The Secret History of the World

by Mark Booth

  The adepts understood, too, how sinking deep into contemplation of the solar plexus chakra enabled them to perceive clairvoyantly. And they knew how to wrap others in a protective beam of love emanating from the heart chakra.

  In addition to the sixteen petals of the heart chakra, the adepts saw 101 subtle and luminous arteries issuing from the same area like spokes from a wheel. Three of these, larger ones they saw rising to the head. One rises to the right eye and corresponds to the sun and the future. Another rises to the left eye and corresponds to the moon and the past. They understood how it was by a combination of these two organs that humans are enabled to perceive the movements of material objects in relation to one another in space and so also to have a sense of time passing.

  The middle of the three arteries ran up from the heart and through the crown of the head. By this route, the way upwards is illumined from below, by means of a radiant heart. And it was by the route of this middle artery, too, that the spirit would depart up through the crown and out of the body at death.

  The Neolithic ‘swastika’ carved on a boulder on Keighley moor in Yorkshire, England, is a symbol of the revolving two-petalled lotus and above — the same device — in a Celtic sun brooch found in Sweden. The Rig Veda says, ‘Behold the beautiful splendour of Savitva the Sun-God of the swastika to inspire our visions.’

  To the ancients all life was involved in a pulse, rhythm or breath. They saw all human lives as breathed temporarily into the world of maya, or illusion, then breathed out again, a process repeated through the ages. They saw great flocks or shoals of souls being breathed in and out of material life together.

  This ancient Indian civilization was in some ways an echo of the sun-filled, watery, vegetable world of the period before the sun and earth separated. In some ways it too was a lotus-eating period that would have to end if progress was to take place.

  We saw how great beings from the higher hierarchies could no longer appear in physical bodies as they had earlier on Atlantis. They could still appear as semi-material spectres or phantoms, but even this was happening less frequently. By the end of the age people might only see them with their physical eyes once or twice in a lifetime. As the gods withdrew, people would have to find ways to follow them.

  In this way yoga was born.

  At the height of their meditations a rush of energy from the base of the spine would travel upwards through the middle artery via the heart to the head. Sometimes this energy was thought of as being like a snake, which rose through the spine up into the skull and bit at a point just behind the bridge of the nose. This bite released an ecstatic lace-like flux of luminous currents, seven hundred thousand lightning flares sounding like millions of bees. Adepts would find themselves in another dimension that appeared at first to consist of a mighty ocean of giant weaving waves of light and energy — the preliminary mystical experience in all traditions. As they became more accustomed to the spiritual world, these apparently impersonal forces would begin to resolve themselves into outer garments of the gods, and finally the faces of the gods themselves would emerge from the light, the same faces of the gods of stars and planets that have become familiar to us over the last few chapters.

  One of the shortest books in the world, but one of the most powerful, is called the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali. It was written down in its final form in about 400 BC, but originated in the teachings of the Rishis.

  Pantanjali tells the reader to concentrate on the strength of the elephant and by this means attain that strength. He says it is possible to know past lives by concentrating on the past. It would be wishful thinking to believe you or I might be able to perform these feats just like that. These are things that now, as then, only the most advanced, the highest initiates, can attain. The rest of us will only be able to do them in future incarnations.

  The Rishis taught that the evolution of the whole cosmos is the goal of existence, and that the seeds of all this transformation lie in the human body.

  In 5067 BC these gods were moving the cosmos towards the next stage of human evolution as the sun entered the sign of Gemini. Just as, earlier, the impulse for the evolution of humankind had moved eastwards from drowning Atlantis to India, now it began to move westwards, as it continues to do today.

  10. THE WAY OF THE WIZARD

  Zarathustra’s Battle Against the Powers of Darkness • The Life and Death of Krishna the Shepherd • The Dawn of the Dark Age

  IN 5067 BC IN THE REGION WE NOW call Iran, the birth of a great new leader was foretold. We should picture his mother living in a small agricultural community, like the one unearthed at Çatal Hüyük

  It was in the depths of an exceptionally harsh winter when the plague struck. Tongues were wagging in the community, accusing the young woman of witchcraft, claiming the storms, the plague, were her doing.

  Then in the fifth month of her pregnancy she had a nightmare. She saw an immense cloud and from it emerged dragons, wolves and snakes that tried to tear her child from her body. But as the monsters approached, the child spoke from inside her womb to comfort her, and as his voice died away, she saw a pyramid of light descending from the sky. Down this pyramid came a boy holding a staff in his left hand and a scroll in his right. His eyes shone with inner fire, and his name was Zarathustra.

  Zarathustra with rolled scroll. The carrying of a rolled scroll in the right hand is always a sign that the subject is an adherent of the secret philosophy. Look around the streets of London, Paris, Rome, Washington DC or any of the great cities of the world, and you may be surprised how many statues of the great and the good carry rolled scrolls.

  There are different schools of thought about the dates of Zarathustra. Some writers of the ancient world placed him at approximately 5000 BC, while others, such as Plutarch, at 600 BC. Again, this is because there was more than one Zarathustra.

  The birth of the first Zarathustra unleashed storms of hatred. The king was in thrall to a circle of sorcerers who persuaded him the boy must die. He went to the young mother’s house and found the baby alone in his crib. The king was determined to stab the baby, but as he raised his hand, it became mysteriously paralyzed. Later he sent one of his servants to kidnap the child and abandon him in a wolf-ridden wilderness. But the pack of wolves the king hoped would tear the child in pieces saw something in his eyes and ran away terrified. The child grew to be the youth of his mother’s dream.

  But the forces of evil knew their greatest enemy had come down to earth. They were just biding their time.

  The Age of Gemini was one of division. It was no longer possible to live safely in Paradise, as people had lived in the Indian epoch. If the Indian epoch had been a recapitulation of the heavenly time before the separation of earth and sun, this new, Persian epoch was a recapitulation of the fiery period when the dragons of Lucifer had infected life on earth. Now the forces of evil reasserted themselves, led by Ahriman (the Satan of Zoroastrian tradition). The cosmos was invaded by hoards of demons that darkened the heavens. Demons thrust themselves between humans and the higher echelons of the spiritual hierarchies. If the Indian epoch was the time when the secret physiology of humankind was imprinted on human memory, then this Persian epoch is the time we look to for knowledge of demonology.

  Etruscan depiction of a demon in the form of a Persian Asura. The name Asura literally means not-god, ‘a’ meaning ‘not’ and Sura being the Persian name for a god or angel. Demons in all traditions are often shown gnawing the viscera. This is because of the primordial understanding that consciousness and memory are not stored in the brain alone, but in the whole body. Things we have done that we would rather not confront, painful and undigested experiences, are stored in the viscera.

  The hosts of demons against which Zarathustra led his own followers were also classified by him. These form the basis of classifications that the secret societies use today.

  At this turning point in history people began to feel insecure on a level that today we call the existential. They were less su
re that they lived in a cosmos that was ultimately benevolent, where everything would turn out right in the end. They began to suffer for the first time the species of fear that Emile Durkheim named anomie — fear of the destructive chaos that creeps in at the margins of life, that may attack us from the darkness outside the encampment or from the darkness that overwhelms us when we are sleeping. It may also lie in wait for us when we are dead.

  WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP WE LOSE ANIMAL consciousness. In the teachings of the secret societies animal consciousness — or spirit — is pictured floating out of the body in sleep. This has two main consequences. First, without the animal element our body returns to a vegetating state. No longer sapped by the agitations of animal consciousness or the wearying effect of thought, the bodily functions that the vegetable element controls are renewed. We wake up refreshed.

  Second, detached from the sensory perceptions of the body, the spirit enters an alternative state of consciousness, which is an experience of the sub-lunary spirit world. In dreams we perceive the spirit worlds, where we are approached by angels and demons and the spirits of the dead.

  Or at least that is what humans experienced in the time of the Rishis. By the time of Zarathustra human nature had become enmeshed in matter and so corrupted that dreams had become chaotic and difficult to interpret. They were fantastical now and full of strange, distorted meanings. Still, dreams might contain promptings by spirits, fragments of past lives, even memories of episodes from history.

  In deepest sleep the Third Eye may open and peer into the spirit worlds, but on waking we forget.

  AFTER YEARS IN EXILE, THE YOUNG ZARATHUSTRA felt the need to return to Iran. On the border he had a vision. A gigantic shining creature of spirit came to meet him and told him to follow. Zarathustra had to take ninety steps to the spirit’s gigantic nine as the spirit swept over the stony ground, taking Zarathustra to a clearing, hidden by rocks and trees. There a circle of six other, similar spirits hovered above the ground. This shining company turned to welcome Zarathustra, and invited him to leave his physical body for a while in order to join them.

  Marble group of the second century BC. Mithras, archangel of the sun — St Michael in Hebrew tradition — is here slaying the cosmic bull of material creation. From the bull’s spine sprouts the corn of vegetable life and from his blood the wine of animal life. Note that Mithras is wearing the ‘Phrygian cap’ which resurfaced into exoteric history when it was worn by initiates of the secret societies who led the French Revolution. The French Martinist Joseph de Maistre wove together from various sources an account of the Mithraic initiation ceremonies. A pit was dug, which the candidate stood in. A metal grille was placed over the opening to the pit, and on this stood a bull that was sacrificed. The candidate would become drenched by the blood of the bull raining down from above. In another part of the ceremony the candidate would lie in a tomb as if dead. Then the initiator would grasp him by the right hand and pull him up into ‘new life’. There were seven grades of initiate: Raven, Nymphus, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Courier of the Sun and Father.

  We have met these shining spirits before. They are the spirits of the sun called in Genesis the Elohim. They now prepared Zarathustra for his mission.

  First, they told him he must pass through fire without being burned.

  Second, they poured molten lead — the metal of Ahriman — on to his chest, which he suffered in silence. Zarathustra then took the lead from his chest and calmly gave it back to them.

  Third, they opened up his torso and showed him the secrets of his inner organs, before closing him up again.

  Zarathustra returned to court and preached what the great spirits had revealed. He told the king that the sun spirits who created the world were working to transform it, and that one day the world would be a vast body of light.

  The king he was addressing was a new one, but, like his predecessor he was in thrall to evil ministers. He did not want to hear this good news and let his ministers persuade him to have Zarathustra thrown in prison.

  But Zarathustra escaped from prison and also from attempts to murder him. He lived to fight many battles against the forces of evil, battles where he pitched his magic powers against the powers of evil sorcerers. Later he became the archetype of the wizard, with a tall hat, cloak of stars and an eagle on his shoulder. Zarathustra was a dangerous, somewhat disconcerting figure, prepared to fight fire with fire.

  He led his followers to secluded grottoes, hidden in the forests. There in underground caverns he initiated them. He wanted to provide them with the supernatural powers needed to fight the good fight. We know about this early Mystery school, because it survived five millennia underground in Persia before resurfacing as Mithraism, an initiatory cult popular among Roman soldiers, and then again in Manichaeism, a late Mystery religion which included St Augustine among its initiates.

  Zarathustra prepared his followers to face Ahriman’s demons or Asuras by terrifying initiation ordeals. He who fears death, he said, is already dead.

  It was recorded by Menippus, the Greek philosopher of the third century BC, who had been initiated by the Mithraic successors of Zarathustra, that, after a period of fasting, mortification and mental exercises performed in solitude, the candidate would be forced to swim across water, pass through fire and ice. He would be cast into a snake pit, and cut across the chest by a sword so that blood would flow.

  By experiencing the outer limits of fear, the initiate was prepared for the worst that could happen, both in life and after death.

  An important part of this preparation was inducing in the candidate conscious experience of the separation of the animal part of his make-up from the vegetable and material parts, as happens in sleep. Equally important was to experience the separation of the animal from the vegetable part, as happens after death. In other words initiation involved what we today sometimes call an ‘after-death experience’.

  Paracelsus said: ‘It is as necessary to learn evil things as good, for who can know what is good without learning what is evil.’ Meeting of a contemporary secret society in woods in West Sussex, England. It is sometimes supposed that all secret societies engage in commerce with evil spirits. However, the great, historically significant secret societies, such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, acknowledge the dark side in order to combat it.

  By the act of leaving the body the candidate knew beyond any possibility of doubt that death was not the end.

  People who learn how to dream consciously, that is to say with the ability to think and exercise willpower we normally only enjoy in waking life, may develop powers which are ‘supernatural’ by today’s definitions. If you can dream consciously, then you are on the way to being able to move about the spirit worlds at will, communicating freely with the spirits of the dead and other disembodied beings. You may perhaps learn about the future in ways which might otherwise be blocked. You may be able to travel to other parts of the material universe and view things where you are not bodily present — so-called astral travel. The great sixteenth-century initiate Paracelsus, who, as we shall see, has some claims to be the father of both modern experimental medicine and homeopathy, said he was able to visit other people in their dreams.

  We will also see that many great scientific discoveries have been revealed to initiates while in this alternative state of consciousness.

  Supernatural means of influencing minds is another of the gifts that initiation may confer. Initiates I have met have undoubted gifts of mind-reading way beyond the abilities of sceptical scientists to reproduce in ‘cold reading’ experiments.

  Similarly science has only the flimsiest, question-begging explanations for hypnosis. This is because, though it may be abused by popular entertainers, hypnosis was originally — and at root remains — an occult practice. Ultimately explicable only in mind-before-matter terms, it originated with the Rishis of India and in techniques practised during the process of initiation by the temple priests of Egypt. In the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali, th
is power of influencing others’ minds is one of the powers called vibhuti. Mind-influence was used for benevolent purposes, but as the world became a more dangerous place it would have to be used for both defence and attack.

  We saw earlier how in a mind-before-matter philosophy the way you look at someone can affect them at a sub-atomic level. The coiled cobra representations of the Third Eye on the foreheads of Egyptian initiates shows that it can reach out and strike at what it perceives. In the seventeenth century the scientist and alchemist J.B. von Helmont said that ‘a man may kill an animal by staring at it for fifteen minutes’. From the eighteenth century onwards European travellers in India were amazed by the ability of adepts to throw anyone into an immediate state of catalepsy, just by looking at them. The story of one nineteenth-century traveller was recorded by George Eliot’s friend, the initiate Gerald Massey. This traveller had been mesmerized by the gaze of a serpent. He was sinking deeper and deeper into a ‘somnambulic’ sleep under its fascinating influence. Then someone else in the party shot the snake, breaking its power over him — and he felt a blow to the head as if he too had been struck by a bullet. Travellers in the twentieth century reported tales of wolves that were able to freeze their victims and prevent them from crying out, even when the victim was unaware that he was being watched. In living memory in a small town called Crowborough, less than six miles from where I write, lived a local wise man and healer called Pigtail Badger. The villagers were afraid of him, because it was said that this tall, heavy-set, fierce-looking man could stop others in their tracks just by looking at them. It was said that sometimes he would do this to farm labourers, then sit and eat their lunches in front of them.