On Sacred Magic

Part 4, Matter as a Mediator of Divine Power and Grace

In John Milbank and Aaron Riches' Forward to Gregory Shaw's Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus they make connections between Iamblician theurgy and the Christian sacramental imagination.

What we witness in Christ's Incarnation, argue Milbank and Riches, is the divine embrace of material reality. They write:

Iamblichus's non-dualistic sense of the interrelation of the material and the divine, along with his emphasis of rite and "liturgy," found remarkable common cause with orthodox Christianity (as opposed to its Manichean and Gnostic variants).

[For] Iamblichus--in contradistinction to the dualistic and gnostic deprecation of matter which marred so much of non-Christian thought of the era--incarnate being is precisely the vehicle of salvation through theurgy...There is no escape from mediation, from the "sacramental," and from images; indeed it is only via these material facts that the soul receives (as by a quasi-"Grace") the theurgy of the gods, the divine action that transforms the soul into godlikeness. All of this is remarkably akin to the sacramental and liturgical practice of Christianity, which finally understands the ascent of the human soul to God, not so much as a mere ascent of the soul, but rather as a paradoxical ascent of the soul rooted in the Incarnate descent of God from heaven relived and participated in Christian liturgy, which insofar as it is a "work-of-the-people" is finally and most truly a grace imbued by the power and action of the Holy Spirit.

As an example of this incarnational embrace, matter as mediating grace, Milbank and Riches cite John of Damascus' defense of icons ("which included cloth, metal, ivory, wood, manuscript illustrations, frescoes, mosaics, and statues") against the dualistic and anti-matter sentiments of the iconoclasts. John of Damascus says, "in terms highly reminiscent of Iamblichus":

I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked...[For] if the body of God has become God unchangeably through the hypostatic union, what gives anointing remains, and what was by nature animated with a rational and intellectual soul is formed, it is not uncreated. Therefore I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace.

Due to the Incarnation, observe Milbank and Riches, "matter is pregnant with power to communicate what is most radically beyond matter." The imagination tips here toward the magical. Matter is "filled with divine energy and grace." Matter is charged with divine power. Beyond the power of liturgy, then, consider this episode from Acts 19:

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

Notice in this story the role of mediation. Grace comes through material objects, Paul's handkerchiefs and aprons. Matter becomes a (borderline magical) mediator of divine grace and power. As Milbank and Riches continue:

In John as in Iamblichus, the conviction of matter's worthiness to image the divine origin means that matter itself is receptive of the divine, and can therefore be a vehicle of communication of divine energy. Through rites and prayers, the divine power of matter to be receptive to the divine energy is unlocked, making it thereby a vehicle of the soul's receptivity to the divine energy.

This is the same vision we saw in Pseudo-Dionysus who wrote, "Using matter, one may be lifted up to the immaterial archetypes." Grace is mediated through sacramental acts, rites, and material objects.

Lastly, to give a practical example, Milbank and Riches also describe how prayer is theurgic. Prayer is not about changing God's mind. Nor is prayer self-therapy. Prayer is "attunement" with the divine that "will truly allow the divine influence to flow into reality." God is Light and prayer, through attunement with the Light, becomes a window through which the Light "flows" into our material reality to illuminate and transfigure.

Once again, theurgy is weirding our categories. Instead of prayer being a mere "talking" to God at a distance, prayer is theurgic as it allows a "divine influence to flow" which brings about an ontological transformation, the material uniting with the spiritual. Viewed from this ontological angle, a unitive vision of prayer, prayer could be described as a practice of "sacred magic." Not that anyone would or should so describe prayer, but our perspective about "what happens" in prayer is being deepened and illuminated.