Examples of "active" mystics who self-identified as Christians?

Factual Questions
1

Traditionally, the mainstream Christian view seems to have been that the only acceptable mystics are the passive mystics - those who wait, patiently, for the initiative of Heaven; those chilled-out beatific quietists and such, on whom revelation is bestowed through no effort of their own.

If you get too impatient, too active - if you try to pry Heaven open, or force God’s hand, by invocations or rituals or what have you, in order to get God and/or the angels to reveal themselves on your command - well, then that’s magic, and distinct from “true” Christian mysticism.

Many prominent scholars of religion seem to have gone along with this - from William James and on, the mainstream scholarly view seems to have been that “passivity” is one of the defining traits of the “true” mystic (Christian or otherwise). Mircea Eliade, too, held that when you’re passive, that’s religion - but when you’re active, that’s magic. The list goes on.

Well, I’m now looking for names of “active” mystics who would have disagreed with all of that, i.e. who practiced an “active” approach, be it with theurgic invocations or operational magic or psychoactive plants or what have you, but still self-identified as Christians.

Thanks in advance.

2

Francis of Assisi? He wasn’t trying to bring on The End Times, but he did espouse a pretty active pursuit of revelation.

3

I’m not sure.

Take his stigmata, in September of 1224.

Quoting from this article from The New Yorker:

Notice the passive language here. While praying he “looked up” and saw what he saw; afterwards, he “found” the wounds on his body. My reading, at least, is that he didn’t specifically seek out a vision - he prayed, and then Heaven made a move and things happened.

The same seems to be true of Francis’ famous “go and repair my house”-vision - it, too, is said to have happened during regular prayer.

4

I don’t know individual names, but Pentecostalists have some practices that seem to me fairly mystic in nature. Faith healing, speaking in tongues, snake handling.

5

Hermeticist and astrologer John Dee? Isaac Newton? Meister Eckhart? Ignatius of Loyola?

6

Evelyn Underhill, maybe? I admit I don’t know enough about her or her writing to know whether she fits your definition of “active.”

7

Hildegarde of Bingen is often described as a Christian mystic, but I can’t speak to how active or passive she was about it.

8

Not Loyola; like Assissi, Juan de la Cruz or Teresa de Jesús, his revelations came to him during ordinary prayer. The only practice any of them had which could have been considered to actively bring visions was an excessive use of fasting, and they didn’t do it because they were trying to bring visions but as a penitence.

9

Lotsa possibilities here!

John Dee – YES. His angelic invocations are just the sort of thing I was thinking about. Well outside of mainstream Christianity, and yet it seems clear as day that Dee considered himself a true and proper Christian.

Isaac Newton – I don’t know that he ever experienced visions, hallucinations, altered states of consciousness or anything of the sort. Did he?

Meister Eckhart – Same as with Newton.

Ignatius of Loyola – A very interesting fellow indeed, and one of the reasons I started this thread. Thanks, Nava, for setting the record straight.

I wonder where the Spiritual Exercises stands in all this, though? Does it deal with the active vs. passive distinction, at all? Does it make a point out of distancing itself from active, perhaps “magical” practices?

I realize it’s not exactly a “Visions For Dummies” handbook, but I wonder if it didn’t, perhaps, at least run the risk, in its day, of being seen as recommending an all-too-active pursuit of visions - what with its visualization techniques and such.

Evelyn Underhill – Need to read up on her. Interestingly, a quick googling shows that she directly attacked William James (mentioned in the OP), but I don’t know if James’ insistence on “passivity” was one of the things she criticized him for.

Hildegarde of Bingen – Definitely passive. Claimed to have had visions since the age of three, and only understood them as such later on. Following the classic pattern, she was initially reluctant, shirked from her duty of writing them down, etc.

10

Isaac Newton would be a big one, imho. He identified as a Christian, did scholarly research on the Bible, and was also a practicing occultist.

Newton also falls under the group of scientists in academia who were also into the occult, along with Jack Parsons. Along with his rocket science work, Parsons was a good chum of Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard.

Does Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science) count?

11

Don’t most modern day celebrity psychics claim to be Christian?

12

Did Newton ever try to get in touch with angels or spirits or what have you? I don’t think that he ever did.

Of course I could be wrong.

“Good chum” is a bit of an overstatement. Crowley never met either Parsons nor Hubbard, and in fact looked down on them both. And if I remember the story correctly, Hubbard, being a complete piece of shit (pretty sure about that part), stole Parsons’ girlfriend and/or money and/or boat (not too sure about that part).

Don’t know about Mary Baker Eddy. Will look her up, thanks.

13

Probably quite a few of the renaissance hermeticists fall into this category. John Dee, who has already been mentioned, was one, but also, I think, Cornelius Agrippa and, arguably Giordano Bruno. Bruno’s use of the “arts of memory” seems to have been at least partly about trying to induce divine visions of some sort (although I am not sure how much that counts as “active” in the OP’s sense). Certainly Dee and his associate Kelley tried to summon angels, and I would be surprised if there were not quite a few other renaissance hermeticists (it was quite a sizable intellectual movement) who tried something similar.

More recently, the 20th century Irish poet W.B. Yeats believed himself to have got in touch with spirits via his wife’s “automatic writing”, and his book A Vision sets out the mystical system he derived from these spirit messages. The religious context and background of his mystical thought was certainly Christian, but I am not sure to what extent he considered himself to be a Christian.

14

As would I!

If I remember correctly, in Esotericism and the Academy (pretty sure that’s the the one), Prof. Hanegraaff presents some (informed, level-headed) speculation about how, exactly, the renaissance Hermeticists might have tried to “do magic.” I think singing was part of it, based on readings (and/or misreadings?) of Plato and a whole bunch of neo-Platonic literature. Music of the spheres and all that.

Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself!

Apparently, at least some of Yeats’ (drug-fueled*) visions were of some Celtic sun god – but how that squares with his Christian faith or background, I just don’t know and can’t really say. Prof. Hutton indicates (in Triumph Of The Moon) that, for a while there, Yeats actually considered establishing a whole new religion all of his own – but that, by 1902, he had given up on the idea. Too bad, could have made for some interesting stuff, I’m sure!

  • IIRC, mescaline was Yeats’ drug of choice.