After publishing Andrea Cionci’s “review” of the bizarre “Museum of Light” that has recently opened in the Jesuit MotherHouse in Rome, I decided that I had to see the circus for myself.
And by God was it strange.
This will not be a simple site report. And if you are just looking to get drunk on conspiracy and sinister symbols you will probably not be disappointed either. But I believe this exhibition has allowed me to illumine something deeper.
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-(Ezra Pound Guide to Kulchur)
A single suspicion has haunted me for as long as I can remember. This suspicion is not merely that the Church’s hierarchy has ceased to believe its own dogmas, but that the church now lacks the necessary genius to even comprehend its own dogmas. A vacuum was created with the passing of a certain epoch- which precise epoch, I cannot say- in which the prodigious second sons of Europe no longer felt the need to take up the cloth. In a certain sense, this was inevitable, and whether this fact is “good” or “bad” matters not. This is a reality and nothing else. But past the veil of all mystification, a simple fact abides- institutions are comprised of men- and their periods of glory and decline is wholly contingent upon the men of the moment.
In common speech, genius is often equated to light. “The light of genius.” “He is a bright man.” Intellect is almost instinctively understood to glow, to have a luminosity that enlightens that which is around it. But when the light of genius is extinguished, it is not necessarily darkness that fills the void, but a queer phosphorescence. And strange lights now shine indeed.
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"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights."
Further also, every procession of illuminating light, proceeding from the Father, whilst visiting us as a gift of goodness, restores us again gradually as a unifying power, and turns us to the oneness of our conducting Father, and to a deifying simplicity. For all things are from Him, and to Him, as said the Sacred Word.
With these two sentences, Pseudo Dionysus the Aeropagite would begin one of the most profound and influential treatises on Christian metaphysics of the first millennium, De Coelesti Hierarchia. This wonderful exposition on Angelology would be the source that St Thomas Aquinas would draw upon to standardize the celestial hierarchy in the mind of the Roman Catholic Church. But the true beauty of the work is found in his Theology of Light.
Substack writer Psychedral has a concise summary of the matter in his fantastic article linked here.
The universe of the pseudo-Dionysian writings is a hierarchy of more or less imperfect emanations (“theophanies") of God – whom Denis refers to as “the Father of the lights.” There is a formidable distance from the highest, purely intelligible sphere of existence to the lowest, almost purely material one; but for pseudo-Dionysius, even the lowliest of created things partakes of the essence of God, the qualities of truth, goodness and beauty. Each hierarchy acts as a symbol, which is to say have content that when interpreted points beyond itself, causing an anagogic ascent to the next hierarchy. Knowledge is then gained through interpretation of the symbolic hierarchies. Thus The Celestial Hierarchy states:
“We must lift up the immaterial and steady eyes of our minds to that outpouring of Light which is so primal, indeed much more so, and which comes from that source of divinity, I mean the Father. This is the Light which, by way of representative symbols, makes known to us the most blessed hierarchies among the angels. But we need to rise from this outpouring of illumination so as to come to the simple ray of Light itself.”
For Pseudo-Areopagite, the the whole material universe becomes a big "light" composed of countless small lanterns, where every perceptible thing, manmade or natural, becomes a symbol of that which is not perceptible – a stepping stone on the road to Heaven. Augustine sees geometrical and musical harmony as serving an anagogical purpose, but for Pseudo-Areopagite, everything in the entire universe – if properly understood – serves an anagogical purpose. The human mind, abandoning itself to the "harmony and radiance", which is the criterion of terrestrial beauty, finds itself "guided upward" to its transcendent cause: God.
This mystic vision has served as a fountain of inspiration for generations of Catholic artists and theologians across the centuries. This harmonious symphony of the simplest of sensations, light, served as a perfect analogy for the splendor of God and his corporeal institution- the Church.
From Dante to the architects of the Chartres Cathedral- light has long been the Church’s greatest tool for calling men home. Whether it is the light radiating off of the cantos of Paradiso, or the coral-colored glass of a country church apse, light when properly employed can communicate the essence of the divine in a way words often fail to. But there is a sophisticated technique required to utilize light in a way that does justice to the divine, a certain genius and precaution. “And no marvel; for even Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light.”
With all of this in mind, I decided to visit the new “Museum of Light” located under the Jesuit Mother Church in Rome. For if any institution is capable of creating a “Museum of Light,” it should by all measures be the Catholic Church.
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The day began beautifully.
As I set off from my apartment to the metro station, I was blessed by a true vision from above. On certain fortunate days, the sky radiates with a certain energy, a grandeur that you can almost hear. I like to think that such skies are what inspired Pseudo Dionysus to formulate his idea that “everything in the universe serves an anagogic purpose.”
Photos always fail to capture the spark of the sky. Divine light cannot be refracted into binary code.
Upon entering the metro I noticed a poster. A poster I had seen before but never processed. It was indeed an advertisement for the museum.
I winced a bit at the sight. What were the designers going for here? A snapshot of a couple at Tommorowland rolling face on half a gram of X? A bit unsettling, but far more goofy than sinister. But this promo combined with Cionci’s fever dream write-up had certainly raised my expectations. At this point, I was not going to feel satisfied leaving the museum without Mephistopheles manifesting in hologram format.