Turned Every Which Way: Melchizedek as World Soul
A Re-reading
The Anima Mundi, Universal Psyche, or World Soul is a concept that has a rich history in many western religious traditions, a history I am neither willing nor qualified to explain in any scholarly capacity beyond long winded general remarks. Sufficient for my purposes here are that, within Christian circles, she has often been identified with Sophia, the most famous example of which is perhaps Sergei Bulgakov. I want to propose an alternate reading, as a (presently) polytheist Christian, and identify this entity with Melchizedek, the mysterious entity of Genesis 14, who has his own rich literary life outside canonical scripture, although often implicit within the latter, even becoming explicit, for example, in the New Testament, where the author of Hebrews utilizes him in an argument for Jesus Christ’s supremacy as the Jewish God’s Son. I am not doing away with Sophia as intimately related to this Psychic activity; indeed she is indispensable to my understanding but indispensable in a way that does not require an identification. Sophia, who I will now call Chokmah, is in this rereading, a far prior principle, prior to even Jesus Christ as the Universal Demiurge of my understanding of the Christian ontological regime.
In my reading, the first indication of the World Soul comes at the end of the Genesis narrative about the Garden, when Adam and Eve are exiled and “He [The Lord] placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Gen. 3:24) The flaming sword is a Logos figure of some kind, or at least connected to one. It is the case in Christian symbolism that the Logos is connected in some way to swords and flaming swords, and this spills over to Angelic figures, who are of the intellectual nature of the Prime Angel. What follows is the decoupling of “Logos” from one figure, and into many interrelated figures.
Interesting for me here is the fact that this sword “turned every way”, a depiction of a sphere being drawn. Of course, we should not read this crudely. What this depicts is a boundary to go beyond which one would have to go through the two things that happens to a sacrifice: they are cut and burned. It is not a mistake that the human couple are given garments of skin in their exile. They – or rather their “logoi” – are to enter the world of generation, of bodies, and of “animals”. The garments have a double function. Firstly, they indicate that are “below” this boundary are “animals”. It is not a mistake that it is cherubim that are at this boundary, cherubim being famous animal chimaeras. Secondly, it indicates the end of this descent, which is into the lowest physical flesh, rather than the “exalted flesh” of the higher “animal” entities. Since it is in the Cosmos that bodies appear, this boundary can only be the principle that both creates and destroys them, the World Soul. For Proclus, the Intellect of the World Soul is Time itself[1], and so we have a connection to the fact that Melchizedek, as Christian World Soul, is at the “end of the age”. This is also the first explicit appearance of “Angels” since Genesis started. They were implicit before, and their bodies were mentioned in the form of the celestial bodies and the “birds”, but here, we have another perspective on them, where they are explicitly identified in their highest forms with the Cherubim with the World Soul. Anything prior is only implicit in the sense of eminence in their causes, thus the Serpent prior to this is not really an Angel, but a God, in the sense I have previously described. The World Soul is also, I believe, a God, but a “Malakhic God”, the principle of the Malakh, the “Messengers”. As Margaret Barker has said[2], this entity has been called “Michael” as well as “Melchizedek”. In this case, I will identify them qua formal, insofar as I believe Melchizedek to be Michael’s Principle. If Michael is a different entity, that will be something that I will have to figure out later. For now, all Angels, including the possible “Archangels”, “Cherubim”, etc, are to be under the Melchizedek. In this case, I’d have to amend my statement from a previous post, where I said:
“Back to the question of YHWH as Christ; on the one hand, as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – whether he appropriates the name of another God or not – He is “El Shaddai”. On the other hand, as El Shaddai, he is subordinate to El Elyon, for whom he is a priest, the premier Priest, and the King. He is Melchizedek, or at least, his principle.”
I would now say that Christ is Melchizedek’s principle, and firmly take that side, over Christ being Melchizedek tout court. Christ is principle in the sense of the ontological root of a God’s activity that is Himself reducible to no ontology. As mentioned previously, it is the persons of the Gods that holds an ontology together. So, while, formally, the World Soul requires Intellect/Nous for its role and activity, the God that is the World Soul is independent, and directly divinizes and manifests said World Soul and Psychic activity. Thus, Melchizedek is the God that is the Christian World Soul, in my reading. Insofar as Christ is incarnated on earth, he is under the aegis of Melchizedek, in his train, even if he is prior as Universal Demiurge. This unique duality of a God being both the Universal Demiurge and the God of human constitution is something I will explore later, but it suffices to say that Melchizedek plays a crucial mediatory role in this duality. In Melchizedek’s face, you see Christ. In Christ’s face, you see Melchizedek. In all of them, Sophia is present, the shining effulgence of their “pattern of life”, their paradigm. We can, therefore, because of this, make the following connections in the form of a benediction:
It is Melchizedek – whose name is King of Justice – the ruler of Salem, whose realm is the whole world, united in peace, King of Peace. His sword is his body, broken and divided for our constitution, and yet whole, because by it we are broken. His Wine is His flame, for by it we are intoxicated with the pneuma, the flaming pneuma. By this Limit we are killed, by this Infinity we are resurrected, in order that we might ascend while still in descent, to see in his face the visage of the broken man in whom wholeness has no face but ours.
[1] Antonio Vargas, “Time, King of Heaven and Earth: Proclus on Timeless and Timebound Metaphysics,” Dionysius, January 1, 2016, https://www.academia.edu/31462657/Time_King_of_Heaven_and_Earth_Proclus_on_Timeless_and_Timebound_Metaphysics.
[2] Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, Names, 1992.