‘Abyssum abyssum invocat’ ‘Deep calls to Deep’
– Psalm 42:7
In the previous part of this series I wrote about the links I perceived between the Brythonic term for the ‘otherworld’, Annwn, ‘Very Deep’ and the Hebrew tehom ‘deep’ which is translated as abyssum ‘abyss’, ‘bottomless depth’ in Greek.
My personal experiences with the Abyss and its appearances in the visions that formed the core of my attempted novel In the Deep suggest it holds profound significance for my calling as a nun of Annwn. Yet I’ve rarely come across other Polytheists and Pagans speaking of encounters with the Abyss*.
Therefore I was intrigued to find out not only that ‘abyss language’ occurs in the writings of medieval Christian mystics but that it has been conceived as ‘abyss mysticism’.
Bernard McGinn traces this movement from the twelth to the sixteenth century. ‘In the Psalm phase ‘abssyum abyssum invocat’ medieval mystics found a mantra for their meditations in the startling claim that the unknowable God and the human person could somehow become a single pure Abyss.’
One of the earliest proponents of these ideas was the Flemish Beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp (13th C). In Vision 11 she says:
‘I was in a very depressed frame of mind one Christmas night when I was taken up in the spirit. There I saw a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included, crowded together and compressed. The darkness illuminated and penetrated everything. The unfathomable depth of the abyss was so high that no-one could reach it… It was the entire ominoptence of the beloved.’
And in Song 7:
‘My soul melts away
in the madness of Love;
the Abyss into which she hurls me
is deeper than the sea;
for love’s deep new abyss
renews my wound.’
Marguerite Porete, a French Beguine executed as a heretic in 1310 writes of her experiences of the Abyss in The Mirror of Annihilated Souls. For her love leads through six levels of purificatory practices to a state of self-annihilation in which she becomes ‘nothing’ and ‘finds there is neither beginning, middle nor end, but only an abyssal abyss without bottom.’ Finally the soul, ‘purified, clarified, sees neither God nor herself, but God sees himself in her, for her, without her.’ God sees himself in the mirror of her soul.
The practice of annhilatio as a path to the Abyss and union with God also appears in the Liber specialis gratiae of Mechtilde of Hackeborn (1242 – 1298). Her friend, Gertrud, at her death bed realises why she cannot pass. She ‘would not be received into heaven until her strength had been utterly consumed and annihilated by divine power… Then putting off all insipidity of human nature, she would be plunged into that abyss of blessedness and deserve to be made one spirit with God.’
Angela of Foligno (1248 – 1309) follows a more penential practice of self-annihilation, following Christ in ‘poverty, suffering and contempt’, leading to the revelation of Christ as ‘Uncreated Love’ and a state of ecstasy referred not as annihilation but inabyssare. Angela speaks of a vision of her spiritual children ‘transformed into God… now glorious, now suffering… abyssated’ ‘into himself.’
The ideas of these radical medieval nuns were taken up by Meister Eckhart and his successors. The Dominican priest John Tauler (1300 – 1361) speaks of Psalm 42:7 in his sermons. In Sermon 21: ‘Here the word the prophet taught in the Psalter becomes true: “Abyssum abyssum invocat, the abyss draws the abyss into itself.” The abyss that is the created (thing) draws the Uncreated Abyss into itself, and the two abysses become a Single One… a pure divine being, so that the spirit is lost in God’s Spirit. It is drowned in the bottomless sea.’ In Sermon 45 he speaks of how annihilation leads into ‘the divine Abyss.’
Dominican friar Henry Suso (1295 – 1366) was the first to pray to God as Abyss. ‘O endless Abyss, come to my aid or I am lost.’ In the Life he speaks of the goal of the soul as ‘the Deep Abyss’. Intriguingly he speaks of a ‘God beyond God’. ‘In this wild mountain region of the where beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits, and the spirit enters into this secret namelessness… it is a deep bottomless abyss for all creatures and is intelligible to God alone.’
In the work of Flemish canon Jan Van Ruusbroec (1233 – 1381) the Abyss performs a healing function. In a poem in Seven Enclosures he addresses God:
‘O mighty jaw
without any mouth,
conduct us into your abyss
and make us know your love,
for though we be wounded mortally
when grasped by love we are sound.’
When reading about these medieval conceptions of the Abyss I was struck by the notion of the soul annhilating itself for love to gain union with God. I found Van Ruusbroec’s idea of the Abyss as a ‘God beyond God’ (or beyond the Gods) fascinating. I was also surprised to see the Abyss, which for me has been terrifying, to be described as ‘divine’ and ‘blessed’, as a place ‘full of play’ and healing.
In the final two parts I will be speaking about how the experiences of these medieval mystics relate to my own and to the Brythonic tradition.
*An exception is fellow polytheistic monastic Danica Swanson who writes of her encounter with ‘the Void, the Abyss’ in her essay ‘Of Hearth and Shadow’ in Polytheistic Monasticism (2022).
SOURCES
Barbara Newman, ‘Annihilation and Authorship: Three Women Mystics of the 1290s’, Speculum, Volume 91, No 3, (2016)
Bernard McGinn, ‘Lost in the Abyss: The Function of Abyss Language in Medieval Mysticism’, Franciscan Studies, Vol. 72 (2014), pp. 433-452
Grace M. Jantzen, ‘Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity’, Literature and Theology, Vol 17, No. 3,pp. 244-264
The Sanctuary of Vindos 
Interesting that you should cite the Beguine writers. In his book , Oliver Davies says that Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch of Brabant have in common with the early Welsh bards an “isolated magnificence in the history of medieval European letters in its emphatic embrace of poetic creativity as being, in Cynddelw’s words, a ‘gift’ of God.” He further points out that it is comparatively rare in the Middle Ages outside these writers to attempt to capture visionary experience in literary form. Interesting that these practitioners of the awen outside Wales are women from lands that have their own Celtic origins.
Deep utterance shaped indeed from out of the depths.
Oliver Davies: ‘Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales’
It’s lovely to hear from you Greg. Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware Oliver Davies had made connections between those medieval mystics and the Welsh bards. It sounds like his book is worth reading. I’d be curious to hear whether you have come across abyss mysticism in any of your research on the relationship between Welsh Christian writers and the Welsh bards.
I don’t know of any specific parallels. Taliesin, of course, often speaks of ‘dwfyn’ both as an adjective and as a noun, the latter translatable as ‘abyss’, as in “From the children of Seraphin / evil ones of the abyss / let us release Elffin” (Kadeir Teyrnon)
“Seraphin” is puzzling as it can’t be the angelic Seraphim, but might mean ‘saracens’, not necessarily the actual Islamic people , but as a synonym for ‘evil ones’ or ‘enemies’, a common usage in medieval Europe for any ‘others’.
Yes I came upon that too. Also to the use of ‘afwyss’ ‘abyss’ in ‘The Book of Aneirin’ in the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru but couldn’t find a decent copy of ‘The Book of Aneirin’ online to check the context. Do you know of any or have a copy? It’s line 18.
The Book of Aneirin is the manuscript containing the Gododdin and a few other fragments ascribed to Aneirin. ‘Affwys’ occurs in stanza 71 (line 681) of Jarman’s edition of the Gododdin, translated by him as “He fell to the depths, headlong” telling of the death of Ywain in battle. Koch gives a similar translation in The Celtic Heroic Age. Jarman’s notes suggest he may have drowned in a river, but I think it could just as easily mean ‘he fell into the abyss’, meaning to his death.
Taking a different focus, I note that the Gnostic Gospels which state that behind the popular image of God (the ‘demiurge’) is another force, the ground of being whose source is “the depth” defined as an incomprehensible primal principle. I’m not sure what original word is being translated as ‘depth’ here, but it is from the ‘heretical’ writings of the Gnostic Valentius in the Nag Hammadi papyri, and is close to what you quote from the Dominican friar Henry Suso when he speaks of a ‘God beyond God’ some 1000 years later!
Thanks for this information Greg. I now recall the Gododdin being in the Book of Aneirin. With your help I’ve identified the line and it does look like there is a mundane explanation in this instance.
Thank you also for sharing some more of your knowledge on the Gnostic Gospels and the Nag Hammadi Papyri. I was unaware of the exact source of that gnostic belief. That is very old (367AD) and might bear further looking into.
I find it fascinating that you have drilled down, as it were, to these writers, all of whom are familiar to me from reading Mediaeval History and Literature at University. You are clearly not alone and are in quite remarkable company.
Humans are so very curious – that’s what I was thinking while reading, the abyss seems like the black holes scientists talk of today, its as if such thinking has been overlooked or pushed to the margins and even banned, but it keeps coming back. It seems to me, if its out there, we need to explore, understand and classify it, in religion, philosophy, psychology, culture, science, etc
It surprises me that more polytheists haven’t written about the Abyss. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Encountering It can be bewildering and terrifying; hopefully your work gives people a way to articulate their own experience. I encountered It during, funnily enough, a festival of lights for Dionysos, and It completely changed the trajectory of my spiritual practice. It’s encouraging to see more people engaging with these ideas.