. Bonaventure (1221–1274), with his “coincidence of opposites” anticipating that of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), who, with his idea of the fundamental unity of religions (De pace fidei, 1453), himself anticipates Renaissance Hermetism and, incidentally, the 20^th-century Perennialism. And the latter, through its critique of the modern world and its doctrines of religious convergence, helped foster the contemporary New Age, even though a chasm, of course, separates them.

Following specialists of esotericism such as Antoine Faivre (1934–2021), one may nonetheless be surprised to find within this vast domain—alongside Freemasonry, for instance, which appeared in the 16^th century in Scotland, or ancient treatises of Hermetic magic—Fathers of the Church (Clement of Alexandria, Origen) or Doctors of the Church (St. Bonaventure). In other words, esoteric studies treat on the same level Christian occultisms or heresies and theological works officially approved by the Church. The reason for this, we believe, lies in the laicist and anti-clerical constraints of the French University¹.

The strict etymology of “esoteric” is instructive here. The Greek adjective esôterikos in itself conveys three indications. Esô means “inside,” with a sense of motion: “towards the inside”; ter (from teros) indicates comparison: “more towards the inside (than)”; and the ending -ikos specifies the nuance of particularity: “that which has the characteristic of going more towards the inside (than).”

The word thus implies three fundamental aspects:

• the notion of “interiority” or deepening, which is also found in its Arabic equivalent bâtin (“cave,” “matrix”);
• the notion of a permanent movement towards ever-greater interiority, which refutes any “settled,” fixed, definitive esotericism;
• and the notion of comparison: the relative opposition between “esotericism” and “exotericism.” Relative opposition, for there is no esotericism without exotericism—without reliance on a tradition—just as there is no absolute exotericism nor absolute esotericism, pure, stripped of all form, and freed from all revelation (as Hegel would have wished, for example).

Great importance must be attached to the difference between the immemorial adjective “esoteric”² and the recent substantive “esotericism”³, by which the notions of relativity and movement are lost. This confusion has led, in Guénon for example, to the concept of an institutional esotericism supposedly proper to religions but, at the very least, inapplicable to Christianity⁴.

What interests us here, as regards metaphysics, is the definition of what is esoteric in nature. To encounter something esoteric is to meet a veil, to realize inwardly that there is veiling, and to desire to know what lies beyond the veil. Hence the two great pitfalls of esotericism: believing oneself superior because one has noticed the veil, and studying the veil rather than gaining access to what the veil conceals.

This feeling of superiority is frequently found in established esoteric groups—Freemasonry, Theosophy, Anthroposophy (not to summon all the esotericists or occultists of the 19^th century)—where they speak condescendingly of the “man in the street.” Yet, in Christianity in particular, one will agree that God came to save all men (1 Tim 2:4), even if they be “stupid as hay-eaters”⁵.

As for this study of the veil—or of the finger instead of the moon—one finds it frequently in books of esotericism that seem to turn in circles, from symbols to symbols, analogies to analogies, correspondences to correspondences. One must here criticize this frequent search for correspondences “at any price,” which merely displays a useless erudition concerning the veil alone. This is the trap of rationalization under the sway of logic, and the prison of reason. It is the same trap that appears in the so-called proofs of the existence of God. There, individuals who engage in this exercise seem determined to combine their vision or their faith with their reason at all costs. Certainly God is the cause of both revelation and reason, but reducing one to the other inevitably eliminates what surpasses reason; it misses the essential distinction between intellectual intuition and discursive reason⁶.

Metaphysics, on the contrary, is an unveiling. It offers the clearest formulations of ultimate realities; beyond them, no further interpretation is possible. Naturally, as the final possible interpretation, every esoteric discourse must therefore abolish itself in metaphysical formulation, failing which it has not gone beyond the veil that confronted it. At that point one passes from the conceivable to the intelligible—that is, from the productions of discursive reason to the reception of intelligibles by the intellect.

Nevertheless, metaphysics is not the end of the journey. We must recall here the structure of the sacred. Indeed, despite contemporary modernism, the distinction between the sacred and the profane has remained quite visible. Everyone still clearly sees the difference between the Arc de Triomphe and Notre-Dame Cathedral. Once within the sacred, we find different types of interpretations, from the most exoteric to the most esoteric—each only in relation to the other—surmounted by the ultimate metaphysical formulations. These may be read in St. Dionysius the Areopagite or Meister Eckhart as well as in St. Thomas Aquinas. However, beyond this metaphysical interpretation—or rather, facing any interpretation whatsoever—there is the Revelatum, inaccessible except to that gnosis of which St. Paul speaks (Eph 3:18; 1 Cor 1:21–25; 1 Cor 13:12), or the “true gnosis” of which St. Irenaeus of Lyon speaks (Adversus Hæreses).

Here we discern the danger of a metaphysics that positions itself independently of a Revelatum, “from the outside.” For this “outside” would, in fact, be an “above,” a vantage point; it would be to borrow God’s eye—or to believe oneself doing so. The gravity of this error lies in the illusion in which it imprisons the one who commits it; particularly, the illusion of thinking that the concept of gnosis is equivalent to an effective gnosis—while the concept of water does not quench thirst, nor does the concept of fire burn.

In Christian language, gnosis is the mystical theology taught by St. Dionysius the Areopagite: a non-modal mode of communion with the mystery. A surpassing of all speculative knowledge such that it becomes a participation, through grace, in the Knowledge that God has of Himself. One leaves the symbolic veil for mystical nakedness. Here metaphysics abolishes itself. No more than esoteric knowledge is metaphysical knowledge enduring; both undoubtedly constitute a genuine path—among other possible paths⁷—but, as must be recalled, a path is never the end of the path.

At this point one leaves, even through a speculative awakening, all intelligence, for an operative order, salvific one might say, but which only grace can bring. Far from any theurgic illusion or manipulation of spiritual forces (as has sometimes been claimed), it is the Spirit who “blows where He wills” (John 3:8); we then speak of the pneumatization of the intellect, and this is reserved, through grace, for “intelligences that know how to close their eyes”⁸ before that which is, in any case, “above the eyes”⁹.

Thus we may see two phases in a spiritual path of gnosis: the surpassing of all esotericism and all metaphysics. The first phase, belonging to the human being, is that of detachment and renunciation; the second belongs to the grace of God. In metaphysical language, one has spoken of a “centering within the horizontality of amplitude,” then of an “exaltation along the vertical to this center”¹⁰. In Christian language, one will say that one must “become Virgin, in order to give birth to Christ” (Meister Eckhart) through the operation of the Holy Spirit; the rest will be given to you as well (Matt 6:33)¹¹.

Footnotes

1. Nevertheless, it hosts a chair in “History of Esoteric Movements in Modern and Contemporary Europe,” held by Prof. Jean-Pierre Brach.[↩]
2. Immemorial in its meaning, but the term dates back only to the 2nd century, used by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–c. 180) as a counterpart to its antonym “exoteric,” which preceded it and is found in Aristotle (384–322) to refer to teaching open to all.[↩]
3. Appears in German in 1813 in Hans Schulz, Otto Basler: Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 2^nd ed., vol. 5, Berlin, 2004, pp. 245–248, and in French in 1828 in Jacques Matter, Histoire critique du gnosticisme, Paris : Levrault, 1828, pp. 83 & 489.[↩]
4. Christianity can be described as integral esotericism, in the sense that the deepest mysteries are offered to all, or even integral exotericism, in the sense that all mysteries are offered to all. This distinction between esotericism and exotericism has little meaning in characterizing a division that does not exist within the Church.[↩]
5. Voir « Faut-il être intelligent pour être sauvé ? »[↩]
6. Voir « La raison et l’intelligence, les deux faces de l’esprit ».[↩]
7. Without going into detail, in yoga we know the paths of action, love, and knowledge, or, in the West, the paths of the hero, the sage, and the saint, even if we show that they overlap..[↩]
8. Denys l’Aréopagite, Théologie mystique, 997 A & B.[↩]
9. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, II, II, 3.[↩]
10. René Guénon, with reference to Islamic esotericism.[↩]
11. See the analysis of these two stages in the seven traditions: Christianity, Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism: “The two-step cure”,[↩]