This is the third in a series of posts for Hogwarts Professor Paid Subscribers in which series we will be posting chapters from Ray Livingston’s The Traditional Theory of Literature. It is the only Perennialist text that explores the writing and interpretation of poetry, plays, and stories from a traditional, which is to say ‘theocentric’ or ‘anagogical,’ perspective. The first two chapters can be found here and here, the first of which is available to all readers.
I’ve read this chapter three times now and, frankly, each time there are discoveries that make me marvel at what I had missed on my first readings. It’s not smooth sailing or easy sledding; I had to chuckle when Livingston noted that a Coomaraswamy essay about Eckhardt “made few concessions to the reader” because I confess to feeling that way about much of what Livingston was ‘dumbing down’ of AKC’s essays.
But the effort is rewarded richly. The Serious Reader and the Rowling Deep-Diver will be intrigued as I was by how the three step creative process of traditional or sacred art, art that fosters the heart of a reader, his or her Intellect or noetic faculty, the “Innermost Self,” parallels Rowling’s two part metaphor for her writing process. The three steps, akin to the nigredo, albedo, and rubedo of alchemy, are the silencing of the “psychophysical” individual mind or ego-driven mental noise, reception of paradigmatic images or forms by the purified heart, and the imitation or exteriorization of those forms in the medium of the artist, e.g., stone for the sculptor, canvas for the painter, words for the author.
For the writer, this process is a Path or Way to godliness, to create with the spontaneity and profundity that God does with His Word. That spiritual goal is possible only via the use of traditional tools and observance of the received rules of the craft in question.
I think we have demonstrated that Rowling’s Shed tools are the most traditional set imaginable. The debate, I think, is whether her CBT exercises and consequent psychological ‘work’ constitutes the necessary ego-renunciation and spiritual receptivity that is necessary to creating non-liturgical sacred art. Livingston concludes this chapter with a brief discussion about the distinction of understanding literature as a psychologist versus a traditional cardiac perspective.
Nick and I will be reviewing next week Rowling’s comments about her Muse in light of the Perennialist perspective and its disdain for a strictly biographical reading of an author’s work, which Livingston discusses in his footnotes. Our regular readers will be pleased to note the references below, too, to the Imagination, true Eros, and logos as synonyms for the Heart or noetic faculty (“Intellect” to Perennialists, after the Latin intellectus, not to be confused with “smart” or “knowledgeable” as it is today).
Enjoy!
Chapter III: The Creative Process
In making a thing, the very innermost Self of a man comes into outwardness — Meister Eckhardt
As above, so below; this metaphysical principle is clearly exemplified in creative activity. Because of the correspondence of the two orders – heavenly and earthly – all human life is said to be patterned after the divine existence.[1] And since creation is one of the most godlike activities,[2] the human artist must be especially aware of modeling his art on that of the divine artificer. A Hindu work has it, “We must do what the Gods did first.”[3] Referring to Meister Eckhart as one of the great proponents of the Tradition, Coomaraswamy observes that “it runs through all his thought that man is an artist in the analogy of the ‘exalted workman’ and his idea of ‘sovran good’ and ‘immutable delight’ is that of a perfected art.”[4] As man labors in his vocation and approaches perfection in his work, he will become more like God in spontaneity and efficacy. It is to approach this perfection that each person traditionally practices the art best suited to him.
Coomaraswamy has written at length in many essays about the creative process. The theory he sets forth is clear, though possibly somewhat alien to modern attitudes and thought. In general it is the familiar doctrine of Plato and the Scholastics. It is essentially the same as that sketched out by William Blake, whose theories much informed his practice.
