Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
Community to experience the jam and the nondum with the difference
between them abolished and the abyss between them filled in. This is so
because the Community experiences itself as the intermediary place uniting
God's celestial habitation with his earthly habitation: the Temple of the
kingdom, "the unique sanctuary where, in an intimately synchronized
liturgy, the worship of men and the worship of Angels conjoin". 156 Needless
to say, the symbolism of the Temple is not the cause which enables the
Community to believe in the present realization of eschatological salvation.
It is one of the modes—and an exalted mode at that—of envisaging the
presence of the final salvation. 157
Once this realized eschatology is seen as essentially linked to the motif
of Paradise and of the restoration of Adam, the Anthropos, to the state of
Paradise, it has to be safeguarded by a conception of a time which is other
than the time of History; for otherwise the motif in question will be
relegated to the imaginary, and will not be stabilized on the level of the
mundus imaginalis as a reality sui generis in its own right: the reality in which
the events of hierohistory or "subtle" history take place. For all visionary
events take place and have their place in the subtle time of this subtle
history, whenever the invisible world, disclosing itself to the seer, sets him
in the company of the Angels.
This is what happens in the great visionary scene that takes up the
whole of chapter III of the Book of Zechariah. The high priest Joshua is
defended from Satan by the Angel of Yahveh himself. The Angels remove
his soiled clothes and clothe him in festal garments (3:4). And the Angel of
Yahveh utters the solemn promise in the name of the Lord of hosts:
the Temple of Jerusalem, rebuilt and purified, will once more be filled
with the divine Presence. It will once more be the place filled with the
company of Angels, because there is no gap, no hiatus between the
celestial and the earthly Temples. "Ecce enim adduco servum meum
Orientem" (3:8). "Ecce vir, Oriens nomen ejus et subter eum orietur et
156 A. Jaubert, op. cit., p. 191.
157 D. E. Aune, op. cit., p. 37. But if one can say that what differentiates the concept of
the eschaton as a restitutio principii, as professed at Qumran and in Jewish apocalyptic
literature in general, in relation to other religions, is the conception of the theophanic
nature of history, it is still necessary to specify that this is not History in the
ordinary, current sense of the word, but a hierohistory; and the time of this
hierohistory, in which the events proper to it take place, is no longer the time of
profane history. The hierohistoric recital is by its essence a "hierology". Cf. below,
note 170.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
aedificabit templum Domino" (6:12). 158 This promise is addressed by the
Angel to "Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before
thee" (3:8), who are described as "men who serve as signs or portents"
(viri portendentes). This very same expression is used to describe the companions
of the psalmist of Qumran. 159 There is a knowledge which man,
through his communion with the Angels, is called upon to share. The
Angels are the "knowers" par excellence. "You have charged man with an
eternal destiny in the company of the Spirits of knowledge . . ." It is this
that, a few lines above, made us keep the Latin of the Vulgate: Ecce vir,
Oriens nomen ejus. The Angel's knowledge is knowledge of the Orient "in the
Orient" of things, knowledge which is "oriental" in the metaphysical sense
of the word: the cognitio matutina, a term whose exact equivalent is the 'ilm
ishraqi found in Suhravardi, who resurrected the ancient Persian theosophy
of Light in Islamicized Iran. Oriens is the type of man realized by all
the sons of Light.
Naturally, the esoteric character of this knowledge or gnosis need not
surprise us. It has long been known from the historian Josephus that the
Essenes pledged themselves "not to reveal the names of the Angels", for
this is one of the mysteries about which the initiate does not speak lightly
in front of anyone. But this does not mean that, on the level of Qumran
angelology, it is not fitting to note, as Annie Jaubert does so well, the
expansive breath of cosmic communion which inspires the piety of the
faithful. The word ecclesia is taken here, of course, in its etymological sense,
connoting the idea of a liturgical assembly. It would therefore be simpler
to say just "the Temple", since the union of the celestial and the terrestrial
communities is, indeed, the Temple. Bearing this in mind, we can subscribe
to the following lines: "On entering into the covenant of the Community,
which was by definition the Covenant of God, the new member was
involved in an immense ecclesia, both of Angels and of men, of which it
could perhaps be said without paradox that it was more celestial than
earthly. It was the communion of the sons of Light, of the sons of truth, of
the "Saints", whether of heaven or of earth. Beyond was the world of
darkness, where Belial and his troop of evil spirits exercised their perverse
158 What the Vulgate translates as Oriens is often translated as "branch". We prefer
the former, with its distant echoes of the concept of the Ishraq and the Ishraqiyun
(the "Orientals") in Suhravardi ('ilm ishraqi, "oriental" knowledge, cognitio matutina).
Cf. a-bove, note 89.
159 Cf. A. Jaubert, op. cit., p. 190.
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