S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 1 7 Anton Vydra language “must be a union of dream-producing and idea-forming activities” (Bachelard 1999, 10). One could object that there is an essential difference between dreams and images and between ideas of conceptual thinking and spiritual reflections. But in Bachelard’s work, dreams are related to lucid daydreams rather than to the dreams in our nightly unconscious. Thus, some form of latent imagination, not rationalized but rather embodied in the dreamer in the manner of the passive syntheses of which phenomenologists speak, plays a role in Bachelardian daydreams. It is similar with ideas. Although Bachelard understands them in this context as poetic ideas, they are very close to the meditations that aim to deepen human existence. They form a non-theological spirituality sui generis, which will be discussed here later. The intertwining of dreams and ideas, of images and spirituality, is thus a crucial moment in Bachelard’s understanding of material imagination through the notion of the graft as a characteristic anthropological trace in nature. Of course, a lot depends on whether the dream-image develops within the element of water or earth, because deep water (for example, passive sinking) and depths of earth (for example, active digging) offer different imagery and motives. I am convinced that the same could be said of spiritualities, which are sometimes unconsciously based on one of the four elements and thus lead the human being along different horizons and verticals of his being. To put it figuratively: it makes a difference if I plunge into the deep mysteries of existence, or if I must dig hard to get to them. It makes a difference whether I am adrift on the lower waters of transcendence, or if I struggle (dirty with clay) through the transcendent darkness of the Unknown and the Unspeakable. Just think of Mephistopheles’ words to Faustus that he must “dig down deep, so deep” to reach the realm of the Mothers (Goethe 2014, 6411–6418). Hans Pollnow used this Faustian image as a description of Jean Wahl’s notion of “trans-descendence” (Wahl 2016). And there are also different silences grafted onto waters, cosmic space, earth or even onto the bowels of a cave. Let me now show it with some examples from history which could help us better understand this topic. 3 Images of the Transcendent I would like to turn now to very specific spiritual imaginings related to motherhood and femininity. Much work in this area has already been done (for example by Bynum 1982, 1988; Penniman 2017; Davy 1960, 1977; Atkinson 1991). Motherhood and femininity will here play the role of one of the many backdrops to the imaginations on which various medieval spiritualities were based. Most visions of motherhood attributed to God or to males were accompanied by a very detailed study of feminine experiences, both in the milieu of the Church Fathers and later of theologians and mystics in the Middle Ages. The basis of their imaginings, however, was always somewhat different and with either more moderate or more fundamental shifts of meaning. Referring to God or a man (bishop, priest, saint) as a mother was not as much of a problem for early Christians as it might seem to contemporary people. The roles of fatherhood and motherhood were not strictly separated from one another, and it was normal to conceive of man as a being in whom masculine and feminine elements are equally represented: such as animus and anima in Carl Gustav Jung. But while today’s discourse looks for femininity in men and masculinity in women rather through certain forms of behavior, emotions or character traits, older epochs based this duality primarily on the corporeality (or psychosomatic union) of men and women. Among the typical signs of femininity that came into play here were breasts, mother’s milk, and breastfeeding. Since the asexual notion of a transcendent God led to an empty, non-figurative image (analogous to horror vacui), a certain solution was God’s imagined sexuality, mostly masculine, sometimes very strictly feminine (e.g. , in 15th century mystic Julian of Norwich), at other times swinging to one side or the other according to the needs of the interpretation or the topic at hand. Drinking milk (of course, spiritual milk) from the breast of God or from the breast of a wise man was a typical image that appears from early Christianity until the 15th century. This imagery is not stable but emerges in the texts of medieval authors according to contemporary trends of thought and based on different contexts. It may surprise people today to read the words of one of The Odes of Solomon, an anonymous apocryphal piece of writing of Aramaic-Syriac origin, which may have been written in the second century and had an impact on the ante-Nicene Church and its main leaders (Irenaeus of Lyons, Justin the
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