"Scrolls"

"Another Way of Being"

Chapter 26, Scrolls

Towards the end of the Summer term I spent a lot of time with Chris. We were planning our journey.

I had a list of things I wanted to see. They were mostly paintings or sculpture or mosaics. I had got interested in some of them after reading Goethe’s Italianreise. But many of them were to do with my recent interest in early Christian art and the art of the Renaissance. Fortunately, these were interests which Chris shared.

We had decided we would each make a record of our travels in the form of an illustrated diary or portfolio. We would make sketches or paintings of what we saw. We would be travelling rough at times, so we had to find the right sort of journal or sketchbook to take with us. The journal had to be big enough for sketching, but it had to be small enough to cram into a rucksack.

I found the answer while burrowing through piles of old art books in a shop in Cecil Court. I used to spend a lot of time in the bookshops around Charing Cross Road and Cecil Court. There was a bookshop for dance and ballet that I particularly loved, and there was a bookshop for everything to do with theatre. But it was in a shop that specialised in art books that I found my ream of deckled paper.

‘Deckled’ paper is paper without straight edges. Handmade paper is made sheet-by-sheet and is pressed in a frame (‘Deckel’ in German). When you take the sheet out of the frame the edges are beautifully ragged. The edges are usually trimmed subsequently in a paper cutter – but some artists prefer to work with the paper in its original ‘deckled’ form. I am one of them.

The ream of paper that I found was made of cotton paper – paper that is made of pulped cotton rags. It had a wonderful texture for drawing in pencil or charcoal, and it had a beautiful subtle ivory colour. I assumed it would be fabulously expensive, but the shop owner took pity on me when I told him what it was for and he let me have it at a fraction of the correct price. It was old paper, he said, and not many people would want it. And besides, he added, it wasn’t often that a customer appreciated that kind of paper.

I struggled home on a bus with my ream of paper. The next day I went to a leather workshop that Penny recommended and I bought an unstained water-buffalo hide. It was fairly cheap because it was ‘vintage’ leather from a working animal – which was another way of saying it was full of holes and flaws. But it was big enough for me to cut two good pieces from it that were large enough for my purposes.

I cut two leather covers in A3 size and I stitched ‘signatures’ of paper into the covers with goatskin thong. When I had finished I had two substantial sketchbooks that could be rolled up like scrolls. They were tough enough to survive travelling, and they could easily be stuffed into a rucksack. As a finishing touch I attached a leather tie-strap to each book as a fastener.

‘They look like the Dead Sea Scrolls,’ said Chris.

‘Do they really?’ I asked.

‘Well, not particularly. But they certainly look ancient.’

…..

That summer I was also getting interested in scrolls of another kind. I found a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was the first time I heard of the fact that the Bible was not the only scripture that could claim to be ‘Christian’. The Bible was in fact a highly selective collection of scriptures that had been chosen by the Church in a long process of political manoeuvring and acrimonious debate during the fourth century. The Bible contains those scriptures that supported the views of the winning side. The Bible excluded all those scriptures which did not support the prevailing ideology. From now on what the Bible contained was Divine Truth. All other scriptures were condemned as heretical.

As a child I had always thought of the Bible as a unified book, and I had assumed that there was a seamless continuity between the Old and New Testaments. I was astonished to discover that the two sections of the Bible had almost nothing to do with each other.

Nietzsche once remarked that there was a subtlety in the fact that when God wanted to become an author He learnt Greek – and that He learnt it so badly.

Almost all of the New Testament is written in Greek. But it is not the Greek of Plato. It is koine Greek – slum Greek, the Greek of the marketplace. Greek was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world for centuries. For most speakers of koine Greek it was a second language. It was the language they learnt in order to do business. The people who spoke koine had no interest in literature or philosophy. Most of them probably couldn’t read or write. But this was the language chosen by the scribes of the New Testament because it was the common dialect – it was the best way to reach the crowd.

Because the New Testament is ‘scripture’ we tend to approach it with reverence and to reflect deeply on every phrase. We find all sorts of subtle meanings and profound meanings that aren’t actually there. Most of the New Testament is comprised of a vicious spat between Saint Peter and Saint Paul as they struggle for dominance amongst the followers of the dead ‘Jesus’. Peter tries to steer the faithful in the direction of traditional Judaism, while Paul insists on interpreting the life and ‘sacrifice’ of Jesus in the language of Hellenistic mystery religions. Paul skews everything in the direction of Hellenism because Paul – earlier Saul of Tarsus – was an initiate of Mithraism. Paul’s Mithraic background has long been suspected by scholars, but the Church prefers to ignore their arguments. The version of Mithraism that Paul touted was his own invention. It was a debased and vulgarised Mithraism that offered instant salvation in exchange for ‘faith’. It was Paul’s crass theology that finally triumphed.

The New Testament is largely composed of character assassination and self-justification, embroidered by fairy tale accounts of angelic visitations and virgin birth. It is an old coat that has been handed down and patched and re-patched time after time in order to fit the latest wearer. But because it is ‘scripture’ we expect it to be beautiful and profound – and our imagination makes it so.

There is one word in the New Testament which occurs again and again, but which hardly ever receives attention. This is partly because it is usually translated by a word that sounds archaic and quaint. It is translated as ‘Behold!’ But there is nothing archaic or quaint about the word in the original Greek. It is the Greek word ‘idou’! and it simply means ‘Look!’. It is an imperative, and it means literally ‘Open your eyes!’ – ‘Look for yourself!’

It is the one command in this rag-bag collection of ‘scriptures’ that deserves our serious attention.

…..

It was Gerard Manley Hopkins who made me open my eyes and look for myself.

It is ironic that it was Fr Rieu who first introduced me to the poetry of Hopkins. Fr Rieu thought of Hopkins as a Jesuit priest and a good Catholic. He was certainly both of those things, but he was also much more. He was above all else a man whose nature was riddled with contradictions.

Hopkins had an extraordinary sensibility. He lived in his senses – especially in the sense of sight – and his sensual perceptions explode directly into the words of his poetry. Hopkins’ poetry cannot be read with the eye. It needs to be performed. It must be spoken aloud – declaimed or sung or chanted aloud. And if you can dance to it better still.

I found Hopkins’ poems difficult at first. The lines of words are wound tightly upon themselves like a coiled spring. You have to read them many times before they unwind – but they then unwind suddenly, explosively.

Hopkins had an extraordinary eye for beauty. He doesn’t see things, he sees into things and through things, and his words capture that vision and reveal it again. This is equally true whether he is describing a flower or a landscape or the sky. It is also true of his descriptions of boys.

But there is a danger in this. To be so in love with the world and to respond so sensuously to it is a danger for the good Christian man. For this world is not as God intended it to be. Beauty is danger and temptation, and for a Christian the love of beauty is a sweating devil that needs to be curbed and tamed. Perhaps that is why Hopkins mostly chose to write in the most difficult forms of verse. The form is a discipline. It is a classical cage for the tiger of sensuality. The caged tiger, alas, grows only more fierce.

Perhaps it also why Hopkins chose to become a priest. Hopkins was queer. He was a queer with the aesthetic sensibility of Oscar Wilde. He never compared himself with Oscar Wilde, but he did once compare himself to Walt Whitman. In a letter to his friend Robert Bridges Hopkins wrote that he believed Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like his own mind than that of any other living man. He added that he regretted this, as he considered Whitman to be a scoundrel.

Hopkins was a beautiful boy. A portrait of him painted by his aunt survives. He was thirteen at the time. He has locks of golden hair and his features bring to mind the paintings of Burns-Jones. He was a sissy boy. But he was a sissy boy with a will of iron.

A remarkable story survives from Hopkins’ school days. It comes from around the same the time that his aunt painted his portrait, so Hopkins must have been about thirteen. He got into an argument with one of his classmates. It was a pointless argument of the sort that boys often get involved in. Hopkins was of the opinion that people generally drank too much liquid and that they could survive on much less. His friend disagreed, and they made a bet on it. Hopkins declared he would go for a week without drinking anything.

On the fifth day of his bet, during a games lesson on the school playing field, Hopkins collapsed with dehydration. He had lost his bet.

It was Hopkins’ body that collapsed on that occasion. It was his body that failed, not his will. The opposition between one’s bodily nature and one’s will came to dominate Hopkins’ thinking in later years. Eventually it dominated his life as well. Hopkins spent his life denying and suppressing his sexual nature.

It was something I also thought about a lot when I was a teenage boy. Chris’s mother had said I was an ‘unnatural’ boy. Was it in my power to change my nature? Could I will myself to be different? And did I want to be different?

…..

That summer I also came upon a scroll of a different kind. It was a hand-written manuscript and it filled three large manila envelopes. It was in the neat handwriting of my Grandfather, and it came with the parcel of books that Owen Duane sent from Ireland.

The papers had a faint smell of musk or amber. It was a scent I remembered from my Grandfather’s study at Liscannor. There were many crossings-out and corrections to the text. There were also bundles of pages that were actual ‘scrolls’ of rolled paper tied with elastic. I wasn’t sure at first whether what I was looking at was a single document, or a collection of several. From the different kinds of paper and the changes in the hand-writing I had the impression that these pages had been written one by one over a long period. I hoped there might be a letter to me enclosed amongst the papers, and I searched for one. But there was nothing. I put the papers together again in the order in which they had first come, and I began to read.

I began to read out of a sense of curiosity and partly out of a sense of duty. It seemed that my Grandfather had taken trouble to preserve these papers even though he had not made a final ‘fair copy’ of them, so I assumed they were important. When I looked over the first few pages I thought I was reading a historical study or a biography. This didn’t come as a surprise. Most of my Grandfather’s writing had been articles for scientific periodicals, but he had also written essays on History and Religion. But none of that would have prepared me for what I was reading now. It only dawned on me slowly that I was reading a love story.

It was the story of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and the boy that he loved.

…..

I did not know a lot about Roman Emperors and the little that I knew did not make me want to know more. But Hadrian - as my Grandfather made clear in the opening pages of his manuscript - was different.

I read:

“Nobody doubts that Hadrian was one of the greatest Emperors of Rome – perhaps even the greatest of all. His life is well-documented. And he left to the world a remarkable ‘biography in marble’ – the extraordinary number of wonderful buildings which he commissioned and inspired. Yet for all that we know about the Emperor Hadrian, Hadrian the man remains an enigma.

Hadrian was not a conqueror, but he was in every respect a soldier. Hadrian’s predecessor, Trajan, had expanded the borders of the Empire to their greatest extent. Hadrian viewed the Empire’s borders with the cold eye of a soldier. He shed those frontier territories which he did not consider worth defending. He re-drew the Empire’s borders within defensible limits, and he invested in defences. The famous wall that divides the North of the British Isles, and which bears Hadrian’s name, marked one of the newly drawn borders. But he built even more extensive defences along the rivers Rhine and Danube to hold the troublesome Germanic tribes in check. Within these borders the Empire flourished as never before and its citizens enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity. The prosperity was accompanied by an extraordinary creativity in the arts. This was the Empire’s ‘saeculum aureum’ the ‘Age of Gold’. It was in this period, if at any time, that Roman culture achieved parity with that of Ancient Greece

Hadrian was a soldier. If you want to know what it means to be a soldier, you would find the answer by studying the life of Hadrian. He joined the army when he was a teenager. Despite his noble birth he rose through the ranks until he became a general. This was not unusual. In the Roman army promotion to the rank of general came through merit, not through social status.

Hadrian differed from other generals in that he chose to live the life of a soldier. He regularly marched with his troops and he slept alongside them. He shared the harsh conditions of the army camp and he exposed himself to the same dangers as his men. This was Hadrian’s command style as a general, and it continued to be his style even after he became Emperor. He rarely visited Rome He spent the vast majority of his reign at the frontiers of the Empire with his legions.

It is a paradox that this most soldierly of Emperors was also the most cultivated. Hadrian was a passionate patron of the arts, but above all he was a passionate Hellenist. He loved Greek art and Greek culture and the Greek language – so much so that he earned the nickname ‘Graeculous’ – ‘the Greekling’.

For Hadrian the life of a soldier was not a profession. It was a spiritual journey. Hadrian was an initiate of Mithras.
…..

“Scholars have shown a remarkable lack of intelligence and imagination when writing about the process of Mithraic initiation. They have perhaps been influenced by Christian writers of later centuries who did their best to ridicule Mithraism by giving distorted accounts of initiation ceremonies. But in addition to this they have failed to grasp that Mithraism involved a spiritual training and that the initiations make sense only in the context of this training.

The Mithraic initiate of the fourth degree and above passed through ‘twelve tortures’. He suffered hunger and thirst. He exposed himself to extremes of heat and cold. He exposed himself to danger and he struggled to master his fear. The ‘tortures’ were not limited to ceremonial rituals as scholars and critics have generally supposed. The ‘tortures’ were a way of life.

Hadrian’s practice of accompanying his legions on military campaigns was inspired as much by his religious convictions as by military necessity. This was a man who drove himself relentlessly and who deliberately chose a life of physical hardship and self-denial. His diet was sparse. His main recreation – hunting – was also one that involved great physical exertion and danger. Hadrian was pursuing the Mithraic ideal that was expressed in the initiations: he tamed his body until it became the perfect instrument of his will.

Many busts and statues of the Emperor Hadrian survive. They show a good-looking man with a strong physique and a face that suggests a powerful and determined character. But there is a curious detail that I noticed many years ago when I was first studying medicine. Portraits of Hadrian show marked creases in the lobes of each ear. These lobar creases run diagonally across the lobe and are strongly pronounced. They are a typical symptom of problems with the coronary arterial system.

In Hadrian’s case they perhaps indicate a genetic tendency to arterial disease. His vigorous lifestyle probably delayed the onset of the disease into his fifties, but after that age his frequent travelling and the stresses involved in his political life will have exacerbated the symptoms of the disease. We know from contemporary accounts that Hadrian suffered a great deal of pain in his final years – particularly the constricting and acute chest pains that are associated with angina and arteriosclerosis.

Despite his privileged background Hadrian’s life had not been easy. His parents died when he was nine. In his twenties he found himself in a loveless marriage with a woman who refused to bear his children. The main comfort of his life was his love of boys.

There was nothing unusual about Hadrian’s taste for boys, and his contemporaries would not have considered it discreditable. On the contrary, the love of boys was divinely inspired. It was considered to be purer and more noble than the love of women. Hadrian indulged his passion for boys with a good conscience and we must suppose that his boy lovers were the chief solace of his life.

But this too was to lead to tragedy and suffering in his final years.”

…..

“I am writing this account of Hadrian because I believe he has not been treated fairly by historians. Hadrian made himself unpopular with the people who count - with the people who count when it comes to writing history. Hadrian was adored by his soldiers, but his soldiers were mostly illiterate, and in any case after two millennia their opinion counts for nothing. What we know for certain is that Hadrian made himself extremely unpopular amongst politicians and bureaucrats. The reasons are not hard to find.

On his infrequent visits to Rome Hadrian busied himself with only two things: the beautification of the city by the erection of splendid public buildings, and the purification of the city by the eradication of corruption. It was his battle against corruption that earned him the resentment of the bureaucracy and the political classes. It was these people who ultimately wrote his history.

Despite the hostility to his reforms, Hadrian’s fight against corruption was largely successful. Hadrian was a big spender. He set up numerous welfare projects for the poor in Rome, and he embarked on a colossal programme of public building. All this had to be paid for. The astonishing thing is that it was paid for without an increase in public taxation. This was possible because Hadrian put an end to the waste and profligacy of his predecessors, and he stamped out the widespread practice of embezzlement within the public sector. He made a lot of enemies in the process, but he also won over a sizeable portion of the state bureaucracy. Under Hadrian the ideals of public service became honesty and integrity. These were the practical ideals of Mithraism.

Like many of the emperors of Rome Hadrian was a Mithraist. He was exceptional only in that he practised his religion so seriously. He was also interested in other religions, in particular the Eleusinian Mysteries. There was no contradiction in this. The Roman approach to religion was highly syncretic. To the Roman mind the Eleusinian Mysteries were simply Mithraism in another guise.

In the year AD123, on one of his numerous tours, Hadrian passed through Greece. At Samothrace, on the Aegean, he was initiated into the mysteries of Cabiri. The following year, in Athens, Hadrian was initiated into the rites of Demeter at Eleusis. Later the same year he was initiated into the Mysteries of Dionysus. On this extended tour Hadrian was accompanied by a young boy whom he had met in the Greek province of Bithynion. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old. He was a boy of exceptional beauty and his name was Antinous.

In the Eleusinian Mysteries Hadrian would have encountered the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic drugs - particularly the Amanita Muscari mushroom.

Amanita Muscari had been used by the Hellenistic mystery religions for centuries. We can be confident that it was used in Mithraic ceremonies too, though there is no written record to confirm this.

In appearance the Amanita Muscari resembles the popular idea of the ‘toadstool’. It has a bright red cap with flaky white spots. It looks poisonous and it is.

But the Amanita Muscari is very rarely fatal. It induces different symptoms in different people. If you are unlucky it will induce nausea, dizziness, sweating and panic. If the mushroom is kindly disposed to you it will induce euphoria, a profound sense of relaxation, and a remarkable range of hallucinations. Some have speculated that Amanita Muscari is the source of the magical drug ‘soma’ of the ancient Vedas. I have my doubts about that. During my time in India I encountered a wide variety of drugs, but Amanita Muscari was not one of them.

Its use in the Hellenistic mystery religions is easy to understand. Amanita Muscari disposes you to see visions and to dream dreams. It produces a heightened awareness and an increased sensitivity to visual and auditory impressions. In this mood a man is ready to encounter his gods.

The symptoms are usually over within 24 hours, but its profounder effects can last for many days.”

…..


‘You will see god in the form of a beautiful boy, his hair is gold-coloured like fire and he wears a fiery crown; he is dressed in white and has a cloak of scarlet.’
Inscription on the wall of a temple to Mithras…..
…..

The noise of the trumpets and cymbals in the low chamber is deafening, and the noise is intensified by the darkness. The air is thick with the smoke of incense. You can sense the bodies around you by the waves of heat that come from them.

The music ceases abruptly. In the silence you hold your breath and you count the seconds passing. The voice of the Father finally speaks.

‘You will see god in the form of a beautiful boy, his hair is gold-coloured like fire and he wears a fiery crown; he is dressed in white and has a cloak of scarlet.’

Then there comes a dazzling light. And there, at the end of the Mithraeum, you see an astonishing vision. It is Apollo, the beautiful boy god – only a thousand times more comely and beautiful than you had ever imagined. The light quickly fades and the vision fades with it. The air is thick with the smoke from the spent flares. Bells are ringing again, cymbals are clashing. The noise and the scent and the smoke overwhelm your senses, but your mind clings desperately to the vision that you glimpsed so briefly. It lasted only as long as it takes to draw a breath, but it is unforgettable. You have seen eternal beauty in the form of a boy.