The Secret History of the World
Page 49
The remains of an ancient wisdom lie all around us in the names of the days of the week and the months of the year, in the arrangement of the pips in an apple and in the strangeness of mistletoe, in music, in the stories we tell our children and in the design of many public buildings and statues and in our greatest art and literature.
If we can’t see this ancient wisdom, it is because we have been conditioned not to. We have been bewitched by materialism.
Science sees idealism as having dominated history up until the seventeenth century when the process of discrediting it began. Science assumes materialism will remain the dominant philosophy until the end of time. In the view of the secret societies, materialism will come to be seen as a mere blip.
THE TEACHINGS OF THE SECRET SOCIETIES have here been pulled out into the light of day for the first time. Readers may find them laughable — but at least on the basis of knowing what they really are. Other readers may sense something in them, even though they seem completely incompatible with the great scientific certainties of our age.
This has been a visionary history, history as it is retained in the human psyche, a night history preserved by adepts able to slip from the material dimension into another one. It might seem incompatible with the history you have been brought up to believe in, but maybe it is true in other dimensions?
Perhaps we should end by considering the musings of a great scientist? The physicist Niels Bohr said, ‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.’
We have seen that if we try to peer back into the past beyond 11,451 BC there is very little evidence that science can properly count as hard. Vast, airy constructions of interpretation are balanced precariously on the tiniest bits of data. And, of course, the same is true if we try to gaze far into the future, beyond AD 11,451 . The truth is that we must use our imagination. When we travel any distance in either direction, when we leave the confines of this little island of matter, we cannot but enter the realms of imagination.
Of course materialists tend to distrust the imagination, associating it with fantasy and illusion.
But the secret societies hold an especially exalted view of the imagination. Each individual mind is a protrusion into the material world of one vast cosmic mind, and we must use the imagination to reach back into it and to engage with it.
It was using the imagination in this way that made Leonardo, Shakespeare and Mozart god-like.
Imagination is the key.
Acknowledgements
I thank Sarmaurin, Kszil and Aaron. I have been helped in the thinking and writing by Hannah Black, Jane Bradish Ellames, Jamie Buxton, Kevin Jackson, Kate Parkin and Paul Sidey. I am blessed to have such kindred spirits. I have the best agent and the best publisher. Jonny Geller is all deft action like a Zen archer and Anthony Cheetham is a unique combination of intellectual clout and commercial nous. As soon as I saw he was setting up a new publishing company, I knew I wanted to be published by it. I wish to thank Sue Freestone, my editor and Publisher of Quercus, and also the exceptionally able Charlotte Clerk. Thanks, too, to Patrick Carpenter, Nicolas Cheetham, Caroline Proud, Lucy Ramsey, Emma Ward, Andrew Sydenham, Doug Kean, Paul Abel and also to Elaine Willis for researching some really obscure pictures. Thank you, Betsy Robbins and Emma Parry for wonderful foreign rights sales, and I’m really glad to have the legendary Peter Mayer as my publisher in the States. Fred Gettings and Lorna Byrne Fitzgerald have, I know, been looking after me from afar. My mother, Cynthia, and Terry provided a peaceful haven when it was needed. My family have had to put up with a lot in the past eighteen months. My daughter Tabitha has also helped by drawing some brilliant illustrations in cases where permissions have been beyond reach, and my son Barnaby is always ready to lighten the mood with his subversive jokes. I thank my wife, Fiona, for all the love and dedication she has shown throughout the writing of this book — and this I now wish to repay.
Illustration Acknowledgements
The publishers would like to thank the following for source material and permission to reproduce copyright material:
Private Collection Pages 15, 21, 23, 34, 36, 37, 38, 43, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91, 92, 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 111, 114, 116, 119, 124, 125, 126, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138, 140, 144, 145, 148, 155, 156, 158, 160, 162, 165, 166, 171, 172, 173, 179, 181, 184, 187, 188, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 205, 207, 213, 216, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 233, 235, 244, 249, 252, 253, 256, 261, 264, 267,275, 277, 278, 280, 282, 286, 288, 296, 297, 298, 308, 311, 312, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 329, 335, 337, 338, 339, 342, 346, 347, 348, 352, 353, 356, 361, 366, 370, 372, 375, 377, 378, 385, 388, 394, 398, 403, 407
Bridgeman Art Library/Private Collection/Photo Boltin Picture Library © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007 Page 24
Bridgeman Art Library/Private Collection Page 56
Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Louvre, Paris Page 284
Tofoto/Fotomas Page 9, 27, 295
Topfoto/Charles Walker Page 55
Topfoto/Picturepoint Page 332
Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Published in English 1943 Page 141
National Gallery, London Page 212
Corbis/Philadelphia Museum of Art © Succession Marcel
Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007 Page 230
Corbis/Alinari Archives Page 401
Martin J Powell © Martin J Powell, Page 131
COLOUR SECTION
Plate 1: Top: The Kobal Collection/Warner Bros, Left: Bridgeman Art Library/Washington University, St. Louis, USA/Lauros/Giraudon © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, Right: Bridgeman Art Library / Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Plate 2: Top: AKG Images, Bottom: Corbis/ Sygma.
Plate 3: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Peter Willi/Goethe Museum, Frankfurt, Bottom: AKG Images.
Plate 4: Top: The National Gallery of Ireland, Bottom: Corbis/Philadelphia Museum of Art © Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007. Plate 5: Private Collection. Plate 6: Top: Art Archive/Musée du Louvre Paris/Gianni Dagli Orti, Left: Bridgeman Art Library/Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France/Giraudon, Right: Bridgeman Art Library/Prado, Madrid, Spain. Plate 7: Private Collection. Plate 8: Private Collection. Plate 9: Top Left: The British Museum, London, Top Right: Private Collection, Bottom: The Kobal Collection/NERO. Plate 10: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Musee d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France/Giraudon, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 11: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Lauros/Ste. Marie Madeleine, Aix-en-Provence, France, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 12: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Louvre, Paris, France, Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, Austria. Plate 13: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/Giraudon/Prado, Madrid, Spain. Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Alinari/Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, Italy. Plate 14: Top: Art Archive/Museum der Stadt Wien/Alfredo Dagli Orti, Bottom: Private Collection. Plate 15: Top: Bridgeman Art Library/ Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA, Bottom: Bridgeman Art Library/Duomo, Orvieto, Umbria, Italy. Plate 16: Top: Corbis/Christine Kolisch, Bottom: Corbis/Francis G.Mayer
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention.
A Note on Sources and Selective Bibliography
The moment it all came together was when in Hall’s second hand bookshop in Tunbridge Wells, I found a copy of Jacob Boehme’s Mysterium Magnum translated in two volumes by John Sparrow. Written in 1623, before the great influx of esoterica from the East that would result from European empire-building, this book showed me was that there really was a genuine Western esoteric tradition connecting the Mystery schools of Egypt, Greece and Rome with the assertions of modern visionaries like Rudolf Steiner.
Around the same time I also chanced upon Boehme’s The Signature of
All Things, Paracelsus’s The Archidoxes of Magic, and Paracelsus: Life and Prophecies, a collection of his writings edited and with a short biography by Franz Hartmann, and The Works of Thomas Vaughan, the English Rosicrucian, edited by A.E. Waite — in a beautiful glowing gold cover. Rich pickings indeed, these books provided further confirmation of this tradition. A modern book, Joscelyn Godwin’s Robert Fludd: Hermetic philosopher and surveyor of two worlds actually contained a picture of the earth separating from the Sun. I knew there was an esoteric tradition of this as a historical event, but previously I had only read about in Steiner.
Some writers, including Valentine Tomberg and Max Heindel, have been accused of not sufficiently declaring their debt to Steiner. Let me do so now. Steiner is a colossal figure in arcane circles, bestriding the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much as Swedenborg bestrode the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has done more than any other teacher to illumine the difficult and paradoxical world of esoteric philosophy. There are apparently some six hundred volumes of Steiner’s work, mostly collections of lectures. I must have read thirty of these, at the very least.
Although he has done so much to illumine, his books are by no means an easy read. Steiner’s aim is not to be as clear as possible in the way of Anglo-American academia. His aim is to work on his listeners by a sort of weaving together of themes — the historical with the metaphysical with the moral with the philosophical. There is no structure in the conventional way, and no narrative. Things come round and round again rhythmically, some in larger cycles, some in smaller ones. Many readers will quickly lose patience, but if you persist there are always fascinating nuggets of information — and my own book is as full of these Steinerian nuggets as a plumb pudding.
All idealistic philosophy, (which is to say philosophy that proposes mind came before matter and that matter was precipitated out of a cosmic mind in some way), accounts for this precipitation in terms of a series of emanations from the cosmic mind. The higher science of idealism always — esoteric philosophy in all traditions — relates these emanations to the heavenly bodies in a quite systematic way. The different traditions show some variations, and where they do I have not only simplified for the sake of clarity, I have taken Steiner as my guide. The key texts here are: Theosophy, Occult Science, The Evolution of the World and Humanity and Universe, Earth and Man.
(I have stayed away from disputes between different schools of thought, such as the anthroposophists, the theosophists and the followers of Keyserling — about the chronology of these events — because they are abstruse and on the grounds that, as I argue in my text, time as we understand it today did not exist then. I think such discussions sometimes veer dangerously towards the meaningless, but for an intelligent discussion of these issues I recommend the Vermont Sophia web page and the Sophia Foundation website of Robert Powell. Many works by Keyserling are also available online. Incidentally, I have in one instance — on the question of whether or not stories of two Krishnas should be disentangled, preferred Keyserling to Steiner.)
Steiner is a visionary, and rarely sources his teachings. Much of what he says is in principle unverifiable in any academic or scientific sense, but a lot is verifiable and that has almost always checked out. There are only a handful of exceptions, I believe.
I think a problem with Steiner is that he is such a great figure that people who follow in his footsteps find it hard to think freely and independently. Steiner’s shadow can inhibit originality. Partly because I have worked for so long in publishing, where a pig-headed certainty that you are right is indispensable if you are to enjoy any success, and partly because my research has ranged so widely that I have been able, to some degree at least, to see Steiner in context, I have not felt him in any way a burden — rather as an inspiration.
Among other modern teachers G.I. Gurdjieff means to tease and bemuse in his writings, but his gigantic, ten volumes All And Everything also contain astonishing nuggets that confirm ancient, esoteric teaching. His protégée, Ouspensky, had a gift for reframing ancient wisdom in what we might without being too cute call a modernist idiom in In Search of the Miraculous and Tertium Organon. Likewise immersed in the Sufi tradition René Guénon is the image of Gallic intellectual rigour, and I have used his Man and his Becoming, and The Lord of the World, and Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrine, not only as sources of information but as models of good discipline.
The Secret Wisdom of Qabalah is a wonderfully concise yet illuminating guide. In terms of a specifically Christian esoteric tradition, The Perfect Way by Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, written in 1881, is difficult to find, but I chanced upon a ring-bound photocopy. Written by a High Church Anglican, C.G. Harrison, The Transcendental Universe was published in 1893, causing a furor in esoteric circles both inside and outside the Church, because it revealed things the secret societies thought better kept secret. From the Orthodox Perspective, the small library of books by Omraam Mikhal Aïvanhov represent a tradition of nurturing the ancient Sun mysteries and Christian esoteric teachings on love and sexuality. Mentioned in the text, Meditations on the Tarot was published anonymously in Paris in 1980, it was written by a former disciple of Steiner’s, Valentin Tomberg, who later became a Roman Catholic. (For a fascinating account of the fallout, I recommend The Case of Valentin Tomberg by Sergei O. Prokofieff.) Meditations on the Tarot is a treasure trove of Christian esoteric lore. The Zelator by David Ovason is a neglected classic of modern esoteric writing. It draws on the wisdom of several schools but has a Christian message at its heart. Rudolf Steiner’s books on Jesus Christ have been invaluable, especially on the Sun-Mystery central to esoteric Christianity: Christianity as a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity, The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, Building Stones for an understanding of the Mystery of the Golgotha, the Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, From Buddha to Christ, his various commentaries on the gospels, including the so-called fifth gospel and The Redemption of Thinking (on Thomas Aquinas). I have also tracked down some works excluded from the various extensive Steiner publishing programmes, including his early, theosophical work on Atlantis and Lemuria, and more importantly for my text, Inner Impulses of Evolution: The Mexican Mysteries and the Knights Templar. I have made much use of the biblical commentaries of Steiner’s friend Emil Bock from Genesis to The Three Years and Saint Paul. I have also used Lore and Legend of the English Church by G.S. Tyack, and Good and Evil Spirits by Edward Langton.
The great masterpieces of alchemy in twentieth century writing are, of course, Le Mystère des Cathédrales and Les Demeures Philosophales. Not only do they offer clues to understanding, but they are also brilliant guides to tracking down esoteric sites in France. I recommend Paul Sedir’s History of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, which contains an excellent, illuminating account of the greatest flowering of Christianized alchemy. The Zelator by David Ovason is good on this subject, as is Steiner’s The Mysteries of the Rosicrucians. To anyone wishing to research alchemy further, I recommend the writing website of Adam Maclean, a fascinating archive of historical documents.
Steiner’s predecessor, Madame Blavatsky, is a bit of a problem, if only because her anti-Christian animus seems in retrospect a bit impish and perverse. I prefer to see Blavatsky as an exemplar of a splendid Victorian tradition — the writing of monstrously large rag bags of books packed with strange ideas and obscure but often fascinating erudition. With the possible exception of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough — which is at least permanently in print — these books are hardly read at all now. In fact I sometimes wondered whether I was the first person to read some of these pages for perhaps over a hundred years. Their wisdom has become discarded wisdom, but there is wisdom to be found, and I have had a lot of fun rummaging around in the following: The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled by Madame Blavatsky, Theosophy and Psychological Religion by F. Max Muller. Fragments of a Faith Forgotten and Orpheus by G.R.S. Meade, The Egyptian Book of the
Dead and Gnostic and Historic Christianity by George Eliot’s friend, Gerald Massey, Ancient Theories of Revelation and Inspiration by Edwyn Bevan, Oedipus Judaicus by William Drummond, The Lost Language of Symbolism, and Archaic England by Harold Bayley, The Canon by William Stirling, Architecture: Mysticism and Myth by William Lethaby, Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter, Introduction to Tantra Sastra and The Serpent Power by Sir John Woodroffe, The History of Magic by Eliphas Levi, The Kabbalah Unveiled by S.L. Macgregor Mathers, Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, Studies in Mysticism and Certain Aspects of the Secret Tradition by A.E. Waite, Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Bucke, The Initiates by Eduard Schure, The Eleusian and Bacchic Mysteries by Thomas Taylor, The Veil of Isis by W. Winwood Reade.
Occult physiology is a key part of this book. I have used The Occult Causes of Disease by E. Wolfram, The Encyclopedia of Esoteric Man by Benjamin Walker, Occult Principles of Health and Healing by Max Heindel, Occult Anatomy and the Bible by Corinne Heline and An Occult Physiology, Initiation and its Results, Occult Science and Occult Development by Steiner. The Parable of the Beast by John Bleibtreu, while not framed in esoteric philosophy, has fascinating information, especially on the Third Eye.
Occult art is also key. I have used Symbolists and Symbolism by Robert L Delevoy, Legendary and Mythological Art by Clara Erskine Clement, Hieronymus Bosch by Wilhelm Fraenger, Symbols in Christian Art by Edward Hulme, Three Lectues on Art by René Huyghe — particularly good on El Greco — The Occult in Art by Fred Gettings, The Two Children by David Ovason, Marcel Duchamp by Octavio Paz on Marcel Duchamp, John Richardson’s three volume biography, A Life of Picasso and Mark Harris’s insightful essay on Picasso’s Lost Masterpiece, The Foundations of Modern Art by Ozenfant, Sacred and Legendary Art by Mrs Jameson, Surrealism and Painting by André Breton, Surrealism and the Occult by Nadia Choucha.