Category: Secret Wisdom

From New Dawn 164 (Sept-Oct 2017)

A human life is a story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Like stories, our lives are filled with moments and experiences that shape us into who we ultimately become. Many of those moments and defining experiences become embedded within the subconscious mind, and even deeper into the ‘collective unconscious’ where they continue to drive our behaviours, actions and thoughts long after their shelf-life has worn out. They take on a symbolic form, and, in turn, a universal aspect that is understood, and experienced, by others all over the world regardless of time, place, colour, gender or creed.

These universal symbols are called ‘archetypes’, a word which has its roots in the ancient Greek archein for ‘original, old’, and typos for ‘pattern, type or model’. Archetypes are models or blueprints of original patterns, concepts, ideas, objects, themes and motifs that are later copied, modelled after, emulated and derived from. They serve as a foundation for understanding who we are not only as individuals, but as the collective of humanity as well.

Two of the biggest figures in the development and evolution of the study of archetypes were Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. Both have been instrumental in our understanding of archetypes, and their research served as the springboard for more recent examinations by noted authors and experts in the field of personal transformation.

Levels of the Mind

Before we delve into the world of archetypes, we need to understand the levels of the human mind and how they operate. The most obvious to us is the conscious mind, which basically is the present and aware mind we live with on a daily basis. It is awake, rational, analytical and observant, but also preoccupied, overwhelmed and distracted. It is both clear mind and monkey mind, and the level of mind we use to interact with others and our physical environment.

Just below the level of the conscious mind lies the mighty world of the subconscious, where the vast majority of our behaviours, thoughts, actions and personalities emerge from. Like the base of an iceberg, the tip being the conscious mind, the subconscious is the ‘driver’ of the vehicle and is a place of shadows and darkness, buried experiences and embedded patterns, old beliefs and fears and all sorts of programming that has built up over the years, often at the hands of external influences like parents, peers, teachers, religious and political figures and cultural beliefs.

Where the conscious mind makes plans, the subconscious mind often derails those plans because of old patterns we don’t even know are there. So, it makes sense that most of who we believe ourselves to be is not even who we really are. Rather, it is the product of the vast expanses of the subconscious. And it is very hard to find the programming within, let alone change it!

Deeper still is a realm of mind that connects us to everyone else, and to all of humanity. It is below the personal subconscious, and filled with images and symbols as its means of expression. Dreams, visions, patterns, and yes, archetypes, live here in the collective unconscious, which may be described as the universal grid we are all locked into, yet often completely unaware of.

Carl Jung believed that it was here, at this deepest layer of reality, of mind, that most of what made us ‘us’ existed. The collective unconscious is not a place where language and words are spoken, but where images and symbols reign. These symbols are universal to humanity, and links us to those who have lived in the past, and to those who live thousands of miles away, in cultures and societies far different than our own. On this level, we all ‘get’ each other.

Archetypes

Born in 1875, Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss-German with a fascination for the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy. He began his illustrious career as a student of Sigmund Freud until differences of ideologies, basically those of Freud involving infantile sexuality and the Oedipus Complex, drove Jung to strike out on his own. Jung believed that the world’s myths, origin stories and even religious stories contained universalities that were shared by all, even amongst cultures that had no interaction with one another. How could this be? Jung noted the symbols common to all were archetypes, stored away in the collective unconscious, but always popping up into our human experiences and interactions in very visible and identifiable ways.

From this “common psychic substrate,” as Jung called it, which is present in each and every one of us, comes the very source materials from which we become ‘human’ in a way we can all identify with. He wrote extensively about this in his seminal books, notably The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which suggested archetypal symbols are not learned but inborn. These patterns were inherited by each generation by both genetic and non-genetic means. They became a part of the DNA of humanity, so to speak.

The Jungian archetypes became the structures by which psychology, psychotherapy and even recovery therapy and counselling looked at the deepest root causes of personal patterns, dream motifs and long-held problems the conscious mind could not overcome or change. These symbols also infiltrate every aspect of creativity, entertainment and today’s pop culture in the characters and themes we most flock to in novels, movies and television shows.

The main Jungian archetypes are:

PERSONA: The mask we wear to others, and often ourselves. This is our public role and the way we wish to be perceived out in the world. It is NOT the true person we are.

SELF: The authentic self, which can only be achieved once we have unified the SHADOW side and the ANIMA/ANIMUS. The whole SELF. This is what we should have as the ultimate goal – the real person we want to, and were meant to, be.

SHADOW: The ‘dark’ aspects of SELF we often deny exist or tuck away into the depths of the subconscious. This is our primal, sexual, animal side. It is both creative and destructive, and often contains all that we have repressed.

ANIMA/ANIMUS: The mirror images of gender within. The ANIMA is the female aspect, and the ANIMUS is the male aspect. Females have a repressed ANIMUS they must acknowledge. Males have a repressed ANIMA. 

GREAT MOTHER: The nurturer and creative force, which begins as the archetypal MAIDEN, then becomes the caretaker and MOTHER of the world, and then becomes the wise old CRONE.

HERO: The aspect that takes on challenges, exhibits bravery and courage, and partakes of the journey of life, obstacles and all, with all the growth, trials and transformations that it entails.

CHILD: The innocent one who sees life as pure. The child within.

WISE OLD MAN/WOMAN: The wise part of Self that knows all, sees all. Also known as SAGE, PRIEST, PRIESTESS, MENTOR, and even KING or QUEEN. Both kind and understanding, and cantankerous and snarky, just like our favourite grandparents.

Other archetypes include everything from MARTYR, VICTIM, WARRIOR, SURVIVOR, PRINCE, PRINCESS, GODDESS, GOD, JESTER, FOOL, ARTIST, ANTI-HERO, BEAST, HEALER, GENIUS, STORYTELLER, LEADER, FOLLOWER and even DEMON. While Jung was focused upon the main archetypes associated with his field of study, we can easily see how modern humans exhibit a number of archetypes he did not include, and how those evolve along with humanity as a whole.

For example, today we might call a ‘GEEK’ an archetype that is associated with the rise of technology all over the world. A boy in Japan and an old woman in Norway will both understand the symbol of someone immersed in gadgets and computer gear. Today, we might recognise a DIVA on a global scale, but thousands of years ago, she might have been called a GODDESS. We evolve, and therefore the inherent archetypes that describe our experiences do too.

Archetypes can even be applied to life events that are universal, such as birthdays, marriage, first menses, menopause, death, funeral rites, baptisms, and coming of age rituals. Jung referred to them as “situational archetypes.” These events happen in most of the world’s cultures, with only the specifics that are changed. Interestingly, life itself is an archetype…

The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” is an archetypal motif for the human experience, itself filled with archetypes, and one of the most identifiable explanations of the universality of the most popular stories, whether they are old or new. Campbell was a noted mythologist, writer and lecturer who literally put comparative religion and mythology into the hands of the layperson by making such complex subjects both simple and understandable in his many books, including The Power of Myth, and lecture series for PBS. His “Hero’s Journey” motif was the basis for the most popular movie franchise in history, Star Wars, as George Lucas, the creator of the science fiction adventure series, was a huge fan of Campbell and met with him while structuring his storylines.

One only needs to watch how the story of a young lad named Luke Skywalker unfolds to see this archetype at work and be able to identify with aspects of it. Luke begins as an innocent and ordinary young man, working for his aunt and uncle, when he is called to adventure upon their tragic deaths. He is afraid at first, but takes on that call and soon meets with allies in the form of two droids, who help him along in his journey. He also has wise older mentors to teach him the ways of the Jedi. He crosses the threshold from his normal life into one of galactic adventure, where he runs into the enemy in the form of a dark-cloaked individual who he must do battle with, but first he enters the dark cave of truth where he comes face to face with his innermost fears. He comes out to face the supreme ordeal, hitting bottom. The abyss calls out to him. But Luke seizes the sword and gets a reward for it, which drives him on to the journey home as a newly resurrected hero. Then, BOOM, before he makes it home, the biggest battle of all confronts him and he overcomes it, with his newfound courage, strength and wisdom. Then, finally, he heads back home with a treasure in hand, truly transformed,and is celebrated as a hero.

The most endearing, and enduring, forms of entertainment contain this journey in some form. The genre might change from science fiction to western, but the bold elements are there in all their archetypal glory, and we respond accordingly.

But understanding archetypes intellectually doesn’t help much when we are struggling to fully express ourselves and actualise the authenticity we feel within.

Working With Archetypes

So we understand what archetypes are. Big deal. Unless we can find a way to apply this knowledge to bettering our lives, it really doesn’t matter much. If a concept isn’t useful, we tend to toss it aside. However, when it comes to archetypes, we truly do have the ability to literally rewrite the stories of our lives if we know how.

First we have to dig up the archetypes that operate us and put them under the microscope. Are they serving us? Are they sabotaging us? Did we even choose these archetypes in the first place, or were they chosen for us by other people with other agendas?

It all begins with an honest appraisal of who we are, what our ‘story’ is, and how we see ourselves in the eyes of others. For some people, writing out the beats/defining moments of their own personal history can reveal telling patterns that may not be obvious on the surface. Meditating on our lives can do the same by shedding light where all was concealed in shadow. Then, sitting down and reviewing our story becomes more honest and truthful, much in the same way someone in recovery undertakes a ‘fearless moral inventory’ as part of the 12-step work. 

This takes time and effort, but will show us exactly where patterns that still govern our actions and behaviours originated, and who planted them there. Only then can we ask if those patterns are chosen by us, and if they are helping us achieve authenticity and fulfilment of the SELF… or keeping us under the power and control of the PERSONA – the mask we wear for the world.

One powerful way to see exactly what archetypes are active in our lives is to notice what we complain about the most.

“I am so tired of doing everything for everybody. Who helps me?” 

“Why do I have to always repeat myself? I feel like no one even listens to me or sees me?”

“I am sick of being a doormat for others to take advantage of.”

Any of those sound familiar? If so, think of yourself as a VICTIM or MARTYR.

How about:

“I always have to be strong.”

“I am tired of saving everyone.”

“I have to lead every situation because no one else steps up to the plate.”

You, my friend, have a WARRIOR imbalance.

And that is key, because some of the archetypes within are positive, some are negative, and some are just in need of a little balance. We all want to be warriors, but as shown above, when that archetype is too strong and active, we may need to temper it with a little VICTIM in order to not feel taken for granted, burnt out or overwhelmed saving the world. Even WARRIORS need to be taken care of now and then.

We have all heard it said that it takes approximately 21 days to change a habit. When it comes to changing a negative archetype and replacing it with a more empowering one, we have to repeat ourselves and act as if. Say, for example, we want to replace the inner FOOL with a SAGE. We must pretend at first that we are wise and act from that belief until it becomes habitual and embedded within the subconscious, and then the collective unconscious. We may still behave as the FOOL now and then, but course correction is a part of archetypal work and it won’t happen overnight. Knowing that, we can move forward to creating a new ‘vision’ of who we are that is more aligned with our authentic SELF, and not the PERSONA we have been wearing just to survive.

Guided visualisation can assist us in meeting with the aspects of ourselves we need to change or eliminate, and also to further empower the archetypes we like and that work for our greater good. 

Watch Your Language

Those who follow the teachings of the laws of attraction can attest to the power of words to define us. When we want to change our lives, and the symbols that we operate by, we must watch what we say as well as what we do. The words we choose to describe ourselves are telling.

“I am a survivor.”

“I am a loser.”

“I am an addict.”

“I am _________” Fill in the blank.

What we say about ourselves is what we believe and what we manifest. Yet is it accurate, or again, imposed upon us from our childhoods by those who decided to label and categorise us as they saw fit? 

In the recovery movement, standing up and saying “I am an alcoholic” or “I am an addict” is a powerful part of admitting the truth and getting out of denial. But are these labels ultimately keeping us stuck and associated with the very aspects we wish to change? Can we rephrase these to be more powerful and assist in our recovery? “I am a sober person.” “I am thriving without drugs.”

Even those who are cancer survivors are recognising the amazing power that choosing words can have on their ability to stay positive and possibly assist in healing. “I am a cancer survivor” is being replaced with “I am a thriver,” and the difference in the energy is palpable.

Act Local, Think Global

The great thing about working with archetypes is that we not only become more actualised and authentic individuals, but we contribute to the collective. We can change the archetypes that are at play on a global scale from negative to positive if we do the hard individual work first. Imagine a world that is more PEACEMAKER and less WARMONGER. Can we envision and work towards a planet of NURTURERS and CREATORS, neutralising the overwhelming power of the DESTROYERS and USERS? This world can certainly use more ARTISTS and LOVERS and VISIONARIES. But first we must become those things on a personal level.

Archetypes are working all the time in each of us, whether we stop to notice at all. By taking a look at where we are now, and whether or not we are living as we desire, we can get a good gauge on how much deep work is needed to take off the masks of the PERSONA and step into a more actualised SELF. Symbols and images are somewhat useless unless we can find a way to use them for growth and transformation. 

If indeed a human life is a story, then each human has the ability to revise, rework and rewrite that story to better reflect the truth of who he or she is. That is the power of archetypes. They shape the subconscious and form the substrate of the collective unconscious. Without change on those levels, we cannot change on the conscious level.

We must dive deep to the base of the iceberg and the dark murky ground upon which the base stands to really understand why we act, think and behave the way we do… and how we can once and for all tell the world the stories of our lives the way they were meant to be written.

For more on this subject, obtain a copy of Marie D. Jones’ book The Power of Archetypes: How to Use Universal Symbols to Understand Your Behavior and Reprogram Your Subconscious (New Page Books, 2017).

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From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 13 No 5 (Oct 2019)

The Tarot is a path. In Egypt it was called the Books of Life or Books of Thoth and also the Royal Way of Life. The word Tarot was derived from the Egyptian words Tar, meaning path or way, and ro, ros or rob, meaning royal – hence: The Royal Way of Life. And the Books of Life, used in connection with initiation ceremonies, were quite literally the Books of a path of initiation, and its 22 symbols or pictograms were like the words of a sentence adding up to a single meaning. Or they could have been compared to steps upon the way or beads upon a string. They were to be understood singly but also as a whole, a totality, and in relationship to each other.

It is said that the candidate for initiation in the Egyptian mysteries had to pass between paired rows of Tarot symbols inscribed in hieroglyphs on huge tablets of stone and signify his understanding of them before he could be accepted. The symbol T also stands for an initiate; and in early times initiates were know as T’s.

It is possible that the original Books of Thoth contained a secret describing a very specific and literal pathway or method by which the initiate might attain realisation.

The Egyptian Books of T were not cards at all but mighty Books embodying cosmic principles. The authorship of the Books of Life was ascribed to Thoth-Tehuti, the scribe of the gods and one of the oldest of the gods who, by tradition, came from Atlan – or Atlantis, the Land of Atlan. Thoth may have been an historical personage. It is believed that he established a colony in Egypt before Atlantis went down. If so, this would place his date at around 10,000 BCE, at about the time of the final submergence of Atlantis, according to Plato’s account.

In his Tehuti aspect, he invented the alphabet, and it is he, along with Osiris, who weighs the heart in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He is ibis-headed; his symbol is a feather; and he is associated with Truth.

No one has seen the originals of the Books of Thoth. The present day Tarot of the Bohemians, or gypsy pack, used as a fortune-telling deck, is a descendant of the originals but has undergone many alterations in form and symbols as it has been rendered by countless artists. Madame Blavatsky said that the originals of the Tarot were stored in Mesopotamia in cylinder seals of copper and would one day be found. However, their historical origin can never be established, and it is possible that we will never know whether they were written by the legendary Thoth-Tehuti or whether they sprang from an earlier source. But their historical origin is, in the present consideration, beside the point. 

During the Middle Ages, the Tarot was carried to Europe, some say by the Knights Templar, others by the gypsies. The gypsies, according to one account, were the descendants of Egyptian priests who rescued the Books of Thoth, also called the Tora, from the burning library at Alexandria; and the gypsies may easily have been Egyptians as the very word gypsy suggests. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Tarot appeared in the guise of a playing card deck, also as a fortune-telling deck with the addition of the 56 cards of the minor arcane, or the four suits – wands, swords, cups and pentacles – which are the foundation of all modern playing card decks.

The medieval Tarot deck of 78 cards has survived until the present as a fortune-telling pack, and appears in numerous popular versions. While this preserved the original 22 Tarot symbols, or major Arcanum, which otherwise would have been lost, it obscured their real meaning. Their sacred purpose was forgotten and few realised that they described a path or that they contained a teaching, a way of life.

Although the Kabbalists found and stressed an esoteric meaning in the cards, relating them to the ten Sephiroth on the Kabbalist Tree of Life and the Hebrew letters, this was overshadowed by their use as a fortune-telling deck, and the cards came to be thought of chiefly as a means of predicting the future, with mundane and literal meanings ascribed to each card.

Tarot & Your Destiny

The Tarot symbols are archetypal symbols of man’s unconscious and represent the enfoldment of his unconscious. They are, therefore, his built-in destiny for any given time period. They are directly linked with cosmic principles and for this reason are predictive on a grand scale. For that which is within is expressed without. Even as the seed contains the tree, that which the unconscious contains is outed and fulfilled externally. Destiny is internal. What is inherent in the times, in the unconscious of man, becomes the time itself. This is another way of saying that man is his own Fate, and that he writes his Destiny, or the Tarot.

The above is abridged from T: The New Tarot, The Tarot for the Aquarian Age by John Starr Cooke and Rosalind Sharpe (Western Star Press, 1968).

The full story about the Book of T or the New Tarot for the Aquarian Age, can be read in New Dawn 145, “ONE: The New Tarot & the Secret Doctrine that Launched the Counterculture” by Mark Walker, and also see the websites www.royalmaze.com and www.tarot.one.

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From New Dawn 182 (Sept-Oct 2020)

Some weeks ago I had an odd experience. Like many other people, I have spent the past few months under a voluntary “house arrest,” following the rules the government has set out in order to combat COVID-19, the coronavirus that has stopped the world in its tracks. 

I am not the most gregarious of people and so being asked to practice social distancing, to self-isolate and stay at home, was not, as it was for many others, that much of a hardship. I missed being able to see friends or to sit at a café or loiter in bookshops, but to be honest I spend most of my time reading or writing at home anyway, and my neighbourhood in North London has many quiet, leafy backstreets, so my daily ration of exercise, taking a walk or riding my bicycle, was pleasant. I also have a small garden where I can stretch my legs and putter around outdoors. Lockdown, then, was more of an inconvenience for me than a burden. 

I hasten to add that I am aware of how lucky I am. The last thing I would want to appear is callous, insensitive to how difficult things have been for many people less fortunate. In fact, the odd experience mentioned above is directly related to this, the inveterate human habit of “taking things for granted.”

What happened is this. One morning, when the usually dull London spring had brightened and the day promised to be fine, I stepped out of my backdoor and into my little patch of garden, a cup of coffee in hand. The air was unusually fresh – a collateral benefit of lockdown, which left hardly any traffic on the streets – and as I took a deep breath, I stretched and looked up. Whether it was the cleaner air or simply the fine weather, what I saw surprised me. I can think of no better word. 

What did I see? The sun. The sun had surprised me.

When I say that the sun surprised me, I don’t mean that it poked its head from behind a cloud and said “Peekaboo!,” although, to be sure, that would have been even more surprising and perhaps cause for concern. No, the sun didn’t do anything unusual. It was just there, as it usually is, bright, yellow-white, and too dazzling to do more than glance at. Nevertheless, I found myself asking “What is that?” As soon as I did, I realised what I had asked. 

What is that? It’s the sun, of course, something you’ve seen all your life and which has been around for close to five billion years and which is expected to be around for another five billion. It is a middling size star set in a galaxy among billions of other stars, in a universe of billions of galaxies. It is a great ball of fire, ninety-three million miles away, in which hydrogen is being transformed into helium, and it could swallow more than a million earths. And so on. I “knew” all this, but this knowledge somehow didn’t answer my question, nor did it explain why I should suddenly see something as ubiquitous as the sun as strange. I was genuinely surprised by it, and if any of my neighbours were in earshot that morning, they may have wondered what it was that I was giggling about.

This sense of being surprised by something I took for granted and rarely devoted much thought to, was related to an odd exhilaration I felt at the beginning of the corona crisis. Although I was not as badly affected as many others, I still had to change my routine. After a few trips to my usual market resulted in a tour of empty shelves, I decided to go to smaller ones that hadn’t yet been pillaged by hysterical hoarders. Even there I had to make do with what they had. The smaller shops were further away, so I used the daily food run as an extra bit of exercise, pulling on my backpack and heading out on my bike. I took all the advised precautions, wore gloves – at that point touch seemed the main means of transmission – wiped down my supplies with antibacterial agents, and washed my hands after that. I was in “crisis mode,” but the odd thing was that I found myself feeling more that I was on holiday. 

Again, I know these past months have been anything but a holiday for many people, and my sympathy goes out to them, and to all the frontline workers who had to deal with a very dangerous and very deadly situation – and are still dealing with it. What was odd was that, as I mentioned, I was not actually doing anything very different from my ordinary routine. Yes, I had made a few changes but nothing too upsetting. But there was something odder still. Recognising that something unusual was happening to me, I decided to try to analyse exactly what that was, to apply a bit of phenomenology to my consciousness. The result was that I realised that the essence of the strange exhilaration I felt was paradoxically a sense of freedom.¹

Freedom? During lockdown when my movements were severely proscribed and what I was allowed of them were saddled with various precautionary measures? How could I feel free, in a very real sense – certainly more than I usually do – when, to all intents and purposes, my freedom was limited, more than it usually was? And if this wasn’t paradoxical enough, my reflections led to an even odder insight. It was that the “freedom” I was feeling was not one that I had recently been granted – as some people, celebrating the easing of lockdown in some places may be feeling now. No. It was a feeling for the freedom I already possessed but had become used to. It was a freedom the “crisis” had reminded me of, just as I had been reminded of the strange reality of the sun, although I thought I knew all about that. I had taken the freedom I already possess for granted, just as I had taken the sun for granted. The sun had surprised me and so had my freedom.

When it came to me that this was the source of the odd happiness – I can’t think of a better word – I was experiencing, I had to laugh. Why? Because I realised that I was experiencing exactly the kind of shift in consciousness that Colin Wilson describes in many of his books, a shift from what he calls “the robot” to “real me,” or, in your case, to “real you.” This odd transition is at the heart of Wilson’s work, and it was apparently something I already knew, as I had written a book about Wilson’s life and work entitled Beyond the Robot. I may have known it, but I had taken it for granted, just as I had taken the sun for granted. Now I saw that I had had an experience of this phenomena, and I knew, with the kind of knowledge that comes from experience, that Wilson was right.

What is the robot? It is a labour-saving device that we have developed over thousands of years of human evolution. Its main function is to perform laborious, repetitive tasks with a minimum of energy, thus freeing up consciousness for more complex operations. Think of some skill that you now possess but which cost an immense amount of effort when you were first learning it. It can be anything, from tying your shoes or learning how to type, to riding a bicycle or playing a musical instrument. At first, it is discouragingly difficult; we have to expend much energy and focus our attention on each little step, making sure we put our finger on the right letter on the keyboard or turn the handlebar in the right way. We fail, make mistakes, fall down, grumble. 

But if we keep at it, one day something miraculous happens. We discover that we can ride our bicycle, type a letter – or email, these days – or play a tune. We have learned how to do these things, which means we no longer have to think about where to put our fingers on the keyboard but can think instead about what we want to say in our email. What has happened is that our robot has taken over the grunt work, freeing “us” up to consider other things. He is a kind of automatic pilot that keeps us flying while we can enjoy the view and think about what we’ll do when we reach our destination.

This is why the philosopher Whitehead said that “Civilisation advances by extending the important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

If it wasn’t for the robot we would never learn anything and would have to start from scratch each time we wanted to type, ride a bicycle, or use any other learned skill. Animals have robots, but theirs are not as versatile or capable as ours. You can teach a young dog new tricks, but even their capacity to acquire new skills is severely limited. A dog may fetch your morning paper – although these days I suspect that is a lost art – but it can’t learn French or how to sew (and of course this is also true of many people…)

So the robot is a handy, indispensable tool and we simply couldn’t do without it. But there’s one hitch. He does his job too well. The robot is like a valet who is eager to do everything for us. He is happy to take things out of our hands and never complains about the tasks he has to perform. Such an eager helper can overstep his brief. He begins to do things that we would rather do ourselves. He is such a good automatic pilot that we forget that we really should get back at the controls. And this is not his fault. To extend my metaphor, he hasn’t hijacked the plane from us; we have allowed him to infer that we would like him to take control. And, accommodating fellow that he is, he is happy to oblige.

The problem is when we allow the robot to do everything for us, life begins to lose its savour. As Wilson writes, the robot has “one enormous disadvantage.” What is that? 

“If I discover a new symphony that moves me deeply,” Wilson writes, “or a poem or a painting, this bloody robot promptly insists on getting into the act. And when I listen to the symphony for the third time, he begins to anticipate every note. He listens to it automatically, and I lose all the pleasure. He is most annoying when I am tired, because then he tends to take over most of my functions without even asking me. I have even caught him making love to my wife.”² 

(Wilson does not mention it, but one wonders if his wife ever caught her own robot in the act as well.)

Eventually, by allowing the robot to do everything for us, life begins to feel slightly unreal, or at least not as real as it used to feel. It is not a sudden change; it happens gradually, imperceptibly. But at some point, the moments of delight that we used to feel at a sunset, a starry night, or simply relaxing with music and a glass of wine, begin to dwindle. “The shades of the prison-house begin to close,” as Wordsworth tells us, and the “intimations of immortality” we received in our youth no longer arrive. We have “grown-up.” That is why we have a nostalgia for our childhood, although, as Wilson points out, we develop our robot precisely in order to help us deal with the emotional and psychological turbulence of youth. In “The Rock,” T.S. Eliot asks, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” Wilson answers: “In the hands of the robot.”

Sometimes the feeling of being cut off from life is so acute that it can lead to suicide or, conversely, to sudden outbursts of violence, just in order to “feel alive” again. This is the thesis behind Wilson’s “existential” study of murder and sex crime, in books such as his Encyclopaedia of Murder and Order of Assassins. Some individuals, who have allowed their lives to become almost completely automatic, periodically erupt into a murderous rage, the violence throwing off the robot temporarily. More often, we resort to expedients like alcohol or drugs, which achieve their effect by putting the robot to sleep for a while. That is why after a glass of wine or two, things that struck us as uninteresting take on a strange glow of meaning. It’s no coincidence that poetry and wine have long been linked. The problem here is that by putting the robot to sleep, our own efficiency is hampered; that is why we are advised not to drive while drunk. Wine may inspire poetry, but the actual writing is best done while sober.

Wilson discovered there was another way to get the robot out of the driver’s seat. Crisis has the effect of putting the robot in his place – or rather, of putting “us” in ours. This is why so many of the “outsiders” Wilson wrote about – people with a high appetite for purpose and meaning, “life more abundant,” which the modern world can’t provide – followed Nietzsche’s advice and “lived dangerously.” 

As an example, Wilson offers the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre who said he never felt as free as when he was a member of the resistance during the German occupation of Paris and was in danger of being arrested by the Gestapo. Another more extreme example is the novelist Graham Greene. As a teenager, Greene suffered from acute boredom, and when he discovered his brother’s revolver, he decided to play Russian Roulette. He put a bullet in a chamber, spun the cylinder, took the gun out to the common, and put the barrel to his head. Then he pulled the trigger. When Greene heard the hammer click on an empty chamber, he experienced an “extraordinary sense of jubilation… as if a light had been turned on… and I felt that life contained an infinite number of possibilities.”³ 

Greene had been so bored that the thought of blowing his brains out seemed appealing. Nothing had changed except something in him. The “infinite possibilities” were always there; Greene had simply been blind to them. He didn’t see them because his robot was on the watch, and he isn’t programmed to see possibilities but to perform functions with a minimal expenditure of effort. 

As Wilson points out, as he pulled the trigger the thought that he could die caused Greene to concentrate his mind in a sudden psychic spasm, into a kind of mental fist. When he heard the hammer hit an empty chamber, he relaxed. The sudden contraction of his attention, in effect, told his robot that “this is important,” and so it handed over control to Greene. That is why when he relaxed, “he” was seeing life’s infinite possibilities. “He” was living again, briefly, not the robot.

Something similar, Wilson tells us, happened to Dostoyevsky when he faced execution and received a sudden reprieve: an immediate, overwhelming insight that “all is good.”

Greene’s experience is summed up in a quotation from the English man of letters Doctor Johnson that Wilson is fond of quoting: “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.” Greene’s mind was thus concentrated. So were Sartre’s and Dostoyevsky’s. This is why the philosopher Heidegger and the esoteric teacher Gurdjieff both suggested that the one sure way for humans to overcome their “forgetfulness of being” was to maintain an awareness of their inevitable death. The thought of the reality of our death causes us to make a sudden inner effort and we momentarily push the robot aside.

I was not going to be hanged in a fortnight, nor was I in danger from the Gestapo. But the change in my routine prompted by the “crisis mode” I had adopted had, I believe, a similar effect. I somehow felt more alive. This, I believe, is the same phenomenon that led many Londoners who survived the Blitz to remember it as the most exciting times of their lives. Many of them said that they never felt more alive or more free. They could be blown up at any moment, and this added a certain savour to everything. What had happened, in Wilson’s terminology, is that I had lowered my “indifference threshold.”⁴ 

This is the term Wilson uses to highlight the fact that when we have allowed the robot to take over our lives, things that we would otherwise find pleasant and agreeable elicit no response from us. We are indifferent to them. “We” do not enjoy the music we listen to or the book we are reading or even the love we are making, because “we” are not really involved. We all know how difficult it is to cheer someone up when they are deeply depressed or bored. Wilson discovered, though, that where something pleasant fails, an inconvenience can succeed. It can shake us out of our indifference and break through the “I can’t be bothered barrier” many of us spend much time behind. Somehow, the inconvenience prompts us to respond, and when it is overcome we find ourselves in a better mood than we were in before the inconvenience. Paradoxically, it has “cheered us up.”

When I was surprised by the sun, it was because “I” was seeing it that morning, not the robot. And because “I” was more real, so was the sun. Gurdjieff captured this in the title of his last, unfinished book, Life is Real Only Then, When “I Am.” Gurdjieff knew about the robot; his way of speaking about it was to say that we are all mechanical, machines, not real human beings. Or that we are all asleep, believing we are awake. This is the most dangerous part of “living on the robot”: we accept this half-life as the real thing and don’t realise that we are actually unconsciously “de-valuing” life by involuntarily ignoring a great deal of it. Not in some physical sense – I hadn’t ignored the sun all these years and now suddenly got a glimpse of it. The robot edits out everything that he considers inessential, so the world he presents to “us” is stripped down to practical concerns; all the “extras” are omitted. Just the facts, no meaning. This is why when he is given a holiday, everything seems more “interesting,” rather like the effect of colour being added to a black and white sketch, or a sumptuous soundtrack to a silent film.

We simply don’t understand that most of the time we are “living” in name only, and accept our moments of non-robotic consciousness as “gifts” or “treats,” short breathing spaces we deserve before getting back into harness. These moments, what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences,” are really moments when our consciousness is working as it should, and not at the “energy-saving” levels the robot usually has it set at. We all have much more energy and power than we know, but because we have come to accept the minimum levels that the robot limits us out of habit, we never draw on these supplies. Gurdjieff again knew this; that’s why he developed a whole system of what we can call “artificial inconvenience” or “induced crisis,” to push his students past those limits.

Yet, like genuine crisis, the artificial kind can become habitual too. Greene eventually stopped playing Russian Roulette because the kick of not blowing his brains out lost its thrill; it’s a wonder he survived to write his gloomy novels. Gurdjieff had to develop more and more difficult exercises and create more inconvenience in order to keep his students on their toes. In his last days in Paris, Gurdjieff’s students “lived dangerously” by piling into his car and driving at breakneck speed to parts unknown until the petrol ran out; Gurdjieff was an appalling driver, and they would have to find petrol in order to get back. As some reports suggest, at times the crisis Gurdjieff induced proved too great and a student collapsed. And as Wilson points out, we have created civilisation in order to minimise crisis, so there is something absurd about having to put a gun to your head in order to feel alive. 

This led to Wilson’s insight that we can apply two other methods to free ourselves of the robot, neither of which involve actual physical danger. One is to put more effort and attention into everything we do. Wilson often quotes this line from Hermann Hesse’s allegorical novel The Journey to the East: “A long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength.” Devoting time to small details strikes us as a bore, and as soon as we feel this, the robot is there to take over. But if we put, say, twice as much attention into some “boring” task – such as cleaning our flat – we can find that we actually enjoy doing it.⁵ Why? Because “we” are doing it, not the robot. The enjoyment is not from the task itself but from our being “alive” while doing it.We can see this as a version of the exercises Gurdjieff gave to his students; the sense of “being alive” is what he called “self-remembering,” which, in fact, is what we are doing when we “feel alive.”

Another method is to use the imagination to create a crisis “in the mind.” This is the same as Heidegger suggesting we maintain an awareness of the reality of our death. You can try this right now. Take a look at your life and focus on everything that is important to you. Now, imagine how you would feel if those things were threatened. Say your house has burned down or you have been diagnosed with a fatal, incurable disease. Imagine, as Doctor Johnson suggests, that you will be hanged in a fortnight. If you are able to imagine this vividly enough, you should get a taste of what it would feel like if it was real. 

But we can go a step further. If you can imagine the loss of what is important to you, you can also use your imagination to evoke a sense of the reality of those things you would lose, for this is what the crisis does: it puts the robot in the back seat so that “you” are in touch with reality. So, rather than focus on the negative impact of loss, you can focus on the positive impact of remembering that you now possess what you would regret losing. The essence of both exercises is to evoke a sense of reality, and the shock of a positive reality can be just as effective as that of a negative one, as well as being a lot less gloomy.

This, I believe, is what happened when I was surprised by the sun, and when I felt an odd exhilaration at the start of the corona crisis. I had taken my freedom for granted. Now, when that freedom was constrained, this inconvenience reminded me of it; hence the paradox that I felt more free. The crisis mode I had adopted made “me” more “present” and I remembered how much I possessed and had to feel grateful for. It was a collateral benefit of a difficult time. With any luck I will not need another crisis to be reminded again.

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Footnotes

1. “A single obsessional idea runs through all of my work: the paradoxical nature of freedom.” Colin Wilson The Occult (London: Watkins Publishing, 2015) p. xxiii.

2. Colin Wilson “Existential Psychology: A Novelist’s Approach” in The Bicameral Critic (Salem, NH: Salem House, 1985) p. 39.

3. Quoted in Colin Wilson Frankenstein’s Castle (Sevenoaks, UK: Ashgrove Press, 1980) p. 122.

4. Space does not allow me to tell it here, but the story of how Wilson arrived at this insight is worth telling. I do in Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2016) pp. 33-34.

5. We can also employ what we can call the “Tom Sawyer effect,“ and pretend that we are enjoying it and then find that we actually do. This refers to the scene in Mark Twain’s novel when Tom pretends he is enjoying painting the fence and by doing so, tricks his friends into paying him to let them have a go. They do enjoy it, so the trick is really on Tom. He has convinced them that painting is fun and their enjoyment ironically proves him right.

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From New Dawn 186 (May-June 2021)

The study of mystical religious experience was introduced into psychological studies in the late nineteenth century. Curiously, this somewhat novel interest was initially stimulated by researchers of medical psychology who observed that phenomena resembling those experienced by mystics frequently resembled the experiences of mental patients. 

One outstanding example that attained seminal status was the work of Theodore Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with Glossolalia, published in the year 1900 (the year when Sigmund Freud published his work Interpretation of Dreams). Flournoy’s work influenced Pierre Janet, C.G. Jung, and Freud himself.

In 1913, C.G. Jung developed a technique for inducing visions that he named “active imagination.” In such experiences, hypnagogic states were combined with visualisation techniques with the objective of inducing waking imaginations of an autonomous character. (Autonomous in this context means that the vision is not consciously directed but acts on its own. This feature distinguishes Jung’s procedure sharply from the “guided imaginations” and reveries popular in New Age circles.) 

Summing up the major conclusions drawn from the studies of mystical and related states by depth psychologists, mystical experiences are states of consciousness that bring about a radical elevation of awareness and at times a deep and abiding union of the individual mind with a realm of transcendence which extends beyond all features of terrestrial embodiment. These states of radical awareness and mystical union have become the definition of certain Western and Eastern exalted states of consciousness, the former known as Gnosis and the latter as Enlightenment. Upon these states are based the traditions known as Gnosticism and Buddhism.

The Twin Traditions

The present writer contends that there are two paramount traditions of mystical spirituality in the world. They are so closely related to each other that it may be justified to give them the metaphorical label of twins. They are named Gnosticism and Buddhism. To familiarise oneself with the “twins” and their relationship, one needs to attempt a comparison of their origins as far as these might be discerned historically.

As the child is father to the man, so Vedic Hinduism is the forerunner of Buddhism. It is known that Buddhism evolved out of Hinduism by way of its founder, Gautama the Buddha. It is said that one’s ancestry is always important, and this may be true of religious traditions as well. The Hindu religious matrix, out of which Buddhism arose, had a significant influence on this tradition. 

For an unknown length of time prior to Buddha, Hinduism possessed a classical school of Yoga, in Sanskrit called Jnana, meaning “the way to union through knowledge.” The structure and composition of Hindu religious life are not unlike those of ancient Gnosticism. It has been said that Hinduism is not so much a religion as it is a family of religions. The diversity of ancient Gnostic traditions is undoubtedly similar. Individual Guru figures are certainly present in both traditions, as are diverse sacramental ritual practices designed as aiding the transformation of consciousness. 

On the side of doctrine, there are significant similarities also. Perhaps the most important of these is the belief in the presence of the Divine in the human spirit. The Atman is identical with Brahman, so the Advaita school of Vedanta declares – universal divinity is present in miniature within each person. In Gnosticism, the Pneuma (individual human spirit) is seen as a spark sprung from the divine flame. As noted, self-knowledge in-depth thus is knowledge of God. 

Another teaching that makes Buddhism’s background and Gnosticism similar is the teaching that declares the existence of many divinities in realms between the ultimate and the material dimensions, yet all connected with a supreme spiritual fullness. These few examples might indicate that the doctrinal foundations underlying Buddhism are akin to Gnosticism itself. 

Although akin to Judaism and even more closely to Christianity, Gnosticism was undoubtedly inspired by the mystical experiences of the initiates of the various Mysteries of Greece, Egypt, Rome, and perhaps Persia. These Mysteries afforded many persons very impressive individual mystical experiences. Their tradition survived in diverse forms among the Gnostics, Hermeticists, and Neo-Platonists. Thus, along with others, the Gnostics became the heirs of the Mysteries of antiquity.

The Wisdom of the Knowing Ones 

When it comes to Buddhism itself, the signs that join it to Gnosticism are numerous and powerful. The supreme objective of Buddhism is identical with the ultimate aim of Gnosticism. This is none other than Liberation, meaning freedom from embodied existence and thereby from all suffering. This liberation is brought about not by belief or by the following of moral precepts, but rather by a radical altering of consciousness, an experience of inexpressible liberating power called by Buddhists Bodhi, often translated as Enlightenment, and known to Gnostics as Gnosis, the latter translated by G.R.S. Mead as “the knowledge of the things that are.” The supreme quality to be cultivated in the quest for Enlightenment/Gnosis by the Buddhist is called Compassion, while the Gnostic Christian cognate quality is known as Love.

Some students in the West have chosen to believe that the Mahayana doctrine of Bodhisattva-hood makes it incumbent on Buddhists to keep reincarnating until there is no one to be helped any longer. Some years ago, H.H. the Dalai Lama, within the hearing of the present writer, replied to such a question: “You just get Enlightenment, then you will know”! 

The pioneer present-day Gnostic scholar, Elaine Pagels, pointed out in her Gnostic Gospels that it is legitimate to translate the term Gnosis as used by the ancient Gnostics as insight, for it involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. Pagels also goes on to emphasise that this knowing oneself at the deepest level is simultaneously to know the Divine and that this is the true secret of Gnosis. 

Many highly informative statements were made by the late renowned Buddhist scholar Edward Conze, who openly called Buddhism “the Gnosticism of Asia.” The following paragraphs are in part based on a lecture by Prof. Conze that I attended some decades ago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The lecture concerned the convergence of Gnosticism and Buddhism. Here are some of the outstanding points:

1. Salvation (Liberation) is achieved through Gnosis, or Enlightenment. Gnosis offers insight into the enslaving structure of the archonic creation; Buddhism practices insight into the dependent origination of manifest existence. These insights bring liberation.
2. Ignorance is the true root of evil. In Gnosticism it is called agnosis, and in Buddhism avidya. The absence of liberating insight creates wickedness and evil actions.
3. The knowledge, cherished by both Gnostic and Buddhist, is arrived at not by ordinary means of information and reasoning but as the result of internal revelation.
4. Spiritual attainment differs with what might be called psycho-spiritual types. There are levels of insight that range from foolish materialism (hyletic consciousness) to illumined Gnosis (pneumatic states).
5. Regarding rules of behaviour and commandments, a certain mystically informed relativism is inherent in both systems. While at the lower levels of spiritual ascent, rules of behaviour are often regarded as being of great importance; in exalted spiritual states, their significance diminishes. (Accusations of antinomianism have been levelled against both Gnostics and Buddhists by their critics.)
6. When opting for preference between myth and fact, both Gnosticism and Buddhism show an inclination toward myth. Modern mythologists, including Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, concluded that insights gained by the Enlightenment of the Buddhist and by the Gnosis of the Gnostic are best understood in terms of myth.
7. One of the most potent mythologems appearing in both Gnosticism and Buddhism is the feminine deific principle of wisdom – Sophia and Prajna, respectively. Conze was fond of quoting the Hevajra Tantra: “Prajna is called Mother because she gives birth to the world.” In fact, there are other important feminine figures among the deities of Mahayana Buddhism that may be considered cognate to Sophia, such as Tara and Kwan Yin. It may be noted that in Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism), the figure of Sophia has been driven underground, but this did not occur in the Orthodox Churches of the East. The obscured Sophia was brought into a renewed prominence by the Russian Sophiologist theologians, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the present, starting with the magnificent scholar and poet Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900). A very large number of artists, literati, philosophers and theologians became advocates and devotees of “the feminine wisdom of God.” It may be stated that the Russian Sophiologists came as close as anyone to rediscovering a feminine deity similar to such figures in Buddhism.

After noting several similarities in the teachings and spiritual ambiance of Buddhism and Gnosticism, a penultimate evaluation of their relationship may be important. The origins, both historical and other, of the two traditions are cognate. Both had their beginnings with a founder who experienced exalted spiritual states and whose example helped generate a tradition oriented toward such experience. Even as the Buddhist tradition moved outside of Hinduism, so the Gnostic tradition, in Christian garb, separated from Judaism. The similarity of the story of the two ends here, for the majority within Christendom cast out the Gnostic minority, condemning it to a mostly underground existence. Buddhism, on the other hand, for the most part, morphed into folk-religiosity, although esoteric communities continued. Both traditions maintained their orientation toward transcendental experience, which allowed for great, even ultimate transformations. Thus, we may conclude that even in the midst of their frequent misapprehensions, the early leaders of depth psychology have discovered something of momentous significance in regard to mystical consciousness. 

Not only were the mystics of East and West not to be seen as victims of psychosis, but rather as persons who gained access to an insight so profound that it supersedes all worldly knowledge and information. Gnostic and Buddhist sages always had their successors in history.

It may be appropriate to close this article with a passage, part meditation, part sermon, heard many years ago from the lips of a teacher, and remembered by the present writer: 

“You are not of this world. You are not this body that you inhabit. You are not these emotions, these thoughts, this ego you identify with. You are not even your life and death. When you are able to distance yourself from these things, then the true you, the Gnostic you, comes into the focus of your cognition. Purer than the ether, more radiant than the sun, purer than the driven snow, filled with life and taken out of the context of death, this is the self you are. To help you know this, Jesus and Buddha and all the other great messengers of light have come into this world, making the sacrifice to come from the fullness into the emptiness to bring you this. You must know this, and you must do this, because without it you are not really alive, you are not really conscious, but with it, you are all things, you have all things, and the All has become you. This is the message of Gnosis!” 

(This meditation was conducted for his students by the late Richard, Duc de Palatine during his visits to the USA.)

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From New Dawn 170 (Sept-Oct 2018)

The Council of Ferrara-Florence, held from 1438 to 1445 in, not surprisingly, the Italian cities of Ferrara and Florence, had as one of its main objectives the possible reunion of the two branches of Christianity, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Byzantine, that had been separated since 1054. Agreement over doctrinal differences was not the guiding principle of the proposed merger. The true motive was realpolitik. The Turk was edging closer to Constantinople, and the Greek Orthodox Church knew it needed help to keep him at bay. When Emperor John VIII Palaeologus decided to put together a crack team of negotiators to plead the Byzantine church’s case, he included among his top men someone from outside the fold, a secular thinker he respected. Some thought this strange. Yet the appearance at the Council of the emperor’s man turned out to be one of the most important events in what we can call the “secret history” of the West.

Who was this mystery man and why was his participation in the Council so important? It certainly wasn’t because of his ostensible reason for being there. The Council itself was a failure. The two churches did not reunite and less than a decade later, just as the emperor feared, the Ottomans overran Constantinople. Oddly enough, the ransacking of the Byzantine capital by the Turk was itself a major factor in the same secret history for which the Council of Ferrara-Florence set the stage.

The mystery man in question was the Byzantine Neo-Platonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon. It wasn’t in fact until he attended the Council that he took or was given the name Plethon. This was a variant on the name of a philosopher who was still something of a mystery himself at the time, Plato. Why Gemistos took the name of the father of Western philosophy will become clear as we go along. 

Gemistos was born in 1355 in Constantinople to a well-off family who had him educated there and in Adrianople. Adrianople at the time was the capital of the Ottoman empire and had become an important centre of learning. Gemistos must have been something of a prodigy; he was said to have accompanied the emperor on a visit to western Europe when he was in his teens and seems to have been primed to become a teacher of philosophy. In this regard, Gemistos was lucky to be born in Constantinople. After the fall of the pagan world and the onset of the Dark Ages, more of Greek philosophy survived in the eastern empire than in the west. What there was of it that he could find, Gemistos absorbed greedily. 

Gemistos was a passionate lover of the ancient world and devoted student of Plato; in the Aristotelian atmosphere of the Orthodox – and Catholic – church, this held certain dangers. While Aristotle could be harnessed for the church’s purposes, Plato was seen as a threat. But Gemistos’ Platonising also meant that his learning, wisdom, and dialectical skill were highly prized. Hence, the decision of John VIII Palaeologus to send him to the Council. Gemistos was an old man by then – he lived to be nearly 100, amazing for the time – but in many ways it was the defining event of his life.

Gemistos had no appetite for doctrinal disputes; he also had no love of the Catholic church although he did his best to get it on Constantinople’s side. When his services were not needed, he let his companions split dogmatic hairs while he killed time by giving lectures on Plato, Aristotle, and a strange idea that he had retrieved from his studies of a mystical text known as the Chaldean Oracles. This was what he called the prisca theologia, a “primal” or “ancient theology,” the fundamental knowledge of God, that had been revealed to mankind in the dim past, but which had, over the centuries, become obscured. 

Gemistos believed that the Chaldean Oracles had been written by one of the sages to whom this ancient wisdom had been given, the Persian Zoroaster, who lived in the dim past and who had himself passed this wisdom on to those who came after him. Sadly, Gemistos was wrong about Zoroaster – at least about him being the author of the Chaldean Oracles. Today we are fairly sure that these strange texts were actually written in second-century Rome by a family of magicians and seers known as the Juliani, who used various forms of what we would call mediumship and trance states to produce them. 

For Gemistos the Oracles were a fount of the primal theology, the ancient wisdom that had been vouchsafed to man before the Flood. Since that time it had been kept and periodically disseminated by what became known as the aurea cantena or “golden chain of adepts,” a lineage of secret teachers whose mission it was to pass on the ancient wisdom to those who could grasp it. Plethon’s own stream of transmission had Zoroaster at the start, with Eumolpus – the founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries – King Minos of Crete, the oracle of Dodona, Chiron, the wisest of centaurs, the Seven Sages, as well as Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and his disciples Porphyry and Iamblichus, following after him.

Gemistos enjoyed lecturing on the ancient wisdom and its teachers, but as the Council dragged on, he left Florence and returned to his home in Mystras, near ancient Sparta, where he began a kind of “mystery school.” He also devised a plan to reorganise the failing Byzantine empire along the lines of Plato’s Republic, wrote about the need to revive the pagan religions, and produced studies of Neo-Platonism, astrology, Hindu philosophy and Sufism. He seemed to have a premonition of a coming crisis and wanted to preserve what he could of his beloved ancient past. He died in 1452. A year later Gemistos’ premonition proved correct. Constantinople fell, and as the Turk entered the city, scores of Christian Greek scholars fled, selling off their libraries to fuel their departure.

Marsilio Ficino

One of the people who had heard Gemistos lecture while he was in Florence was Cosimo de’ Medici, the city’s great power broker. The Byzantine’s words had inspired him. Gemistos’ championing of Plato and, even more, his belief in the “ancient wisdom” of which Plato himself was a student, had fired Cosimo’s soul. So inspired was Cosimo that he decided to revive the Platonic philosophy right there in Florence. The best way to do this, Cosimo saw, was to reopen the Platonic Academy, which had been closed for business since the Emperor Justinian I shut its metaphorical doors in 529, effectively calling time on the pagan world. Luckily for Cosimo, just the man for the job was close at hand.

Marsilio Ficino was a young Florentine Greek scholar, and after an interview with him, in 1462 Cosimo entrusted to him the newly revived Platonic Academy, putting all he needed for it at his disposal. Along with a villa in the hills above Florence, Cosimo, an obsessive book collector, gave Ficino access to his library. Recently, precisely because of the fall of Constantinople, many items previously unavailable in the west had come on the market, and several works by Plato had been snatched up by Cosimo’s book scouts. Cosimo hoped to read these as soon as possible, so he put Ficino on the job of translating them into Latin. No sooner had the young scholar got down to work than his boss told him to delay that order. Something else, more important than Plato, had come into his possession. Ficino had to put the father of philosophy aside and get to work immediately on this.

What could have been so important that it forced Plato into the backseat? None other than the Corpus Hermeticum, the collection of mystical, magical, and metaphysical writings that were attributed to the greatest sage of the antediluvian world, Hermes Trismegistus, fabled “thrice greatest Hermes.” Hermes, an even more misty figure than Zoroaster – he is in fact an amalgam of the Egyptian god of magic Thoth and the Greek god of writing Hermes, born in ancient Alexandria – was considered to be even more important or fundamental a secret teacher than the great Persian sage. When Cosimo heard that a collection of these texts had come into his possession, he told Ficino to get them into Latin post haste. By one of those twists of fate that suggest some guiding hand at work, the very catastrophe that Gemistos Plethon, teacher of the ancient wisdom, had tried to prevent, led to perhaps the greatest work in this tradition coming to the mind most ready at that time to appreciate it and, more importantly, to pass it on.

Ficino put down Plato and picked up Hermes. Soon his Latin translations of these primordial texts were informing the shift in western consciousness that we know as the Renaissance. In school, we are taught that the Renaissance was about the rediscovery of the great works of ancient philosophy, such as Plato’s dialogues, and the birth of humanism, the belief in humanity as something more than a race of wretched sinners. This is true. But as the historian Frances Yates argued in Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, it was also as much about the rediscovery of the Hermetic texts, and Ficino’s belief that they presented the very prisca theologia and “ancient wisdom” which Plato and the whole aurea catena had called upon since time immemorial. 

Along with informing and inspiring works such as Botticelli’s Venus and Michelangelo’s masterpieces, among others, what is remarkable about the Hermetic Renaissance is that for a time, Hermes Trismegistus was considered a kind of precursor to Christ or at least a very important fellow traveller. There were influential people within the church who argued for the “ancient wisdom” to be incorporated into church teaching. I tell this story, along with that of the Corpus Hermeticum itself, in my book The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus. One product of this sadly unsuccessful attempt to unite the ancient wisdom with Christianity – which devotees of the prisca theologia believed was an expression of the ancient wisdom itself – was what has become known as the philosophia perennis, or “perennial philosophy.”

The Perennial Philosophy

This term was coined in 1540 by the humanist, biblical scholar and Catholic apologist Agostino Steuco, to account for the harmony he and many others saw among Christianity, pagan philosophies, and the Hermetic teaching, and which argued that they should be united and not antagonists. This was further extended to include the differences between Protestant and Catholic, Aristotle and Plato, Jew and Christian, and has since come to mean a central timeless spiritual teaching from which all religions, including those of the East, emerge. Steuco’s arguments convinced others, such as François Foix de Candale, Bishop of Aire, who believed that the Hermetic writings should be made canonical, and the Venetian philosopher Francesco Patrizi, who petitioned Pope Clement VIII to have Hermetic ideas taught in Christian schools. Although the notion made some headway, in the end the church insisted that Christianity, rather than being the best or most perfect expression of this perennial wisdom – as its advocates needed to concede – was unique, incomparable, and in a league of its own, and did not need other adepts.

Although clearly similar and often used interchangeably, there is nevertheless a difference between the ancient wisdom and the perennial philosophy. The difference lies in the ancient wisdom positing a historical revelation, a “giving” of this knowledge to mankind in the dim past, which has subsequently become obscured over time. Hence the Renaissance obsession with the “source” or “fount” of wisdom, which it considered the purest expression of it, rather as a mountain stream is clearest at its source, not muddied as it gets into the lowlands. Hence also the belief that what is oldest is best, and the prestige given to the Corpus Hermeticum, which was believed to have been written before the Flood. For a culture coming out of the Dark Ages, such an appetite for the “real thing” is not surprising.

For the perennial philosophy, however, the source is not that important because it is always present; it is a-temporal. It does not lie in the vaults of time but in the Eternal Now. We can say it presents an “evergreen wisdom” rather than an ancient one. This is the sense in which it became popularly known and first widely appreciated, through Aldous Huxley’s influential anthology The Perennial Philosophy, which draws on spiritual and mystical texts from all sources – although it must be said that Huxley’s interpretation falls heavily on the side of the East. He also mistakenly credits the philosopher Leibniz with coining the term philosophia perennis. This is understandable, as Leibniz was the first to make it widely known outside the church. 

Another school likewise associated with that of the ancient wisdom, which is also different from it, and from the perennial philosophy, with which it is also confused – all three are often mixed and matched – is what is known as Traditionalism. Like the ancient wisdom, Traditionalism posits a “primordial” revelation and also believes that this pristine appearance of sacred Truth has over time become obscured. As does the ancient wisdom, it believes that this revelation is at the heart or essence of the great religions. But where they differ is in Traditionalism’s belief that access to this primordial knowledge can come only through strict adherence to one of the great religious traditions. We can see this as a kind of esoteric fundamentalism. René Guénon, the recognised founder of Traditionalism, sought this “true” stream of knowledge first in Hinduism, then in Islam. That said, other important Traditionalists, such as Frithjof Schuon and Julius Evola, took the idea in directions rather different from Guénon’s, and it is not unusual today for contemporary Traditionalists to follow paths not necessarily laid down by the great religions.

While in its early days, the proponents of ancient wisdom did seek for unity among different beliefs, and adherence to a strict tradition was not part of their method. As in ancient Alexandria, the birthplace of the Hermetic teachings, the Renaissance in which these teachings re-emerged was a melting pot of different ideas and visions, and the synthesis of these was of more importance than any putative purity – see, for example, Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. Hence the syncretism characteristic of Alexandria and of the esoteric and mystical teachings that appeared there. It is one of the ironies of esoteric history that Traditionalism, whose roots can be traced back to Ficino’s version of the aurea catena, came to be known as a vociferous condemner of the Renaissance, and a fierce opponent of the “modernity” to which it gave rise, as well as of the syncretism which it saw as the sign of what it called “counter-initiation.” If we can accept the Renaissance as the time when the notion of an ancient wisdom or lost tradition gained intellectual and cultural momentum, then Traditionalists of the “revolt against modernity” school seem to want to pull away at their own roots.

Yet that modernity itself undermined its Hermetic foundations. In 1614 the prestige of Hermes Trismegistus declined when the humanist scholar and church historian Isaac Casaubon declared that, based on the Greek in which the Corpus Hermeticum was written, it could not have been “revealed” to mankind in the misty past, but was most likely produced – as we have subsequently come to accept – in Alexandria circa 100-200 CE. At a single blow, the authority of the ancient wisdom and the Renaissance worship of the oldest as best had the rug pulled out from under them. Although Hermetic thinkers like Robert Fludd fought gallantly against it, with Casaubon’s bombshell the Hermetic philosophy quickly lost its street cred. Now the modern, new, up to date and rigorously “scientific” had pride of place. 

What Happened to the Ancient Wisdom? 

What happened to the ancient wisdom? For one thing, its links to the philosophia perennis helped in this crisis; if the source of wisdom was ever-present, then fixing it at a one-time-only point in history seems redundant, although its various appearances, at different times and places, could be traced. But perhaps more important, the ancient wisdom went underground. First with the Rosicrucian brotherhood – that mysterious secret society of invisible sages – and subsequently in a variety of forms, which have come down to us as the Western “esoteric,” “mystery,” or “inner tradition,” or, more popularly, “occultism.” This is a body of “rejected knowledge,” jettisoned by the rise of rationalism and, in our time, “scientism,” which insists nevertheless in maintaining its important and indispensable place in the human spiritual economy. In fact, we can say that since the late nineteenth century, the ancient wisdom has been making a fragmentary but persistent comeback, filled with detours, dead ends, and wrong turns, but gaining ground nonetheless. 

This began with the most influential appearance of the ancient wisdom in modern times, the founding of the Theosophical Society by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her colleagues in 1875, and the mammoth texts Blavatsky produced – Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine – to get the wisdom across to the reading public. As in the Renaissance, Blavatsky and Co. believed that the ancients knew quite a bit that had been forgotten; they also believed that at root all religions share the same source and are moving, however clumsily, in the same direction. Science, in its own befuddled way, is too. 

Blavatsky’s ancient wisdom was global; she found it in the rejected Hermetic tradition, and in the Eastern traditions she did so much to translate to the West. After her, others sought this wisdom too, and brought some of it back from their journeys: Rudolf Steiner from the Akashic Record, Gurdjieff from the Sarmoung Brotherhood, Ouspensky from his search for “the miraculous,” to mention only some of the most insightful and influential of those “seekers of truth” that followed, often literally, in Blavatsky’s footsteps. Today, almost a century and a half later, ancient wisdom, perennial philosophies, and a variety of Traditions crowd the electronic noösphere we call the Internet.

And what precisely is the ancient wisdom? That would require another article. But I would think that by now the reader would have enough to find out for themselves.

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