Between Three Worlds: Spiritual Travelers in the Western Literary Tradition

By John C. Stephens

This book explores the motif of the spiritual journey and its evolution in Western literature. A spiritual journey can be broadly defined as a search for the divine. Such a search can occur either internally as a psychological process or in some cases may involve an actual geographic journey. Spiritual journeys can be conducted by individuals or groups. In exploring this topic, various kinds of texts will be reviewed, including autobiographies, novels, and short stories, as well as myths, folktales, and mystical writings. The book classifies spiritual journey narratives into four categories: theological journeys, mystical journeys, mythopoetic journeys and allegorical journeys. Representative texts have been selected in the history of Western religious literature that illustrate the basic features of each of these four categories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666758757

John C. Stephens

John C. Stephens is an adjunct professor of religion at San Joaquin Delta Community College, USA, and received his PhD in the field of religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a specialist in the history of religions, and his work focuses on the ancient religious traditions of the West. His previous books include The Dreams and Visions of Aelius Aristides: A Case-Study in the History of Religions; Ancient Mediterranean Religions: Myth, Ritual and Religious Experience; Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature; and The World of the Axial Sages: The Age of Awakening.

Book preview

Chapter One

Introduction

The Spiritual Journey in the History of Religions

A spiritual journey can be simply defined as an ongoing process undertaken by either individuals or groups to form a meaningful relationship with the divine. The main objective of this book is to examine some Western literary texts that describe such a quest. This literary theme finds its original inspiration in many of the myths and rituals of ancient times. In order to set the stage for a discussion of some of those Western texts that describe spiritual journeys. a few general remarks need to be made in this chapter about some of the ancient myths and rituals.

For the purposes of this study, the term religion will be defined as a collection of beliefs, myths, rituals, ethical practices, social institutions and experiences related to the sacred cosmos.¹ To put it simply, a myth is a story about the gods. In rituals, the myths are reenacted in some fashion. In Paul Tillich’s words,

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life. Therefore, this concern is unconditionally serious and shows a willingness to sacrifice any little concern which is in conflict with it.²

To use Paul Tillich’s terminology, religious narratives deal with matters of ultimate concern such as making a journey to the gods. All the vicissitudes of religious behavior including myth and ritual deal with matters of ultimate concern. It has long been observed that myth and ritual exist in a symbiotic relationship. On the one hand, rituals reenact or act out the myths. On the other hand, myths are stories about the gods and the origin of the cosmos that explain and give support for the rituals that are performed. No one has ever been able to determine whether it was the myths or the rituals that came first. What has been established is that the myths and rituals of a religious tradition exist together and must be understood in light of one another. Since religious writings throughout Western civilization find their inspiration from many of the myths and rituals of old, it makes sense that they contain many of the same themes.

The whole idea of a spiritual journey is very different from ordinary, mundane travel in profane space since spiritual journeys focus upon the sacred and humanity’s search for the divine. However, there may be some type of interaction and influence between profane journeys and sacred journeys. On the concrete level of day-to-day existence, prehistoric human beings participated in a never-ending journey from one geographic location to another in order to meet their basic needs.³ The survival of the Paleolithic tribe depended upon its ability to move and adapt to new environments. Thus, it is not surprising that one of the dominant themes in our cultural history is the metaphor of the journey.

Human beings have always been a wandering species. One of our earliest ancestors, Homo Erectus, began to migrate out of Africa over two million years ago. Similar kinds of migrations were undertaken about five hundred thousand years ago by our Neanderthal ancestors. The first modern humans existed as hunter-gatherers for a period of about 185,000 years. About fifty thousand years ago, the first migrations to places outside of East Africa into various locations in Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Islands took place. Some archeologists and anthropologists have speculated that climatic changes may have spurred Cro-Magnons to flee from their African homeland, but in the final analysis, no one knows the reasons why some groups migrated to other places around the globe and others stayed behind.⁴

Our prehistoric ancestors preferred to travel together in small bands, going from place to place searching for food and water in order to survive. In Paleolithic times, Cro-Magnons had learned the skill of stone tool making and used the tools for hunting wild game, but they still had not learned how to grow crops or domesticate animals. Once early humans learned how to domesticate animals and grow crops, they were able to settle down in one spot. Sometime during the Neolithic Age, a monumental event happened in the history of the human species. No one knows exactly how it happened, but somehow early humans transitioned away from their migratory way of life to a new sedentary lifestyle by learning how to grow a variety of agricultural crops such as wheat and corn and to domesticate certain animals like cattle, sheep, and goats. Regardless of whether this major discovery was made by accident or through trial and error, it meant that human beings no longer had the need to continually be on the move from one geographic location to another in order to survive. Suddenly, life became much easier for people once they learned how to domesticate animals and grow crops. The hostile environment of the past was not quite as brutal as before. At this point, a major transition came about in which the Paleolithic period came to an end, and the Neolithic period began. The first settled human communities began to sprout up, usually near large rivers like the Nile or Tigris-Euphrates. However, the migrations within early human communities did not completely come to an end once the Neolithic period was underway. Once Neolithic humans learned how to domesticate animals and grow agricultural crops, there were still plenty of reasons why some tribes of early humans needed to move around the globe to secure new and better places to live. Even after permanently settling down in one location, changes in climate often forced early humans to pull up stakes and relocate to more habitable places. Besides changes in the weather, competition between various tribes for habitable land and other economic resources was also another driving force for the unending movement of human populations around the globe. Approximately 20,000 years ago and several millennia after the time when Neanderthals had gone extinct, the Last Ice Age forced Neolithic tribes living in the Northern Hemisphere, predominately in Europe, to seek shelter in warmer enclaves in the south until temperatures warmed up. A few thousand years after that, there is evidence of further movement of Middle Eastern peoples into Europe.

A Review of Prior Research

Early humans were hunter-gatherers who wandered the earth in search of food. Religious behavior emerged in the world for the first time in the context of this migratory lifestyle of early humans. One of the key elements of the hunting religion of early humans was placating the animal spirits. Since humans needed to take the life of an animal for survival, it was necessary to appease the animal spirits to avoid some form of reprisal.

In his classic study of religion entitled Religion in Essence and Manifestation, historian and phenomenologist of religion Gerardus Van der Leeuw (1890–1950) points out that in their most rudimentary forms of expression, the various types of religious ritual involve seeking divine protection and fleeing from divine retribution.⁵ Seeking and fleeing from the divine probably found its original expression in the hunting rituals of prehistoric peoples. Van der Leeuw points out that among various indigenous peoples, a variety of terms are used to describe this terrifying and fascinating power of the gods. In the early part of the twentieth century, a Christian missionary named Robert Henry Codrington stated that the Melanesian islanders of the Pacific used the term mana to denote a type of divine energy that caused unusual natural events to occur such as storms and earthquakes and could also give human beings uncanny, magical powers. Other indigenous peoples around the world had similar conceptions and terms. For example, among the Native American peoples, the Sioux use the term wakenda and the Iroquois use the term orenda to refer to a similar kind of divine energy or power. According to Van der Leeuw,

in the human soul, then, Power awakens a profound feeling of awe which manifests itself both as fear and as being attracted. There is no religion whatever without terror, but equally none without love, or that nuance of being attracted which corresponds to the prevailing ethical level. . .. Physical shuttering, ghostly horror, fear, sudden terror, reverence, humility, adoration, profound apprehension, enthusiasm—all these lie in nuce within the awe experienced in the presence of Power. And because these attitudes show two main tendencies, one away from Power and the other towards it, we speak of the ambivalent nature of awe.⁶

The notion of divine power is an extremely archaic idea. In the words of historian of religion Geoffrey Parrinder,

The starting point of religion must be sought in something more comprehensive: in a belief in a sacred power which transcends the universe, and is its ground and support. This may not have been personified, and so it would seem to have been a vague conception of providence as a creative and recreative power operating in the food quest, sex, fertility, birth, death and the sequence of the seasons. When the idea of this potency acquired an independent life of its own in its various aspects and functions, it found expression in spiritual beings, ghosts of the dead and departmentalized divinities.⁷

Not only is the idea of seeking and fleeing divine power one of the underlying themes of prehistoric religious rituals, but it is also a dominant theme in mythology as well as many other types of narratives which appear later in historical times. Once civilization comes into being, the concept of divine power reappears again and again in a variety of camouflaged, symbolic, and artistic forms. Seeking protection and avoiding punishment from the animal spirits most likely represented one of the early motivations for performing rituals in prehistoric times and many millennia later continues in various mutated forms to be one of the underlying themes in literature.

Implicit in the idea of divine protection or destruction is the notion of power. For early hunter-gatherers, taking the life of an animal meant that the spirit of the animal had to be somehow appeased through the meticulous performance of rituals.⁸ The outcome for the human community hung in the balance. Gerardus Van der Leeuw points out that when a human being is confronted by this divine power, they are filled with a sense of dread because of its otherness.⁹ Yet, at the same time, one is drawn towards this very same power. In a sense, humanity displays a kind of approach-avoidance attitude towards sacred power. Seeking and fleeing divine power represents two opposing forms of movement that define a large part of humanity’s relationship to the sacred. It is not surprising that similar metaphoric imagery related to fear and trembling, to use Soren Kierkegaard’s phrase, appears in narratives such as Dante’s Inferno or John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Another German historian of religion named Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) theorized about the nature of religious experience in similar terms. In his book entitled The Idea of the Holy, Otto speculated that in confronting the world of supernatural beings, a person is filled with two conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the person has an experience of awe and fascination in the presence of the holy, but, at the same time, they are filled with fear and dread. Humans are both attracted and repelled when encountering the overwhelming power of the divine. The twofold nature of religious experience has roots in our primeval origins.

Edward Tylor (1832–1917) was another nineteenth century scholar who took an interest in investigating the beliefs and practices of indigenous religion, thanks to the increased contact of missionaries and colonists with pre-literate societies around the world. Tylor published a book in 1871 entitled Primitive Religion in which he defined religion as a belief in spirits. Tylor claimed that from the earliest of times, humans believed that the world was filled with spirits and that every living thing had a soul. According to Tylor, the belief in the soul was originally derived from a failure to understand the nature of dream experience. Instead of understanding the true psychic origins of dreams, early humans mistakenly believed that at night their psyche would go on nocturnal out-of-body trips to various places around the world. As a result of their misinterpretations, early humans developed their ideas about the existence of the soul and its ability to go on celestial journeys. Tylor’s theories about religious origins are based upon his studies of nonliterate societies. One questionable assumption of Tylor’s theories regarding religion is his assumption that there is a fundamental continuity between prehistoric religious life and the religious life of contemporary indigenous culture. Nevertheless, his research into the dreams of indigenous peoples throws some light on the subject of spiritual journeys. For example, Tylor states that

among the Indians of North America, we hear of the dreamer’s soul leaving his body and wandering in quest of things attractive to it. These things the waking man must endeavour to obtain, lest his soul be troubled, and quit the body altogether. The New Zealanders considered the dreaming soul to leave the body and return, even travelling to the region of the dead to hold converse with friends. The Tagals of Luzon object to waking a sleeper, on account of the absence of his soul. The Karens, whose theory of the wandering soul has just been noticed, explain dreams to be what this la [soul] sees and experiences in its journeys when it has left the body asleep. . .The North American Indians allowed themselves the alternative of supposing a dream to be either a visit from the soul of a person or object dreamt of, or a sight seen by the rational soul, gone out for an excursion while the sensitive soul remains in the body.¹⁰

In writing about the religious practices of indigenous peoples, another historian of religion, Sir James Frazer (1854–1941), provides some interesting allusions to humanity’s interest in making a journey to the gods when he states that

often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it lingers as a metaphor in poetry. . . . The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and actually to visit places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts of which he dreams. For example when an Indian of Brazil or Guiana wakes up from a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his soul has really been away hunting, fishing, felling trees, or whatever else he has dreamed of doing, while all the time his body has been lying motionless in his hammock.¹¹

Scholars such as Van der Leeuw, Otto, Tylor and Frazer all were interested in identifying the origins of religion, but unfortunately, they were not able to complete the task due to a lack of solid historical evidence. Nevertheless, their cross-cultural research clarifies some aspects of humanity’s quest for the divine that are reiterated in Western literary works such as Augustine’s Confessions or Dante’s Inferno.

Shamanism

A key component of the prehistoric hunting religion was the phenomenon known as shamanism. Shamanism is one of the earliest ritual analogues to the phenomenon of the spiritual journey.¹² Inside the entrance of a cave known as Tuc d’Audoubert, located near the Pyrenees mountains in southern France, there is a mysterious Paleolithic drawing of a shaman. In contemporary times, shamanism continues to be practiced by members of indigenous religious communities around the world, especially in the areas of central and northern Asia.

Shamans are spiritual travelers possessing the unusual capacity to go at will into pre-conscious trance states in which they allegedly experience visions and travel throughout the three cosmic realms of heaven, earth, and the underworld in search of healing remedies for the sick.¹³ In distinction to people who are possessed by spirits, the shaman learns special techniques enabling them to take control of the spirits and demonic forces without becoming overwhelmed or being taken over by them. During their celestial travels, shamans ask the gods for healing remedies which are used on the patient once the shaman returns to earth. When the shaman descends into the subterranean realm of the underworld, the voyage becomes much more treacherous and involves finding a lost soul. Within the world of indigenous religion, the shaman interprets his spiritual experiences in terms of the tripartite model of the universe consisting of heaven, earth, and the underworld, each of which possesses its own gods and supernatural powers. The shaman has the unusual ability to travel throughout the three cosmic realms in search of healing remedies. The shamanic worldview revolves around the concept of the axis mundi (center of the world), which provides a connection between the three levels of the cosmos. The image of the axis mundi is an important one because it is symbolically tied to its function of providing a road for cosmic travel. In their celestial travels, shamans use various ritual objects such as poles or trees that symbolize the axis mundi.

It is impossible to determine the level of continuity that exists between shamanism in contemporary indigenous culture and shamanism in Paleolithic times, However, later in history, numerous examples of the cosmological journeys of the soul continue to appear again and again in many cultural contexts, including the religious mythology of indigenous peoples, as well as the myths of the pagan religions of antiquity. In the world of indigenous religion, the mythology of the Winnebago Indians of North America provides one example. In many of their myths, a supernatural place is described existing below the earth where all of one’s deceased relatives reside.¹⁴ The Thompson River tribes of British Colombia believe that there is a place beneath the earth called the country of the souls.

The country of the souls is underneath us toward the sunset; the trail leads through the dim twilight. Tracks of the people who last went over it and their dogs are visible. The path winds along until it meets another road which is a short cut used by the shamans when trying to intercept a departed soul.¹⁵

Although one can only speculate about the details of the prehistoric religious outlook, it is clear that once civilization is born, the soul and the afterlife become fundamental components of the historic religions of the world. In the early days of civilization, the search for the summum bonum became synonymous with ideas regarding the soul’s uncanny ability to traverse the three cosmic realms. Even before the dawn of philosophy in classical Greece, there were mythological explorations of the topic, such as what is described in Book XI of the Odyssey where Odysseus’ spirit visits the land of the dead. Going back even further in time before Homer, Egyptian literature has a lot to say about the soul’s subterranean voyage where it is judged by the gods of the underworld. In the second millennium BCE, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Pyramid Texts, and Coffin Texts all make copious references to the immortal soul’s excursion into the afterlife.

For example, an Egyptian Coffin Text dating from the second millennium BCE states,

Whether I live or die, I am Osiris,

I enter in and reappear through you,

I decay in you, I grow in you,

I fall down in you, I fall upon my side.

The gods are living in me for I live and grow in the corn

that sustains the Honoured Ones.

I cover the earth whether I live or die I am