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Angelus Silesius: The Cherubinic Wanderer (Classics of Western Spirituality)

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When the early Zen Master Ma-tsu was very old and unwell, the monastery steward visited him and asked, "How has Your Reverence's health been?"
Ma-tsu replied: "Sun-face Buddha, Moon-face Buddha".
(The "Buddha-Name Sutra" informs us that Sun-face Buddhas live for 18,000 years, while Moon-face Buddhas live for a single day and night.)

Can anyone in the Western tradition explain this cryptic exchange? Johannes Scheffler, born a Lutheran but converted to Catholicism, published in 1657 a book of mystical epigrams called "The Cherubinic Wanderer", using the pen-name Angelus Silesius. One of his couplets says: "A child who lives on this earth for one brief hour has already lived all the long years of Methuselah". (In the Bible. He lived to be 969, remember?)

Does this help? Time is the creation of our own minds. If you think a moment is shorter than a century, that a century is longer than a moment, you haven't understood yet. Angelus Silesius didn't teach anything new, he summarised the great Northern European mystics (Meister Eckhart, Jan Ruysbroek, the Lutheran Jakob Boehme). But as he compressed their teachings into tight, two-line poems, he sharpened them into arrows of paradox which, like Zen sayings, either mystify completely or open the door to a vast new world. (Please don't ask me how an arrow can open a door.)

"Even before I was me, I was God in God; and I can be once again, as soon as I am dead to myself."
"Time is eternity and eternity is time, just as long as you yourself don't make them different."
"I know God couldn't live a moment without me; if I should disappear, He would die, destitute."
"God, whose delight it is to be with you, O man, prefers to come and see you when you're not at home."

The best English translations I know of are in Willard Trask's selection, long out of print. Those in this book are not on the same level, a little too prone to inversions and quaint poetical language. Some favourite poems are missing, while others are included that I could do without. But this is an essential book and I shouldn't quibble.

The ideal English Silesius would have the original German on the facing page, because epigrams by definition defy translation. It wouldn't have to be complete. Poems on the Blessed Virgin and the Saints no longer mean much even to Catholics since Vatican II. Others make use of the forgotten language of alchemy. But hundreds of these couplets are among the most profound and surprising utterances to be found in the Christian tradition. Until the probably remote day when a better version appears, this book will do as an introduction to this out-of-the-blue spiritual poet.

This volume is an important contribution to the illustrious and much needed Classics of Western Sprituality Series from Paulist Press, a project which was initiated in the early 1980's and continues. A bonafide mystic, if not in the most progressive sense (as is made abundantly clear in the superb introductory essay and foward, a succinct, yet comprehensive, survey of the life and work of this relatively little known but important poet and hymnist), an early Lutheran Pietist who coverted to orthodox Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation, Angelus Selesius is first and foremost an artist of high rank.
My one plaint here, however, is that, what is in my opinion, Silesius' best poem, his masterpiece, is for some strange reason omitted from this collection or somehow I have missed it. Thus, I cite it here, and if you like, you can copy it, as I have, into the wisely included blank pages at the end of this handsomely constructed book.

"Though Christ a thousand times
in Bethleham be born
And not within thyself,
Thy soul will be forlorn . . .

The Cross on Golgotha
Thou lookest to in vain,
Unless within thine heart
It be set up again."

The author is one of the most interesting European mystics to have appeared. This book contains excellent translations of the short generally two line poems he wrote while in - if not a fully Enlightened state - at least something close. Here is one poem I like very much: "Because through death alone we become liberated, I say it is the best of all the things created." Not everyone's cuppa' tea but for those who want to feed their inner mystic -- dinner is served...

A few years ago God opened my eyes to Gal 2:20. Since then I have found very few - except some of the Christian Mystics - who are aware of it's life changing reality. It is the core of Christianity.

Angelus Silesius KNEW. He said what Paul was trying to say - in less words.

I AM not I nor Thou;
but Thou art I in me,
Wherefore, my God, I give
all honor unto Thee.

He is more in line with the Apostle John - conveying the love of God to a point where you can barely handle it.

A diamond is a small thing of beauty that is multi-faceted.
The more I read it - the more it's light dazzles me.
Some of the verses shocked me at first - until they sank in.

If you have "eyes" - this book will be one of the best that you have ever owned.

"So high above all things that be
Is God uplifted, man can dare
No utterance: he prayeth best
When Silence is his sum of prayer." (Angelus Silesius, I. 240)

Here, the poetic form of epigram is mastered and undertaken in the service of expressing the deepest, most beautiful, must puzzling and profound mysteries of Christian mysticism.

Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) is a Protestant-turned-Catholic who lived in the height of the turmoil in the aftermath of the Reformation. Eight years after converting, he left the world for the monastery, where he spent his formidable creative energies in anti-Reformation polemics, and profound spiritual verse. His prose polemics are nothing original. His poetry, however, serves as the the content of this highly-important addition to the Classics of Western Spirituality.

One thinks of the minimalist and apophatic artistic expression of Basho and the haiku tradition in the East. One might expect from Western German Roman Catholic imitation of Dante's epic poetry, or even something like the fourteen-line line poetry of Shakespear and Petrarch.

Angelus prefers the two-line epigram, the four-line maxim, the concise apothegm, and puts this small package in service of the near infinite interplay of paradox and simple truth in Christian theology and experience. Each short verse is a succinct summary of, a beautiful re-statement of, or a wise insight into the truths of the Holy Scripture and the Church.

Moving, enlightening, convicting, at times (intentionally) perplexing, these verses draw the soul into a search for that which is beyond words.

The spiritual seeker, the devout Catholic, the curious Protestant, the sympathetic non-believer will all find a verse on which to be nourished.

"God loves me more than Him; than me I love God more.
So He gives me as much as I to Him restore."

This man was a doctor and good friend of Abraham Von Franckenberg and was of ambivalent loyalties to catholic church during the counter reformation.An orphan himself, he was later the benefactor of orphans and lived a cloistered life while writing his specialty,rhymed alexandrine couplets.. he is said to have been the first author of most of the protestant hymns