Mysticism

‘Now the experience of God … always impels to some sort of service: always awakens an energetic love’.¹ So writes Evelyn Underhill, the much under-appreciated pioneer of the study of mysticism, and not merely of its study, but a passionate advocate of the importance of mysticism for a full human life.² Hers was a wholly unpredictable achievement, made possible in part by the privileges of her upbringing and education, and the opportunities she had to take religion seriously. From our perspective it may seem to be something of an irritant that she writes in ‘non-inclusive’ language, but it should be noted that she is remarkably even-handed in her choice of female as well as male examples of ‘mystics’. In addition, it is inevitable that some of her work reflects the limitations of the scholarship of her day. For instance, Margery Kempe’s Book survived only on the library shelves of the descendants of a recusant family until in 1934 it was shown to the distinguished American medievalist Miss Hope Emily Allen. With publication following in 1940, only at the end of her life would Evelyn Underhill be able to appreciate that Margery Kempe was anything but a ‘contemplative’, but could now be located in the fourteenth/fifteenth century, one of the many visitors to the cell of Julian of Norwich. Evelyn Underhill did, however, have the benefit at the beginning of her life as an author of being able to read the recently rediscovered Mirror of Simple Souls, though was spared the knowledge of its author’s hideous death. What Evelyn Underhill initially offered her readers both in her own day and in ours, is a window into the emotional and intellectual religious world of the First World War era, making it accessible in a way which remains of great importance to many, if her publishing success if anything to go by. Her earliest major work seems to transcend the years in which it was published. This chapter can do no more than discuss her earliest work, but even so we may agree that along with authors such as Dorothy L. Sayers and Helen Waddell she merits being honoured, not only as what we would now refer to as an ‘independent scholar’ but like them, as a significant theologian for her time and even for ours.