Chapter 6 shows how female subordination was expressed and symbolised through head-covering, following St Paul’s injunction that ‘the woman ought to have power on her head because of the angels’ (1 Cor. 11: 10). While some theologians, including Calvin, sought to reinterpret the text figuratively rather than literally, the Reformation never completely lost sight of the idea of the church building as a sacred space hallowed by the presence of the angels. This idea was taken up in the early seventeenth century by Laudian divines who used it to promote the gesture of bowing to the altar. More surprisingly, it was also supported by a handful of non-Laudian divines, including Joseph Mede and Paul Micklethwaite. This complicates the standard picture of the early Stuart church as divided between Laudians and their opponents, and suggests that the Laudians were tapping into a more widespread concern about declining standards of reverence in public worship. It also challenges the view that the Reformation witnessed a desacralisation of sacred space, by showing how the belief in the sacredness of churches not only persisted long into the early modern period but rested specifically on the notion of supernatural presence.

Worship is typically understood as an act of religious reverence and devotion to a deity, usually involving some ritual. I aim here to explore whether, and how far, we might make sense of the idea of worship even on robust atheistic assumptions, according to which there is good reason to believe that there is no deity, nor supernatural beings of any kind, so that the only live beings in the world are humans, animals, plants and the like. We shall call this Atheist Worship (AW). Beyond that, I wish to explore the possible value of such practice. If there is no God, then in some sense AW is normatively the only possible form of worship that is not based on error or pretence. But as we shall see, there is no reason why theists cannot also engage in many forms of “AW” (in the sense of engaging in practices expressing attitudes of reverence and devotion towards something held to be of great value and importance, without theistic assumptions), so the value of this project does not depend upon atheism.

With special reference to Diotima’s teaching in Plato’s Symposium, this chapter discusses the central importance to Hermetic spirituality of beauty and reverence (eusebeia), Hermetic psychological theory, and the centrality of imagination to the Hermetic concept of “becoming aiōn” and gaining cosmic consciousness.

Having attained rebirth, the pupil’s mind was opened permanently to the universal cosmic consciousness of Gods own imagination. As described in a unique Coptic treatise, s/he could then make a further ascent beyond the cosmos to experience the Ogdoad of universal Life, the Ennead of universal Light, and even glimpse the pēgē, the divine Source of manifestation.