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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34723 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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In my circles on twitter, the Mystical Christianity conversation is cropping up again. It tends to come around every few months, at least for the past year I've been on the site.

Tyler Alterman writes a long post on it that is mostly summed up here:

There’s an emerging branch of mystical Christianity that is very intriguing. I think of it as “Imaginal Christianity” (IC). You could also call it Mythic Christianity or Jungian Christianity

IC’s main selling point is that it’s compatible with a scientific mindset. I list the tenets I’ve observed below. By doing so, I try to document what I see ppl practicing. (I am not an Imaginal Christian.)

God = the ground of being. It is both presence and void, shows its love by embracing all things that exist & affording the path to salvation through communion with it

“The Lord”: a useful anthropomorphism of god. ICs use imagination to turn something incomprehensible (god) into an imaginal presence that we can speak to and which speaks to us through words, silence, and beyond

Jesus of Nazareth: a person who came much closer than most people to theosis – ie embodying how god would behave if it acted in human form with full recognition of its own nature. By doing so, Jesus genuinely did show us a path to salvation. (Although – here’s the heretical part – other people like Gautama Buddha might show us a complementary paths.) Thanks to the degree that Jesus was charismatic and the degree to which his followers admired him, they created and/or realized an imaginal being called Christ

Christ: a mind that continues to guide humans to salvation, directly inspired by Jesus of Nazareth (whose body is now dead). There are many names for the nature of this type of mind: thoughtform, tulpa, egregore, archetype, living symbol, yidam, memetic entity. His metaphysical status is similar to the way Tibetan lamas seem to regard their deities, as manifestations of Mind. This doesn’t make him less divine; he represents a latent divine potential available to all people. We see archetypes similar to Christ manifest across cultures: Osiris, Dionysus, Krishna, etc. However, Christ is is our culture’s instantiation of the archetype – his specific teachings and the story of his life are meaningful to us

Now to broaden this outside of just Christianity, I'm curious what the Motte thinks of symbolism as a whole? I will admit my own path back to religion came via a symbolic pathway, although I believe it goes far deeper than this.

That being said, from my short time here it seems like most of the Christians on this site aren't that into symbolism, and tend to be more "rationalist" and materialist in their worldview. Again, might have a mistaken impression.

I know this is a rationalist offshoot forum so not sure I expect a ton of mystical/symbolic discussion, but I'm kind of surprised by how little there is given how many professed religious folks there are here. And I do think from a Culture War angle, that materialism is definitely losing steam (especially amongst the right) as we see more and more cracks form in the edifice of Expert Scientific Opinion(tm).

On a deeper note, the symbolic worldview is all about seeing the world through the language of God (or meaning if you prefer), in a way that helps people bind together and understand events in the same way. Right now we are in "darkness" symbolically because, well, nobody can interpret events the same way! I personally think a return to the symbolic is inevitable given how confused everything is at the moment, although the transition may not be smooth or easy.

Now to broaden this outside of just Christianity, I'm curious what the Motte thinks of symbolism as a whole?

I remember really liking "Being as Communion" by Fr Alexander Schmemann, though it's been a while, so I don't remember it in any detail. Also "The Universe as Sign and Symbol" by Fr. Nikolai Velimirovich, though in general his poetry compilation "Prayers by the Lake" is better. In general things like holy water and blessing more things, not only Communion, is good -- we should bless things more. There's a grape blessing, blessed oil, blessed basil, and so on. This is good! I don't have a strong opinion on whether anointing people with oil from a shrine does something in particular or not, but still think that kind of thing is a good tradition.

Last night I was listening to Jonathan Pageau talk about art and stories and Orthodox art and so on, and it was mostly what everyone has known and talked about most of my whole life, but still good. (My example, not his) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was an excellent book because it relied heavily on Christian symbolism, to the point of being basically about that, with also some sailing involved. The movie of the same was not very good because it stripped out most of the symbolism and replaced it with a video game style quest plot. If the entertainment industry were replaced by deists comfortable with Christian symbolism, that would be an improvement. His example was Snow White, both on account of the new movie, and because his small publishing company has made their own storybook version of the tale, and the illustrations do look very nice. I'm still not going to buy it, I don't like Snow White much, but would recommend it to anyone interested.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether anointing people with oil from a shrine does something in particular or not, but still think that kind of thing is a good tradition.

Here I have to quote one of my favourite poems by Yeats, it's very short but full of rich imagery:

Oil And Blood

In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli
Bodies of holy men and women exude
Miraculous oil, odour of violet.
But under heavy loads of trampled clay
Lie bodies of the vampires full of blood;
Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

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