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  • The Gods Are Dead! Long Live the Gods!

    The Gods Are Dead! Long Live the Gods!

    From New Dawn 142 (Jan-Feb 2014)

    When the veil descended, men revered what it covered. And as time went on it seemed to hide more and more and was revered still more. Then, when it was heavy with age, young men fresh and arrogant demanded the removal of the veil and demanded to see what was hidden. For they said that whatever is hidden from the people cannot be for the common good. In the thunder and lightning of indignation, the veil was torn down. Nothing lay beyond. At first the young men were startled, but then they laughed jubilantly at the absurd fraud they thought they had uncovered. And the old men grieved, cursing the young men because they had destroyed the veil.
    – The Tree of Life Oracle

    Why do so many creation sagas sound alike? Why can myths of a universal flood be found worldwide? And why do we find prophecies of an end of the world in equally far-flung places?

    There are two basic theories that try to account for these similarities. One is the archetypal, which argues that these universal myths point to a common structure within the human mind. The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung is the best-known advocate of this approach. The other is the diffusionist view, which claims that these resemblances point to a common source of myth in the past.

    In a recent book, entitled Origins of the World’s Mythologies, E.J. Michael Witzel, a professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, argues on behalf of the diffusionist view. He compares the myths of nations around the world and paints a picture of the history of myth that reaches back as far as 100,000 years.

    Witzel claims that certain universal mythic elements may actually go back to the earliest stages of humanity, when the whole species still lived in Africa. He calls this strain the “Pan-Gaean” mythos (he uses the geological names of prehistoric continents to label these different strata). The next oldest is that of “Gondwana,” a mythos that can be found today chiefly among the indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. By this account, the gods, heaven, earth, and so on, preexist; there is no story that tells of their origins. The gods create humans from substances such as trees or clay, but the humans commit acts of hubris and are punished by a worldwide flood (an element that apparently goes back to the Pan-Gaean mythos). Afterward, local tribes emerge.

    The myths of the rest of the world – not only Europe and Asia but the Americas and even Polynesia – are “Laurasian.” They first arose, probably in southwestern Asia, between 40,000 and 20,000 BCE, and share one crucial feature: unlike the earlier strains, they all present a continuous and more or less similar narrative; Witzel even describes it as a “novel.” It has some of the features of the earlier Gondwanan story, but it goes much further and is much more coherent. It begins with the origins of the cosmos and the gods and extends to the birth of humanity, whose history is delineated into four or five “ages.” Humans show hubris in this narrative as well, and are also punished with a universal flood.

    The mythos proceeds to the end of time, in which heaven and earth are destroyed and a new heaven and new earth emerge. This event is represented in legends as different as the Nordic Götterdämerung (“twilight of the gods”) and the Last Judgment of Christianity. Indeed, for Witzel, the creation narratives and eschatology of the Bible are only the latest manifestations of the Laurasian mythos. 

    Why have these myths lasted so long? According to Witzel, one reason is that, quite simply, they are good stories. Another is that the Laurasian mythos in particular recapitulates the human lifespan on a universal scale: like us, it is saying, the cosmos is born, grows to maturity, and eventually withers and dies; it even goes through several distinct stages of development. He also echoes the claim made by certain neuroscientists that in some yet undefined way the human brain is “hardwired” for myth and religion (although this leads toward the archetypal view that Witzel dismisses).

    We can also see that these myths have been recast into new forms every few thousand years. Little by little, the old gods cease to be taken seriously; sometimes they are mocked. This happened in classical antiquity. The period that is most familiar to us – from 500 BCE to 300 CE – is a comparatively late one for that civilisation, and we can see the old gods losing their hold. Around 500 BCE, the pre-Socratic philosophers arose in Greece, some of whom disdained the gods, claiming that they were mere personifications of natural phenomena or outright fictions. The gods were also satirised in literature then and in later centuries, as we see in the comedies of Aristophanes and the dialogues of Lucian. While paganism remained alive in the popular mind until Christianity won out in the fourth century CE, the intelligentsia had long ceased taking it seriously – or interpreted the gods symbolically or allegorically. (Sometimes when the new mythos takes over, it keeps some of the gods of the previous one, but as demigods or demons: early Christianity saw the Greek and Roman gods this way.)

    The Ages of Greece

    Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
    – Henry David Thoreau

    This constant need for creation and recreation of myth leads us to wonder what may cause these upheavals. It is tempting to look at this issue in the light of the “ages” that are so universal a mythic motif. Among the most familiar are those of the Works and Days by Hesiod, a Greek poet of the eighth century BCE: the ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze, the Heroes, and Iron. Hesiod’s sequence of these periods, like those of many Laurasian myths, is one of decay and degeneration, from the Golden Age, whose people “lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief” down to the present Age of Iron, when “men never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night.” Although Hesiod laments that he had rather “died before or been born afterward,” the present age will deteriorate still further, and will approach an end when people “come to have grey hair on their temples at their birth.” 

    Hesiod may be preserving some historical memory here, at least in his choice of names. The Bronze Age in Greece lasted till around 1100 BCE, and the Age of Heroes centres around the sack of Troy, which is generally dated to the early twelfth century. The Greek Dark Ages (1100-750 BCE), when iron was introduced, then began, at the end of which Hesiod himself lived. The ages of Gold and Silver would then be part of a more or less imaginary mythic prehistory.

    While the idea of the Golden Age still floats about in the popular mind today, Hesiod’s other ages do not. But we have something similar in the mythos of Christianity. One common version of Christian sacred history speaks of several “dispensations” or different periods of worship. Based on the biblical narrative, they are usually divided thus: the period between Adam and Noah; the period between Noah and Abraham; the period between Abraham and Moses; the one between Moses and Christ; and from Christ to the present, which will last until Judgment Day, and restore a new heaven and a new earth. The last days, again, will be characterised by decay and degeneracy, as we see in Christ’s apocalyptic discourse in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.

    Thus we see ancient Laurasian myth transposed into both classical Greek and Christian modes. And this in itself illustrates how a universal mythos can shift from one era to another.

    Astrological Ages

    For some today, the concept of the ages can take an astrological form, and this idea has been extraordinarily popular since the 1960s, when the coming of the Age of Aquarius was proclaimed. The idea of the Aquarian Age itself now seems somewhat dated, but that, I would argue, is because we are now actually in the Age of Aquarius, and we take some of its most characteristic features for granted.

    The idea of the astrological ages is based on the precession of the equinoxes, in which, by an extremely long and slow cycle, the point of the sun’s rising at the spring equinox (that is, in the northern hemisphere) moves from one sign of the zodiac to another over a period of nearly 26,000 years. Dividing this by twelve, we can see that each age lasts somewhat less than 2,170 years. Since there is no dotted line in the sky separating one constellation of the zodiac from another, the time of this transition as given by different authorities can vary by centuries. Moreover, there is a tremendous overlap of influences, so that no sharp delineation can be drawn.

    Our understanding of the earliest of these ages, which were preliterate, is imperfect, relying on surviving artefacts that may or may not reflect the totality of the culture. It is really only with the Age of Aries, which began in the second or third millennium BCE, that we can begin to fill in details and learn how religious observance in particular has changed throughout these ages.

    It’s common to date the recent astrological ages as follows: the Age of Aries, 2100-7 BCE; the Age of Pisces, 7 BCE-2100 CE; the Age of Aquarius, 2100-4200 CE. These dates are highly approximate, although 6 or 7 BCE is sometimes given as the beginning of the Age of Pisces, when a “great conjunction” (between Jupiter and Saturn, opposing the sun) supposedly marked the birth of Christ.

    But, on the basis of history, I would suggest that the ages took place much earlier: Aries, between roughly 3000 and 800 BCE; Pisces, between 800 BCE and 1400 CE; and Aquarius, from 1400 CE to, perhaps, 3600. There is also an overlap of several centuries.

    My reasoning is as follows: Pisces is associated with religion, and the great world religions all arose around what the German philosopher Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, the period between 800 and 200 BCE, when figures including the Hebrew prophets, the Greek philosophers, Lao Tzu, Confucius, the Buddha, and Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, all lived.

    Thus, by my account, the Age of Pisces marked the birth of all the great world religions, with the possible exception of Zoroastrianism. (Zoroaster’s date is controversial: although his life was traditionally dated to c.800 BCE, scholarly opinion has now pushed it back to the late second millennium BCE.) Judaism and Hinduism certainly existed before the Axial Age, but they changed profoundly during that era. One of the most remarkable changes is that they, like most of the world, gave up animal sacrifice.

    Animal Sacrifice In Religion Phased Out

    In the Hinduism of the Age of Aries, one of the most important rites was the asvamedha or horse sacrifice. It could only be performed by a king and was meant to ensure the prosperity of the kingdom. The horse was released and allowed to roam for a year; if it wandered into hostile foreign territory, that territory had to be conquered. After its return, it was sacrificed. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad compares the horse to the universe, so that symbolically the universe is sacrificed in this rite.

    After the Axial Age, however, the old Vedic animal sacrifices were phased out. The more philosophical and ethical Hinduism that we know today arose, and the sacrifices that were retained (such as the extremely ancient fire sacrifice) did not involve animals. The difference in eras is illustrated by a line from the Hindu Laws of Manu (5:53), which date from the early centuries of the Common Era: “He who sacrifices every year with a horse-sacrifice, and he who eats not flesh, the fruit of the virtue of both is equal.”

    Judaism practiced animal sacrifice up until the sack of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. And the sacrifice was on a grand scale. Many people have a sugary, children’s-Bible image of the Jerusalem Temple, but the reality was quite different. A text dating probably from around 100 BCE called The Letter of Aristeas gives one of the few surviving eyewitness descriptions of it. One detail that especially impressed the author was the temple’s elaborate plumbing system, which was needed to drain off the blood of all the animals killed.

    Animal sacrifice and blood were major themes in the religions of the Age of Aries. Blood keeps surfacing in the biblical narrative; in Genesis 9:6, for example, where God forbids Noah to eat meat with the blood, “which is the life thereof”; a commandment repeated in the Mosaic law, for example in Leviticus 17:11 and Deuteronomy 15:23. Blood, reserved for God alone, is to be poured out on the ground.

    The spilling of blood in sacrifice is an ancient and widespread theme. It is treated vividly in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, where Odysseus summons up the shade of the prophet Teiresias to learn how he can return home. Odysseus begins with a huge sacrifice:

    I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit, 
    and the dark-clouding blood ran in, and the souls of the perished dead gathered to the place…
    These came swarming around my pit from every direction
    with inhuman clamour, and green fear took hold of me. 

    When Odysseus wants to speak to the spirits of the dead, he allows them to draw near and drink the blood – or, as we might put it today, the energies given off by the blood.

    One might begin to wonder about the nature of animal sacrifice and of the gods that demanded it. Were the gods of the Age of Aries lower-grade spirits that, like the ghosts from Homer’s Hades, literally fed on the life force released from the blood? And did the Age of Pisces, with its more abstract and ethical religions, mark an actual transition to a worship of a higher form of god? (For one view of this transition, see the accompanying article, “Is Your God a Devil?”)

    One case of this transition appears in Pythagoreanism, a mystery school founded by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c.570-c.495 BCE). Pythagoras enjoined his followers not to eat meat or fish (indeed, until the term “vegetarianism” was coined in the nineteenth century, this was called “the Pythagorean diet”). Nonetheless, in the first century of their existence, the Pythagoreans did not seem to have any problem with the animal sacrifices that were so central to Greek religion; only later, in the fourth century BCE, did this become an issue. This in itself gives a hint of the shift that was taking place in Western consciousness.

    Animal sacrifice is still practiced to some degree. Muslims sacrifice domestic animals at the festival of Eid el-Adha. The practice survives as well in Santería and Voudun, the religions of the African diaspora that flourish in the Americas. Years ago in San Francisco, I remember seeing a dead bird on a street corner. It was not the typical grey city pigeon that had dropped dead; it was pure white. I suspect it was the offering of some devotee of Santería who had sacrificed a dove at a crossroads.

    Pisces, as we have seen, was the age of the great world religions, and all the major world religions arose during that period, the latest being Islam, which came in the seventh century CE. The most famous symbol of the Age of Pisces is the ιχθυΣ (ichthys) symbol, which is the acronym of the Greek phrase “Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour.” It is the Greek word for “fish.”

    The largest and most successful of the Piscean religions (at least in terms of size) are Christianity and Islam, which together account for approximately half of the human race. Both of these posit a monotheistic, personal God who demands obedience, prayer, and ethical behaviour.

    Age of Aquarius and the Changing God Image

    The changing and diverse figures and forms of world religion over the ages. The arch of the zodiac appears in the top left hand corner. This drawing appears in Manly P Hall’s Secret Teachings of All the Ages (and was redrawn from Lanoir’s La Franche-Maconnerie).

    While the monotheistic God continues to command the belief of much of humanity, another radical change of thought seems to have taken place with the approach of the Age of Aquarius around the beginning of the Renaissance. At that point, humanism began to supplant religion. Humanism has a dual meaning: it can refer to the learning of classical pagan civilisation as well as to a kind of nonreligious philosophy that promotes ethical behaviour without recourse to the supernatural. Both of these began to come to the fore at this time. In the Age of Aquarius – whose symbol is a man – humanity began to focus on a human-centred rather than a divine-centred world.

    As I argued in my New Dawn article “The Other Side of Aquarius,” (New Dawn 141) the final transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian age came centuries later, with the great upheavals of the world wars. From a military point of view, these began with naval power dominant (as evidenced by the British Empire) and ended with the triumph of air power (as seen at Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Pisces is a water sign, Aquarius an air sign.

    We are thus now in the Aquarian Age. Those who predicted that it would be an age of harmony and understanding were only half-right. It is an age like any other, with its progress and tumult. It is not a dawning millennium that will save us from all our problems; rather it has brought a number of problems of its own – environmental damage, an obsession with computers and technology, and so on.

    So we have seen that the previous two ages saw the demise of one set of gods and the rise of another. Who are the new gods of Aquarius?

    Aquarius is a rather impersonal sign, as zodiac signs go; it is more comfortable with ideals than with particulars. (It reminds me of a line from Charles Schultz’s comic strip “Peanuts”: “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand!”) So it stands to reason that the Aquarian gods would be impersonal as well. And we see that science has pushed aside the creator God of Christianity in favour of abstract entities such as natural selection and the forces of physics. Unlike the gods of Aries, they do not require animal sacrifice. Unlike the gods of Pisces, they do not require worship and moral behaviour. They are completely and utterly indifferent to, and unaware of, the human race.

    Science is the dominant mode of thought in the present age. It is taken as the final arbiter of reality and the ultimate determinant of meaning: if science sees no meaning in the universe, then, many would say, there is none. Consequently, the struggle between science and religion is a struggle between the old worldview of Pisces and the new worldview of Aquarius.

    From all this, someone might look back and see a steady elevation in conception from the blood-drinking gods of Aries to the moral but vindictive God of Pisces to the bright, shiny new world of science, technology, and progress. There is some truth to this picture – but only some.

    We tend to assume that whatever is newer is better, but that itself is a fairly recent development in human thought – and probably Aquarian in inspiration. We’ve already seen how Hesiod portrays the cycle of the ages as one of decay. The classical scholar E.R. Dodds argued that the ancient Greeks had no concept of progress as we know it today. In classical Latin, the word for “new” – novus – had the same pejorative connotation that “old” has for us. In Christian apocalyptic terms too, the present age deteriorates until it can only be saved by the return of Christ. Progress does appear in some Laurasian myths – such as in the Mayan Popol Vuh, which says that the gods created several unsuccessful races until they got it right with humans – but not in very many.

    In any event, we can now see Witzel’s Laurasian mythos in its latest incarnation: that of science. There is no creation by God; rather there is a Big Bang. The picturesque ages named after metals have been replaced by immeasurably long and grandiose-sounding ones such as the Precambrian and the Jurassic. And instead of a Götterdämerung or Last Judgment, physicists posit a Big Crunch or heat death as the final fate of the universe.

    What remains most striking is that, even in this supposedly objective view of the universe, we have a cosmos that is born, grows up, and dies – just like us. No matter how much intellectual and technical sophistication human beings acquire, they still tend to view the universe as themselves writ large. Is this objectively true – that man is the measure of all things, and our lifespan recapitulates that of the cosmos? Or are we simply foredoomed by our own makeup, with its all-too-finite duration, to see things this way?

    I myself go back and forth between these two points of view. In any event, contemporary science faces a fundamental contradiction in its outlook. It holds (1) that our minds are necessarily limited and conditioned by the structure of our nervous system and yet (2) this nervous system, expressing itself in scientific formulae, gives a complete and accurate version of the universe. The Christian theologians papered over their logical contradictions by appeals to divine mystery and the inscrutable will of God. I wonder what escape route the scientists will find.

    Finally, the question of meaning remains. Paganism and the world religions did give meaning to the universe. Science, or its quasi-religious form known as scientism, has not. In fact it has gone in the opposite direction. Scientism says not only that it can find no meaning in the universe, but that there is none. Any attempt to find such a thing is derided as a reversion to the supposedly obsolete idea of a personal God.

    Are the cultists of scientism right? Science may have squashed simplistic notions of meaning and purpose, but this need persists, and it is not going away. The failure of the new gods of Aquarius to provide it have left our civilisation with a deep sense of anomie and isolation. We can ask how accurate or complete a picture this impersonal Aquarian religion really offers. After all, our very appetite for meaning attests to its existence. You would never feel thirst if there were no such thing as water.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 142.[/alert]

    [alert type=”success” dismiss=”no”]If you appreciate this article, please consider subscribing to help maintain this website.[/alert]

    Sources

    Arthur Coke Burnell and Edward R. Hopkins, ed. and trans., The Ordinances of Manu, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995 [1884]
    R.H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, volume 2: Pseudepigrapha, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1913
    Cherry Gilchrist and Gila Zur, The Tree of Life Oracle, Friedman Fairfax, 2002
    Homer, The Odyssey, Translated by Richmond Lattimore, Harper & Row, 1965
    R.E. Hume, ed. and trans., The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, 2d ed., Oxford University Press, 1931
    G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2d ed., Cambridge University Press, 1983
    Rudolf Steiner, “The Occult Significance of Blood: An Esoteric Study”, http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19061025p01.html; accessed Sept. 16, 2013
    E.J. Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies, Oxford University Press, 2012

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • Nicholas & Helena Roerich: The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists & Peacemakers

    Nicholas & Helena Roerich: The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists & Peacemakers

    This article was published in New Dawn 99 (Nov-Dec 2006)

    Visionaries, luminaries, and spiritual pioneers Nicholas and Helena Roerich were two of Russia’s most outstanding people. High initiates, they devoted their lives to helping the advancement of humanity. And as is often the way with many great spiritual leaders, their path was liberally strewn with hardship and adversity: revolutions, captivity, spy charges, deception and deceit; testing the Roerichs constantly on their shared belief that it was these very obstacles that would allow them to grow. 

    Yet, despite the fact that the couple were once barred from entering the United States and their teachings prevented from circulating freely throughout Russia, the Roerichs’ ideas are today reaching an ever-expanding group of people around the world.  

    Perhaps it is an attempt to bring balance and harmony to our world of unrest, pain and strife that is causing the massive desire to know more of Nicholas, the painter and mystic, and his wife Helena, the co-author of the Agni Yoga series of metaphysics and deep spirituality.  

    Internationally acclaimed artist, author, explorer, archaeologist, humanitarian, conservationist and peacemaker Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich (1847–1947) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He met his beloved wife and life partner Helena Ivanovna (1879–1955) on his way to excavate in the eastern part of Russia, and they married in 1901. 

    She was a gifted musician and healer who had been studying the ancient spiritual writings of India and the East for years; in time, she became an inspired writer and teacher. He eagerly shared her pursuits for wisdom and knowledge. Together, they explored the teachings of Rama Krishna, the Buddha and also studied Madame Helena Blavatsky’s writings and philosophies. Once safely out of Russia and the civil war that raged following the 1917 Russian Revolution, they used their time in exile to test and experiment with the Theosophical teachings. It was at this time that they met Master Morya, their spiritual teacher. Since her childhood, the Masters (members of the Brotherhood of Light) had been working with Helena in her dream world but now the work took an additional form as page after page of expansive, astonishing information was dictated to them. 

    After leaving Russia, the Roerichs and their two sons had first gone to Scandinavia, then made their way to England, eventually arriving on the shores of America. But the United States was not their ultimate destination. Their actual goal was India. For some years after 1917, India – the Raj – was closely maintained by the British who were constantly on guard against infiltration by Russian Bolsheviks bringing their inflammatory thoughts of revolution. The Roerichs were clearly on the list of those not wanted. In time, the way did open for them to enter India and although they never knew it, they were continually kept under surveillance. This fact accounts for many of their hardships. 

    Nicholas Roerich (middle) with his two sons.

    The Roerich family arrived in New York City in the fall of 1920. Within the next three years they had gathered about them a little circle of the perfect people to accomplish all of their goals: the formation of an idealistic artist’s society called Cor Ardens, to encourage artists to push themselves to greater heights of artistic ability; the Master School of United Arts where all of the arts where taught under one roof and students were encouraged to express themselves in various media – thereby giving them the opportunity to become more rounded individuals. And Corona Mundi, an international art museum, founded to display artistic treasures from Central Asia and other areas of the world. Roerich’s paintings were exhibited in 26 US states and he and Helena toured much of the country – meeting and exchanging ideas with the most open-minded, progressive people in the arts and humanities.

    Central Asian Expeditions

    In 1924, they left New York for Europe which was the last stop before going to India and beginning their four-year Central Asian expedition. The history of Central Asia of the late 1800s and early 1900s is sprinkled with daunting accounts of fearless explorers and adventurers; men and women such as Helena Blavatsky, Alexandra David-Neel, Sir Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, and Russian born Col. Nikolai Przhevalsky, who discovered a breed of horse that was named in his honour. But none of those were artists and to the best of my knowledge, none were on a mission to Shambhala. The couple were both past fifty years old when they undertook the gruelling journey to traverse Central Asia for four years on foot, camel, horse and yak enduring the brutal heat of the lowest desert elevations and laboring over the highest mountains ranges on the planet. 

    What is it that stirs people to leave the comfort of their home and set off for the unknown? Gold? Religious freedom? The quest for a better life? For the Roerichs, the reasons were many. Nicholas was interested in proving the migration routes of the early tribes that encircled the globe. He wanted to be the first Westerner to paint and document the vast mountain ranges of India, Tibet and Central Asia and search for and uncover treasures long-hidden by the desert sands. 

    Through fourteen years of researching, thinking and writing about the Roerichs, I could not help but question the real purpose of the Roerichs’ Central Asian expedition. Unbeknownst to me, a Russian scholar by the name of Vladimir Rosov, was quietly helping. Just as I had began my work by living a short time in India and meeting with Svetoslav Roerich, reading through Madame Roerich’s journals and some personal correspondence, searching through the files kept in the Library of Congress and the Freedom of Information Act; researching old micro-fiche, newspapers, and the British Secret Files for facts regarding the Roerichs’ years in America, Rosov had been studying and sifting through all the Roerich documents which had been unavailable to researchers before Gorbachev’s Perestroika restructured the country. The results of his work can be read (in Russian) in his two volumes, whose name in English translates to Nicholas Roerich, The Messenger of Zvenigorod. 

    In the first volume, he relates a startling story which answered all my questions and astonished the world of Roerich followers. Since it was already in print, I was able to use it, thereby becoming the first person to tell (in English) the real story of the Roerichs’ four-year expedition. Rosov’s account also provided a new basis for understanding the Roerich’s second trip – during which the United States sent Roerich and his son George, back to Central Asia in search of drought resistant grasses to help prevent a reoccurrence of the disastrous “dust bowl” of 1934. It was this expedition which broke Roerichs’ friendship with Henry A. Wallace, US Secretary of Agriculture during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, and led to Roerich being barred from returning to the United States.

    Shambhala

    For years various authors have written about Shambhala. Though many people are familiar with the term, a far greater number of people have no idea what it refers to. Those “in the know” think that the search for Shambhala was the purpose of the Roerichs’ four year expedition. And they are both right – and wrong. 

    Shambhala is a Sanskrit word meaning “place of peace, tranquillity and happiness.” It is considered a mystical place – both visible and invisible – where the higher world connects with the realm of Earth. The earliest references to Shambhala are found in the more than three hundred volumes of Kanjur and Tangyur, the most sacred books of Tibetan Buddhism. The books say it is a hidden kingdom, located somewhere north of Bodh Gaya, the Buddhist shrine in northern India. Shambhala is thought to be an oasis, completely ringed by high, snowy mountains that glisten with ice. Some lamas were said to hold the opinion that it has peaks which are perpetually hidden in the mists, while others believe it is visible but too remote for anyone to get close enough to see. And then there are the stories of people who tried to find Shambhala and were never seen nor heard of again.

    Many Tibetans were said to regard Shambhala as a heaven of the gods or a special paradise, meant only for those on their way to Nirvana. Possibly the Roerichs first heard the term while reading one of Madame Blavatsky’s books on Theosophy or if not then, it might have been in 1912 when a famous Buddhist lama was in St. Petersburg helping with the construction of a Buddhist temple. However, when the lama spoke of it, he was not speaking of a destination; he was speaking of a famous Buddhist prophecy.

    The prophecy involved the Panchen Lama, who held a position the Dalai Lama had created several hundred years earlier in order to share the leadership of Tibet. The Dalai Lama was the temporal leader of the country and the Panchen Lama was the spiritual leader. The prophecy predicted that one day the Panchen Lama would leave Tibet. Once this happened, a great army would arise to destroy the forces of evil and usher in a golden age, a thousand years of peace and harmony. In order for that to occur, however, the Panchen Lama would have to die. When he was reborn, he would be named Rigden Jypo and be the Maitreya, The Coming One, the king of Shambhala, the abode of the mystical Buddhist learning and the symbol of the Great Future. Shambhala was the guiding principle of the coming Kalpa, or cosmic age, and at the sound of that powerful name, certainly something awoke in the Roerichs’ hearts as it does in the hearts of all people who yearn for peace.

    However, when the Roerichs’ spiritual teacher, Master Morya, spoke of Shambhala, he gave the name an additional meaning for it was how he referred to the new country that he wanted the Roerichs to create. Morya envisioned a new Buddhist spiritual country to be established on the borders of Mongolia, the Gobi and Siberia. This country was to be governed jointly by the Panchen Lama and Roerich. 

    Therefore, the two major purposes for the expedition – which were kept private and confidential – were so that the Roerichs could prepare the ground for the new country and the commerce necessary for it to be financially sound; and to find the Panchen Lama so that they could parlay with him, present this startling (and naive) idea, and convince him it was possible and viable. Considering, however, that all of the land involved was already occupied and within the boundaries and domain of other governments, the fulfilment of this plan was highly improbable. One country attempting to take land from another is what wars have been fought about throughout time. When the first expedition was aborted after the Tibetans (and British) kept the Roerich Central Asian expedition freezing in captivity for four months on the border of Tibet and then sent them straight back to India, it looked as if all plans were foiled.

    Then, Henry A. Wallace offered Roerich a second chance and sent him back to Central Asia. But, with China and Japan on the brink of war, it was a very dangerous and volatile time. This trip Helena Roerich stayed behind and Nicholas, an artist – not a diplomat, blundered about until Wallace ordered him to return to India and stay there – and not leave again.1 Years later, looking back on the entire event, Madame Roerich wrote in her journal that both the Panchen Lama and her husband were too old at the time to accomplish this feat. Perhaps the Roerichs were laying down the lines of light necessary for it to become a reality in the future.

    Helena Roerich

    Considering that during the entire four year expedition Roerich’s travel plans were continually thwarted by visa and passport difficulties, it is surprising that Nicholas and Helena even attempted to accomplish the establishment of a new country. To me it seems a demonstration of their loyalty and dedication to work with their teacher. 

    Art, Beauty and Unity

    Roerich loved the concept of unity. He believed that “beauty is the force that can bring nations together.” He hated borders and boundaries and thought that since all the people of the world belonged to one family, they should be able to roam and travel freely throughout it. 

    Nicholas and Helena Roerich had very expanded consciousnesses. They believed “that knowledge and beauty are the real cornerstones of evolution, the gates to a world community.” They taught that a synthesis of knowledge from all fields of human endeavours was needed to form a fully developed being. Nicholas wrote nearly thirty books and created over 7,000 paintings and theatre designs depicting scenes from ancient Slavic myths, the Himalayan Mountains, and spiritual themes from the world’s religions. 

    People who see his art for the first time are often speechless at the inspirational use of colour and the spiritual power it evokes – especially his later work, completed during and after the four years of expedition. Roerich’s paintings portray spiritual development, culture and its role in human evolution and possibilities for peace in a troubled world. A broader and more metaphysical understanding is added to the paintings once the viewer penetrates Helena’s deeply spiritual writings. In addition to the Agni Yoga series, which she wrote in conjunction with Master Morya, she wrote On Eastern Crossroads under the name of Josephine Saint-Hilaire. 

    Daring explorers, the couple investigated the remote and dangerous regions of China, Mongolia and the Gobi Desert where few Westerners had previous ventured. They were seeking ancient manuscripts hidden in subterranean crypts and caves, the treasures to be found in burial mounds, and the wealth of statues, artifacts and wall paintings left behind in caves by the artistic Buddhists. 

    In 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in creating the Banner of Peace and the Roerich Peace Pact, designed to preserve the world’s treasures from being destroyed in time of war. Franklin Roosevelt and twenty-six world leaders met in Washington, D.C. to ratify the agreement. The Roerichs were friends and advisors to heads of state, scientists, artists, writers and poets. Roerich’s work won praise from Albert Einstein, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, and many others. 

    Madonna Oriflamma, the original Roerich painting where the Banner of Peace flag appears for the first time (courtesy Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York)

    Now, over fifty years later, many of their key ideas have found a place in the human soul: the equality of the feminine and the masculine principles, the wisdom of the heart and the striving for the common good and brotherhood. The eternal truths the Roerichs demonstrated on Earth are echoing through time, awakening humanity to beauty and unity. “Beneath the sign of beauty we will walk joyfully,” wrote Nicholas Roerich. “With beauty we conquer. Through beauty we pray. In beauty we are united.”

    To the Roerichs, culture was the highest expression of the Light – the “cult” of Ur (Light). They considered that beauty and art speak an international language understood by all and that focusing on the beautiful in life would lead us to world peace. 

    Nicholas Roerich wrote: 

    If you shall be asked, of what kind of country and of what constitution you dream, you can answer in full dignity: the country of Great Culture. You shall know that in that country peace and knowledge and beauty will be revered…. You may say: life is hard. How can I think of knowledge and beauty if we have nothing to live on? Or: We are far away from knowledge and art; we have important business to attend to first. But I say: You are right, but you are wrong. Knowledge and art are not luxuries. Knowledge and art are not idleness. They are the prayer and work of the spirit. Men pray in the moments of great difficulty. So too, is this prayer of the spirit most needful, when one’s whole being is shaken and in want of support, and when it seeks a wise solution.

    An arduous trial awaits the whole world: the trial by the assimilation of truth. After the medieval trials by fire, water and iron, now comes the trial by assimilation of truth. But if the power of the spirit upheld men against fire and iron, then will that same power not also raise them up the steps of knowledge and Beauty? 

    Throughout the world, in Israel, India, Mexico, Germany and many other countries, schools, civic organisations, and ordinary citizens are flying the Banner of Peace, proclaiming Peace through Culture. Do you want to join in this effort? If each person who reads this article would take the time to research, create, and fly the Banner of Peace – a white flag with three magenta balls in the middle – over their home, place of business, he or she will be contributing to the cause of Peace. 

    Let’s all do it now! Dedicate ourselves to the cause of peace and align ourselves with the hundreds and thousands of people around the world who are using Nicholas and Helena Roerichs’ legacy and memory for inspiration.

    Please visit www.roerich.org to see Roerich’s wonderful paintings and learn more of this fascinating couple.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 99.[/alert]

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    Footnote

    1. For the full and complete account of this event, see my book Nicholas & Helena Roerich, The Spiritual Journey of Two Great Artists and Peacemakers.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • Flying Saucers, Hidden Empire & the Secret of World Control

    Flying Saucers, Hidden Empire & the Secret of World Control

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 5 (October 2012)

    Back in 1958 the Essene Press in Texas published an intriguing little book entitled UFOs Confidential: The meaning behind the most closely guarded secrets of all time.

    The authors George Hunt Williamson and John McCoy were closely involved in the 1950s UFO contactee phenomenon. In fact George Hunt Williamson was a pioneering UFO researcher and one of the “four guys named George” among the famous contactees of the 50s. The others were George Adamski, George King, and George Van Tassel.

    Williamson had “witnessed” George Adamski’s historic encounter with an extraterrestrial from Venus on 20 November 1952. He also received messages from “Space intelligences” by way of radio telegraphy as well as the Ouija board, and wrote several widely read books on Flying Saucers among them Other Tongues-Other Flesh, Road in the Sky, Secret Places of the Lion and The Saucers Speak! He developed many of the themes of modern UFOlogy and was the first to present what is today referred to as the “ancient astronaut theory.” Independent researcher Alec Hiddell, in his article “Tracks in the Desert,” says Williamson wrote “the most remarkable UFO documents ever conceived.”

    But Hiddell points out that while George Hunt Williamson was a prolific writer on the theme of contact with extraterrestrial intelligences:

    It would however, be a capital error to classify him solely as a UFO researcher. He was above all an occultist whose activities helped to usher in a new magical aeon – the aeon of the Flying Saucer. No attempt can be made to understand him or his work unless this fact is first taken into account.

    International Bankers

    George Hunt Williamson and John McCoy believed the reason governments refuse to acknowledge UFOs and the visitors from other worlds is due to the machinations of a “Hidden Empire” of international bankers. As they explain in UFO Confidential:

    Many people have asked the inevitable question: ‘If visitors from other worlds are here, why doesn’t our government inform us of such a momentous event?’ The reason is obvious… all governments, yes all, are under the complete control of the ‘International Bankers’ who also control all money and thus create depressions and prosperity whenever they want it. They want and need a divided world so that wars may continue and their wealth steadily increase. 

    According to Williamson and McCoy:

    These secret world rulers will never allow official UFO announcements to be made public. If they did allow it, it would spell their doom. If the technology of the space visitors is revealed it will immediately eliminate the need for oil, gas, automobiles, and practically everything else that drains the public….

    Although written over fifty years ago and reflecting widespread anxieties of the post World War II period, a good many of the ideas set-forth in UFOs Confidential remain with us today. Nowhere is this clearer than in the chapter headed “The Drama of Earth’s Great Delusion.” 

    Surprisingly, it is not too difficult to see several parallels between life in the 1950s, when UFOs Confidential first appeared, and our own time. Back then, in the Cold War era, the subversive ‘enemy’ of the so-called ‘free world’ was Soviet communism. Today the Cold War is a vague memory and we’re told a global ‘War on Terror’ is necessary to safeguard ‘freedom’. In the 21st century ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘Terrorism’ have now replaced the Soviet Union and communism as the ‘enemies of freedom’. 

    The extract on the opposite page is from Part II of UFOs Confidential – “The Drama of Earth’s Great Delusion” – where John McCoy poses the question, “If you wanted to absolutely control a world, how would you go about it?”

    Hidden Empire

    In Other Tongues-Other Flesh, George Hunt Williamson discusses the role of the “Hidden Empire” in concealing information from the public about extraterrestrial intelligences. He again poses the often asked question, “Why haven’t the ‘powers that be’ announced what they know about the Flying Saucers?”

    “If they acknowledge extraterrestrial origin,” Williamson writes, “it would mean that they must acknowledge extraterrestrial allegiance as well. There would be extraterrestrial interference with established government, and no world power would welcome such a situation. If Universal truth came to the people of Earth, their schemes and plans for mankind would crumble. No longer could they exploit the masses.”

    George Hunt Williamson was indeed a man ahead of his time. His books discuss everything from the nature of life on earth, Mayan mysteries, environmental collapse and the secret plan for global government, to the identity of UFOs and the dawn of the Aquarian New Age. Over fifty years ago, Williamson received the following astonishing message from a higher intelligence. 

    The United Nations must collapse because that which you read from the Nostradamus forces is true. The war lords, the ‘International Bankers’ will use the United Nations to form their super-government. This will not be. There are no Christ forces in the United Nations. That does not mean that there are not some good people who are in the United Nations. But the organisation itself is a centre, using gullible people. I say it is demon controlled and must go down. The Master has said, and it is written in Corinthians by our beloved Paul: ‘All forms of authority and power must be put down before I come.’ And the United Nations fits that category. 

    Everybody wants the New Age, but they want it to be an American New Age, or a British New Age, or a Communistic New Age. I say that all forms of government will collapse. Every seat of government will fall utterly and completely. Every economic system will be eliminated. All forms of authority which are under the direct guidance and tutelage of the Black Dragon will perish. 

    As for his native United States of America, Williamson was warned:

    I speak strongly because I feel strongly. I am perturbed at the entire situation that is taking place in the United States of America… What is this statement that the United States will be spared? The United States will be submerged… The United States is the centre for the darkest forces upon the Planet Earth.

    These messages were published in 1958 by Neville Spearman Ltd under the title Secret of the Andes. The London publishers had received the original manuscript from South America where George Hunt Williamson was then resident at the Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays in Peru. Due to its highly controversial nature, Neville Spearman edited out about a quarter of the manuscript. The revelations were apparently too startling to appear in print at the time.

    Famed parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, best known for popularising the Israeli psychic Uri Geller, had a chance encounter in Mexico with one of George Hunt Williamson’s associates, a Dr. Charles Laughhead. Laughhead described Williamson as “a very fine voice channel or medium,” who had “been in frequent communication for over a year with one of the ancient Mystery Schools in South America.”

    Dr. Laughhead related to Puharich how:

    These sessions covered a wide range of subjects, from ancient history and life origins on this planet, to science and religion. This Brotherhood also has a communication centre for contacts with intelligences on other planets and star systems, and on spacecraft. Some of these intelligences are obviously not human… Their knowledge and wisdom far exceed our comprehension. For simplicity we referred to them as Space Beings or Space Brothers…

    George Hunt Williamson continued to travel on expeditions to many parts of the world, conducting his research largely in private, and out of public view. He reportedly passed away in California in 1986, at the age of 60. 

    “He was among the first to connect all those dots and draw us a believable picture of the chariots of the gods in action,” noted UFO journalist Sean Casteel. Alec Hiddell identifies Williamson as one of the small group of men from whom “the contemporary UFO mythos first grew and took shape.”

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 5.[/alert]

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  • Will The Real Conspirators Please Stand Up

    Will The Real Conspirators Please Stand Up

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 3 (June 2014)

    Today the name Illuminati is used in popular conspiracy literature to describe a mysterious hidden elite out to gain power over the whole world. For some writers the Illuminati is synonymous with a shadowy cabal of international bankers and mega-rich ‘Insiders’, while others see the ‘Enlightened Ones’ as the ultimate secret society committed to the enslavement of humanity in a ‘Satanic’ One World government. In the opinion of Tokyo based journalist Benjamin Fulford, former Asian Bureau chief for Forbes magazine, “the Illuminati are really inbred families of European and North American traditional aristocracy and banking families… Their goal is to create a world government.” 

    In order to understand the origin of much of what is written today about the Illuminati, it is necessary to begin with Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a professor of canon law at the University of Ingoltstadt in Bavaria. Together with four of his friends, Weishaupt founded the Order of the Illuminati – that is, the ‘Enlightened Ones’ – on 1 May 1776. Modelling his political secret society on the Catholic Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), he sought to advance the anti-clerical, anti-monarchist, liberal ideals proposed by Voltaire, Diderot, and other French philosophers of the time. “Princes and nations,” he forecast, “will disappear” and then “the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men.”

    Weishaupt tried to infiltrate and control the lodges of Freemasonry in an effort to advance his political agenda. He wrote: “The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment, let it never appear, in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation. None is fitter than the three lower degrees of Freemasonry; the public is accustomed to it, expects little from it, and therefore takes little notice of it.” In March 1785, in response to widespread anxiety in Catholic Bavaria over Weishaupt’s activities, the Bavarian government outlawed the Illuminati. Weishaupt, dismissed from his university post, fled into exile and ordered the Illuminati to go underground.

    When four years later, in 1789, the merciless French Revolution broke out, sending shock waves through Christian Europe, conservative writers suggested it was the result of a plot hatched by secret societies, principally the Freemasons. Books and pamphlets began to circulate revealing the Illuminati as the hidden hand behind the Revolution, having transferred its secret operations from Bavaria to France. A leading proponent of this idea was Abbé Augustin Barruel (1741-1820), a French Jesuit Catholic priest who had taken refuge in England.

    Barruel believed a widespread conspiracy involving Freemasons – inspired and directed by the Illuminati – was out to destroy Christianity and the European monarchies. Revealingly perhaps, the Jesuit priest Barruel dedicated his four volumes to the “English nation.” Barruel made a clear distinction between the radical Freemasons on the Continent and their Masonic brethren in England, describing the latter as “a society composed of good citizens.” Interestingly, Barruel pointed out how in Britain the Masonic lodges were loyal to the Crown, writing: “Let us admire it [the wisdom of England] for having known how to make a real source of benefit to the State out of those same mysteries which elsewhere conceal a profound conspiracy against the State and religion.” 

    Inspired by Barruel, the Scottish Freemason John Robison published a book of his own (see accompanying article in this same issue ‘Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy’ by Mike Jay). The revelations by Barruel and Robison on the secret causes of the French Revolution created a sensation. Across Europe their claims were championed enthusiastically by conservative forces locked in battle with republicans. Catholic traditionalist author Joseph de Maistre referred to the Illuminati when he spoke of those “guilty men who dared to plan and even organise in Germany that dreadful, most criminal conspiracy to extinguish Christianity and royalty in Europe.”

    In an article in New Dawn Special Issue 11, Dr. Richard B. Spence, a specialist in the history of intelligence agencies, noted “that both Barruel and Robison wrote their books in Britain and that the government of Sir William Pitt the Younger embraced and promoted their ideas. At the very least, Pitt exploited the conspiracy theory to effectively discredit and demonise the French Revolution.”

    Secret Societies & Subversive Movements

    Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, in which the anti-monarchist, atheistic Bolsheviks forcibly seized power, the English writer Nesta Webster published The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy. In the tradition of Barruel and Robison, she claimed a secret conspiracy had prepared and carried out the French Revolution, concluding that: “The lodges of the German Freemasons and Illuminati were thus the source whence emanated all those anarchic schemes which culminated in the Terror.”

    Mrs Webster’s most influential book, however, was Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, in which she set out to document the existence of a vast, centuries old, secret conspiracy to overthrow Christian civilisation. Building on the work of Barruel and Robison, Nesta Webster argued that behind the forces of world revolution “whether Pan-German, Judaic, or Illuminist – beyond that invisible secret circle which perhaps directs them all,” is another force, still more potent, an “Occult Power.”

    Webster had a wide and influential readership. H.G. Wells called her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, “a book that all serious people interested in the British situation ought to read and think about… I believe her [Mrs. Webster’s] influence has spread far beyond the circle of her actual readers.” Winston Churchill praised her in a 1920 article entitled “Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” where he wrote of the growth of a “world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality” which “played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution.” After reading Webster’s books, the British economic reformer Major C.H. Douglas, father of the Social Credit movement, declared: “Any serious endeavour to identify the origins of world unrest and war inevitably and invariably leads back to what is loosely called occultism.”

    It was not long before Nesta Webster’s writings made their way across the Atlantic to North America where they found a ready audience among right-wing Christians. “Without the influence of Nesta Webster,” notes the British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in Black Sun, “it is likely that few Americans today would have heard of the Illuminati. Due to the re-publication of her books and the popularisation of her ideas among the radical right, the Illuminati became a major theme of American conspiracy literature from the late 1960s onward.” 

    Nesta Webster, like Barruel and Robison before her, was quick to absolve English Freemasonry of any involvement in political subversion. By focusing on the ‘evil German’ Illuminati as the guilty party, she effectively diverted attention away from Britain’s clandestine role in many of the upheavals in Europe. That Mrs Webster, the daughter of a senior partner in Barclays Bank, was a committed British imperialist with close ties to the English ruling class, there is no doubt. After the First World War, Nesta Webster supported punitive measures against Germany. Starting in 1922 she penned a series of attacks against Pan-Germanism in the pages of The Morning Post. Webster believed that powerful forces in 1920s Germany had secretly allied with Bolshevik Russia to bring down the British Empire. She castigated the Jews for being dupes of Pan-Germanism who “from the time of Frederick the Great had frequently acted as Prussia’s most faithful and efficient agents.”  

    With Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, Webster supported Nazi Germany, seeing in the Third Reich a bulwark against the hated Soviet Union. A position held by sections of the British establishment who believed Hitler’s Germany was more of a threat to Communist Russia than the British Empire.

    More than any other author, Nesta Webster’s writings have played a major role in shaping the political/occult conspiracy theories in the English-speaking world for nearly a century. In the years prior to the Second World War, Webster enjoyed a special relationship with elements in British Intelligence. In fact her book World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilisation was based on lectures she gave to British military officers and members of the Secret Service at the end of the First World War. 

    Richard Gilman, author of Behind World Revolution: The Strange Career of Nesta H. Webster, who extensively studied her life, concluded that the real “function of her books was to blame the crimes of Britain’s power elite on others as well as defend the Empire in general.”

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  • On the Trail of Occulture

    On the Trail of Occulture

    From New Dawn 166 (Jan-Feb 2018)

    Recently I returned to London after a week in Spain promoting a new translation of one of my books, and taking part in an International Occulture Conference held in León, an ancient city in northern Spain that is an important site on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrim trail. An ‘International Occulture Conference’ you might say? What is that and why in Spain? The second part of this question is easier to answer than the first. 

    The conference was held in Spain because it was organised by one of that country’s most popular writers, Javier Sierra. While he is not necessarily a household name in the English speaking world, Sierra has had considerable success with some translations of his work, most notably La Cena Secreta (2004) which, as The Secret Supper (2006), found a place on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for some time. Other works of what Sierra calls “investigative fiction,” like El Maestro del Prado (2013) – The Master of the Prado (2015) – have also done well in the UK and US. But in Spain Sierra is something of a phenomenon. I got a sense of this at the conference, watching the many fans of his books queue up for him to autograph their copies and to take a selfie with their favourite author.

    Javier Sierra (photo courtesy of Javier Sierra)

    Sierra’s fictions deal with occult and esoteric themes, but not in a way aimed at shocking or titillating his readers. His books are thrillers, detective stories in the mould of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, but what Sierra aims at giving his readers aren’t thrills and shivers but knowledge. He uses the structure of a mystery to uncover the traces of what for convenience sake we can call the Hermetic or Gnostic influence on Western culture. We can say that he uses one mystery to reveal another. At least this is the theme of the two books of his I’ve read. The Secret Supper – translated by Alberto Manguel – deals with the heretical ideas and teachings that Leonardo Da Vinci secretly embedded in his painting The Last Supper, and the efforts of a kind of papal secret police to wipe out those few who can read the code. In The Master of the Prado a young man meets a mysterious older gentleman in Madrid’s famous museum, and is instructed in the subtle art of reading the strange symbolism inserted into some of the world’s most famous paintings, works by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Botticelli, and others. 

    The knowledge the heroes of Sierra’s fictions acquire is doubly ‘occult’, in that not only is it about ‘hidden’ things – the soul, the spirit world, and visionary states of consciousness, all deemed verboten by the religious authorities – but is itself hidden, coded in a language that only devotees of the lost wisdom can decipher. Sierra’s aim seems to be to teach this language to his readers so they can look at some of the most well-known works of Western art with new eyes, and grasp the deeper meanings that, for the uninitiated, are hidden in plain sight.

    What is Occulture?

    Brochure for the International Occulture Conference.

    Here I would say we can begin to answer the second part of our question: what is occulture? It is what happens when what we call the occult and what we know as culture come together, in ways that illuminate both in an unusual light and allow us to understand each from new and different angles. In Sierra’s books Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, art history, hermeneutics and mysticism come together in narratives that not only entertain but instruct.

    Sierra’s success led to the launch of a new publishing line, Ocultura, which specialises in titles hand-picked by him and whose covers receive his imprimatur. Hence the conference and my appearance at it. My book Politics and the Occult had been chosen for translation as was The Masks of Christ by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, who were the other English-speaking presenters at the conference. Picknett and Prince’s The Templar Revelation had been an inspiration for Sierra’s The Secret Supper as it had been for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – they even make a cameo appearance in the film. My book looks at the many examples of occult or esoteric ideas that have influenced politics in the modern west, and argues, contra Umberto Eco, that there is plenty of evidence for a ‘progressive’ occult politics, and not only for the more well-known far-right version. In The Masks of Christ Picknett and Prince analyse the actual evidence we have for who exactly Christ was – or wasn’t, as the case may be. As readers of their other books – like The Stargate Conspiracy and The Turin Shroud – have come to expect, their conclusions are, if nothing else, challenging and thought-provoking. The other speakers were Sierra himself, who engaged in a dialogue with the Spanish author and occult mover and shaker Enrique De Vincente on the true meaning of the visions of Fatima, celebrating their hundredth anniversary in 2017, and the top-flight designer Lorenzo Caprile, who spoke about the growing influence of occult ideas in the fashion world.

    Politics, religion, haute couture and esotericism do not usually mix, but for the week of the conference they seemed to get on well. The huge León civic auditorium, where the conference was held, was packed and the audience engaged. Local, regional and national newspapers, radio and television covered the event, with shots of the speakers and Sierra standing before the remarkable cathedral at León – a masterpiece of French gothic transported to northern Spain – and at the Basílica de San Isidoro. It claims, among its many other worthy features, to house a good candidate for the Holy Grail, at least according to the historian Margarita Torres Sevilla who argues for its authenticity.1 At the start of our Spanish adventure, in Madrid, I was surprised at the media attention Sierra’s new Ocultura editions drew. Lynn, Clive and I ran a marathon of radio, newspaper, and web interviews, enabled by our excellent translator. But in León there was even more, and when the head of the town council greeted us, I was surprised that he didn’t hand us the key to the city.

    Most of this had to do of course with our host’s popularity and the attention and business he was bringing the town, which is already a well-trod pilgrimage site. But it also could not hurt the ‘occulture’ cause, if there is such a thing. I had already taken part in several similar events all held under the occulture banner, in London, New York, and Trondheim, Norway. I had spoken at symposia and conferences in Germany, France, Denmark and Sweden in which the theme was the close links between art and the occult, in the past and present, and had written essays about this for art magazines and catalogues for ‘occulture’ exhibitions held in Europe and South America. So, whatever occulture is, it is certainly getting around.

    But what exactly is it? The term occulture is said to have been coined by the performance artist Genesis P–Orridge sometime in the 1980s. What exactly he meant by it remains unclear – at least to me – but it received its academic bona fides some years later. In 2004 Professor Christopher Partridge of Lancaster University defined it as a concern with “hidden, rejected and oppositional beliefs and practices associated with esotericism, theosophy, mysticism, New Age, Paganism,” and other ideas belonging to the “occult subculture.”2

    That is indeed a mouthful, but the gist of it was expressed more succinctly by the Swedish writer and publisher Carl Abrahamsson, who summed up occulture as “anything cultural but decidedly occult/spiritual.” Abrahamsson, to whose forthcoming book Occulture I contributed a Foreword, sees this union taking place more in the odd mashups between pop culture and the avant-garde, in the films of the Aleister Crowley devotee Kenneth Anger, the ‘cut-ups’ of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and other forms of ‘trangressive’ art. But “anything cultural but decidedly occult/spiritual” is a wide brief. It includes, for example, the work of the comic writer Alan Moore, the Russian painter and guru Nicholas Roerich, and the ‘traditionalist’ composer John Tavener. And if Sierra’s ideas are correct, it includes many of the great works of Western art.

    To be sure, most self-conscious works of contemporary occulture tend toward the transgressive, the antinomian, for the simple reason they aim to challenge not only the social but the ontological status quo, to upset ‘consensus reality’. As Sierra shows, much of the old traditional art that later rebels transgress against is itself already transgressing – against the religious dogmas and repressions of the time. It is not out to disturb, as by definition transgressive art is, but to instruct. What it wants to trigger is not so much a reaction as a response. It does not want to convey a shock, but knowledge. And to acquire this knowledge it is necessary to know where to look for it and, even more, how to read it. And for this, one must understand the language in which it is written, a symbolic code or lost alphabet that is at the heart of esotericism.

    Of course, there is much art that does not qualify as occulture, just as there is much occultism that does not qualify as culture. Occulture inhabits that intermediary realm between the artwork and the ritual, the inner journey and the poetic experience, where the transformative power lies not only in the secret knowledge revealed but in the symbols that convey it. Here knowledge and experience, symbol and symbolised, are one. The magic of a work of art lies first in its power to compel our attention. It is only when it grabs us that we can begin to see it clearly.

    The idea of a hidden alphabet or secret code of some kind can be taken too literally, as can the notion of some lost or forgotten knowledge. Then what is sought is some explicit information, some concrete secret – like the password to your bank account – just as military codebreakers seek to decipher the enemy’s messages, which remain meaningless until the key is found. The process, the codebreaking itself is irrelevant; if the information could be obtained otherwise it would be just as useful. The destination, not the journey, is what counts.

    Transforming the Imagination

    Learning the hidden alphabet of occulture is another matter because here the language and the knowledge revealed through it are one. It cannot be given in another way. The knowledge and the process of acquiring it are one and the same. Because of this, they are transformative.

    What brings about this transformation and is itself transformed is the imagination. The artworks at the centre of Sierra’s tales are products of the imagination. But the ability to read them too requires an imaginative effort. Their meaning does not simply pass into our consciousness passively, although to be sure many of us assume that if we stand before an El Greco, a Botticelli, or a Da Vinci, we have ‘seen’ it. But we haven’t. To see in the way that the artist wants you to, and to know what to look for, requires work. It necessitates acquiring what we might call the ‘learning of the imagination’.

    That, in fact, is the theme of my recent book, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, which looks at imagination not as a way of escaping reality or of creating some substitute for it, but as a way of knowing it, as a cognitive faculty. Imagination, I argue, is what enables us to grasp the reality of the world around us in its fullness, which means being aware of dimensions and meanings beyond the physical and sensory, the ‘here’ and ‘now’. This means ‘unseen’ or ‘occult’ dimensions which are nevertheless as real as those revealed through the senses – perhaps more so – but which are grasped not by the senses but by the mind, by what the German writer Ernst Jünger called our “inner claws.” Learning how to grasp in this way is part of the ‘learning of the imagination.’ More times than not the first lesson in this is simply becoming aware that such claws exist and that you possess them. And this means becoming aware of the mind as an active power reaching out into the world and not merely a passive mirror simply reflecting it. This awareness of ourselves as active agents and not merely passive subjects is, I would say, one of the central teachings of esotericism.

    Hermetic Wisdom

    The Hermetic wisdom that Sierra’s heroes discover in the great artworks of the past says as much. Since the ground-breaking research of the historian Frances Yates, we’ve known that much of the Renaissance and the masterpieces it produced – and which fill museums like the Prado, which I had the opportunity to visit – were informed with the Hermetic belief that man is a microcosm, a little universe, and something more than a wretched sinner. “Within God,” the Hermetic writings tell us, “everything lies in imagination.” Man was made in the image of God and, “If you do not make yourself equal to God you cannot understand him,” so says the universal Mind to its student, the great sage Hermes Trismegistus. The message is clear: the way to God is through the imagination. 

    Through the translations of the Corpus Hermeticum – the supposed writings of Hermes – by the Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino, ideas and beliefs like these informed the work of masters like Michelangelo. For a brief time it seemed the church would embrace the Hermetic wisdom, seeing in it another expression of the perennial philosophy it itself had emerged from, although it was loathe to admit it. In the end the Hermetic knowledge proved too threatening and, as history shows, was forced underground. Hence the need for the artists aware of these ideas to convey their knowledge secretly, in symbols that only their fellow initiates understand and which pass before the watchful eye of the authorities, seen but not understood. Hence the storyline for Sierra’s ‘investigative fictions’ in which modern-day visitors to the world’s great museums become privy to this lost knowledge, and by learning where and how to look, can read the wisdom hidden for all to see. 

    Sierra’s message, and perhaps that of occulture, seems to be getting across. When I returned to London I heard the news that he had just been awarded one of Spain’s top literary prizes, the Premio Planeta, for his novel El Fuego Invisible (2017) – The Invisible Fire – which centres around the Holy Grail – which, as mentioned, is believed to reside in León. Most likely this will help the pilgrim business there, and bring in some literary esotourism. Copies of El Maestro del Prado already guide readers to some of that museum’s many treasures, if the stacks of them in the Prado bookshop is anything to go by. Sierra’s belief is that “literature should not only entertain its readers but awaken them.” I would only extend that mission to culture at large, and make it the purpose of art en total.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 166.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. Margarita Torress Sevilla and José Miguel Ortega del Rio, Kings of the Grail: Tracing the Historic Journey of the Holy Grail From Jerusalem to Spain, Michael O’Mara Books, 2015
    2. Quoted in Here to Go: Art, Counter Culture, and the Esoteric, ed. Carl Abrahamsson, Edda Publishing, 2012, 7

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