Of Clouds and Daemons
“And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.”[1]
I have before me two books. The first is called ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, a 14th century mystical tract by an unknown author. The second is ‘The Secret Commonwealth’, the second volume of renowned atheist author Philip Pullman’s planned trilogy, ‘The Book of Dust’.
‘The Book of Dust’ is a companion series to Pullman’s earlier trilogy ‘His Dark Materials’. These are a series of fantastical children’s books full of witches and angels, fairies and talking beasts, a sort-of contemporary reboot of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia novels, written by a man firmly anchored in Oxford, the city where Lewis wrote his classic tales. But unlike Narnia, Pullman’s books are not all allegory, and the world in which they are set in is not pure fantasy. Instead, the stories, which all focus on a young lady named Lyra Belacqua, are set in a parallel universe, with her living in an Oxford that is like ours and yet, well… not.
Parallel universes sound like pretty fantastical stuff. The idea is that here, now, there is another universe — or countless other universes — that we are wholly unaware of. Ridiculous, you may scoff. As fantastical as Lewis’s Narnia or his old mate Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Yet almost all scientists agree that parallel universes could exist and a significant number — perhaps a majority — believe that they do. So, not so fantastical after all.
As I said before, Lyra’s Oxford is very much like our own, but one of the significant differences from our reality is that in her world, every human has a daemon, an animal that they are somehow attached to and, if parted from, the pain becomes unbearable. These animals are born when the human is and die when their human does. During childhood they shape shift as the child discovers its own personality and then, when the child hits puberty, their daemon settles on a particular form. Lyra’s is a pine marten, other folk have dogs, birds, mice, snakes and so on.
Indeed, in interviews, Pullman has said that the daemon idea was the seed from which the whole world of ‘His Dark Materials’ and ‘The Book of Dust’ sprouted. For daemons are souls, they are part of the person. Pullman argues that we have daemons in our world too, but they do not physically manifest, so we can’t see them. They are there though.
But what has all this to do with ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’?
Well, that short mystical tract penned by an anonymous monk (probably from the East Midlands) sometime around 1390 focuses on the Biblical story of Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary. This only appears in one gospel (Luke) and is so short that I can retell it here:
“Now it came to pass as they went, that he entered into a certain town: and a certain woman named Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord’s feet, heard his word. But Martha was busy about much serving. Who stood and said: Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me.
And the Lord answering, said to her: Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.”[2]
So, Jesus goes to a house and whilst one sister spends her time doing jobs — cleaning, cooking, etc — the other sits at his feet listening to what this strange preacher has to say. Understandably, the first sister is angry that she isn’t getting any help, but instead of agreeing with her, Jesus surprisingly replies that her sister is actually doing the better thing.
The question is, what are we to make of this? The child me rather liked the tale because it meant that when my mum was telling me to help with the housework, I had an excuse to sit around reading a book since that is what Jesus would have wanted me to do.
Perhaps.
Others feel that what Jesus is getting at is that the eternal God of all mankind does not incarnate himself all too often and sit in your front room dispensing sound advice and so wouldn’t it be wise to listen to him rather than frying the chips?
Maybe.
The author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ takes a different tack. He tells us that there are, essentially, two ways of life for a Christian — the active life and the contemplative life. Martha, with her worldly concerns and focus on practicalities, is living the active life; Mary with her interest in holy teachings and silent devotion is living the contemplative. In other words, Martha and Mary are all of us. Part of us pulls towards the practicalities of life, the other part towards prayer, meditation, and contemplation.
Our unknown author goes on. He describes a cloud of unknowing above and around us. He claims that we cannot know God and all His ways as He is so vast and impenetrable. But we can do two things: firstly, acknowledge that the cloud is there — something he would argue that the atheists and those content with the active life fail to do — and then, secondly, to plunge right into it — which is what the contemplatives attempt to do.
But what does any of this mean for us in our digital multi-tasking world? Well, perhaps more than ever we are focussed on the practical, worldly tasks, from checking that the washing is in to checking on our social media, and more than in any time in history we are ignoring that vast cloud of unknowing that surrounds us, for with today’s distractions it is so much easier to ignore.
One man who does not ignore it, however, is Philip Pullman. I described him earlier as an atheist but that is a little inaccurate. Although associated with famous atheists like Richard Dawkins, and as staunch a critic of organised religion as you will find, Pullman labels himself as an “agnostic”, an acknowledgement of that impenetrable cloud that surrounds him. And the central importance to daemons in his series of novels — ‘The Secret Commonwealth’ perhaps more than any other — and the effects of neglecting or being separated from our soul might have on us, suggest that he understands well the value of contemplation.
The jobs that Martha do may be important or they may not. Does it matter if you hoover up every day or every other day? And do you have to be doing the washing right at this particular moment in time? In our world it is easy to forget the importance of our souls, even if we are atheists or agnostics. But they matter even if we cannot see or hear them, for they are an integral part of us.
So, stop for a moment, sit down, and contemplate your daemon. What does he or she look like, and why have they taken that form? What might you say to them and, more importantly, as with Mary at the feet of Jesus, what might your daemon be trying to tell you?
Listen to that still, small voice.
Written Smallthorne, UK, 21/03/2022
Copyright © 2022, Matthew E. Pointon
[1] 1 Kings 19:12–13
[2] Luke 10:38–42