The Apophatic Eel

By Niamh Coldren

In the sprawling depths of the Sargasso Sea, a vast, hot, and oxygen-starved region of the North Atlantic boarded not by land, but by four ocean currents, European eels return for the last time to breed and then die. Nobody knows why exactly they return here, and it was only until recently that their spawning ground was unobscured. The eel has long been understood and presented as a mysterious harbinger of death, an unfathomable force of darkness, and an image of decay. It is a creature that at times echoes our own perception of the definitions of life, constraints of death, and image of the divine. 

Apophatic theology is a section of belief found within many religions that argues that full ignorance is needed before it is possible to enter communion with the divine. It comes from the Greek “apo” or “away from” and “phais” or “speech”. It is essentially the act of coming to God by what God is not. The apophatic God is one of darkness, namelessness, and silence. It is a force beyond human comprehension and language, yet still far more reachable and understandable than the non-apophatic God. Perhaps it is when looking at the eel through the lens of apophatic theology that we may begin to better understand our own human perceptions of death and faith, and what it means when all of it is at the brink of extinction.

Maybe what both eels and the divine hold the most in common is their understanding of being a representation of shadow and decay. The eel is seen as a metaphor for the beginning and the end, and for the ineffable and empty ties that string the two together. This understanding is most clear in the ways that eels are presented through storytelling. One of the most referenced examples of this are the eels in ’The Little Mermaid’; Flotsam and Jetsam. Their presence is one of secrecy, unreliability, and tragedy. They are two creatures that lurk in the dark of the sea; they are unpalatable and slightly revolting. They stand in the middle of the story, providing a sense of strangeness and mystery. Of course, it is a natural thing to express these preexisting beliefs. It is our way of making sense of a creature that is stealthy and reserved. Perhaps this image of darkness, vagueness, and unreliability is at times desired within our society as well. It serves a purpose, a necessity. It mirrors our world and allows us to see more deeply and more fully. 

 For centuries, humans have attempted to understand, comprehend, and put language to both eels and God. Each attempt has inevitably been filtered through the lens of human experience and human comprehension, and the eel (perhaps like God) has become an appendage and furnishing for the human perspective. Language has been the foundation of these reckonings. It is through using words and storytelling as a medium that we have begun to understand the unfathomable. Still, our attempt at this has been insufficient and their presence is almost always one of darkness, secrecy, tragedy, and vagueness. There is something seen to be utterly revolting and discomforting about the way in which the eel moves: its scales and fins, the slimy touch of its flesh, the foam of the sea slipping off its slick skin. In each description of the eel, there is an underlying sense of unease, discomfort, and of profanity. Like God, the eel is incomprehensible and unspeakable, but still somehow experienced by many. This is the core of apophatic theology: it requires us to give up on language to better recognize what surrounds us. It understands the unspeakable truth that language is a failure, and never through words will we be able to understand such a strange delineation of life that both eels and the divine share. 

There is no merciful way to kill an eel. Every feature and facet of it is wholly brutal. It is a difficult process, and one that requires much precision and attention. Some fishers choose to kill the eel through suffocation- a long and exceedingly cruel operation in which a live eel is rolled in salt or ashes, a process that slowly starves their oxygen and eradicates the slime on their skin. Others freeze the eel, causing it to slip into a bleak and icy stupor, then it is rendered lifeless with a quick blow to the head. Even after the eel has been killed, it will often wriggle and sizzle in the hot pan as it is cooked, its nerves twitching violently. It is as though it has retained some version of itself even after death. It is as though death becomes a portal, not a barrier, and the eel takes on an almost mythical status. 

But perhaps the truth of the eel and of God is one that cannot and will never be expressed through the confines of language or under a microscope. These are merely our attempts to make sense of such a strange force of existence that exists both separate and connected to us. It is through apophatic theology that we may understand the limits of language, both when it comes to the divine and the eel. The apophatic eel is formless, unexplainable, and simply itself. It exists purely as we perceive it, and maybe when giving up on trying to bring it to words, we can understand it more fully.