This paper was given by Kathryn LaFevers Evans
at ASE 3rd International Conference, “Esotericism, Religion, and Nature”
May 29 - June 1, 2008
College of Charleston, South Carolina
L’École Abstraite: Coincidentia Oppositorum as a Dialectic of Love:16th-18th Centuries
Textual examples of number symbolism document the propagation into Early Modern esotericism of a key concept: coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love. The architecture of this fortification or Palace of Divine Love represents in physical geometric form the spiritual ideas of l’école abstraite, the abstract school of thought. The key texts compared herein—Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ De Magia naturali, François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Jacob Boehme’s The ‘Key’, and Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman—demonstrate the inheritance of this subfield of esotericism, l’école abstraite.
Lefèvre (1455-1536) synthesized mythological, philosophical, theological and scientific theories and practices into a wholly-interpenetrating, esoteric worldview utilizing coincidentia oppositorum, termed such by the fifteenth-century cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Particularly Book II of Lefèvre’s unpublished treatise On Natural Magic is exemplary of Early Modern esotericism’s inheritance of l’école abstraite, the abstract school of thought.
Kent Emery Jr. asserts that Lefèvre’s teachings contributed to the evolution of l’ecole abstraite, an indigenous French school of spirituality the influence of which reached to the philosophy of Hegel. Emery traces the tradition from John Scotus Erigena (800-877) to Ramon Lull (AmicAmat 1276-83) to Nicholas of Cusa, and emphasizes that Lefèvre reinforced teachings of mystic Church Fathers such as St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) and the Victorines, which were then later legitimized by Lefèvre’s students Josse Clichtove (1472-1543) and Charles de Bovelles (1479-1553), then by the Capuchin Benet of Canfield (1562-1611), then Laurent de Paris (1563-1631) who spoke of le palais de l’amour divin. Regarding Benet of Canfield, and his contemporary Laurent de Paris, Emery says, “For both, the principle of the coincidence of opposites is central” (Emery online, dates mine). In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 4, Lefèvre himself claims a more ancient lineage for this tradition of numerical ascension along the chains to Idea:
Quam Mercurius, quam Zÿmoxchis, quam Zoroaster, denique divinus Plato,
posteaque eam Egiptios magos concesserat, tantopere desiderabant [. . .].Which Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, which Zalmoxis, which Zoroaster, and
thereupon the divine Plato, and after he had departed the Egyptian magicians, of such measure were longing for [. . .]. (Evans II:58, f. 202)
Francois Rabelais
Categorized most specifically, I find that Book II embodies Christian Kabbalah, which is encompassed by the overarching abstract school of thought, later coined l’école abstraite by Benet of Canfield. The network during Lefèvre’s time of those now labeled Christian Kabbalists, included his compatriot François Rabelais (1483-1553). He is suggested to have used Lefèvre as the model for his satirized good theologian Hippothadée in The Third Book of Gargantua and Pantagruel (Œuvres Complètès L’Intégrale, Index des Personnages 998, “Hippothadée”). Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), a seventeenth-century self-identified receiver of God’s Will, in turn transmits l’école abstraite in The ‘Key’ through describing the physical architecture representing spiritual experiences. The primal architecture of this fortress or Palace of Divine Love is the binary juxtaposition of Above and below, married in a love-triangle or Trinitarian love-nexus generated out of that binary. Never tiring of the basic physical joke of satirically inverting sublime intimacies, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), in Tristram Shandy, reenacts the key concept of coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love through satirized incarnations of the binary, enacting a divine comedy to the very end of his voluminous text.
Where, in Lefèvre’s and Boehme’s texts we receive sublimely mythopoetic incarnations of divine love, through Rabelais and Sterne we receive a sacrifice of that dearest experience, yet offered in such a way as to effect the healing purpose of satirical learned wit. Each in their own way, these thinkers propagate an esoteric, wholly-interpenetrating worldview where all are in love, all are saved.
In the title of De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 10, Lefèvre employs the umbrella term, “Priscae velatae Theologiae” or “Ancient veils of Theology” (Evans II:80, f. 213). Throughout Book II, Lefèvre unveils mythology, theology, and philosophy to reveal a theory, practice and experience of number as Idea. He reveals how the limit of the metaphorical imagery in disciplines is duality, the binary coincidence of opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The Magic in Lefèvre’s number mysticism is based on human experience of numerical ascension from man to God, achieved through the number 3. Renaissance esotericists conceived of this prisca theologia as embodied in the Trinity through the Spirit of Christ. Theirs was a wholly-interpenetrating vision of universal Holy Spirit beyond dualistic boundaries, demonstrated in the topic of Lefèvre’s Book II, which he calls “Pythagorean philosophy”, and which he equates to “Cabala” and prophetic teachings (Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198; Ch. 14 II:89-90, f. 217-218v). The Magic ternary or number 3 is identified in Chapter 1 as the Venusian love-nexus: “Venereum amorem, et inferioris potentiae appetitusque nexum . . . Venus is love, and love-nexus of the inferior power and longing . . .” (Evans II:51, f. 199v). In Chapter 3, Lefèvre details planetary effects on the earthly resulting from similars’ affinity to similars through the “benignity” of archetypes who embody this coincidence of opposites as a dialectic of love:
And Jupiter along with Venus, celestial love-nexus of benevolence, sound in unison their approach reciprocally nearest to benignity, as of all magical accordances, through their path benignity is sanctioned. And in truth not only the celestial to the celestial accord, but also the celestial to the earthly. [. . .] The influence consequently of the eighth circle, and also of the Moon, earth feels the greatest. Of Saturn and Mercury water, of Jove and Venus air, of Mars and Sun fire. And this agreed upon proportionate admixture of theirs, Empedocles of the Pythagoreans, who merely rightly inferred by conjecture, that matter is saved by concordant discord, by a love-relationship truly interior . (Evans Ch. 3 II:56-57, f. 201-202v)
This sexualized, though clearly metaphorical coincidence of opposites in ritual theological couples Lefèvre adopts as the primal mythopoetic scaffolding for De Magia naturali, describing that mythologized genesis of creation as “the mitigation of re-creation,” and justifying its use with the explanation “such that minds more easily understand” (Evans Ch. 7 II:67, f. 207v). Lefèvre delineates the inferior terrestrial numbers of the body and the Superior celestial numbers of the soul, forming the first binary relationship: “[. . .] primus ergo binarius.” “[. . .] the first [number] is therefore the binary .” This binary, the primal exilic metaphor of the Fall, he mythologizes as androgynous unity in the term “mons binarii,” “the mountain of the binary,” synonymous with the axis mundi or World Pillar. All other numbers emmanate from 2. (Evans Ch. 7 II:68-9, f. 207-208v)
For Christian Kabbalists, the exilic Fall from One to 2 is expressed mythologically in the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and in Jesus’ birth as the Son of God. The final Christian salvation from exile is expressed sacrificially through Jesus’ crucifixion when he becomes Christ, the Spirit that unites God and man, completing ascension to the Trinity. Likewise, Natural Magic resolves exile through number symbolism incarnate in mythological beings. Lefèvre employs the descending and ascending chains of the numerical, celestial and angelic spheres, on which man ascends to the divine. In Chapter 10, he claims that the numbers to the mystery of the magi (magicians) and the numbers to the mystery of the prophets are the same, that this “ancient veil of theology” is in concordance with Christian theology, and that Judaic Kabbalah is not unworthy (Evans II:80, f. 213; Ch. 14 II:89, f. 217). Eugene F. Rice explains how Lefèvre relates God’s delight in the number 3, and associates the triangle with the Trinity: “From the triangle all things come; it is the beginning, middle and end. [. . .] It inspires love of justice and equity, for the equilateral triangle is the figure of aequalitas” (“The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 24)
Echoing Lefèvre, what the triangle symbolizes to Boehme is described thus: “Nothing and All; Alpha and Omega, the Eternal Beginning and the Eternal End; the Trinity Unmanifest” (The ‘Key’ 56).
I saw the Being of all Beings, the Ground and the Abyss, also the birth of the Holy Trinity, the origin and the first state of the world and of all creatures. I saw in myself the three worlds—the Divine or angelic world; the dark world, the original of Nature; and the external world, as a substance spoken forth out of the two spiritual worlds . . . In my inward man I saw it well, as in a great deep; for I saw right through as into a chaos where everything lay wrapped, but I could not unfold it. Yet from time to time it opened itself within me like a growing plant. […] The work is none of mine; I am but the Lord’s instrument, with which He does what He wills. (74)
Adam’s fall is symbolized as a divorce from Sophia into two triangles, which move again towards complete union, towards “the most significant Character in all the Universe” [the hexagram] (74).
Boehme describes the Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion in Divine Marriage:
[…] the Children of Adam [. . .] are Images of GOD […] Wherefore also they are distinguished from the Angels by this peculiar Character [hexagram symbol] which is not contrived by human Speculation, but is written in the Book of Nature by the Finger of God; for it points directly, not only at the Creation of this third Principle in six Days; but also at fallen and divorced Adam’s Reunion with the Divine Virgin SOPHIA. (80)
Laurence Sterne
The importance of mathematically generated symbols—such as the triangle and the hexagram—to esoteric thought is readily communicated through satire, since the satiric genre embodies the foundation from which to generate such symbols from Ideas: the comic juxtapositions and reversals of High and low. Satirists’ construction of the coincidence of opposites centers the Holy Spirit itself as the battleground between High and low, and thus the rightful territory of satire. The Ideas and forms of number symbolism have also long been ensconced in military allegory by its practioners, whether seriously or satirically, Ephraim Chamber’s Cyclopedia cites this fact in the definition of fortification: “Some Authors go back to the Beginning of the World, for the Author and Origin of Military Architecture. According to them, GOD himself was the first Engeneer; and Paradice, or the Garden of Eden, the first Forteresse” (“Fortification” 79 U of Wisc online). Under the obsessive manipulations of Sterne’s military character Uncle Toby, the precious hexagram form is satirically distorted into a hexagon fortification, as Sterne would have seen Chamber’s “Fortification” just so illustrated.
D. W. Jefferson has pointed to the direct influence on Sterne’s Tristram Shandy of Urquhart and Motteux’s first English translation of Rabelais’ third book (Jefferson 150). Turning to The Third Book then, Neopythagoreanism, Neoplatonism and Christian Kabbalah are foundational throughout in such teachings as the significance of numbers. That significance is demonstrated through Panurge’s satirical defense of debtors:
Debts: A thing most precious and dainty, of great Use and Antiquity. Debts, (I say) surmounting the number of Syllables which may result from the Combinations of all the Consonants, with each of the Vowels heretofore projected, reckoned and calculated by the Noble Xenocrates. To judge of the perfection of Debtors by the Numerosity of their Creditors, is the readiest way for entring into the Mysteries of Practical Arithmetick. (310)
“Practical” here connotes the esoteric technique, or practice of number symbolism and numerical ascension. Reversing the mechanics of that cosmic hierarchy, Rabelais contends that Debt is the essential divine relationship rather than Love; Debt sets the universe in motion, not Love. The religious reversal is then amplified as Rabelais throws sex, and then war, into the equation. Panurge abstractly ponders the passion in his own nuptial coupling and what he concludes is the reason for the saying, “the Debt of Marriage” (Rabelais 317). Linking that chain next to a military allegory, Panurge denigrates second marriages to widows of war (320-21). Enter Sterne’s character Uncle Toby and the apparent impotence of a passionate desire, in the end, towards the Widow Wadman. Uncle Toby is obsessively practicing on his military Hobby-Horse in the central battleground of Holy Spirit. What endears this esoteric military allegory to us is that this interior territory, this love-relationship truly interior, embodies the touchstone of sacrifice. Therein is Uncle Toby’s double victory of sacrificing both passion and divine love, as demonstrated in the construction of his drawbridge:
“It turned it seems upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle Toby to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;—for by this means, he would say, I leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession—and pray of what use is the other?” (Jefferson 21)
At the end of the story, after “THE INVOCATION” of Cervantes and his “mystic mantle,” I interpret that Sterne’s character Tristram recommends we sacrifice both divine love and human passion or debt:
[…] there must be ups and downs, or how the duce whould we get into vallies where Nature spreads so many tables of entertainment. […] for heaven’s and for your own sake, pay it—pay it with both hands open […]. (Sterne 571-72)
Hence, in a triangle of aequalitas, Uncle Toby’s Hobby-Horse drawbridge leverages both the camps of God and man in a spiritually redemptive sacrifice, thus securing victory. Melvyn New provides a clue to this conclusion in the Editor’s Introduction, where he describes the nature of Sterne’s sermons: “Above all, he denies the possibility of happiness or morality without religion, and asserts again and again the Providential design of the world […] from the first Adam’s fall to the second Adam’s (Christ’s) redemptive sacrifice” (xli). So I conclude that when satirists in the tradition of learned wit invert sublime intimacies through sexual and military allegory, neither an embrace nor an offense is intended, but rather complete surrender to Divine Will in love.
The telltale binary clue to Sterne’s propagation of the abstract school of thought is sounded loudly at the story’s end, where Tristram’s father’s “Bull,” lent for animal husbandry purposes to their servant, reappears. It is then that Sterne likens human progeny to such two-horned beasts as satyrs. So not only is the binary number 2 allegorized in the love-nexus between Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman, but that same dialectic of love has borne the beastly fruit of Tristram, instead of the Holy Trinity. His father Walter embodies the coincidence of opposites in that the name Walter can be traced through its manifestations as Bon Gaultier, Merry Walter, Robin Goodfellow, Puck or Pooka, and thus back to the two-horned pagan god Bucca or Boucca (“Puck Through the Ages” online; “The Boucca Society” online). By all counts, the binary Walter should have spawned the Thrice-Blessed Trismegistus as planned. Fortunately for lovers of satirical learned wit, the mere mortal Tristram was born, and along with him this “Cock and Bull” tale for our instruction and delight.
Works Cited
Boehme, Jacob. The ‘Key’ of Jacob Boehme. Trans. William Law. Illus. D.A. Freher. Intro. Adam McLean. Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1991.
Emery, Kent Jr. “Mysticism and the Coincidence of Opposites in
Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France.” Journal of the History of Ideas. (ABC-CLIO) 1984, vol. 45(1). 22 Jan. 2003. 3-23. JSTOR, (San Marcos, Calif.).
“Fortification.” University of Wisconsin. 20 February 2008.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech000900240826.
“Fortification Plate.” University of Wisconsin. 20 February 2008.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/EFacs//Cyclopaedia/Cyclopaedia01/XL/0795.jpg.
Jefferson, D. W. “Tristram Shandy and the Tradition of Learned Wit.” Laurence Sterne: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Ed. John Traugott. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 148-167.
“Puck Through the Ages.” BoldOutlaw. 20 February 2008.
http://www.boldoutlaw.com/puckrobin/puckages.html
Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Tr. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Le Motteux. Intro. Terence Cave. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
—. Œuvres Complètès. L’Intégrale. Ed. Guy Demerson. Paris: Seuil, 1973.
Reuchlin, Johannes. On the Art of the Kabbalah: De Arte Cabalistica. Trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994.
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Ed. Melvyn New and Joan New. London: Penguin, 2003.
“The Boucca Society.” Pagan Heart. 20 February 2008.
http://www.pagan-heart.co.uk/worldmoots/newzealandmoots.html
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