Monday, August 30, 2004
Eryk Hanut's Spiritual Pilgrimage
Recently, my friend Eryk Hanut published an outstanding book describing his spiritual journey to Mexico City to pay homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe. I wrote the following review, and reprint it here so that other readers will discover this fascinating account.
The Road to Guadalupe: A Modern Pilgrimage to the Goddess of the Americas, by Eryk Hanut
In this amazing work, Eryk Hanut, as modern Everyman, undertakes a spiritual journey to discover the truth at the heart of Guadalupe, the presence so beloved by Mexico (where she resides) as well as much of the rest of the world. His odyssey is at once magical. spiritual, fantastical and--at times-- hysterical. For Mexico, as he quickly discerns, is no single entity, no homogenous reality. It is, on the contrary, a mix of wild disparates--beauty and squalor, reverence and fakery, potent icons from the past and modern kitschy variations for sale at the temple door.
Along the way he encounters a cast of characters worthy of a Fellini movie: a hopelessly vain ancient and faded beauty who resembles "a mummified wedding cake"; a prescient witch who reveals to him unnerving facts about his past; cathedral priests who drone endlessly before a throng of the devout who move humbly forward on their knees, in awe of the divine spirit they have come here to celebrate. The object of their devotion--and the goal of Eryk's search--is the Virgin herself, whose image is mysteriously imprinted on the renowned tilma, the simple peasant's cloak once worn by Juan Diego, which has survived intact through many centuries, by some process which science is helpless to explain.
We soon perceive that Eryk comes equipped for his adventure with the three requisites for the authentic spiritual voyager: a pure heart, an honest eye, and a willingness to be open to the unexpected, in whatever form. What he discovers delights and perplexes, as his odyssey unfolds at ever deeper levels of Mystery and contradiction.
This work is part travelogue, part historical narrative, and part spiritual exploration. In a bravura performance, Eryk deftly fuses the levels and achieves a truly remarkable revelation of the archetypal search set within the banal realities of the modern world.
Mexico City is ever present in brilliant evocation, with its constant stream of hallucinatory images and bizarre figures, as if to underline the pervasive spiritual grotesquerie which characterizes our times. Yet, this same city harbors the miraculous image imprinted on the tilma, visible proof that the transcendent flourishes still within the material realms.
Eryk yearns to experience the numinous through authentic connection with sacred reality, the ultimate divine feminine. The challenges he faces are those which traditionally confront all such pilgrims, and indeed, together they comprise an allegory of the ills which beset modern society itself, and prevent us from claiming our rightful spiritual heritage.
He must literally wade through the crowds of hawkers and clamorous purveyors of spiritual tinsel to enter the cathedral (our obsession with materialism which distracts from spiritual progress?) Inside, he encounters the entrenched hierarchy, the male representatives of the establishment so reminiscent of our own omnipresent authority figures. The priests care little about the actual experience of the seekers before them, as long as their own power of control is not challenged. And elsewhere, he meets a cuandera, a witch/healer with apparent supernatural powers who offers some striking evidence of secret gifts, but who also relies on blatant superstition for many of her ritualistic practices. Like many today, Hanut is both drawn to and skeptical of such emissaries of the occult, a realm which often proves to be a deceptive path. Each of these obstacles is presented in telling precision, acutely and stunningly drawn. Indeed, Hanut's capacity for description is a rare gift.
In all, this book is a brilliant accomplishment--a bringing together of the many levels, a story told with an uncanny knack for revealing what is truly there, rather than offering the idealized picture a naive journeyer might suppose. It is Pilgrim's Progress and Fellini, Dante and Flannery O'Connor, the hero and the comic foil all in one superb, entertaining, enlightening package.
And, in the end, he gets his reward. Finally, after the crowds have departed, after the souvenir sellers have closed their shops, he and and his husband (Andrew Harvey) are admitted to the old cathedral, now undergoing renovation. Here, away from the meaningless turmoil of the exterior world and the hollow rituals of the official sanctuary, in a state resembling that of Juan Diego, the simple peasant who opened his heart to the original vision of Guadalupe on a barren hillside, Eryk discovers at last the essence he has come to find--the Sacred Feminine, real, vibrant, as powerful as ever, the one who triumphs over all the foibles and follies of a deficient humanity to confirm the immeasurable divine reality which underlies and motivates the entire universe of perceived things. It is here, in this unpretentious setting, that she acknowledges his presence, and extends to him the grace of acceptance which he has longed for. Indeed, she is "the goddess who did not leave," but remains to console and nurture her children as the Divine Mother of all.
"The Road to Guadalupe" is a rich feast for the soul. a compendium of marvelous sketches revealing a culture which, like our own, yearns for connection, yet too often is lost in the maze of the irrelevant and the misleading. It is an enthralling and entertaining book, filled with both wisdom and wit in a rare combination. It is a treasure, a valuable contribution to an age filled with seekers desperately striving to recover the lost link with spirit.
Dorothy Walters
The Road to Guadalupe: A Modern Pilgrimage to the Goddess of the Americas, by Eryk Hanut
In this amazing work, Eryk Hanut, as modern Everyman, undertakes a spiritual journey to discover the truth at the heart of Guadalupe, the presence so beloved by Mexico (where she resides) as well as much of the rest of the world. His odyssey is at once magical. spiritual, fantastical and--at times-- hysterical. For Mexico, as he quickly discerns, is no single entity, no homogenous reality. It is, on the contrary, a mix of wild disparates--beauty and squalor, reverence and fakery, potent icons from the past and modern kitschy variations for sale at the temple door.
Along the way he encounters a cast of characters worthy of a Fellini movie: a hopelessly vain ancient and faded beauty who resembles "a mummified wedding cake"; a prescient witch who reveals to him unnerving facts about his past; cathedral priests who drone endlessly before a throng of the devout who move humbly forward on their knees, in awe of the divine spirit they have come here to celebrate. The object of their devotion--and the goal of Eryk's search--is the Virgin herself, whose image is mysteriously imprinted on the renowned tilma, the simple peasant's cloak once worn by Juan Diego, which has survived intact through many centuries, by some process which science is helpless to explain.
We soon perceive that Eryk comes equipped for his adventure with the three requisites for the authentic spiritual voyager: a pure heart, an honest eye, and a willingness to be open to the unexpected, in whatever form. What he discovers delights and perplexes, as his odyssey unfolds at ever deeper levels of Mystery and contradiction.
This work is part travelogue, part historical narrative, and part spiritual exploration. In a bravura performance, Eryk deftly fuses the levels and achieves a truly remarkable revelation of the archetypal search set within the banal realities of the modern world.
Mexico City is ever present in brilliant evocation, with its constant stream of hallucinatory images and bizarre figures, as if to underline the pervasive spiritual grotesquerie which characterizes our times. Yet, this same city harbors the miraculous image imprinted on the tilma, visible proof that the transcendent flourishes still within the material realms.
Eryk yearns to experience the numinous through authentic connection with sacred reality, the ultimate divine feminine. The challenges he faces are those which traditionally confront all such pilgrims, and indeed, together they comprise an allegory of the ills which beset modern society itself, and prevent us from claiming our rightful spiritual heritage.
He must literally wade through the crowds of hawkers and clamorous purveyors of spiritual tinsel to enter the cathedral (our obsession with materialism which distracts from spiritual progress?) Inside, he encounters the entrenched hierarchy, the male representatives of the establishment so reminiscent of our own omnipresent authority figures. The priests care little about the actual experience of the seekers before them, as long as their own power of control is not challenged. And elsewhere, he meets a cuandera, a witch/healer with apparent supernatural powers who offers some striking evidence of secret gifts, but who also relies on blatant superstition for many of her ritualistic practices. Like many today, Hanut is both drawn to and skeptical of such emissaries of the occult, a realm which often proves to be a deceptive path. Each of these obstacles is presented in telling precision, acutely and stunningly drawn. Indeed, Hanut's capacity for description is a rare gift.
In all, this book is a brilliant accomplishment--a bringing together of the many levels, a story told with an uncanny knack for revealing what is truly there, rather than offering the idealized picture a naive journeyer might suppose. It is Pilgrim's Progress and Fellini, Dante and Flannery O'Connor, the hero and the comic foil all in one superb, entertaining, enlightening package.
And, in the end, he gets his reward. Finally, after the crowds have departed, after the souvenir sellers have closed their shops, he and and his husband (Andrew Harvey) are admitted to the old cathedral, now undergoing renovation. Here, away from the meaningless turmoil of the exterior world and the hollow rituals of the official sanctuary, in a state resembling that of Juan Diego, the simple peasant who opened his heart to the original vision of Guadalupe on a barren hillside, Eryk discovers at last the essence he has come to find--the Sacred Feminine, real, vibrant, as powerful as ever, the one who triumphs over all the foibles and follies of a deficient humanity to confirm the immeasurable divine reality which underlies and motivates the entire universe of perceived things. It is here, in this unpretentious setting, that she acknowledges his presence, and extends to him the grace of acceptance which he has longed for. Indeed, she is "the goddess who did not leave," but remains to console and nurture her children as the Divine Mother of all.
"The Road to Guadalupe" is a rich feast for the soul. a compendium of marvelous sketches revealing a culture which, like our own, yearns for connection, yet too often is lost in the maze of the irrelevant and the misleading. It is an enthralling and entertaining book, filled with both wisdom and wit in a rare combination. It is a treasure, a valuable contribution to an age filled with seekers desperately striving to recover the lost link with spirit.
Dorothy Walters
