The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (44 page)

218 the path of love

of the beauty of the soul, which ultimately comes from the Good, the source of all beauty. Therefore the lover must learn to look beyond superficial beauty.

“The lover feeds her soul with the sight and sound of her beloved, for only sight,

hearing, and the mind are capable of appreciating grace of form, proportion, and harmonious measure.251 According some philosophers, because the lovers’ intentions are

spiritual, their physical loving may proceed so far as kissing, for the mouth expresses the soul, and by kissing the lovers may unite their souls as well as their bodies. When the soul advances to the lips it takes the first step toward separation from the body.

Here is an exercise for the first stage.”

Observed Beauty:
Sit and talk with your beloved for a few minutes for your mutual pleasure in your usual way. Castiglione suggests gentle caressing and kissing,

but sexual arousal is not the point; the goal of this exercise is to move beyond

the body. Therefore, rest in a state of quiet contemplation of your beloved.

Allow yourself to become aware of the beauty of your beloved, which is more

than their physical beauty. Appreciate the grace in your beloved’s movements

and behavior. See your beloved as an expression of divine beauty and grace,

and feel your love as a kind of adoration. You may be awestruck by mysteri-

ousness of love. Contemplate your beloved in this manner for as long as you

like. I hope you will agree that this is an exercise worth practicing regular-

ly! If you are not currently romantically involved with someone, you can still

perform this exercise. In fact, the customs of courtly love required that the

beloved be inaccessible to the lover (typically because the beloved was married

to someone else). You can do the same today, loving someone who is beyond

reach, either with their consent or without, if you behave with discretion. Just

make sure it someone you actually love, and not just lust after. No doubt many

of Hypatia’s students adored her, not as a romantic interest, but as an embodi-

ment of the beautiful soul. Nevertheless, if you cannot find a suitable beloved,

there is no harm in proceeding directly to Purification, the first stage of the

actual ascent.

Courtly love is a spiritual practice in which the heroic lover invokes and invites possession by Eros, and the beloved lady invokes and invites possession by divine Wisdom. The lover longs for, comes to know, and ultimately unites with the goddess; the beloved comes

the path of love 219

to identify with the goddess and to experience the flow of divine Wisdom through herself.

The beloved bestows the providential love and care of a goddess, and the hero returns her love through service. Both are elevated, for a time, into the celestial realm, the sphere of Nous. Therefore the lover typically refers to his beloved by a
senhal
or symbolic name (e.g.,

“Precious Stone Beyond all Others”). This has the practical effect of disguising her identity (for she is married to someone else), but the spiritual effect of reminding them both that she is representing the eternal Beloved, so they both should behave accordingly. Since the intended relation is archetypal, it is appropriate for each to set aside their egos. Nevertheless, neither party should forget that they are both mere mortals, not divinities.

For this spiritual practice to succeed, each party has to strive to embody the ideal they represent, to be a suitable vehicle for the divine energies. In medieval chivalry, the beloved lady would strive to be a living embodiment of divine Wisdom and Virtue, an inspiration and guide for her lover, the knight, so that he could accomplish his heroic destiny. The knight in turn would strive to love the Eternal Feminine through his lady. He would prove his worthiness by subjecting himself to tests and by adhering to the
chivalric virtues
, which are
moderation, service, prowess, patience, chastity, secrecy
, and
compassion
. In legend, the knight must go on quests, slay dragons, defeat sorcerers, protect the innocent, and rescue fair maidens. Psychologically, these chivalric tasks are the challenges that must be faced in achieving an integrated personality. Specifically, they represent the rejected parts of the psyche (the
shadow
, in Jung’s terms) and other psychological complexes that must be acknowledged and consciously integrated. These include the opposites of the chivalric virtues: excess, egotism, cowardice, impatience, promiscuity, gossip, and indifference.

Courtly Love:
You can adapt the spiritual practices of courtly love to our time. Both you and your beloved (who need not be your spouse, but should agree!) attempt to embody your respective archetypes, the Lover and the divine Beloved

(also Wisdom, the Good). If your partner is not your spouse, then you may

want to follow the rules of courtly love and limit your interaction to the first

four “lines of love.” From ancient Rome to the Middle Ages poets enumerated

the
five
lines of love: gazing, speaking, touching, kissing, and coitus. Obviously everyone must agree on limits.