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By Root 740 0

sense of gratitude moves a person to labor in the service of his daemon. The opposite is properly called narcissism. The narcissist feels his gifts come from himself. He works to display himself, not to suffer change. An age in which no one sacrifices to his genius or daemon is an age of narcissism. The “cult of genius” which we have seen in this century has nothing to do with the ancient cult. The public adoration of genius turns men and women into celebrities and cuts off all commerce with the guardian spirits. We should not speak of another’s genius; this is a private affair. The celebrity trades on his gifts, he does not sacrifice to them. And without that sacrifice, without the return gift, the spirit cannot be set free. In an age of narcissism the centers of culture are populated with larvae and lemures, the spooks of unfulfilled genii.

I want to offer a final example of transformation and gratitude, this one at quite a different level. Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century Christian mystic, presents a high spiritual statement of the commerce I have tried to outline between man and spirit. The specifics are quite different, of course, but the form of the exchange is the same as with the shoemaker and the elves or with the Roman and his genius, an escalating exchange energized, on the human side, by gratitude and culminating in the realization (and freedom) of the gift. For Eck-hart, all things owe their being to God. God’s initial gift to man is life itself, and those who feel gratitude for this gift reciprocate by abandoning attachment to worldly things, that is, by directing their lives back toward God. A second gift comes to any soul that has thus emptied itself of the world— a Child is born (or the Word is spoken) in the soul emptied of “foreign images.” This gift, too, can be reciprocated, the final stage of the transformation being the soul’s entrance into the Godhead.

Eckhart says: “That man should receive God in himself is good, and by this reception he is a virgin. But that God should become fruitful in him is better; for the fruitfulness of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift.” Eckhart is speaking his own particular language here. To understand what he means we need to know, first, that according to his theology, “God’s endeavor is to give himself to us entirely.” The Lord pours himself into the world, not on a whim or even by choice, but by nature: “I will praise him,” says this mystic, “for being of such a nature and of such an essence that he must give.”

When Eckhart says that it is best if God becomes fruitful in man, he is commenting on a verse from the Bible which he translates as: “Our Lord Jesus Christ went up into a little castle and was received by a virgin who was a wife.” He interprets the verse symbolically: to be a “virgin” has nothing to do with carnal life but refers to “a human being who is devoid of all foreign images, and who is as void as he was when he was not yet.” A virgin is detached, someone who no longer regards the things of this life for themselves or for their usefulness. Detachment is the first station in Eckhart’s spiritual itinerary. When God finds the soul detached he enters it: “Know then, that God is bound to act, to pour himself out into thee as soon as ever he shall find thee ready … It were a very grave defect in God if, finding thee so empty and so bare, he wrought no excellent work in thee nor primed thee with glorious gifts.” When God pours himself into the soul, the Child is born, and this birth is the fruit of the gratitude for the gift.

If a human were to remain a virgin forever, he would never bear fruit. If he is to become fruitful, he must necessarily be a wife. “Wife,” here, is the noblest name that can be given to the soul, and it is indeed more noble than “virgin.” That man should receive God in himself is good, and by this reception he is a virgin. But that God should become fruitful in him is better; for the fruitfulness of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift. The spirit is wife when in gratitude it gives birth in return and bears Jesus