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CRYSTALLISING the ANGELS –
A methodological proposal
By
June Boyce-Tillman MBE
Professor of Applied Music University of Winchester
Uk
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) Choir of Angels
Music is the echo of the glory and beauty of heaven.
And in echoing that glory and beauty, it carries human praise back to heaven
Data
• Historical texts of one kind or another,
• Theological expositions
• Artistic works (music, poetry, images, play, sculpture),
• Cultural studies material (from such disciplines as religious studies, broadly rooted in anthropology)
• Accounts of experiences from a variety of historical periods including the last century in the Alister Hardy Archive.
Popular Spirituality
• Classical engaged spirituality with established religions • Classical folk spirituality within established religions e.g. devotions
to saints • Holistic engaged spirituality such deep ecology, theosophy and so
on • Holistic ordinary spirituality such as holistic health, astrology and
wellness • Inner-worldly (secular spiritual practices using religious symbols
found engaged environmental, feminist and gay movements and human potential movements such as Scientology and business management spirituality )
• Spiritual fragments such as temporal devotions such as ‘silent marches and religious imagery in films, pop music.
• Jespers, Frank (2011), Investigating western popular spirituality. Chapter in Hense Elisabeth and Maas, Frank (2011, Towards a Theory of Spirituality, Leuven, Paris, Walpole MA: Peeters pp97-111 p110
SPIRIN - Spirituality International
• words, • things, • arts, • texts, • forms, • connections, • processes, • professions, • disciplines • theories.
Crystallization
Crystallization combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent text or series of related texts, building a rich and openly partial account of a phenomenon that problematizes its own construction, highlights researchers’ vulnerabilities and positionality, makes claims about socially constructed meanings, and reveals the indeterminacy of knowledge claims even as it makes them. (Ellingson 2009 p4)
Connection as a theme in well-being literature (John Habron)
7
Spirituality through connection
• InterGaian
• Intrapersonal
• Interpersonal
• Extra-personal
• Metaphysical
• Narrative
•
Methodologies
• Textual analysis of various kinds • Historical analysis • Feminist methodologies • Cultural analysis • Artistic methodologies • Auto ethnography • Action Research • Grounded Theory • Narrative analysis
Cognitive empathetic engagement as an ethnographic method
• Openness to the other
• Critical awareness of one’s own perspective
• Reluctance to move too quickly to explanation
• Inclusive of an anthropology of wonder. (Fiona Bowie 2014)
Question
• Why has the Sanctus held its place in Western culture?
Questions
• What is the relationship between fact and faith?
• What cultural shape have angels taken in function and in artistic representation?
• What effect do experiences of angels have on the lives of experiencers?
• What is the nature of the experience? Is it pathological or mystical?
• How are these experiences validated?
Pseudo-Dionysius
God has shown, according to revelations which are fitting to god, to his faithful servants in holy visions adapted to the nature of the seer. The divine theology, in the fullness of its wisdom, very rightly applies the name theophany to that beholding of god which shows the divine likeness, figured in itself as a likeness in form of that which is formless Pseudo-Dionysius Fox and Sheldrake(1996), p 45
•
Formlessness
Although air as long as it is in a state of rarefaction has neither shape nor colour, yet when condensed it can both be shaped and coloured as appears in the clouds. Even so the angels assume bodies of air, condensing it by the Divine power in so far as is needful for forming the assumed body.
• http://taylormarshall.com/2013/04/can-humans-see-bodiless-angels-answer.html May 18th 2015
Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica
TREATISE ON THE ANGELS
• Of the Substance of the Angels Absolutely Considered • Of the Angels in Comparison with Bodies • Of the Angels in Relation to Place • Of the Local Movement of the Angels • Of the Knowledge of the Angels • Of the Medium of the Angelic Knowledge • Of the Angels' Knowledge of Immaterial Things • Of the Angels' Knowledge of Material Things • Of the Mode of the Angelic Knowledge • The Will of the Angels • Of the Love or Dilection of the Angels • Of the Production of the Angels in the Order of Natural Being • Of the Perfection of the Angels in the Order of Grace and of Glory • The Malice of the Angels with Regard to Sin • The Punishment of the Demons • http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa/FP.html May 18th 2015
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? By Orange Julius
Insert the pin upright into a sturdy surface, such as a pin cushion or Styrofoam block. Begin playing "The Song That Doesn't End (Extended Version)" and instruct the angels to step onto the pin and begin dancing. Count each angel, stopping only when no more angels can dance on the pin, and remembering to make sure all of the angels are dancing on the pin and not just hovering above it, so as to avoid a potential source of error. Repeat several times, removing all angels from the pin after each trial. From these trials, determine the average number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
Further angel experiments
• Procure a copy of Maurice Durufle's "Ubi Caritas et
Amor" and repeat the experiment. Discuss the effect that music religious in nature has on your results.
• Does the type of dancing affect the number of angels who can dance? Experiment with such dancing styles as the foxtrot, the Electric Slide, and the clueless male arm flail.
• Discuss possible sources of error, such as pin imbalance, drunken angels who keep falling off of the pin's head, or angels who won't dance if they don't know the song.
Macrocosm
So we have the macrocosm of the celestial spheres and the microcosm of the human sphere. The angels are connectors, administrators, messengers that touch and connect the microcosm, the human being and integrate us with the sphere of cosmic forces…..
Microcosm
So the song of the angels is both microcosmic and macrocosmic:
This means that angels can be operating in small individual situations, as in the tradition of guardian angels, or in terms of nations, continents, planets, solar systems and galactic systems. (Fox and Sheldrake 1996)
The TEXTS: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th, early 6thcentury Celestial Hierarchies [His] vision is remarkable because, on the one hand, his understanding of hierarchy makes possible a rich symbolic system in terms of which we can understand God and the cosmos and our place within it, and, on the other, he finds room within this strictly hierarchical society for an escape from it, beyond it, by transcending symbols and realizing directly one's relationship with God as his creature, the creature of his love. There is space within the Dionysian universe for a multitude of ways of responding to God's love. Louth, Andrew, Dionysius the Areopagite, (London : Geoffrey Chapman, 1989)
Reissued by Continuum Press (London & New York) 2001 under the title
Denys the Areopagite.
The TEXTS: Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica (1265-1274)
The Annunciation
The Annunciation by El Greco
THE TEXTS: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) – The Choir of Angels
Praise the Trinity Our life-giving music. She is creating all things. Life itself is giving birth. And she is an angel chorus praising And the splendour of arcane mysteries, Which are too difficult to understand. Also from her true life springs for all .
The Vision of the Angels
Then I saw in the secret places in the heights of Heaven two armies of heavenly spirits who shone with great brightness. .. Those in the second army also had wings on their breasts….These armies were arrayed in the shape of a crown around five other armies. …. Those in the second shone with such great brightness that I could not look at them. Those in the third had the appearance of white marble and heads like human beads, over which torches were burning, and from the shoulders down they were surrounded by an iron-grey cloud. Those in the fourth had forms like human forms and feet like human feet, and wore helmets on their beads, and marble tunics. And those in the fifth had nothing human in their appearance, and shone red like the dawn… And all these armies were singing with marvellous voices all kinds of music about the wonders that God works in blessed souls, and by this God was magnificently glorified. And I heard the voice from Heaven, saying to me: God wonderfully formed and ordered His creation
Hildegard’s Visionary Experience
Then I too grew amazed at myself, that whenever I saw these things deep in my soul I still retained outer sight, and that I heard this said of no other human being. And, as best I could, I concealed the vision I saw in my soul. I was ignorant of much in the outer world, because of the frequent illness that I suffered, from the time of my mother's milk right up to now: it wore my body out and made my powers fail. Exhausted by all this, I asked a nurse of mine if she saw anything save external objects. 'Nothing', she answered, for she saw none of those others…. Then, realising that they came from God, he indicated this to his abbot, and from that time on he worked at this [writing down] with me, with great eagerness.
Hildegard’s Visionary Experiences
Then I too grew amazed at myself, that whenever I saw these things deep in my soul I still retained outer sight, and that I heard this said of no other human being. And, as best I could, I concealed the vision I saw in my soul. I was ignorant of much in the outer world, because of the frequent illness that I suffered, from the time of my mother's milk right up to now: it wore my body out and made my powers fail. Exhausted by all this, I asked a nurse of mine if she saw anything save external objects. 'Nothing', she answered, for she saw none of those others…. Then, realising that they came from God, he indicated this to his abbot, and from that time on he worked at this [writing down] with me, with great eagerness.
Nine orders in a hierarchy
• Seraphim, • Cherubim, • Thrones, • Dominations, • Virtues, • Powers, • Principalities, • Archangels • Angels
Copernican universe
Ottoman universe (1583 showing the universe, the
terrestrial globe, the seven stages of the sky, the zodiacs and the position of the 28 days of the lunar month)
Ptolemaic universe
The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist that first appeared
in Camille Flammarion’s L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888) pp. 163
The caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth
Protestantism and angels
The Protestant world view is very similar and they found kindred spirits in the Deuteronomists {who discouraged prophecy, denied Moses had seen God and generally denied and disliked the mystical realm]. The predominance of Protestants in the formative years of biblical scholarship in Europe and North America has ensured that their worldview is now widely thought to be the Old Testament worldview – emphasizing word rather than images – is now widely thought to be the biblical worldview. With the Reformation in Europe the might angels of the old Christian world became charming cherubs
The reduction fo the angels
Scientific rationalism abandoned angels, and so reduced religion to a private matter, severing the ancient link between human beings and the wider been great fragmentation presented as freedom, and no sense of belonging or of person, beyond that of producing and consuming. Despite all this, the great thinkers and innovators continued to recognize that the source of their creativity, their inspiration, lay outside themselves. They did not use the word angels – but they entertained angels unawares. (Barker (2003)
Contemporary thinking: Interconnectivity
We should put up a sign: angels needed. There’s plenty of work for angels in a period of interconnectivity.(Fox and Sheldrake 1996)
Contemporary Angels
• The benevolent guardian angel of the 1940’s was, of course, Superman. While a cloak replaced the wings, this expression of the all-powerful guardian archetype, who battled the evil dragons of satanic violence, greed and injustice, replaced the Archangel Michael in the popular imagination. (p203)
• If anyone imagines that the old Superman image of the 1940’s has lost its emotive charge then they should be directed to the Batman of 1989 which was the all-time box office hit. In this we have the age–old conflict of the good angel and the bad. (Godwin 1993 p207)
•
The Spiritual Experience in music (Boyce-
Tillman)
VALUES
SPIRITUALITY
MATERIALS
CONSTRUCTION EXPRESSION
Materials
What is playing?
What is it made of?
What technique is required?
What is the acoustic space?
EXPRESSION
Expression
What is the feelingful content of the music?
What memories or images does it evoke?
Are the emotions experienced
intrinsic to the music or extrinsic
(related to the performer or
listener)?
CONSTRUCTION
Construction
How is the music put together?
What is repeated and what is not?
How much contrast is there?
Can you follow the argument?
VALUES
Values
In what context is the music performed?
Why is it being performed?
How like the original context is this?
Have people paid to hear it?
What are the values of the culture in which the music originated and how is this reflected in the music?
VISUAL ART
• The Church allowed images of angels at the second council of
Nicaea in 787 and these were initially ethereal figures with no sexuality.
• As the natural sciences progressed , the angels acquired more flesh and sexual characteristics which were sometimes painted out by the Church authorities.
• The inclusion of wings in visual art suggests movement, soaring high and some sort of archetypal being of power.
• The design of the wings was adapted to reflect the scientific interest in the technology of flying.
• In the 15th century the designs stop developing except in the use of the round cherubic figures to fill small architectural spaces.
Malcolm Godwin’s Angels: An endangered species (1993)
Hildegard
• The Rupertsberg Scivias pictures, if they were painted as late as 1160-1179 are extremely conservative • Her art work contains the quality of living light • Deliberate archaism is deliberate stemming from a
resistance to depicting the visionary world in corporeal terms
• Before Hildegard’s death a changed attitude to naturalism had begun to transform the art of the region, as elsewhere in northern Europe to greater naturalism with draperies.
(Caviness p116)
The decline of Angels visually
• The disillusionment with religion around the Great Plague.
• The development of an interest in Hell and fallen angels with the rise of the Inquisition and burning of witches.
• Pre-Raphaelite angels in the late Victorian era and popularised through the religious postcard • The angel as re-emerging in popular figures, seeing the
concept of angel emerging not in a shape but in a function as we saw above in Batman and Superman
Paul Klee: Angel
In them we recognize ourselves, since they both represent the “human, all too human” and satisfy an existential need for reflection on the hereafter, on life after death. Their petty inadequacies bring heaven and earth closer together and turn them into congenial helpers.
Hopfengart, (2013)
Angelus Novus
The art of Paul Klee thus represents art with a view to somatising higher in it….It is no longer tied to a religious confession or Weltanschauung nor does it give expression to quasi-religions; it rather seeks, with dialectical consistency, to be a quasi-religion itself – as art. It embodies a striving for the absolute on the foundation of a secular concept of art. Its basic dogma – that the absolute is unattainable and that art is a medium of longing – is placed beyond doubt and its validity extended to every area of life. •
Angelus Militans
They [the angels} represent to soliloquy of a loner – one who though estranged from the church, nonetheless harboured a devout Protestant heart.
St Mary’s Balham
MUSIC: Handel’s Messiah
I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and God Himself seated on his throne, with his company of angels.
MUSIC: The Dream of Gerontius
• Soul Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be, And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me. There, motionless and happy in my pain Lone, not forlorn, - There will I sing my sad perpetual strain, Until the morn, There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, Which ne'er can cease To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest Of its Sole Peace. There will I sing my absent Lord and Love: - Take me away, That sooner I may rise, and go above, And see Him in the truth of everlasting day. Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be.
The Angel’s Farewell
• Angel Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul, In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And o'er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee. And carefully I dip thee in the lake, And thou, without a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. Angels to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as liest; And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest. Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
POETRY: Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (published 1923)
The First Elegy Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
PLAY: Ordo Virtutum
The Virtues/Powers are those angels that order the universe and in her play they give the soul the robe of faith which she abandons to go with the Devil. Eventually they get the soul back and chain the Devil. This – the earliest European musical play – brings into much greater detail the ideas of the angels as carrying
out the governance of the world.
Hildegard O vos angeli
PLAY: Dorothy Sayers The Zeal of Thine House
Avoiding sham archaism and the fusty language which is too often expected and provided in plays of period, it presents the Middle Ages as being very little removed in essentials from our own. Petrol and patent medicines have taken the place of the windlass and the faith-healing of the pilgrims, but human fallibility and the inspiration of the artist remain constant. The Archangels who from time to time descend into the arena and direct the destinies of the groundlings need not bewilder the reader or the spectator. They represent the Will of God, Fate, providence, Accident or what you will and, in the final scene, that bright flash of intuition which occasionally illuminates even the most clouded conscience. Laurence Irving http://archive.org/stream/zealofthyhouse012297mbp/zealofthyhouse012297mbp_djvu.txt May 18th 2015
LITERATURE: Philip Pullman
I was uneasy about the notion of using angels at all, until I realized that I could take a hint from Paradise Lost and view them not as actual beings but as analogue of states of mind. • (Barker,(2004) p236)
LITERATURE: Salley Vickers
• Miss Garnet’s Angel
• Mr Golightley’s Holiday
• “Serious themes that are both accessible and popular”
SCULPTURE: Graveyard angels
Marit Benthe Norheim’s moving angels
Angels in Trafalgar Square
Amy Godman 2013 University of Winchester
Cecily Mary Barker (1896-1973)
Flower Fairies
Psychoanalysis and the positioning of angels
• The pathologization of angelic visions be they good or bad.
• In the nineteenth century Nietzsche declared God dead
• The world - that had once been conceived as existing outside of human beings - a cosmos made up of Heaven, Earth and Hell in a three tier universe - became located within the self as the superego, ego and id.
Stephen Fry’s Angels and Demons
If you get rid of my demons, the angels may also leave. (Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4 June26th 9am 2015)
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS: Swedenborg
I am well aware that many will say that no-one can speak to spirits and angels so long as he is living in the body; many say it is all fancy, others that I recount such things to win credence, while others will make other kinds of objection. But I am deterred by none of these: for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt. (Swedenborg quoted in Godwin 1993 p8)
•
Possible themes
• Beings of light • Within or without the person • The effect of the experience on their lives • The appearance of the angel and its relationship with images of angels
that they have seen in artistic works • Any artistic expressions of the encounter • Strength to cope with/accept terminal illness • Visitations in dreams • Helping out in a practical hour of need • Preventing an accident • Companionship when afraid • Guardian angels • Angel experiences around a church
Disruptions
[Coding] handles poorly that which exceeds and precedes ‘capture’ by language, such as the bodily, signifying, disrupting (and connecting) intensities of affect. (MacLure p170) MacLure Maggie (2013), Classification or Wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research, Chapter in Coleman, Rebecca and Ringrose, Jessica,(2013) Deleuze and Research methodologies, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press pp164-183
Heterotopian Space
Foucault describes the ‘tangled paths, strange places, secret passages and unexpected communications ‘of the heterotopian space (Foucault
1973 pxix).
Paradox
a ‘cabinet of curiosities (MacLure 2913 p180) which will produce ‘a syntax of unanticipated associations’ (Lugli 2000 p30).
Chinese classification of animals
a) Belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed. c) tame d) sucking pigs e)sirens f) fabulous g) stray dogs h) included in the present classification i) frenzied j) innumerable k)drawn with a very fine camel hair brush l) et cetera m) having just broken the water pitcher n) that from a long way off look like flies (Foucault 1973 pxv)
Qualitative and Quantitative
In brief, one can thus say that the results from the qualitative and quantitative parts of the investigation agree with each other. There is, however, no doubt that the qualitative part – the analysis of the participants’’ own accounts – has illustrated SEM [strong experiences of music] with greater width as well as greater depth than an analysis of the questionnaire answers would offer. Gabrielsson (2011)p402
The Metaphysical
The nature of the experience from both contemporary and historical accounts which can be analysed using a grounded theory methodology or narrative analysis,
or expressed through
performance-as-research projects.
The Narrative
The doctrines, stories and creed underpinning different faith traditions. It is covered by theological methodologies and the interpretation of the associated texts, supported by images. It concerns the dilemma of defining the Divine and the place of figures associated with the Divine (particularly in an age when God is dead). It explores different religions ‘ positions. The use of quantitative methodologies in this area has been satired and lampooned following Aquinas. But in the contemporary world this closest to this area may well be quantum physics
The Intrapersonal
The experience of the experiencer. It will examine where the vision is perceived as originating and how it relates to personal faith and therefore is amenable to auto-ethnography. Here we can explore the transformative effects of the experience, the role of the psyche in it and the place of angels in meaning-making. It can be explored qualitatively by narrative analysis and quantitatively by questionnaires. It will examine the pathologization of experiences in the contemporary world.
The Interpersonal
Relationship of some kind. Here we can examine experiences where the angel is perceived as coming from an outer rather than an inner world. Here also the metaphor of the angel is regularly used in popular material for the beloved or a close friend and cultural studies analysis of song texts would serve well here. It also relates to an angelic communion in lonely circumstances and figures like the guardian angel and again would explore issues of validation of the experience.
The Extra-Personal
Morality and ethics. This links back with the time when angels were perceived as having a role in the governance of the world and would look at angelic interventions in world affairs which would link with the cultural studies area of aliens and extra-terrestrials. It can be examined not only through visual images as well as plays. It is linked with a hierarchical theology of the Divine.
The InterGaian
Relationship with the natural world and the interconnectedness of creation. Here angels have traditionally played a significant part. It has been seen emerging in the relationship with the fairies in the contemporary rise of pagan traditions and traditional angel images.
Thank you for your attention!
