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

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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION of secular history. This hierohistory is also, by its essence, a radical innovation, a new creation, hitherto unseen. The true relationship is expressed, moreover, in a remarkable symbol. 2. From the Temple of Ezekiel to the Johannine city-temple. The symbol in question is a magnificent window in Chartres cathedral, which shows the apostle John perched on the shoulders of the prophet Ezekiel. 280 This symbol by itself makes the relationship between the vision and theology of the Temple in Ezekiel (see above, section III, 4) and the Johannine vision of the Nova Hierosolyma quite clear: fundamentally they are in agreement, but in the second new heights are reached. To reach these heights, however, it is necessary to be carried by Ezekiel himself higher than his own vision. "And he [one of the seven Angels] carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God" (Rev. 21:10). Ezekiel, too, relates how "In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south" (Ezek. 40:2). The temple contemplated by the visionary Ezekiel is already a city-temple just as the city contemplated by John is a city-temple. Here, our inquiry should complete the parallel previously established (see above, sections III and V) between the Ezekelian theology of the Temple and that of the Community of Qumran, by establishing another parallel between the Qumran vision of the Nova Hierosolyma and the Johannine vision. 281 For the present we must confine ourselves to pointing out what there is in common between the Ezekelian and Johannine visions of the new Temple. Common to the Temple in both visions is the geometrical layout, whose symbolism is such as to characterize an Imago Templi common to the esotericism of the entire Abrahamic tradition. In Ezekiel's city-temple, whose name is "the Lord is there", the four sides of the perfect square each have three gates (north, south, east and west): twelve gates in all, the 280 There is a beautiful reproduction of this in Paul Popesco's hook, La Cathedrale de Chartres, Chefs-d'oeuvre du Vitrail europeen (Paris, Bibliotheque des Arts, 1970), fig. 40, window 95 (south), and p. 140: "The evangelist appears like 'a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant', meaning that the evangelists are lesser then the prophets, but see further because they are more highly-placed." 281 Cf. Shozo Fujita, Temple Theology, pp. 306-316, the final chapter entitled 'The book of Ezekiel and the fragments of "New Jerusalem'". 380 THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION name of each corresponding respectively to the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel (Ezek. 48:30-35). In the Revelation of John (21:12), the city-temple, the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, "had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel". There are three gates in each of the four sides of the square. Furthermore, the city wall had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles (Rev. 21:13-14). Another parallel completes this one. Twelver Shiite prophetology always establishes a correspondence between the number of twelve Imams, and the twelve heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve springs that gushed from the rock struck by the staff of Moses. And Shiite gnosis, most notably in the work of Qadi Sa'id Qummi, meditates in this sense on the cubic form of the Temple of the Ka'bah, which corresponds to the form of the city-temple in Ezekiel and John. In the twelve edges of the cube, Shiite gnosis perceives the symbol of the twelve Imams, who are the spiritual temple because they are par excellence the ministers of the esoteric aspect of the prophetic revelation. The very structure of the Temple thus betokens the structure of the pleroma of the eternal prophetic Reality, and the Temple of the Ka'bah is transfigured into a spiritual Temple. 282 In this way there emerges an Imago Templi that is common to all three branches of the Abrahamic tradition. Through the mediation of their esotericists, they are finally reunited in the mystical Jerusalem, in the same spiritual city. Next, there is the Johannine statement: "And I saw no temple therein [in the city]" (Rev. 21:22); for the Temple is the Lord God himself and his Christ. Jewish eschatology itself, it is true, makes the new Jerusalem into the symbol of the unity not just of Israel, but of humanity, and John relates his vision to this great hope by making the city-temple the centre of the world. But is not a future Jerusalem without a temple something unthinkable, unacceptable for the Jewish sense of piety? In reply, Ezekiel himself and, closer to our time, Swedenborg, prepare the way for 282 Cf. my study on 'The Configuration of the Temple of the Ka'bah', published above. See also my 'Science traditionnelle et Renaissance spirituelle', op. cit. (in fine, on the meaning of the coat of arms chosen for the Universite Saint-Jean de Jerusalem). 283 "Das zukiinftige Jerusalem ohne Tempel, ein fur die alte Synagoge unvollziehbarer Gedanke", Strack und Billerbeck, III, 852, cited in R. J. McKelvey, op. cit., p. 175 note 2. 381
THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION the hermeneutic. Does not God say, in the Book of Ezekiel (11:16): ". . . yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary"? (see above, section III, 2). There are thus two essential aspects to be taken into account. 284 a. It would indeed be disconcerting if the new Jerusalem had no temple. What John means is that the temple of the new Jerusalem is God himself and his Christ (Rev. 21:22), and the intimacy proclaimed in Ezekiel between God and man is experienced on an even higher level. The veils or barriers between God and men disappear in the new Jerusalem. "And they shall see his face" (Rev. 22:4). b. Another aspect, leading back to the first, is that the new Jerusalem is itself the Temple: it is all Temple, the city-temple. Not only is God a temple for the believers., as in Ezekiel; the believers are also a temple for God (cf. the Community-temple of Qumran; above, section V, 2. See also Rev. 3:12: the believers become pillars in the Temple and bear the name of the new Jerusalem). The city-temple is in the form of a cube (as is also the Ka'bah; see above), like the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon (I Kgs. 6:20). The new Jerusalem and the Temple are one and the same thing. Better still, the new Jerusalem is itself the new Heaven and the new Earth. Let us note, too, that when John speaks of God as the temple of the believer, and of the believer as the temple of God, he does not signify the same thing as when one speaks of the Church as the Temple of God. He is not describing the Temple alone, but the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the Temple. Thereby the necessity for Christian esotericism is also established (see above, section VI, 1—5). Consequently, the Johannine Imago Templi is the symbol of the ultimate and final communion between God and his people, the fulfilment of the Ezekelian promise: "They will be his people and God himself shall dwell amongst them". The divine Presence—"the dwelling of God amongst them"—which believers are privileged to experience on earth, will not be taken away from them when they die. In the world to come they will still have that privilege. This is what it means to become "a pillar in the temple of my God" (Rev. 3:12), and to enjoy the immediate vision of the divine (Rev. 21:22, 22:4). There alone will the mystical epic of all Templar chivalry be consummated, for it is not in this world that man's goal and destiny are to be sought. 284 For what follows, see McKelvey's apposite observations in ibid., pp. 175-177, 187. 382 THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION 3. The "Nova Ecclesia" in Swedenborg. The entire spiritual oeuvre of the great eighteenth-century visionary theosopher Swedenborg is dominated by the idea of the Nova Hierosolyma, signifying the Nova Ecclesia whose annunciator and prophet it was Swedenborg's mission to be. His hermeneutic of chapter XXI of the Revelation is in some sense the recapitulation of his entire doctrine. "The whole of this chapter," he writes, "treats of the Lord's Advent, and of the new church to be established by him. It is this new church which is meant by Jerusalem . . ." 285 We should therefore study the whole doctrine of the new Jerusalem; but we will confine ourselves here to the commentary on the chapter in question, which has the virtue of reminding us of the laws of imaginal visionary perception (angelic hierognosis in Swedenborg). The hermeneutic of the Imago Templi illustrates how esoteric and exoteric, by virtue of these very laws, are inseparable. 286 The heavenly Jerusalem is perceived first of all by the visionary of the Apocalypse as the holy city; immediately afterwards, he contemplates it as a young betrothed maiden. In the doctrine of Swedenborg the two images, superimposed one upon the other, are symbolic visions, an exemplary case of correspondence. The very idea of such a correspondence presupposes the ontological reality of what we, in common with our Islamic theosophers, have called the mundus imaginalis and, consequently, the necessary perception of things at "the meeting-place of the two seas". Symbolically or "representationally", the new Jerusalem is perceived as a city; in its spiritual reality it is perceived as a betrothed maiden. This, observes Swedenborg, is exactly what happens for the Angels when they see, read or hear in the Word something to do with a city. In the thought of the lower-ranking Angels, it is still perceived as a city. In the thought of the Angels of a higher order, it is perceived as the Nova Ecclesia with respect to the doctrine. But by virtue of the law of correspondences, which ensures the plenary reality sui generis of the visionary Images that immediately translate the inner state of those who perceive them, the holy city is perceived in the thought of the still higher-ranking Angels as a most beautiful maiden, clothed in garments that correspond to the attributes of 285 Emanuel Swedenborg, The Apocalypse Revealed (London, The Swedenborg Society (Inc.), 1878), vol. II, art. 880, pp. 705-706. 286 On Swedenborg's hermeneutics and the meaning of the Antiquissima, Antiqua and Nova Ecclesia, cf. H. Corbin, 'Hermeneutique spirituelle comparee: I. Swedenborg. II. Gnose ismaelienne', in Face de Dieu, face de I'Homme (Paris, Flammarion, 1983). 383
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