the keltic knot

THE KELTIC KNOT:
THE CELTIC-INDO-ARYAN LINK BETWEEN THE PRECURSOR CULTURE,
THE DRUIDS, THE BRAHMINS, AND THE HUMANIST COLLECTIVE.
Copyright (2001): Alexei Dolgorukii-Urievskii.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS:
I have titled this work “The Keltic Knot”, not simply because I like the way it sounds (which I
do) but because the topic to which it is dedicated is; like the wonderful Keltic Knot which
typifies the advanced artistic abilities of the Kelts, complicated to an extreme degree.
Was there a “Precursor Culture”? Obviously, I think there was. Of course, I want to make it
clear, right at the beginning, that in dealing with anything having to do with a discussion the
existence of The Pre-cursor Culture and its possible survivors, complication is the rule and
not the exception.
Needless to say, it is my convinced belief that the precursor culture is a more than
probable reality. If that is true, then we have the resultant probability that there exist
descendants of the survivors of the Pre-Cursor Culture. Because of that probability of
descendants, it is the effects of these survivors and their descendants on human societies
with which this essay presumes to deal.
To the best of my knowledge the first appearance of the Word “Kelt” or “Celt”, comes from
the Ancient Greeks who rather catastrophically encountered a migrating tribe they called
“The Keltoi” which was apparently a Hellenization of what these people called themselves.
For this reason I have decided to spell the word “Kelt” because it is more true to the original
and because it does NOT lend itself to mispronunciation the way “Celt” does. For no matter
how you spell it, the word is pronounced Kelt and never “selt”.
The linkages which exist between the Keltoi and the Indo-Aryans, between the Druids and
the Brahmins, and between the Humanist collective and various so-called “Secret Orders”,
most, but not all of which are fictions, and most importantly of all; between all of these
things and the survivor population of The Precursor Culture mentioned in my title and their
descendants; are a writhing mass of truth, untruth, fact, innuendo, and fiction, and it is a
mess that needs clearing up.
The “Knot” needs untying! Because of that fact, the pathway to understanding these
connections, like that Keltic Knot, is equally tortuous and circuitous. Now when I say “the
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knot needs untying” that’s what I mean, Alexander the Great’s method won’t work here.
The strings of legend, myth, and history that made this knot what it is must be carefully
unraveled.
I hope that my examination of this pathway, and my exposition of its true nature ends up
as a clear exposition or at least more clear than our present explanation. Never the less, I
want you to be aware that the way to the exposition will require the tracing of all that maze
of perception, fable, history, and myth. Therefore, like that “maze”, the exposition will, by
necessity, wander a bit.
However there is one very important thing I want to make absolutely clear. I mean
everything I say in exactly the words I use to say it, and I try very diligently to say what I
mean as clearly as possible. Please do not look for subtle or “inner” meanings in my words,
there are none. If and when I say something, I say it as I mean it. It is not to be
“interpreted”. Far too many otherwise completely rational hypotheses become utterly
irrational when interpreted!
The subject described in my sub-title is usually not even discussed except in Metaphysical
Circles and for that reason, I will start by discussing and defining “Metaphysics”.
For at least thirty six years I have been very seriously studying what is popularly and
loosely called “Metaphysics”, by which I want to make clear that I do NOT mean either
fairy-tale "Occultism" (of the Theosophical Society, Edgar Cayce, Dion Fortune, Manly P.
Hall ,Rudolf Steiner, or A. E. Waite variety), or the equally fairy tale "New Age" PsychoBabble based Pseudo-Metaphysics (of the Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts, Deepak
Chopra, “Celestine Prophesies”, or “Course in Miracles", variety).
"Metaphysics", and I want to make clear immediately that, at least as I use it, the word is
NOT a euphemism for "religion", is the intellectual and speculative synthesis of several
philosophical disciplines, and in our time period, we have finally followed Aristotle’s lead
and added the synthesis of some scientific disciplines as well, and they are distinctly
"hard" sciences too! What I mean to describe when I use the term metaphysics is a
combined and complicated field of study and speculation which includes Cosmology (and
this includes contemporary uncertainty based scientific cosmology and quantum theoryparticle physics), Ontology, Epistemology, and Eschatology.
"Metaphysics" is the methodology which intelligent human beings utilize to answer all their
most basic questions regarding the "Nature of The Human Condition", their individual
relationship to that condition, the place or context into which the Human Condition "fits" in
the universe which is slowly being revealed to us in response to diligent scientific effort,
and most important of all, to enable human beings to understand "What it all means". In
other words, metaphysics is a methodology that has been developed to try to answer
humankind's most urgent existential questions.
Frequently in the course of this exposition you will see an individuals name followed by the
notation “q.v.”, ( qui voir) this means that the individual has a short biography included in
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the list of the Humanist Collective which makes up a major portion of this work.
There is a justly celebrated definition of "metaphysics" expressed by Francis Herbert
Bradley (1846-1924 q.v.), who was an influential British Philosopher of his time associated
with the Absolute Idealist Movement. In 1893 he defined "Metaphysics" as: "Metaphysics is
an attempt to comprehend the universe not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but some
how as a whole".
Another famous definition is that of William James (q.v.) who said: "Metaphysics is nothing
but an attempt to think things out clearly to their ultimate significance, to find their
substantial essence in the scheme of reality and, thereby, to unify all truth and reach that
highest of all generalizations which constitutes philosophy"
In our times, serious metaphysical speculation includes the following concepts:
Substance, essence, accident, form, matter, actuality, and potentiality, to this must be
added speculations on the perception of "beginnings" and "endings", in other words, life
and death. Also, and this is only in our times, we cannot intelligently discuss these subjects
without adding the input of scientific disciplines such as Quantum Theory and Scientific
Cosmology which deal with precisely the same speculations from the scientific point-ofview.
For instance: Werner Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" is clearly metaphysical in
implication while totally scientific in nature. We also, of necessity, must include the very
copious "hard" information coming to us through the Hubble Telescope and other
astronomical-cosmological devices.
Unfortunately for us all, most human beings do not follow this eminently reasonable
approach, and either due to lack of intelligence, lack of proper education to use their
intelligence, or (and this is the prime reason) lack of emotional maturity; use metaphysics,
which they mistakenly perceive as a synonym for Religion, as a sop to their need for
fantasy, and an escape hatch from a reality they do not like. Needless to say, the kind of
people who use Metaphysical Philosophy as a synonym for “Religion”, like almost all
religionists, use it as a way to avoid personal responsibility for their lives and actions.
The term "metaphysics" is a gift to us from Aristotle, but his "metaphysics" (and his
"physics" too) were limited to the fairly rigid temporal parameters within which his
tremendous and fertile intelligence was confined. Most of his speculations, both physical
and non-physical were based upon his broad spectrum powers of observation and
synthesis, and some of it related to his botanical and zoological work. We are infinitely
luckier than he, our parameters are infinitely broader, for we have the most advanced
efforts of our modern quantum theorists, scientific cosmologists aided by their "supercomputers" to help us in our speculations in our effort to understand "The Nature of the
Human Condition" and it's relationship of the whole to which that “condition” is a part
Formerly the study of metaphysics included that field of speculative mythology called
“Theology”, but here I must agree with both the Vedas and Gautama, the absolute cause of
causes is infinitely beyond human speculation. What one cannot possibly know, or even
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begin to comprehend, is best “left alone”.
The reason I am pointing this out so bluntly, and perhaps even rudely, is that over these
last one hundred years and more, the term "Metaphysics", thanks to people and groups
like the ones I instanced above (The competing Theosophical Societies and other groups
of so-called “Popular Occultists”, being most guilty of all), has lost the meaning of a
serious field of study and been turned into a subject richly deserved of amusement and
contempt.
I see this as a loss to humanity because "metaphysics" is the only term which can be used
to describe and delineate the several fields of study that must be entered to answer some
of humanity's most important questions. One should also have been able to describe this
process as “theosophy” (note that the word “theosophy” is not capitalized), but that term
too, has been very much devalued and debased by the adherents to organizations
claiming to be “theosophical”. That is why the Theosophical Societies are more culpable
than anyone else. They are, since the late nineteenth century, the primary source out of
which “Fairy Tale (popular) Occultism” flowed.
Now, I am fully aware that the above comments are going to really both irritate and alienate
a lot of people, to that fact I can only say , “so be it”, but I would ask that you first read the
section of my presentation which deals with this subject before closing your minds to what I
have to say.
Let’s start with very recent history, which is something which we all know, and upon which
we can all at least partially agree.
During the 1960's, thanks to the works of J.R.R.TOLKIEN, and to some degree the one
major work of E..R. EDDISON ( which, though it was written very much earlier, only
obtained any kind of wide audience during the 60's thanks largely to Tolkien’s Immense
popularity. ( Eddison’s work is however, is wonderfully well-written, and clearly ‘the best of
the bunch’ from both a literary and a philosophical point-of-view ), there began a
tremendous public fascination with what is called “Swords and Sorcery Fantasy” and that
fascination has continued and intensified to this day as a visit to any book store will prove.
A vast number of films and computer games and arcade games echo this same
preoccupation. Of course the enormous success and popularity of the “HARRY POTTER”
series of books is a wonderful indication of how wide spread this phenomenon really is as
was the equally popular “STAR WARS” series of films. But this is something almost
everyone clearly knows.
Now, going back somewhat further in time, we find that there was a very great impetus
given to what I call “Popular Occultism” in the period I identify as the last 25 years of the
19th Century and the first 25 years of the 20th century. The primary “movers and shakers”
in this impetus were people like Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Eliphas Levi (“Eliphas Levi”
was the “pen-name” of Alphonse Louis Constant), Theodore Reuss, Franz Hartmann,
Gerald Gardner, Rudolf Steiner, Aleister Crowley, A.E. Waite, Gottfried de Perucker, Alice
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Bailey, Edgar Cayce, Cyril Scott, Annie Besant, Charles Webster Leadbeater, Dion
Fortune, Franz Bardon, and far too many others of much less significance to name.
Most of the popular novelists mentioned (by implication) in connection with the “Swords
and Sorcery” fad, must have gotten their primary inspiration from these people. Don’t look
for any subtle symbolism in the order in which those names are listed, for they are all on a
par with one another, at least as far as I am concerned.
Because of the very strong impetus provided by these two phenomena, there was a
corresponding enormous expansion of public interest in the occult. This has produced
both positive and negative results. The primary negative results are simply the tendency of
“true believers’ to “live their fantasies”. I think it pretty clear why that is negative. The
positive results are not as obvious as the negative ones.
What these positive results are, and they are not necessarily the conscious intention of
most of the participants in the phenomenon, are as follows:
The Positive Results are that the power of the “mainstream religions” especially those of
the Judeo-Christian complex, has been insensibly weakened and the number of “true
believers” in these religions have lessened as many people have moved away from them
and into alternative religious movements that, alas, have been primarily influenced not by
metaphysical philosophy, but by a simulacrum of metaphysical philosophy as represented
in Swords and Sorcery Fiction. That fact, of course, is the strongly negative outcome of
what could, and surely should, have been a positive result.
(This, ‘positive result’ by the way, was, I strongly believe, clearly one of Helena Petrovna
Blavatskaya’s original purposes in founding The Theosophical society. Once the society
was established, she was carefully discredited and shunted aside, and her agenda
changed by those who had assumed leadership in the Society.)
The withering away of mainstream religion is a very positive result as the mainstream
religions have been nothing but the source of oppression and sorrow. But replacing them
with a totally imaginary costume drama is distinctly negative.
A negative result of this phenomenon is that a very large number of people, those less
gifted with intelligence, education,
and personal confidence, have turned
to
Fundamentalist Heresies and these, of course, are even more harmful than their original
religions. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that all Fundamentalist Beliefs are
fundamentally heresies to what ever religion they grow out of. Not simply schisms, but
heresies.
There is one other negative aspect of “Popular Occultism” that I would like to mention here.
That aspect is that unfortunately “Popular Occultism” has been inextricably and undeniably
linked to totalitarianism, especially during the Nazi Era....in the course of my research for
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this work, and for my essays and my other two books; I have encountered some
astonishing connections between the “Occult Community” and the Nazis. But, astonishing
or not, these connections do exist, they are strong, and they are totally negative and
absolutely inexcusable.
Far too many of the people listed above as “Movers and shakers” of the “Occult”
phenomenon were clearly either Fascists or Fascist Sympathizers. Some of these “movers
and shakers” while not fascist themselves, certainly inspired those who were. This was a
fate Helena Blavatskaya certainly shared as her racial theories are considered by many
scholars to be the inspiration that led to the Nazi’s murderous racial theories. In
Blavatskaya’s case, I believe, or rather I hope, that the connection was entirely
unintentional on her part as it contradicted most of what I believe she stood for. Those
other people, and the authoritarian and fascist ideas they espoused, are utterly
contradictory to the knowledge contained in metaphysical philosophy, knowledge that is
intrinsic to the Mystery Tradition.
This same connection with the Nazis and with Fascism is also true of the Post-Modernist
and The Existentialist-Deconstructionalist-Relativist Movements in contemporary Academic
and Intellectual circles. Jacques Derrida, who was the philosophical founder of these
groups was himself inspired by his teacher and mentor; Martin Heidegger, are both
inextricably linked with the Nazis and Fascism.
This is certainly equally true of Jean Paul Sartre a close associate of Heidegger who
seemed unable to make up his mind whether to adhere to Nazism or Stalinism, but it
doesn’t matter for the two things are two sides to the same coin.
The on-going results of these movements are enormously negative for the well-being and
evolutionary development of human society.
The basic motivation for the totalitarian nature of “Occultism” (Let’s face it, the ONLY kind
of “Occultism” there is, is “Popular Occultism) is fairly easy to determine. “Occultism” and
its unavoidable corollary - “magic”; is only a quest for personal glory, prestige, and
power by those who don’t have it to begin with.
I don’t think that it should be too hard for anyone to understand why something whose
primary announced purpose is the attainment of vast power, power over nature itself, and
as a result; power over other people, is quite easily attuned to totalitarianism. There is no
avoiding this simple fact.....”occultism” and “magic” are ego trips and that is all that they
are. There is absolutely no validity in either conception.
People like Aleister Crowley and Franz Bardon and others of less notoriety are nothing but
ego-maniacs, totally solipsistic men desiring to be in a place of power and authority over
others. But in all cases their ego-masturbation is purely hallucination.
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The existence of “magic” is one of the human race’s most undying fantasies. There are two
words, both beginning with the letter “m” that are the source of no end of trouble for
humanity. Those two words are “magic” and “miracle”, and they mean exactly the same
thing, and they attempt to describe an event or action that contravenes “nature”.
Now it is important to get this one fact absolutely straight: If a thing happens, or exists, it
does not contravene “nature”. There is nothing at all which is “unnatural”, Nothing
contravenes nature! There are things, or rather there are causes and effects, which are
not completely understood, but NATURE (which is simply another word for reality) cannot
be contravened, and is not ever contravened.. There are certainly observable effects
whose causes cannot be immediately ascertained, but that is due to a lack of knowledge
and comprehension, not to the contravention of nature. There are no such things as
“miracles” and equally, there is no such thing as “magic”. Remember, when a person turns
on a light, perhaps their cat thinks it’s a miracle (magic), but that doesn’t make it so.
Though knowing cats, it probably knows better.
On the other hand, Metaphysics has, as both its primary purpose, and its only legitimate
reason for existence, the answering of humanity’s most basic or intrinsic existential
questions. Religion has never really done this, even though it vociferously claims to do so,
and the new alternatives don’t do it either. How can they? They are, for the most part,
simply the result of some human being’s fertile imagination.
“Popular Occultism” and “Swords and Sorcery Fantasies” are really simply identical
phenomena. They are entirely creatures of the imagination. They’re fun, but they do no one
any good; other than to distract them from the search for reality and for real answers to
basic existential questions. This of course is equally true of religion.
Now, this does not mean to imply in any way that there was no interest in “the Occult” prior
to this time. It is a motif that has always moved beneath the surface layer of human
consciousness. But, it was not public and wide-spread until the late 19th century. Of
course neither was literacy. Prior to the 19th century only the leisure classes had the
time, the education, and the inclination to indulge in hypothetical supposition. Prior to the
15th century the only people who fit that description were Monks and Rabbinical Scholars,
and here we find one of the primary sources of “Popular Occultism” I think it only fair to
point out that when all is said and done, the Monks and the Rabbis were the original
“leisure class”..
The premise I am about to present to you is that whether we speak of “Theosophy”, or The
Golden Dawn, or The Orderae Templi Orientalis (O.T.O.), or The Thule Group, or the
School for Esoteric Studies, or any other of the truly enormous number of tiny groups all
enraptured by the same glamour, what it is with which we are truly dealing is “Popular
Occultism”; and it is just as much “Swords and Sorcery Fantasy” as the works of Tolkien or
Andre Norton.
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“Magic”, both “white” and “Black”, as we view it today, is while not entirely so, nonetheless
largely an invention of Medieval Monks who, in order to combat the challenge to
Christianity which was represented by the Ancient and valid “Mystery Tradition (both the
Druidic version and the Greco-Roman version), linked it to “Satan” and called it Magic. The
Rabbis are not entirely free of blame here, for while their version of “Magic” was invented
for a different reason, it’s just as completely invalid. The Rabbis and other Jewish Scholars
turned to “Magic” (i.e. the Kabbalah) as a way to escape in their minds from the restrictions
of the Ghetto, and the other oppressive measures taken against them by an intolerant
Christian society. But between them, the Rabbis and the Monks left a very harmful legacy.
Due to the fertile imaginations of all those clerics, the official position of the church, which
at the time was monolithic, was that Metaphysical Philosophical studies were “the work of
the devil” it was therefore, worth your life to be seen as engaged in it in any context but
from inside the Church. Let’s look at some examples.
Two of the most famous Occultists” in the middle-ages and early renaissance were
Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. Let’s take a brief look at history here, when it is
divorced from clerical and other myth-making.
PARACELSUS:
Aurelius Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Höhenheim (1493 - 1541 C.E.)
Paracelsus is one of the great “heroes” and “icons” of the “popular Occultists”, but let’s look
at his life and works.
It is interesting to start our look at “Paracelsus” by taking note of the fact that his chosen
“alias” was what it was. “Paracelsus” means “Beyond Celsus”. This is very interestingly
evidentiary because of the kind of statement made by this identification. Identifying one’s
self with Celsus was a very courageous act in the 16th century and it probably cost Herr
von Höhenheim dearly. So, before we look at Paracelsus, let’s look at Celsus.
CELSUS:
Celsus lived (approximately) around the year 178 of the common era. We know almost
nothing at all of him because Christianity tried very diligently, and with all it’s enormous
power, to eradicate the memory of this man, but all they managed to accomplish was to (if
you’ll pardon the expression) “occult” him. He was an eclectic Platonist of the MiddlePlatonism of the period pre-Plotinus and “Neo-Platonism”.
CELSUS is known to us ONLY from the work of ORIGEN:(Origenes Admantius c. 185 254 C.E.) Who was the most influential theologian of the early Christian Church. Origen
preserved fragments of Celsus’ only known work (ALETHES LOGOS or “True Word”, of
which no one has seen a copy since the second century of the common era) in Origen’s
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attempted refutation of Celsus in his “CONTRA CELSUM” or “Against Celsus”.
In point of fact, we only know about Celsus at all from Origen’s quotations of his work.
Were it not for Origen, Celsus would be one of history’s many “unknowns”. We don’t really
know anything else about him except that he wrote “Alethes Logos” around 178 C.E. We
have no idea where he lived (it’s believed to be either Rome itself, or Alexandria) and other
than it being obvious that he was a Platonist and probably a philosopher by profession, we
know absolutely nothing. To be perfectly truthful, it is entirely plausible to argue that Celsus
was an imaginary antagonist that Origen “invented” to state the “Pagan” side so that he,
that is Origen, could refute it. Doing so was certainly an acceptable rhetorical “ploy” in
those days.
Identifying with one of Christianity’s two most significant antagonists (the other was
probably the more important of the two, he was PORPHYRY(q.v.) and he lived from 234 to
305 C. E.) surely was not a “way to make friends and influence people” in the 16th century,
but it sends us an unmistakable signal as to von Höhenheim’s real interests which were
philosophical and clearly not “Magic”. I think it also important to point out that for all we
know the name Paracelsus is part of the myth and not part of the man. We have absolutely
no indication or proof that Herr von Höhenheim ever referred to himself as “Paracelsus” or
if it is an appellation that attached itself to him after his death. If this is so, however, it too is
evidentiary for, whether it is history or myth, it is very clear that Celsus was known only for
the one thing. The appellation, “Paracelsus” certainly had nothing at all to do with the
medical or scientific skills of Herr von Höhenheim.
Now as to PARACELSUS himself, what is unfortunate is that this is one of the people
central to the myth of “magic”, “alchemy” and “popular occultism” This was not done by
him, but to him.
Theophrastus von Höhenheim was a Swiss of uncertain antecedents, though his
mythology claims his Father was the illegitimate son of a “Prince”. One thing is clear
though, given the laws and customs of the period and the severity of their enforcement,
this clearly means or rather implies that his unchallenged use of the “von” in his name
means he was most probably legally of the nobility. But that’s all we really know about his
background. As to his career, we do know that he was a physician and scientist who
established the role of chemistry in medicine.
The “Paracelsus Myth” of course, calls him an “alchemist”, but in truth. in those days all
chemists were called “alchemists”, it’s all they knew to do. This man was no “magician” or
“occultist” but a major philosopher and a really important “Father of Science”.
What did he really do?
Well, after being born (in or near EINSIEDELN in Canton Schwyz - Switzerland) he grew
up in what appears to be a perfectly normal fashion, and was probably introduced to
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medicine by his Father who was also a physician. He eventually matriculated at the
University of Basel and then studied at the Monastery of Sponheim under the sponsorship
and tutoring of it’s Abbot, Johannes Trithemius (Johannes Tritheim: 1462-1516) (q.v.
“The Humanist Collective, to follow). He remained there a short time (it’s not known how
long) and left to go to the mines in the Tirol, where this polymath became absorbed in the
mechanical aspects and difficulties involved in mining, in the nature of the minerals
themselves, and as a physician, in the diseases and injuries of the men working in those
mines.
He returned to Basel in 1526, and became a lecturer in medicine on the faculty of the
University of Basel. One extremely iconoclastic thing he did was to lecture in German
rather than in Latin, which was unheard of at the time, and may be seen to be quite a
revolutionary action. Another thing that Theophrastus von Höhenheim did, and this was far
more radical and most dangerous to his personal safety, was that before his series of
lectures, the books of the following two writers were formally, and with great fanfare, burnt.
GALEN
C. 130 - 200 C.E. Greek physician from Pergamum, founder of experimental physiology,
and after Hippocrates the most distinguished physician in antiquity. He too was a polymath
and among his works were not only works on Philosophy [he was an Aristotelian] but he
wrote on many other subjects as well, subjects ranging from the theater to history and
government. He himself was a monotheist (in all likelihood of Pythagorean influences) and
stood between the Stoics and the Christians in his beliefs. For this reason, and for his
personal closeness to the Imperial Family. He, or rather his works, became the canon of
Christian Medicine and eventually it became understood that to criticize his works was
considered heresy.
AVICENNA
( Al Sheik Al Reyes Abu Ali Al-Hossein ben Abdallah ben Sina, 980 - 1038 CE.: Was
another polymath who, in 1021 wrote his famous treatise “BOOK ON THE CANON OF
MEDICINE” He was primarily a mathematician and philosopher who took up medicine as a
hobby and became the most famous physician of his time. He was, like so many people of
his geographic area, strongly influenced by the Gnostics, Manicheans, and the legends
and mythology of the Chaldean Mazdazdian Magi. He is one of the primary sources on the
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so-called “Philosopher’s Stone” and an important primary inspirer of what, in the 19
century, became “Popular Occultism”.
The books of these two writers were “The Canon of Christian Medicine”, and they were
the ONLY treatises truly approved of by the Inquisition. Obviously the public and highly
symbolic burning of their works was an extremely bold statement, and probably a very
foolhardy thing to do. But risks like this have to be taken if human knowledge and
comprehension is to go forward.
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Theophrastus von Höhenheim’s lectures discredited past and contemporary medicine and
promoted his own theories (largely Platonistically based) and treatments of disease. In
1529 he was driven out of the University of Basel and wandered Europe, which is a period
of his life of which we have no credible records. In 1541 The Archbishop of Salzburg invited
him to come there and live and work “under his protection”. There, on September 24th
1541 Theophrastus von Höhenheim was flung down a very steep embankment or cliff by
“unknown assailants” and died of his injuries. I believe these “assailants” to have been
agents of the Church, probably monks from the nearby monastery. He thusly paid for his
efforts on behalf of humanity. It is my strong belief that the Archbishop of Salzburg was a
far from innocent bystander in this murder.
In his works, Theophrastus von Höhenheim shows a truly sincere desire to promote the
progress of medicine, but it is really questionable that he introduced a single truly new
truth, though, as is usually the case, it is possible that his innovations were original to him.
The inter-communications available to scholars and scientists which are so easily available
in our times, were undreamed of in his. Though I have come to discover that there was far
more scholarly inter-communication that is usually discussed, I have no way of knowing if
von Höhenheim was involved in it. Much of what others were doing, and discovering was
probably completely unknown to von Höhenheim, even as what he was doing was (or may
very well have been) unknown to other students.
One of the most important factors is that, inter-communications notwithstanding, the work
of all scholars and scientists in that period had to be kept rigidly secret, especially as
regarded real innovations, due to the ubiquitous Inquisition. Not all scholars and scientists
of the time were as courageous as Theophrastus von Höhenheim.
Fundamentally his system was based on a visionary Neo-Platonic philosophy in which the
Human Condition is regarded as inseparable from that of the Cosmos. I am personally
inclined to believe that much of what is presented as “Paracelsian” is actually later
revisionism and forged additions. But of course it cannot be denied that the man was prey
to much of the ignorance that so marked the age in which he lived. We may also assume,
and I believe correctly, that much of what he actually did write, was written in a kind of
“code”, familiar to others in his field, but to avoid the attentions of the Inquisitors. The
Muslim Sufis too, did this . Most if not all of their so-called “Love Poetry” is actually highly
disguised metaphysical philosophical exposition.
I think we can be quite sure about one thing regarding “Paracelsus”, he was a physician
and a chemist, and NOT an “alchemist”. In fact, I think it is safe to assume that there is not
now, nor was there ever any reality involved in “Alchemy”. It is at best a euphemism, and at
worst a “fairy tale”. He (von Höhenheim) spent his time and energy, and when all is said
and done, his life; for the betterment of humanity and NOT in fruitless attempts to
“transmute ‘base lead’ into ‘gold’”, even if we view that through later revisionist eyes in the
rationalization of “alchemy” into the ‘great work” of transmuting the “base lead” of physical
existence into the “noble gold” of spirituality.
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Now let’s turn to the other individual I mentioned:
HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA von NETTESHEIM:
(1486 -1535 C.E.)
Cornelius Agrippa is firmly believed by most “Popular Occultists” to have been a very
important “Magician”, Alchemist” and, of course, an “occultist” just like them. In fact he is
alleged to be the original of “Faust or Dr. Faustus”. This of course, is sheer nonsense, as a
number of claimants actually laid vociferous claim to that “title”. There was a really
enormous controversy as to who was, or was not, the “real Dr. Faustus”. A controversy in
which Theophrastus Bombastus von Höhenheim’s teacher JOHANNES TRITHEIM
(TRITHEMIUS) was involved.
But what’s the truth of the matter?
THE HISTORICAL FAUST:
th
Various contemporary documents of the 16 century mention a contemporary
“necromancer” calling himself Faust. But what IS a “Necromancer”?
In the 16th Century it was believed that “Necromancy” was the skill, or capability, of actually
summoning the dead “back from the grave” and communicating with them for reasons
which were, in that time frame, invariably believed to be diabolical in origin and motivation.
But aside from total fraud, what was “Necromancy” actually? It was I believe, a combination
of two things; one: mediumistic, and two: Misunderstood and mis-diagnosed Shamanism.
This was inevitable in a society which no longer knew anything about the subject having
lost that knowledge due to it’s violent suppression of Shamanism and Shamans, over the
years since Christianity triumphed over the pre-Christian religions in which Shamanism was
a vital aspect.
In 1509 The Abbot of Sponheim, Johannes Tritheim (Trithemius) wrote in reply to an
inquiry: “Georg Sabellicus......is a worthless fellow who should be castigated to stop his
proclaiming of abominable and sacrilegious doctrines........He has chosen to call himself:
“Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus Junior, fons necromanticorum, astrologus, magus
secundus, chiromanticus, aeromanticus, pyromanticus, in hydra atre secundus” “[ Master
George Sabellicus, Faustus the younger, fount of necromancy, astrologer, Second Degree
Mage, chiromancer, aeromancer, pyromancer, and the last seems to translate as
something like second degree Water diviner].
“Sabellicus” and “Faustus may be pseudo-humanist Latinizations of an Italian Place Name
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and a Family name (or of two family names), but it is historically clear that both “Sabellicus”
(“The Sabine” - for in Classical Rome the Sabine Hills were the country of the Stregae or
witches).....and “Faustus” (“The Fortunate”) are traditional epithets of magicians.
Tritheim reported having been in Gelnhausen the year before (1508) at the same time as
“Faust” and hearing from his fellow clerics there of Faust’s boast that: “If all the works of
Plato and Aristotle .....had been lost, he, through his genius, would be like a second Ezra,
not only restore them completely, but improve on the restorations.
In Würzburg, Tritheim continues; “Faust even claimed that he could perform the miracles of
Christ”, subsequently Faust-Sabellicus was appointed schoolmaster of Kreuznach because
of his vaunted alchemical learning, but he had to flee when his homosexual seduction of
various pupils was discovered.
In 1509 a Johann Faust from Simmern (a Principality incorporated into Würtemburg in
1504) received the A.B. at Heidelberg; If he was Tritheim’s “Faust”, later tradition was
correct in claiming that the “Necromancer” was born in Knittlingen (the chief town of
Simmern) in the early 1480's.
In 1513 Conrad Mudt (“Mutianus Rufus”), the supporter of Reuchlin (q.v.”The Humanist
Collective” to follow)and the friend of Philip Melancthon (q.v.”The Humanist collective”)
Saw and heard Georg Faust at Erfurt. He wrote to a fellow humanist that this “immoderate
and foolish braggart”, calling himself “the demigod from Heidelberg”, before astonished
audiences “, he talked nonsense at the Inn”.
The accounts of the Bishopric of Bamberg records a payment in 1520 to “Doctor Faustus”
for casting the Prince-Bishop’s horoscope. In 1528 the Town Council of Ingolstadt forbade
“the soothsayer” Jorg (i.e. Georg) Faust to remain in their city; and in 1532 the Junior
Burgemeister of Nuremberg recorded denial of entry to “Dr. Faust, the great Sodomite and
Necromancer”.
From 1532 to 1536 the same “philosophus” practiced medical alchemy and soothsaying in
the Rhineland and Lower Franconia with some success: he is reported to have died in
1540 or 1541 at a village in Württemberg.
During “Faust’s” earlier years, i.e. before the Reformation, humanists and theologians both
gave little or no credence to the preposterous pretensions of this shabby exploiter of
contemporary superstitions (i.e. belief in “Witchcraft”). Over the course of time, however,
some successes - and obviously....his continuous shameless and unflagging selfadvertisement....established his reputation as a soothsayer and necromancer (as well as a
“Sodomite”) and various Protestant Theologians, among them Martin Luther himself and
his friend and colleague Phillip Melancthon, alluded seriously to “Faust’s” “diabolic
Powers”.
The sad thing is that because of revisionism and myth making we’ll never know the actual
13
facts about Georg Sabellicus, “Faustus Junior”. We do know he was probably a
homosexual. But do we know anything else at all? Was he a “shameless and shabby
fraud” or was he a tireless worker to help mankind? We’ll really never know. But we do
know this, what ever is the truth about “Dr. Faustus”, he was NOT Cornelius Agrippa!
Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was born on 14th September 1486 at Cologne to a
family of the middle Nobility. He was a soldier, a writer, a physician, and a major
metaphysical philosopher.
From 1501 (when he was 15 years old), to 1507, he served as a Captain in the Army of
Maximilian 1st, Holy Roman Emperor (things were surely different in those days, but his
holding the rank of Captain at such a young age shows his family to be of considerably
more prestige than lowest level nobility).
In 1509 (when he was 23) two years after he left the Army, he was found serving as a
lecturer at the University of Dôme, in the Franche-Comté, in France. There he gave a
series of lectures on “De Verbo Mirifico” ( “The Wonderful or Marvelous word” ), which was
JOHANN REUCHLIN ’s (q.v. “The Humanist Collective” - to follow) very liberal treatise on
religion. These lectures aroused violent and vociferous ecclesiastical opposition. As a
result of that opposition Cornelius Agrippa was driven from Dôme in 1510 and he went to
London. This was in the second year of Henry VIIIth’s reign and, while England was not
anywhere near the Protestant Nation it was to become, both Henry and his Queen were
liberals (and by “his Queen” I mean to say his first wife, the Spanish Princess)), and more
important still, in England the Dominicans and their Inquisition never gained any real power
or authority.
As to the Dominicans, let me say this, when compared to the historical activities of “The
Hounds of God” which is what Domini Canem means, both the Gestapo and the KGB are
reduced to looking like Sunday School Teachers. That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t
perceive either the Gestapo or the K.G.B. as being the infinitely horrible organizations that
they surely were, what it means is that, when weighed in the balance, the “Hounds of God”
were worse, and what is even more important, and what makes them worse, is that they
had centuries rather than mere decades in which to practice their horrors!
IN London, Cornelius Agrippa stayed with the Humanist-Platonist Philosopher and
Churchman JOHN COLET (q.v. “The Humanist Collective” - to follow)
From London, Agrippa went back to his hometown of Cologne (he always went back to
Cologne), where he married his first wife.
Eustache Chapuys (Later to be Imperial Ambassador to England, during some extremely
delicate negotiations in a very dangerous and sensitive time) stood as God-Father to
Agrippa’s son. This, by the way, gives us a pretty accurate picture of Agrippa’s station in
life (at this time he was about 24 or 25 years old). Firstly, at the age of 15 he was a Captain
(a position of considerable authority in those days) and then we see that he is able to have
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a man, moreover one who was sufficiently distinguished to serve as the Ambassador from
an enormously important ruler to a VERY important Court, stand as God-Father to his son.
In those days being God-Father was taken very seriously indeed, the child was practically
considered to be equally your responsibility along with its parents. This makes it pretty
clear to me that Cornelius Agrippa and Eustache Chapuys were nearly social equals, and
that’s pretty high indeed.
In 1515 Cornelius Agrippa was lecturing in medicine, philosophy, and “occultism”
(Metaphysical Philosophy) at the University of Pavia in Italy (He was now 28). He remained
there until 1518 when, upon the recommendation of William VIIth, Marquis of Montferrat
(yet another extremely important individual), he was appointed to the post of Public Orator
and Public Advocate (equivalent to the modern Public Defender) at Metz in Germany.
At Metz, his eloquent and quite vociferous defense of an accused witch (Cornelius Agrippa
maintained that the person had to be innocent, as there was really no such thing as a
witch, this by the way was one of his major themes) brought the rage of the Dominicans
and their Inquisitors down upon Agrippa and he wisely discreetly left for Cologne, where his
first wife died.
In 1524 Agrippa went to Lyons to take a position as physician to Louise of Savoy, Dowager
Queen of France. But after having received not one cent in salary at all for three years, he
left her employment in 1527. (He was later thrown into prison in France for criticizing her
for this).
In 1529 he was appointed Court secretary, with specific duties as Court Historian, in the
Court of The Emperor Charles Vth at Antwerp.
Agrippa was imprisoned for debt in Brussels in 1531, but was rescued by Eustache
Chapuys, the Emperor’s friend, confidante, and sometimes spy. I think it is relatively safe to
assume that it is not entirely impossible that Agrippa served the Emperor in some capacity
as well.
In late 1534 he got involved in a tremendous battle with the Inquisitor of Cologne and was
only saved from execution by the Elector Prince-Archbishop of Cologne who simply voided
the sentence. But as a result he was forced to move once again and he went to Grenoble
in France where, on the 18th of February 1535 at the age of 49, he died, apparently of
natural causes Though considering the important enemies he had gained, other causes
are not improbable.. He was married 3 times (their names aren’t recorded) and had seven
children (none of whom we know anything about).
Cornelius Agrippa’s principal works are: “DE OCCULTA PHILOSOPHIA” (Concerning the
Obscured Philosophy) which was written about 1510 in Cologne and published in revised
format in Antwerp in 1531: It is, obviously, this work that has been one of the principle
sources of “Popular Occultism’s” fascination with this man. It’s title certainly lends itself to
such fascination. But what was the book, in fact, about? Secondly, we have only the later
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significantly revised book, what were the differences between the later version and the
original? That, of course, we’ll never know unless the original manuscript is discovered
somewhere by a scholarly historian who is neither a Churchman nor an “Occultist”. I say
that because it is absolutely clear to me that neither class of person could be trusted with it.
“DE OCCULTA PHILOSOPHIA” is a totally fascinating if confusing mixture of NeoPlatonism with Early Christian Beliefs. It is very important to remember that some early
Christians, men such as Augustine of Hippo, Origen, and Clemens Alexandrinus; were in
fact Platonists before they were Christians, and strong elements of humanism persist in
their writings. This work contains a systematic synthesis of Cabalistic-mystical philosophies
in which, according to Agrippa, “magic” emerges as the most perfect science that can lead
humanity to real understanding of nature and of “God”.
In the period of time in which Cornelius Agrippa lived, “magic” was a euphemism for
“Metaphysical Philosophy” the very idea of which was anathema to Christianity. This book
contains Agrippa’s doctrine of “the three worlds”, “ those of the elements, the stars, and the
spirits.”, corresponding to the physical world, to the heavenly world, and to the world of the
mind. Agrippa also postulates another element (quintessence, i.e. “spirit”) that presides
over, or mediates between, the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
When those contents, and that title (which is intentionally misleading) are added to the
efforts of the furious Dominicans, it is no wonder that this brilliant man, who was a
polymath, a philosopher of very broad scope, a scientist, a physician, and an outstandingly
advanced abstract thinker; comes down to posterity trivialized as a “magician”, “alchemist”,
“sorcerer” and devote of Satan. There are however two very important things, and they are
factual and not theoretical “things, which serve to completely contradict this reputation.
One: As I mentioned earlier, in 1519, in Metz, he got into major trouble with the inquisition
for defending an individual who was accused of “witchcraft”. His defense was based
entirely on the grounds that “there is no such thing as a “witch”’, and that the charges, and
indeed the very crime of “witchcraft” was entirely the product of clerical superstition and
ignorance and greed.
The second contradiction is Agrippa’s other major work: ”DE INCERTITUDINE ET
VANITATE SCIENTIARUM ET ARTIUM ATQUE EXCELLENTIA VERBI DEI
DECLAMATIO”.....(which roughly translates as: ON THE VANITY AND UNCERTAINTY
OF SCIENCE AND THE ARTS AS SUPERIOR TO DIVINE RHETORIC”) This was a truly
scathing attack on “occultism” and all the “sciences”, which in those times were all far more
“occult” than they were scientific. This work was highly influenced by PICO DELA
MIRANDOLA (q.v “The Humanist Collective”...to follow) and JOHANN REUCHLIN. (Ibid). It
is a biting satire on the state of science, attacking the belief in witches, magic, and sorcery;
denounces the accretions which had grown up around the simple doctrines of early
Christianity. And, it also very strongly attacked the reactionary academics and scholars of
the time.
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As my exposition of the activities of “The Humanist Collective” progresses further on in this
work, you will see just how many people who I designate as members of the Humanist
Collective have devoted much time and effort to the combating of the superstitions that
were, and unfortunately, still are, the principal appurtenances of the religions of the world.
One fact that I have found common to all the people of the middle ages who have come
down to us with reputations imputing them to be “Magicians”, “Occultists”, Q’uabbalists
(Kabbalists), or “alchemists”, and that “fact” is this: All of these people were either
philosopher-scholars or scientists (or usually both), and they were not favorable to the
Institution of Christianity. Most, if not all of them, were Platonists of one stripe or another,
and they were all vilified by the Church as “magicians” and “Sorcerers”. Of course either
one was subject to the death penalty in those days of the power of the Dominicans
(Hounds of God) who ran the Inquisition. In a way, it is completely accurate to say that
what we call “Popular Occultism” today, is the fantasy of Dominican Monks and a weapon
they used against enemies of Christianity.
As I have said before, and will doubtless say again with great frequency: “There is no such
thing as “magic”.”
From that day to this there has not been a word of truth in the whole business of “Popular
Occultism”. What was truly “Occult” or “hidden” was any kind of thinking that would call
down on you the rage of the church. Most while the greatest majority of “occult writings” are
utter nonsense, the much more rare valid “occult” writings are intricately and purposefully
confusingly disguised discussions of metaphysical hypotheses that differ with Christianity.
Those few who dared to speculate on metaphysical philosophy publicly, ended up like
Giordano Bruno, murdered by the Church!
That is not meant to imply or infer that the concept of “magic” didn’t exist prior to the advent
of Christianity, but everyone of any education knew that it was largely the province of
ignorance, charlatanry, and superstition; and it’s only followers the gullible and ignorant.
Of course there were always those who only apparently believed in these things but who
profited upon the ignorance of those who did.
Today “Magic” in the form of “Popular Occultism” is still the province of Charlatanry and
superstition and it still preys on the gullible and ignorant. Though, sad to say, some of the
most gullible and ignorant are the practitioners of ”Occultism” themselves.
How does it do this? Well, let’s review just what it is that “Popular Occultism” has to say
about itself. The word “occult”, as most people know, means to say “obscured” or “hidden”.
The word is most correctly used in astronomy. When one “heavenly body” gets between
the viewer and another, the other body is said to be “occulted” or concealed. In a solar
eclipse, the Moon occults the Sun. But what does “Popular Occultism” have to do with this?
Well “Popular Occultism” claims that there is a certain body of facts and techniques which
are “secret” or “hidden” and that this knowledge, when discovered, confers certain “powers”
17
on the discoverer thereof. “Magic” is the use of these “powers” to do all sorts of things to
the benefit of the “Magician.
Is there a word of truth in any of it? Not at all. All knowledge confers a kind of power, but
there is nothing under the sun (or moon) which confers the kind of power the “Occultist”
fantasizes about.
It should be pretty clear to everyone by now that I have little or no regard or respect for
either “Popular Occultism” or it’s illegitimate off-spring “magic”. As that is the case, I think
that you all have the right to know why I’ve spent nearly 40 years studying and researching
metaphysical philosophy and The Mystery Traditions which most people seem to think are
the same thing as “Occultism”. Certainly the Theosophists do, and most certainly so do the
people who adhere to the many groups and schools that grew out of the Theosophical
Movement such as Alice Bailey’s “School of Esoteric Studies”. But what those 40 years has
taught me is that the two things are anything but the same.
Nor are Metaphysical Philosophy and The Mystery Tradition the same thing. Though
without The Mystery Tradition we would have no Metaphysical Philosophy. By the way, the
reverse is equally true. It is absolutely clear that The Mystery Tradition is the pragmatic
realization of that understanding of the Human condition of which Metaphysical Philosophy
is the hypothesis. You’ll see what all this has to do with the Precursor Culture as the
narrative proceeds.
Now it’s obviously time for a definition on my part. What do I mean by “The Mystery
Tradition? It’s an important definition too, as what “Popular Occultism” really is, can only be
accurately defined as a total “occultation” of the reality of The Mystery Tradition. Perhaps it
would be a good idea to give a historical picture of how this occultation happened before
describing the traditions themselves.
Prior to the conquest by Christianity of the Western World, ( and it was, very definitely
both a political and military conquest, the West succumbed to Christianity they did
not accept it), one has to divide the existential questing of the Humanity of the West in two
distinct parts.
There was Northern Europe and the Europe of the extreme West. Now the term “extreme
west” is one used in old legends and histories. Now, whether it referred to the West Coast
of Ireland or even further west is something we do not yet know. This was the area in
which the spiritual expression of the people was Druidism which was at once a combination
of The Mystery Tradition and exoteric or popular religion. One really has to extend the
Druidic area of influence to the central part of Europe which came under the influence of
Eastern European Shamanism but which was nonetheless definitely Keltic at least in part
and was therefore Druidic though it’s “style” was somewhat different.
In the “Classical World” which is the world which was made up of the Græco-Roman
culture, the Egyptian Culture, and the Persian Culture; each of which was almost entirely
18
unique, things were very different.
In the enormous geographical area that the Græco-Roman Civilization contained, the
division between Religion and “The Mystery Traditions”, on the subjects of existential
questioning and worship, were far more clearly defined and separate than among either the
Druidic or the more Eastern based Shamanic peoples.
In the Classical world (e.g. Græco-Roman) we find there were distinct Mystery Temples
served by an extremely special and very specialized Priesthood. This was paralleled but
not at all duplicated, by the Temple Cultus which were the Temples and Priesthoods of the
various Gods and Goddesses. Service in the Cult Temples and contributions to them were
among the most important services, or rather “Civic Duties”, of a citizen of these cultures.
These Cult Temples were also the Primary Source of charitable work in that period and
place. The “Temple Cultus” was exoteric religion and was the belief structure of the
common people. It is important to remember that there were only a very few Mystery
Temples with their Priesthoods and Mystae. Most of the Cult Temples of the preChristian period had absolutely nothing to do with the mysteries.
The best thing I can say about the Cult Temples is that they served the same purpose that
Churches do today. It was then, and is now, the only valid and positive purpose served by
these types of institutions. They provided a place for devotion and prayer, and they
presided over various festivals and “Holy Days”. Most important of all their functions was
that they were the primary source of charitable services in those times. The Mysteries were
something else again.
So then what were the “Mystery Temples”, and where were they?
Well, The Western Druids had centers for the study of their equivalent of the “mysteries” at
Glæston (Glastonbury) and Karnac in Brittany. These two are well known to all. There were
other centers in Ireland, Northern Spain (Galicia), Wales, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia,
and at a few centers in the Slavic Lands. Where ever the Keltic peoples were found, so too
were the Druids (or their nearly exact equivalent) and the Druidic “Mysteries”. Current
Ethnological Studies inform us that the Teutonic Peoples and the Western Slavs, rather
than being separate peoples, were sub-septs of the Kelts
In the Classical milieu (i.e. The Mediterranean Basin) the Mystery Centers were: Eleusis, in
Greece, Delphi in Greece, Samothrace, in Greece, Dordona in Ionia, Sais and Heliopolis in
Egypt, and prior to the advent of Zoroastrianism, the Mazdazdians had a center in Babylon.
After the advent of Zoroastrianism that school was moved to Shiraz, in Persia, where it
eventually became associated with the Sufi order. When you subtract the Islamic
language, and the various sub-sects devoted to superstition and other nonsense, the Sufi
Order, in its original formulation, in the very rare instances where it presently retains in that
format, is a Mystery Tradition.
The content of the Mystery Teachings was identical in all cultures, it was only the “style” of
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the teaching methods that differed. Karnac and Shiraz taught the same truths, the
language, style, and teaching methodology were very much different.
How did these Mystery Schools differ from the Cult Temples? Well, primarily it was a
matter of direction, purpose served, and orientation. The Cult Temples, as I said earlier,
were places of worship, the Mystery Temples were the providers of various degrees of
knowledge.
What kind of knowledge?
This is important to our discussion because it is from the public perception of the nature of
the knowledge so carefully dispensed by the mystery Priesthoods, and the almost total lack
of either knowledge of, or comprehension of, HOW they dispensed that knowledge and to
whom, that the myth of “occultism” arises. What happened is that the Mysteries became
“magical” which is exactly what they weren’t. They weren’t “magical” they were tutorial.
To reiterate, I think it should be pretty clear that what were called “Cult Temples” were the
ancient equivalent of our modern Churches. They served the cults or myths of the Gods
and Goddesses, they were centers of worship and veneration of those “Divinities”, and they
were the only providers of social services in that period. They were the Religious
Institutions or Churches of their time and place. They were also one of the primary sources
of public entertainment in that period. In fact, in Greece, the theater was actually a
religious function dedicated to the worship of Dionysus. While our contemporary societies
have a plethora of Churches, we do NOT have mystery schools and that is a distinct loss to
humankind today.
So then, I ask once again: what were the “Mysteries” if they were, in fact, other than
“occultism” has made them seem?
The Priests and Priestesses who served in the Mystery Temples were selected through a
process that was intentionally elitist and exclusionary in the extreme. The candidates were
chosen from among those who presented themselves at the Temples with the desire to
become “Mystae” or “initiates” in the “wisdom of those temples”.
Some of the wisest and greatest of the Human Race served in these temples, and some,
like Plato and both his Grandfathers; Solon & Pericles; as well as his near relation and
fellow pupil of Socrates, Kritias; were initiates into most of the “mysteries”. These Priests
were not “magicians”, they were scholars. They were the anthropologists, and the scientific
cosmologists and particle physicists of their times, they were also the only historians of
their times! The “mysteries” they guarded and dispensed so carefully were simply the
comprehension of the nature of the human condition, the nature of the greater reality
outside of the human condition, and the nature of the inter-relationships between the two.
It was their methodology which led to the problems that exist today regarding “occultism”.
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The knowledge and understanding they possessed were not then, and are not now,
attainable by the ordinary person. In reaction to that fact, the “Mystery Temples” dispensed
their knowledge in carefully “graded” doses, and the entire content of their data-base was
kept rigidly secret from all but the highest level of their Priest-Initiates. Why? Well because
knowledge of things one is incapable of comprehending is dangerous and more so to
the person who gains that which is utterly beyond them, than to anyone else.
“A Little knowledge is a dangerous thing” and, by extension, “ a lot of knowledge is an
extremely dangerous thing”. Especially to those who are incapable of comprehending what
they are taught.
What was it about these things that made them incomprehensible to most people? It was
the simple fact that they were (and we are) dealing with abstractions. Abstractions are
incomprehensible to most people. And so the content of their instructions was held rigidly
secret. Both by those who taught it, and by those who received it. That is the only reason
why they were called the “Mysteries”, it was because they were hidden or secret.
Their teachings were, in fact, available on a very low level to all who applied to the Temples
of the Mysteries for “Initiation”. They were “given out” to the General Public in the form of
dramatic presentations which demonstrated symbolically certain truths or facts about the
human condition. By people’s reactions to those demonstrations, the Priests knew who
might be appropriate for further instruction. These “Mystery Temple“ were primarily places
for “winnowing” and I will describe why and how that took place as this essay continues.
The Mystae were first and foremost scholars. Their knowledge and wisdom were the only
source of “power” they possessed and that is equally true of their successors to this day.
They are not magicians, they are not alchemists, they are simply knowledgeable!
The study and research which produced this work is not a "hobby", but is clearly my
primary life-interest. It has been very closely coupled with an equally intensive study of our
planetary political and social history. As a result, I wrote my books “Here we
are.....so???? and “Here we are....what next?” Which should most definitely be read as
a prelude to reading this book, if one is to have the background material which is needed to
fully appreciate and understand what I am saying.
Now that is NOT intended to say or imply that one cannot “get” this work without having
read the previous two. You certainly can, but having read them makes it easier and the
three of them are, after all is said and done, one work.
Incidental to that study, and as what could best be described as a ”side line” to it: I am
finally developing a relatively clear over-view of certain really interesting and significant
linkages or connections. These are connections which I feel are very important to every
human being’s comprehension of the nature of the human condition. The more one
understands about the nature of the human condition the more comfortable they are with
existing in that condition. I want to share this view with you.
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These “connections” of which I speak, are linkages, and or parallels which exist between
clearly historical, perfectly socially acceptable subjects, groups, and things that are
themselves entirely orthodox. It is those connections that are not at all orthodox. It is
the connections or links that are neither adduced or delineated in the course of the usual
historical study. There is no subject included in these connections that is not covered by
mainstream historical work except for those that are normally covered in mainstream
literature, literary history, or folk history. My goal is to demythologize (as much as I can)
that “folk history”. I have another goal too, but I will talk about that later on in this essay.
I have long suspected, and I am only just now beginning to discover the suspicions to be
valid, that there are large segments of what are probably very important aspects of
planetary and human history that are preserved for us only through literature and folk
history, especially where these two things overlap and/or combine.
Note: There is a very interesting book on this subject which I recommend to you. It is called “FICTION AS HISTORY” and
it was written by G. W. BOWERSOCK. In it he deals with fiction written during the period called “The Early Christian Era”.
But it is an indication of how advanced scholars are beginning to view Literature in relationship to history>
What is unusual about my present work are the intimate connections that I have
discovered which exist between what are normally considered to be totally unconnected
subjects. It is this network of unusual connections which I am trying to establish clearly.
These "connections" certainly enlarge and enhance my world-view. But what they also
accomplish is that they greatly enlarge my comprehension of what life is really "about".
That is, after all, the reason a person studies metaphysics, to find out why one is alive
and why one thinks.
Whether you prefer to state it as: "Cogito ergo Sum" or “Sum ergo Cogito” (“I think,
therefore I am” or “I am, therefore I think”) , it doesn’t matter, for the question is the same.
And that question is: Why is this so? Why is it true that: “I think, therefore I am”? Why is it
true that:: “I am, therefore I think”? Is it in fact “true”? To find the answer to those two
questions and one other; “What happens to me when I die?”; is the only valid purpose
of metaphysics.
The study of Metaphysics, or for the reasons for existence, which is the very same thing, is
not a narrow field, it is, in fact, of all fields of study, surely the broadest. What has harmed
it over the ages is it’s narrow contemplation of only matters and subjects that were deemed
to be appropriately “esoteric”. That was, and still is, a terrible error.
Metaphysics is, and must be, the consideration of ALL things that produce the Human
Condition and the milieu in which it exists, and of course, that requires the consideration of
ALL THINGS! One of the most important considerations involved in the study and
contemplation of the nature of the human condition is the activities of the human condition
since it came to be, and that, my friends is HISTORY!
Life, and the Human History that is the sum of many billions of lives, is certainly very
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different indeed than it would seem to be were we only to mistake for truth that which is
commonly taught. Seriously studying human history is not simply an intellectual activity but
really a kind of "Detective Process" in which the seeker tries to sort what really happened
out from what is largely propaganda by conquerors. It doesn't matter in the slightest
whether those "conquerors" are military or theological, they write the history and what we,
as their hapless victims, learn is mostly only what they wanted us to learn.
For instance; poor King Richard III, of England was, for the longest time, the victim of the
Tudors who supplanted him and wanted that supplantation to seem other than just the
result of overweening ambition. The Tudors used every single propaganda and "spin"
remedy and scheme available to them to make their tenure appear to be legitimate.
Shakespeare's play, "Richard III" was, and still is, and always will be, very great literature
indeed, but in the context of its time it was primarily a political polemic designed to
ensconce the Tudors more firmly on their ill-gotten throne.
This is an especially interesting fact if, you are, as I am, one of those who believe that the
plays attributed to William Shakespeare, and in particular the Historical Plays, were written
not by Shakespeare, but by a man with a very great interest in the Tudor Monarchy, Sir
Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord chancellor of England. There
are certain differences in style and evidence that leads me to believe that the “Tragedies”
and “Comedies” were possibly though not necessarily attributable to others. I tend to
believe however, that these non-political plays were written either by Christopher Marlow or
Ben Jonson or both. ( i.e. The Tragedies by Marlow and the Comedies by Jonson) I find
the De Vere hypothesis questionable, except as concerns the “Sonnets” (or some of them).
Most of the highest level of British Aristocracy in the Elizabethan Period were remarkably
talented men and women, they wrote excellent poetry and excellent music, so to attribute
the sonnets to one of their member is not really far fetched. As an example; Sir Phillip
Sydney was a really brilliant poet.
Modern historical research clearly shows that King Richard III was nowhere near as "evil"
as “Shakespeare” paints him, nor in fact, did he have a "crouch back". In fact, if one simply
stops to think about it for a minute, how could he? Richard, Duke of Gloucester was an
extremely notable man-at-arms, known both for his bravery and his skill at arms. This was
simply not possible for a man with either a malformed spine or a non-functional arm, and
most particularly impossible for one with both. A full suit of armor from this period weighed
about 80 pounds. How would a “cripple” support such a weight? The arms they used were
very heavy and required tremendous dexterity. How would a “cripple” have managed?
What is true of The Tudors and Richard III is equally true of Caesar and the Kelts.
Considering the fact that he (Julius Caesar) probably never left the house during inclement
and cold weather without wearing an imported and very expensive British woolen cloak
(called a “Sagi”), which was an item particularly prized and only affordable by upper-class
Romans.
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Considering the fact that Gaulish and Keltic jewelry, arms, and things such as cups and
bowls and other decorative objects (most particularly weapons) were very highly prized by
Roman Connoisseurs. What I am about to say is hardly conjecture.
Julius Caesar, in his role as diarist-historian and self-publicist, wrote what he, as a
tremendously intelligent and very well educated man, must have clearly known were
absolute untruths (lies) depicting the Celts as " naked savages". They were anything but,
and he knew it. Caesar described the Celts and The Gauls as being totally bereft of any
civilization, to justify his otherwise unjustifiable personal ambitions. The conquests of Gaul,
Lower Germany, and the unsuccessful attempt to conquer Britain, were the end products
of Julius Caesar's personal ambitions. It was his personal agenda, and not that of the
"Senate and People of Rome". In order .to attain that agenda, he cleverly manipulated
“The Senate and People of Rome” by the propaganda in his “diaries” to support his aims.
Julius Caesar, like most all humans, “demonized” those he wished to destroy.
Rome, and later the Christians who totally subsumed Rome, wrote history not as it was, but
as they wished it to be read! Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ (the name is symbolic of the
church itself, and has nothing to do with any historical personage) were Rome's greatest
"boosters". Julius Caesar created The Greater Pan European Roman Empire
and Jesus Christ kept it in place in his persona as The Church Universal. (Odd that they’re
both “J.C.” isn’t it? Just “coincidence” of course.) It is, however, no coincidence
at all that the Roman Empire transmogrified into the “Holy Roman Empire”.
Let me make clear what I mean to say when I say, in reference to “Jesus Christ” that:: “The
name is symbolic of the church and has nothing to do with any historical personage”. I
have seen a lot of evidence that the term “historical personage” is misunderstood. What I
mean to say by “historical”, and what I believe almost everyone else means by the term, is
“real”, no more, no less. “Jesus Christ” was not a myth, he was fictional, and there is an
enormous difference between the two things. “Jesus Christ” is a piece of religious
iconography invented out of whole cloth by the Christian Religion. The man Jesus, as
depicted in Christian iconography-hagiography, as depicted in “The Synoptic Gospels, no
matter what or who the inspiration for the figure may have been, was not a real
person. He was not born. He did not live. His “teachings” were the creation of a committee
of highly educated Jews and Greeks. He was not crucified. He did not “return from the
dead”.
The Roman Catholic Church is the undead Roman Empire. Like the fictional “undead” it is
a vampire. It survives on the strength of the life energies of its adherents. It preys upon
those who come to it to pray. It gives nothing and takes everything. All the rest of
Christianity is, without exception, either the result of personalities, politics, money,
ambition, heresy, and most important cause of all...IGNORANCE!.
Protestantism exists because the Ruling Classes of Europe began to resent and resist
“Peter’s Pence”, which was a popular term for the yearly tithe to the Pope’s coffers. But it
wasn’t simply “Peter’s Pence”, there were other things even more important. Most of these
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“things” had absolutely nothing to do with religion. The invention of Protestantism is more
fiscal-political than it is religious or philosophical. It is primarily traceable to the ruling
classes’ resentment and anger over the immense amount of tax-free property the Church
had amassed.
In most of Europe the Church owned more land than the Landowners, nobility, and King
combined. The various Protesting Religious Reformers such as Martin Luther, simply
provided the rulers with an excuse to confiscate Church properties and stop paying the
Papal Tax.
The strife accompanying this process killed tens of millions of people. The “Thirty Years
War”, which primarily involved Germany, France, and Austria, and in a less primary but
nonetheless important fashion, Sweden, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, and
also Belgium and the Lowlands, was more deadly than any plague. Thirty Million people
died during the course of this “war”. History makes it very clear that the only “peace”
connected with “The Prince of Peace” is that of the charnel house.
I grew up during World War II, and during the course of that conflict, the citizens of both
sides were presented with "News" (News, after all, is history in the act of happening) and
that "News" was utterly contradictory. Today, some fifty or so years later, we are finding out
that a good percentage of that "News" on both sides was simply propaganda and largely if
not explicitly untrue. Only today, when the need for propaganda in that context is beginning
to fade, are we beginning to find out the truth, or History!
The shameful part of this discovery is this:
Truth doesn't mitigate the actions of the Axis War Machine, or the actions of the Nazi
Party, or those of the German people as a whole. Nothing possibly could mitigate that over
whelming series of facts. The German Government from 1933 to 1945 remains as
unremittingly villainous as ever. And the German People? Whether their acquiescence
was active or passive, if they were living at the time, and were not actively
subversive,(and many were) they are nonetheless accomplices to the Nazi Guilt.
Whatever we are told, the truth of the matter is that Hitler and the Nazis were the
manifestation of the over-all will of the German populace, and the Nazis happily
acquiesced to that will and acted out the fantasies of the majority of Germans.
What history does do however, is make it clear that the actions and motivations of the
other side of that conflict were far less pure and altruistic than their propaganda of the time
would have us believe.. What history shows us, when it is divorced from national and
political agendas, is that while the "Axis" was unremittingly "Black", the "Allies" were at best
a "medium gray", and more than just occasionally almost entirely “black”, but not nearly as
unremittingly “black” as the Germans.
The German “terror bombings” of such civilian targets as London, Canterbury, etcetera
were not a whit worse than the Allied Terror Bombings of Bremen, Berlin, Dresden
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etcetera. And we have come to find out, the German bombings were simply a furious
response to the commencement of such bombings by the Allies. Prior to that time, the
Germans had stuck to military targets only. The terror called “Strategic Bombing” was an
American invention. But one which the English enthusiastically adopted. If the end results
are to be taken as evidence, the Allies were far better at the total destruction of civilian
targets than were the Axis. This is not “second hand” reporting, I was there, and I know.
IF HISTORY TEACHES US ANYTHING AT ALL, IT IS CLEARLY THAT NEVER IN THE
COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS HAS ANY PARTY TO ANY WAR COME OUT OF THAT
WAR UNSTAINED!
I have carefully studied the history of war on this planet, and those studies have totally
convinced me that there is not, was not, and never will be any such thing as a “good” or
“justified war”! Though I must admit that what we call World War II was the nearest thing to
a justifiable War as the Nazis were an absolute plague on humankind, nonetheless, it was
a war that could have been entirely prevented at several junctures prior to its
commencement. Even so, In every war in human history the ordinary person is
sacrificed to the needs and desires of the existing power structures. “National Honor”
and “National Political Integrity” has no real meaning to the common man or woman, and
they die and suffer so that the political insiders, to whom these things do mean ”something”
can “risk all to gain even more”. But what does “war” actually mean to the power
structures? It means profit, power and control, and those are the ONLY goals of
every power structure that has existed on this planet.
A truly curious and open-minded investigating historian-sociographer, just like a truly
curious metaphysician, can't simply look in one place for clues to what, how and why life is
what it is on this planet. They must accept everything as "grist for their mill" and they must
grind that "grist" very finely indeed. When I began to look at "everything" as source
material. When I began productively comparing all that data with history and archaeology.
The picture I was getting began to have its details amazingly filled out and human history
went gradually from black and white to sepia to full-color.
FIRST HINTS:
Far too many of the avenues of study and research which I followed led me primarily to
questions for which mainline scholarship could give me no answers. These are the
questions I then began to ask myself. I’m still asking them, and I suppose I always will be.
They concern the developing appearance of connections and links that are beginning to
make themselves very obvious to me. They are connections between apparently disparate
things and groups. Some of them real, some of them mythical, some of them only
apparently mythical when understood correctly, and others simply symbolic.
Now, when I say that something is "symbolic" I mean that it stands in the place of, or
symbolizes, something which may be an abstract truth. But when the term "Myth" is used
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the meaning is far more nebulous. Primarily the term "myth", from the Greek "Mythos", is
used to mean a story, or kind of parable. This “story” is told to illustrate and enliven either
a metaphysical perception (in which case it is called an anagogical myth) or else an
abstract conception of an uncertain historical situation or event.
A myth is not necessarily a lie. Too many people, myself all too frequently included, use
the word "myth" as a euphemism. They use it in order to be either polite or kind. We do so
when what we actually mean to say is at best, "Fairy Tale", and at worst, "Lie".
In the past I have frequently used the word "myth" when referring to Christian Beliefs. I was
wrong to do so because in so doing, even though it was entirely unintentional, I clearly
misled people. People have far too many personal definitions of the word “myth” for it to
be used clearly. People like Carl Gustav Jung and Joseph Campbell have made the whole
topic far too nebulous. I was wrong, I shouldn't have said “myth”, because what I have
always meant is "lie". A “pious lie” in some cases, but a lie all the same. Joshua ben
Jehovah of Nazareth as depicted in Christian Religious writings, never lived, and so
everything which has since been created around his alleged life is a lie.
But, it is a lie ONLY if you believe his life and works to be a true historical occurrence.
It is a lie only if you are a literalist. If you view the "Life of Christ" as a parable intended
to illustrate certain metaphysical truths, then it is simply an anagogical myth. But
historically, institutionalized Christianity has always avoided the myth and insisted upon the
lie! They have “insisted upon the lie” to a point where they made its acceptance a matter of
life or death. This is unacceptable. That, by the way is a total understatement, murder is no
way to deal with philosophical disagreement. The unending and mindless ferocity of
Christian behavior toward dissidents is a blot on the record of humanity. Why are they so
ferocious? It is simply because, as their entire belief structure is based on falsehood, they
are insecure and disagreement makes them even more insecure. In their insecurity they
murder those who make them uncomfortable.
What are the things between which I am finding what I think are previously undetected
connections? And why have they been undetected for centuries in some cases? The
connections are so obvious in some cases that I am forced to conclude that the
obscuration has been purposeful. And I am beginning to think I know by whom. In any
case, this that follows is a partial listing: (They are in no significant order.)
The Gundestrøp Caldron. The Holy Grail. The Legendary Priesthoods of the Sun and
Moon of Atlantis. The Druids of Europe. The Brahmins of India. The Sang Real (Here it's
important to remember that the Sang Real and the San Graal ~Holy Grail are not identical).
The Tuatha de Danann of the Gaels. The Nephilim of the Old Testament. The Sidhe of the
Gaels. The Aesir of the Nordics and Germans. The Ljosalfar of the Nordics and Germans.
The Walsungen of the Nordics and Germans. The “Elves” who are spoken of in one form
or another by all the peoples of this planet. The Chaldean Magi of Mesopotamia. The
Trouvères or Troubadours, The Rosicrucians of Europe. "The Masters of the Wisdom"
spoken of by esotericists, The Order of the Illuminatii, The Knights Templar. The Knights
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of the Temple of Sion. The Various Masonic Orders. The Dogon People of Africa. The
Mayans of Yucatan. The Basques of Europe. The Olmecs. The many disparate "Mystery
Religions". Most Shamans and Berdaches. Pythagoras, the Philalethians and neoPlatonism, The Piri Reis Map (and others), places like Tiahuanaco, Machu Picchu, and
Teotihuacan, things like the incredible Pre-Incan road system in Peru, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera.
Most peculiar of all though, there are strong indications and evidences that these things
also connect with what is loosely called “UFO phenomena”, “near Death Experiences”, and
“Alien Abductions”, and that’s really a shock! But then, if you really stop to think about it, it’s
not so shocking at all. Compare them, if you will, with the legends surrounding the Banh
Sidhe or “Fair Folk” (Elves). Changelings, and abductions, and creatures of light abound in
all these myths.
These things, groups, and peoples, and the tales and mysteries surrounding them, and the
only apparently non-abstract legends and stories and folk histories which allegedly explain
them, are not simply gentle breezes that blow through human consciousness, they are (at
least some of them) veritable hurricanes. Why is this so?
Some of these things, The Druids, The Brahmins, The Dogon People, The Mayans, The
Chaldean and Persian Magi, The Trouvères, The Rosicrucians, The Knights Templar, The
Knights of the Temple of Sion, The Shamans and Berdaches, and the Basques are clearly
historical peoples and historical human institutions. Some of them are clearly extant today.
They are important for what we already know and surmise about them. They are more
important still for what we may yet learn about them. There are plentiful clues that there is
very much still to learn.
Of these things I listed, There are those among them that are not real, or at least not
demonstrably so. There are those among them that are legendary or merely symbolic.
They are all nonetheless vitally important. They are so important because of what we may
learn about them in the future. They are so important because even now, we can learn
about them by connecting them to things about which we already know.
Many, but not all, of course, of these terribly disparate things are either fairy tales or largely
mythical aren't they? Oh they are indeed, and, some fairy tales may be simply what they
seem, but others? I believe that there are others that are not so simple. These others are
perhaps the echoes or shadows of a reality long forgotten.
A reality, in some cases long obscured by those whose interests are best served by having
certain realities seen as fairy tales so that they themselves are obscured. This particular
obscuration is now becoming not simply unnecessary but is completely negatively
productive for all concerned, both to those who were “obscured”, and to those from whom
they were obscured.
But that was not at all the most important source of the purposeful obscuration. It is also a
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reality which has been almost completely obscured by those whose interests are best
served by having these realities seen as a “fairy tale”, so that their own fairy tale
(Christianity) cannot be contradicted.
None of these things I've listed are connected are they? But, the thing is, I am beginning to
realize that they are. The surprising thing is how strong these connections and/or linkages
still are, despite being spread out over fifty thousand years or more of human and social
evolution. That's probably an overly generous figure. Recorded history, or the written kind,
extends at best back to the beginning of the fourth millennium before the common era.
That gives us some six thousand years of "recorded history".
There are other types of records (cave paintings and archaeological "finds") that take
human civilization back, depending on the archaeologist you listen to, formerly anywhere
from about fifty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and the date keeps
moving backwards in time with each new excavation or “find”. It has now moved back well
beyond one million years. But, around the early part of the fourth millennium before the
common era, the mists of time begin to close in and all things get very shadowy and
indefinite. Though they are becoming less and less so with every passing year.
But that's not the only example of occultation.
Between the implosion of the Roman Empire in the fifth century of the common era and the
first beginnings of the Renaissance, around 1400 C.E., there was another erasure of
human knowledge. It was very justly called "The Dark Ages". It’s becoming more clear all
the time that despite the nineteenth century’s appellation of “Dark Ages”, the period wasn’t
as unrelievedly “dark” as they believed,
Despite terrible plagues, and feudalism (which was a kind of a plague) there was still much
that was intellectually and artistically positive during these 900 years.
Most of the topics on my list suffered nearly complete obscuration during that period. Some
of the topics were already only dim memories well before the founding of Rome, and it
didn't take much to obscure them. A good two millennia went by between the founding of
Rome and the beginning of the Renaissance (7th century B.C.E. to the late 13th century
C.E.) That was quite enough.
That brings me to the principal perception that these developing "connections" are tending
to strongly support. It is a perception regarding a subject that is among the longest
occulted, but never entirely so. Because of the way it was obscured, however, it might have
well been completely lost.
I have long suspected, and more than half believed, that cultural traditions considered, this
planet was, and still is, the home of not one race, but of two.
Those "two races" have absolutely nothing at all to do with complexion, nor with Europe,
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Africa, and Asia. Africans, Caucasians, and Mongols are all three simply environmentally
induced mutations of one race. That race is Homo Sapiens. (Technically that’s supposed to
be “Homo Sapiens-Sapiens”, but for the purposes of this work, let’s just call them “HomoSapiens”).
The "two races" that I am speaking about are Homo-Sapiens and "Other than Homosapiens". The two different sapiencies are not only not the same "race", they are while
physically hybridizable (i.e. they can inter-breed), nonetheless of entirely different orders of
reality and beingness. But I do believe that they are, both of them, equally real.
What has happened is that clear public awareness of the real differences between the two
have been lost in "the mists of time". But they were not entirely lost, because they have
been preserved, enshrined in myth, legend, and "Fairy Tale". The essential reality of
those differences, while lost to common human awareness, has not been lost in fact. Nor
has it been lost to legend, myth, and memory.
To at least begin to describe why I believe this to be not simply possible, but rather strongly
probable, I will tell you that in the course of my studies there was a very clear "first clue".
That "clue" was this:
I have come to see clearly that in almost every single instance I can think of,
whenever or wherever there is a myth, or a legend, that is absolutely universal
among the peoples of our planet, that legend, no matter how much the myth makers
and time may disguise the fact, contains some kernel of truth.
For a good example of this, let’s take “The Flood”. If one leaves out all the religious
nonsense associated with the various myths, one is still left with the clear idea that at
sometime in the distant past, the planet was subjected to a really vast inundation that was
not localized. It’s pretty clear that as “Global Warming” proceeds apace, there’s going to be
another such!
The legend, or rather the plethora of legends, that have led me to my clearly controversial
conclusion are those that concern parallel evolutionary life-forms which have evolved, and
are still developing, simultaneously in the context of what can only be called the
independent evolution of this planet.
Parallel, but not at all the same, parallel, but not at all equal.
Of course while "parallel evolutions" is in fact what these many legends and myths are
really talking about, it is hardly what they say.
Primarily they talk about humans and other-than-humans. They talk about "The Sidhe",
"Elves", "Fairies", "Silkies", "The Fair Folk", "The Good People" etcetera, etcetera. But the
real truth, the true crux of the matter, the idea of parallel evolutions never really comes up
except of course, by implication.
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These myths and legends are, as their terminology makes perfectly clear, all decked out in
fantastic "fairy tale regalia". But as far as I can ascertain, their almost total universality
implies more than just a kernel of truth. Semantics and trappings aside, no matter where
you go you are confronted with myths concerning interactions and relationships and
hybridization and competition between humans and not-humans.
Some of these legends and myths are not at all obscure. They are easy to find in our
cultural and literary history and the most important thing about them is that they are clearly
folk history and they cannot be traced to people like the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian
Anderson who used old folk legends and old folk tales upon which to base their “Fairy
Tales”.
FIRST EVIDENCE:
For instance, all of the founding families (Gens) which made Rome what it was, claimed
descent from some “God”, “Goddess”, or para-human “Hero”. This was not public relations,
it was not myth making, it was not even mythology. At least it wasn’t mythology as far as
those people were concerned. These people firmly believed in their pedigree. Considering
their accomplishments in every field of endeavour available to them, they can hardly have
been seen as credulous savages. Considering those same accomplishments, especially in
the areas of literature and philosophy, they can hardly be viewed as insane.
Julius Caesar was not, by any stretch of imagination, a “nice” man, but he was certainly
dreadfully “sane”. Success, especially among dictators, of course, has nothing to do with
“sanity”. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein are all hardly exemplars of
sanity, but Caesar, while he was wildly ambitious, and utterly ruthless in the attainment of
his ambitions, or at least so we are told, was not, in any way, shape, or form, the sort of
crazed monster these others exemplify.
I think it is important to acknowledge that these myths were not ex post facto justification
for power and privilege. It is pretty clear they the “myths” preceded the privilege and
position.
Let’s grant them their hypothesis. Among their antecedents were those who were not
perceived as ordinary human beings. If they weren’t ordinary human beings, what were
they? I don’t believe there are actually such things as “Gods” or “Goddesses”. So what was
it they were descended from?
Alexander The Great blazed like a comet across human history. He firmly believed himself
to be the son of a “God” (Apollo, who, it was claimed, impregnated Alexander’s Mother
Olympia, while in the form of a python). Nothing else in his life would make it appear that
he was insane or stupid. Perhaps he was “insanely ambitious”, he was certainly ruthless
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and remorseless, but he was an incredible strategist and probably the greatest leader of
men who ever lived, which really precludes insanity. So then, what was he “the son of”?
He, in fact, did not believe that his Mother, Olympia, was fully human. In point of fact most
Macedonians alive in the time she lived didn’t believe she was fully human either. She was
believed to be a “witch” or “sorceress” who wasn’t then.... and in truth, isn’t now, viewed as
entirely human. And, if I am correct, may actually not be so.
Let’s face it, one of the world’s major religions in terms of power and importance;
Christianity, bases it’s entire validity as a religion on the fact that it’s “founder” wasn’t
Human. I think Jesus, as we know of him, was an anagogical myth, Christians do not.
Christians see Jesus as “God made man”. How is that different from Alexander the Great.
Except that I believe that the Jesus in whom Christians believe, was not a real person, and
we know that Alexander was.
Even Plato (Ariston Erecthides) who was a member of the Ruling Family of Athens, was
deemed of “divine descent” (Apollo and Pallas Athene). Plato was also seen as descended
from a “demi-God” or “Hero” - Theseus of Athens. I have never seen that he (Plato) denied
its possibility. If ever there was anyone who could not be accused of insanity or stupidity it
was Plato. Plato’s Grandfathers, Solon and Pericles, themselves eventually rose to at least
semi-divine status.
All the Greek Ruling families, in all the Greek city states, believed the same kind of divine
descent to be true in their case. Notice I do not, in any of these cases use the word “claim”.
I use the word “believe” which is an entirely different thing.
This is true, going back as far as the mists of time will permit us to go. It is equally true no
matter where you go. Asia, Africa, The Americas, Polynesia, everywhere. The ruling
houses all believe themselves to have non-human antecedents. Many of these peoples
had absolutely no social or intellectual connections. Many of these peoples had never
heard of the other peoples mentioned.
In Egypt, where brother-sister incest was the rule rather than the exception, the ruler was
deemed to be a “God”, an avatar of the Solar Deity, and utterly non-human. And so was his
sister, through whom, in theory, the rulership derived..
Henry , Count of Anjou, who was called Henry Plantagenet and was to become Henry the
Second, King of England (1133 - 1189), had a Grand-mother who was called "The Demon
Countess of Anjou"; not because she was an evil woman, but because she was a magical
one. She was believed by everyone at the time to be a "Fairy" or “Elven Princess". The
location of Anjou is an important factor. The province (County) of Anjou was physically
contiguous to the Breton peninsula, to the Duchy of Brittany.
Brittany was the locus of many legends. The most important of those was that of the City
and Kingdom of Ys. Which was ruled in the extremely ancient matriarchal manner by a
council of women who were described as “Witches”. The Kingdom of Ys was viewed as
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almost entirely magical and alien. It is interesting that the first man to become more than a
‘year King’ a Celto-Roman allegedly named Gralon is one of the principal candidates for
the real person behind the King Arthur myth.
Now Brittany was, and still is, a habitat of Celtic People, their “elves” were a Breton version
of the Irish Banh Sidhe who were, at best, viewed as ambivalently beneficial. Therefore a
“magical woman” might be viewed as a Demoness. I believe that, at the time, the term
wasn’t as pejorative as it would seem today. It is also quite probable that, as most
historians or writers of chronicles, in that period, were churchmen or monks (they had to
be, they were almost the only people who could read and write), perhaps “Elven lady” was
changed into “Demon Countess” to advance clerical purposes. I believe there is at least
some possibility that the Demon Countess of Anjou was believed to be connected to the
“Witches of Ys”
One thing is clear throughout history. The Church regarded even the legends of the
“others” as antithetic to its interests. As to the reality of the “others”, their enmity was
implacable. It was right to the flames for anyone suspected of either believing in the
“others’ or worse yet, being one themselves. I believe that the basic motivation behind the
terrible “witch Hunts” was the seeking out of people believed to be other-than-human in
order to wipe them off the face of the Earth.
Now, before I go on, let’s do some defining of a terribly complex subject. I just said that
“The Countess of Anjou” was viewed as “a magical personage not an evil one”. Now, you
already know I do not believe in the reality of “magic”, so what am I saying? What is meant
by “magical”? What do I mean by “Magical” when I don’t believe in “magic”?
Does the word just mean or imply “different” and that’s all? No it means far more than
simply “different” though it means that too, of course. Most people, especially today, seem
to think that “magical” means contrary to nature. Humanity has been entirely misled by
The Brothers Grimm, by Hans Christian Anderson, and by Walt Disney. But not only these,
they have been misled too, by allegedly serious writers on the subject. People like Eliphas
Levi, Dion Fortune, and Israel Regardie, etcetera. The only person who ever said a true
word on this subject in print was Aleister Crowley, but because almost everything else that
he ever said was (or rather seemed to be) utter nonsense, it got over looked.
But the belief that “magic” is contrary to nature is absolutely not true. It’s not only not true,
it cannot be true. As I said earlier: If a thing exists, it’s natural, nothing that exists is, or can
be, contrary to nature. What makes a thing or person “magical”, is that it is not
commonplace or ordinary. What makes a thing or person “magical” is that it’s functionality
is not obvious. What people call “magic” is simply the capacity (as Crowley put it) to “make
reality conform to an act of will”. No spectaculars, no “shooting lightning out of your ass.”
No creating “things out of no-thing”. None of that at all.
“Magic” is simply the intrinsic capacity to first detect, and then deflect, the currents of
energy that we call “ reality”, and in so doing, manipulate those trends to conform to will. It
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is intrinsic to the individual, it is not necessarily a conscious action. Nor is it necessarily an
unconscious one.
That does not include “turning people into toads”. But then again, silly as it may sound, it
doesn’t exclude so doing. Anyone capable of doing such a thing is also capable of seeing
what a waste of time and energy such an action would be.
After all, “changing reality in conformance with will” is precisely that. Reality changes in
“conformance with the will of the “magician”. Anything which does NOT change reality isn’t
“magic”. “Magic” has nothing at all to do with changing the PERCEPTION of reality, it has
to do with changing reality itself..
Contrary to myth, fable, fairy tale, and legend, “magic” is not an act, but rather it is a stateof-being. “Magic” is not someone learns to do and then does. “Magic” is something one is.
An individual is “magical” because that individual is other-than-human, and was born that
way. Now, aside from the innate and inborn capacity to alter reality to conform to the will,
which is an always extremely subtle thing, how does this “magical” nature manifest itself?
How does it appear to others?
For some reason one of the most obvious and simple differences between humans and the
“others”, is appearance. That is because human beings deal almost exclusively with
externals. Those who are “other-than human” historically seem to present a more attractive
appearance than average human beings. Maybe that’s where the expression “Devilishly
attractive” originated. This “difference” is universal in human legends of “the others”.
“Elves” and the “Banh Sidhe” are always described as possessing “unearthly beauty” and
being “irresistibly seductive”. Why is this?
Why are some people naturally blonde and some not? Genetics, that’s why.
Another difference that appears universal is charisma. The “others” appear to be
charismatic. Does this mean that anyone who’s good-looking and charming is an “other”.
Of course not, because it’s far more complicated than that. Each and every human being is
a terribly complicated mixture of genetic and environmental influences. And, in any case,
history being taken into consideration, most of them are probably hybrids to some degree
or another.
Well, even if you accept the existence of other-than-humans only in a hypothetical way, it’s
obvious that what’s true of humans would be equally true of non-humans but in a still more
complicated way.
I could go on about much higher intelligence levels, eidetic memories, and many other
things, all of which would be valid qualifications, but for now I will just say that a person
who is likely to be viewed as “magical” by those not too sophisticated and cynical even to
consider the possibility, is a person who comes across not so much as simply “different”
but rather as particularly “special”.
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To the average person, one who is not a “psychic” (i.e possessed of extra-sensory
perception), they nevertheless appear to “glow”. In a less sophisticated age like the period
in which Henry of Anjou lived, this was popularly accepted to be “magical” or “Elven”, or
among the particularly Christian as “Demonic”. Though it’s a shame that a religion could
cause charm and beauty and talent to be seen as “Demonic”.
Getting back to Henry of Anjou, he had a cousin, Robert Duke of Normandy, who was
popularly called Robert the Devil (though not to his face), but that had nothing to do with
what he was, but was entirely because of things that he did. He was a violent, head-strong,
and ferocious man, and our modern psychology would say that he was a psychotic due to
incidents in his childhood. But in that time period he was seen more simplistically as a
totally evil man and therefore was called Robert the Devil. Of course a mythology sprung
up about him. It was all fairy tale nonsense, but it kept people busy in a dull age.
It was common belief at the time in which he lived that Raymond, Count of Le Fôret (The
Forest), whose descendants (The Lusignans) became The Kings of Jerusalem during the
final years of the Crusades, married the "Fair Mélusine". She, Mélusine, was said to be an
"Undine" or "Water Sprite". Raymond had allegedly encountered, or "found" her,
swimming, in a pool deep in a forest, while he was riding to hunt in the forest. She is said to
have “magically” constructed for them a Castle around the site of the pool, which she
named “Chateau Lusine” after herself. This name, over time, was corrupted to Lusignan.
Now, the family of the Lusignans was a very great and powerful family indeed. Their
pedigree was extremely distinguished and they gave Princes to many lands and places and
one of them, Guy de Lusignan (who was a thoroughly nasty man, and an incompetent one
besides) became (through marriage) King of Jerusalem.
To the best of history’s recollection, neither the family, nor the King ever denied this tale of
non-human descent to be true. There are those living today who are descended from the
Lusignans, The Prince of Wales for instance, and his late wife, Diana Spencer as well.
Myself as well.
What is the truth of the story of Melusine? Once again there's no real indication in any of
the tales dealing with her that she was considered to be evil in any way, simply that she
was magical. For instance it was widely believed that she was given, from time to time, to
“fly from the battlements of the Castle to visit her forest pool, and then to fly back again”.
Though that certainly contradicts the story that her magical Castle was built around her
forest pool. What was the way in which she was actually so “special”? I’m afraid we’ll never
know. It is my assumption that she was first perceived to be very beautiful and very
charming and very special and perhaps there was some mystery about her origins, and
that the Mythos began to develop upon that base..
The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II von Höhenstauffen (1194-1250) was popularly
believed to be of partially “superhuman” background. In his case, it’s an easy instance for
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us to see why this is so. Aside from being an inordinately important personage (Born in
1194, he was crowned King of the Romans in 1196, he was crowned King of Sicily in 1198,
He was crowned King of Germany in 1212, and he was Holy Roman Emperor from 1220),
apparently, aside from his obviously fortunate birth, he was a totally unusual person. One
of the most important things about Frederick is that he was the Grandson of Frederick
Barbarossa, and that was seen as quite a “magical descent”, for Barbarossa was a figure
of truly mythical and magical proportions. Back in the 13th Century things like that were far
more important than they are today. Because of the way “news” spread (i.e. word-ofmouth), a person could easily go from being simply a “real person” to being an almost
entirely legendary figure in a very short space of time. That is clearly what happened to
Barbarossa who was “larger than life” in any case.
Matthew Paris, the famous 13th century English historian, who wrote what may be the
primary chronicle of the times, called Frederick “Stupor Mundi” or the “wonder
(amazement) of the world”. This was not because of his vast array of titles and honors and
power. It was solely because of Frederick’s immense abilities and accomplishments.
Frederick himself was an independent polymath and an eclectic scholar of immense note.
In that period being a scholar was very suspect. The Christian establishment did not
approve of independent scholarship. But then Frederick was Holy Roman Emperor, and so
they can be said to have check mated one another. He, after all, had a large and loyal
army. An interesting factor is that while the clerical establishment hated Frederick like
poison, the people absolutely worshiped him. Advanced scholarship in that age was
unusual even in the Church, most Kings and Emperors in that period were virtual illiterates,
so Frederick was doubly unusual.
One of the things about Frederick was that his scholarship included his ability to speak and
read not simply Greek and Latin but Arabic and Hebrew as well. He was also an architect
and a poet and as such, a primary patron of the Trouvères along with his slightly earlier
contemporary, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Calling him a polymath is clearly no exaggeration. His
court, aside from being the most glittering, cultured, and sophisticated in Europe, was also
liberally providing a home to many famous (at the time) Hebrew and Arabic scholars. His
court was a center of Kabalistic ( Q’aballistic ) studies and experimentation. He provided a
warm welcome, and very safe haven, for European students of metaphysics. His highest
ranking court official was Michael Scott (q.v) who was considered to be the most
advanced European Adept of his period, and is historically accepted to be one of the
founders of true (by which I mean valid) Rosicrucianism.
One of the most common elements I have discovered in this series of connections is a link
with Metaphysics or “Magic”. Frederick the second was clearly believed to be a magician.
Michael Scott, his friend and colleague was “known” to be a Mage. Olympia, the Mother of
Alexander the great was believed to be the Macedonian equivalent of a “witch”. The Fair
Mélusine was an Undine. The line of the Counts of Anjou had a long connection with magic
dating from the dark ages and continuing well into the renaissance.
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These are simply three of the most famous instances, there are many others. Please
notice the element in common, they are all of the ruling classes.
Here I believe I must point out that despite the above remark, being a member of the
(usually formerly) ruling class or descended from such a person is no guarantee of any
kind of uniqueness or specialness in any way. Everything needs to fall correctly into place.
Genetics is distinctly a kind of “game of chance”. One need only follow the news to see
how frequently members of the Ruling classes are blithering idiots. But, when things do “fall
correctly into place” there are some truly spectacular results.
What is the difference between having a "fairy ancestress" and being "descended from
Venus" as was Julius Caesar? Believe me, Julius Caesar didn't doubt his divine ancestry
for one minute of his life, with the possible exception of the last few moments of it (There’s
nothing like being assassinated to make one feel very human indeed). Or being the direct
descendent from Odhinn in the male line as Ragnar Lödbrok, King of Norway knew himself
to be? Or from Odhinn, Yngwi, and Skaadi; as Ragnar’s contemporary and relation, my
own ancestor, Rurik of Göteland, Prince of the Rus(fl. 855), knew himself to be? What is
the truth here?
For one thing we can be sure of, while the details may be fabulous, they overlay a distinct
and totally factual truth. And that truth is that these individual’s antecedents are neither
"deities" or "fairies", but simply the extended and obscured memories of "others". What
else can you call non-humans but “others”?
THE CAULDRON AND THE GRAIL:
Let me continue by discussing two objects, one of them very real, The Gundestrøp
Cauldron (You can see it, but surely not touch it, in the museum in Copenhagen,
Denmark). The other is the "The Holy Grail", which is nothing but an object of fancy. But
one which is unfortunately all too real to far too many people.
What do legends of parallel evolutions have to do with the very real Danish Gundestrøp
Cauldron (c. 200 -100 B.C.E.)? Many contemporary scholars (among them some very
respected and eminent Christian theologians) believe the Gundestrøp Cauldron to be the
model from which medieval Christian poets and theological myth-makers developed the
myth of the Holy Grail. Our question then, must be, are there any actual connections or
links between the Cauldron which is a real artifact, and that totally mythical "Holy Grail"?
Well, there are two connections between the real caldron and the mythical cup, as I see it.
The Gundestrøp Cauldron was, as its careful preservation implies, an extremely precious
and highly revered artifact of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples. Why it was so precious we
have no way of actually knowing, but there are things we may surmise. There are things we
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may assume in view of the religious beliefs of the Celts. The people who lived in Denmark
when the cauldron was made were clearly of at least partial Celtic descent. What is today
Denmark was once the home of a Celtic Tribe called The Cimry (all of whom were there in
200 B.C.E. and, despite their almost total destruction by the Romans, at least some
remnant of whom were still there in 100 B.C.E.).
The Cauldron was most likely not only entwined with the Mythos of Ceridwen's Cauldron (a
"cauldron of rebirth"), and the Cauldron of The Dagda (an inexhaustible source of
nourishment), but was itself, perhaps, an imaginative artistic re-creation or representation
of one or both of these cauldrons. It can be nothing other than an imaginative symbol
because, of course, the two cauldrons in question never really existed, but are instead
symbolic of the conceptions of re-birth and the nourishment of people by agencies of the
"divine".
These cauldrons, which are the foci of very important pre-Christian anagogical myths, were
and are, connected with pre-Christian views of life and death all of which were very
important to the mythology/theology being developed by the Christians. They were also
very threatening to the developing body of Christian dogma. The founders of Christianity
were very talented publicists, they adapted and converted all prevalent and popular
religious beliefs into the context of their religious construct in order to attract as many
"converts" as possible.
It's interesting that, in order to "convert" people, the Early Christian "spin doctors" first
converted those people's ideas!
This Gundestrøp cauldron, whatever it may actually have been in its original creation, (and
it certainly wasn't a soup pot), could very easily just have been simply a decorative object.
However, I really don’t think that it was “simply a decorative object”.. Considering the
motifs of its decoration, I think that anything other than a ritual function was highly unlikely.
There are careful and dignified representations of divinities and divine symbology all over
it. Because those people seldom would "profane" such clearly religious objects, it probably
had both a religious significance and use.
The Gundestrøp Caldron was therefore intimately connected with the spiritual lives of the
Celtic peoples and their mysterious Priesthood, the Druids. And that "Druidic" connection
very strongly ties the Holy Grail/Gundestrøp Caldron very firmly to the tradition involving
parallel evolutionary developments.
THE DRUIDIC CONNECTION:
How does a "Druidic Connection" tie the Gundestrøp Cauldron to the tradition implying
parallel evolutions? We know the cauldron was a Druidic artifact because if it was Celtic,
and it was, and if it was a religious artifact, and it was, it was probably both made by, or at
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least for, the Druids, and used by Druids.
But why would those facts tie the cauldron to the tradition implying parallel evolutions? It
does so, because it grows ever more clear that the Druids were not simply a Order of
Priests made up of ordinary people who were "recruited" or enrolled in the "Order". The
“Druids” were not a Priestly Order, though some “Druids” functioned in that capacity. What
they were, was a hereditary tribe or "Caste". This “caste” constituted the intellectual
hierarchy of pre-Roman Europe. Later, suitably disguised or "occulted", the Druids
constituted the intellectual and ruling elite of post-Roman Christianized Europe as well.
Celtic Christianity was an extension and revision of Druidism. It’s purpose was to make
Druidism compatible with Christianity, it was also a total perversion of Druidism. To be
honest, it was a perversion of Christianity as well; as the Papacy soon realized.
Let me introduce another very important element for our consideration: The Vedas.
Druidism, and Pythagoreanism, while they are hardly identical, have a great deal of
commonality. I personally believe Druidism to be far closer to the high level of philosophy
which is displayed in the Vedas than is any other Western Metaphysical Philosophy,
(Pythagoreanism included). I also believe that Druidism and the Vedas may, in fact have
originated in an identical source,
There is considerable evidence that perhaps all that Pythagoreanism was, could be
described as Greek Druidism. Pythagoras was an extremely famous philosopher and
teacher. But no one is born such, some one had to have been his teacher. There are two
strong indications of who that may have been in history.
One tradition is that Pythagoras was a principle disciple of one of the 13 Zoroasters, and
the other is that he was the pupil of a Druid of the Keltoi. (Who may or may not have been
a slave of Pythagoras’ family) It is equally possible that both are true. In fact, those
classical authors who wrote about Pythagoras as a man, also claimed him to have been an
initiate of every mystery school then available. But unless something truly unexpected is
found by archaeologists, we’ll never really know. But the truly immense degree of respect
shown to Pythagoras by his contemporaries would lead us to believe the stories of his
qualifications to be probably valid. It is very interesting to notice that Pythagoras’
contemporaries, while immensely respectful and admiring of him, were nevertheless,
sufficiently sophisticated NOT to claim any kind of “Divine” status for him. They remarked
on his very remarkable teachers, and they remarked on his extremely illustrious status
among the mystae, but that is all.
Nevertheless, Druidism and Pythagoreanism are far closer to the Vedic Metaphysical
philosophy than either of them are to Christianity to which both of them are infinitely
superior.
Because of the Vedas and the Upanishads and many continuing centuries of Indian
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Philosophical musings on them, we know infinitely more about Brahminical philosophy than
we do about Druidical philosophy where all we possess is second hand commentary.
This is equally true of Pythagoras, but luckily, in his case, some of that "second hand
commentary" comes from sources such as Socrates and Plato who were at least
conversant with Pythagorean Philosophy on what is alleged to be a "first-hand" basis.
Both the Druids and the Pythagoreans shared the peculiar concept that all written
recording of their basic philosophy and belief structure was forbidden. Or at least so we are
told. If this was, in fact, true, I have an idea as to why they did this, which I will discuss
presently. But, no matter what the reasons were, or how valid they were, it cost those of us
who live today, dearly. Had we this knowledge, the world might be a far better place.
Unfortunately in the conflict between Keltic Christianity and Roman Christianity, the Kelts,
as usual, lost. The world would have been a far better place had Druidically influenced
Keltic Christianity been the philosophical source of modern Western societies. It would
have been an even better place had Druidism itself been the philosophic force behind the
development of Western civilization instead of Christianity which is essentially an aspect of
Roman Myrmidonism.
A tribe or "Caste" is an hereditary thing, a tribe or "caste" is obviously a genetic thing. The
question I am beginning to ask in reference to the Druidic caste is whether or not it was
entirely human or whether, like the Brahmin Caste was believed to be in Ancient, but not (
at least officially not) in modern India, it might be considered to be something different and
“special”.
[NOTE: I’ve just used the term “other than human” and so I believe I had better define what
I mean by that as clearly as possible. It would be very easy for readers to get a
misconception of the way I mean it. What I mean by it is this:
As Homo Sapiens or Cro- Magnon Man was to Neanderthal Man , so too, the people I call
“other than Human” are to Homo Sapiens.]
Now, the Brahmins in India are defined by the sobriquet “Twice Born” but that is odd,
because of Indian belief in Reincarnation. While of course “reincarnation” is not considered
to be a speculative thing in India, and while “twice born” sounds like it is distinctly
connected to that conception, if everyone is believed to “reincarnate”, what else does
"twice born" imply about the Brahmins other than “specialness” in a land of those who
clearly see themselves as successively “born again”? Where this to be untrue, why the
epithet?
In line with this question I am also asking myself is there a connection of some kind
between the Druidic Caste and the Tuatha de Danann or Banh Sidhe? If there is, what is
the connection between the Druidic Caste and the Banh Sidhe or the Tuatha Danann?
In Nordic traditions the same caste the Celts clearly called Druids were called Æthlinga.
The Æthlingae were the highest levels of the ruling classes (As time went by “Æthling”
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came to mean simply “Royal Prince”). The Æthlingae were viewed as either “Æsir” or
"Æsgarders" (Æsgarde = the realm of the "Gods"), or "Ütgarders" (Ütgarde = "outside"),
which while they do not mean the same thing, do possess if not entirely identical, at least
related implications of non-humanness.
There is an interesting difference though, and it is perhaps worth a word of explanation.
In the Nordic-Teutonic world view (Welt-Ümshauung); the world, or locus, of humankind’s
activities is called “Midgard” (Middle-Earth), the locus, or area of “divine”, or spiritual activity
is called Æsgarde, and the locus of pre-self aware , pre-physical, elemental activity is
called “Hel”. Now, the three loci; Æsgarde, Midgard, and Hel, form one single tripartite
parameter in which Human Evolution takes place. With Midgard being Human space,
Æsgarde being post-human space, and Hel being pre-human space.
But Ütgarde is outside the parameter completely. It is the Ütgarders who are distinctly
“others’. Apparently the Nordics and Teutons weren’t completely clear in their estimation of
which category the Æthlingae fit into. Perhaps what they were attempting to say was that
the Æthlingae fit into both paradigms.
THE TUATHA DE DANANN - BANH SIDHE;
In regard to defining the Tuatha De Danann / Banh Sidhe (pronounced Banshee) , the
answer I keep coming up with is this: they are absolutely identical!
That answer is of necessity, based upon Irish proto-history, as it is the only proto-history
which has survived the advent of Christianity. As the Irish were Kelts, I think it only fair to
assume that their proto-history (at least to some degree) mirrors the history of the
Keltic peoples in the other areas of their diaspora. Certainly Druids were common to all the
Keltic peoples, and that means to all European peoples. We are beginning to discover that
the Kelts were far more widely dispersed than was originally believed and that other
people, heretofore not believed to be Kelts, were actually Kelts. Or, as with the Germans,
at least partially Keltic. Many scholars view the Teutons as a sub-sept of the Kelts.
That is why I think it historically and philosophically valid to use the Irish as a microcosm of
Keltic-ness, as it were, and to assume that Irish Myth and Keltic Myth are similar if not
identical. We do know this: Irish and Welch myths are extremely similar and they
interconnect. Scottish myth is only an extension or variant of Irish myth. This is because
the Scoti, an Irish tribe, emigrated from Dalriada in Ireland, to Alba or the Northernmost
part of the British Isle. After militarily overcoming both the Brythonic Gaels who lived in the
Western Part of Alba, and the Picts, who they found living in the Eastern Part of Alba, and
then inter-marrying with them, the hybrid became what we call the Scots.
No one’s ever suggested it be called “Pictland”. I say the Picts and the Brythonic Gaels
were “living in the area” because we have absolutely no idea if they were indigenous. We
really have no idea who, if anyone, was indigenous to the British Isles. It would probably be
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far easier to say if the Channel had been original and not a relatively late development.
But, relatively speaking, the “English Channel” was a “late development”.
We also cannot forget that the last word in paleontology and anthropology says that human
beings are indigenous ONLY to Africa and that all other human habitation is the result of
dispersion and migration. If that is true, and the hypothesis seems to be well supported,
than no one is indigenous to anywhere and only Africa has indigenous inhabitants. Though
the latest Paleontological theories hypothesize that it was what we call “modern man”
which developed in Africa, while Neanderthal Man and Homo Erectus Australiensis and
Peking Man developed elsewhere but did not survive. Personally, I don’t believe the “case
is closed” as to where Humanity actually developed. In any case, that is not entirely true
however, as Africa’s present inhabitants are “mutants” as it were, from the original
“humans”, as are all other septs of the human race.
But then paleontology and anthropology do not even pretend to discuss this planet’s
“others”, it’s other race. How could they with no empirical evidence? Where that race
originated, the “place” to which it is indigenous, that is a question to which neither I nor
anyone else has a clue. Lot’s of theories, but almost no clues at all. My personal intuition is
that the “others” are survivors of the precursor culture. About which more in time. However,
this I will say, we have absolutely no idea as to where that precursor culture might be
indigenous. They too could have been migrants. Which thought opens a really big “can of
worms”. But we just don’t know.
"The Tuatha De Danann", were, it seems to me, an only apparently legendary people.
What they were, was a totally non-human tribe which are believed to have occupied Ireland
before the Kelts arrived. They were regarded as an important but entirely super-natural
part of Ireland's population in pre-Christian Ireland. As there was an equivalent in Wales,
Scotland, and Brittany, I think we can safely assume some equivalency everywhere the
Kelts lived. Which was literally “everywhere” in Europe.
What shall we assume “super-natural” to actually be trying to tell us? You know if you really
look at the meaning of “super-natural” mightn’t it mean to say paranormal? In fact, from
either a semantical or a philological point-of-view, what else could it possibly mean? The
two terms are nearly synonyms, one, “super-natural”, is common usage and the other,
“paranormal”, is more technical. But we, today, have given different meanings to them.
“Super-natural” has to do with “ghosts, and sprites, and things that go bump in the night”
while “Paranormal” has to do with extra-sensory perception and advanced human abilities.
Looked at from that point-of-view, with the Banh Sidhe being paranormal rather than supernatural: Suppose that, instead of being the Banh Sidhe of myth and fairy tale, let us
assume that, whoever or whatever they were, they were a group, or race, of individuals
who were totally unlike the people who are telling us about them. That “difference”
apparently included external appearance.
Now the period in question is somewhere between the possibly ( probably?) mythical fall of
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Troy (which is allegedly some 1200 to 1500 years before the common era, and therefore a
really long time ago) and, perhaps a couple of centuries before the Common Era. I say the
fall of Troy because the associated legend claims that the Milesians (who are our modern
Keltic Irish) were survivors of the Trojan War. It is claimed that “Miles” (it means soldier in
Latin) their eponymous leader, was a “brother” of Aeneas and therefore a son of King
Priam of Troy. The Welch believe that still another Brother (Brutus) was their eponymous
nation founder. And of course the Romans claim Aeneas for their own. Of course, no one
in their right mind would believe this to be literally true, but at least it gives us an idea of
what people much closer to the events in question believed. What we do know is that the
Kelts probably migrated from Ionia, which of course, is where the Troy of Legend stood..
In this context, I have a question; would it not be reasonable to ask ourselves if this tale of
descent from an event, so old as to be past memory, (i.e. “The Fall of Troy”); might not
have been a way that the Bards of Old Ireland described an event that took place even
further back among the mists of time? That ”event” being the fall or collapse of the
Precursor Culture.
Let’s sort of take a look at that for a while. The place Heinrich Schliemann identified as
“Troy” was based entirely on his perception of the location of that city as he read “The
Iliad”. Now, it is absolutely clear that the site he chose, “The Mound called by the Turks
‘HISARLIK”; AND WHICH HAD BEEN KNOWN SINCE Hellenic and Roman times as the
site of a City-state called “ILION” was the location of many cites, and they are all piled one
on top of the other. The problem is that we don’t know if “Ilion” (Hisarlik) was a trading
center or merely the site of a major nobleman’s Villa. In the very interesting world of
professional German archaeology there is a “war” going on in regard to the nature of
Hisarlik.
Was one of the “layers” Troy? We don’t really know, and we can’t really know, because
the entire Trojan War is no more than myth. All of its characters are highly problematic
when it comes to historicity, and most of the major characters have aspects that are not
entirely “normal”. Because of that continued emphasis on para-normality, it certainly
wouldn’t be unreasonable to conjecture that the entire mythos refers to some basically
racial memory, and that could be the fall of the precursor culture, could it not?
In his book “THE CELTIC DRUIDS” (pub. 1823), Geoffrey Higgins posits that the Celts
were descended from “survivors of the flood” and that clearly means the “Precursor
Culture” and he furthermore demonstrates that the Brahmins believed the same thing, and
that the Celts and the Brahmins were the same race, dispersed.
Now, of course, let us admit freely that this “dating” is extremely arbitrary, and that the
likelihood of “Troy” having anything to do whatsoever with the Celtic Folk Migrations or with
the settlement of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, is highly unlikely. What is important are the
Celtic Folk Migrations ( what the Germans call; Völkerwanderung) and that took place
during the fourth or fifth centuries prior to the common era.
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Let us assume that upon their arrival in Ireland, Wales, and perhaps, somewhat earlier in
Europe itself, they found the present occupants to be mightily unlike themselves. They
called the present inhabitants the Children of Danu (Tuatha de Danann) or, conversely
these people called themselves that, and the Irish are only “passing it along”. Danu was the
Chief, or Great Mother Goddess of these people, that is why they were called her
“children”. Their chief God was “The Dagda”. (He of the Cauldron)
One of the many legends connected with the Tuatha da Danann claims that they were
“banished from heaven because of their knowledge” and descended on Ireland in the form
of a “cloud of mist”.
There was also an accompanying history which claimed that the Tuatha de Danann~Banh
Sidhe had also emigrated to their present lands and had been forced to conquer it from the
previous inhabitants whom they called the Fir Bolg. There were other inhabitants who had
also been “invaders” who were the Partholonians and the Nemedians both of whom have
some utterly temporally impossible connection with Rome. Who had in their turn conquered
the place from an even more primitive people called the “Fomorians”.
The “Fir Bolg” which means “Men of the Bags” also were said to have come from Greece,
where they were alleged to be something like slaves who had to carry dirt from construction
sites in large leather “bags” which they later converted to boats (Coracle or Curragh) and
fled to Ireland’ which feat is quite amazing if true.
Now the “Fomorians” were really interesting, for they weren’t even seen as physically
anthropoid or “human-like”. On the contrary they were described as gigantic and brutish
and totally more like animals then men. Even their facial features were described as “Goat
Like”. Could we be talking the last of the Neanderthals here? Or could we be talking the
European equivalent of “Big Foot” or the “Yeti”?
In fact, are the “Yeti” and “Big Foot” and “Sasquatch” the remnants of the Neanderthal
Race? No one really knows, and I very much doubt if anyone ever will unless and until an
otherwise inexplicable fossil is found. With fossils one can’t really argue. (Though I admit
that some irrationalist-fundamentalist-literalists do.) If The Fir Bolg actually existed as
described, it’s hardly impossible for such a thing to be found, there are a lot of peat bogs in
Ireland and they make wonderful morgues. It just hasn’t happened yet. Of course that also
doesn’t imply it will happen. It’s just one of the many things we just don’t know, yet.
However, elsewhere in Europe we have very strong evidence that Neanderthal and Homo
Sapiens lived side by side for millennia. We also have DNA evidence that they did NOT
interbreed. Or at least until very recently we thought we did. Recently a child’s skeleton
was discovered which appears to have been a hybrid between Homo-Sapiens and HomoNeanderthalis because of the nature of it’s bone structure. It’s head was crushed in the
event of its discovery and intact would have provided even stronger evidence, but the
paleontologists are putting the pieces together and perhaps they will find the evidence we
need. In any case this will certainly change some things about our views of our planet’s
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citizens. Some would then be pure descendants of the Precursor culture, and others
hybrids of Homo Sapiens and the Precursor Descendants, while still others would prove to
be descendants of hybridized Homo Sapiens-Homo Neanderthalis mixes. This would
certainly require some re-thinking of the nature of our societies.
Now, I said that the emigrating Milesians had found the occupants of their new territories
“Mightily unlike themselves”. How so? How “unlike”? The main thing we have got to keep in
mind is that the “Tuatha” have always been identified as identical with “Elves”.
Did they have radically pointed ears? Did they have cat-like eyes? No one knows. It is
strange however, that almost globally the myths depicting these people share those
characteristics. While I’ve never seen anyone with “cat eyes” that could certainly be a
mythologizing way to define the eyes of Orientals, and I have seen many people with
distinctly “pointed ears”. But there are other more subtle differences. Suppose that these
people, or “tribe” were all plentifully possessed of something we are only just beginning to
define as paranormal abilities. Let us grant that the Milesians weren’t so endowed. Would
not that have seemed immensely “magical” to the primitive Kelts?
Though it is clear from the legends which tell of “Aimairgin the Druid”, who was credited
with being primarily responsible for defeating the Tuatha as well as being “magically
endowed”, which would appear to indicate that some of the Kelts were paranormally
endowed or wished to claim that they were so.
My own view of this is that when the Kelts arrived in Ireland, or perhaps, and I view this as
much more likely, when they first arrived in what we now call Europe, they had not as yet
encountered any peoples as paranormally endowed as the Tuatha De Danann. I think they
must have come as a compete surprise even to the original Keltic Shamanic Priesthood
who were later to be superseded by, and transformed into “Druids” by the people called
“The Tuatha da Danann”.
The question that naturally arises her is WHO were the survivor population? The Kelts or
the Tuatha de Danann? My opinion is that they BOTH were, but to different degrees of
racial purity. Let me explain:
The question is: How did the Tuatha de Danann of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany evolve into
the Pan-European Druids? There is absolutely no evidence that the Druidic Order or Caste
pre-dates the Keltic Migration into Western-most Europe. But of course, lack of physical
proof doesn’t mean the Druids didn’t exist both among the Keltoi and among the Pre-Keltic
populations, we simply cannot prove that it did. In all historical discussion it is better not to
be didactic without ample empirical proof. The problem here, is that we don’t really know
very much about the Druidic Culture except what we get from the Romans, whose
accounts are far more propaganda than history. If the Druidic Caste among the Kelts was
composed of members of the “survivor population”, what then were the Tuatha De
Danann?
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It is my suspicion that the Druidic Caste among the Kelts was composed, by this date, of
primarily hybrid members of the “survivor population”. The Tuatha de Danann, on the other
hand, because of their physical isolation, were in all likelihood entirely “pure” blooded
members of that population. Entirely alien as opposed to simply partially alien.
Remember, according to the legends the “Tuatha” were defeated by the Milesians, and
went “underground” to become the Sidhe. I think that’s part of what happened, but there’s
a lot more to it. Most importantly, I believe “the defeat” to be a strategic untruth. Because of
that belief, I also belief the feats of Aimairgin The Druid” to be entirely a fabrication. But a
fabrication of the Tuatha de Danann not the Milesians. In other words, “Aimairgin” is not a
“face-saving myth”, but a “cover-story”.
The “other” question is: What really happened?
Now, every shred of historical and historic-mythology we possess, makes it extremely clear
that the Druidical Caste were certainly regarded as very important, and at its upper levels
quite super-natural indeed. But there is no real indication that the Druidical Caste, or even
the Arch-Druid him or herself, was considered to be as totally “magical” as were the Banh
Sidhe, which was what the Tuatha de Danann had become by historical times in Eire.
Let’s create a scenario of what may have actually happened. I will base the scenario on
Irish myth, legend, and history. We start with the Kelts, in migration from somewhere else.
By “somewhere else” I mean the place they started out before they arrived in Europe. They
eventually arrive in a place,(Eire) new to them, which is not inhabited by people who are
like themselves, but by people who are considerably different than themselves. Obviously
these people could not have been technically advanced or a highly urbanized civilization,
because archaeology gives no indication of any such thing existing. Even peat bogs can’t
hide the remnants of an advanced and urban civilization. But these previous inhabitants
were hardly ordinary. They had great wealth, advanced art forms, and “magic”. They
should have won.
They probably did. It just depends on what one means by “won”.
Legends such as the histories to which I am referring usually tell about how things “might
have been”, or “could have been”, or more important still, “should have been”; and they
take a long time to develop.
Based upon Irish legendary history I’d say what happened is this:
The Milesians, after much warfare, were absorbed into the population as the western
equivalent of the warrior caste of Kshatriyas in Aryan India. After all, the “cutting edge” of
modern paleontology/anthropology is beginning to think that the Kelts and The Aryans are
closely related, if not identical.
The really original inhabitants, those who were conquered by the Tuatha De Danann, those
we know as the Fir Bolg, ( and we have no idea at all how the Fir Bolg relate to, or differ
46
from the Femorians, or even if they differ), became the common people, and the Tuatha
became the Kingly, Priestly, and Intellectual Caste.
Because their religious practices were similar, and their origin identical, they eventually and
almost insensibly merged with the Druidic Caste among the Kelts and eventually became
popularly known as simply “The Druids”. This is not an unusual set of circumstances. The
same thing happened in Greece when the Achaeans conquered the country. The
Achaeans, who were not original to Greece, became the Hellenes, and the original
inhabitants became the servile classes.
Is it not also possible that after Christianity conquered the Celts, which was not a sudden
conquest but a process which took two or three hundred years, during that process, a
confusion arose in the Celtic-Northern European public consciousness and due to that
confusion, along with the Druidic Order, the Tuatha De Danann were transformed into The
Sidhe. Now obviously that is not what actually happened to the Druids...but it was a
convenient confusion.
But is there really a difference between the Tuatha de Danann and The Druids?
Obviously the Irish believed in both the Banh Sidhe, and their predecessors the Tuatha De
Danann, long before the first Christian Missionaries arrived on the wings of Rome. Though
perhaps “believed in” is not the correct expression to use. The Early Irish didn’t simply
“believe in” the existence of these “magical peoples” they knew, and knew surely, that
these peoples existed. Just as Americans today know the Sioux and the Apaches existed.
And, also just as there are living Amerindians in America today, in old Ireland, there were
living Tuatha da Danann/Banh Sidhe to drive home the truth.
What I believe occurred, and it may have been either carefully planned, or totally insensible
(i.e. coincidental) or any combination of the two, is that over time the totally magical Banh
Sidhe (Tuatha de Danann) and the varying degrees of magical and near-magical Druids
merged in the common memory and became one thing. Which “thing”, they may, in fact,
have been all along. I think they were!
The Banh Sidhe, of course, are a magical, mysterious chthonic people who were
sometimes benign and sometimes malign, sometimes benefactors of humankind and
sometimes not. All of which easily fits the Druidic Caste as well. In fact, if you look at that
statement openly, it fits every sentient being that has ever existed. People, all of them, very
easily fit the old nursery phrase: “When they are good...they’re very, very good....but when
they are bad they are awful!”. And you know what else? In the long run it doesn’t matter at
all, it all balances itself out. But the important thing is it’s all a learning environment.
It is well to remember the whole of the story of the Tuatha De Danann. Let me recapitulate
it shortly for you.
In the Irish "History of the Invasions", Ireland is conquered by different waves of invaders,
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The present day Celtic Irish see themselves as the inheritors of the Milesians. We know
the modern and ancient Irish to be Kelts and truly not indigenous to the island. They
believe themselves to be descended from Miles, whom we view as an eponymous
ancestor who was a Kelt from Celt-Iberia. The Irish view him as a Trojan. I find that difficult
to believe, however, it’s not entirely possible that his ancestors were fugitives from “Troy”.
Because scientific history says that Troy, if it existed at all, fell centuries before this could
have possibly taken place. But “Troy” or Ilion was in Ionia, and there we find an area called
today Galicia. Now the Celto-Iberians came from and left behind a people called Galicians
in the Iberian Peninsula, and so the “Trojan” aspect may simply be a result of the confusion
caused by time and the coincidence of location.
The Celtic history claims that Mile’s brother, "Brutus" led the wave of Celts who settled
Wales. The are both supposed to be, but historically cannot possibly be, the brothers of
Aeneas, son of Priam, King of Troy; who of course, is alleged to have founded Rome!!
All things considered, and in view of future happenings, what an interesting and ironic
connection that is! There is, of course, absolutely no way to prove that any aspect of the
story, including the part about “Aeneas”, could be anything but eponymous and totally
mythical.
Now then, when the Milesians ( Kelts) reached Eire, the people they found ruling that
Island were the Tuatha De Danann, and they are depicted as entirely magical. They in turn,
conquered the Island from its aboriginal inhabitants ( at least we think they were aboriginal,
but once again that leaves the Femorians, Nemedians, and Partholonians in limbo as it
were)) who are known to Irish history as the Fir Bolg. The Tuatha themselves, came to
Ireland, not from Europe but allegedly from "the uttermost West". Where exactly is that? I
have no idea, but it certainly isn't California, or is it? No one would be more surprised than I
were that to prove the case. I think it’s almost completely safe to say we’ll never know
where they came from, if it is any thing other than as refugees from the collapse of the
precursor culture.
It is my idea that the "tribe" in question, The Tuatha De Danann, were, in fact, the actuality
of what eventually became the Druidic Caste in all the areas where either the Goidelic or
Brythonic (language variants) Kelts dwelt. They replaced or merged with the extant rulingpriestly classes. Let us say hypothetically, that they were the indigenous ruling class in
Northern Europe and the British Isles when the Kelts arrived at the end of their long
Diaspora from middle Scythia. It is important to remember that in this hypothesis both the
Kelts and the Tuatha Da Danann were related and were descended form survivors of the
collapse of the precursor culture. The difference was that the Kelts were hybridized with
Homo Sapiens stock and the Tuatha were pure-blooded. Let us make it clear that they
(The Tuatha) stayed the Ruling class. despite Milesian-Keltic myths to the contrary. We
don’t really have any other myths that tell of these occurrences. The Nordo-Teutonic
Mythos deals only with Æthlingae and Ütgarders, i.e. The Æsir.)
Let us also say hypothetically that in this, the mythology is correct and they themselves
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(The Tuatha) were not indigenous, after all the Irish Legend has the Fir Bolg as the original
rulers of Ireland, and even in Historical Ancient Ireland there were clans who were called
Fir Bolg and Clans who were seen as descendants of the Milesian or Celtic settlers. The
famous “Fionn mac Cumhail or Finn Mac Cool” was a member of a clan described as Fir
Bolg. The troops of the “Fianna” which were the private troops of the High King, were
strictly limited to Fir Bolg clansmen. But the only group not connected to any Clan were
the Druids. The Land or Cattle Barons (i.e. anyone who owned cattle) were the only
nobility and they were all Milesians as were the rest of the Warrior class. The many various
clan chiefs (Kings) were also usually Milesians).
Let us also say hypothetically that what originally gave rise to the character of their myth is
that the Tuatha de Danann were not actually Homo sapiens but another species
altogether, and that the "differences" were causing problems with the Kelts, who were, I
believe, far more numerous. The Kelts were feeling inferior which they didn’t like, and they
had lost, which they liked even less.
Think about it for a moment. If the Human race is having problems between its various socalled racial branches. If the human race is experiencing troubles between its various
ethnicities. Worst of all, if human race is experiencing violent troubles between people of
the same branch, the same ethnicity, but different religions. What would the situation be
like between two peoples who had almost nothing at all in common? Not even their
common humanity. What would the situation be like if one people were feeling both afraid
of, and intrinsically inferior to, the other people.?
Human Beings for some unfathomable reason are extremely insecure and feel threatened
by anything they fear is ‘superior” to themselves. Look at the record of the treatment by
Humans of people regarded as geniuses. They are either idolized or demonized, far more
frequently the latter.
The eventual response of the non-humans was a very wise one. After all "magical" is a
good, if primitive, description of advanced non-humans. In a wise response, the Tuatha
"moved underground", so to speak. They hadn’t really moved underground except in the
symbolic sense of the word, what they had done is transformed themselves into the Druid
Caste. Being the intellectual and Priestly, Political, and Poetic leaders of a Nation is a far
safer situation than being clearly alien. That left the Kelts as the “warrior caste”. This
allowed the Milesians a great deal of “chest thumping” and it allowed them the illusion of
being “in charge”. In Keltic Lands it was a far worse offense to kill a Druid or Bard than to
kill a King. This was identical to the situation in India between the Kshatriya or warrior
caste and the Brahmin or Priestly class. The Brahmins ruled, the Kshatriya believed they
ruled, and everyone was happy.
As to Eire, I have an intuition that the Sidhe were not entirely a fictional “front” for the
Tuatha/Druids. I think that some of them were so entirely non-human, and so entirely
“magical” that they really had to keep out of humankind’s way in order to physically survive
without a re-ignition of the original warfare.
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This pretended dichotomy between the very real Druids and the pseudo-mythical “Tuatha”
lasted until the advent of Christianity. By that I mean to say until it became clear that
Christianity would become the dominant religious paradigm.
At that point those of the Druidic Caste who did not merge into the Christian priestly
hierarchy, which was hardly an option for the highest ranks of the Druid Priesthood, again
quietly and subtly went "underground" as it were, joined their fellows who had for so long
been there, disappeared from public view, and merged in the public imagination with the
Tuatha de Danann/Banh Sidhe. The majority of those already “underground”, who were the
most advanced and least human of this people, did not stay “underground” but silently
emigrated to safer climes. Where that may have been we have absolutely no idea, but I am
tempted to believe it is back to the general vicinity from whence they came. The culture
whose collapse they had fled so long before no longer existed that is sure, but that means
its principal centers of culture and administration no longer existed. I do not believe it is
possible for the entire physical space occupied by the precursor culture to have vanished.
It is to the physical remnants of this space that the Tuatha returned.
But in fact, the great majority of the Druidic Ruling class, “converted to Christianity” and
stayed what they had always been the ruling, scientific, and intellectual class of the Celtic
world.
But who were they? That question, by the way, should not be construed as being limited to
who they were among the Kelts. These people were the survivors of the precursor culture
and they were ubiquitous.
The Persian and Chaldean Magi, The Druids, some, but hardly all, of the Egyptian
Priesthoods, and those of the Mystery Schools, and probably the Brahmins, and in Africa,
the Ife, Dogon, and Yoruba Priestly classes with them, were, I believe, the remnants or
survivors of the ruling and priestly classes of something that can probably be best thought
of as "the precursor culture".
"Precursor culture" I think you will see, explains my earlier reference to "The Legendary
Priesthoods of The Sun and Moon of Atlantis".
While they may have disappeared from public awareness as a group, it is also my
suspicion that, with certain very spectacular exceptions who couldn’t do so. The Tuatha De
Danann, or Druidic Caste, far from disappearing underground or "becoming invisible",
became invisible by way of becoming extremely visible.
What I am beginning to believe happened to the Druidic Caste is that when Rome finally
imploded in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries of the Common Era, they, along with Roman
Military retirees, remained what they had always been, and that was the European (and
other places as well) ruling classes.
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It is, among those few who care about the subject, and are therefore interested in it; a
pretty well accepted fact that Europe's lower nobility are mostly descended from Roman
subalterns and officers. Men who had been retiring, and marrying (largely, as they were
prosperous and influential with the Roman Government, into local nobility), and raising
families, all over Europe for approximately five centuries. This was Rome’s very intelligent
method for “Romanizing” their Empire. Officers and the regular troops too, were permitted
to “retire in place” and gifted with land holdings commensurate with their rank. This practice
both Romanized Europe and helped to make it Christian.
Europe's higher nobility are descended from Christianized and partially Romanized Druids
who had always been the leadership class of the Gauls-Celts-Germans. Maybe that's why
there's such a mystery about the "Sang Real" or the "blood royal". The "Mystery" began as
a wise and well advised necessity of secrecy for the sake of self-preservation, and then,
as time passed, and as the inevitable mists over memory gathered, the reasons for the
secrecy were forgotten and only the mystery remained.
Now there is an interesting corollary to this. I know that I have said that the survivor
population, or rather their descendants, became the Ruling Classes all over Europe, and to
be honest it was true Planet wide. Now this sounds both elitist and exclusive, and it was,
but it was not exclusionary, or at least not as exclusionary as it sounds. I think it important
to remember that a very important and ubiquitous element in the various legends of the
pre-cursor culture is that it was an extremely advanced culture! Because of that, it is
reasonable to assume that the individuals who survived the collapse of that culture were
considerably advanced too.
I believe that there was both a conscious
unconscious occurrence of hybridization.
policy of hybridization and a natural or
Let’s look at some European evidence of conscious hybridization. There was a medieval
policy, that is among the most maligned of all medieval ideas, and that is the “IUS PRIMAE
NOCTAE” or “The right of the first night” which gave the Lord of the Manor the right to the
first night of the marriage of any of the inhabitants of his demesne.
Now this sounds truly objectionable, in fact despicable, but lets ask ourselves WHY this
was formalized into Law, Policy, and Custom. I very much doubt if it was due only to lust.
The reason I doubt it, well a noble had all the accouterments to obtain all the sexual
gratification he or she desired without forcing the issue. We all know that under the social
situation in Feudalism the nobles didn’t really need to “formalize” a policy whereby they got
to allegedly deflower all the brides in their fiefs. We also know that the Ius Primae Noctae
was more honored by non-observance than observance and Lords who demanded their
“right” were looked down upon by their peers. If there was any non-genetic basis for Ius
Primæ Noctæ it was as a demonstration of power and authority.
However, it was hardly required for the purpose of gene spread.. As they would have put
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it, “Young Lordlings and the Squirage tumbled wenches all the time and got many children
on the wrong side of the Blanket”, this was what I called the “natural or unconscious
hybridization”.
The “Right of First Night” was the other kind of hybridization, the conscious kind.
Now, if the aristocracy was at least partially descended from the precursor survivors, this
certainly spread the genes about freely. Now it must also be remembered that the
“wenches” tumbled by the Lordlings could very easily have been the “get” of previous such
matings and in fact, so might have been either or both of their parents, so the possibility of
fortuitous genetic combinations is very high.
That is why in our times, if one accepts the Precursor Hypothesis, then clearly it is
becoming necessary to identify the descendants of these matings no matter what their
social standing, and help them to realize their potentials. And of course, I cannot remind
everyone sufficiently frequently that genetic inheritance is something of a gamble. There
are, and I am sure everyone knows this, terribly aristocratic “blue bloods” who are blithering
idiots. Sometimes recessives overwhelm potential.
The Roman Military types of whom I speak; were themselves, for the most part, not
actually Romans per se. By the time of the implosion of the Roman Empire, her Armies
were composed of anything but Romans. The Roman Military consisted of Romanized
mercenaries who had long made up the majority of Rome's soldiers.
The Romans themselves, of all classes of society, had, as Edward Gibbons so wisely
observed, become far too decadent to accept the onus and burden of military service.
Only some of the Officer class in the higher ranks were Romans descended from the
original Roman Patricians. Most of the members of the “officer Class” who were not of
Roman descent were the Centurions, who largely had come up through the ranks. The
higher ranking officers were, of course, taken from the ranks of the centurions and so they
too were not of Roman descent for the most part. Actually as time passed for a Roman
Officer to be an old-line Patrician was extremely rare. Of course they ran the Armies!
Though there were a few exceptions so rare as to prove the rule), what they (The Officer
Class) were, was mostly Keltic, Slavic, Kelt-Iberian, German and Gallic. It is safe to say
that the entire Empire was represented in the ranks. It is also safe to say that there were
people from outside the Roman Empire in the ranks as well. Mercenaries, as individuals, or
as groups, as long as they could demonstrate competence, and subordinate themselves
to Roman discipline, were always welcome. These mercenaries usually served under
their own officers.
The European descended mercenaries were at least of Europe's warrior class, so there
was at least a tenuous connection with the Druidic caste here too.
It is important to recognize the corollary to this conception. If the Druids and others of their
ilk were descended from survivors of the collapse of the Precursor Culture, what does that
tell us?. It tells us that in that case an extremely long period of time had elapsed between
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the collapse and the classical age of which I am speaking.
Plato reckoned that the precursor culture, which he called Atlantis, collapsed 10,000 years
before his own times. We have absolutely no indications available to us where he got this
figure. We have no way of knowing what traditions he was drawing on or what sources he
was referring to. His grandfather Solon, and Plato too, had been exposed to the Egyptian
Priesthood, and quite probably some remnant of the Cretan priesthood as well. But it’s still
an open question. I do not believe he “made it up”, and anyone, in that time period, who
was aware of the tectonic plates, as Plato apparently was, has got to be given a broad
degree of credit.
No matter how long it actually may have been, it was clearly a long period of time. A lot of
hybridization had obviously taken place in the interim. It is my belief that the “Tuatha” who
had to go “underground”, the kind of otherness that had to become the Sidhe (or
equivalent) were the purest of these people. Their differences from humankind were too
pronounced to permit “passing”, or any open contact with humans at all. And so they
disappeared. Where it is they “went” is something else I’m afraid we’ll never know. But
there were very wide areas of the world in those days that were utterly Terra Incognita, and
so it could be anywhere. I think too that this happened at the very beginning of the
Romanization of Europe.
It is my belief that the so-called "Druidic Schools" were not simply places to train Druids
anymore than Pythagoras' sodality at Crotona was a "school", or the various "Mystery
Schools" located around the Classical World were simply "schools". (Plato's Academy was
really a school, as was Aristotle’s Lyceum),
The "Mystae", or rather those individuals who composed the inner cores of the Priests of
the Mystery Temples, were as much a part of the "Caste" as the Druids.
.
It seems to me the primary purpose of these "schools” was, that they were not so much a
place of training (though they clearly performed that function too), as a place of
“winnowing” or "weeding out" the caste. Weeding out what? Weeding out the nearly fullblooded "Tuatha" (Æthlingae) from those of lesser proportions of “other” genetics, and
then, in turn, separating these partially “other” people from those with little or no such
genes whatsoever. If it were at all possible to identify the gene with any degree of certainty,
with today’s science we could easily make such identification. Though the uses this
knowledge could be put to, terrifies me..
What is "The Caste"? It is composed of the descendants in various degrees of the
survivors of "the precursor culture". It's pretty obvious why this "selection process" would
be necessary, both then and now. It’s also pretty clear that, as far as the “winnowing’ is
concerned, there is no one who is “doing it” now. But it is extremely obvious that it needs
to be done, more now than ever before. It is also obvious that the process will be a great
deal more difficult and dangerous today.
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There’s another question that arises here. What happened to the insufficiently pure
blooded who were weeded out? What happened to those hybrids who were not sufficiently
hybrid to be selected into the Druid (and equivalent) orders? I think they became the
Stregae, “witches”, Wise healers”, and psychics of this planet. I think too, that occasionally
a series of serendipitous matings would produce a relatively pure specimen, who would be,
when and if found, inducted into what ever branch of the “others” was local. When not
located by their peers, they became (when relatively unlucky) people like The Baal Shem
Tov and other charismatics. These “serendipitous matings” still happen, and that is another
reason why a “place of refuge” and “winnowing” is required.
The Precursor Culture, whatever it may have been, fell or was destroyed well before our
present written history began. If it hadn't, but had fallen after the inception of "written
history" it wouldn't be so problematical, as we’d have actual records of its existence.
Therefore by the time The Druidic Colleges and other training schools I've mentioned were
founded, and that's well within recorded history, it was clearly a necessity to establish some
kind of "testing procedure" to identify those with significant proportions of precursor
genetics. And that's what I'm talking about "precursor genetics" not elves, not Fairies, not
The Tuatha De Danann, but a group of people descended from the living survivors of the
culture which preceded and inspired our own.
Those “living survivors” had, over long periods of time, fully cognizant of the absolute
necessity of so doing, carefully and expertly created a medium for the perpetuation of not
so much their histories but their knowledge, and that medium became the “mystery
Schools”. The same process is required now, only more so! The Druids and The Mystae
and others of their ilk around the world, knew how to identify the various degrees of
hybrids, modern society, or rather all but an infinitely small percentile of it, has lost that
knowledge. I think an attempt must be made to regain it for our aver-all planetary society..
One similarity between Druidic Training, Brahminic Training, and Pythagorean Training
and, we are finding out, the training at many other of the pre-Christian Mystery School type
Priesthoods, was the very strong emphasis on memory.
Perhaps the motivation wasn't the training of memory so much as the identification of the
possessors of Eidetic memory. An eidetic memory could easily be an identifying factor of
those of the desired genetic pattern.
Perhaps the Druidical and Pythagorean prohibition of written records (if it in fact existed)
was based primarily on the fact that only those of the proper genetic background were
capable of such feats of prodigious memory. It is a clearly established fact that the
dependence on literacy has had a deleterious effect on memory. It wasn’t that the potential
for memory was lost, but the habit of memory was lost.
This lack of clear information was probably beneficial for the human race’s sense of wellbeing. Can you imagine the result of the finding of a Qumram Cave type cache of
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documents dealing with a totally non-human race, one moreover which was clearly superior
to Homo-Sapiens, co-existing on this planet? First there would be a gigantic panic. That
panic would be immediately followed by the most incredible “witch-hunt”. No, not “witch
hunt”...pogrom!
Will what I am saying herein cause such a result. No, I don’t think so because most people
will correctly assume it to be hypothesis. If there were tangible proof, it would be another
story altogether! Or at least I hope this to be the case.
If membership in the Druidic caste and its world-wide equivalents is based entirely upon
genetic inheritance, might these "weeding out processes" not be both an accurate and
subtly inconspicuous way to locate members of the caste? Why would this be necessary?
Well, if the "caste" consists of people descended from an equivalent caste in the precursor
culture, they would, of course have been scattered and hybridized, and many of them
would have no knowledge at all of their descent. They would have totally lost such
awareness during the many millennia that may have passed since the collapse of that
culture. So the goal was not only weeding out those in which the inheritance bred true, but
in keeping the purpose of the weeding from everyone else. The reason for the secrecy
is obvious. The Homo Sapient have always been ferocious in their response to anyone or
anything different than themselves and their so-called "norm".
In addition, the strong emphasis on the development of what are now called paranormal
facilities by these same groups might easily indicate not so much a training ground for
paranormal abilities but once again a place to identify people who possess talents
indicating their genetic heritage.
There are other evidences as well that show that all of these groups placed an extreme
value on both high intelligence and artistic creativity, which once again we know to be a
genetic inheritance. I know it’s totally “politically incorrect” to say that. But, whether it is
“politically correct” or not, it’s true. True in every single one of its aspects. Mozart’s Father
was an extremely important musician of his time. He literally “wrote the book” on violin
instruction. Mozart and his sister Nannerl were both musical geniuses, their father was too.
He was NOT a merchant or craftsman! Egalitarianism doth make mongrels of us all!
Egalitarianism is the most totally negative and harmful concept ever to arise among Homosapient societies. It is so because all of the premises and hypotheses that support the
“Egalitarian Ideal” are entirely false. It is so because nothing, nothing at all, harms people
more greatly than the inculcation of false expectations. False expectations, especially
those which encourage exaggerated ideas of personal potential, are harmful because their
only results are frustration, discouragement and despair.
In addition, if all of these many interconnected and related " Magical Priestly Orders" are
seen to be identifiable as intrinsically of a character of the type generally called
“Shamanic”, then perhaps what is loosely called “Shamanism” is also an indication of precursor genetics.
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This is something which I think needs to be made very much more clear:
In any case in which what people call "magic" is seen as intrinsic to either a group
or an individual, we must see it as a manifestation of that ability called Shamanic
Power. Or rather a thing for which, most unfortunately, the only extant term is
Shamanic.
Now, why do I say such a thing?
Unfortunately for most people, the term “Shamanic” obscures rather than illuminates. So
for the purposes of this essay, let’s pretend it’s a word that you’ve never heard before, one
that you are only just going to learn about. Erase everything you think you already “know”
about Shamans. Just keep an open mind.
I am coming to know, not ‘believe’ but ‘know’, that in every instance where the physical
and non-physical “cross” one another in any way, what we’re dealing with is a kind of
Shamanic manifestation. A manifestation of human interacting consciously with spirit.
Humans just don’t possess either the vocabulary, or (as yet) the awareness to know this is
so. Any human being who interacts with the non-physical (spiritual) levels of the relative
realities in any way, as long as that interaction is real and not hallucination, is a kind of
Shaman.
"Magic" has absolutely no reality outside of what needs to be called Shamanic Realities.
Perhaps then, being a real Shaman, an actual "spirit talker", an actual bridge between the
levels of realities, is another indication of membership in "the Caste".
Now here we run into a problem which, unfortunately, is now, and always has been a
barrier to communicating thoughts clearly, and that is Semantics and Philology.
The word “Shaman” carries with it a great deal of semantic/philological “baggage”, far too
much of it garbage. That “baggage” presents a formidable barrier to comprehension of
what I’m talking about. In order for everyone to comprehend the differences intrinsic to the
“others” and their hybrid off-spring and the race of Homo-Sapiens I am going to have to
make it clear to you all that what I call “otherness” while of course there are other hallmarks
by which to identify that status, “otherness” is most easily identified by the state-of-being
called Shamanhood.
Obviously that means that Shamanism is a most important factor in this discussion.
And that requires a clear definition of Shamanhood.
WHAT IS SHAMANISM?
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Before I say what Shamanism is, I must first emphasize what Shamanism is NOT! It is
NOT a religion, it is not organized in any way, it has no hierarchy, it possesses no dogmas,
it is not a form of worship in any way, it is not even truly a belief system. It is simply a more
intensive and holistic way of living. Conversely, anything which is organized, which
possesses dogmas, which has a hierarchy, or which includes “worship” in any way is, no
matter what it claims, NOT Shamanism.
Do I view it as a replacement for religion? No, I don’t! Religion needs to “go away” it does
NOT need a replacement! It is simply a way to make life better.
What then, is Shamanism? As my definition of Shamanism is quite different from the
popular misconception of it, I ought to ask:
What do I mean by Shamanism?
If I could have found a different word to use to make my meaning clear, I surely would
have used it. "Shaman" is awfully close to both "Sham" and "shame". Sometimes
rightfully so. I can think of no other, better word though. If anyone can suggest one, I’d be
glad to hear it and very glad indeed to use it!
I suppose I could coin a word. But then that word would mean nothing to anyone but
myself. That wouldn't clarify things for others. “Clarify" is what I'm trying to accomplish.
Unfortunately, there's no alternative, I have to use "shaman" and try to define it so clearly
that it means exactly what it originally meant, and not what it is popularly thought to mean
today.
It will assist you to understand what I'm saying about "Shamanism" if you agree to forget
linking the word itself, and its intrinsic meaning, with either primitivity or aboriginality of
any kind. You must forget about "naked". You must forget about "feathers and paint".
You must forget about "dancing around fires". You must forget about psycho- tropic
substances. You must entirely divorce "Shamanism" from any specific cultural or social
setting. You must try to view Shamanism as a thing in itself.
The answer to the question: "What is Shamanism?", is not only a lot more simple than
social anthropologists, ethnologists, and others would have you believe, but completely
different from what they would have you believe. The reason for this is that all these
academic and scientific professionals are absolutely prevented by both their personal
religious commitments and, in most cases, by their scientific commitments as well, from
taking either Shamanism or Shamans either seriously or at face value.
"Taking Shamanism at face value" is what one must do if one is to comprehend
Shamanism the thing in itself.
Shamanism is not a religion, it resembles religion only in that they are both ways in
which human beings try to deal with the spiritual or the numinous side of things,
Shamanism and religion are both ways in which physical beings attempt to transcend
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that physicality. Now that too is a statement that needs considerable clarification.
It would be much clearer to say that a shaman is a kind of ‘tool’ which people who are NOT
shamans can use to deal with the non-material. Shamans are the means to bridge the two
states as they are both material and non-material at once. I will further define this state of
duality as we continue.
The primary difference between religion and shamanism is that a religion is something in
which a person believes and, because of that belief, follows as an act of faith. Shamanism
may be defined as a state-of-being where the Shaman is concerned, and an existential
experience where the non-shaman is concerned. Religion cannot be so described. Religion
is anecdotal and theoretical, the shamanic experience is not.
Religions all posses various practices, but they are not themselves practices, they are
belief systems. There's really very little "belief" involved in true Shamanism, it's entirely
experiential. Shamanism is actually something which one is, and does ( the "doing" is the
only "practice"), and not at all a matter of belief, or "an act of faith".
Another major difference between Religion and Shamanism is "God". Religions are
either monotheistic or polytheistic in a totally authoritarian and fear-based paradigm.
Shamanism has no equivalent concept though individual Shamans in more “basic”
cultural environments may refer to the spirits as "Gods". What's missing in Shamanism is
the "authoritarianism" and the fear.
If you don't think that "difference" makes an enormous difference in the lives and attitudes
of people living within the paradigm, think about it for a while!
Simply put, Shamanism is a world-view, or rather a cosmic view, one based entirely
upon personal experience, in which the dividing line between life and death is not nearly
as rigid a parameter as mainline religions see it. The "veil twixt life and death" is far
thinner and much more fragile, than anyone who is not a Shaman can know. Just as
Shamanism is not a "practice", so too it is not a technique or method which an
individual can "learn".
Shamanism is an attitude toward the human condition which views all of life, and all of
consciousness, as much more holistic than it superficially seems to be. It views
communication and interaction between other sentient creatures and humans, between
"the quick and the dead", and most important of all, between non-physical and physical
consciousness, all as things which are very much possible and highly desirable. These
‘views’ are anything but hypothetical, they are experientially based and entirely empirical.
What is a Shaman (Male) or Shamanka (female)?
A Shaman~Shamanka is the fully aware vehicle for communication and interaction
between the quick and the dead, between physical consciousness and non-physical
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consciousness.
A Shaman~Shamanka is not a "medium".
What’s the difference? Well, I am in the midst of explaining what a “Shaman” is, so I think it
would be appropriate to define a “Medium”. Now, a Medium, when genuine, and many are
not, is a person who acts as a mouth for otherwise unidentifiable spiritual consciousnesses.
They do this while in a state of semi-consciousness called a “Trance”. There are two major
difficulties herein involved. Firstly: it’s far to easy to “fake”. Secondly: It is next to impossible
to evaluate or validate either the alleged source or the validity of the statements the
‘source’ makes.
Another very important difference is that a valid Shaman does not, or at least should not,
deal in “messages from beyond” though it is something they are capable of doing.
Shamanism, in its most positive manifestation, has absolutely nothing to do with
personalities. What a valid Shaman does will be made evident as this essay continues.
A Shaman~Shamanka is both a gateway and a bridge between the so-called "real world"
(physical world) and the greater realities which transcend that physical world. People like to
see correlations between Shamanhood and various Buddhist or Hindu spiritual entities. But
most of these are very forced identifications.
Who is a Shaman~Shamanka? I am, by the way, using the somewhat cumbersome
and graceless "Shaman~Shamanka" to try to make it emphatically clear that, unlike
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Brahmins, Shamanism isn't sexist. Shamanism isn't
limited. It is also not limiting.
A Shaman~Shamanka is a person who, in and of themselves, consciously embraces,
and in embracing it, completely destroys the duality based conception of the abyss
between the physical and spiritual levels of reality.
The Berdache, which is a very common variant in Shamanism, destroys the duality of
male-female. “Berdache” by the way means “Person with two spirits”. The “ two spirits” to
which it makes reference are simply maleness and femaleness.
I am sure that many people will ask:....Why does it matter who and what a Shaman may
be?....Aren't they a dying breed if not entirely atavistic?....Aren't Shamans all fakes at best
and insane at worst?....Aren't Shamans limited to primitive peoples?....Aren't Shamans an
anachronism in our twenty first century urban milieu?....What possible use would
Shamans be to twenty first century humanity?....Doesn't the value of Shamanism lie in the
possession of a relatively holistic consciousness which is possible only for extremely
primitive peoples?....How can urban intellectual-scientific age mankind possibly hope to
achieve some kind of holistic view of self and milieu?
There is no real reason why 21st century humankind who are clearly no longer animal-man
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but who have developed into the very earliest stages of intellectual-man, cannot,
within the parameters of their own social context, develop a holistic consciousness that
is just as valid as animal-man's were. But they can only do this when, once again, as
they were in the remote past, they are the recipients of numinous input via the
Shamanic bridge.
To make that clear let me say that I do not mean ‘verbal input’ but rather what can best be
called an “input of both realization and deeper comprehension”.
The Shaman is neither animal-man nor intellectual man, but is the culmination of the
process of physical evolution and that is spiritual-man. The reason this evolutionary
difference exists is that the fully developed Shaman is a member of the survivor race. By
that I mean to say a genetic inheritor of the precursor race that pre-existed Homo-Sapiens.
Or so I believe.
The Shaman~Shamanka, he or she who bridges the clearly perceived gaps between
the real and the unreal, the quick and the dead, humans and spirits, male and female; is
now.....and was then.....a living and functioning reality. A very necessary reality!
I've used the term "bridge". What do I mean by it? The very first "bridge" was a log,
placed across a stream or chasm, one end on each side of the thing to be crossed, and
people walked across it. Carefully! As time went by the bridges became more elaborate,
and society too became more elaborate. But, the bridge performed the same function. It
crossed a gap by having itself on both sides of that gap at once.
Now, how does this relate to a Shamanic consciousness? It relates exactly! The Shaman
doesn't "shift" consciousness from one side to another, from one reality to another.
What makes a Shaman a bridge, is that the Shaman is consciously bilocal. A Shaman
consciously exists on both sides of the "gap" at once. They don't mediate between two
realities, they are an intrinsic part of both realities, simultaneously. A true Shaman exists in
a state of bilocality continually.
The Shaman~Shamanka was, in the days when Homo-sapiens was a young race; and
in its slowly evolving~developing new "incarnation" still is, the only real source of
knowledge about the reality of death and its meaning in the lives of humankind, that
ever existed on this planet. The understanding of the true meaning of the only apparent
opposites "life" and "death" is the most important development awaiting the human race.
I want to make it perfectly clear that: “Magic”, as it is popularly perceived, has nothing at all
to do with the reality of Shamanism or with Shamanism in any way. There is clearly
something that really exists above and beyond the concept of "magic”. The
Shaman~Shamanka always was, always has been, still is, and always will be, the only truly
valid possessor of the ability to change reality in accordance with will, that ever lived on this
planet. I repeat:
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"CHANGING REALITY IN ACCORDANCE WITH WILL" DOES NOT CONSIST IN
SHOOTING LIGHTNING OUT YOUR ASS!
The true reality of the thing humans foolishly and ignorantly describe as "Magic", consists
of the usually subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle manipulation of various aspects of the
physical and emotional realities in conformity to the will, by way of an action of that will, by
a non-physical center-of-consciousness, or "spirit".
This action by an elemental or "spirit", is consciously carried out by way of, or through,
the "magician", or rather the Shaman~Shamanka. The Shaman or "reality changer" wills
a certain thing to happen, and the spirits associated with that Shaman "make it
happen”. In any case, the Shaman~Shamanka is merely the conduit of and for energies
which originate far outside of themselves.
One thing we must not do is permit ourselves to become caught up in, or englamoured
by Jungian euphemisms. Carl Gustav Jung was, though he wouldn’t publicly admit it, a
Shaman, and he was trying to reconcile his unavoidably Shamanic view of reality with 20th
century materialism, or "rational thought" and of course with the ideas of his teacher
Sigmund Freud. This was a great mistake on his part, and because of it Jung set human
progress back a long way. While it is very easy to make things conform to Freudian and
Jungian perceptions, that doesn’t imply that they actually do so conform. This was not his
only mistake, he was far too enamored of, and englamoured by, the Nazis.
The Shaman~Shamanka not only bridges the various realities symbolized by the
various dualities, they can, by consciously merging their energy fields with those of
non-physical consciousnesses, "change" the inner, or spiritual, nature of those realities by
an action of the combined directed wills of the Shaman and the spirit(s). And that's truly
"magic" isn't it?
But there are many additional possibilities. A truly experienced Shaman has the ability to
exponentially increase the potential for change by drawing upon the energies of all those
present at a public Shamanic event. Additionally, if those same people freely join their wills
to the Shaman's in an entirely conscious attempt at conjoining, the effect is greatly
empowered.
An actual historical example of this kind of thing on a large scale can be seen in the
activities of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a Shaman, people call him a "Black Magician" but
Shaman is what he was. Of course he was a totally evil and probably totally insane man,
but it really doesn’t matter. In any case, society’s perception of the totally insane as
dysfunctional is completely false. The totally insane can be horribly functional and
dreadfully efficient. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong, all mass murderers to an
almost unbelievable degree, are perfect examples of this.
The Cosmic Harmonic is entirely neutral or value-free and the spirits who were either once
physical or never physical and therefore are equally neutral, will cooperate with the
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Shaman in a non-judgmental way. All things, no matter how physical beings view them, are
occasions for the expansion of consciousness and awareness. If one truly experiences the
fact that consciousness-as-energy, energy-as-consciousness is the only reality, and life
itself as only relatively real, then this attitude is more easily comprehended.
The greater reality in which we all exist is entirely value free, and a Shaman can use the
energies and the spirits as he or she sees fit. I am sure that many people will recoil in
horror at this concept. I can certainly empathize with that feeling. But, we are speaking of
two entirely separate realities, what is “horrible”, truly horrible and horribly true, on the
physical levels of the relative realities, doesn’t exist on the non-physical levels of those
same realities. This dichotomy is the single most difficult thing to comprehend in the
attempt to penetrate the relationship of the relative realities.
This does NOT for one instant change the fact that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were totally evil
men. Physical men, living in a physical reality, and as such their actions were unforgivable.
The nature of the Human Condition is such that all human actions may and must be judged
within the context of their physical reality! The so-called “greater reality” intrinsically real
though it is, has very little bearing on each human life.
The Manifested Universe, or Cosmos, is an infinite, illimitable, unified energy field. That
energy manifests itself as sine wave curves which function as carrier waves for the energy
particles that are the only reality of which we are presently aware. Each of those particles
represents a cosmos in embryo. This Unified Field also exhibits evidences of
consciousness. The most likely purpose for the existence of the Cosmos (if it actually
requires a purpose) is as a vehicle for the infinitization of consciousness and awareness
both of self and not-self. When "consciousness and awareness" are combined, the result is
called intelligence. The Cosmos is a milieu of intelligence becoming ever more self aware
and equally more aware of what is not-self.
Within this milieu, or cosmic environment, there are an infinite, and constantly growing,
number of intelligences at various stages in their process of infinitization of awareness and
comprehension of the whole. The Cosmos is self-created. There are no "Gods", but
discarnate intelligence is infinitely more common than carnate intelligence. Discarnate
intelligence is relatively permanent, carnate intelligence is entirely ephemeral.
The Universe itself, is an entirely value-free information gathering system and bearing in
mind how ephemeral and truly unreal physicality is, it is fair to state that nothing at all which
an individual does while in the physical is going to have more than an attitudinal effect
upon their post-physical future. Physical actions have effects only within the environment in
which they occur.
A person, because of the things they do, and because of the way they think, and because
of WHAT they think, create an environment which colors and flavors their personal
trans-physical future. But that is only the way in which an individual influences their
post-mortem future, it has nothing at all to do with the Universal Intelligence field.
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There is no judgment, there is no retribution, there is only a personal post-mortem milieu
which every individual creates for themselves. Naturally, WHAT they create for themselves
is hardly independent on the belief systems which they hold.
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS, THE ONLY THING IN THE UNIVERSE, THAT
MATTERS, IS INTELLIGENCE (CONSCIOUS AWARENESS).
It is how that intelligence is utilized and how it processes and stores information that is
critical.
That's what the Universe is all about, the infinitization of intelligence, and the processing
and storage of information for the use of that intelligence. All information is valid, all
information, and experience is the major source of information, is needful to the universal
data-bank.
What an individual human being does with their personal information data-bank, matters
only within their personal paradigm. It does not matter in the slightest within the universal
paradigm.
Well, to continue, Hitler imported 100 Shamanist (Bonist) Lamas from Tibet to aid him in
his "magical" workings. They greatly aided him in many ways, but to no avail; the forces
arrayed against them were too great. They all committed suicide when Hitler did. Now
there’s an important and kind of frightening corollary to that; these were Shamans, and as
Shamans know very well that there is no such thing as death, we have to sort of wonder
what these folks are doing now. Being a Shaman, has an unavoidable side effect, “death”
makes a Shaman more powerful not less.
Eventually, in a Shamanic “Event”, those inner changes, which are the intrinsic essence of
"magic", will cause clearly recognizable changes in the outer or physical nature of the
realities concerned.
Of course that's also a very good definition of spiritual healing. That's why Shamans
are most clearly recognized as healers. The Druids were also famed as healers. The
Pythagoreans and Theraputæ were too.
Anything else that claims to be "magic" is pure falsehood. The ceremonial magician or
alchemist in robes and cloak, with staff or sword, and "great grimoire" is really just
"drag". Aleister Crowley's Thelemic fantasies,, The "Golden Dawn", Alchemy, The
Q'abbalah (or Kabbala, Kabala, Cabbala), Wicca, etcetera, is all hallucination. It's
nothing more than a manifestation of humankind's instinctive religious impulse. Still
worse, it's fiction and only fiction, pure and simple.
That kind of "Magic" is an infantile ego-trip in an individual, it's an "ego-trip" because the
so-called Magician entirely fails to credit the spirits. It's an ego-trip because the so-called
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“magician” pretends to control or dominate the spirits, and that is fantasy. It's lots
of fun in fantasy novels as long as one remembers they're fiction. The most important
thing to remember regarding the oh-so-ill used term "Magic", is that "magic" is not at all
something which a person does, no not at all, "magic" is something which one
Is!
Does that mean to say that a person who does get all done up in Ceremonial Magician
drag, and equips themselves with a fortune in "magical implements", cannot actually
"change reality in conformance to will"? It certainly doesn't. What it does mean is that
the "drag" and the "implements" have nothing to do with it except make either the individual
performant or their audience feel good about themselves (or both). The “props” provide
security. Most ceremonial magicians are just playing Disneyesque games, primarily with
themselves. The individual that can actually make something valid really "happen",
whether they know it or not, whether they violently disagree with the idea or not, are using
their own genetic potential as part of the "caste of others" to do so, and are either
Shamans or near-Shamans.
A Shaman, or Kahuna, or anything else in any language indicating the same function, is
simply a magical individual, a gateway through which the numinous acts upon the levels
of the physical realities. "Magic" is simply the numinous realities intervening in the
physical or human realities.
The most common error is to try to limit the Shamanic reality to only primitive cultures.
The Shamanic reality is not in any way limited to the primitive.
It was not for nothing that the head of the Classical Roman Religion retained the very
ancient title of "Pontifex Maximus" or "chief bridge builder". The "Pontifex Maximus" was
the Chief Shaman of the earliest Romans, and the bridge built by him was the Rainbow
Bridge of Shamanism. The "Lares" and "Penates" which were the primary non-physical
feature of Roman Religion, were spirits of the class Amerindian Shamanism refers to as
Grandfather-Grandmother spirits and "spirit Allies”.
The "Gods" and "Goddesses" to whom the Romans built such imposing Temples (primarily
in order to impress foreigners), came much later in Roman History, and were the result of
cultural cross-pollination between the Romans and a culture they perceived as superior to
their own, The Greeks. But no matter how fancy and grandiose the Temples, it was the
Lares and Penates and other "spirits" that were the power in Roman civilization.
There were a class of people known to the Romans as “Evocators” their function was to
communicate with the dead. There is no chance that these people were anything but
Shamans. The Greeks called these people “psuchagôgoi” and there is a “Lost Play of
Aeschylus of that name. It’s one of the many things Greek of which we know because it
was named by others but of which we know very little else.
That the same title, Pontifex Maximus, has been retained by the head of Rome's
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successor, the Roman Catholic Church, is an affectation on the part of the Catholic
Church. That affectation is a clear indication of how very much the Roman Catholics seek
legitimacy from the past and also how very powerful the residual power of the title is.
Though with the Roman Catholics today the title is absolutely meaningless!
Catholicism does not "bridge" the realities.....it never has even recognized the existence of
realities other than it’s own political reality. It simply entirely ignores them!
Roman Catholicism is a perfect example of the devolution and death of Christianity. As
it was the first Christian faith to manifest, it is also clearly in the process of being the first
to dissolve. It has gone from being a system of deep religious conviction to being a
relatively incompetent and only slightly benevolent social work organization. One that
operates within a symbolically religious paradigm. Today it is engulfed in a ruinous scandal.
The Roman Catholic Mass was once a deep and meaningful act, both of belief and of
actual “magic”. After all what is “Transubstantiation” if it is not “changing reality in
conformance with will”? The Roman Catholic Priest was once a Priest~Initiate, and
sometimes, though not usually knowingly so, an actual Shaman (Clerical celibacy and the
Catholic Church's view of human sexuality drives many potential Shamans into the
Church). But even when the Priest is not a Shaman, He WAS, none the less, truly a valid
and potent intermediary, whose right to perform the mass was given to him by the
numinous at his initiation~consecration. Of course, this priesthood should not have been
limited to males. But it was, and unfortunately it still is, and that's why I use the pronoun
"he".
Today the Mass is simply a symbolic performance to remind the congregation of
"Christ's Sacrifice" and the Priest is simply a proselytizing social worker! The only thing
which is holding the Roman Catholic Church together today is inertia! Inertia and the
desire of a lot of old men to keep the scam working. Now while most of these “old men”
aren’t consciously malevolent , when all the good they do in the world is measured or
balanced against all the actual harm they unwittingly cause, they might as well be entirely
and intentionally malevolent.
As I see it, it’s what you actually do that matters in this world not what you mean to do. If, in
meaning to do well by humanity, you none the less do actual harm, you are not a whit
different or better than those who, meaning to do harm, do so. The Universe may be a
judgment free paradigm, and as you know, I believe it is, BUT, as I said before, people do
not have to be judgment fee, nor should they be.
The Shaman~Shamanka is an entity who lives at once on two planes of reality. A living
reality that is both the "Shamanic function" and the living Shaman~Shamanka as well.
While its causation is very clearly genetic, there is, I have come to believe, a distinct
possibility that, in addition, there may be, within that "genetic difference", an element of
something that is very much more exotic than we can know or fully comprehend at this
time. By this I mean to say something that is truly alien, rather than being something
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that was simply the result of the vagaries of human genetic selection. Of course I am
referring to my dual-race theory. Here again we have the "Tuatha Hypothesis".
My ideas in regard to the “Tuatha Hypothesis”, by which as you know I mean to say “the
survivors, or descendants thereof, of the people of the Pre-cursor Civilization; are based
upon what are clearly universal historical and mythical intimations that this may in fact be
the case, but I cannot yet offer too much in the way of empirical proof that it is. There is a
great deal of empirical evidence that a Pre-Cursor Civilization existed but most of it, while
scientifically valid, isn’t sufficiently clear cut to “stand up in court”.
Among human beings, The Shaman~Shamanka is clearly the exception, they are very
clearly not at all the rule! Not in the past, not now, not ever! When the entire human race
has attained the point in spiritual evolution where they are all Shaman’s~Shamanka’s
then physical evolution will be a thing of the past and physicality will no longer be a needed
experience.
Totally contrary to all the claims made, and glossy sales pitches of many, if not most, of
our contemporary "New Age Gurus~Shamans~Teachers"; unless one is born with the
spiritual and genetic hereditary potential that enables the numinous to train one's natural
abilities as a Shaman to function on command, One cannot be taught how to be a
shaman!
Like homosexuality and skin color, being a Shaman is not a conscious personal choice,
but is rather a circumstance of one's birth. Either a person is a Shaman or a person
isn't. Either a person is a person who can have an effect on the currents of reality or a
person isn't. One cannot make a decision to "become a Shaman"!
Once again, as with homosexuality, one cannot even make the reverse decision and
make an attempt not to function in the Shamanic capacity. The function is more
powerful than the individual who is its vehicle, and like homosexuality and truly high-level
artistic-creative talent (both of which, I believe to be inextricably and unavoidably
and inexorably related in kind to Shamanic abilities, and, while not nearly as invariably,
to one another), the function itself, that of bridging two realities, and communicating
between them, and both artists and homosexuals do this each in their own way, will either
force the issue or ultimately destroy the vessel.
The place most people, especially the so-called "experts" go astray is in assuming all
relatively primitive tribal spiritual~religious~healer figures to be Shamans, they are not.
The common definition of Shamans is far too broad. Shamans are clearly only what I
define them to be, many tribal societies have Priests in place of Shamans. I strongly
believe it to be impossible to over define the difference between those two positions.
A Priest is a person who acts as a messenger or intermediary between humankind and
what it perceives to be it’s “Gods”. A Shaman on the other hand, is neither an intermediary
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nor a messenger but someone who is consciously both human and spirit at the same time
and who acts as a conduit for spiritual energies, not communications but energies!
For example the Navaho and Hopi "Singing Men" with the distinct exception of those
individuals who are “Of two spirits” , are healers (though not the same kind) just as
Shamans are, but they are Ritualistic Priests rather than Shamans because, as I
mentioned and as I will further discuss the distinction later on, they are intermediaries
rather than bridges. Also, in the spiritualist religions of Africa such as Yoruba Religion and
its various American offspring Macumba, Candomble, Voudon, Houdon, and Santeria,
while some of the practitioners are clearly Shamans, the majority of practitioners are clearly
Priests and Priestesses, and are also Mediums.
Mediums are distinctly different than Shamans. A Shaman performs their function in full
awareness, or at best a very light trance. A Medium functions in deep trance with
absolutely no awareness of what's occurring.
HOMOSEXUALITY AND SHAMANISM:
Because so many shamans are homosexual, and because the Berdache function of
sexual ambivalence is so ubiquitous ( in some cultures, the Shamans, even if not
homosexuals regularly cross-dress), we must always acknowledge that, while Shamanism
is not an aspect of homosexuality, and certainly Homosexuality is not an aspect of
Shamanism, never the less, the two phenomenon, because they so frequently overlap,
must be discussed together.
Both states of being, and that is clearly what they are, must be acknowledged to be
clearly genetic in nature and nothing is genetic that is not a survival characteristic. By
the way, that distinctly includes so-called "Lethal Genes", they too are a survival
characteristic for the species. “Lethal Genes” are the method by which evolution rids itself
of it’s harmful ingredients.
Obviously procreation, which surely is a survival characteristic, is not regularly a part of
homosexual reality, but the potential for Shamanic function is, and it is that potential, which
is inextricably but not inevitably linked to homosexuality, that is the survival factor.
This, in fact, may go some distance to answering the question: "Why are Homosexuality
and Shamanism so obviously linked?" I have to say that I am far from sure why they are
linked, but I am clearly certain that they are. History and statistics prove they are linked.
While not all Shamans are homosexual or sexually ambivalent, enough are to make the
phenomenon more than simply slightly significant. Certainly there are no clearly obvious
reasons that I can see.
I believe that everything that is human is natural, and everything that is human and
therefore sentient has a purpose. What purpose then does homosexuality serve? As a kind
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of natural "Birth Control"? While it does function as such a thing, that definition is a little too
"pat" for me to be comfortable with it. It is obviously not any kind of survival factor for the
individual homosexual. It is absolutely clear that, in life, everything both has a purpose and
is linked to everything else. So as homosexuality is unquestionably genetic, there is
something about it that contributes to the survival of the life wave. I really doubt if it has
anything to do with "style", or "good taste", so the only causative factor that makes any
sense at all is "Shamanism".
Shamanic potential itself is a survival factor for the entire human race which, in it's
primitive state could not have survived without Shamans. In its present parlous state,
the human race will not survive unless the knowledge and understanding to be gained
from vicariously experiencing the numinous reality by way of the Shamanic Bridge entirely
changes humankind's view of the realities of "life" and "death"!
Let's look at history and how Shamanism has been viewed at various times. Where
Shamanism and homosexuality inter-relate let's see how they do so and what
developed out of that interaction.
The further back one goes in Human history the less problems there were regarding all
sexual behaviour, and of course shamanism was the principal if not the only manifestation
of humanity’s need for some kind of relationship with the pre and post mortem states.
As society progressed, and civilization reached what we call "Biblical Times"; or the
classical age, words meaning Shaman went out of fashion. Among the Jews there were
two classes of people who would fit the classification of Shamans. They were
"Prophets" and "Nabis". Among the Greeks and Romans they were "Seers" , “Evocators,
“Psuchagôgoi” and "Oracles". Some of these people were Shamans, most were probably
not but Mediums instead.
The only historically accurate definition of the Jesus figure as depicted in the synoptic
gospels was a "Nabi", a wandering, unmarried, healer who was a social and religious
revolutionary. The Jesus figure is very clearly depicted in the synoptic gospels as
unmarried, this is not contradicted in any of the Christian sources, and that means that
despite the continual references to the Jesus figure as a “Rabbi”, this could not have been
the case for it was clearly Jewish practice, if not actual “law”, that a man could not be a
“Rabbi in Israel” unless he was both married and a father. It is possible though that some
of the individuals who were the basis for the composite and therefore fictional figure that
was Jesus of Nazareth, were “Rabbis”, but there is no way we can ascertain if that was so.
Just as there is no way we can be certain of the composition of the composite. It is also
possible that “Jesus” was a total fiction created out of whole cloth by the man we know
today as Saint Paul of Tarsus.
The "Prophets" were a different kettle of fish. Each of them was believed to be the "mouth"
of the Jewish deity. I am referring to people like Samuel, Micah, Isaiah, Elisha, Elijah, and
Jeremiah, et al. They were apparently individuals who were psychically linked with what I
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have called a "personage" (there is no way of knowing whether they were all linked to
the same personage) and that “personage” speaks through them. They may have been
mediums, they may have been Shamans, or some of each. Some of them were also surely
frauds! Though my personal inclination is to suspect them to have been primarily Mediums.
However, that is very much open to question because the bible stories telling about them
clearly show that they were conscious while making their pronouncements. However, there
is a kind of trance state that permits the individual to retain the appearance of full
consciousness. However, the Bible being what it is, the absolute truth of the circumstances
surrounding the “Prophets’ is utterly impossible to know. In fact the truth of their existence
is just as unknowable, they too may have been anagogical myths, or else their lives so
fictionalized as to make them into anagogical myths.
"Oracles" for the most part, seemed to be people who went into mediumistic trances
through the use of psycho active substances, or psycho active techniques. From the
history of the subject it is hard to say what they actually were. Clearly a mediumistic
ability would have been helpful, and of course, so would Shamanic abilities. The only
clear connection is that many of the "Oracles" were connected with, or operated by, the
Priesthoods and in pre-Christian times, those, especially among the Mystae, were
Shamanic. There is however, no indication what so ever that any of the Oracles were
associated with the Mystery Schools.
At least that is what they were called in the Western and Middle-eastern and the
Judeo-Christian traditions. To the rest of the world Shamans, whatever they were called,
were what they always were before, the natural spiritual guides, healers, and teachers of
the Human Race, and perceived as holy. Though I don’t mean what religion means when I
use that word. I use it in a way I perceive to have been it’s original meaning, as a person
who is truly “whole”. By which a mean an equipoised personality which is both physical and
spiritual at the same time.
I find the Oxford English dictionary’s definition intriguing.
While in giving the origin of the word which is Old English and simply meant whole. They
also give the common usages which are: 1. Dedicated to God or a religious purpose. And
2. Morally and spiritually excellent and to be revered. The first definition is meaningless
except to a “true believer” and while the second isn’t wrong, I find the very idea of
“reverence” repellant. Admiration or respect is fine and more than adequate, but
“reverence” is something else again and it is negative.
As time passed, and western civilization spiritually devolved (and "devolved" is the only
appropriate word) from classical times into the medieval period. The clearly pejorative
"witches" and "sorcerers" became the more popular appellation. These pejorative terms
came to be applied because the institutional religions feared the Shaman~Shamanka
who were the natural spiritual guides of humankind.
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Our so-called "civilization" in its wisdom and compassion murdered them! They also
murdered homosexuals, calling them "sorcerers and witches" too. In the process it was
not the Shamans that lost anything. After all, the Shamanic function bridges "life” and
"death".......killing a Shaman, or anyone else for that matter, may cut short that individual's
activities and usefulness on the physical planes of the relative realities, but basically it
really harms them not! Shamans are fully aware in both realities, the average person isn’t
and therefore the transition is sometimes difficult. No, in the process of murdering those
who were and are the natural spiritual teachers of the human race, it was human
civilization that was bereft!
Today we incorrectly call Shamanic individuals "psychics". We burned "witches", we
laugh at psychics! We also call certain Shamanic individuals "Queers" though there is
nothing at all "queer" about them, they are natural and very necessary.....we laugh at
them too, but we also deny them the liberty to which birth entitles them, and in an
excess of self-hatred....we "bash" them! Nonetheless, they are still, as always, an
important part of humankind and those who are Shamans are still, and always will be,
"holy" (in its only valid definition of “whole”), and it is the aggregate of human civilization
which is lessened and made very much the poorer by "civilization's" own actions.
Shamans~Shamankas are not simply "psychics" though it is clearly true that a fully
functioning Shaman~Shamanka certainly shares all the various paranormal abilities
which psychics have, though on a far broader scale. Most, but not all, of the people I have
encountered who claim to be psychics, are, unfortunately, entirely or largely self-deluded.
Some very few are anything but deluded! Nevertheless not all people with valid paranormal
abilities are what I call a Shaman~Shamanka, though all Shamans and Shamankas have
access to any paranormal ability they need by way of the numinous aspect of their being.
Like Shamans~Shamankas however, "psychics" are born and not made. Most people
and groups I have met who claim to be able to teach "anyone, anyone at all" to be, and
to function, as a psychic, are phonies. Though it is surely possible that some of them,
more self-deluded than not, are totally unaware that they're phonies. It is my strong
belief however, that most of them know full well they're phonies! What they "teach" is
"How to pretend you're a psychic and how to forget you're pretending." It is, and always
has been, absolutely clear to me that “everyone” is not a psychic, nor is “everyone”
possessed of the potential to become one. I know that this is not currently a “politically
correct” thing to say, but it’s true popular or not.
A person who is pretending to be a Shaman is just that....."pretending". Oh, in most
primitive societies, and in our own society, there are people who are clearly "medicine
people" or "kitchen witches", they are clearly not Shamans, nor do I believe they
pretend to be so, but they are individuals with a strong talent for herbalism and other
technical physical healing arts. There is nothing at all either technical or physical about
Shamanic healing.
Another aspect of all this misunderstanding is this: I believe that many primitive peoples
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when confronted by curious anthropologists, ethnologists, theologians, scientists etc.
give them what I call "THE MARGARET MEADE TREATMENT" in which gullible and
supercilious researchers are told what the so-called “primitives” have ascertained that the
anthropologists want to hear. Usually the primitives are absolutely correct in their opinions.
Based on what they did to Margaret Meade, I also think they have rather well developed
senses of humor!
Then too there are alleged Shamans (i.e. Castaneda's "Don Juan" a man I believe to have
been totally imaginary) who employ various herbal or chemical hallucinogens to mimic the
true Shaman's capacity to bridge the gap.
But these people don't really bridge any gap at all and while affected by the drug they are
totally at the mercy of any non-physical intelligence who comes along. Pretending to be a
Shaman and using chemical or herbal methods to loosen one's ties to the physical is
probably one of the most dangerous and potentially self-destructive things a person can do
especially in social milieus which are divorced from Indigenous Shamanic traditions.
What, in fact, is the Shamanic experience from the Shaman's point of view? What have
I, as a person who is quite reluctantly accepting the fact that he is a Shaman,
experienced?
I am a mostly Caucasian Male Homosexual of English, Scottish, Welsh, French, Goth,
Norse, Samoyed, Russian, Tatar, Tartar, Turkoman, Arab, Mongol, German, Italian,
Spanish, and Hungarian ancestry, in other words, a typical American mixed-breed (well,
not entirely typical, there are very few people who can trace their families back over
1700 years), who lives among a grove of Redwood Trees, on the banks of a creek, in
Western Sonoma County, in the State of California, in the United States of America....
Redwood Trees or not.......how can I be a Shaman?
I am though! It is a fact that others can experience easily. Am I a "self-appointed"
Shaman? No, no one who is really a Shaman is, or can be, "self appointed". Though
there are a lot of folks around who can be described in that manner. Did I drive some
Amerindian Shaman crazy following him around the reservation? No, because that
won't make a person a Shaman.
Did I want to be a shaman? Heavens no!
Shamans are shamans because they were selected and to some degree educated by the
numinous, by the "spirits", and that's the only way it happens whether you live in an igloo,
or a tepee, or a city building! The process isn’t “fun”. It isn’t at all enjoyable, in fact it is both
physically and psychically terribly painful on a quite continuous basis.
Is this elitist? Yeah, if "elitist" means "limited" or "exclusive", then I guess it is. But not in
a negative sense. Shamanism is clearly limited, that is true, but only because
unqualified people are excluded from the activity as other than passive observers.
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Evolution is clearly "elitist", and in so very many ways, life itself is quite clearly "elitist" ,
there are all sorts of different talents and abilities that are not at all universal. The
present fashionable notion that all people are "differently talented" or “differently abled”,
and are therefore of equivalent value to the race, is both almost entirely insane and
monstrously harmful.
In fact I don't see this entire process in which the numinous, the world of spirit, goes
about creating a Shaman, as being negative at all! An ability, or talent, which is
genetically limited to SOME but hardly all, Homosexuals, and to a great many other people
as well, an ability that serves the entire Human Race as a survival factor is hardly to be
defined as "negative".
The many relative realities are what they are, they are never what we would like them to
be.
Why do the numinous intelligences select and train the "bridges" that they do? Why do
the "spirits" pick out certain people and turn them into Shamans? Because they're the
right people, that's why. What makes them "right"? Oh many things, and really none of
them are the result of personal accomplishment! All of them though, are the result of
intrinsic spiritual worth, intrinsic talents, and essential nature.
From the spirits point-of-view, and they only "see~feel~sense" energy patterns and light
itself, a potential Shaman is a brighter light in the pleroma, a shining gateway in relative
darkness! The absolutely true reality of any person is that they are an individuated
force-field. No two force-fields are alike, they are absolutely unique and individual, they are
like snow-flakes in that regard. That is what spirits "see". They see what is called the
electro-magnetic aura.
The spiritual levels of the infinite realities are tremendously colorful places. The unified field
of the cosmos is composed of energy and only energy, that energy is self-illumined, there
is no "darkness". "Darkness" exists only in the human mind. All things, whether animate or
not, are nonetheless energy fields, and each of them is represented by what can be called,
at least if one wishes to be understood, a body of light. The quality, quantity, and character
of that body of light depends entirely on the levels of awareness manifested within it.
A Shaman, and most especially so a “senior” or “advanced shaman” is a person who is
both more and less than a person, and who really isn't entirely human, but is better defined
as a spirit, living consciously living in a human body!! This would mean that a Shaman,
even a potential Shaman, manifests a particularly intense “body of light”.
Now, once the initial selection is made by the numinous, then an experienced
Shaman~Shamanka can assist the "new Shaman" in his or her pathway. For the newly
created Shaman~Shamanka the experience can be quite disorienting and more than a little
encouragement and “hand holding” is required. Though, for other than morale building,
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guidance is not really all that necessary except for matters of ethnic style, for the spirits are
always available for guidance. Though that “guidance” is utterly different in form and
content from physical level guidance. But no Shaman, no matter how powerful that
Shaman may be, can make any other person a Shaman unless that person has been
selected by the world of spirit and then chooses to seek guidance from a functioning
Shaman.
Now we come to a really difficult question. How does a person know when they have
been selected as a Shaman by the world of spirit?
This is clearly not an easy question to answer because the human personality, and the
ego that drives it, and the physical elemental that maintains the vehicle in stasis, are
such a tremendously complicated set of parameters. I said "set of parameters" because
what we call "the human personality" is not monolithic, it is not "a thing", but rather it is a
whole mélange of things, composed of both a contiguous and non-contiguous series of
"things".
The only possible result of over simplifying any definition of the human personality is
confusion and error!
Let's talk a little about what is it that makes each individual person exactly that, an
individual and utterly unique.
The Idea I want to introduce to you here is that each and every person is the end
product of the evolution of dual genealogies. This concept seems to be original with me,
and the result of my own perceptions, but if history is any guide it most likely isn’t. It’s pretty
clear to me that very few ideas or perceptions are utterly unique, even if to the percipient
individual they seem to be so. Along with those hereditary factors, each human being is the
end product of that individual's interaction with every other individual with whom that
person has come into contact along with their interaction with the society in which they live.
"DUAL GENEALOGIES"
Now, as I said, that; I believe, is an entirely new concept. Or perhaps I should say that it's a
new way to look at and understand what is a very old question indeed. It's an entirely
abstract question, and this new way of looking at it makes it far less abstract, therefore
more amenable to human understanding.
By “Dual Genealogies”, what I mean to say is that: each and every human being is the
possessor of not one, but two, entirely separate and entirely different genealogies. There is
the physical or genetic "line of descent", and there is the non-physical or spiritual "line of
ascent".
The first of these deals with an individual's descent from their parents and their parent's
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parents all the way back to Ramepithicus Erectus and far beyond. That is "The Physical
Line of Descent".
The second of these two deals with the line of ascent of the intrinsic immortal spirit which
manifests through, or by way of, independent physical bodies in its quest for the evolution
of its intelligence and awareness. That is "The Spiritual Line of Ascent".
One of the most important tasks facing any individual human being once that individual
has become fully aware of the existence of the greater reality that exists coterminous
with, but very much beyond the basic levels of human realities, is to prioritize which
of these two genealogical lines of development is the one which is currently the most vital
and pertinent to their own evolution as an intelligent being.
By "fully aware of the existence of the greater reality", I mean to say experientially
aware, not hypothetically aware! People who are "hypothetically aware" are people who
intellectually accept the possibility, and even the probability of something, but have not
experienced its reality. People who are experientially aware of a thing's existence, are
people secure in their knowledge.
Now it must be clearly understood that both genealogies are important to an individual
for the very simple reason that they are both absolutely necessary to the evolution of
consciousness both within that individual and on the part of the spirit of which it is an
expression. It would be very easy for me to say that: "Of course, it’s the spiritual that’s
more important", but it wouldn't invariably be true. It would be very wrong of me to imply or
infer, in any way, that the answer to the question of prioritizing is the same for all human
beings. It is clearly not! It will depend upon who the person is, what the person is, and
where the person is. Spiritual evolution grows out of, and depends upon physical evolution.
You cannot, at this point in time, have the one without the other.
Let's take some time to discuss the effects these two genealogies have on an individual.
The Genetic Genealogy, or "Line of Descent" provides the genetic inheritance that
make an individual the person they are. Race, ethnicity and nationality are all part of
one's familial inheritance and are very powerful factors in molding the developing
individual personality. If a person is a homosexual, that's a genetic factor and certainly a
very powerful molder of a personality. Being a Shaman is genetic too, and in those
cases in which it is also linked with, therefore dependent on the homosexual gene, that
combination is probably one of the most powerful influences on an individual's life. And
so, what a person intrinsically is, what they start life's voyage with, is the gift of the
genetic genealogy.
What they do with what they are, lies with their inheritance from their spiritual
genealogy, their "Line of Ascent".
Two people, twins, let us say, with identical (or nearly so) genetic genealogy and totally
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different spiritual genealogies will be totally different individuals. I do not believe that there
have ever been a pair of twins who were the manifestation of the same Perispirit, close as
they may be physically, twins are nevertheless completely separate and individual
spiritually.
There is one other significant difference between the two inheritances. The Genetic
Inheritance is the mortal inheritance. Other than the effect it has in shaping the
developed human personality, and it is an enormous influence, it totally ceases to have
any effect on that individuality once the body is cast off. The Spiritual inheritance is the
undying or immortal inheritance. It influences the individual’s evolution without any
respite at all.
Now then, while it appears that the "Line of Ascent" is more important than "The Line of
Descent", and while I believe that, for me personally at least, in the long run it is. However
that is not invariably true for everyone.. Each person must make a clear decision which of
the two inheritances is more important to them personally, and why it is the more important
personally, and then try to ascertain how that decision can be made to effect their
evolution positively. A decision to move in a direction that negatively aspects one's
evolution is always an error. But some people learn more from their mistakes than from
their correct decisions. You, and you alone, must decide which is more important to you.
Probably the most important factor in that decision is ascertaining which of the two is more
“real” to you.
In order to arrive at an intelligent understanding of this question, let's begin by
discussing the process of the evolution of consciousness and what are the mechanisms
peculiar to that process. In those circles in which the evolution of consciousness is
deemed a practical reality, the main mechanism for that evolution is the process called
"Reincarnation". I say "in those circles" because the evolution of consciousness is not
deemed to be a "practical reality" by everyone.
However, considering the numerical advantages possessed by Buddhists, Brahmanists,
and various groups of animist spiritist Pan-Theists. Reincarnation is held to be valid (at
least hypothetically, for "faith" is a synonym of hypothetical), by a majority of the human
race. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Paradigm holds an immense number of people in
thrall, but when all is said and done, the majority lies with those not so oppressed. It is also
clear that the original Christians, at least, believed in reincarnation, that is one of the rare
things which is made very clear in the Gospels.
The concept of reincarnation; was reintroduced on a broad scale to Western peoples by
the twin but not connected "missionary" efforts of: Swami Vivekananda, who founded
The Vedanta Society (He taught standard Hindu Vedantism), and Helena Blavatsky,
who at first was a philosophical iconoclast, and who founded the Theosophical Society in
1875.
After 1878, however, She, or rather the movement she founded, taught Mahayana
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Buddhist/Brahmanist flavored occultism. As Blavatsky started her "mission" in 1875,
Vivekananda began his work in 1893, and so in many ways Blavatsky was the forerunner,
preparing the West, or at least preparing the popular understanding of the West for
concepts other than Judeo-Christian..
It is, once again, my own belief that in regard to her religio-philosophical efforts, her
primary goal was not simply “preparing the popular understanding of the west for concepts
other than Judeo-Christian” but went much further than that, and was really intended to
completely undermine the West’s religious views. In this, as in her other goals, which were
entirely socio-political, she was very successful indeed.
Prior to this broad scope effort at mass communication, the idea was only familiar to a
rarified level of academic intellectuals such as Schöpenhauer, Nietzsche, Goethe,
Voltaire, etcetera.
The primary problem with the concept of "Reincarnation" is the absolute misperception
of the meaning and methodology of the process on the part of not simply the public, but
most of the so-called "Teachers" as well. I distinctly mean to include both Swami
Vivekananda and Mme. Blavatsky in that group.
The most important thing that it is necessary to grasp in regard to the subject of the
evolution of consciousness is that it has absolutely nothing to do with personal reality
and personal evolution! Conversely, it has everything to do with personal reality and
personal evolution. It's that total dichotomy that causes all the confusion.
So then, how does this process function! How can we remove all the terribly misleading
and harmful confusion with which it is surrounded? It's not an easy task for the concept
itself is entirely abstract, both in nature and in function, and abstractions are terribly
difficult for human beings to comprehend in any degree of fullness. But I will try to
explain and demonstrate the thing to you as best I am enabled.
But first, let me ask you a question. Can you see why confusion on this topic is a thing I
describe as harmful? it is harmful simply because for anyone to have a belief structure of
any kind that is mistaken or untrue is intrinsically harmful. People are thereby encouraged
to live their lives and plan their actions within a paradigm that doesn't really exist, and that
leads to all kinds of foolishness. Unfortunately though, sometimes it leads not simply to
foolishness, but to all kinds of oppressive and repressive behavior.
The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Religious Paradigm is the absolutely perfect example of
how metaphysical misperception coupled with untruth can turn violently poisonous and
terribly harmful to millions upon millions of people.
That is no exaggeration, it is not hyperbole!
In the sixteen centuries that The Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious paradigm
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has been supreme in the Western segments of human society it is no exaggeration to
say that "millions upon millions" of human beings have been murdered, tortured, raped,
robbed, and psychologically and emotionally destroyed in the name of a metaphysical
misperception.
Needless to say, while harmful indeed, the misperception of the nature of
"reincarnation" is in no way comparable to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic paradigm when it
comes to harm and oppression. They stand to one another like a mouse does to a
mastodon!
Secondly: the common misperception of the nature and processes of "reincarnation"
has a really deleterious effect on the human personality. That effect is a dichotomous
one. On one hand, it leads, as we all know only too well, to a plethora of fantastic ego
trips in which individuals glorify themselves on the false idea of who they "used to be".
On the other hand, being merely one cipher in an unending procession of ciphers, is
productive of an attitude that says "I don't matter at all". This attitude is very harmful
because it is productive of a loss of individuality.
A STRONG SENSE OF INDIVIDUALITY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE
INGREDIENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
The single most unproductive and harmful idea arising from a misperception of the
process of spiritual evolution is the notion that individualism is harmful. This notion is
common to both the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Paradigm as well as the Hindu-Buddhist
Paradigms. I am of the opinion that it is in the East that this problem is the more
pernicious. It has led to the denigration of the individual and the individual's rights and
needs in deference to the perceived needs of family, tribe, and nation.
In the west, disapproval of individualism is, while intellectually pervasive in both religion
and "new age philosophy", far more hypothetical than pragmatic. Historically, "stand-out
individuals" are anything but reluctantly admired in the West, although envied and
feared.
That is not to say that there are no "stand-out" individuals in the East, but that in
order to be such, one is likely to have thrown out the entire metaphysical and ethic
paradigm which accompanies the Eastern philosophic view of evolution. It is also rather
dangerous to be a "stand out" individual in most Eastern Societies. That is, it is
dangerous for anyone who is not a religious figure. Though there are certainly ample
evidences that it’s dangerous even then. Look what happened to Mohandas K. Ghandi!
Probably the most pernicious of all Eastern misperceptions of the process concerns
transmigration into non-human forms. In the East, especially among the Hindus, there
is
the really terrible idea that "reincarnation" is a remorseless retributive process. By that
term I mean to say that if a person is "bad", it's not simply a case of "God'll get em", but
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one in which they will return in a successively lower life-condition and even in
successively so-called "lower" species! That is absolutely nonsense!
THERE IS NO RETRIBUTIVE PROCESS OF ANY KIND ASSOCIATED WITH THE
EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS!
"Retribution" is an entirely human and physical conception and it has nothing
whatsoever to do with spiritual evolution or with consciousness per se. The evolutionary
process always tends forward and upward. There are times when, in certain individual
lines of spiritual development the curve "flattens" a bit, but that is only a natural part of
the developmental process and has nothing at all to do with retribution and/or
punishment.
So then, if "reincarnation" is not what most people think it is, what is it?
Probably the most constructive thing we can do to start working towards an increase of
comprehension and a decrease in confusion regarding this topic, is to discontinue
either referring to, or thinking of, the process as "reincarnation". What then shall we call
it?
Well the most descriptive term is "evolutionary growth" because that's what we're
actually talking about. But, it is not sufficiently specific for our needs. "Growth" refers to
altogether too many different specific things, and it refers to them far more clearly than
it refers to the evolution of consciousness. There actually isn't a word at this point in
time that we can use to accurately describe this extremely abstract and complex
subject.
Yelena Blavatskaya liked to use the Greek word “Metempsychosis” meaning “soul
changes” which is a good and descriptive word. But, in my experience, most English
speakers (and I am including Americans) are put off by terms in either Greek or Latin
They would probably misinterpret the “Psychosis” aspect of the term. And so, I believe
that by clearly defining the process, and clearing our thinking on it, we will come to a
point at which a term will be devised which defines and describes the process of
“spiritual evolution” as what it is, while at the same time avoiding the usual confusion as
to the meaning of “spiritual” (Which carries religious connotations).
There is an almost perfectly descriptive phrase: “Evolution of Creative Non-Physical
Intelligence”. It is, in fact, the safest way to think about the process. But when it comes
to ease of communication, it would be more desirable I think, were some single, and
more concise word be found that means the same thing. Even an invented word would
be a good thing, especially if it carried no “baggage” along with it.
So then, what are we talking about? Well, among other things, probably the most basic
is the true nature of the human condition, and the most important is the question: "How
did we all come to be what we are, and what is going to be the outcome of all this?"
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The so-called "human condition" is merely one phase in the evolution of consciousness,
and we are what we are, because of that evolutionary process.
I base all of my metaphysical theorizing upon the theories of what is the presently
"cutting edge" of scientific thought. I'm talking about the work of the Quantum Theorists
and the Contemporary Cosmologists. Why do I do so? Well, it's simply because any
metaphysical theorizing that is not based entirely upon advanced scientific abstractions
is nothing but fantasy and fairy tales.
Now, there are also metaphysical perceptions that are clearly not based upon
"theorizing" but upon empirical experiences. These experiences can be either objective
(and some clearly are) or subjective (which many clearly are). But the experiential
metaphysical perceptions must coincide and support and in turn, be supported by, the
abstract theorizing and the scientific theorizing upon which the metaphysical theorizing
is based.
And so, that having been said, what are we talking about when we discuss "the
evolutionary process of the infinite expansion of consciousness and awareness"?
Everything has to have a beginning and so we did too. Our "beginning" was what is
called "The Big Bang" although I must say that it is my opinion that "A Big Bang", which
is only one in an infinite series of such "explosions", is most likely the better term. But in
either case, what one has at that point in time, is a wildly expanding mass of energy.
That energy is formless and utterly chaotic.
The question that science, philosophy, and religion which unfortunately where
metaphysics takes its roots, have always been attempting to answer is:
"How did we get from that formless and chaotic state to our present condition?"
Now, in the "creation" paradigm to which I ascribe, the one which I feel most likely to be
true and provable; the basic premise is that "formless and chaotic energy" is latent
consciousness. I have, after many years of study. comparative analysis, and
personal experiences of many kinds, come to the very strongly held opinion that: If the
reality in which we exist has any purpose at all, that purpose is, and must be, the infinite
extension of that latent consciousness and awareness. The process of evolutionary
growth is the methodology of that expansion.
That's all very well, but what are you? What am I?
Intrinsically, you and I, and every other thing, "living" or otherwise, are a specific level of
awareness and consciousness, temporarily "wedded" to ( or encapsulated within ) a
physical vehicle of some kind or another. Each of these "physical vehicles" no matter
what it may appear to be, is nothing more or less than a specific field of energy held in
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stasis by a web of force, which is also simply energy.
Those physical vehicles represent energy fields which are not the same as the energy
field of the intelligence occupying them. They are nevertheless not entirely divorced
from, or separate from, those intelligences.
It is the intelligences who are the primary evolving species, bodies do not possess
sufficient duration to evolve, although the species each body represents does in fact
evolve. But that's "now", what was the condition "then"?
That rapidly expanding cloud of "formless chaotic energy" that is what
exists immediately "Post Bang". Of what is it composed? Well extrapolating from the
latest cosmological findings and their quantum theoretical underpinnings, we can
probably correctly assume that the energy cloud is composed of an infinite number of
infinitely small particles.
To which equation I believe that I am a long way from alone in adding the perception
that each of these infinitely small particles is the first step in the evolution of an
independent consciousness.
The evolution of those totally unconscious and un self-aware latent
intelligences into omni-conscious and omni-aware intelligences is the only goal of the
evolutionary cycles. All else is by-product! Were this not so, then consciousness, and in
particular the creative human consciousness, would not and could not exist.
A human being is intrinsically and unquestionably an energy field and only an energy
field, if that energy field is conscious, and we know that it clearly is, then all energy,
while not conscious, or rather not self-conscious, none the less clearly possesses the
potential for the attainment of self and other consciousness/awareness! If some energy
is conscious and aware that it is conscious, then all energy probably possesses the
potential to attain to consciousness.
By the way, as an explanatory note: “consciousness” and “awareness”, as far as I can
ascertain, are: while similar things, very far from identical things. As I see it; as
“consciousness” evolves and expands in its scope, it becomes ever more “aware” of
both its own nature, and both the nature and kind of the things with which it is
surrounded. In other words, the difference between “consciousness” and “awareness” is
that awareness is a function of consciousness. The more aware of its self and its
surroundings any sentient thing is, the higher evolved its consciousness.
The methodology through which this developmental growth is accomplished is best
described as the establishment of a line of development for each primordial intelligence
by which it successively and progressively manifests itself in certain states of being and
reality; through which manifestations it attains the existential experience essential to
growth.
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In the course of this process, the evolving intelligence serially manifests almost
absolutely independent expressions of itself through whom it gains sequentially
progressive experiential and existential data. It utilizes this data-base to expand its own
comprehension and awareness of, first itself, and then, eventually, its comprehension
and awareness of all "things"; both those that relate to itself and those which do not. It
is the extant and extent of awareness of things which do not immediately relate to itself
that indicates the scope of awareness of any sentient entity. The end result of the
process would appear to be the awareness that all things are in fact, inter-related.
These absolutely independent expressions of the evolving spiritual entity, depending on
the level of development of that entity, range from mineral, to animal, to human (homo
sapiens-sapiens) and far beyond human (homo-metasapient). The individual
"expressions" are almost entirely independent of the manifesting entity and of each
other. They do not represent a continuum of experience or identity in any way except
via the intelligence and data-bank of the manifesting entity. Each individual human
being is the culmination of all the previous development, which is why I call this a "Line
of Ascent". Evolution has only one direction in which it moves, that direction is always
one of advancement. I use the term “advancement” because “up” means absolutely
nothing in this context.
So, in this context we may view the evolving primordial intelligence as the intrinsic
reality of any sentient thing, the physical persona is the apparent reality of that
sentience. There is a link between the two, it is a mediating consciousness I call the
virtual reality consciousness, and it is non physical. But it’s far more than merely a ‘link’
it is also the thinking mind of each sentient entity. The brain is merely a switchboard or
perhaps a better metaphor is the Brain is the CPU while the mind or virtual reality
consciousness is the operator of the computer. It is the virtual reality consciousness
that survives “death”, however, as the virtual reality consciousness is the product of a
life experience, it does not precede “birth” even though it contains elements of all that
“went before”.. The Hindus and Buddhists have a word for this they call it the
“Antahkarana “ which can be translated as “Rainbow Bridge”.
The expression on the physical planes of reality, while only apparently real, nonetheless
may truly be described as an "incarnation" of the manifesting entity, but each and every
one of these expressions is almost entirely independent.
That is what you are, and everyone else is. You are an entirely independent physical
intelligence expressing the present aspect of an evolving non-physical intelligence
entity. You are one almost totally independent expression in a continuous and almost
infinitely long line of development of a single evolving "spiritual" entity.
The manifested aspect of that evolving intelligence, which “aspect” is you, is the
contemporary end product of all the past experience and growth of that evolving entity.
In that sense, then, you are very clearly "the sum of all that went before", in fact you are
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the contemporary but entirely temporary culmination of the developmental process.
More than that, you are, in fact, completely identical with "all that went before", but not
at all "identical" with any one particular or individual aspect of "all that went before". In
other words you are the sum of all the "parts" that went into your spiritual make-up but
you are not, nor were not, one of those “parts”.
This thing I call a "line of development" has been described before (by Yelena
Blavatskaya, who, as usual, claimed it wasn't her metaphor but an ancient Brahmin
one), as a "string of pearls”. In that metaphor the manifesting evolving intelligence is the
"string" that holds them all in unity. The "pearls" represent the individual manifestations
of that evolving intelligence, Perispirit, or "Monad". The "pearls" are supported, unified,
and restrained by the "string"; but each of them is totally distinct and separate from
each of the others.
That "string of pearls", I used to think, was the perfect metaphor for what is commonly
called "reincarnation". Which in fact, does not exist as commonly perceived. But I now
perceive that it too, was misleading, as it indicated a separation that was far more
apparent than real. It is my current thinking that a better descriptive metaphor can be
found, and it has been found, I will describe it further on.
Now then, the next two questions we have to deal with, and they are very important
ones, are these:
FIRST:
What is the end product for the evolving spiritual intelligence? What exactly do we
mean
to say by "End Product" and do we know when that result would be reached?
SECOND:
What about you and all the other physical expressions? What does evolution hold in
store for you? For "them"? Does the physical expression~manifestation have no
connection in any way with the evolving entity? If there is a connection does it end? If
so, when?
"End Product of Evolution"? There may be such a thing, but like the initial creator
intelligence (or Creator Spirit) if such actually exists; it is infinitely beyond the grasp of
our conceptual and perceptive facilities. The scope of non-physical evolution is a thing
which is entirely irrelevant to physically based intelligences.
I believe, as you already know, that the goal of all manifestation (or creation, if you will)
is the infinitization of consciousness and awareness. That then, may be defined as "The
End Product of Evolution" but how may we quantify or define what such a thing is? We
cannot.
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If intelligence-consciousness-awareness is to be infinitized, we may ask if a
process devoted to infinitization possesses the potential to be finite enough to
have such a thing as an “end product”? I don’t think so.
There is however, one thing we can say. That thing is that physical reality is simply a
phase in that process. A phase which will, in due time, end. I repeat: Physicality is a
temporary phase in the evolution of consciousness (spirit). In view of the time
periods involved, a relatively short-lived phase at that.
I neither wish nor intend to imply or infer anything either negative or inferior about the
phase of evolution called "The Physical". During it's period of applicability it is vitally
important and the experiences and growth of awareness that are applicable only to
physicality are of tremendous and vital importance to the evolution of
consciousness~awareness and intelligence.
Now, as each evolving spiritual or intelligence entity reaches the end of its physical
phase of growth, the entity and all of its manifested personalities are integrated into a
single beingness. That integration is what humanity's many philosophies and religions
have called "Enlightenment", and which the Hindus and Buddhists additionally call
"Nirvana", which signifies the end of all manifestation in the levels of the realities which
are physical for the evolving intelligence. But it certainly does not, and cannot, and most
important of all SHOULD NOT mean the end of evolution for that evolving intelligence.
So then, where does that leave you?
"Enlightenment" is clearly something which is entirely different than death. So what then
is death?
What actually happens when an individual dies?
Let's just accept that the "one shot" scenario postulated by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
Religious Paradigm is preposterous and leave it at that. It's preposterous because that
paradigm is totally unconnected to the greater reality and is instead predicated upon the
existence of a cosmic busybody with a high sense of permanent outrage and a need for
administering "punishment". This is puerile nonsense.
Let's also accept that the scenario postulated by Atheists and other total materialists is
equally preposterous because it too, like religion, is based upon a total disconnection
from what science is learning about the nature of reality. In addition, I, as a Shaman,
know, and have clearly experienced the greater reality, and I am therefore aware that it
is anything but what either the religionists or their mirror images, the atheists, say it is..
What I deem to be a most intriguing aspect of these two postulations is that the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic Paradigm's after death hypothesis is, in the clearest way,
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equally materialistic to that of the agnostics and atheists if not more so.
After all the agnostics say, truthfully, that they don't know what happens when a person
dies. That's true they don't, but at least they're honest about it which is a plus for them.
The Atheists are no better than the religious, for they too claim they know what
happens when a person dies. What happens they say, is "nothing".....the heart stops,
the brain stops, the lungs stop, and that's it, it's all over, "nothingness" is the result.
But the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Triad is far more material than that, though I must say
it's the Christians and the Muslims who are the guilty parties here as the Jews don't get
too specific, but the Christians and Muslims are totally materialistic and the Christians
are the worst of all. The Muslims have a marvelously sensual and hedonistic "paradise",
which one would have to be physical to enjoy but it's apparently limited to those who die
as "martyrs to the faith", and certain selected "Saints". What awaits the rest of the
Muslims is more vague. But the Christians are another matter altogether, they believe in
actual physical resurrection, the resurrection of the human body just as it was. But, of
course, only Christians get resurrected (or 144,00 Christians if you're a Calvinist predestinarian), whilst every one else "burns in "Hell"”. And that's both utter nonsense and
grotesquely obscene. They also, as a corollary to this limited and limiting concept,
believe in life as a "one-shot" deal, which is also grotesque.
There is no religion on this planet which actually and pragmatically deals with spirit or
consciousness, as an important factor in what is called "Life". I am teaching that "spirit"
or abstract non-physical intelligence~awareness is not simply an important factor in
what is called life, but that when one views "life" in a proper context, spirit is the only
factor in life of any importance at all. Life in the body is a short term thing, life outside of
the body is unending. "Life" the thing itself, not it's physical sub-set, is not transient, it is
permanent.
So then, what is the answer to the question "What happens when you die?" I have an
absolutely clear answer to that question, and it's not that complicated.
THE ANSWER IS: NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS. YOU DON'T DIE!
Did I just say that "You don't die"? Yes, I did.
"Death" is simply a change in the focus of a persons personal consciousness. It ceases
to focus on the material and begins to focus in the spiritual. The person leaves their
body and begins to function without it. In other words it ceases to exist as apparent
reality and continues to exist as virtual reality.
"Death" is stasis, and in a universe composed of constantly changing energy fields
there
is no such thing as stasis! The valid perception is that everything which seems to be
solid and totally physical is nonetheless simply a field of constantly moving energy
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particles held in a semblance of stasis by what is most easily described as a ‘force
field”. This neither means nor implies that physical things are any kind of illusion, they
really aren’t, but it does tend to at least inform us that physical things are also not
exactly what they appear to be.
The energy particles of which all reality is composed are in constant movement, and
that constant movement at least implies the corollary of constant movement which is
constant change.
Constant change means exactly that; constant change, and in the case of sentient
things, in one of those changes, each individual human being comes to that place at
which the body is no longer of any conceivable use to them. It is also a point at which
that vehicle is no longer of any "use" to the manifesting spiritual entity which it had also
served, and so both the individual human being and the evolving spiritual entity, what
the Brahmins call the "Reincarnating Jiva", simultaneously leave the body behind and
that body, bereft of it’s binding forces, dissolves back into the universal energy field
from whence it originated.
At this point the two consciousness, which are not at all identical, and which never were
identical, go their separate ways. The excarnate human being isn't the "reincarnating
Jiva" and the "Jiva" isn't the excarnate human being at all. The connection between
them ends at this point. The newly excarnate human being is the sum of all the
experiences that “ reincarnating Jiva” has had to date plus its own recent experiences
on the physical planes, and so it goes on with it's own evolution.
THEY BOTH DO!
Next, let's discuss an obvious and important question.
If there is truly no such thing as 'reincarnation", and there really isn't, why do so
very many people appear to have experiences and visions which are suggestive
of personal reincarnation?
We all know completely sane people who have had such experiences, we've all read
about such experiences, people have had them during our rituals. Both John Wise and
Jay Stone who are my two closest colleagues, have had some spectacular
experiences of that type, as has the four year old youngest son of Robert McLinton,
another close colleague, and I've had them myself.
In fact, from a very early age, over the course of my life I've had one particular
apparently "past-life" experience repeat itself frequently. It is always extremely detailed
and violent, far too detailed for my comfort, and all of the details are always identical.
What does this mean? It is an experience of being brutally murdered as a young boy,
so has no apparent applicability in my own life. There are absolutely no overtones of
sexuality. It cannot meet the psychologist's criteria for "working out problems in daily
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life". It isn't an "ego trip" because the person I identify as myself in the experience and I
are close Cousins and of nearly identical social status.
Does it then mean that what is called "reincarnation" is a fact? The answer to that
question is neither yes nor no, but that the process is far more complicated and subtle
than simply "reincarnation".
What is it that we actually "know"?
Well, we really do know that the visible and invisible universe is composed of energy
and only energy.
We also know that consciousness is composed of energy, at its most basic level the
brain produces a measurable electric charge, and that the two states of energy,
consciousness energy and so-called "pure" energy, are inseparable and identical.
Based upon that knowledge, and informed by Vedic understanding of that knowledge,
I am assured that it is safe to assume (with the Vedas) that the purpose of the
manifested universe is the evolution of that consciousness energy. Not "a" purpose of
the manifested universe, but the sole and intrinsic purpose of that manifested
universe:
The nature of the universe is continuous change, change marked by the growth and
infinite expansion of consciousness and awareness.
What is meant by the term: "evolution of that consciousness energy"? It means that the
energy of which the manifested universe is composed, is constructively evolved from a
state of inchoate, totally un self-conscious, un other-conscious, extremely minimal
awareness of any kind, into a totally coherent, totally self-conscious, totally
other-conscious, infinite awareness.
In the course of that process, the universe, which is and always has been a unified field
of energy~consciousness, becomes fully aware of that unity and becomes an
omni-conscious, omni-aware multiverse.
We also know that the manifested universe exists upon multiple levels of relative
realities. What does "relative reality" mean to say?
The only intrinsic reality is energy~consciousness.
Anything which is "other" than essential energy~consciousness is unreal, or
rather "less real", than is the essential reality, but real relative to itself, and to
every other thing, sentient or not, which exists at its own level.
The number of levels of the "relative realities" is relatively infinite.
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The various levels of the "relative realities" are differentiated from one another, and
from
the absolute reality, by the intensity of the energy field which establishes them, and
thereby differentiates them.
The energy particles which are the "building blocks" of all forms, both physical forms
and those not so physical, are carried on "carrier waves" of energy. These particle
carrier waves oscillate at different rates of speed in a sine curve pattern. The
inter-action between the particle carrier beams, the sine-curve oscillations, and the
speed of those oscillations create a field of force which is the only reality of all forms.
Changes (slower to faster) in oscillation speed is the only reality of what is called by
occultists "Initiation", and by Buddhists and Hindus; “Enlightenment”.
What does that have to do with a human being?
Everything, for at no time is a human being anything other than a differentiated field of
force existing apparently independently within the unified field of forces which is the
manifested universe. I say “apparently independently” because it is far from clear that
anything within the manifest universe exists independent of that universe.
That "unified field of forces" by the way, is the only reality of what humankind seem to
feel more comfortable with by calling it "God". Because what it really is, !s the gestalt
intelligence-consciousness-awareness of all living things, things past, and things
present and possibly even things future. But that is certainly a very far cry from “The
Cosmic Busybody”, is it not?
What all this has to do with personal reality, with reincarnation, with evolution, and with
the survival of self-consciousness, is that it is the context in which all of that takes
place.
I believe I've already established the nature of the evolving spiritual entity as the
Antahkarana or "Rainbow Bridge" between physical expressions of that entity.
I've discussed "death" and I, at least, know that there is no reality to the notion of
"dying". So how then do we deal with our subject, which is the explanation, within that
framework, of what seem to be apparently valid "Past-life memories"?
An important ingredient in this explanation has to do with what I, inspired by Amerindian
Lore, and because there is no word more appropriate; call "Grandfather/Grandmother
spirits". I'll get back to them later as the discussion of Shamanism continues.
Another important ingredient in the explanation has to do with the integration of
personalities which is the most important aspect of evolutionary development. This too,
is a subject I'll return to later on in this essay.
But first let's go back to our discussion of the evolution of the essential spiritual entity
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via
the Antahkarana.
You'll recall Madame Blavatsky's "String of Pearls"? Let’s try this metaphor instead.
Let's imagine the evolving universal energy field as an infinitely expanding "Field of
force”. Within that immeasurable immensity of energy are particularized "fields" of
energy, within these particularized fields are what might be described as individual
‘energy centers’. What are these “centers”? Well, they are potential nexii within the
universal field, and each and every one of them is an evolving spirit devoid of any
characteristic other than infinite potential (These are the "incarnating Jivas" according to
the Brahmins). The “particularized fields” themselves; which are composed of these
evolving nexii in infinite numbers, have a potential that is beyond human imagination.
It’s possible to simplify that metaphor by likening it to a single human body, which is
actually also an energy field, and as Chinese medicine long ago found out that energy
field is best likened to a net of energy streams which meet at nexii called “acupuncture
points”, well in the living body that is the manifested universe the “reincarnating Jivas’
are the “acupuncture points”.
That universal energy field, at the beginning of the process is absolutely colorless, and
without anything approaching character or form. It is not yet light but rather the potential
of light. On the other hand it is also not “dark”. As time goes by though, and each of the
individual intelligences (energy sparks) evolve, the universe becomes a place filled with
light and color, a place of splendor.
Let's narrow our vision down to one individual “nexus” and/ or one "individual
particularized field"; imagine, if you will, a scene in which these energy beings exist in
relationship to the physical universe, and, in particular, to the physical world in which we
live.
The most difficult act the imagination can perform is envisioning how a formless,
colorless, characterless, unconscious point of energy becomes a sentient entity.
Somehow, and no one knows how exactly it happens, these points of energy possess
the capability of extending what could be loosely described as a ‘tendril’ of
consciousness energy into the earliest embryonic form of a sentient being. This
extension of consciousness is the seed out of which develops both the virtual
consciousness and the physical consciousness. It is also an ‘observer”.
(You realize, of course, and I want to make absolutely sure that you do, that this is a
really major over-simplification. But, I believe, it will enable you to more readily envision
what sort of happens. Whether this is precisely what happens we cannot know, but it is
very clear that the consciousness of a never physical nexus of intelligent energy is
somehow enabled to take part in the life and experiences of something physical to
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which it is not intrinsic.)
That "tendril of energy" will serve the purpose of the "black box" aboard an airliner,
recording everything that happens to that physical creature during the course of its life.
Every new physical entity is the result of a dual developmental process. One process is
the development of the energy field which is the basic reality of all things and the
second process is the development of the apparent reality of the entity which is
physical. But at no time is this conscious being anything but energy.
When that only apparently physical life ends, the physical being, is a field of force in
being. Energy, once created, is never lost from the universe. As a result, that "field
of force in being", which is now an excarnate intelligence, continues on its own
developmental "pathway". That tendril of energy, our putative "black box", returns
whence it came, to the individual evolving (reincarnating) spiritual entity. The nearest
possible term for this aspect of the process is telemetry.
Now, I know that the usual belief is that energy can neither be created or destroyed,
and that is true, but what I am talking about is what can be defined as a re-creation or
redefinition of energy. When an individual force field is created it is created out of the
ever existing energy but once it is individualized it is a kind of “new creation”. It’s really
no so much re-creation as it is the rearrangement of electrons. Perhaps it would be
clearer and even more accurate to define it as the intensification of the force field.
Secondly, I am not sure the old adage is completely correct. MY own “take” on what are
called “Black Holes” is that they are “energy factories” constantly either producing new
energies or, and I think this far more likely, exchanging energies between universes.
At that point the intrinsic nature of the spiritual entity undergoes a qualitative change
due to the new energies added with he reabsorption of the "tendril". It might help you to
envision this if you were to imagine that at the beginning of the evolutionary process,
like the unified field itself, the " individuated “nexus" was a colorless point of almost
light, but with each reabsorption of it's "tendrils of energy", that color changes and
evolves, until eventually it is no longer a colorless mist but a brilliant diamond-like
energy field radiating all the various colors it picked up during its evolution. This of
course is also true, but on a vast scale of the particularized force-field of which the
“nexus” is an integer.
What is true of the nexii within the unified field is equally true of the field itself.
Each successive manifestation of each individual entity is an expression of what the
entity is now, and not at all what it was. In other words, the physical expressions of any
evolving entity become more complex and subtle as that entity evolves. They become a
compendium of all that the entity has experienced vicariously. They are, in other words,
everyone that entity has ever been, but totally unconsciously so.
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But sometimes some of that may possibly "bleed through" in a process I don’t
pretend to understand, and that may account for SOME of what are called
"past-life experiences".
Now I'll return to the two subjects I promised to discuss. "Grandfather/Grandmother
Spirits" and "The Integration of Personalities".
Let me define the terms "Excarnate" and "Discarnate"..
By "excarnate" I mean to say a non-physical intelligence which formerly occupied a
"body" on the physical planes of the relative realities. These "excarnates" can be
human, or animal, or far beyond either state.
By "Discarnate" I mean to say a never-physical intelligence. These can be animal as
well as pseudo anything at all, and it is in this class that a person's so-called “totem
animals” can be found. Discarnate spirits exist on many levels, some far behind the
level of human evolution, and some infinitely ahead of human evolution. But they have
one thing in common they were never physical and never either manifested on the
physical levels of the relative realities as either human or animal.
As a Shaman I am aware, and I am fairly certain that most independently minded but
non atheistic people (and what is probably a majority of religious people as well) alive
today are also aware (if not truly aware at least hypothetically so), that each and
every physical human being goes through his or her life with a coterie of non-physical
companions. After all, what else are “Guardian Angels”?
These non-physical or spiritual companions are of various kinds and degrees. Some of
them are excarnate individuals who have an emotional tie with the individual. Some of
them are excarnate animal spirits who have a strong bond with the individual. Some of
them are Discarnate animal spirits who are called "Totemic Spirits", and they represent
aspects of natural forces that the individual may need to subsume within themselves.
Some of them are Discarnate individual consciousnesses who serve as guides and
teachers. Among the "guides and teachers" are the "Grandfathers and Grandmothers".
Sometimes, in the case of very rare individual human beings, individuals who are of
Shamanic, or true priestly status, or, and this is extremely uncommon, both at once; it
happens that one or two of the attendant "guides and teachers" are Discarnate entities
of a very high level of spiritual evolution. One of that class of entities humans are
forced, for lack of any more valid terminology, to describe as being nearly what humans
mistakenly call "divinities".
But of course, as there are truly no such things, in the case of so-called
“divinities”, what we're seeing is an entirely abstract entity presenting itself in
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terms and context that our minds can grasp. “Divinity” carries an implication
implicit in its use of authority and hierarchical rank. Nothing could be further
from the truth. The more evolved an intelligence is, the less authoritarian it is
likely to be. Hierarchies exist only on the level or physical realities and even there
they are becoming less and less valid. But on the non-physical realities there is
no such thing.
As the immortal spirit evolves, and its manifestations evolve as a reflection of the
evolutionary status of the spirit, those physical people begin to gain the ability to
“communicate” with their spirit companions and eventually with other spirits as well.
I use “communicate” in the sense of “commune”. I am not talking about conversations,
but about a merger of consciousnesses and thoughts. In most people they are
extremely limited, in others anything but.
These spirit companions most clearly and obviously manifest at rituals, but in reality
they are "there" for the person they accompany, all the days of that person's life.
Of these spirit companions, the ones which interest us most in the context of this
discussion, are the "Grandfathers and Grandmothers".
While you are clearly other than they, while "you" are not "them", they are nevertheless
a strong ingredient in your nature. The "Grandfather and Grandmother spirits" are in the
same relationship to you spiritually that your physical paternal and maternal
grandparents are to you genetically. Without them, "you" wouldn't be "you".
These spirits are the on-going immortal spiritual aspects of the physical beings who
were previous physical manifestations or expressions of the evolving never-physical
consciousness entity of which the presently physical being (i.e. ‘You”) is the expression.
In other words, while they are not precisely "you", nonetheless, you could not be what
you are without their contributions to your make-up.
Perhaps this will help. You are not their “present incarnation”, and they are not your
“previous incarnations”. You, and each of them, are entirely independent individuals,
but all of you are the expressions of the same evolving spiritual intelligence. The
primary difference between you and your “Grandmother-Grandfather Spirits” is that you
are an expression of the intrinsic spiritual entity after their contributions have been
added to its “data bank”. You are the “next generation” of expression, as it were. For
that reason the attention of these spirits are focused upon you, and others of the same
category.
Through unconscious contact with these intelligences you can very easily experience
events from THEIR LIVES which are pertinent to your own life and development.
That's another source of "Past-life memories".
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The next subject with which we need to deal is the integrated personality.
The common word for an integrated personality is "Enlightened Being". I prefer to use
integrated personality because it does not carry so much emotional and ego freight on
its back. In the orient it is believed that "Buddhas remember all their incarnations". A
"Buddha" is the Eastern Term for a "Fully Enlightened Being". I describe this kind of
individual as an integrated personality.
Let's look at that phrase (“Buddhas remember all their incarnations”) in the context of
this discussion on spiritual evolution. In our context, that phrase isn't too far wrong if
one understands it to mean that the integrated personality becomes aware of all their
spiritual antecedents.
But the integration of a personality is a very complicated event. It only occurs when the
manifesting entity has reached a stage in its evolution at which it no longer requires
any physical manifestation at all for further growth and development. By that point in its
evolutionary progress its physical expressions are operating at a very high evolutionary
level.
By which I mean to say that the particle carrier wave sine curve of the field of
force that individuates the person is oscillating very rapidly indeed. At that point in time
the consciousness of the physical person absolutely integrates with the totality of
experience of the evolving entity. That person's conscious awareness subsumes the
totality of the memories and awarenesses of all the beings who "went before" them. As
a result, the living person becomes a compendium of all the experiences of all the
"Grandfathers and Grandmothers" combined.
They themselves, the consciousnesses who are the so-called “Grand Mothers and
Grandfathers” themselves, on the other hand, as the completely disparate individuals
which they truly are, go about their evolutionary business on the spiritual planes.
That is probably the most difficult aspect of this process to describe clearly for it is a
very subtle and extremely complicated thing. Absolute individuality and personality
integration seem to be dichotomous. But they aren’t. And that is the problem.
Let’s put it another way: The intrinsic reality personality is the evolving spiritual
intelligence, the means by which it evolves are a series of absolutely independent
individual personalities. Each of these independent individuals has it’s own life to lead
and it’s own “after life” too. But the essence of their life is part of the “mix” that goes into
the Spiritual Genealogy of the next in sequence and so fourth, So then, the term
“spiritual genealogy” is quite identical to the term “physical genealogy” as the
predecessor individuals contribute to what the new individual is.
The last individual in this process, becomes an integrated personality, in that all of the
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experiences of past individuals are conjoined in the new individual, and even though
they, the so-called “past individuals” personally, are continuing their “afterlife”
development and experiences, their memories, while now incorporated in the integrated
personality, are clearly still with the original possessors of those memories too.
Of course an integrated personality will have what seem to be valid "past life"
experiences.
WARNING:
The greatest majority by far of what are called “past life experiences” are entirely
hallucination. They result from an entirely human need for importance of some
kind. Many of them, of course, result from indoctrination in adolescent
metaphysical “notions”. In the past thirty five or so years of experience in these
matters, I have encountered people who truly believed themselves to be the
“reincarnation” of fictional characters. Adolf Hitler, for instance, believed himself
the “reincarnation” of “Klingsor” who was the evil magician of Wagner’s Opera
Parsifal (though the original inspiration for the operatic character in all likelihood
may have been a Sicilian Count “Klingsor”, who was widely believed to be a
Mage dedicated to the “Dark side” during the time of Frederick II). At one point
though, I knew not one, but three, people all of whom believed themselves to be
the “reincarnation” of Jesus of Nazareth who never actually lived. It is amazing
how much trouble these kind of mistaken beliefs can get people into.
But, in the case of an integrated personality they are not experiences from
a past life, what they really are can be more accurately described as the experiences of
one integral life experience. In the case of an integrated personality there is no such
thing as a past life, there is only one life, eternal and on-going.
What personality integration means to say is this:
The integrated personality is a consciously immortal being. That means to say
immortal in consciousness, not in body! The Integrated personality is the sum total not
merely of it's own genetic and spiritual genealogies, but of all that the genetic and
spiritual genealogies combined into one has made of all the many pre-existing physical
individuals who contributed to its development. In this chain of development, the
genetic genealogy is completely unique in each individual, but the spiritual genealogy is
a thing which is continuously being shaded and changed by each new manifestation of
the spirit involved.
The creation of integrated personalities is one of the primary processes in the evolution
of consciousness. I think it's certainly easy to see how the creation of integrated
personalities facilitates the process of the infinitization of intelligence.
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The manifested cosmos is a unified field composed of intelligent energy centers that
are absolutely independent and eventually integrated personalities. All of them unique,
all of them perfectly independent consciousness, all if them the product of a process of
descent and ascent that produces terribly complex integrated histories.
I believe and I hope that I have now answered the question which we have been
discussing..
The fact is that the moment human minds begin to attempt to deal with absolutely
abstract subjects, complication, extreme complexity, is the inevitable result.
While in normal things I am rigorous in my adherence to the principal expressed in
William of Ockham’s “Razor” [”multiplicity ought not to be posited without necessity” or
in the Latin he used: “pluralites non es ponenda sine necessitates”], when we come to
dealing with matters arcane, when we are trying to comprehend metaphysical and
occult truths it is perhaps always wisest to remember that if it seems too simple, it
probably is too simple. Little about what makes an individual just exactly that, utterly
unique, is at all simple.
As I said earlier, an individual is selected as a potential Shaman/Shamanka by the
spirits, the Shaman/Shamanka is not self-selected. Now, what exactly does that mean
to say? It's very easy for a person to enrapture themselves in their own, and/or other's,
glamours and fantasies and "trip out" on being a Shaman/Shamanka. But that does not
make them one!
Being a Shaman/Shamanka is a position implying both knowledge and power on the
one hand, and absolute responsibility for the use of that knowledge and power on the
other.
THE POWER TO ACT, CONFERS THE ABSOLUTE RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SO. IT
CARRIES WITH IT THE EQUALLY ABSOLUTE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE
RESULTS OF THAT ACTION.
Humankind tends to avoid responsibility every chance it gets, that’s why they invented
religion, but it seldom ignores power and therefore Shamanhood is a powerful draw for
people who need to ameliorate their own insecurities. Many people ego-trip on being a
Shaman/Shamanka but that definitely does not make them one.
Many people, who totally misunderstand the nature of the bridging function, wrongly
assume that religion's usual "bottom line", which is power and profit, can be gained by
claiming the Shamanic function as their own.
Given the essentially gullible nature of most human beings there are those who are at
least financially successful in this imposture, people are far too easily imposed upon
and fooled. There are far too many "con artists" in human society and in all too many
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cases the "con" is a false assumption of Shamanic status. The "Con artists" make
money, and the "marks" lose it. But none of this effects Shamanism itself. To pretend to
be a Shaman though, is personally perilous, if not deadly, in the long run. But it's very
hard, and agonizingly painful, in both the physical and emotional senses of the term
“painful” to actually be one.
The most important aspect of being a Shaman, one which must be understood and
accepted by anyone who believes themselves to have Shamanic potential, is this: upon
becoming a shaman, solipsism necessarily becomes a thing of the past. The Shaman
lives only for the benefit of others, never for the Shaman's benefit in any way! A
Shaman is, and must always be, an altruist and immediately available, whether as
healer or as guide, to all those who are in need!
I repeat my very much earlier question:
"How does one know when one has been selected by the realm of spirit to be
transformed into a Shaman/Shamanka?"
It's a slow process, and a very confusing one for a time, but I can assure you that
eventually one certainly does come to know beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I can only answer that question if you will let me tell you of my own experience. I have
already told you that I am a fully functioning Shaman, so it clearly is a question,
although not at all a simple one, that I believe I can successfully answer.
The answer clearly has to do with the term "fully functioning Shaman". When I, or any
other fully functioning Shaman, says: "I am a Shaman", the fact is that they both can
and must prove it to their listener's satisfaction or dissatisfaction as the case may be.
Any valid Shaman can demonstrate the degrees of their functionality to any other
person, and logic, reason, and judgment do not need to be set aside. No Shaman
needs to be accepted "on faith".
How does one prove it? One proves one is a Shaman by being a Shaman, by
demonstrating unquestionably that one can perform the various Shamanic functions.
Not by ‘claiming’ but by actually doing!
NO ONE AND NO-THING SHOULD EVER BE ACCEPTED "ON FAITH"!
Now, the first thing I have to tell you is that this is no sudden thing. You absolutely do
not wake up one morning replete in the absolute awareness and full knowledge that you
are now a Shaman/Shamanka! I do not believe that would be an experience anyone
could survive.
Becoming aware of one's bridging function is actually a life-long experience. I think I
can confidently state that it is a long-term and continuously on-going process. The
process commences, and this at a very early age, with an awareness that you have an
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unusual and extended reality, one in which the borders of reality extend far beyond
those of most people, and most particularly a very special relationship with non human
sentience. It is an awareness of "difference", it is clearly NOT alienation. On the
contrary it is NOT alienation", it is rather a sense of wholeness and union with all
living things!
All of my life I have loved all animals and all the animals I have encountered have loved
me. Animals and I communicate with one another. No, I don't "hear" them "talking".....I
verbalize aloud to them, all the time, but I do not believe that "talking" is the form my
communication with other creatures takes. The form our communication takes is
mind-to-mind and "heart to heart" if one uses the common definition of "heart" as
something other than a pump..
As a child I was always making friends with wild animals in the woods and forests of
New York State. I certainly can communicate with my own wolves, and they with me,
and I have had experiences of communicating with other wolves (also real ones) dating
back to my youth.. Of course this could also describe a psychotic. But, I am not a
psychotic, several psychiatrists have attested that I am a really boringly well-adjusted
person. These psychiatrists, by the way are friends and colleagues, I did not go to them
for evaluation.
Loving animals does not make one a Shaman/Shamanka.
Now, when I was a child, and today as well, like Socrates, I had, and have, a Daemon,
or spirit, or Guardian, or "Grandfather", if you will. A potential Shaman/Shamanka is
never "alone". This Daemon, and I do not now, nor have I ever perceived it as a
"playmate" or "friend", though I have been known to facetiously refer to it as "The
Boss", has always protected me and guarded me and guided me.
When I was about seven years old, I was crossing a city street in New York, having run
ahead of my Mother, a Cab came around the corner at a very high rate of speed and I
was right in front of it! My Mother shrieked, knowing that nothing could stop the Cab
from hitting me, but then I appeared to be lifted straight into the air and deposited on
the opposite sidewalk. The Cab nearly went straight over me, it would have done so
had I not already been "placed" on the sidewalk safely.. ( a witness said to my Mother;
"Boy that kid can sure jump!")
This was a very dramatic instance, but hardly my first experience with my Daemon.
That protection and its concomitant guidance, has lasted from that day to this.
A more recent, and to me far more dramatic instance, was forcibly brought home to me
about five years ago when I suddenly developed a terribly painful case of arthritis. I
cannot begin to describe how difficult it made my life. Then one Sunday, as I was
reaching for the Advil Bottle, my "voice" said: "Don't take those you will damage
yourself"....my thought response was: "What will I do about the pain?".....the voice's
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response? “What pain?". The pain disappeared and stayed away.
Another and far more dramatic instance took place in November 1999, when I had
emergency open heart surgery because all the vessels leading to and from my heart
were either fully blocked or nearly so. The Cardiologists who attended to me had very
little expectation that I would survive, but as I was otherwise extremely healthy they
decided to risk the operation. The operation took a mere two and a half hours and the
surgeon was totally mystified because I was the first person he had operated on that
didn’t need a transfusion. I am better now, and I personally attribute my recovery and
survival not only to the Doctors skills which were great, but to the aid and help of my
Sprit Allies. I say this because to this day the Cardiologists don’t understand how I lived
long enough to make it to the emergency room, nor do they understand why I never had
a heart attack. I do, but I don’t think I can tell them.
Now, I’ve made it clear (I hope) that empathy with animals, and/or having a Daemonprotector aren’t the important aspect of becoming a Shaman, so what is?
Well, in keeping with the most vital of all of the Shamanic capacities, the most important
of all is the ability to testify to the unreality of death, and for this to be so, the potential
Shaman must experience death, and so the spirits guiding the experience take the
individual to “death’s door” and beyond and back again. If my case can be taken as
typical, this happens more than once to make sure it doesn’t get “explained away”. As I
think should be obvious, this is not a process that can be accomplished “over night”.
I have spent the last thirty five years studying theology, cosmology, philosophy, religion,
and metaphysics. At no time during that period was I particularly "drawn" to Shamanism
in any way. In fact, I have to say that as a very civilized and well brought up human, and
having read Mercia Eliade and other books on the subject, I was rather repelled by what
I always perceived as charlatanry, and by the primitive, seemingly brutish, nature of
Shamanism. I know now that true Shamanism is neither truly primitive, nor is it even
slightly brutish, and it certainly isn't charlatanry!
In addition, I had no real passion for native Amerindian culture and religion or that of
any other "native" group in any way. I did not choose to be a Shaman, in fact I backed
away from the whole subject until, in backing away, I fell right into it! One would have to
call me The Reluctant Shaman!
On the other hand, because I am an artist, and because of my strong interest in the
performance of music and the theater; I have always been strongly interested in the
technical side of ritual and ceremony and it's strong effects on the human psyche.
Ritual, of course, is an intrinsic part of the public experience of the Shamanic function,
though when I first became interested in the subject I was totally unaware of this fact.
What I have learned about ritual and ceremony in that thirty five years of study and
evolving practice, besides learning to clearly understand that Ritual isn’t simply theater,
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is this:
FIRST:
Ritual that is only theater, is only that...theater. That, to be brutally honest, describes
most ritual. True Ritual is not an intellectual thing. It is not a "head trip" even though it
may seem to be so. It is not of the mind but is rather of the sensory/emotional/feeling
aspects of consciousness. Intellectuality is the chief obstacle to ritual.
SECOND:
Successful ritual depends on the very careful interplay of every aspect of the ritual.
Color, sound, scent, action, etcetera, all must be closely interwoven into a complete
tapestry of being in and of itself. But all of this planning and thinking must take place
before the ritual. Once the ritual begins it must be an experiential sensory experience.
THIRD:
Successful ritual depends on the prevailing energy, both that of the times, and that of
the individual(s) involved, and these disparate energies must be reconciled, merged,
and utilized in the ritual to generate the energies desired for the completion of the ritual.
What I mean to say here is that intrinsically, ritual is a manipulation of energy
.
FOURTH:
Successful ritual involves two distinct parts. First the opening of the consciousness
and/or awareness of the individual performing the ritual (if it is an individual ritual that is
being performed) or the opening of the consciousnesses and/or awarenesses of all
those who are attending the ritual (for those rituals given for public purpose) so that the
energies generated and called down by the ritual may be fully received and freely
exchanged by the celebrant(s). The easiest way to do this is obviously sensory
overload. That’s the reason for the music, the lights, the scents, the complete removal
of everyday dress and behaviour. These things overload the senses and truly open the
mind.
Secondly the actual "calling down" of the energies.
FIFTH:
Ritual, if performed successfully, has a life of its own that must be effectively utilized by
the practitioner of that ritual, or the energies will dissipate to no advantage and quite
regularly to some disadvantage.
SIXTH:
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Ritual is clearly form, true, but it is also far more than form. If a practitioner falls into
rigid
formulae and loses sight of the fullness available to them through the ritual, then the
right energies will never be generated for the successful performance of the ritual. This
is what has happened to the Catholic Mass and to the rituals of Hinayana Buddhism.
This is the result of intellectuality assuming the major place in the ritual.
SEVENTH:
A successful ritual always sees an exchange of energy that can be perceived by those
participating in the ritual. Something will be clearly and undeniably felt, it may not, and
probably will not, be the fullness of the energies or information being transmitted, but
something will register in the consciousness of the participants. It may simply be a
feeling, or a vision, or anything, but something will occur. If nothing results, than the
ritual has not been performed correctly or there is a blockage somewhere. It seems
pretty clear to me that if there are a large number of people present, and almost all of
them have an "experience" that to them is valid, and only one or two people do not,
then rather than a flaw in the ritual, there is clearly some kind of blockage in the minority
who had no experience.
Now, when I use the term "blockage" I do not pretend that “blockage” to be caused by
a "fault" or "flaw" in the people experiencing the blockage. Shamanism is not a "flaw
seeking thing". An undigested dinner can cause blockage, as can anger or being
sexually stimulated, or a headache, or an uncomfortable seating position, or being too
cold or too warm.
I find it very interesting though that, in my experience, in most cases, disbelief or even
hostile disbelief isn't a "block". In my experience it is sometimes the most hostile that
have the most exciting experiences. Now, their “take” on these experiences, and what
they may then “make” of these experiences is something else again.
EIGHTH:
Ritual, as an aspect of energy being transmitted through the channels of form; is, or
rather can be; a significant benefit to individuals who would otherwise , if they were left
to their own devices, not enjoy the energies that are made available through such
rituals. It is very clear to me that such are of distinct benefit to all in human form.
But Shamanism is not the same as ceremony and ritual, though it has been incorrectly
described in such terms by those who don't know it. Ceremony and ritual are subjective
experiences while Shamanism, though ritualistic, is an entirely objective experience, at
least to the Shaman/Shamanka and those present with the potential to be so.
Then why is ritual so important to the Shamanic experience? It is important not for the
Shaman but for those who would experience the effects of which the Shaman is the
transmitting medium.
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Ceremony and ritual have words and scripts, without them they are meaningless.
Shamanic events, when correctly performed, have very few words or preferably no
words at all, only sensations and experiences. As far as I am concerned verbalization
tends to devalue Shamanistic Ritual.
I came to Shamanism by way of my interest in ceremony and ritual, by way of my
interest in Metaphysics and the Occult, by way of my passionate feelings about religion,
and through experiments with Wicca and Neo-Paganism.
There is another thing that brought me to Shamanism and that is far more important
than any other factor. That factor is that the spirits brought me to Shamanism. Suddenly
my life ceased to be intrinsically intellectual, or even emotional/intellectual, my interests
per se in these things didn’t lessen or change in any way, they're still just as they were,
it was my world view that changed, and, as a result of that change in world view, while
my intellectual activities did not change except in that certain understandings clearly
changed, it was my perception of the nature of the human condition that changed, and
because of that my activities in connection with spirituality became what can almost be
called unconscious and automatic. I no longer thought about “spirituality’ as being
something distinct and separate from my nature, or something to strive for, because I
knew I was intrinsically spirit, and as such my life and thoughts were entirely relieved of
the fear of death. You won’t believe what a difference it makes.
I suppose a fascination with ceremony and ritual is almost automatic in an artist,
especially a visual and entirely abstract artist such as myself. There is an enormously
strong element of art in ritual and ceremony for they are both an arrangement of
strongly visual symbols.
The purpose of ritual and ceremony is primarily to remove a person from their everyday
reality and to induce an altered state of consciousness so that the person begins to
perceive reality in a different way.
I am also a singer who has spent many years involved with a positive and totally
rewarding relationship with music. Music too is a vital element in ceremony and ritual
but is even more important and intrinsic in Shamanism.
And so here I am now, I am still the scholar and intellectual that I always was, but I am
also a Shaman with a "power animal" (my wolves), a "singing Man", and a Healer, and
a good one too, and I consciously bridge the realities. What does that mean to me, and
what will it mean to other people who may find themselves taking the same
path?...........lots!
The main thing is that it has made my life infinitely happier and better! And that is quite
enough, for me at least. The other main thing is that it has enabled me to make other
people's lives happier and better and healthier and that's terribly gratifying and of itself
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makes my own life happier and more fulfilling. Anything that makes life happier and
more fulfilling is really worth considering isn’t it?
But isn’t it, as so many eminent authorities claim both fraudulent and “crazy”??
No, I really don't think so.
So then what is it that makes Shamanism possible? What is it that makes Shamanism
something other than "crazy"? Are there actually rational reasons behind an entirely
irrational system? Is Shamanism intrinsically irrational?
Let me start by saying that while Shamanism may seem at first glance to be as
irrational as it is possible for anything to be, it is nevertheless not at all irrational.
Probably the best way to describe Shamanism is to say that it is "Meta-rational" or
"Para-rational" or "post-rational", in other words it is beyond reason, or perhaps, even
better, to say that Shamanism and reason are irrelevant to one another
On the other hand, what makes Shamanism other than "crazy" is something that can
very easily be addressed using the powers of logic and reason.............how?
It all depends on one's understanding of "reality". If the physical levels of existence are
the only thing that's "real" to you. If you only believe in what you can see and touch,
then of course Shamanism seems totally insane to you. But, Shamanism is something
one can actually see and touch! It just takes some effort!
As I constantly reiterate, the study of words and language is an extremely important
activity. Because people use language and words far too casually and carelessly there's
far too much emotional "baggage" carried by altogether too many common words. This
"baggage" has a very strong tendency to occult and/or confuse the meaning of the
words to which it is attached.
"Shamanism" suffers from this particular affliction very much more than most words.
This “baggage” really tends to completely occult the reality of Shamanism. People hear
the word, think "primitive savages" and "charlatans" and close their minds. I know this
to be true because that’s exactly what I used to do. Of course it is undeniably true that
many Shamans are the spiritual guides of primitive peoples. It is unfortunately also
undeniably true that there are clearly people who are charlatans who pose as
Shamans. But that is very far from the whole story.
One of the primary problems facing us here is that there seems to be no civilized
context for the word or the actuality of Shamanhood. But, even though I regret that we
are lacking a less loaded word for Shaman, I am nevertheless a Shaman, I have a little
wolf pack (two females and one male) as my “power animals” or what the Wiccans call
“familiars” and, in fact, two very large Ravens have taken to living in the Redwood Trees
over my house; and yet, I am writing this essay on a very advanced computer, I live a
thoroughly modern life-style, and all things considered, I am perhaps far too cultured,
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far too civilized. What else can you be when you can trace your ancestors back to the
founding of Rome? And so, perhaps we are all wrong when we automatically relegate
Shamanism to one context and one context only.
As you already know, another of my major fields of serious study and interest is the
work of the scientific theorists who are currently (and some not so current) dealing with
Quantum Theory, Particle Physics, and Scientific Cosmology. These are men like Albert
Einstein, Steven Hawking, Werner Heisenberg, Nils Bohr, and so many others.
If it is true, and our most advanced scientific theorists say it is, that all that truly exists is
a construct of various permutations of raw energy, it is also true that at the same time
that very same "raw energy" demonstrates actions and events that make it appear to be
a construct of various permutations of something we are forced to call inchoate
awareness. An awareness that is, or appears to be, itself, simply a form of energy.
There is also strong evidence that energy itself may be nothing more than a
permutation of consciousness and awareness. One can only say; with apologies to
Gertrude Stein: "energy is consciousness is energy is consciousness is energy
etc.".
In that case then, if the scientists are right, and I am sure they are; "Shamanism" isn't at
all as far fetched as it may seem. We know today that all physical things are composed
of atoms, electrons, molecules, etcetera all held in stasis by a field of force. Those
people have been right all along who, like the Buddhists and Brahmins, say that all
physicality is illusion. That perception of reality is not at all wrong. Anything other than
an energy field is an illusion or as I call it, only apparent reality. Knowing this, we must
re-think our entire belief structure as it concerns the nature of reality. And that includes
our notions about the human condition, and about life and death.
If sentient beings are simply conscious energy fields, then the various ways in which the
Shamanic function interacts with human beings are hardly unreasonable. When all is
said and done, what is Shamanism?
IT IS SIMPLY CONSCIOUSNESS IN TOUCH WITH ITSELF THROUGH ITSELF.
The Shamanic function is to provide a medium for that exchange. The Shamanic
function bridges the various levels of the multiple realities of energies and
consciousness.
If, in fact, the consciousness that is the intrinsic reality of a sentient being is an
absolutely immortal thing. If it is a mind which never dies and knows it full well. And I
firmly believe this is true. Then why can that mind not bridge the gap between physical
realities and non-physical? Why can't the immortal never-physical consciousness
inter-react with the mortal physical consciousness which is it's reflection? It can, and it
does!
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This is Shamanism in one form, and it is also a clear definition of "enlightenment" in
another form. Are the two connected in some way? Yes, but hardly invariably, though in
fact they should be. Some Shamans are truly enlightened beings, others not at all so,
while yet others are at various plateau on their way to that state. Some Shamans only
physically bridge the realities in a connecting sense of the term "bridge", others,
different not in kind but in quality, exist in all the realities at once, and they themselves,
in their intrinsic reality, not so much "bridge the gap", as dispel it. The phenomena, in
these rare cases, is sometimes described as “Clairsentience” which is, itself, simply
another term for “enlightenment”.
So then, what is it that Shamans/Shamankas "do", in a pragmatic sense of the term?
How does what they "do" effect other human beings? You could say: "They bridge the
realities, that's what they do" No, that's not what they do, that's what they are!
Shamans/Shamankas are a "bridge between realities"; it's what they do with that
state-of-being which concerns us here. "Bridge between realities" is a very abstract
concept, but what the Shaman/Shamanka does as a result of that state of being, what
they accomplish by way of that "bridging function", is anything but abstract!
Physical Healing is hardly an abstraction, it serves an absolutely pragmatic and very
necessary function, and healing is a primary function of all Shamans/Shamankas! The
reality of a valid non-physical healing is the best demonstration of the existence of the
greater reality outside of physical reality.
Let me make clear what I mean when I say: “the reality of a valid non-physical healing”.
I mean to say that in such an instance a person or animal who was sick is no longer
sick and in some cases becomes immune to whatever it was that made them sick. How
can this be? I know it happens from past experience, but the rationale behind it is, I
think, the simple fact that what Shamanic Healing does is energize the body’s defenses
to self-cure, in so doing immunity is built up where immunity would be meaningful. By
that I mean that if Shaman helps a person to heal a disease caused by a virus or other
factor, the person very likely becomes immune to that particular virus in the future. But
if a shaman helps a person or animal to heal a broken bone, the person or animal does
not become immune to fractures!
The act of demonstrating, in a clear and relatively irrefutable manner, the existence of,
and absolute reality of, a greater reality outside of, or beyond, the physical reality of
day-to-day human existence is also a pragmatic function. And absolutely nothing
demonstrates this fact better than a valid cure.
Psychological re-integration is slightly more abstract than physical healing, but it is none
the less necessary and totally pragmatic, and this too is a primary function that is
required of all Shamans/Shamankas. Now this is a rather problematic area of our
discussion. By psychological re-integration I am talking about the balancing of an
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individuals energy field to enable them to better cope with the changes that may have
occurred within their field-of-force.
This function may be described most conveniently as dealing with a “disconnect”
between the physical personality of the apparent realities and the non-physical
personality of the Virtual Realities. Sometimes these ‘disconnects’ can be rejoined but
there are times and causations which mean they cannot be re-connected.
Then there are actual psychological-emotional disorders. I do not mean to imply that
Shamanic methods can cure actual Psychological disorders, because in my experience,
it is only extremely rarely that such a thing is possible. I cannot say that I really know
why, but I do know that in my own case it seems that I cannot help people with actual
serious psychological-emotional malfunctions. Perhaps it’s my own blockage, but I
think not, because for the longest time I really kept trying to help people like this but to
no avail at all.
There is a great deal of talk regarding what is called Spiritual or "Soul" healing. But I
really do believe that this is so closely akin to psychological integration That there is
literally no difference.
The “Soul” or “spirit” is a great deal more abstract and difficult to comprehend than is
psychological reintegration. That is because the “soul” is much more difficult to define
accurately. If the “soul’ is to be equated with the intrinsic consciousness, then I cannot
conceive of anyway in which it could become disordered in any way. In any case, I do
not think that the “soul” can be that intimately connected with any physical personality.
On the other hand, the “soul” is probably most accurately identified with the virtual
reality consciousness which is very intimately connected with the physical personality.
Occultists and metaphysicians tend to describe the virtual reality consciousness with
then ”Higher Self” or “Oversoul” and if that is true, and I believe it is, then the
psychological integration function comes into play.
Lastly, and most abstract of all, but still terribly necessary and though not obviously so,
terribly pragmatic as well, there is the attunement of individual human beings with the
intrinsic spiritual reality of their being, the yoking of the physical personality with it's
manifesting evolving spiritual consciousness. This is the most important function of all!
It is accomplished by way of the experiential nature of the “Shamanic Experience” and
it’s clear demonstration that “life” is far more extensive than it’s merely physical phase.
Yoking of the physical human personality with its manifesting evolving spiritual
consciousness leads to enlightenment and that's really the most important function of
the Shaman/Shamanka. All sentient beings will inevitably eventually become
"enlightened", in providing a "Bridge between the realities" the Shaman/Shamanka
provides the rainbow bridge to enlightenment.
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These are terribly important functions. The Shamanic individual is not a mediator such
as is the case of the Priesthoods of other systems. A Priest represents human beings to
their "Gods" and visa versa. A Shaman represents the numinous to human beings.
A Priest is a mediator, or “go between” (in the entrepreneurial sense of the word)
between people and what they perceive as their Deities.
A Shaman enables, or helps to enable, communication and interaction between
physical
beings and non-physical intelligences. A Shaman facilitates an energy exchange
between two or more levels of reality. A Shaman is simply a connection between people
and their higher selves, and between those same people and more advanced
non-physical sentiencies. In essence a Shaman actually does “go between” the two
realities.
A Priest is authoritarian, a representative of allegedly "divine" powers. A Shaman simply
is, and in being, connects humans and the completely misnamed and misunderstood
“Divine”.
As a person who, without adhering to any particular tradition, never the less fulfills the
function of a Shaman; I personally don't believe in "Gods" and "Goddesses".
Life itself, and the combined field-of-force which is the conjoined fields of all things, is a
consciousness entity. It needs to be understood that the Cosmos itself as a developed
center of consciousness , fits perfectly into the parameters needed to define something
as a “life”.
The nearest thing existing in the Cosmos which comes close to being an individual
"God" or "Goddess", are the intrinsic evolving consciousnesses of which all living things
are the manifestation.
On the other hand, I do clearly recognize and quite comfortably relate to various
non-physical centers-of-consciousness at levels of development that are both well
beyond as well as beneath that of humankind.
To be truthful, there are physical consciousnesses that are also at a level of
development far beyond that of the so-called “norm”. It is equally true that there are
physical levels of consciousness below that of the so-called “norm”. However, it is the
non-physical consciousness of high levels of development that are among the spirit
beings with whom Shamans cooperate. It is obviously not necessary to be a Shaman to
communicate with a physical meta-sapient entity.
But in no way is a Shaman a mediator between physical beings and these advanced
nonphysical intelligences, or even an interpreter. A Shaman simply is, and what he or
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she is, is a connection between physical and non-physical intelligence.
I think I have just defined Shamanism and the Shamanic function as well as can be
done.
Or at least as well as I can do it.
Now however, let's get down to the more important discussion for the interested
layman.
How do the various Shamanic Functions really operate?
To start with, let's discuss the question "How does a Shaman heal?" The answer to that
question is that a Shaman/Shamanka doesn't "heal". What a Shaman/Shamanka does
is facilitate healing on several levels.
FIRST:
They facilitate self-healing. It is widely known, and equally widely accepted, both
philosophically and scientifically, that the physical human body is an absolutely
incredible source of self-healing. Shamanic healing facilitates and encourages this
process by way of the ritual and experience of healing. What happens is that the
intellectual and emotional blocks to self-healing are removed by the experience of the
ritual. People are terribly diffident about their own not inconsequential abilities,
experiencing the Shamanic reality changes that diffidence into sureness and
confidence.
An important part of the quest for wholeness and health is reached at this point within
the individual's own personal reality. The most important factor here is experience. The
Shamanic healing process, unlike many other alternative healing processes which have
to be accepted "on faith", is a matter of actual physical experience. That is what
supplies the confidence needed for self-healing. The “patient” is not told they are
receiving healing, the patient feels the energies that are entering his force field, and
that actual “feeling” makes all the difference in the world. Being “told” means you must
accept on “faith” that something is happening to you. That is one thing, Actually
experiencing that something significant is happening to you is something entirely
different. After an actual consciously experienced event, no “faith” is needed.
SECOND:
Remembering always that the physical body of any living thing is simply a field of
energy that can be effected by the introduction of other energy, the Shaman/Shamanka
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is the introducer of such energy. "Introducer" not source! The "energy" introduced by
way of the Shamanic interlink is the basic harmonic of the cosmos itself.
The so-called "Big Bang" that most likely produced our universe, set up a "harmonic” or
"tone". It is this "tone" that I call the basic harmonic of the universe, or rather that I call;
“The Cosmic Harmonic”. The Buddhists and Brahmins call it "Fohat" or "Prajna". The
Yoruba Peoples call it "Ashe". Various Westerners have called it "Od", "Vril", or
"Orgone". Franz Anton Mesmer called it "magnetism". It is the basic energy that holds
all other energy in the stasis that makes form possible, and thereby forms the visible
universe.
THIS WE KNOW:
There is a constantly creating anti-entropy force in the universe, it seeks order and
growth. Sickness and disease are disorderly, the force eternally attempts to order that
disorder. The Shamans/Shamankas are only one among the many various tools that it
uses. The goal of this force is to prevent entropy. Healing is a weapon in the war
against entropy. The Shaman/Shamanka introduces harmonizing energies into living
beings whose bodies have become unharmonious.
The intelligent energy fields that appear to our senses as physical beings have their
field of force regulated by a system of energy venturi called Chakras" by the Brahmins
and Buddhists who, alone among the nations of humankind, possess a practically
complete working vocabulary on this topic.
Individuals are not usually born with all these energy venturi operative. In fact, in most
cases they are not. There are certain centers without which life cannot exist and so they
are usually at least partially operative. But until all of the centers are operative in a
totally balanced fashion there can be no serious spiritual development and growth.
The Shaman/Shamanka can help other people go through the immense difficulties
experienced in the course of this process greatly. The Shamanic individual does not
initiate this process in others in any way, nor does the Shamanic individual cause the
process to occur. The ONLY thing the shaman does, or can possibly do, is facilitate the
process, make it easier and more bearable.
In the course of a Shamanic event the Chakras of all those who are present are
effected
strongly, and eventually, if one is present often enough, one gains many so-called
“paranormal abilities” which make the events much more beneficial and much more
interesting and informative. There is, however, one thing that Shaman can do, and that
is that the Shamanic Individual, as always in concert with the spirits, and with the
consent of the subject, act directly upon the Chakras in order to balance them or to
assist in the activation process of them or both.
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THIRD:
The Shaman/Shamanka is assisted in this task of healing and in all other things that
they "do", by a veritable army of "spirits" who, in their turn, introduce harmonizing
energies into the body of the patient. I do not "believe" this to be true, I know that it is.
But what exactly are these "spirits"?
A "Spirit" by definition is a disembodied intelligence. But that is a very cold and distant
definition for a very lively reality. It is both my belief and my experience that:
THE COSMOS CONTAINS INFINITELY MORE NON-PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCES
THAN IT DOES PHYSICAL INTELLIGENCES.
These intelligences range in scope from almost entirely mindless elementals to beings
that while they are definitely not Divine (given the standard definition of the term,
nothing is), are at the least what humankind views as "God-like" in their range of
powers and comprehension. They are, of course, in no way like the monstrous "God" of
our three Western Religions and they are definitely not "Cosmic Busybodies".
The Shaman "works" with the entire range of them. By "works" I do not mean to say the
entire process is always fully conscious. A Shaman/Shamanka who is performing a
healing event, or a spirit journey, calls upon the spirits to help them in what they are
doing and the spirits do what is needful, the Shaman need not be fully aware of what
that is, nor does the Shaman prescribe the activities of the spirit.
If the Shaman need not be "fully aware" of what the spirits are doing, how does this
differ from the Medium? The medium is not at all aware of anything at all while
performing their function. The Shaman is fully aware of what is happening, but that
neither means nor implies that the average Shaman can fully comprehend the full
spectrum of what is being accomplished and why. Of course this is never invariably the
case. Sometimes the Shaman does appreciate what's actually being done. What the
Shaman may not be "fully aware" of is the technical side of the process. Most of this
depends upon the Shaman's personal level of development. It would be very foolish to
assume that all Shamans exist on the same level of development. To use a academic
metaphor; there are "kindergarten" level Shamans, and there are Post-Graduate School
Shamans, and every possible level between the two extremes.
One has to be able to see auras to know the difference. Most people can't, so the point
is moot. Of those few who can actually see auras rather than pretend or fantasize that
they do, most of them don't have the vaguest idea how to interpret what they see, and
so the point is almost equally moot.
It must be remembered that, in the subject which we are discussing, and that in
Metaphysics as well, "assumption" and "hypothesis" are unfortunately synonyms.
In general, besides the elementals, which are the most primitive and the most
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numerous of intelligent non-physical beings, the Shaman usually deals with the
following:
First, and most important are what Shamans call the "Grandfather/Grandmother
Spirits". I have described these spirits earlier, but there is one thing more to be said
about them: One of the things they ARE, at least as regards the Shaman/Shamanka, is
usually the spirits who choose/have chosen the person to be a Shaman.
Those are the easy definitions, the hard definitions are difficult because they require a
deep understanding of the nature of the human condition and the nature of the
relationship between a sentient physical being and the evolving immortal spirit of whom
that physical being is a manifestation.
The process involved here is metempsychosis and not "re-incarnation'', for it is the spirit
that serially incarnates, it is absolutely not the physical entity in any way.
The simplest definition of "Grandfather/Grandmother spirits" is that they are the ongoing
Virtual Reality consciousnesses of the previous physical manifestations of the spirit
currently manifesting the entity in question. They lead their own separate and individual
existence on the non-physical realities, but their prime purpose as it relates to a
physical being (as opposed to their prime purpose in a personal sense), is to facilitate
the creation, within that physical being, of a synthesis of the entire experiential
data-base of the manifesting spirit or Perispirit. A Synthesis of Experience means the
understanding and processing into memory of the experiences of the previous entities.
It does not mean either the remembrance of things past nor the reliving of things past. It
means the prioritizing the importance of the meaning of things past. That synthesis of
experience is vital to the further evolution of the physical entity as well as its nonphysical manifesting component.
Because this is a process which was tremendously hindered for the last two thousand
years by mankind's so-called mainstream religions, the evolution of mankind as a whole
has been greatly hindered.
Shamans, both actual Shamans and those who simply perform the identical function,
are essential to this process. The reason they are so vital is that this synthesis can only
take place in fullness within a person who has become a fully developed individual.
Shamans are the most efficient aids to this development. The name most frequently
used for this synthesis is "enlightenment". Does a person have to be a Shaman to
become an integrated personality? No, not at all, but it makes the process easier by far
if one is. But as the state of being called Shamanhood is not a personal choice, that's
another moot point.
Next we come to what are called 'Medicine Spirits". These are far easier to define. They
are discarnate intelligences whose purpose is healing and channeling the harmonic
energies of the cosmos. They range from excarnate healers down to almost elemental
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level healing spirits and up to really advanced spirit healers. They serve as guides,
teachers, colleagues, and helpers to the Shaman-as-Healer. They work with other
healers too. The medium Edgar Cayce is a good example. But they also work with
regular medical people operating through such intuitive faculties the person possesses.
But they work most directly and efficiently through the bridging facility that the Shaman
represents.
Next we come to what are called "Spirit Friends", "Spirit Allies", "Companions" and
"Spirit Guides" these consist of a group of spirits who are linked with an individual from
the birth of that individual, and in all likelihood from far before/beyond that event, not
because they had any connection with the individual per se, because each individual is
a unique and original creation, but because they were linked in some way or another
with a previous manifestation of the evolving perispirit of whom the individual is the
present manifestation. I must reiterate: there is no such thing as individual
reincarnation. . Each
Shaman/Shamanka has a large group of them, each and every physical being also has
their own personal group. The size of the group depends on how close to the Shamanic
state an individual is, and also how close to full personality integration.
In a Shamanic event, the Shaman's own personal "spirit group" fully participates, as
does the personal "spirit group" of each individual present. These "personal spirit
groups" funnel their energy through the person with whom they are associated to the
Shaman/Shamanka and back through the operant to the group of participants.
Next we come to the group of "Animal allies". This is another somewhat problematical
group of spirits. They are not the spirits of Human Beings but are rather the spirits of
non-human or animal intelligences. Some of them are totemic which means that they
are never-physical intelligences of a particular animal type who represent the essence
the animal symbolizes. Some totemic spirits are animals who have never existed on the
physical plane, but nevertheless symbolically represent a particular type of energy.
Others of these spirits are those of animals connected with the individual physical plane
personality.
I, for instance, am blessed with several spirit animal allies. All but one of them, a
leopard, are totemic, and that one too may be a totem as well as the spirit of a departed
friend. They are, naturally, and I say "naturally" because of my life-long affinity with
wolves....the Wolf (two of them, one male, one female, this has always been the case
of my totemic wolves, but now as you know, I also possess three physical wolves, one
male and two female), but also a pair of Ravens (who I believe have also manifested
physically, as a pair of very large Ravens who have taken up residence in a really big
Redwood tree under which my home shelters), the previously mentioned Melino
Leopard (who I believe that, rather than being Totemic, which is certainly plausible, is
the excarnate spirit of a black leopard with whom I was good friends as a child), a White
Buffalo (who is not really a Buffalo), a Black Horse, and both a red-gold Dragon, and a
blue/green-silver one.. These animals have regularly been seen by people associated
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with me, even people who have normally never evidenced any clairvoyant facilities.
These animal spirits and totems too, along with those excarnate animals who were
formerly connected with the individual personally, conduit their energies through the
participants to the Shaman/Shamanka. Sometimes a Totemic animal will manifest on
the physical planes as itself, or if it is not something indigenous to the physical planes (it
would be problematical, to say the least, to explain walking a dragon on a leash), as
something spiritually akin to itself, for purposes relating to the development and work of
some particularly advanced Shaman.
For instance, when I am in the process of healing, and particularly when I am working
with a patient who is in a possibly terminal state, or who is terribly afraid, then usually
the “White Buffalo” I mentioned earlier will appear, and then transform itself into an
Amerindian woman all dressed in white. She will then place her hands on my shoulders
and the healing chant will be hers. This has been reported to me by more than a few
people present at one of my healing rituals, and while I had seen-felt this to be true,
having outside and neutral confirmation was a big help.
These animals can be recognized as other than ordinary by the intensity of their energy
field, and by the fact that their auras are far more complicated than those of an
"ordinary" animal, some of them more complicated than many human auras.
But here again we run into the problem that very few people, despite some vociferous
claims to the contrary, can actually “see” auras, and of those who actually DO see
auras, very few know enough to be able to accurately interpret the meaning of what
they “see”. Animals can though. In fact I sometimes wonder if animals identify people
as much by their electromagnetic aura as by their pheromes.
Lastly we come to the highest level of all, these are "The Personages". They are the
spirits we sometimes mistakenly identify with "Gods" and "Goddesses". The White
Buffalo Woman is one such. I won’t even attempt to explain the forms they appear to
assume. For instance, I have no idea why an Amerindian Archetype would appear
connected with me as I have absolutely no affinity with the Amerindian peoples. I can
only assume the way we visualize these spirits comes from very deep within the
subconscious mind. They come and they go as they please, but when they arrive at a
ritual of any kind, all those present are very aware of it. Some people visually, some
empathically, and others just feel the enormous increase in very highly charged energy.
"Who" they are is not really an appropriate question as they are far beyond the "who
stage" of development. What they are can be described as highly evolved
centers-of-consciousness who from time-to-time intervene in human affairs.
All Shamans/Shamankas work with the other spirits I described above, and that means
all the time, But not all Shamans/Shamankas work with the entities I call "personages".
Most Shamans/Shamankas could not survive the influx of cosmic energies entailed in
providing the bridge for such levels of evolution. But, occasionally, on their own volition,
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these advanced entities choose to manifest through a shaman. Some few Shamans do
work with one or more of them regularly.
Even more rare is the instance, when for purposes of their own, such a "personage"
chooses to manifest directly on the physical planes. The physical component in these
instances is what is called an Avatar.
I am slowly becoming aware that at least in the case of some Shamans, one, or more,
of these "personages" act in the position of "sponsors". What this means is that they
guide, instruct, protect, and support, their chosen vehicle. In these cases these are the
spirits to whom the shaman is Tulku. I must re-emphasize that not all Shamans are
Tulkus.
As “Tulku” and “Avatar” are terms taken from the Hindu and Buddhist lexicon, perhaps I
should differentiate between an Avatar and a Tulku.
A "Tulku" is a high Shamanic function in which the Shaman serves, in a fully
consensual and fully aware state, as a "mouthpiece" or amanuensis for a non-physical
being. The Tulku speaks for, or in place of, his guide or teacher. H. P. Blavatsky was
apparently a Tulku, sometimes she consensually served as "speaker" for several
"personages" or at least so she claimed. But it is very clear that a good portion of the
time, especially in the years after 1878, she spoke only for herself.
An Avatar, is not a spokesperson, it is not a mouthpiece, it does not serve a "high
personage", it is that high personage. There is no separation into tripartite-ness, the
"higher self" is the "self". An avatar is a fully integrated personality and that integration
is not as usual, it is the integration of, and between, the physical persona and it's
manifesting entity. There are no barriers at all.
The second function I referred to as being something which Shamans/Shamankas "do",
is "The act of demonstrating, in a clear and relatively irrefutable manner, the existence
of, and absolute reality of, a greater reality outside of, or beyond, the physical reality of
day-to-day human existence is also a pragmatic function." The question is: What do I
mean by "Demonstrate"? "Demonstrate" means "to show clearly" or "to prove" and that
is exactly what the Shaman/Shamanka does. In the course of a Shamanic Event, the
very nature of the event brings home, as nothing else can, the existence of the greater
reality.
A real, by which I mean spiritually valid, for not everyone who claims to be a Shaman is
really such, Shaman/Shamanka "in the grip of the spirits" leaves no doubt at all as to
the absolute reality of the greater reality.
Healing, whether it is spiritual healing or physical healing, is a reality.....a very real and
experiential thing. The reality of that healing demonstrates not simply the reality of
Shamanic Healing but that of the greater reality which makes it possible.
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Now despite the fact that I said that hostility and disbelief do not matter in the case of
people undergoing Shamanic healing. That is completely true, they don’t. Fear,
however, can and does!
Once the process begins the person needs to feel something so that here’s no question
as to whether “faith” is involved. If a person feels absolutely nothing, how then can they
be reasonably expected to have any confidence in the process? The primary block to
experiencing anything is fear. Fear doesn’t block the experiential factor but it does
prevent it’s positive effects. If, as has happened to me once, someone feels the
energies fully, but runs screaming from the room, obviously nothing has been
accomplished!
Why is this important? It's important because each individual that attends a Shamanic
Event, and each individual, no matter how strong their skepticism, who asks a Shaman
for healing, must know, not think or hope, but know, at least while it’s happening, that
what the Shaman is doing, what they themselves are participating in, and what is
happening to them, is entirely real.
This is more important than it may seem at first glance because when an individual
actually becomes convinced of the greater reality in a way that cannot be gainsaid, then
that individual's entire world-view changes, their view of themselves changes, their view
of life and death changes, and most important of all, the individual changes. And it's all
for the better.
Needless to say, that all represents the most positive possible circumstances. It is,
unfortunately, an all too frequent thing, that when one is dealing with humans who have
been brought up in an extremely materialistic society, that while they may have almost
the totality of the possible experience, they possess the most amazing capacity to "talk
themselves out of it". What you end up with is a person who says: "Well yes, I did
see/feel/experience that, but......". It is necessary to keep trying. I don’t personally feel it
would be fair to expect someone to completely change their world-view based on one
experience, no matter how intense that experience may be.
The third "thing" that Shamans do deals with psychological re-integration. As I said
earlier: "Psychological re-integration is slightly more abstract than physical healing but it
is none the less necessary and totally pragmatic, and this too is a primary function of all
Shamans/Shamankas."
What is "Psychological re-integration"? Is it Shamanic psychiatry? It is not, and
probably “psychological re-integration” is a terribly misleading term. I think henceforth I
will use the term “energy-re-integration” is the most descriptive term. What it does is
this: as I have discussed the human body is a compendium of energies, sometimes
these energies become unbalanced, and the individual is in danger of personality
disintegrations, well this Shamanic Function balances and integrates those energies.
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Now, as the subject has been brought up let us discuss the realities involved in
“Shamanic Psychiatry”, as I stated earlier it does not exist. However, there are
instances when something that could be mistaken to be such a thing exists.
Shamanic healing basically deals with physical ills and accidents. A Shaman can help
to heal a disease and also help to heal a broken bone. Actually, in these instances the
universal harmonic energies simply increase the individual’s capacities to heal itself.
But far more commonly than is usually admitted, people have problems that lie in their
personality, and these are problems the Shaman has great difficulty and little success
in “curing”.
Usually a Shaman, especially among the more primitive peoples, helps the damaged
psyche by way of what are usually called (fairly inadequately and very inaccurately); the
"soul journey" or "vision quest" aspects of the Shamanic function. Once again the
Shamanic function is helping the self heal the self only this time the goal is not the body
healing itself but the personality healing itself. This is a very difficult task. It’s far easier
to cure AIDS or Cancer than to heal a damaged personality. This is so because the
causes are far more complicated and the symptoms are quite frequently very subtle.
Here the Shaman/Shamanka “works” with the Grandfather/Grandmother spirits of the
individual seeking psychological first aid, and also with the Companions, Spirit Allies,
and animal Allies of the individual. In the course of this kind of healing, usually the
individual is "shown" something, or experiences something, and it apparently doesn't
matter whether those "experiences" are conscious or sub-conscious. These
"somethings" are things that are needful for that individual to see and to know. The
healing process, when successful, is begun during the ritual healing, but it continues
unabated, and in most cases almost unnoticed, for as long as it is necessary to effect
the deepest recesses of the patient's consciousness.
That particular factor is a very important aspect of using the Cosmic Harmonic to heal
people (and animals too), for the healing process, once begun, continues after the ritual
or ceremony or whatever you choose to call the Shamanic event, is over. Once the
energy flow is “started” it continues until the necessary balance is achieved.
The Shaman/Shamanka who is assisting the personality aiding process does not select
the occurrences or experiences....that comes from both within the individual themselves
and from their spirit allies and teachers. A wounded personality is as terrible an
affliction as a broken or sick body, and very likely worse. Healing that wounded
personality, and that's what this function does,( when it does it), is as beneficial as can
be. It is also far more difficult than healing physical illness or accidental damage
A person in need of personality healing is absolutely incapable of making the kind of
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inner changes required for growth.
Native Shamans often "go on journeys to the spirit world to "find" a "lost" or "stolen"
soul" What they are actually doing on these "journeys" is not "soul healing" . I believe
that they are actually dealing with the virtual reality consciousness which, as I said
earlier, is the ‘mind-memory’ of the individual.
The kind of person for whom native Shamans do this is usually a person who has gone
beyond mere disorientation and may be either catatonic or in a coma. To the native
Shaman, this is an indication that the person's "soul" has been "lost" or "stolen" while it
was in an out of body state. Out of body states are not considered unusual, or fabulous,
or hallucinatory, by primitive peoples. The primitive Shaman therefore believes that the
only way to help someone in such a condition, is to go where they are, and "find" them.
I do not believe this is what actually takes place, but then I am not a native Shaman, I
have not had their experience, and so I cannot really evaluate their report. I could
theorize, but that would be an entire waste of time.
I know what I would do in such a situation, and that is I concentrate on asking help from
the spirits with whom I work. I would ask them to join me in reaching out to the spirit
cadre that surrounds the "lost person". I would then work with the spirits in trying to get
through the barriers behind which the individual has walled themselves.
I think I had best clarify what I mean when I say “I ask help from the spirits”. That
sounds a lot like praying, or actual communications, neither of which it is. Using the
term “ask” is merely a semantic convenience to describe something that is hard to really
describe. What I do is think to myself, this is what is needed, now how do we do it.
That’s about it.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it "works" it does so spectacularly.
When it doesn't "work", it may do so with no fanfare at all, or, it may do so very
spectacularly indeed. This is the only aspect of this kind of healing that is dangerous to
the healer and those present. It is dangerous because it is impossible to foretell exactly
how the patient” will come out of their encapsulation, and how they will behave when
they do so. It is my belief that the various spirits involved will do their absolute best to
prevent any such occurrence, and I have never had an experience that would indicate
that they are not successful in so doing, but it is a possibility that I believe is important
to mention.
I have discussed the conception that a sentient being is the physical reflection
or remote manifestation of an immortal evolving spiritual never-physical being. That
being is the Perispirit which I call the intrinsic consciousness, (or “higher Self”, or
"Oversoul" if you will) and it experiences the physical levels of the relative realities
through the lives and experiences of its physical reflections. Through those experiences
it widens its scope of consciousness and broadens the things of which it is aware.
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The Perispirit is connected to the physical entity by way of the interlocutory
consciousness I call the Virtual Reality Being. Some people call this the "higher self". It
is possible that it’s not a bad description. “Higher Self” describes both levels of
consciousness equally well.
Each and every sentiency, physical or otherwise, is therefore, a triadic entity, a tripartite
being. Somehow, almost every religion on this planet has gotten the "tripartite" part
right. What they get absolutely wrong however, is their perceptions of what the triplicity
means. In Christianity "God the Father" (sexist), "The Holy Ghost" and "The Son of
Man"(again sexist) has the gist of the idea right. It's in the particulars that they go far
afield indeed.
The Perispirit, also called The Monad or The Atman, is the immortal, evolving
consciousness. By way of an extension of itself, which is the Virtual Reality Being
(consciousness), it manifests on the physical levels of the relative realities in, or as, a
physical sentient being. All three are essentially one being as far as experiential datagathering is concerned, but they are NOT at all a unitary being as far as their disparate
futures are concerned.
The Atman is an independent evolving never physical consciousness whose
evolutionary development is aided and abetted by the activities of the Virtual Reality
consciousness and the Physical Human consciousness. I cannot emphasize enough
that when the physical “incarnation” is finished, the Atman and the Virtual Reality
consciousness separate and go their own ways. As I said earlier, at this point in the
evolution of the consciousness, the virtual reality being, as an energy field in being,
begins it’s own further evolutionary processes.
Anyone investigating Shamanism will run across the terms “Soul Sickness” and
“Wounded Souls”. The terms "Soul sicknesses" or "wounded souls" ( and viewed from
the point-of-view of semantics, these are horrible terms which mislead far more than
they inform) have to do with the relationship between the physical human being and
the Virtual Reality Being. That relationship, in many ways, as the most immanent
connection, is the most essential ingredient in the spiritual reality of a physical sentient
being. When something goes wrong with the connection or inter-relationship between
the physical being and the Virtual Reality Being which is its most immediate higher
reality, the connection with the Perispirit is damaged to some degree, or even
completely severed. This is what is called "soul sickness" and when the severance is
complete, or nearly so, we have what is called a "lost soul".
All of this portentous terminology while dramatic to be sure is nearer melodrama than it
is to the reality of the situation. The terminology is reflective of religion rather than of
reality. It is also very misleading.
The Brahmins and Buddhists have a belief in a condition called "Avitchi". This is a
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condition in which the physical personality is completely and permanently separated
from both "higher" levels of their former triplicity.
What this means is that when the body dies, so does the individual person, or perhaps
as might be more accurate, the individuality. This is the only case I know of which would
deny the fact that "no one ever dies". However, upon much reflection, I have got to say
that I am far from certain that this is the case. It is far too retributive to be real. As I
hope I have made clear, I believe that post mortem retribution is entirely
imaginary. The entire concept is enormously harmful.
It seems to me that any energy field in being, and the physical “body” is clearly such,
cannot simply be erased from the universe, though it can eventually dissipate it’s
energy.
What I think we are confronted by in these instances, are cases in which for some
reason or another, the two consciousnesses, the physical and the virtual, determine,
probably independently to “go their own ways”.
I do think however that it is usually the result of the physical personality being not only
unaware of any prompting from the virtual, but of the very existence of the virtual reality
being or “Higher Self”. On the other hand, I think that in some cases, if the physical
component is hypothetically aware of the possibility of its reality being non-physical. It
is either intimidated or skeptical of that possibility, and by refusing, in an emotional
rather than intellectual way to accept the relationship. Therefore as a result of that
rejection, it cuts itself off. This separation can also be the product of chemical
addictions and mental imbalances. This, by the way is the most common cause.
The results of this separation, whatever it’s cause, is that at the physical “death” of the
individual concerned, the energy field that maintained the physical person in stasis
produces what the spiritualists call an “Earth Bound Spirit”. (Occultists call this the
physical elemental). By which is meant that the individual human consciousness
continues to self-consciously exist in the non physical levels of the multiple realities that
are both appropriate to their oscillation rates and the intensity of their sense of selfhood.
What it also means is that the newly excarnate individual is divorced from its “higher
self” (or the Virtual Reality Being) which goes its own way without any further input from
its former physical component and the normal merger of the two consciousnesses
never takes place. If the newly excarnate physical individual was oriented entirely
towards physical existence they don’t last very long as they receive no gratification to
their senses. On the other hand, if they were oriented towards a “life of the mind”, they
can go on for a very long time indeed.
Dr. Stephen Hawking says that he believes the reason for his extraordinary survival is
due to the fact that he has always lived entirely in and through his mind.
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What I am saying here is that, depending on their attachment to the physical and only
the physical, once divorced from the body, these intelligences soon sort of forget who
they are, or rather were, and slowly but surely the energy field loses its cohesiveness
and disperses into the over-all energy field. The Brahmanists and Buddhists see this as
a retribution for a very few really serious spiritual "crimes". I, of course, do not believe in
any retribution from external causes.
To sum up: If "Avitchi" exists at all, which I must say I doubt, though of course in some
connotation it may, then all it could be is a decision on the part of the virtual reality self
to sever its connection with the physical personality, or visa versa. In fact, I should think
that it is far more likely to be a decision on the part of the physical personality than one
by the Virtual Reality Personality. The reason I say this is that it is the physical
personality that has the least information available. I would be very surprised to learn
that the Intrinsic Reality entity ( Monad" or "Perispirit") is at all involved.
In cases of self-encapsulation other that the so-called “Avitchi”, the Shamanic Healer
utilizes their unique situation as a fully, or at least relatively integrated tripartite
consciousness, to "retrieve" or rather to “re-integrate” that consciousness with its Virtual
Reality component, when it is at all possible to do so. It is not always possible to do so,
for it cannot be exaggerated what a truly dangerous situation, in an ethical and
emotional sense, this kind of damaged networking between the parts of the tripartite
entity can be and most frequently, is.
The physical person who is the patient is obviously in a parlous situation, but it can be
emotionally and ethically dangerous for the Shamanic Healer too. An individual who has
lost their connection with their manifesting intrinsic reality, even if they had never know
it existed, is none the less, the most pitiable object, they have lost themselves, and
there is no guidepost other than the Shaman and the spirits with whom the Shaman
works to guide them back to themselves. It is my opinion that no one but an extremely
advanced or senior shaman should try this, and even then never without the strong
backing of a circle of trusted associates.
After a physical person becomes excarnate, and upon the merger of the two now
equally discarnate consciousnesses, it is the Virtual Reality Being (Higher self), that
becomes the "Grandfather" or "Grandmother" spirit eventually for other beings. This
merger, or integration, takes place when the physical entity leaves the physical levels of
the realities( i.e. "dies"). At which point, the memories, or rather the experiential
"data-bank", which consists primarily of the essences of its life experiences, are
absorbed into the experiential data bank of the now singular Virtual Reality Being.
During the course of that merger and absorption” of memories, the same essences of
experiential datum are “telemetered” into the memory bank of the Perispirit. Which, of
course, expands its awareness in the process. Once again I must remind you that I am
describing an almost indescribable process as best I am enabled.
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Now, in most cases, not including the integrated personality, this perispiritic data-base
is identical to that gathered by the serial manifestations of physical personalities. These
experiences are not merely those of the physical plane, but in addition there are such
data as have been garnered from what is loosely called ‘spiritual experience’.
Everyone has, during the course of their physical life, some (normally sub-conscious)
contact with the previous manifestations of their Perispirit, and this adds to the
data-bank of both the virtual reality self and the Perispirit or intrinsic self.
The Virtual Reality Aspect of the Shaman him or her self, is the
center-of-consciousness that assists the Shaman in physical healing, psychological
re-integrations, and most urgent of all, in "soul healing".
Each case of this kind is unique and individual and the Shamanic Healer must use all
their abilities in determining which method or methods to use in trying to help the
person so afflicted. Now as you know, it's the spirits and the spirits alone who are
responsible for the actuality of the healing process, but it is up to the Shaman to make a
first and quite tentative "diagnosis" as to whether the basic Shamanic Chant-healing is
what's required of them, or whether something more elaborate and needing far more
expenditure of time and energy on the part of the Shaman is required.
I am not entirely convinced that every Shamanic Healer is wise to go too far beyond
the basic physical healing processes. The more experience I garner, the more I am
certain that this is true.
Psychological reintegration can be dangerous because persons with disintegrated
personalities can be physically and psychically dangerous. Even though Shamans go
into what is basically only a very light trace state, actually a meditative state, they are
nevertheless vulnerable. No Shaman should ever indulge in anything other than basic
physical healing if they are "alone" with the patient. (I put the word "alone" in quotation
marks because to a Shamanic consciousness, no one can ever be alone.) In fact, given
the hostile and suspicious almost paranoid nature of the society in which we all dwell
today, it is probably the wisest course if a Shaman is careful never to be physically
alone with any patient. I say “almost paranoid” because some of the fears are valid.
As to "soul healing", I said earlier that this should be limited to only the most “advanced”
Shamans, to clarify that point let me say that this is a thing which I think should be
self-limiting to all but the most advanced Tulku level Shamans. I am beginning to
believe that the spirits usually do this limiting on their own cognizance.
Lastly, and really this is certainly an affirmative, alternative, and completely different
aspect of soul healing:
The Shamans through their rituals, their presence, and the energies of which they
disperse, assist those people who are within their orbit to integrate and strengthen the
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linkages between the portions of the tripartite entity. This linkage, which leads
eventually to absolute union between the three levels of one consciousness; is, in its
own way an important part of the infinitization of consciousness that is the single goal
and purpose of the manifested universe. It is called "enlightenment" by religion, and the
Shaman, no matter what he or she is called in their particular social paradigm, is the
only reliable guide to the multiple pathways which lead to its attainment.
Now, it is very important to know that I am not saying that Shamanic guidance is the
only way an individual can reach "enlightenment". It is clearly not. There are many such
ways. But on all the other ways the individual is "on their own". What I am saying is that
is only through Shamanism that a person can be "guided" to "enlightenment" and even
then, it is NOT the Shaman who does the guiding.
The Shaman, better, faster, and far more easily than any other methodology, puts a
person in touch with their "higher self" and it is the higher self that does the "guiding".
"Conversation with the guardian angel" (higher self) is difficult to obtain, the Shaman is
what amounts to a "shortcut" to this conversation. There are other "short cuts" but they
are a good deal more dangerous. SHAMANIC ASSISTANCE IS THE ONLY SAFE
“SHORTCUT”.
It is impossible to limit the importance of "yokage" or "linkage". When a physical
sentience is absolutely yoked to the Perispirit, then it, and all the many Virtual Reality
Beings or "Grandparents" which preceded it in manifestation are united in one vast
scope of awareness. The so-called enlightened being is the ultimate manifestation of
the Shamanic functions.
Now, the question arises; "Does an "enlightened being" have to be a person who is a
Shaman/Shamanka? Of course not, Shamans help people to become enlightened but
one definitely needn't be a Shaman to become so. That's one of the Shaman's greatest
services to humankind. But one can certainly become an integrated personality without
ever meeting a shaman. All sentient beings eventually integrate their spiritual lineage
and become “enlightened”. In a universe that is as of now some fifteen or so billion
years old, there’s really no sense of urgency needed.
Another and alternative answer to that same question is also No, because the question
is entirely irrelevant. Why is it "irrelevant"? Well, it is irrelevant primarily because an
enlightened being is, by no stretch of the imagination, a "person", or at least not what is
normally implied by that term. The fully functioning Shaman/Shamanka is not entirely
human.
THE ENLIGHTENED BEING ISN'T HUMAN AT ALL. (And that statement, I am sure
you know, connects this part of my essay with the over-all topic.)
And so our original question is answered: that's what Shamans do, and that's what
Shamans are. But then we must ask; what does the integration of personalities and its
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Shamanic component have to do with ordinary folks aside from the various things that
Shamans/Shamankas can do to help ordinary folks. Integration of personalities and its
Shamanic corollary have an immense and almost immeasurable value to "ordinary
folks"!
I do not refer, at this point, to the obvious values derived from healing, psychological
integration and soul healing. No there's something far more important than that and it
has to do with what I numbered as the second Shamanic function, the demonstration of
the greater reality outside of or beyond physical reality.
The human race has for millennia been tormented and oppressed by their ignorance of
the reality of the meaning of "life and death" and their total misunderstanding of that
process. The Shaman/Shamanka is the ONLY source for alleviation of that torment.
Most of what's wrong with human societies. Most of what's wrong with human cultures.
Most of human suffering and travail is instantly traceable to all humankind's fear of
death and its putative aftermath. This fear permits some humans to use the threat of
death, and the threat of a terrible post-mortem state, which is far worse than mere
extinction; as a club with which to coerce other people for their own power, profit, and
occasional amusement. The only way in which this situation will ever be ended to the
uncountable benefit of all sentient things is through the Shamanic demonstration, by
way of their link between "the quick and the dead" that there is nothing to fear either
from "death" itself, or from anything connected with the Post-mortem state.
"Death" is simply a transition from one state-of-consciousness to another, this is
something that Shamans/Shamankas regularly experience in their own lives both on
their own behalf and on behalf of others, not simply in healings but in the course of
everything they do. Because it is something they know intimately, it is clearly something
they can clarify for others who do not as yet have the experience.
Of equal importance, the Shaman/Shamanka knows that there is no "judgment"
awaiting an individual in the post-mortem state. There is also neither punishment or
reward, conscious "life" simply continues in a different milieu. The only thing that might
be perceived as a kind of "punishment" is the dismay and horror that accrue to those
who suddenly discover how wrong they have been about so many things and how many
wrong things they had done as a result of their errors. But that dismay is a personal
thing and proceeds out of the consciousness of the entity concerned, it is not a
punishment afflicted by vengeful deific figures.
One of the few really valid things to come out of the Theosophical Movement, despite
the archaic pomposity and the mindlessly sexist nature of its wording, is the following:
“There are three truths which are absolute, and cannot be lost, but yet may remain
silent for lack of speech.
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“The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and
splendor has no limit.
“The principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and eternally
beneficent, is not heard, or seen, or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires
perception.
“Each man is his own absolute law-giver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself; the
decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.
“These truths, which are as great as life itself, are as simple as the simplest mind of
man. Feed the hungry with them.”
And “Feed the Hungry”, at least in a spiritual sense, is exactly what Shamans do!
Another thing which re-born Shamanism has to once again teach the human race is
how ridiculous it is to fear the absolutely inevitable, all physical life forms are born only
to die. No one fears birth, why then should anyone truly fear death which is simply a
part of a continuously ongoing process? Birth truly doesn't begin a process, it continues
that process, so too, death doesn't end anything, it merely continues something. What
is continued is the evolutionary growth of an intelligent spirit, a spirit which is immortal.
Human beings and other physical sentient beings can only benefit from the
Shaman's/Shamanka's completely different relationship to "death".
Shamans prove that there is no "Heaven" and there is no "Hell", but more important by
far, Shamans prove there is truly no "death".
The idea that there is either a "Heaven" or a "Hell" is probably the only thing in the
cosmos that I will grant the description of "intrinsically evil". There is neither "reward"
nor "punishment" beyond that which the spirit creates for itself. I want to make it very
clear that being or doing wrong (by which I mean harm), and knowing both that you are
wrong, and also exactly why you are wrong, and clearly viewing the effects of one’s
actions, is quite enough punishment. It is productive of much positive growth. Upon
excarnation, an individual finds out these things very quickly.
The Universe itself, as I hope I made abundantly clear earlier, is an entirely value free
information gathering, retrieval and storage system; and nothing at all which an
individual does while in the physical is going to have more than an attitudinal effect on
their post-mortem future.
An individual person, because of the things that they do, and because of the way that
they think, and because of WHAT they think, create an environment which colors and
flavors their personal future. But that is the way in which an individual influences their
post-mortem future. It has nothing at all to do with the Universal Intelligence Field (The
Unified Energy Field).
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There is no judgment, there is no retribution, there is only a milieu which each individual
creates for themselves.
The only thing that matters, the only thing in the Cosmos that matters, is intelligence!
It is how that intelligence is utilized and how it processes and stores information that is
critical. That's what the Universe is all about, the infinitization of intelligence, and the
processing and storage of information for the use of that intelligence.
All information, and experience is the major source of information, is needful to the
universal data-bank.
What an individual human being does with their personal information data-bank,
matters only within their personal paradigm. It does not matter in the least to the
Universal Paradigm.
What that means to say is this: What any person does effects only themselves and
those upon whom they personally have an effect. It does not effect the Unified Field in
any measurable way.
When the source of valid spiritual guidance of humanity, which is the
Shaman/Shamanka or whatever less nuanced appellation is found for this type of
individual, is once again the soul physician and guide of humankind, then all sentient
beings will be far more happy, healthy, and secure. They will also no longer be
oppressed and frightened by religious establishments who function only for the benefit
of that establishment and those who control it..
There will never be peace and harmony on this planet until organized or institutional
religion with its addiction to power, control, and profit, and nationalism which is
fostered by religion; and/or political systems which essentially function identically to
religion, primarily for their own benefit, are fully cast aside. The addiction to power and
profit and control, which is the chief characteristic of both religions and governments,
has long kept the human race in a situation which is anything but productive of peace
and happiness. When the human race finally rejects religion for the truly experiential
relationship with the numinous that is an intrinsic ingredient of the Shamanic experience
the situation on this planet will be changed utterly though hardly "in the twinkling of an
eye".
To end this section defining Shamanism, I have a question to ask. Is the Shaman
actually "human". Or is "Shamanism", like eidetic memories, and paranormal abilities, a
symptom of "otherness"?
You will have noticed that I said: “ ”otherness” is most easily identified by the state-ofbeing called Shamanhood”. Does that mean to say that I believe that all those people
identified as shamans are descendants of the survivors of the collapse of the precursor
culture, or that; conversely all descendants of the survivors of the pre-cursor culture are
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shamans? No it doesn’t, not by any measure. That would be far too simplistic an
answer. Nothing that is too simple as an answer can ever really be trusted. It does not
mean that William of Okham was wrong, he was anything but wrong, it just means that
the easy answer always needs to be carefully thought about, and even more carefully
checked. One eventually finds out that the simplest things are not nearly as simple as
they seem.
So, let’s look at that question. And let us use the following progression of questions to
do so:
1. Are there actually people, living today, who are the genetic descendants of the
survivors of an other-than-Homo Sapiens race that represents the precursor culture?
1-a. Were those survivors the dominant species of the precursor culture?
1-b. What exactly do I mean when I say “survivors?
1-c. More important still, what do I mean to say by “Precursor Culture”?
1-d. Most important of all, was there a precursor culture?
These questions will be answered in due course in what follows.
THE CALDRON AND THE GRAIL II
Now back to "the caldron and the grail".
I am returning to this subject because there is nothing that proves my premise
regarding two races better than the "Holy Grail" and it's allied myth "The Sang Real".
The Holy Grail was, and is, entirely mythical, it was and still is alleged to be the vessel
(the "wine cup or bowl supposedly used by Jesus at the "Last Supper" to initiate the
Eucharist) that, in the Christ mythos, somehow got itself to Golgotha and "caught
Christ's Blood at the crucifixion. .
What that means is that the San Graal or "Holy Grail", was the vessel of the Sang
Real. All of which means to say, in modern English, that the “Holy Cup” held the Blood
of the alleged heir to King David.
“King David” was a man who, very much like his alleged descendant, Jesus; has
himself never really been proven to be an historical figure; no matter how strongly the
Jews and the Christians wish to believe him to be so. One has only to read the legends
connected with “King Daud ben Jesse” to know that his life is entirely “proclamatory
history” with an intent that is Nationalistic rather than anagogical. The entirely mythic
nature of King David becomes more and more clearly proven with every passing year.
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To prevent misunderstanding, let me explain what I mean to say by those words. The
“King David” of the Old Testament and various Jewish Folk Histories is not a “real” or
rather historical person. The King David depicted in the Old Testament is an entirely
fictional man who was basically concocted to support Jewish Nationalistic goals and
ethnic agendas.
As regards these myths it really is irrelevant whether or not there was actually a King
David, the man. There may, in fact, have been such a person, but that person, if he
really existed, is so lost under the great mass of myth that it really does not matter if he
ever lived at all. Of course, it then follows naturally that what is true of the Father is true
of the son, and so we really can’t say if a real “King Solomon” existed and if so to what
degree he resembled the Biblical mythology concerning him.
I think it moot to point out that whenever one is dealing with the contents of a document
whose primary if not only purpose is religious propaganda and evangelism, one must
realize that nothing is likely to be reported except in a fashion which supports the goals
and agenda of those whose propaganda this is.
One has to be very strict in accepting any historical claim as truth, especially those
connected with religion, those claims are infinitely more likely to be propaganda, or
"proclamatory history", rather than fact. I think it very important not to accept anything or
anyone as historical unless they are revealed by both Historical evidence and clear and
non ambivalent archaeological evidence and not simply tradition or "word of mouth". In
other words, until historically and archaeologically proven, it's myth and not history. By
those criteria neither King David nor King Solomon, and especially not Jesus, are
anything but myths!
Additionally, in the context of the Jesus Myth, which, it should be clear, is a thing I
believe to be, while entirely non-historical, equally entirely valid in an anagogical sense,
Jesus himself, was the vessel which contained the "Royal Blood" of King David.
Now this is all myth, legend, or actually "Fairy Tale", because it was made up by
Christian apologists/propagandists to counter pre-existent realities with which they
could compete in no other fashion than repression, oppression, and the confiscation of
the basic truth and its conversion into appropriately Christian myth. As a religion it is a
lie and totally invalid, as a parable symbolic of the existence of the caste, however, it is
valid symbolism, but it's meaning has been almost entirely lost.
Christianity is today, and always was since its inception, an entirely artificial "construct"
made up in the first centuries following its founding out of all the material that was "to
hand". Its symbols and mythology were, by and large, "lifted" from the religions and
philosophies of people around them. There is nothing, nothing at all in the content
of Christianity that is original or creative in any way.
The man, or more likely the composite of a group of men, whom the founders of
Christianity used as the model for the creation of the Jesus Myth, have been utterly
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consumed by it, but his or their reality has absolutely no connection whatsoever with the
religion which grew up around the figure which he or they served to inspire.
The only thing which is truly peculiar to Christianity is that it is unquestionably the most
violently oppressive, most violently intolerant of dissent, of any religion in the history of
the human race. Christianity is the most oppressive force extant on this planet. Now it is
quite true that both Islam and Judaism are also intolerant of any disagreement That
intolerance pales into insignificance when compared to things like the Inquisition, the
Crusades, and centuries of pogroms. Though it becomes ever more clear that the
contemporary Islamist Fundamentalists are doing their best to equal that record.
That is not simply my personal opinion of the history of Christianity. That is truly its
history, carefully and copiously recorded, and historical facts cannot either be denied or
euphemized. The fact that much of this horror was perpetrated by people who were
pious and sincere, and who truly believed they were serving their "God", doesn't make it
one iota less horrible!
Good people who do bad things are no better than bad people who do bad things!
In fact, they may very well be INFINITELY WORSE!
This is so because, in doing their atrocities from pious motivations, and believing firmly
that they are doing “God’s Work” they have no hesitation at all in doing really terrible
things to other people. Truly “bad” people are not so ‘fearless” they know what they are
doing is wrong and sometimes (but hardly always) it tempers their actions.
But there is an element of validity in this tale of "Blood Lines". That element of validity is
what ties in with the premise which I am putting forward. That element concerns
individuals as the "bearers of blood" by which, in those days, they meant not blood itself
but genetic inheritance. Of course, not having the vaguest idea as to the existence of
either DNA or genes, they thought it was the "blood" itself that possessed unique
properties and made individuals both unique and occasionally "special". And so it was
that people then (and many in our own times too) believed that people were the
inheritors of "blood lines". Change "blood" to "genes" and it's absolutely true. Therefore
the "Hidden" or parallel evolution individuals could be identified by the "special" blood
they bore. That, of course, can easily refer to the survivors of the precursor culture.
That specialness was identified by the founders of the Christian Mythos for several valid
reasons as "Royal" rather than "other" or "alien" which would have been more accurate.
The most valid of these reasons was the fact that while people in the past had a long
tradition of Royalty and Kings as real physical people to whom some very strong
element of the supernatural adhered, there was no other concept dealing with
especially unique and charismatic individuals available to them with which they could
cope on a day to day basis.
"Extraterrestrial Origin" or things perhaps even more exotic than that, was not an idea
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they could even begin to contemplate. They were unable to encompass such ideas
simply because they lacked any of the basic information required to formulate such
ideas. The Universe in which they perceived themselves as living was infinitely smaller
and more circumscribed than the universe which is slowly opening itself to our gaze
through the medium of modern science. That's probably why their ideas about divinity
were so petty and circumscribed.
After all, Kings ruled by "Divine Sanction", a ruler was "King, by Grace of God". For
millennia Royal Houses had been identified as having Divine Progenitors ( except in the
cases of Tibet, Egypt, Japan, China, The Aztec Empire, and The Inca Empire, where
the ruler was perceived to BE a God ).
Julius Caesar, whose murder caused Imperial Rome to come into existence, firmly
believed himself descended directly from Venus, and everyone in Rome believed it too.
Among my own ancestors are families which believe themselves to be founded by the
Norse/Teutonic Deities Odhinn, Tyr, Yngwi, and Skaadi. Unlike Caesar, I don't believe
it! Unless perhaps all of the pre-Christian "Deities" were simply remembrances of great
men and women who were of the "others". Then I can believe it.
My hypothesis that the ruling classes of this world are, to at least some degree, and
only for the most part , descendants of survivors of what may be a possibly non-human
society ( i.e. non-homo-sapiens), certainly fits into that paradigm. My hypothesis at least
de-mythologizes the paradigm.
Up until the near present (plus or minus two thousand years ago), Kings had always
also been High Priests. In the Pre-Christian Celtic world many High Kings and Kings
were also Druids. Kings had also always been healers and that aspect of the royal state
was true until very recently indeed (In fact Elizabeth of England still touches people for
"The Kings Evil" once a year).
And Lastly up until about some presently unidentifiable time between twenty five
hundred and three thousand years ago, Kings had always served as "The Sacrifice of
Last Resort (There was an earlier time when Kings were sacrificed yearly). This all
added up to a very strong element of the supernatural intimately entwined with the
Royal Person. Some occultists, in fact, (though with absolutely nothing but
circumstantial evidence instead of clear proof) believe that the sacrifice of Kings was,
despite Christian strictures, practiced secretly in circumstances of great need until the
very near present.
In point of fact, the Christian Religion is, itself, primarily based upon just such a “Royal
Sacrifice”. After all, according to Christian myth, the sign on the cross read:” Jesus of
Nazareth, King of the Jews”. The language of Christian beliefs is full of references to
this sacrifice.
In other words, when the founders of Christianity wanted to claim a significant level of
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"specialness" for their central mythic figure, they chose "Royal with divine
characteristics" rather than "Alien with supernatural characteristics". One can easily see
why.
The tales of "The Hidden Ones" or the Sidhe, or other allegedly chthonic or "other
world" entities were not the sort of thing which translated positively into Christian
realities. The Christians could accept this "special blood" as being of Royal estate but
could not accept it being other-than-human.
Those, such as the Celts, who were not encapsulated in Judeo-Christian-Islamic
realities have never really had any trouble accepting such an idea. This acceptance is
clearly demonstrated by the Salian Franks, who were at least partially Celtic if not
entirely so. Their first King, Clovis (Chlodwig) was of a dynasty called "The Merovingian
Dynasty" or "The Long Haired Kings", and the long hair was known to be not a "fashion
statement" but the clue to a "mystery". The word Merovingian comes from the largely
eponymous founder of the line, Merovee or Merovech who allegedly was a totally nonhuman who "came out of the sea" (i.e. was a "Silkie"?) What actually was a "Silkie"?
We know what myth tells us it was, but what was it actually? What actually did "come
out of the sea" mean?
Dagon, the primary deity of the Chaldeans/Phoenicians/Babylonians also is alleged to
have “come out of the sea”. This connection with coming from the Sea is true too of
Quezalcoatl, the primary beneficial deity of the Aztecs, and Varochana the primary
beneficial deity of the Incas. What is the connection here? And what does it actually
mean to say? Given the linguistic usage of the period it could mean “came up out of the
water” but it could also mean “came ashore from a boat”. We may never know what it
meant. It could conceivably even go back to the fact that all life began in the sea. But
how could they have known this 3,000 or 4,000 years ago except via a Shamanic link
unless the tradition was carried down from a much older culture?
Perhaps the main thing this " Royal fairy tale" was designed to obscure was just in what
way that "blood" was so special. Perhaps the Christians didn't see, or didn't want to
see, or most likely of all, they had no idea whatsoever what it was that made certain
people very special indeed. It's not really that they were "special" it's just that they
weren't entirely human. Or rather let us say that while they were entirely "human" in one
sense of the term, they weren't Homo Sapiens, if that's all one takes "Human" to mean.
That is not my definition of “human” however. Being ‘human’ to me, requires far more
than mere racial somatotypes.
If what I believe to be true about the essence of what is most commonly called the
ruling classes of this planet is, in fact, true, then, in those times, it was clearly safer (
and far more comfortable ) for the humans to think their rulers made special by divine
agency rather than being intrinsically special by virtue of some kind of an alien nature.
What is a "Homo Sapiens" ( correctly “Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens”) anyway? "Homo128
Sapiens" in translation merely means to say "wise-Man" or "Intelligent man" and so we'll
have to admit that the term is simply a convenient but not totally and invariably accurate
label. I think it’s pretty clear that not all humans are even intelligent much less wise. For
“intelligence” is simply the capacity or potential for becoming “wise”.
According to the presently most advanced scientific opinion, "Homo Sapiens" is a
species which evolved out of an earlier species called "Homo Erectus". The most
recent opinions trace modern Homo humanity back to a breeding pool of somewhere
between ten thousand and one hundred thousand individuals in Africa.
They were in Africa, they weren't what we today call "Africans". The Human Race took
many long ages to separate into it's present components, in that period there were no
Mongols, no Caucasians, no Africans, no Polynesians, and no anything else...just
Homo-Erectus!
I think, however, that it's very important to say that this "new species" did not just
appear out of thin air. They represented a culmination of Homo Erectus development
and had evolved or mutated out of that species. Until just very recently, it was thought
that the genetic evidence (DNA) available tended to indicate that Homo Sapiens and
Homo Neanderthalis both of which evolved from Homo Erectus, did NOT interbreed,
However, that may not be true for recently a mummified body of a child was discovered
which clearly showed evidences that it was a hybrid between Neanderthal and CroMagnon man.
While there is also, at least at this point, no other evidence than sparse DNA evidence
whatsoever, that proves that there was no further connection or hybridization between
Homo Erectus and the species that were their more evolved off-spring. There is equally
no proof other than this child’s body that indicates that there was even hybridization
between Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals.. I personally think that, in the earliest
days of the “separation” into two species, it is likely that there was This new discovery
certainly tends to support that hypotheses.
It is my opinion that if we want to see what earliest man (Homo Sapiens) was like we
need only look at Australia's aborigines. In fact, they apparently regard the rest of the
human species as "mutants", and themselves as the only “pure” humans, and they may
be, and in fact, probably are, correct. Well, appearance wise in any case, they are far
closer to Homo Erectus than say your average Northern European. I am speaking only
of appearance, not intelligence or ability or spirituality. The "Aborigines" are spiritually,
at least, considerably more advanced, in some ways, than the average European or
Asian or African.
As to "Human", well as it has no significantly explicit meaning. In almost all cases, I
believe it simply means "us" as opposed to "not us". All primitive tribal groups had a
word, cognate to "Human" that mean "US" or "our tribe", everyone else was something
the equivalent of "Them".
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Now, having introduced the subject of so-called "Parallel Evolutions" what exactly do I
mean by it? More important still, who do I mean by it? Or do I mean what? I want to
hasten to say that I am not talking extraterrestrial here, I'm not talking about "E.T.
types". Why not?
Because neither I nor anyone else possesses a scintilla of either knowledge or
evidence to have any grounds for so doing. I certainly do have evidence which I believe
supports my suspicions of two races evolving in parallel, but where the one which isn't
human takes its origins, I have no evidence at all.
Now, I am sure that the non-human race has it’s origins in the Pre-cursor culture, of that
there’s more than adequate empirical evidence, but as to what the origin of the precursor culture was, or who they were, there’s no evidence at all.
There are a lot of people who claim that there is psychically obtained evidence that
shows the Pre-Cursor Civilization to have been Extra-terrestrial, but unfortunately
“channeling” is totally invalid as evidence. It’s interesting, and occasionally amusing, but
nothing that cannot be either proven or disproven can be accepted as empirical
evidence. “Channeling” cannot even be claimed to be a rationally derived hypotheses.
I want to make this very clear, I am absolutely certain that there was a highly advanced
civilization resident on this planet that preceded our own civilization. The civilization
ceased to exist, in all likelihood due to natural causes sometime between 10,500 B.C.E.
and 17,000 B.C.E. it has, we are finding out, left behind it some distinctive
archaeological monuments, these being Teotihuacan, The Sphinx-Pyramid Complex at
Giza, The Oseirion at Abydos, Machu Picchu and Tiahuanaco and the incredible road
system in Peru, a newly discovered temple-pyramid off the coast of Japan and another
monolithic structure off the coast of Turkey. There is currently some excitement
regarding a new discovery off the coast of Cuba, but very little information has been
released by the authorities in that unfortunate country. It is equally possible that there
are many yet to be discovered relics of this civilization which will further enlighten us.
But these were real people, what they were really like we don’t know, other than to
know that they existed. We can assume they had some connection of some kind with
the civilizations of Crete, Malta, Egypt and the Incas and Mayans. But that is only
hypothetical because while those civilizations are the locations of their monuments and
monolithic structures we have no proof at all that there was any actual contact though I
hypothesize that there very well might have been.
Madame Blavatsky tried to trace these beginnings in her work "The Secret Doctrine",
but that work is all psychic and intuitive and serves only to confuse, It may not be total
nonsense, and, while it probably is mostly nonsense, it equally probably may not be
entirely so, but for all the good it does it might as well be! Madame Blavatsky’s ideas on
“races’ have also done a great deal of demonstrable harm. While she was not the
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primary source of Adolf Hitler’s ideas about race (Nietzsche, or rather Nietzsche’s
Sister’s augmentations to his work were Hitler’s prime source), but her “rounds and
races” nonsense certainly was a clearly contributory factor.
Now, there is a great deal of doubt in my mind that Yelena Blavatskaya had much to do
with the “Secret Doctrine” as we know it today. So the whole discussion of it is possibly
moot!
Let me share with you the questions going through my own mind. This is not a new
question for me, unanswered questions have been ringing through my mind for much
more than forty years now in regard to this subject. It is only just now that the "pins are
all lined up" as it were. New information I have gotten in my continuously on-going
studies have thrown open all the switches and many formerly closed pathways
connecting these things have suddenly opened up.
I don't think there's anything "psychic" about these "switches opening up". what I see it
as is this: a person like myself who, as I do, possesses an eidetic memory, and literally
spends their entire life reading and studying; "stores up" literally millions of
disconnected bits of information in what amounts to a very large capacity randomly
accessed data storage memory. At certain points in a life, something triggers the
"random access" and it ceases to be so random and then all those apparently unrelated
bits of knowledge suddenly become not so unrelated after all. That's what's happened
to me now.
Are those individuals who are members of the "parallel evolution" to be regarded as
"who" or "what"?
Another important question is this: are the so-called "parallel evolutions' totally
separate, or, like the "Romans" in Gaul, have they gradually been converging over the
centuries by way of inter-breeding?
In other words: If there are, in fact, some people who are totally "other" than human, are
some other people left who are completely “Human”? Are there those who are hybrid?
Is there not, in fact, after some 15,000 years, anyone who is not hybrid? If we may
regard ordinary people as Homo-Sapiens and the others as something else, what is the
condition of people who are partly one or the other? If we regard the "others" as
"something else" than Homo Sapiens, what is that "something else", that "otherness"?
How far other? Do we know?
We did once, certainly the Druids and the Magi knew, but the human race has largely
lost that knowledge. I think we're just beginning to find out what it was. Do I know? Yes,
I am beginning to think so.
One of the most important things we have to remember is this; when one excludes the
Judeo-Christian Islamic Triad from the world's religions, one finds that the myths,
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legends, and traditions, along with the basic ontology/cosmology, of the peoples on this
planet is remarkably similar and remarkably connected, they really overlap!. All of these
legends in some way touch one another, they tend to reinforce each other, as it were.
And it is from these traditions that I am finding my new truth about the history of this
planet and the two peoples who dwell on it. Well, actually, considering the convergence
of the species it's actually three peoples: Homo-Sapiens, which are clearly the majority,
" The Others", which are clearly an extremely tiny minority, and the Hybrids of varying
degree who may actually represent a surprisingly large percentage of humankind. In
fact, they are most probably the majority. If Darwin was correct in his survival of the
fittest hypothesis, and I believe he was, then that’s probably the way it is. After all if the
survivor population is to be identified by the traits that make that population unique,
then those traits are very strongly survival characteristics.
In order to make it less general, we have to go back to the very beginning of the interaction between Homo-Sapiens and “The Others”. That actually takes place quite a long
time before the “fall of the pre-cursor culture”, or upon the “arrival of the aliens”. One
takes one’s choice, as both are equally possible/impossible.
Think about interaction between totally alien cultures. What sort of things happen?
Especially when one of those cultures is very advanced and the other exactly the
opposite. Science fiction writers have been speculating creatively on this particular
subject for many years. The situation we are going to deal with is exactly parallel to the
science fiction situation. It’s quite true that we might really be dealing with an identical
situation as we have absolutely no proof at all that the Precursor Civilization was of
terrestrial origins. No one can state with any authority at all that it either was, or was
not!
As I said earlier, I am fairly sure that, even in the times before the collapse of it’s home
civilization, the precursor society sent out, what could only be described as “questing
tendrils” of it’s best and brightest folk, in order to keep itself fully aware of what was
happening to the indigenous primitives (i.e. their state of development). I would think it
completely safe to assume that these “questing tendrils” are things which have given
rise to many, if not most, of humanity’s oldest legends. It is also my feeling that the
“Precursors” tried diligently to keep these “sightings” as infrequent as they possibly
could. One of the reasons was to avoid effecting the primitive cultures in any way. But
try as they might it was impossible to avoid some inter-contact, and it is from these
contacts that the basic legends that lead to ideas like “Ütgarders” and “Elves” and
“Angels” arose.
It was back in this period that he legends arose that made these individuals into “Gods”
and “Goddesses” because of the obvious good they did for the primitive humans. It’s
clear to me, in any case, that the many stories concerning “teacher Gods” have their
basis in this inter-action. This part of the process continued for a very long time.
To a primitive caught in the “hunter-gatherer” stage, anyone who could teach them how
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to plant and harvest, or to domesticate food animals, thereby securing a reliable food
supply, would be deemed a “God”. This would be equally true of a person who first
demonstrated the long bow.
Though the Homo-Sapiens had long had primitive Shamans of their own, the first really
advanced and truly “magical” Shamans the Human Race knew were members of the
precursor culture, and they too got elevated to divine status. This was true too of those
who taught homo sapiens about healing.
As time went by and homo sapient civilization become more sophisticated (not very
sophisticated though) I believe that the Precursor Society most likely sent out groups of
it’s folk to found “colonies” or “trading posts” while pretending to simply be “ordinary
human beings”, I think these outposts served two purposes. They were actual trading
posts to purvey carefully selected items from the Precursors in return for various raw
materials that the precursor culture may have required. Some of these raw materials, I
am sure, were human.
The other purpose was, I am certain, far more subtle. It was to carefully and discreetly
influence the development of human society: politically, scientifically, technically,
philosophically, and, of course, socially. And that’s what those who walk in their
footsteps, who are the colleagues of the Humanist collective, are still doing. That has
made them, over time, the principal catalysts for change on this planet.
Then, upon the collapse of the home civilization, the outposts combined with such
refugees as managed to escape the disaster, became the “survivors” and the method of
their operations changed. They became, among many other things, the “Mystery
Priesthoods” and changed the human race by way of dealing with it’s most basic
existential questions. In what was probably a relatively short period of time, because of
their advanced knowledge and abilities, they became the Ruling Classes as well.
Now, basic human civilization in it’s earliest phases, was entirely anarchic and mutually
totally hostile in nature. The goal and purpose of the survivors was then, always has
been, and still is, to slowly shepherd humankind from mutually hostile anarchy to
mutually entirely amicable anarchy. Much progress has been made, but you know as
well as I that there is still a very long road to follow till we reach the goal.
Mankind started out in small family groups led by their Senior or strongest Male figure.
These small family groups evolved, entirely due to the exigencies of life, into larger
intra- familial groups, or tribes, but now led by some combination of Shaman or “wise
man” and its most successful Hunter-Warrior. Eventually these tribal (blood related)
groups began to amalgamate with other tribes for various reasons, Inter-marriage and
convenience or necessity being the primary motivations. For instance, if a tribe lost
most of it’s warrior-hunters in either battle or a particularly disastrous hunt, the
remnants of that tribe very likely would be absorbed into another tribe either amicably or
otherwise.
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This process slowly but inexorably led human kind eventually to form tribal
confederations and eventually to the earliest City-States. We, of course, would call
those early “city states” mere villages. It was a continuous process of amalgamation.
Believe it or not, the synergy of human society is still going on, and is now, and always
has, since the commencement of the earliest tribal confederations, been under the
guidance of the “survivors” and their successors. That guidance however, is not
authoritarian but is very subtle.
Now, the governing bodies of these developing social units always assumed a
character appropriate to the parameters in which the society found itself bound. At first
the family-father was absolute Lord and Master, but he had to be for the family to
survive. I do not, by the way, believe the” survivors” to have been at all involved in the
process at this stage. Some very basic lessons the human race had to learn on its
own..
Then for much the same reasons the Tribal Chieftain became “Lord and Master”, at the
earliest stages of the development of human societies it was usual for obvious reasons,
for the Chief Warrior-Hunter to be male, but the Shaman could be either sex and, in
fact, was even more frequently Berdache, the only qualification was ability. The
strongest (most “magical”) Shaman was the Chief Wise Person of the tribe and
combined the functions of Shaman, Healer, Seer, and Priest.
I believe that it was when the tribes finally began to amalgamate into confederations
and/or city states that the members of the survivor group took a more active hand in the
process.
What the leadership classes of the survivor groups have been doing during all these
long ages is slowly weaning the humans away from mutually hostile anarchy and into
authoritarian but relatively orderly societies. Obviously to go from totally hostile anarchy
to a libertarian amicability is totally impossible. In civilizations earliest days,
authoritarianism was necessary. This is because the technical, scientific, and
intellectual development of the human race could best proceed in an orderly milieu.
The members of the survivor population and their successors, those whom I call “The
Humanist collective” have also, in that process, caused the amalgamation of smaller
groups of people into ever larger groups and that resulted in at first, Nation-States and
then Empires, and today, into the hope and possibility of world government.
Once, the state of this planet’s society is orderly and peaceful, then the authoritarian
aspect of its control center will no longer be needed and human civilization will assume
a form I call “amiable anarchy”. But that’s a really long time off.
When I say “amicable anarchy” what exactly do I mean by it? I certainly don’t mean
everyone on their own, no centrality at all, but I also don’t mean some kind of
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commonality which implies a denigration of individuality. There will, I believe, always be
some functions which human society must perform on behalf of the individual and for
the benefit of the individual. Things that the individual would be hard put to do for
themselves. But, the oppressive and coercive elements of Governance must slowly
devolve.
Now then, once the requirement of basic stability and order had been met, the
”survivors” concerned themselves with the intellectual and scientific development of the
human race. As time went slowly by, and those goals began to be met, the leadership
classes of the survivors with that ultimate goal in mind, began to concern themselves
with the ameliorization of authoritarianism and the slow development of human liberty.
Now, liberty doesn’t mean the ability to vote, it’s a far more complicated phenomenon
than that. Pseudo-Democracy is far more common on this planet than actual
Democracy!
The “survivors” ultimate goal is illimitable liberty, and that has nothing to do with
Democracy. One of the most important perquisites of “Illimitable Liberty” is that all
people not only are “free”, but that they also feel free.
One is only as free as one feels oneself to be.
Probably the most important liberty is freedom from fear, and that is the goal of the
Humanist Collective which is an amorphous organization of the leadership classes of
the “survivors”. There is however, one single thing from which no one can ever be
freed, and that is responsibility. It is taking a very long time for humans to develop
sufficiently to be responsible enough for actual full Liberty, and the end is not at all in
sight. But that is the goal, nonetheless.
For these and other reasons, the Members of the Humanist collective have long been
the catalysts of revolution and change. For these and many other reasons they have
never been the “Mary Poppins” type. Sometimes their efforts have to be harsh and
unpleasant. The members of The Humanist Collective (sometimes misnamed “The
Illuminati”) have been responsible for every significant revolution and major societal
change in human history. Calling them the “Illuminati” “The Adepts” or “The Great White
Brotherhood” is so misleading as to be actually harmful. The Humanist Collective today
(and “Fellowship” would be an equally good word) is composed of extremely intelligent,
talented, and creative people, simply “doing what it is they do” and in the process,
making the world a better place for everyone!
Many people have “died” due to, and because of, revolutions. A major sociological
dislocation, such as that occurring in our own period, is, in its own way also a revolution,
and it displaces and confuses enormous numbers of people. But sad to say, it needs to
be that way, for comfortable humans will never make any effort to improve the society in
which they dwell. Not as long as for all too many people, it’s always; “I’m all right Jack”,
and to perdition with everyone else. It’s only when everyone is insecure and
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threatened that any meaningful change can occur.
I am inclined to believe, that as things are right now the only thing that would precipitate
a meaningful move toward a World Government, is a threat from “outside” or
“elsewhere”. After all, what a world government is, can be seen to be simply a logical
but vast extension of the original family group. The only difference is a consciousness
that all the inhabitants of the planet are indeed one family. Behind all of this
development and change have been the members of The Humanist Collective, and, of
course, they still are.
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THE LINKAGES:
That being the end of what are, in spite of their length, clearly my introductory remarks,
let's start our discussion by identifying clearly, and defining as well as one possibly can,
each of the elements in that list of dichotomous things with which I started this essay :
The Gundestrøp Caldron, The Holy Grail, The Legendary Priesthoods of
the Sun and Moon of Atlantis, the Druids, The Nephilim, The Brahmins, the
Sang Real The Tuatha de Danann, The Sidhe, The Ljosalfar, Elves, The
Chaldean Magi, The Rosicrucians, "The Masters of the Wisdom" ( spoken
of by esotericists ), The Original Knights Templar, The Contemporary
Knights Templar, The Knights of the Temple of Sion, The various Masonic
Orders, The Dogon People of Africa, The Mayans, The Basques, the many
disparate "Mystery Religions", Shamans and Berdaches, Pythagoras,
Platonism and Neo-Platonism, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The Gundestrøp Caldron and The Holy Grail I have already dealt with, and at length.
The Caldron is an artifact that may be viewed in a museum today. The Holy Grail is a
fairy tale (i.e. a fiction) not an anagogical myth, and that's all it has ever been if one
defines it by way of the medieval legends concerning it.
If one defines it in the sense I defined it earlier, and that is in Human terms only as a
description of an individual person seen as a "vessel" for a special or "sacred" genetic
inheritance, it is not nearly so much of a fairy tale. It is not at all far fetched to describe
an individual person who is either purely, or largely, or even only slightly of "The
Others", as being a vessel of the "Holy Blood" or "Sang Real".
It's simply a matter of degree of hybridization, but all human-"other" hybrids are vessels
of the Sang Real. That description is probably valid for almost everyone of "Royal
Inheritance" on the planet. The more inbred the Royal/Noble line the more likely it is to
be true. Unfortunately, that inbreeding has some very unfortunate effects. But not
invariably so. But due to the creeping hybridization to which I referred earlier, that
doesn't mean that the description doesn't equally fit other people who possess no
"Social Status" of that kind. Or those of no apparent social status at all for that matter.
It's far too easy to forget that for each person, when you go back 16 generations, there
is a breeding stock of sixty five thousand five hundred and thirty six (65,536) individuals
and that only covers a period of from three hundred twenty to four hundred years. What
I'm talking about here is breeding going back to the collapse of the precursor culture
whenever that may have been, but if the Precursor Culture “crashed” with the onset of
the last Ice Age, we can assume it's between twelve and seventeen thousand years.
Think of how many individuals make up the genetic heritage going that far back. In fact,
as each human being goes back to the original breeding stock so many millennia ago
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think on how many individuals separate you from Ramepithicus. The notion that
everyone is related isn’t total nonsense. Genetic heredity is, as you can see, very
obviously far from simple, and that is why locating or "weeding out" actual possessors
of a significant degree of "Sang Real" is an important part of all the various institutions
who recognize both it's existence and its potential, even if most of them may not have
been entirely aware of what it actually was.....Who were those institutions? ..This is a
sample, not a complete listing, but a sample of the institutions who knew about the
“difference”:
The Druids, The Brahmins, The Chaldean Magi, The Rosicrucians, “The Masters of The
Wisdom, or Adeptii, or Illuminatii”(in their non-fictional aspect), The Knights Templar,
“The Knights of the Temple of Sion”, The Dogon Priesthood, The Ife Priesthood, The
Yoruba Priesthood, Pythagoras and Plato, these are just some of the groups who had
at least an “inkling” of the truth. All of these institutions, as I understand them (and
Pythagoras and Plato are, by this point in time, much more to be seen as “institutions”
then as men), are outgrowths, or rather the successors of the most important item in
the list, and that is:
Now we come to what I've called "The Legendary Priesthoods of the Sun and Moon of
Atlantis". And so, as they are absolutely the key to everything in this essay, let’s talk
about them.
In the model of reality that I am now developing, these are certainly among the most
problematical and controversial elements.
If I am correct in the perception that "any legend which is absolutely world-wide and
culture wide is probably the bearer of a kernel of truth", and I am certain that I am, then
there is some "truth" in the Atlantis myth, But the rub is that there's no truth that can be
supported in a historical or archeological way. There's nothing that can be proven and
equally nothing that can be disproved. There is distinct physical and empirical proof of
the existence of the Pre-Cursor culture, but no details regarding that culture and there is
no thing at all regarding “Atlantis” or Lemuria” or “Mu”. Not yet anyway. But in the model
which the myth creates, these were the seed Priesthoods for all succeeding
civilizations.
Were some of the survivors of the pre-existent civilization in fact “Priests” or the
equivalent of what ever religion (if any) that civilization possessed? We will only know if
we find actual records of that civilization,
On the other hand: Did the survivors of the precursor civilization pass themselves off as
“Priests” because it was more advisable in the totally primitive situation in which they
found themselves? It’s certainly not an impossible scenario. If the precursor civilization
was truly highly advanced, it’s the more logical scenario.
The religious mythology of almost the whole planet tends to bear this out.
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In any case, these, and others of the leadership classes, are "the survivors of the
precursor culture" to whom I have been referring. No catastrophe is, or can be, utterly
complete. There are always survivors. There were survivors of Pompeii. There were
survivors of Hiroshima. Secondly in any society as advanced and complicated as the
precursor culture must have been, (and the many legends all agree that while insular,
the “Atlantean Empire” {or whatever} was not limited to its home island, but was widespread) there are always outlying portions of the "Empire" that are not in the least
involved in the catastrophe.
The Minoan Empire is a case in point if, as is traditionally assumed, it was an outpost of
"Atlantis". The leadership class that was residing in these outer portions of the "Empire"
survived and went on into the future. They are the source of the Druidical Caste and all
other such groups in the history of this planet. Or so I am beginning to believe.
Nonetheless, while the previous civilization may be highly problematical as to its
significant details, there are certain traditions regarding the Pre-cursor Culture that are
unavoidable and undeniable. There are many historical, cultural, and linguistic
phenomena that clearly imply the existence of a precursor culture. Lastly while there is
no archeological proof, there is a great deal of solid archeological and anthropological
evidence that tends to support the premise. In point of fact, slowly but inexorably there
is beginning to be assembled a plethora of physical evidence that an advanced culture
existed, of almost planet-wide extant, that we as yet know almost nothing about. This
evidence is based on ruins that are imposing, extremely impressive, and almost totally
inexplicable, at least not in the current state of our knowledge. But, it is coming to be
clearer and clearer that the culture that left these tremendous ruins was not either a
fable or a fantasy. Sooner or later, these ruins or others as yet undiscovered will yield
indisputable evidence regarding the Precursor Culture.
Much of the historical, cultural and linguistic evidence is based upon almost
unanswerable questions.
Why did the Mayans, for instance, claim that their race originated on an Island to their
east which was destroyed (sank) in a violent and catastrophic combination of
vulcanism and earthquake? This is clearly not the sort of thing people would "make up"
as a myth to explain their origins. "Come down from the heavens" yes sure, but "run
away from catastrophe"? Why did the Mayans possess a written record of 25,000 years
worth of transits of Venus, when Venus is not observable from Yucatan? Why, when
these transits are fed into a computer to discover what was the place from which the
observation was made, do we find a location over the mid-Atlantic ridge? Could the
Azores, The Canary Islands, Bermuda and the Bahamas be the mountain tops of a
sunken continent sized Island? Just as the Mayans (and Aztecs after them) had no
wheeled vehicles, so too, they had no ocean capable vessels, they had canoes galore,
but one can’t get from Yucatan to the mid-Atlantic in a canoe. So then we have to ask,
how did they get these observations? In any case, you can’t take serious astronomical
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observations from a canoe.
Why do the Basques claim that their race came to the Pyrenees fleeing a catastrophe
in their homeland which was an Island to the West of Europe which was destroyed in a
cataclysm? Are both of these peoples to be accused of "making up" the same fiction?
Why do the Mayans and the Basques have the same word for water.....Atl? Why do the
Mayans and the Basques call the tool used to help throw spears accurately and
far, the Atl-atl? Why is the Basque language unique in Europe being neither IndoAryan or Finno-Urgic which account for all other European tongues? Why does the
Basque tongue bear resemblance to the language of a people separated from them by
some two thousand eight hundred miles of what was historically an impassable ocean?
Lastly, and as I see it, most importantly, why are the legends of Atlantis (or some place
of the same nature) so absolutely ubiquitous? What is the constantly implied
connection between Atlantis and Santorini/Thea? What is the connection therefore
between Atlantis and Crete?
The famous scholar Professor Jowett who translated Plato into English apparently
believed that Plato was "resting his mind" in his tale of Atlantis. But Plato has never
seemed the kind of man who "rested his mind" in that fashion. Or, for that matter, Plato
never “rested his mind” in ANY fashion, that was what was wrong with him. His
dialogue, “The Republic”, clearly proves this to be true.
Plato was a very serious man, he was a "stuffed shirt" for that matter, he was also a
Prince of the Athenian Royal House, and he was hardly likely to have amused himself
with childish fictions. Secondly if it wasn't a fiction, he was far too intelligent and well
educated to confuse the volcanic eruption that destroyed the small island of
Thea(Santorini) with a cataclysm that destroyed what he described as "a continent".
Plato fully knew the difference between a continental land mass and a small island
which is all Thea was. Plato was a man who was aware of the tectonic plates that make
up the Earth’s under surface, this is clear from his remark that “If you could go far
enough above the surface, and look at the planet devoid of it’s covering of earth, trees,
and water, you would see that it looks like a ball sewn out of hides”, and anyone who
was that knowledgeable would hardly make such an error. Where he got that
knowledge is another very interesting question, one that I know well enough to leave
completely alone!
The classical world apparently believed there was some connection between Thea and
Crete and Atlantis. Well, Atlantis may be legendary and mythical, but the Minoan
Civilization certainly wasn't. Despite certain mythical aspects (The Minotaur and The
Labyrinth, and they are far more likely the mythologized memories of time-hazed facts))
Crete was a major civilization of which Thea was an outpost. They were an advanced
culture clearly beyond the Myceneans, and to some degree (flush toilets for instance)
beyond the Egyptians who were the primary other contemporary Mediterranean
cultures. It is certain that Crete, from the point of view of actual power, wealth, and
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influence, was the equal of Egypt. Crete certainly inspired more satellite cultures
(Phoenicia, Philistia, etc.) than Egypt did. The extremely magnificent and grandiose
Egyptian civilization awed other cultures, but it did not inspire them, it was far too
locality (i.e. geographic locality) and people specific.
As to Egypt: What happened to raise Egypt, called by its inhabitants “The Land of
Khem”, from a very basic stone-age hunting/gathering culture of little naked people, in
boats made out of reeds, using fire pointed sticks to kill birds in the swamps bordering
the Nile to a great civilization that could build the step pyramid at Sakkara, in what, in
historical terms, can only be seen as "the blinking of an eye"?
Now the Step Pyramid was built during the reign of King Netjerikhet (Djoser) who
reigned from 2668 to 2649 B.C.E., that tomb complex was an artifact clearly
demonstrating a very high-level of civilization. The “little naked fishermen” represent the
same civilization in the pre-dynastic period which ended around 3200 B.C.E. The
difference represents an amazing “jump” in civilization for a mere 400 years. I can’t
think of anything to equal it without the addition of an outside influence.
But there are other instances of things quite likely to have been inspired by the
survivors of the pre-cursor culture”
Where did the Aryans who conquered India get their "Holy Books" The Vedas? They
didn't find them in India, because the Vedas weren't Dravidian, and Vedic philosophy
bears no resemblance to Dravidian theology either then or now, and while they may
have brought them to India with them, the Aryans themselves certainly were far too
barbarous to have produced them. It can be argued that all non-Shamanic based
human ideas concerning the immortality of the spirit originated with the Vedas. It is
however, my belief that the Vedas themselves derive from Shamanic sources
originating in the precursor culture.
What do I mean by that? Well as I hope I made clear in my long discussion on
Shamanism, it’s an entirely experiential phenomenon and it’s perceptions on the
immortality of the spirit are experience based and not theoretical. We don’t know where
the Vedic perceptions come from, they seem to be intellectually based, but I personally
think they aren’t. I think they are the long term memories of a culture that, at least at
one time, was Shamanic in the most culturally advanced sense of the word. I think that
the Vedas themselves, represent the sophistication of some totally unknown culture
that was a long way in advance of basic shamanism. And that has to be our precursor
culture.
Who wrote the Vedas? We have absolutely no idea at all what produced the Vedas. It
is completely clear to me that any perception so completely accurate can only have
resulted from apperception and therefore could only have been Shamanically produced,
but we are not familiar with any form of Shamanism which would have, or could have,
produced such a set of coldly logical musings on reality. To me that would require
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millennia of musing and ruminating on Shamanic evidence.
Another avenue of questioning starts with this: Why do so many disparate civilizations
claim that "The Gods" or a specific "God" "taught them all the arts of civilization" What
Gods? Charles Berlitz and apparently very many others think it was extra- terrestrials,
but there's absolutely no otherwise inexplicable evidence supporting those theories, and
none absolutely disproving them, so, as we can't prove it was "E.T." We also can’t
prove it wasn’t.
There are, of course, many people who point to UFOs as “proof” of extra terrestrial
contacts. But the UFOs themselves are extremely controversial, and while I certainly
accept that they do exist, that is all I accept. I just cannot accept some of the things
claimed for them.
What "Gods" did all this "civilizing"? Extra terrestrials are somewhat plausible but
entirely unprovable, what about refugees from a natural disaster involving an advanced
culture? That's equally plausible and not quite so equally unprovable, but far more
likely. What about "the others", they could be either of the two previous categories
considered, or both at once, or something else altogether. That too is plausible and
equally unprovable. But I think all of the choices are well worth investigating.
Now that entire list of categories is a problematic subject! How can one really deal
seriously with such “fairy tale’ subjects as “Elves”? I think one can because as I said
earlier I have come to believe that “Fairy Tales” often contain an element of truth that
can be saved for posterity in no other way. No matter what the various mythologies may
have to say about them, these various categories are simply “safe” ways to describe the
reality of the other-than-humans among the human race.
There is one thing that does not require "proof" and cannot be denied. All of these
myths and legends and many other traditions, and some physical evidence, all point to,
or rather strongly imply, the existence of a precursor culture, and in lieu of any other
alternative we must at least tentatively accept the ubiquitous myth that says that the
"precursor culture" was Atlantis (in the interests of clarity and convenience I am using
the term "Atlantis", but one must include Mu, Lemuria, and Shamballah in the category
of legendary precursor cultures). In any case if it wasn't "Atlantis" per se, and it very
likely wasn’t, then it was something very like it. “The Demon is in the details”.
Why this is of importance to the subject at hand is this: The legendary Priesthoods of
the Sun and Moon of Atlantis are also alleged to have been the founders of most of the
on-going metaphysical belief systems on the planet that are not Judeo-Christian in
origin.
What this means to me , as I clearly indicated earlier, is that if the pre-cursor culture is
not a myth, then there is a very great likelihood that the Chaldean and Persian Magi,
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The Druids, The Priests of Ammon-Ra, The Bonists of Tibet, The Brahmins of India,
and equally quite probably the Yoruba and Ife Priesthoods of Africa are all quite
possibly descended in a direct not simply spiritual line, but in some case an actual
physical /genetic line of descent from those "Atlantean" Priests and Priestesses.
Whatever it may have called itself, and whatever it may have been, “Atlantis” is
surely long gone, but it’s wisdom and its genes may not be.
That means to say that the primary point of my theory is that some of these Priests and
other people as well may not simply be spiritually descended but physically as well.
That theory rests entirely upon the category of "otherness" which is what is unique and
important about these individuals.
"Descended in a direct line" is the key concept here. I am not speaking of mythical or
"fairy tale" descent but actual historically traceable genetic descent.
Is such a thing possible? Yes, I am very sure it is. There are many highly respected and
respectable Archaeologists, Anthropologists, Ethnologists, Linguists of various
disciplines, and Cultural Historians who are beginning to see very important
connections between the Celts and The Aryans and who are beginning to wonder which
was the inspirational source for these cultures.
These same "experts" have discerned that the Druids, rather than simply being an
Order of Priesthood, are; like the Brahmin Caste in India, the hereditary intellectual
caste of the Celts, Gauls, and Teutons. In fact they are beginning to find historical and
literary hints that imply far more than that. What we're trying to find out is did the IndoAryans inspire the Celts or is it the other way around? Or were they both equally
inspired by some shared source from which they both descend? It is my opinion that
the latter is far more likely.
Now, the Druids have left us no evidence in writing, although others have written at
second or third or fourth hand about their beliefs. The Brahmins have the Vedas, but as
you know I don't believe that the Vedas originated in India or with the Aryan invaders
thereof from whom the Brahmins may descend. In any case the Vedas are the most
advanced metaphysical document the human race possesses. We just don't know
where they originated.
Now as to the Brahmins today, they are the decadent and degenerate remnants of a
formerly illustrious caste, they really don't tell us much of what they may have been
when they first entered India. The Druids, unlike the Brahmins, are entirely extinct as
an identifiable group. But if they were a caste rather than simply a religious
organization, then surely their descendants are still among us, but even if we could
succeed in identifying them, they too could tell us little or nothing of what their
antecedents might truly have been.
All we know about the Druids comes either from Roman and Christian polemics or
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myth-making and from Irish and Welch legend. There are however, some things we do
know in spite of the propaganda and myth-making. The Druids were utterly ubiquitous
among the leadership class of the Celts, and the Celts themselves, were an enormous,
but obviously amorphous mass of a civilization, if something that amorphous can be
described as a unified civilization, that spread across Europe and Asia Minor. We do
know, and are daily learning more, about the Celtic Civilization and it has got to be seen
as one of the great civilizing factors of humanity.
I will say this: when the Celtic civilization was submerged and destroyed by the
myrmidon hordes of Rome, the Ant Hill Civilization, it was an absolutely colossal loss
to humankind.
Despite it's magnificent architecture, which was not at all original but stolen from the
Greeks and debased through over elaboration along with almost all else in so-called
Roman Civilization. Rome was a violent and ugly place. There were only two things at
which the Romans excelled, they produced a truly mindless, almost robotic , military
machine (The "Myrmidons" I referred to earlier) that was entirely at the disposal and
mercy of a totally corrupt ruling class which produced more incompetent venal louts
than military geniuses like Caesar and Pompey. There were Roman Generals who
killed infinitely more Romans through incompetence and ineptitude than did foreigners
out of malice..
But, when well led, the Roman Military Machine was frighteningly effective. It conquered
the known world. But one of its primary weapons was what the Germans call "Ein
Shrecklichkeit" which means " An act of Terribleness" or "Horribleness"; which, in the
Roman context, was accomplished by the wholesale massacre and enslavement of
foreign populations who stood in Rome's way. These people's only offense was
occupying a space that Rome wished to occupy or control and being unwilling to
relinquish their own lifestyles for the experience of Roman Anthill life.
The Romans controlled their Myrmidons the same way, by a process called
"decimation", it certainly produced the disciplined automatons that they desired. When
the Roman Government became the civil arm of the Catholic Church it continued its
habitual process and used terror very effectively.
The other thing the Romans were extremely competent at doing, concerned what we
call civil engineering, they built really good aqueducts and sewers (some still in daily
use). They were good road builders too, but their reputation therein is somewhat
exaggerated as in a good part of the Roman Empire the Roads had been originally built
by the Celts, and merely improved upon by the Roman Engineers. It certainly cannot be
denied that they really did improve upon what they found.
Aside from Christianity, Rome's major legacy to the west is Roman Law in which the
burden of proof of guilt lies not with the prosecution but rather the burden of proof of
innocence lies with the accused. This is a thing which is entirely authoritarian and
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therefore anti-democratic, as well as almost totally unfair and oppressive. The state
has infinitely more resources at its disposal than the citizen, and especially the poor
citizen. Roman Law, however, is far more efficient, but then an anthill is a terribly
efficient place. Heartless, mindless, but efficient!
Poor lunatic Hitler thought he was creating a society based on his Celto-Germanic
ancestors, but actually what he did was set up a pseudo-Rome complete with
spectacles and circuses! What, after all, was the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally but
a circus? The ancestral Germano-Celts were a wildly independent and free people, the
absolutely disciplined Germans of Adolph Hitler’s German Nightmare, were simply Army
Ants. Hitler (an Austrian) truly must have hated and despised the Germans considering
what he did to them.
But what of the Celts who Rome destroyed, why are they a loss? They were just naked
Barbarians weren't they? Why are the intellectual elite of a bunch of bare-assed
savages important? The answer is that they're important because they were anything
but "bare-assed savages", it was the Romans who were essentially "savages" although
they clearly weren't "bare-assed".
Let's look at what we know about the Celts. Let's start by looking at their art because a
people is best understood by the quality of its art work. The Celts were absolutely
consummate artists, their work was original and to a great extent, abstract or symbolic.
It was also anything but naif, in fact, Celtic art was one of the most sophisticated and
complicated art forms to have evolved on this planet. Now when you really look at Celtic
art, with it’s intertwined motifs, and prevalence of serpentine motifs, you can see a
family resemblance to the artistically equally complicated and intertwined motifs of the
Mayas and the Aztecs, the major difference is that Celtic art forms are more liquid and
flowing while the Aztec-Mayan forms are more squared, but they are still intrinsically
very much alike.
Realism, at which the Romans excelled, and which they carried to an extreme, is not
creative but re-creative, and it is a lesser form of artistic expression. Creativity invents
something that exists only in the artist’s mind, but realism simply slavishly copies
something extant. All Roman art was modeled on Greek or Etruscan originals. It seems
to me that the Romans were too busily involved in conquest and finances for their
society to be really conducive to the development of any independent art forms unless
one considers sewers to be art forms.
The Celts produced truly sophisticated art forms and they extended their artistic
appreciation to articles of daily use and common purposes. Their weapons and their
wine cups were equally artistic. The Celts (actually their Sarmatian ancestors) invented
pants ("Brigga") and their fabrics were woven of many colors and patterns, and they
were tremendously individual.
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The Romans, as usual, eschewed individuality and the upper classes wore artfully
arranged white table cloths (though some had purple stripes around the edges), while
the lower classes wore tunics if they were lucky enough not to be wearing "strategically
arranged rags".
The Romans actually invented what in Medieval or Feudal times, were called
“sumptuary laws” which were class based, and limited what each of the classes in
society was permitted to wear. The Celts too had a version of sumptuary laws in that
the different classes were limited in the number of colors they could wear. Celtic
aristocracy were peacocks, and the lesser classes wore as much finery as they could
manage, but the Romans? Well when you went into the Senate, which was the
Assembly of their highest class, the myrmidon phenomenon hit you right in the face, all
the aristocrats dressed exactly alike! There is no liberty or freedom of any kind in a
society that despises individual expression.
One of the most important things about Celtic Society was the fact that Poets were so
highly valued that their lives were sacrosanct. Now that's the mark of a high civilization
as I see it. Another mark of high civilization which set Celtic civilization aside and in a
special place was the fact that, in Ireland and Wales, which are the places we know
most about, the sexes were completely equal. That's a situation which modern western
society is only just striving to reach today! In Ireland we know that there was no death
penalty under Brehon Law (The Druidic Law Code) that's a far cry from Caesar’s Rome
or the U.S.A. today, for that matter.
I want to return to something I consider to be of tremendous importance. One of the
worst inheritances the Western World has from Rome is an absolute abhorrence of
individuality, which Christianity adopted in one whole piece from the Romans. The Celts
on the other hand were wildly individualistic. The Romans couldn't comprehend this at
all. The Roman writer Strabo has been paraphrased as saying: "The Celts came at us
retail, and we beat them wholesale, had they been inseparable they would have been
insuperable". But, that independence, while it eventually doomed the Celts, was their
greatest glory. The Celts were a free people and their greatest legacy to us all is that
sense or spirit of freedom, that seed of independence that can eventually make the
world a good place to live instead of what it is today.
And that brings me to the motivation that underlies this essay. While of course we can
never go backwards to a "better time", what can we do to go forwards into a better time
rather than into the social catastrophe into which we are insensibly moving today?
The answer I have found is to try to return to that glorious individualism of the Celts, to
return to the higher sense of priorities that the Celts had, to return to the equality
between the sexes that the Celts demonstrated, and to return to the almost anarchic
but truly democratic spirit of the Celts. To do that we must carefully and knowingly turn
away from the Myrmidonism of both Rome and it’s successor, Christianity. We must
turn away from a society which controls and oppresses its people, to a society which is
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not so much controlled by its peoples, as one which is a manifestation of the
consensus of its peoples. Control is both a word and a concept that humanity must turn
away from. The only positive aspect of “control” is self-control, and even that is
questionable if rigidity is included.
We must turn to a society in which people are seen as inherently more important and
valuable than "things" or institutions. Individualism must cease to be viewed as a
"heresy" or a "sin" and become instead the goal of all people. As Popeye used to say: "I
yam what I yam", well that should be a proud statement of fact not an embarrassed
one. For how does it differ from "I am that I am"?
But, what is it that made the Celts what they were? The Druids made the Celts what
they were. And the Druids were the purest manifestation of the spirit of the precursor
culture.
I have come to believe that the survivors of the pre-cursor culture are the original
source of all that is beneficial in human civilization. I have come to believe that the
survivors of the pre-cursor culture are the protectors of all that is beneficial in Human
civilization. I have come to believe the survivors of the pre-cursor culture were originally,
have always been, and still are, the guides and protectors of humankind. They’re the
ones that are, as I’ve said before and will doubtless say again, quite mistakenly, called
the “Adepts or Illuminati”. But in a way, they’re the “Foster Parents” of humankind.
But why do I believe them ( the survivors) to be non-human? There are several
reasons. The first is that the overwhelming weight of human myth and legend believes
them to be non-human, and that is a vitally important factor. The second is that, given
the nature of their myth, they clearly were a society very much advanced in every way
over that of humanity. Now, if modern science is correct, and I believe it is, and homosapiens only began to develop from a small African breeding stock some 70,000 to
150,000 years ago, while “Atlantis”, or rather the advanced precursor civilization, fell
some 12 to 50 thousand years ago. There has simply got to be a different species
involved. To be constantly taken for “Gods”, the survivors had to be significantly
different and more powerful than the humans to whom they seemed so awesome. To
be “God-like” requires that one be special indeed. Even to the extremely primitive.
We have been given perfect examples of this phenomenon at work in our own times. I
refer to the cargo cults in Papua-New Guinea. To stone age development primitives the
aircraft and the soldiers of World War II were clearly “Gods”, helicopters and airplanes
and radios and rifles were all “divine attributes”. Viewed in the light of this clearly
historical occurrence, my hypothesis is far from unlikely. The “Cargo Cults” are based
upon a primitive stone-age perception of an actual reality. How then are the Sumerian
and other myths of “The Gods” teaching men the arts of civilization any different? They
are simply older.
Let’s hypothesize for a moment. Let us presume the old legends and myths are totally
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accurate and that a pre-cursor culture is a reality. Let us presume that this culture was
significantly culturally, philosophically, and scientifically advanced beyond the other
inhabitants of the planet at that time. Let us assume that for at least some part of that
time, Homo-Sapiens did not yet exist. Let us presume that for various, and probably
good reasons, these people had avoided direct contact with the primitives for long
periods of time. One of the reasons probably being a desire to avoid negatively
effecting the development of this new species. I assume that to be the case but it would
clearly be foolish to assume that there were not other far less altruistic reasons for the
avoidance of contact.
Let us also assume that for reasons of need, such as raw materials, slaves, and some
degree of trade, the pre-cursor culture had established trading colonies which were
apparently very discreet, and which carefully appeared to be only slightly more
advanced than their neighbors. They were not entirely discreet however, for 1500 years
before the common era, both Thea and Crete were fairly widely called “Atlantis”. That
was many thousands of years after the collapse of that civilization. What I think may be
true here is that both Thea and Crete were accepted to be outposts of “Atlantis”, what
that place itself was like was unknown.
People are still people and they haven’t changed that much. I think the common view
was that “Atlantis” was just like what they were used to, but richer and more powerful. I
think people around 1500 B.C.E. viewed “Atlantis” in the same light as they viewed
Egypt. Mysterious, Rich, exotic, and powerful. Of course Classical Egypt was nonexistent when the Pre-cursor culture flourished.
Let us say that the world, at the time of the disastrous collapse of the main population
centers of the Precursor Culture, was suddenly confronted with an influx of advanced
people. That would explain why Egypt suddenly took it’s turn towards its eventual
greatness. That would explain the Quezalcoatl myth in Yucatan. It would explain
sudden changes in the level of civilization in many areas.
Now, who were these survivors?
Of course there were those citizens of the Precursor Culture who were absent from
their homeland for some reason. They, of course, survived. But they were surely not
alone in their survival.
In a major natural catastrophe, which is what all the legends and myths make the cause
of the collapse to be, only those with the means to escape do so. If there was
forewarning, those with the intelligence and foresight to leave in advance of the actual
catastrophe, also escaped. But they too, require the means. Especially when one is
dealing with an insular civilization widely separated from the areas capable of providing
refuge.
I believe it was the ruling and Priestly classes that escaped the collapse, because they
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did possess the means, and taking advantage of what they already were, they evolved
into the ruling and priestly classes all over this planet. After all, they were all
representative of a group that had evolved into the ruling and priestly classes of the
precursor culture.
What exactly is it that gave these individuals such an advantage? What is it that caused
them to evolve into a people who would be seen by homo-sapiens as utterly supernatural and cause them to eventually be turned into the completely legendary Tuatha
De Danann and/or Banh Sidhe? They were extremely advanced Paranormals that is
why. They possessed wide spectrum fully self-controlled extra-sensory abilities, that is
why. It is necessary that this be so for the traditions concerning them to have taken the
form they did.
And so, what has all this meant to us today? It means that in between that time and this
there has developed an entire congerie of legends, myths, and “tales” of “magical
peoples.
Now, as far as I see it, these “magical peoples”, at least in so far as the Human
imagination is concerned, do not usually include the Druids who are usually generally
seen in a far more pragmatic light as an order of Priests and Bards and Scholars. That
they are seen so, doesn’t necessarily make them so. The Druids are every bit as
“magical” as any of the groups I am about to discuss. But it certainly does include the
Tuatha de Danann and the Banh Sidhe and the Ljosalfar and Svartalfar (Light Elves
and Dark Elves) and probably the “Nephilim” of the Old Testament.
Today, of course, there are areas where the categories (magical and pragmatic)
“overlap” as it were, and here we have groups like “The Rosicrucians” who are seen as
part pragmatic “order” and part “Magical” order. The Same is true of Theosophy’s socalled “ Masters of The Wisdom”. Who, dependent on the culture involved are also
known as “Mahatmas (Great Souls)”, Adepts (Adeptii), and Illuminatii. But of course, the
validity of these particular traditional myths is certainly questionable.
This brings us to a juncture at which we are confronted with one of the most dangerous,
misleading and harmful concepts in Metaphysics and Occultism, and that is the
erroneous idea that there are people called “Adepts”. Unfortunately, these so-called
“adepts” are usually described as “walking on water”, “walking though walls”, and
figuratively at least, “shooting lightening out their asses”! This view is absurd,
nonsensical, and insulting to the reality of the subject.
This is a topic which, if I could have my wish, I would avoid altogether, but as it is a
topic in such common usage, and one moreover which does a lot of damage, I am
forced to attempt to deal with it. I am forced to deal with this unsavory subject because
it has been made clear to me that there are those who will conflate the Humanist
Collective with these myths.
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There are a whole series of questions that are cogent here. One of the first of them,
and one I wish to dispose of immediately, and, I hope for all times to come, at least for
those who read this and who take me at all seriously, is: What about “Ascended
Masters”?
Well, the answer to that question is that there is absolutely no such thing!
The entire concept of the existence of “Ascended Masters” is one of the many
intrinsically Religion based absurdities that so discredit the entire field of metaphysical
inquiry. As far as I can ascertain, this myth was started by Helena Blavatsky as sort of a
“cover story” for where she got the material she put in her two major works (Isis
Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine) which if they were not simply fraudulent nonsense,
were themselves merely “covers” for her real agenda, which was entirely political and
extremely radical. Most of her active political life took place prior to 1875 when the
Theosophical Society was formed in New York City. There is such a totally fictitious
mythology that has arisen around Helena Blavatsky and her works, partially her own
invention and partially that of her successors in an effort to glorify her and through her,
themselves.
One of the myths was that in the case of “Isis Unveiled” she did no real research and
that the entire enormous content of that book was “channeled from the Masters of the
Great White Lodge” this just isn’t true. There is simply too much of a parallel with the
th
works of Godfrey Higgins who wrote in the early part of the 19 century. Was she then
“channeling” from Higgins? Or did she just “forget” that he was a primary source, as
was Schöpenhauer? I mention Schöpenhauer as there’s also a lot of the ideas and
th
perceptions of his, and of many other of the 18 century philosophers in her book “Isis
Unveiled”.
As to the “Secret Doctrine” that is simply a combination of a tremendously fertile
imagination mixed with exposure to the more superstitious aspects of Brahminism and
Mahayana Buddhism. She, and her successors, all claimed she had access to “secret”
stores of knowledge hidden in Tibet, but then there is very adequate evidence that she
never went to Tibet and no valid Tibetan scholar has ever heard of her sources.
I hope she never intended it, but her racial theories caused a lot of actual harm in the
world. As I said earlier there are many who believe that it was her inspiration that led to
the Nazi death camps. It is my perception that while this may be, at least to some
degree, true; it was not HER intention nor aim. Nazism was the absolute antithesis of
her own goals and agenda.
The “Ascended Master” concept was then taken to totally absurd heights by her
successors in the Leadership of the Theosophical Society and subsequently by various
imitators and so-called “Channelers” most of whom were and are psychologically
disturbed or clear frauds or both.
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The word “ascended” is meaningless in terms of the reality both of The Human
condition and The evolution of Creative Intelligence. Every excarnate, which means to
say every single person who leaves the body, could, if one were that simplistically
inclined, be described as having “ascended”. But as we know, that’s not what happens
when someone “dies”. As to “Master” that’s a medieval conception that may have been
appropriate in Madame Blavatsky’s Hierarchical and Authoritarian Victorian milieu, but
it was totally misleading and inaccurate then, and is infinitely worse in that respect now.
In fact, in our time, which is truly “post-Modern”, the term “Master” has very unfortunate
and negative connotations considering it’s unavoidable connection to the “MasterSlave” relationship, which is a totally unacceptable one. There’s an unavoidable
inference of subservience inherent in the word “Master” which is totally unacceptable in
post modern human society.
The term “Master” as used in these totally fictitious myths, most likely came to us from
the Medieval period, especially from the medieval universities and the Guild systems
which were so very important and influential in Medieval Society. In the Universities,
anyone licensed to teach was called a “Master”; and in the Guild systems, anyone who
had fully “Mastered” their trade was called a “Master”. But those are historical examples
and are probably unfortunately, entirely invalid in the social and commercial context of
our times.
An ”Ascended Master” is a wholly fictitious thing, and an “Adept” may, or may not be
another thing entirely, but in any case, the word has been entirely contaminated by
those who foisted off the “Ascended Master” concept on the world. As a result “Adept”
means nothing relevant. ‘Adepthood’, which really signifies an Integrated Personality or
metasapiency, either of which is a more pragmatic and rational designation of what
people have called “Adept”, is a function of intelligence. The word “Adept” carries with it
a long history of being a very dangerous term indeed, it can be, and regularly is, very
misleading and used for all kinds of fraud for that reason I will not use the term again.
Let’s agree that henceforth whenever I am forced by the limits of language to use a
term to describe such a level of intelligence, I will use the term “integrated Personality”
or perhaps “Metasapient”. In any case, I will be using it only as an “umbrella category”,
which means to include the terms; “Enlightened Being”, “Illuminatus”, “Mahatma”, and
“Master”. The primary question is this: Are these individuals human? The answer is that
if the person is truly “enlightened”, no they are not! At least not if “Human” is taken to
mean Homo Sapiens. Are they then “Homo Superior”?
No, ”Homo-superior” is a term (whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter) that I’d very much
prefer not to use, for that term takes us on to the very dangerous ground of Nietzsche’s
“Supermen”. Why is it “dangerous ground”? That is very simple to answer. I could
easily say: “No Nietzsche, no Hitler!”, but that would be an over-simplification. There
were many different influences and events that produced Hitler. Hitler’s racial theories
were certainly influenced by Nietzsche’s “Superman” theories(and there is copious
evidence that these theories were heavily amended and revised by Nietzsche’s Sister
after his death), but as I have already mentioned, there were other sources of those
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theories as well, among them theosophy. What term then is preferable?
Well, to me, there are two terms available to us for describing them. These terms are
used to describe such people, depending on their level of purity in their “otherness”
genetics, for of course, here too we are dealing with the descendants of the survivors of
the precursor culture.. And within the context of that “level”, upon the degree to which
their personality is fully integrated. Those two terms are “Homo-metasapient” and
“Homo Hyper-metasapient”.
All of these individuals are integrated personalities but some are more fully integrated
than others. I am sure it might be asked: how can one integrated personality be “more
fully developed” than another? What I meant by that term is this: the integration process
is a gradual thing, with integration proceeding slowly and gently so that the fullest
comprehension of its meaning can be attainted. To suddenly ‘download’ the entire data
bank of memory of a long series of life experiences into a persons mind would cause
extreme overload and do far more harm than good. Therefore people who have been
undergoing the process for some time are “more fully integrated” than those who have
only just commenced the process. I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
As you already know, what religion means to say by “enlightened”, I mean to say by
“integrated personality”. Therefore an individual described as either ‘HomoMetasapient” or ‘Homo-hyper metasapient” is an enlightened person. I realize those
terms are more complicated than was the word “Adept” but their value, as I see it, is
that they are not nearly as misleading.
Now then, what does that mean? Does this mean to say that at this time one needs to
have a significant percentage of “otherness” to be any level of metasapient? Well, yes it
does. But, the reason that it does is important. The people whom I describe as having a
significant percentage of “otherness” are people who, because of that genetic
“difference”, represent a more mature species than does Homo Sapiens. The reason
that the collegial association of people with integrated personalities which I call “The
Humanist Collective”, was founded, is so that, as a group, they can better serve the
development of the Homo-Sapiens species.
This by the way is a very important nuanced distinction. The “others’ see themselves
ONLY as the servants of humankind not as its Masters!, The Metasapient serve
humanity as teachers, guides, and providers. They are not, and do not see themselves
as, and do not want to be seen as “Masters”. Never in the course of history have the
“others’ viewed humanity as subservient or inferior to themselves in any way or fashion
That’s why the “Master-Ascended Master” concept is so harmful, for when people
create a hierarchy and refer to someone as “Master”, what they are really doing is
making that “someone” responsible for their actions, and that is humankind’s worst
weakness. No matter what people desire, at the end of the day, they are completely
responsible for their own actions, and also for the results of those actions, they cannot
foist that responsibility off on anyone or anything.
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As to “enlightenment”, I have described and defined this process at great length in my
book “Here We All Are....So????” I have also defined it in the context of Shamanism
earlier in this work. But as everyone reading this may not have read that earlier book,
and as it is both a terribly confusing and difficult abstraction and at the same time a
vitally important one. I shall briefly redefine “enlightened”. .
As I see it, the purpose of the created cosmos is the expansion of consciousness and
the infinitization of awareness. In the following sentence I am going to use the term
“newly created Cosmos, it’s merely a convenience, because I am anything but
convinced that there is, or can be, such a thing as a “Newly Created Cosmos”.
The best I can say is that I really believe that “Newly Re-Created Cosmos” is probably
closer to the truth. That is if one can comfortably accept the existence of a thing that
can be legitimately described as: “truth”. A “newly created cosmos” consists of energy
and consciousness, the energy is existent, and the consciousness is intrinsic to, and in
fact identical with, that energy, but it is primarily potential. The infinite expansion of that
potential is the reason for, and purpose of, “creation”. (each creation?)
Within that inchoate mass of energy and potential are nexii of consciousness or
sentience, and the methodology of the expansion and infinitization of
consciousness/awareness is that each of these nexii goes through a process of
manifestation on all the infinite numbers of possibility planes of reality until it possesses
full awareness of and comprehension of all of these planes of possibilities.
Some people call that process “reincarnation”. I, and Madame Blavatsky before me,
choose to call the process “metempsychosis”, or “soul changes”. Because it is the
evolving spirit which undergoes the changes not any individual personality
The individual consciousness nexus, which is very poorly defined by the term “soul”, is
also, depending on the cultural context, defined (in Buddhism, Hinduism, and
theosophy) as “Monad”, “Atman”, and “Reincarnating Jiva”, and, though not totally
identical, and far more flexible in meaning, by the Greeks; as the “Nous” (which Plato
called “The Second Hypostasis”).
The one point that I want to make very clear is that this immortal principle, by whichever
name it is called, is that which both commences and continues the evolutionary
process. While it is in fact the initiator of the process; not simply on its own behalf, but
on the behalf of each of it’s experiential manifestations, it actually has very little to do
with any individual sentient being. And it is sentience that is the primal factor in all of
this.
Now then, this “metempsychosing sentience” or “Second Hypostasis” is not truly
“immortal”, for that word is relatively meaningless in something that is never mortal in
any way. The evolving intrinsic intelligence simply IS, and as such, it always was,
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always is, and always will be. Though “always” is itself undefinable. The Nous can be
said to manifest serially (or sequentially if you prefer) on all of the infinite levels of
possibilities on all the infinite levels of relative realities. Each time it does so, it creates
an individual sentient being. As the process continues the levels of sentience of those
manifested entities get more and more developed or advanced. Now then, each and
every one of these manifestations is an entirely unique and totally individual entity or
“consciousness center”.
The major confusion here lies in understanding the connections, if any, that exist
between these “unique and independent entities”. The problem that causes the
confusion is that these entities are both utterly unique and independent as their
description makes clear, and yet, they are not totally unconnected from one another.
This is so because each successive manifestation of the “immortal sentience entity” is
the end product of all that went before it. Therefore it represents the growth and
maturation of the manifesting entity itself as that entity grows by way of its serial
manifestations.
There is therefore, a process of serial manifestation, but there is no re-manifestation for
the individual sentiencies manifested, while they are the sum of all that went before,
they are, nevertheless, totally independent, both of all that went before, and all that
comes after.
As the intrinsic ”oneness” is intrinsically energy/consciousness, and that individuated
field of energy-consciousness is the only reality, then it is clear that each so-called
“manifestation” of that “energy-consciousness” is therefore also an energy field.
What follows is, in my estimation, so important that I have carefully chosen to
emphasize it!
ENERGY CAN NEITHER BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED. BUT IT
CHANGES. HOWEVER; WHILE ENERGY ITSELF IS UNCREATED,
AN INDIVIDUALIZED ENERGY FIELD, ONCE CREATED OUT OF
THAT EXISTING ENERGY, THOUGH IT MAY CHANGE, IS NEVER
LOST FROM THE COSMOS.
ENERGY, LIKE ALL ELSE, CHANGES, CHANGE IS THE ONLY
CONSTANT!.
Because that is true, each successive manifestation is intrinsically potentially every bit
as “immortal” (permanently extant) as the “immortal sentience entity”, and therefore
becomes, itself, a center of evolving sentience.
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Now then; we come to the “integrated personality”. How does an “integrated
personality” fit into the paradigm I’ve just defined?
Let’s look at the process this way: The “immortal sentience entity” manifests through the
various planes of possibilities of the infinite levels of relative realities serially, producing
a series of manifested sentiencies. These manifested sentiencies are totally
independent of one another, but each subsequent manifestation is the end product of
the process to that moment in time.
An integrated personality is an individual sentiency who has become aware of, and
shares awareness with, all of the sentiencies which came before him or her. All of the
sentiencies involved are still independent, but the culmination of the process, the
integrated personality is a conscious compendium of all the experience and knowledge
of the others in the same line of manifestation. This integrated sentiency is the
Metasapient individual.
It must be understood clearly that: whether you call them Integrated Personalities or the
metasapient, they don’t “walk on water”, “walk through walls”, or “shoot lightning out
their asses” any more than ordinary humans do! Why, in the name of sense and
sensibility, would they want to do so?
They do, however, possess the capability to “change the fabric of reality by way of an
act of will”. Another thing these individuals are, is vessels of very high proportion of the
Sang Real. They are “others”. They are the vanguard of evolution.
It is very important to remember, in this context, that with a very few totally isolated
exceptions, almost the entire population of this planet is to at least some degree hybrid
Homo-Sapiens/”others”.
They (The Metasapient) are what the entire race that is presently, while hybrid, (i.e.
predominantly Homo-sapient or “human”), will eventually become. In other words, they
are the future. But when ALL humans have reached the even the earliest level of
integrated personalities, physicality will be a thing of the past.
What will have happened, is that by that time, all physical human sentiencies will have
mutated through genetic evolution into the caste I call survivors of the pre-cursor
culture.
Is that mutation really possible? Of course it is! For two reasons: First...It is a survival
characteristic and such characteristics always replace those characteristics which are
not survival based. Second: Except in isolated and primitive cultures, there is hardly a
single individual human being who does not, by this point in time, contain a modicum of
“Otherness”.
Now let’s define metasapient.
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METASAPIENCY AND HYPER-METASAPIENCY:
It’s very important to keep in mind that there’s absolutely no religious “fol de rol”
involved in these categories. In our times, when “elitism” has become a pejorative, we
are entering on dangerous grounds. In my use of the terms “metasapient” and “hyperMetasapient”, I am not really making any value judgments, at least not in terms of social
status. However, if we speak in terms of social utility, that’s another matter altogether.
And an important matter it is! The Metasapient are, because they are more efficient,
and more able, of far more utility to the human race than average people are. They truly
help to make the world a better place for all people to live in.
Now, even though it is not my intention that it should, if that implies or infers superiority
of some kind, so be it! The obsession with the necessity to appear to avoid any hint of
“elitism” is one of the most harmful things working in the world today. Let me speak to
that question for a moment. True elitism is socially based it is the attitude that says “I’m
better than you because I am richer than you are”. This is both nonsense and harmful.
On the other hand, a person like Albert Einstein, for all his errors, is of more use to
mankind as a whole than most people are. Recognizing that fact for the truth that it is, is
simply common sense!
So then, what do these categories really mean to say?
Now, as the universe itself, exists as nothing but a milieu for the extension of
consciousness, the universe itself, or rather the unified field of conscious energy, is also
a function of intelligence. It might, without exaggeration, certainly be described as a
gestalt intelligence.
The Manifested Universe, or Cosmos, is an infinite, illimitable, unified energy field. That
energy manifests itself as sine wave curves which function as carrier waves for the
energy particles that are the only reality of which we are presently aware. Each of those
particles represents a cosmos in embryo. This Unified Field also exhibits evidences of
consciousness. All sentient things are individualized fields of energy which are intrinsic
to and within the unified field, and that, I think, is adequate evidence of consciousness
(sentience).
The most likely purpose for the existence of the Cosmos (if it actually requires a
purpose, and that is hardly certain, as it simply applies human values to ‘something’
that has no real connection to humanity) is as a vehicle for the infinitization of
consciousness and awareness both of self and not-self. But “a vehicle for the
infinitization of consciousness and awareness both of self and not-self” is simply what it
seems to do, in other words it’s function, or rather, one of its functions. It’s purpose, that
which motivates the function, is truly unknowable.
When “consciousness and awareness” are combined, the result is called intelligence.
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The Cosmos, whatever else it may be, is none the less a milieu of intelligence
becoming ever more fully aware of what is the actual meaning and significance of “self”
and what is the actual meaning and significance of “not-self”.
Within this milieu, or cosmic environment, there are an infinite, and constantly growing,
number of intelligences at various stages in their process of infinitization of awareness
and comprehension of the whole. The Cosmos is self-created. There are no “Gods”, but
it is certainly clear to me that discarnate intelligence is infinitely more common than
carnate intelligence. Discarnate intelligence is permanent (at least relatively so),
carnate intelligence is ephemeral. At least it’s ephemeral in its corporeal state.
Corporeal intellect becomes incorporeal intellect. I have really serious questions in my
mind as to whether “intelligence” per se is ever actually corporeal.
Now the human and animal brain is clearly corporeal, but it is anything but clear to me
whether the mind and the brain exist in any relation but that of “tool” and “tool user”. To
make that statement more clear, let me say that to me, the mind is the “tool user” and
the brain is the “tool” it uses.
The Universe itself, as you already know, is, or at least appears to be, an entirely
value-free information gathering system; and bearing in mind how ephemeral and truly
unreal physicality is, I think it is completely fair to state that nothing at all which an
individual does while in the physical is going to have more than an attitudinal effect
upon their post-physical future. Physical actions have effects only within the
environment in which they occur.
A person, because of the things they do, and because of the way they think, and
because of WHAT they think, create an environment which colors and flavors their
personal trans-physical future. But that is only the way in which an individual influences
their post-mortem future, it has nothing at all to do with the Universal Intelligence field.
The foregoing statement, (and yes, I know it’s not its first appearance herein), will, I am
absolutely sure, really disturb a great many people. But, as I am even more certain that
it’s true, perhaps I ought to dwell on it a bit.
The purpose of philosophical thinking, i.e. comparing the “real’ with the ‘ideal’, is the
search for truth and understanding. Philosophy should never be used as a “tool” to
encourage or enforce any form of behavior. Religion, most unfortunately, has always
been used as a “club” to force people to behave according to certain “moral standards”
taken from within that religion’s religious paradigm. It doesn’t really work very well, does
it? Never has, never will!
Behavioral “norms” and “standards” should, in fact must arise from a consensus of
societal needs. And, in fact, they do, and always have done so
But, for anyone interested at all in the Greater Reality, for anyone who comprehends
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(even if only hypothetically) that the physical levels of the relative realities are only
apparently real, then it becomes clearly obvious that physical level actions effect only
those physical levels of reality.
That is true of actions, but what of thoughts? If the mind is, as I believe, not a physical
thing, where do the effects of thoughts and thinking come home to roost? Am I talking
about ALL thoughts or only some thoughts? Some thoughts really don’t manifest
anywhere but on physical plane actions. It’s the more habitual thought patterns that
color one’s reality on the multiple levels of non-physical realities. It’s the stronger
thoughts and deeper thoughts that have some effect beyond life.
But that still leaves us with the question: “Why, if this is true, should a person be
‘good’?” It does, doesn’t it?
But it is clear to me that the question itself ignores the ultimate meaning of this
discussion. In turn, I have a question too: if a person ‘behaves’ or is ‘good’ ONLY to
avoid post-mortem unpleasantness, then the ‘goodness’ is only the result of duress,
and it is therefore valueless.
People should “behave” because it’s the wisest thing to do to make their own lives
better and more secure as well as the lives of others. Good people behave the way they
do because that’s the way they are. Bad people behave as they do because that too, is
the way they are. No one has ever been able to change that. Eventually people will
change for the better, but not under duress.
To me, the most urgently needed change in Human Attitude must be the development
of a really strong aversion to control in all it’s forms other than self-control.
There is no judgment, there is no retribution, there is only a personal post-mortem
milieu which every individual creates for themselves. Naturally, WHAT they create for
themselves is hardly independent on the belief systems which they hold.
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS, THE ONLY THING IN THE UNIVERSE, THAT
MATTERS, IS INTELLIGENCE (CONSCIOUS AWARENESS).
It is how that intelligence is utilized and how it processes and stores information that is
critical.
That's what the Universe is all about, the infinitization of intelligence, and the
processing and storage of information for the use of that intelligence. All information is
valid, all information, and experience is the major source of information, is needful to
the universal data-bank.
What an individual human being does with their personal information data-bank,
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matters only within their personal paradigm. It does not matter in the slightest within the
universal paradigm.
Now that we have seen how, in my paradigm, intelligence is not simply the most
important thing but rather the only thing, let us discuss how it relates to metasapiency.
What differentiates “humans” (so-called) from “animals” (so-called)? It’s their scope and
spectrum of intelligence (conscious awareness) that’s what. And because that’s what it
is, some “animals” are far more advanced creatures than many “Humans”. What do I
mean by “scope and spectrum of conscious awareness (intelligence)”? I mean the
scope and spectrum of any individual sentiency’s awareness of the nature of its
surroundings, of its own state and condition within that environment, and the way that
condition relates both to the relative physical realities, and to the Cosmic paradigm
itself, and to all that exists within that paradigm.
Obviously, the evolutionary development of “the scope and spectrum of conscious
awareness (intelligence) is an infinitely continuing process of growth and grasp. Terms
like Homo-sapient, Homo meta-sapient, and Homo hyper meta-sapient, define states of
awareness that are merely stepping-stones along the way to full consciousness of the
Cosmos and all that is within it as self.
Now, let us discuss the subject of intelligence which is the result of the combination of
consciousness and awareness. The measurement of intelligence, in its present “state of
the art” is a relatively questionable science. But let us discuss here just what it is I take
into consideration in any attempt to quantify and qualify intelligence. To me, there are
three separate qualities involved in intelligence.
The first is “Data Retention (storage)” and concerns the individual’s ability to retain what
he or she learns. By “learning” I do not mean to refer simply to educational learning in a
formal setting but to what a person “learns” in all aspects of their life. And so we start
out with the size of an individuals “data bank”.
The second aspect involves retrieval speed. An immense data bank of information and
experience is of no value whatsoever if the information it contains cannot be speedily
retrieved for immediate use. A corollary aspect is accuracy of retrieval. Retrieved
information has to be the appropriate (or necessary) information in order to be used.
And lastly we come to the most important of the three aspects of intelligence, and that
is the capacity to synthesize the information retrieved into useful and creative forms.
But far more importantly, the ability to use the stored data, retrieve it, and create
something entirely new and synthetic out of it.
In other words a thing, and it doesn’t matter whether it is an entity or a machine, isn’t
intelligent if all it can do is store data, retrieve it efficiently, and regurgitate it in the
precise form it stored it. That is why “artificial intelligence” is not possible at this point
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in time. In fact, it may never be possible. Artificial Intelligence can never be anything but
a tool, true intelligence is a tool user.
That’s what makes the metasapient individual what it is, the ability to store more,
retrieve more quickly, and create totally original things in it’s mind. I think that it is the
possession of those faculties is the only factor that could possibly make the word
‘Adept’ valid, as the individual so described is ‘adept’ at the full use of it’s
consciousness.
Now what does that mean pragmatically? And for this section of my discussion let’s
agree to use the term “I.Q.”, even though we all know the current level of the art of
measuring I.Q. leaves an enormous amount to be desired. But it’s easier to use
available words rather than make up words which won’t mean the same thing to each
reader.
O.K. It’s pretty well agreed that a really clever Chimpanzee has an I.Q. equivalent to a
Human I.Q. of 75. Now the “average” human I.Q. is, by definition, 100. So then the
average Human has an I.Q. that is only 25 points higher than the clever Chimp’s 75.
Now while the definitions of the level required for describing a person as a “genius”
differ, they appear to range from 132 to 150. Most of the specialists in the field suggest
that an IQ higher than 150 is intrinsically un-measurable, but that merely means that
the upper level of Human “genius” rating is exactly twice that of the Chimpanzee. What
then is Metasapience? Well, I think we’re safe in accepting ten significators higher than
“genius” level for metasapience, and that would imply an intelligence quotient of
somewhere around 300 to 350 for a metasapient level individual; because of this, most
of them, as I will demonstrate presently, with examples, are polymaths, and that is what
makes them special.
What hyper-metasapience really means is what it really says. It is way beyond
metasapience, in fact it is something other than intelligence as humanity defines it. It
implies an infinite data-bank instantly accessed, and a creativity on the abstract level
that is what we would foolishly call “divine”. What it is, can only be described as
“clairsentience.”
Now then, these intelligence attributes that go into the making of an Integrated
Personality are themselves attributes of “otherness”. In other words, The Metasapient
and beyond are still people, but they aren’t humans. At least not if by “Human” you
mean to say Homo-Sapiens. The fact that Integrated Personalities come in all sexes
and colors is a clear indication that what humankind calls “races” is nonsense and
totally meaningless. An Integrated Personality is born, not “made”! No human being
can decide to “take the path leading to Metasapiency, because there is no such path.
Life itself, which when properly understood, is relatively endless, leads inexorably
towards the eventual integration of personality.
What humanity today popularly calls “An Adept”, their distant ancestors called “An Arch
Druid”, or “An Aethling”, or “A Priest of The Mysteries”, or “A Liege Priest”, or “A High
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Shaman”, or a “Pontifex Maximus”, or a “Sun Lord”, or “Wolf Lord”. The ancestors of
modern humankind knew better than to pretend the Illuminatii were ordinary humans,
they also knew better than to pretend they were demi-Gods.
Aside from the clear fact that the metasapient are very smart, what is it that
distinguishes the Integrated Personality?
The Metasapient Person is distinguished by the positive effect of their life on the
lives and times of their contemporaries.
The Integrated Personality, in other words is “one who makes waves”. They are always
whole beings in a sense directly opposed to the religious use of wholeness which is
“holy” and which is a meaningless concept. The Integrated Personality is not “More
Pure” than other entities because “purity” is an entirely inane concept. The most
important thing is this: The Metasapient individual is not Human, but lives primarily to
serve humanity. Another very important factor is that an Integrated personality does
not conform to human illusions of “sanctity” and “goodness”. The Metasapient Individual
leaves the world a better place than they found it, but sometimes their means are
horrifying.
Now, because I discussed this earlier, I am sure that both you and I are fully aware that
there are some particularly silly interpretations put on this concept by various individuals
and groups of individuals. As you know, one of the most guilty parties to this inanity is
the Theosophical society, which first introduced the concept of Metasapiency, using
the term “Adept”, to a wide public commencing in 1875. Unfortunately they chose to use
the word “Master” as well as the term Adept, and then switched to the even more
unfortunate term, because it is culturally specific, and has strong overtones of
religiosity; and that is “Mahatma”.
What was “wrong” with this? Lots actually.
When dealing with human beings, it is a really important thing to remember how easily
they confuse things and in confusing, confound them!
The problem is, to far too many Theosophists (and other occultists as well), the
“Masters” really do “shoot lightning out their asses”!
Now naturally I don’t mean they believe that in a literal sense, but to do so actually
might be better than what they do believe! In the 108 years since their founder Madame
Helena Petrovna Blavatskaya died, they have turned her Adepts into Demi-Gods and
more than Demi-Gods. They have made utterly unnatural and totally infallible creatures
out of them. That is harmful, that is totally wrong, that is stupid. They have also made
pompous asses out of them, so it’s lucky they aren’t real because that’s insulting.
They have made the “Mahatmas” physically immortal, or nearly so. They have made
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the “Mahatmas” eternally in the “Prime of Life”. In their foolishness and fatuousness,
they have even made the “Mahatmas” what can only be called “fashion model
attractive”. They have made the “Mahatmas” invariably Male. And worst of all, they have
made the “Mahatmas” infallible! And that is a disaster! No one is infallible! They have
removed the “Mahatmas” from Humankind’s milieu and placed them in some fairy tale
limbo. The have mythologized them out of all resemblance to their reality.
Is this harmful? Of course it is! Why is it harmful? It is harmful because it makes
integrated personalities into fairy tales and removes them from the realm of reality. This
is harmful because how can humans cooperate with entities they believe to be “Fairy
Tales”? This is harmful because how can ordinary human beings be expected to relate
to such totally mythologized creatures? This is harmful because it creates really
powerful “false expectations” and these false expectations are humanity’s worst
“demons”. Lastly, and in many way of the most importance; it is untrue, and concept or
belief based on falsehood is harmful.
Let’s put it this way, if folks expect Integrated Personalities to “shoot lightning out their
ass”, when observation and experience prove they don’t do so, then the real integrated
personality becomes too unprepossessing, too unspectacular, and meta-genius or not,
is rejected. Sadly enough, it’s far too true that Humans can deal far more easily with an
entity that DID “shoot lightening out its ass”, than they can deal with a meta-genius.
This is because the one just “terrifies” them, and the other makes them feel inferior.
Humans, by and large, would far rather be terrified than abashed.
Now, I have at length discussed the nature of what an Integrated personality is, but I
haven’t devoted any time or energy to the other question; “Why” they are. What
purpose do they serve? Are they what they are, because that’s what they are, and
because “they are what they are” they therefore make waves?” While that is a clearly
true statement, I really doubt that it represents the whole truth. What I think the
purpose they serve is, could be nothing else than the betterment of the Human Race in
all ways. You remember earlier that I said that I regard the survivors of the precursor
civilization and their descendants as mid-wives and foster parents of humankind? Well,
as that’s who the Metasapient are, that’s also the purpose they serve. The Metasapient
individuals shepherd humankind through their civilization’s evolution.
That’s a really general statement isn’t it? Well now, let’s make it less so.
Besides being the shepherds of human civilization there is another thing that a large
number of the Metasapient do, and that is serve as “Light Bearers”; they carry the torch
for humankind. Prometheus is the classic and perfect representation of an entirely
Integrated Personality. They are the bearers of a philosophic, intellectual, and
metaphysical tradition that, for lack of a better, term is sometimes called “The Platonic
Lineage”. Now let me make this clear, while Plato was clearly a major “torch bearer”, it
wasn’t “his torch”, and he certainly didn’t “light” it. Were not Prometheus so terribly
legendary and very probably mythical, this lineage would be best called “The
Promethean Heritage” but as you know I draw back from the inclusion of figures so
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heavily symbolic that any reality they may have had as individual people is long since
lost. Now, I truly believe that Aristotle was the greater philosopher, but it is Plato who
provided the most inspiration of successive “Torch Bearers”, so I will not cavil at the
tradition that this be called “The Platonic Lineage”. Though I’d really prefer to call it
“The Humanist Collective”. Let’s look at it.
THE HUMANIST COLLECTIVE:
What is the “Humanist Collective”? Is there really such a thing? Oh yes, there most
certainly is, but it is the definition of what it is that presents some problems. I call them
“Humanist” because it is humanity they serve.
The Humanist Collective is an extremely informal and loosely inter-connected, almost
totally unorganized, in fact, almost entirely anarchic collection of men and women, in
relatively equal proportions, sometimes more of the one, sometimes more of the other.
This amorphous association dates back, as far as we can tell, at least to the third
millennium prior to the common era. I chose that date because it’s as far back as we
can trace individuals at all, and not many that far back.
It has no hierarchy, nor can it have one. Hierarchy is dichotomous with the goal of
the collective.
The men and women who comprise this “collective” have one very broadly stated
common goal, that goal is: to make this world a better and more amicable place for
all people, indeed for all sentient beings, to live in.
What this means is to provide ever more opportunity for freedom of action and
movement, and ever more open options and choices. So, what must be
accomplished is the removal of all barriers to such freedoms.
This means that the primary work of the “collective” has been the gradual lessening of
oppression of all kinds. The sources and causes of oppression and hostility have got to
be extirpated. The “work” has been “in progress” for five thousand years, but I do
believe there is beginning to be “light at the end of the tunnel”. While that may not seem
to be the case, I think it really is. Why? Because it is ever more clear to me that all over
the world, more and more people are realizing the need for this to happen, and are
focusing their hopes and dreams in that direction. People are recognizing the need
because they are sick and tired of bloodshed and oppression, and even more sick and
tired of being afraid of the future.
The Humanist Collective is not connected or associated with any government or form of
government; nor is it connected or associated with any religion or any form of religion.
It’s goal is the provision of equality of opportunity and the end of oppression, how then
could it be connected with either government or religion which are the primary sources
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of oppression and the denial of opportunity?
The Humanist Collective is an entirely (or almost so) inchoate collective of
consciousnesses: “Incarnate” (physical), “excarnate”(formerly physical), and
“discarnate” (never physical) consciousnesses. Are there “qualifications for
membership”? Well, yes and no. Among the discarnate, of course not. Among the
incarnate and excarnate? Well there is a genetic component, some of which has to do
with intelligence and talent, but I think there’s more to it than that. Clearly I think that
most, if not all, of these individuals have a very high component of “otherness”, in other
words they are descendants of the survivors of the Precursor Culture. But what is
important is that these individuals are born with an undeniable urge to make the world a
better place. A NEED to make the world a better place, and in acting upon that urge, in
trying to meet that need, they insensibly become a part of the collective.
Within the collective there are many roles to play. For the most part, incarnate members
serve primarily as “iconoclastic catalysts” which means that they challenge the “status
quo”, they demand that “authority be questioned”, they demand that people examine
themselves and their motivations. However an almost equal number, some of them
identical to the afore going, serve to either add to, or preserve, the knowledge and
understanding of science, of medicine, of society itself. But in all truth, they work in
every conceivable area of human endeavor and interest, for the improvement of the
human milieu requires all sorts of input. They all of them, each man or woman in their
unique and individual fashion, assist in the creation of significant and substantive
change.
The discarnate “do what they do” and that seems to be the provision of balance and
guidance and inspiration. They are the companions and allies of all that is incarnate.
That they exist is something of which I am absolutely certain, experientially certain. The
totality of their functions, the extent of their activities? I have no idea. And I am
absolutely certain that no one else does either.
The Humanist Collective is NOT something one can “aspire to join”, in fact it is not a
thing that someone “joins”. One either is a member or one is not. What makes it even
more fascinating is that by far the greater majority of the membership are totally
unaware that they “belong” to the collective, though they learn of it almost immediately
upon becoming excarnate. This means that no individual can “decide’ to join or “apply
to join” for to whom would they apply? Nor can anyone be “invited” to join for there is no
one with the authority to do so, in fact in the collective there is no one with any
“authority” at all! Member ship in the collective is a thing that a person BECOMES in the
course of a life that is, consciously or not, devoted to the goals of the collective. There
is absolutely no ATTAINMENT involved as attainment is simply a function of the
individual ego.
The next thing I want to discuss is what “The Humanist Collective” is NOT!!
It is not “The Illuminati” , nor is it “The Rosicrucians”, nor is it “The Masters of the
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Wisdom” or “The Great White Brotherhood” (notice the intrinsic sexism of those last
two), but it is the reality that gave rise to those “fairy tales”. Those “fairy Tales” by the
way, are almost totally harmful to human development. This is so because their totally
authoritarian and hierarchical nature is oppressive. It is also a tissue of falsehoods and
that is always harmful. The individuals who compose the collective are not wonder
working magicians and authority figures, they are far more likely to be self-effacing,
almost faceless “toilers in the vineyards”, and while they may individually do wonderful
things, and indeed some of them become world-famous and attain to positions of power
and influence, that is always because of what they do and not who they are. One of
their more important functions, in fact it is perhaps their most important function; is that
they gladly share, and that entirely freely, with what they have learned with anyone who
wishes to learn it too.
Perhaps it will aid in understanding what I mean, if I give historical examples of those
who are Integrated Personalities (by which I mean to say functioning members of the
Humanist Collective), and say a few words as to why each of them qualifies. I will, out
of obvious necessity, not be able to list the more obscure ‘adepts’, but believe me there
are far more obscure ‘adepts’ than there are spectacularly famous ones. This is going
to be a comparatively long list of people, fascinating people, some of them famous
some of them almost entirely unknown, I have done this research over a period of 5
years and I must say that I found it a listing that was completely fascinating to seek out,
to identify, and to assemble and I hope you will find it fascinating too. History is not
simply a catalog of events and trends, no where near it.
History is the story of individual people, and of what they think and
do, and because people are far more interesting than “things”; it is
the story of people, real people, people who worked and studied, and
taught and wrote, and lived and loved, and gained (sometimes) fame
and fortune, or who toiled and strived in complete obscurity, or who in
either instance suffered and sacrificed, and died; sometimes
respected sometimes reviled. That personal factor is what makes
history a living thing.
I want to impress upon you that this list could just as easily be entitled “People who
have left the world a better place than they found it”. That’s the best definition of what
an integrated personality is, and does. But it’s not the only definition.
Let me explain how this list was generated. Over the many years I have been studying,
and not simply the five years mentioned above, there have been people who have
strongly impressed me by their legacy to humanity, and by the changes to human
th
civilization their lives and examples have wrought. Now, I am luck enough to own a 19
century Encyclopædia which includes two volumes titled “ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF
NAMES”. For many years I have used this for recreational reading. There were so
many unknown people who were fascinating even though the entries are short. I began
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to assemble my list over the years just out of curiosity. Then as this book began to take
shape, the purpose of the list made itself clear to me, and so here it is. What I am going
to do is take each of the names and try to find authoritative sources such as The
Encyclopædia Britannica and import their articles to this document in their entirety so
you can see for yourselves why I chose them. It will also enable you to see that I didn’t
make these folks and their contributions up out of whole cloth. Where Britannica comes
up blank, I’ll seek other sources.
Why should you bother to read these entries? Well primarily because the people whom
they describe are so very interesting, and because I really believe that by seeing the
interesting connections established by this list, you will understand how important and
how real the Humanist Collective really is. In addition you will also know a lot more than
you did, and I hope and believe it will be painless learning. As you know...”The More
you know, the harder it is to lie to you!”
I want to start with someone whom Will Durant describes as “humanity’s first famous
person” and I’ll use him as the first person who can indubitably be considered to be not
simply an Adept, but the archetype of the category, and that is:
IM-HOTEP OF EGYPT.
This is a man credited with the “invention of medicine”; and the man who designed and
supervised the construction of the first Egyptian Pyramid of any size and that was the
Step Pyramid at Sakkara. He was also the Pharaoh’s (3rd dynasty: Netjerikhet-Djoser,
2668 - 2649 B.C.E.) first minister and treasurer, and probably most important of all, he
was High Priest of Heliopolis. He is the first of many polymaths on this list.
He is also the man who is believed to have formulated the precept: “AS ABOVE, SO
BELOW”, which has been one of mankind’s most important philosophical ideas in all
the time since. It is as important today as it was when he first said it. What it means to
say is that physical reality reflects the greater reality. Now one of the great sillinesses
that has been perpetrated by the “Popular Occult Community” is a reversal of the
aphorism. “Popular Occultists” pretend to believe that the aphorism truly states some
variation of “as above so below, as below so above”, but in spite of the fact that it may
seem to follow logically, it doesn’t.
Now, as Im-hotep lived some 4,365 years ago, and is still remembered and celebrated
(justly so), his effect on his contemporaries must have been almost preternaturally
great. How great? Well, on his eventual death he was assumed to have been an Avatar
of Thoth, who was the Neter (which is what the Egyptians called Gods, and which
simply refers to an embodiment of natural principles and forces) of Wisdom and of
Medicine. Metaphysical tradition also calls him “Hermes Trismagistus” or “Hermes the
Thrice Greatest” and he is seen by the “Popular Occultism Community” as the patron of
all magic and magicians.
I think his status as an Integrated Personality of the first rank is assured. Even though
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he did not make it into Britannica.
While I am discussing the metasapient in Egypt, there’s two more people I’d like to
indicate that I view as clearly at that level (that doesn’t mean to say they were the only
integrated personalities,, they weren’t, far from it, but, long as it is, this is only a cursory
list). They are:
AMMON-HOTEP SON OF HAPU (period of Senusret III, 1878 - 1841
B.C.E.)
This man, like Im-Hotep, was also an architect, and again like Im-Hotep, he was also
High Priest of both Heliopolis and Saïs. He too had a major effect on his
contemporaries because the Egyptians swore by him and discussed him for centuries
upon centuries, that’s why we know of him.
Lastly there is:
AMMON-HOTEP THE IV, known to history as AKHEN-ATON
“The heretic Pharaoh” (1350 - 1334 B.C.E.), this man is credited with the first institution
of the idea of a universal deity, Though I very much doubt both that it is true that he did
so, and that, except in the abstract, such a thing exists. Nevertheless, I think that here
too, there is little question of his status, this man really made waves. The truly vast
scope of Egypt’s civilization is indicated by the fact that both Ammon-Hotep the
architect and Ammon-Hotep the Pharaoh lived more than five hundred years apart,
and the elder of the two, Ammon-hotep son of Hapu, the architect, lived over a
thousand years after Im-hotep.
He did make it into Britannica:
fl. 14th century BC,, Egypt
also spelled AKHNATON, OR IKHNATON, also called AMENHOTEP IV, OR
NEFERKHEPERURE AMENHOTEP, Greek AMENOPHIS Akhenaton, king of Egypt
(1353-36 BC) of the 18th dynasty, who established a new monotheistic cult of Aton
(hence his assumed name, Akhenaton, meaning "One Useful to Aton").
Egyptian religion and culture before Akhenaton's reign.
The religion of ancient Egypt was static and traditional, urging that the gods had given a
good order and that it was necessary for man to hold firmly to the order. When changes
did occur, religion tried to incorporate them into the system as though they came from
the creation. By the time Akhenaton took the throne as the fourth pharaoh named
Amenhotep, the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 BC) had run for nearly 200 years, and there
had been a century of imperial conquest and control of foreign lands. Egypt dominated
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Palestine, Phoenicia, and Nubia. The nation was powerful, rich, and courted by lesser
princes. To maintain these gains, a military and political group controlled the culture.
Since the Egyptian state had always been theocratic, ruled by a god or gods, according
to traditional beliefs, this group interlocked with the priesthood. The richest and most
powerful of the gods, such as Amon of Thebes or Re of Heliopolis, it was held, dictated
the purpose of the state. The king had to apply to the gods for oracles directing his
major activities. In return for wealth, elegance, and the role of the leading actor in a
drama of imperial success, the pharaoh had relinquished his religious (and military)
authority to others.
A century before Akhenaton, the energetic pharaoh Thutmose III had conquered the
neighboring parts of Asia and Africa. His successors continued his vigorous method of
life, but, when the conquered territories were firmly held, that vigor turned from warfare
to sports. Akhenaton's father, Amenhotep III, was a mighty hunter in his youth, but the
son was weak physically and could not follow the pattern of outdoor feats. His activities
were intellectual.
The sudden spread of empire had excited the Egyptian culture. Architecture became
less firmly planted and soared upward in assertiveness. In the visual arts, the
predominant heavy, angular style of rendering became softer and rounder. Egyptian
soldiers and officials lived in foreign countries, and foreigners lived in Egypt. The sharp
differences between the people of the Nile valley and the people abroad were blurred.
Egyptian gods had temples in other countries, and foreign gods were introduced into
Egypt. Gods and goddesses were concerned about Asia and Africa, as well as Egypt.
Hymns before Akhenaton's reign show that the spread of empire meant the spread of
religion. Gods became universal. Egypt had already combined gods, with Amon and Re
(the sun-god) becoming Amon-Re or even Amon-Re-Harakhte. This permitted the
Egyptians to think of the gods as unified forces, which was a prelude to monotheism.
There were other breaks in tradition. The royal line, wherever possible, had been kept
pure by marriages of the heirs with princesses of the king's own family. Amenhotep III
defied this custom by marrying a commoner named Tiy. She apparently enjoyed
unusual power in the palace without abandoning her loyalty to her husband. Akhenaton
was a child of this marriage.
Empire was held firmly by garrisons abroad, which assured the favourable flow of trade
to Egypt. Near the Nile valley there were rich gold mines, so that the country could
dominate both trade and politics. Messengers traveled between Egyptian and foreign
cities carrying letters written in Babylonian cuneiform, the international language of the
day, on clay tablets. This correspondence shows the imperial power and elegance of
Egypt, which seemed to be assured of its unending dominance over all the nearby
countries.
Akhenaton's early reign.
Scholars disagree whether Amenhotep III associated his son Amenhotep IV on the
throne for several years of coregency or whether the younger king succeeded to rule
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after the death of his father. It is here assumed that the older king died before the
younger pharaoh gained power. The latter still used the family name Amenhotep, and
on his ascension he still worshiped the old gods, especially Amon of Thebes and a
sun-god, Re-Harakhte. His first buildings near Thebes were started in the older,
massive architecture, using huge stone blocks and showing the worship of
Re-Harakhte. The art was traditional, even though the figures of men and gods were
carved in a softer outline than they had been a century earlier.
Within his first few years as pharaoh there were changes. He abandoned the temple to
Re-Harakhte and began to build a place to worship a new form of sun-god--the disk of
the sun, called the Aton. It had been a little-known deity for two generations before him.
The Aton was never shown in human or animal form, except insofar as the extended
rays of the sun disk might end in hands to confer blessings upon men. This was the
life-giving and life-sustaining power of the sun. He had no image in the hidden
sanctuary of a temple but was to be worshiped out in sun-warmed openness. The
buildings for the Aton were of a new kind. The massive solidity of the older temples was
given up, and walls were run up of much smaller stones and were jammed with excited
little scenes in a feverish new art. When artistic inventiveness was encouraged, forms
were exaggerated to the point of caricature. Since the young king had a drooping jaw, a
scrawny neck, sloping shoulders, a pot belly, and thick thighs, these features were
carved in a grotesque way. The shape of the king became the flattering pattern for his
followers, so that they also were shown with thin necks and round bellies. The king's
wife, Nefertiti, may be beautiful in some of the sculptures made of her, but the new art
often showed her as though she were a misshapen hag. Egyptian art changed from a
static statement of eternity into a liveliness that is both fascinating and repelling. It came
down from eternity to the here and now, with pictures of the king presiding over a
specific ceremony, kissing his wife, or gnawing on a bone at the dining table. As long as
art had shown the indefinite future, it had had no exact time or place; under the new
pharaoh it told stories about what happened to the royal family and their followers.
Life and rule at Akhetaton
(Amarna). The new temples were built at Karnak, near Thebes, a region dominated by
the god Amon and by the families that had run the state for several generations. The
new king had to break away sharply from this traditional setting. In the fifth year of his
reign he changed his name from Amenhotep ("Amon Is Satisfied") to Akhenaton ("One
Useful to Aton"), thus formally declaring his new religion; and he moved his capital from
Thebes more than 200 miles (300 km) north to a desert bay on the east side of the Nile
River, a place now called Tell el-Amarna or Amarna. Here he began to build a new city,
which he called Akhetaton ("Place of the Aton's Effective Power"). He took an oath that
he would never go beyond the bounds of this place, which seems to mean not that he
would never leave it but that he would not push the city limits beyond designated
boundary stones. He was now free from the hostile forces at Thebes.
In their new home, Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and their six daughters gave themselves over
to the new "truth." Their family life was open to the public. They worshiped the Aton in a
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temple open to the sunlight. The newly made nobles and officials gave their devotion to
Akhenaton and Nefertiti.
Although the Egyptian texts always asserted that the king was a god and therefore the
source of every benefit for the land, the complexities of a large empire, the activities of
the bureaucrats, and the enticements of royal privilege had made Akhenaton's
predecessors captives of the state. His political reforms were hence reactionary,
inasmuch as he tried to recapture the old authority of the king. If the focus is only on the
spectacular new elements that he introduced, the fact that his domination of rule was a
restoration of a very old "truth" may be obscured.
The new city at Amarna must have had charm. Officials lived in spacious villas with
trees, pools, and gardens. Indoors the walls were painted in the free flowing new art,
with marsh scenes near the floor and floral bouquets near the ceiling. Amarna art
ranged from the very gracious, such as the famous bust of Nefertiti, to the grotesque.
Everything was lively. Probably the elegant fragility of the portrait of Nefertiti displeased
the traditionalists. Instead of presenting a solidity that might last forever, it gave a
delicate and fleeting impression. The new "truth" came down to earth. The prime
minister was shown running in front of the king's chariot, an exertion that would have
been unthinkable in the staid old times. Scenes of the busy market and the soldiers'
guardroom, with lively comments of the people, are depicted. Present-day viewers of
this ancient art feel as though they were there.
The decline and end of Akhenaton's reform movement.
The politics of the time must have been troubled. Although the ruling classes had been
shorn of their powers, there was still an army. It may have been restless, because the
documents show that Akhenaton paid little attention to it. Without a strong army and
navy, foreign trade began to fall off, and internal taxes began to disappear into the
pockets of local officials, finally causing the discontented priesthood and civil officials to
combine with the army to discredit the new movement. Akhenaton was able to
withstand these forces, but his weaker successors could not.
The Amarna Letters, discovered in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna from an archive of
international correspondence directed by Asian princes to the courts of Amenhotep III
and Akhenaton, reflect the new situation. The army commanders and high
commissioners in Palestine and Syria were neglected. The local princes, who had seen
their advantage in trading with Egypt, became despondent when Egypt did not answer
their appeals for support. Hostile forces arose, ambitious princes in Palestine and Syria,
invaders from the eastern desert, and the venturesome Hittites to the north. The
Amarna Letters, as well as the archives found at the Hittite capital, show the
disintegration of the Egyptian empire in Asia. Loyal princes were forced to flee their
cities. Aggressors, aided by the Hittites, captured territory from the Egyptian army. It
may be that Egypt lost all of its holdings except the southwest corner of Palestine.
Akhenaton's preoccupation with ideas and ideals cost Egypt its proud empire.
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Akhenaton may have given in a little in the face of these disasters. In the 12th year of
his reign the queen mother, Tiy, a practical woman, made a visit to Amarna. There is
some evidence that he modified his extremism after that. The matter is confused,
involving Akhenaton's estrangement from Nefertiti and the promotion of his young
son-in-law Smenkhkare as a favorite. Since Smenkhkare apparently returned to
Thebes, compromise seems to have been in the air.
When Akhenaton died, he was succeeded briefly by Smenkhkare and then by a second
son-in-law, Tutankhaton. The latter was forced to change his name to Tutankhamen,
dropping the Aton and embracing Amon, to abandon Amarna and move back to
Thebes, and to pay penance by giving the old gods new riches and privileges. When
the tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered in western Thebes in 1922, it gave a final
illustration of the sumptuous glories of Amarna art. A few years after the death of this
young king, the army took over the throne in the person of General Horemheb. He
instituted counter reforms in order to restore the old system fully.
Assessment.
Akhenaton was a strange figure, spiritually and physically. Representations of his
peculiar, unmanly body have been studied by pathologists with no unanimous
conclusions. Some modern scholars have also questioned his ability to father children,
but the presence of six daughters would certainly indicate that he was potent. Despite
conflicting statements in the literature, it now seems certain that his mummy has never
been found. Anciently and modernly he has been a controversial person, but the very
fury of the controversy shows that he was a major figure of ancient history. The strong
and changing forces of his day shaped his determined nature, and yet he stood
estranged from his day in the strength of his ideas and ideals.
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In this short list, actually it’s short only relatively to how long a compete list would be, I
am, for the most part, going to ignore Biblical characters as most of them are far too
likely to have been simply propaganda figures. (Proclamatory History strikes again!)
The sad thing about Biblical untruth is that it forces us to toss out the real people with
the unreal people. That’s not only true of biblical figures, there are many figures who
are just too intertwined with myth and fairy tale to be included.
The kind of people who will be perforce excluded from the listing for this reason include:
Moses, Jesus, Solomon Ibn Daud, King of Israel, C’Hiram of Tyre, Merddyn (Merlin) of
Wales, and Arthur, High King of Britain...far too much fable...not nearly enough fact.
Now fable is an important part of human historical records, but on certain individuals the
myths and legends are so enormous they completely obscure any possibility of
descrying the real person. That is not to say categorically that these people never
existed at all, it is simply too difficult to ascertain what is real about them and what is
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not, as their reality has been totally “occulted” by the mythology and fantasy that
surrounds them.
There is another category of individual who I am not going to officially include in my list
of “those who made the world a better place” and it’s for the very same reasons that I
gave above. There’s just too much myth and not enough History. But all of these
individuals are identified by myth and legend as “Arch-Mysteriarchs”; and usually as the
founders of the various mystery schools as well. That identification makes them worth
identifying in a separate short list, as it also marks them clearly as an important part of
the legacy of otherness.
Now, as Human Beings never really change all that much, most of these individuals
have become the stuff of legend and myth. All too many of these people have been
transmogrified into deific figures. But then that has always been the fate of those
among the human race who possess a high percentage of what I have identified as the
reality of what is called the “Sangreal”.
Here too, unfortunately as always, there are no women to be found though we know
that there were woman’s mysteries, woman’s mystery schools, and woman ArchMysteriarchs. But aside from various individuals Identified as Goddesses, and we may
assume that those Goddesses identified with “magic” were perhaps memories of
woman Arch-Mysteriarchs (such as the Nordic-Teutonic Goddess, Freyja) the real
identities of these women have always been completely occulted. This is probably not
surprising when one considers the small number of men included in this category.
The important thing to remember I believe, is that all of the “Arch-Mysteriarchs” were,
no matter how they have come down to us in myth and legend, simply members of the
survivor class of the Precursor culture working diligently to pass on to humankind the
knowledge they possessed of the nature of reality and the nature of the human
condition in the context of that reality. This we do know...the mystery schools existed, if
they existed, someone founded them, the folks who did this work were clearly very
“special” indeed!
The incomplete list I am going to share with you is, nonetheless, very long; but I feel it is
a valuable experience for the reader because it brings home, as nothing else possibly
can, how many of the metasapient class there were, and by inference, ARE. It also
clearly demonstrates that the metasapient are real people, doing very important real
things. It demonstrates that integrated personalities are fully immersed in, and involved
with the world in which Human Beings actually live. You really won’t find them hiding
away in caves in the Himalayas, or in Castles in the Carpathian Alps. They’re absolutely
real, but totally extraordinary people, doing hard work to make sure other peoples lives
are better.
I cannot begin to tell you how absolutely fascinating I have found this research to be. It
has been not simply fascinating but very strongly consciousness expanding. Because of
researching these individuals my awareness of so very many things has been clarified. I
have enjoyed the project immensely and I am encouraged to believe you will all find the
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results as fascinating and exciting as I found the assembling of them. You’re going to
meet a lot of really fascinating people!
Because, I myself, and I believe, most of my readers, live in the West, I’m going to give
mostly names of people who worked in the West. I want the names to be meaningful
and while there are just as many adepts who worked all through history, and are
presently working in the East, and in Africa and everywhere else, their names would be
almost totally unknown to most western Folk. Now, some of these people you may
never have heard of, be they Western or not, but I assure you that the world we live in
would be an entirely different, and very much worse place than it is, had they not lived
and worked.
Some, I am sure, of the names on this list will be very familiar to you, but it is my
strongest hope that, as you read this list, you will gradually develop an new awareness
of these people and what they did for humankind.
The civilization we call “Classical Greek” is what I’d have to call the Catalyst civilization
of the West. It is our womb, the place where western thought and attitude was molded,
and so it is there I will go next in my list of Integrated personalities.
.I will now make a rather “long jump” in history from the third millennium before the
common era of Im-Hotep, to the Eighth Century before the Common era with a man
named:
HESIOD, who has the singular appellation of “The Father of Greek Poetry” and in
fact, he actually wrote the first didactic poetry in Greece. Though the terminology would
most likely be strange to him, Hesiod considered himself as a Shaman-Tulku; as he
claimed his poetry was what we would call “dictated” to him by his muses while he
watched his sheep on a mountainside. His two most famous epic poems were
“Theogony” which tells how all things came to be, and “On Nature” which continues
the story. It is interesting to note that while he was a poet, he was clearly a
metaphysical philosopher. What a fascinating destiny to be known almost three
thousand years after your birth as “The Father of Greek Poetry”! Greek poetry is no
insignificant art. This is surely one of the metasapient for the world was changed and
improved by his presence in it.
Let’s allow that to serve as an introduction to what the Encyclopædia Britannica has to
say about him:
Greek HESIODOS, Latin HESIODUS (fl. c. 700 BC), one of the earliest Greek poets,
often called the "father of Greek didactic poetry."
Two of his complete epics have survived, the Theogony, relating the myths of the gods,
and the Works and Days, describing peasant life.
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Life.
Not a great deal is known about the details of Hesiod's life. He was a native of Boeotia,
a district of central Greece to which his father had migrated from Cyme in Asia Minor.
Hesiod may at first have been a rhapsodist (a professional reciter of poetry), learning
the technique and vocabulary of the epic by memorizing and reciting heroic songs. He
himself attributes his poetic gifts to the Muses, who appeared to him while he was
tending his sheep; giving him a poet's staff and endowing him with a poet's voice, they
bade him "sing of the race of the blessed gods immortal." That his epics won renown
during his lifetime is shown by his participation in the contest of songs at the funeral
games of Amphidamas at Chalcis on the island of Euboea. This, he says, was the only
occasion on which he crossed the sea, but it is not likely to have been the only
invitation he received from places other than his hometown of Ascra, near Mount
Helicon.
Genuine works.
Of Hesiod's two extant epics, the Theogony is clearly the earlier. In it, following the
Muses' instructions, Hesiod recounts the history of the gods, beginning with the
emergence of Chaos, Gaea (Earth), and Eros. Gaea gives birth to Uranus (Heaven),
the Mountains, and Pontus (the Sea); and later, after uniting herself to Uranus, she
bears many other deities. One of them is the Titan Cronus, who rebels against Uranus,
emasculates him, and afterward rules until he in turn is overpowered by Zeus. This
story of crime and revolt, which is the central subject of the Theogony, is interrupted by
many additional pedigrees of gods. Elsewhere, in addition to mythical family relations,
Hesiod presents new ones that are the product of his own speculation. Thus, the
names of the 50 sea maidens (the Nereids) fathered by the sea god Nereus indicate
various qualities of the Sea. In a different way, the story describing the first woman,
Pandora, sent by Zeus to bedevil man, brings out Hesiod's firm belief in the supreme
and irresistible power of Zeus. This power is most majestically displayed in the
Titanomachia, the battle between the Olympian gods, led by Zeus, and the Titans, who
support Cronus.
Hesiod's authorship of the Theogony has been questioned but is no longer doubted,
though the work does include sections inserted by later poets and rhapsodists. The
story of Typhoeus' rebellion against Zeus was almost certainly added by someone else,
while the somewhat overlapping accounts of Tartarus, the hymn on Hecate, and the
progeny of the sea monster Keto are highly suspect. The discovery of a Hurrian
theogony similar to Hesiod's seems to indicate that Hesiod's theogony owes significant
episodes to Middle Eastern models. Nonetheless, the Uranus-Cronus-Zeus succession
as told by Hesiod approximates the pattern of a classical Greek tragic trilogy. Thus, the
Erinyes (the deities of vengeance) are born when Uranus is overthrown by Cronus,
while their own hour for action comes when Cronus is about to be overthrown by Zeus.
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These and other similar features plausibly represent Hesiod's own contributions to the
inherited story.
Hesiod's other epic poem, the Works and Days, has a more personal character. It is
addressed to his brother Perses, who by guile and bribery has already secured for
himself an excessive share of their inheritance and is seeking to gain another
advantage in a similar manner. Trying to dissuade him from such practices, Hesiod
recounts in the first part of the poem two myths illustrating the necessity for honest,
hard work in man's wretched life. One continues the story of Pandora, who out of
curiosity opens a jar, loosing multifarious evils on humanity; the other traces man's
decline since the Golden Age. Against the brutality and injustice of his contemporaries,
Hesiod affirms his unshakable belief in the power of justice. For him, Justice is a deity
and, indeed, Zeus's favorite daughter, and the happiness of individuals as well as of
communities depends on their treatment of her.
The part of Hesiod's message that exalts justice and deprecates hubris is addressed to
the leaders of his community, who seem inclined to abet Perses. Hesiod also speaks to
Perses directly, urging him to abandon his schemes and thenceforth to gain his
livelihood through strenuous and persistent work: "Before success the immortal gods
have placed the sweat of our brows." Hard work is for Hesiod the only way to prosperity
and distinction. The concept of life that Hesiod here develops is in conscious
opposition to the more glorious ideals of the heroic epic of Homer.
In the second half of the poem, Hesiod describes with much practical detail the kind of
work appropriate to each part of the calendar and explains how to set about it. The
description of the rural year is enlivened by a vivid feeling for the rhythm of human life
and the forces of nature, from the overpowering winter storm, which drives man back
into his home, to the parching heat of summer, during which he must have respite from
his labors.
The poem ends with a series of primitive taboos and superstitions, followed by a
section explaining which parts of the month are auspicious for sowing, threshing,
shearing, and the begetting of children. It is difficult to believe that either of these
sections could have been composed by Hesiod.
Spurious works.
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Such was the power of Hesiod's name that epics by other poets were soon attributed
to him; these are often included in editions of his works. The Precepts of Chiron, the
Astronomy, the Ornithomanteia ("Divination by Birds"), the Melampodeia, which
described a contest between two seers, and the Aigimios are today little more than
names. There are numerous extant fragments of the Catalogues of Women, which
deals primarily with women who through union with gods become mothers of heroes
and ancestresses of noble families. Papyruses deciphered since the 1890s, and
especially in the 1950s and '60s, have added much to knowledge of its content and
have made it possible to arrive at a clearer idea of its organization. There is no
evidence for the theory that the oldest parts are by Hesiod. The story of Alcmene,
Heracles' mother, is extant in an expanded form as the Shield of Heracles, probably
dating from the early or middle 6th century. In its present form the Contest Between
Homer and Hesiod, ending in Hesiod's victory, postdates the emperor Hadrian (2nd
century).
Assessment.
One of the earliest Greek epic poets, Hesiod, through his works, serves as a useful
corrective to Homer's more glamorous portrayal of the world. Hesiod has an essentially
serious outlook on life and is an artist who deals with the gloomier side of existence,
relating, in his Theogony, the bloody power struggle among the divine dynasts Uranus,
Cronus, and Zeus, while his Works and Days demonstrates that, in Hesiod's immediate
circle at any rate, mankind's situation on earth was equally deplorable during what he
calls the "age of iron."
Translations.
The Works and Days, Theogony, and The Shield of Herakles, translated by Richmond
Lattimore (1959), is a brisk, modern translation. It is perhaps appreciated best when
sampled along with Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, translated by Hugh G.
Evelyn-White (rev. ed. 1936), an antique but accurate translation, with parallel text. (
F.So.)
176
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Scholarly analyses of Hesiod's poems and discussions of various facets of these works
are provided by Friedrich Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus (1949, reissued 1967); Pietro
Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (1977); and Robert Lamberton, Hesiod
(1988). The best appreciation of his poetic individuality is in Hermann Fränkel, Early
Greek Poetry and Philosophy (1975). Important for Hesiod's place in the history of
Greek thought is Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. 1, 2nd ed.
(1945, reissued 1986). Suggestions about the relationship between Middle Eastern
theologies and Hesiod's Theogony are found in P. Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East
(1966).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Somewhat later, in the late seventh and early 6th centuries B.C.E. we find a group
called
“THE SEVEN SAGES OF GREECE”.
Why have I included them in my lists of members of the Humanist collective or “those
who made the world a better place”? Well, if you’ll recall my primary qualification of the
metasapient as people who preternaturally influence their age and the people
contemporaneous with them. Then I think it’s very safe to assume that any group of
people who so impressed the folks around them as to be entitled “The Seven Sages of
Classical Greece” Obviously fit the bill, as it were.
The important thing to remember about these men is that how we think about
things today, is dependent on the way these men, among others, molded western
thought patterns. These are the people who created the basic data base upon
which all subsequent Western assumptions were and are based.
Considering their truly vital importance to our lives today, it is truly amazing how little
information there is to be found on most of them. For that reason, wherever possible I
am going to include the citation from the Encyclopedia Britannica that refers to these
people. I think it is an indication as to how very important they really were, and how very
powerful the effects of their lives on the lives of humanity, that despite how little we
seem to know about them, other than that they are clearly historical individuals we know
little in the way of details about them. It’s an interesting side note to see that as regards
people from the relatively distant past, the more “details” we have about them, the less
likely they are to be real people. For instance; we have a great deal of detail regarding
the lives of the likes of “King David”, “King Arthur”, “Merlin the Wizard”, and “Jesus of
Nazareth”. On the other hand Lao Tse was a real person about whom we know next to
nothing.
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Now, if you study the subject, you find that there are actually ten of them. This I
believed results from an ancient argument as to who actually belongs in the list, some
of the ten are on ALL lists however. I’d like to point out that because of History’s
grouping of these people as a group of ten, I am so grouping them. That will mean they
are not in strict temporal order. The rest of the list is in as close to an accurate temporal
progression as I could manage.
They are:
1. BIAS OF PRIENE: (sixth century B.C.E.) Statesman and Philosopher, the
leading citizen of the Priene of his day. He was one of the most important of the people
who began to fix in Western Minds the proper ideals and principals of government.
2. CHILON OF SPARTA (active 556 B.C.E.) He was also a statesmanphilosopher and he actually created the final form of Spartan Government which was
unique in all of history. When viewed from the perspective of our period in history, the
Spartan society was almost entirely psychopathic and produced a populace which by
our definition was entirely psychotic. But from the point of view of Chilon and his
successors the Spartan Society was a reasonable response to the exigencies of life in
the age. He created the post, and was the First “Ephor”, which was the Chief
Magistrate in Sparta and was second in power only to the two Kings. The difference
however, was that the Ephor was a much more stable office. As a philosopher he is
noted for some of the most famous aphorisms of all time: “Know Thyself” and ” Nothing
in Excess”, which are absolutely key to all Greek philosophy were his concepts
(Socrates’ philosophy was surely based on these two precepts). He also said: “Make No
Trouble” and “Do not hope for the impossible:” What sort of man’s words ring through
the ages as these do?
3.CLEOBOLUS OF RHODES (sixth century B.C.E.) Another statesman.
Philosopher and poet. That is all I know of him. But as the people of his time and place
clearly valued him so highly, he like the other “Seven Sages” obviously belongs in this
group.
4. PITTICUS OF MITYLENE (late seventh- early sixth century B.C.E.)
Soldier, Statesman, philosopher on the subject of politics and ethics.
5. SOLON OF ATHENS (sixth century B.C.E.) “The Law Giver”, statesman,
social philosopher, Mystae - initiate in all Greek Mysteries, all Egyptian Mysteries, and
the Persian Mysteries, and while not Mysteriarch, he was none the less a very high
ranking Priest of the Mysteries. He was Plato’s Grandfather.
Here’s what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say about him:
178
(b. c. 630 BC--d. c. 560), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of
Greece. He ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a
system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane law code. He
was also a noted poet.
Solon's era.
In Solon's lifetime, the Greeks had not yet begun to write history or biography. It was
not until the 5th century that accounts of his life and works began to be put together, on
the evidence of his poems (of which the 300 or so lines preserved by quotation
probably represent only a small proportion), his law code, oral tradition, and inference
from existing institutions. Although certain details have a legendary ring, the main
features of the story seem to be reliable.
Solon was of noble descent but moderate means. As the tradition states and his travels
and economic measures suggest, he may have been a merchant. He first became
prominent about 600 BC, when the Athenians were disheartened by ill success in a war
with their neighbours of Megara for possession of the island of Salamis. By publicly
reciting a poem that made the issue a matter of national honour and that called on the
Athenians to "arise and come to Salamis, to win that fair island and undo our shame,"
Solon induced them to resume the war, which they eventually won. (see also Index:
Salamis, Battle of)
The early 6th century was a troubled time for the Athenians in other ways as well.
Society was dominated by an aristocracy of birth, the eupatridae, who owned the best
land, monopolized the government, and were themselves split into rival factions. The
poorer farmers were easily driven into debt by them and when unable to pay were
reduced to the condition of serfs on their own land and, in extreme cases, sold into
slavery. The intermediate classes of middling farmers, craftsmen, and merchants
resented their exclusion from the government. These social, economic, and political
evils might well have culminated in a revolution and subsequent tyranny (dictatorship),
as they had in other Greek states, had it not been for Solon, to whom Athenians of all
classes turned in the hope of a generally satisfactory solution of their problems.
Because he believed in moderation and in an ordered society in which each class had
its proper place and function, his solution was not revolution but reform.
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Economic reforms.
Solon had already held office as archon (annual chief ruler) about 594 BC. It was
probably about 20 years later that he was given full powers as reformer and legislator.
His first concern was to relieve the immediate distress caused by debt. He redeemed all
the forfeited land and freed all the enslaved citizens, probably by fiat. This measure,
known popularly as the "shaking off of burdens," was described by Solon in one of his
poems:
These things the black earth . . . could best witness for the judgment of posterity; from
whose surface I plucked up the marking-stones [probably signs of the farmers'
indebtedness] planted all about, so that she who was enslaved is now free. And I
brought back to Athens . . . many who had been sold, justly or unjustly, or who had fled
under the constraint of debt, wandering far a field and no longer speaking the Attic
tongue; and I freed those who suffered shameful slavery here and trembled at their
masters' whims.
He also prohibited for the future all loans secured on the borrower's person. But he
refused to go to the length demanded by the poor, which was to redistribute the land.
Instead, he passed measures designed to increase the general prosperity and to
provide alternative occupations for those unable to live by farming: e.g., trades and
professions were encouraged; the export of produce other than olive oil was forbidden
(so much grain had been exported that not enough remained to feed the population of
Attica); the circulation of coined money (invented in Solon's lifetime) was stimulated by
the minting of a native Athenian coinage on a more suitable standard than that of the
coins of neighbours, which had been used hitherto; and new weights and measures
were introduced. The rapid spread of the new coinage and of Athenian products,
particularly olive oil and pottery, throughout the commercial world of the times, attested
by archaeology, shows that these measures were effective. Poverty, though not
eliminated, was never again in Attica the crying evil that it had been before Solon's
reforms.
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Political reforms.
Solon's new political constitution abolished the monopoly of the eupatridae and
substituted for it government by the wealthy citizens. He instituted a census of annual
income, reckoned primarily in measures of grain, oil, and wine, the principal products of
the soil, and divided the citizens into four income groups, accordingly. (Those whose
income was in other forms, including money, must have been rated on a system of
equivalents.) Henceforth, political privilege was allotted on the basis of these divisions,
without regard to birth. All citizens were entitled to attend the general Assembly
ecclesia), which became, at least potentially, the sovereign body, entitled to pass laws
and decrees, elect officials, and hear appeals from the most important decisions of the
courts. All but those in the poorest group might serve, a year at a time, on a new
Council of Four Hundred, which was to prepare business for the Assembly. The higher
governmental posts were reserved for citizens of the top two income groups. Thus, the
foundations of the future democracy were laid. But a strong conservative element
remained in the ancient Council of the Hill of Ares (Areopagus), and the people
themselves for a long time preferred to entrust the most important positions to members
of the old aristocratic families.
Code of laws.
Solon's third great contribution to the future good of Athens was his new code of laws.
The first written code at Athens, that of Draco (c. 621 BC), was still in force. Draco's
laws were shockingly severe (hence the term draconian)--so severe that they were said
to have been written not in ink but in blood. On the civil side they permitted
enslavement for debt, and death seems to have been the penalty for almost all criminal
offenses. Solon revised every statute except that on homicide and made Athenian law
altogether more humane. His code, though supplemented and modified, remained the
foundation of Athenian statute law until the end of the 5th century, and parts of it were
embodied in the new codification made at that time. (see also Index: Greek law,
Draconian laws, Capital punishment)
Response to Solon's reforms.
181
When Solon had completed his task, complaints came in from all sides. In attempting
to satisfy all, he had satisfied none. The nobles had hoped that he would make only
marginal changes; the poor, that he would distribute all the land in equal shares and, if
necessary, make himself tyrant in order to enforce the redistribution. But Solon,
although concerned for freedom, justice, and humanity, was no egalitarian, nor had he
any ambition for autocratic power. Though discontented, the Athenians stood by their
promise to accept Solon's dispositions; they were given validity for 100 years and
posted for all to see on revolving wooden tablets. To avoid having to defend and
explain them further, he set off on a series of travels, undertaking not to return for 10
years.
Later years.
Among the places Solon visited were Egypt and Cyprus. These visits are attested by
his poems. Less credible (because of chronological difficulties) is the famous encounter
with the fabulously rich Croesus, king of Lydia, who, so the story goes, learned from
Solon that wealth and power were not happiness and that, so long as he was alive, no
man could be counted happy.
When Solon returned, he found the citizens divided into regional factions headed by
prominent nobles. Of these, his friend Peisistratus, general in the final war for Salamis
and leader of northeastern Attica, seemed to Solon to be planning to become tyrant.
The old statesman's urgent warnings were disregarded, even dismissed as the ravings
of a madman. His reply was that "A little time will show the citizens my madness, / Yes,
will show, when truth comes in our midst." It was not long before he was proved right:
Peisistratus did become tyrant (560 BC). Although on this occasion he was soon
ejected, it seems that Solon did not live to see it.
Reputation.
Solon embodied the cardinal Greek virtue of moderation. He put an end to the worst
evils of poverty in Attica and provided his fellow countrymen with a balanced
constitution and a humane code of laws. Solon was also Athens' first poet--and a poet
who truly belonged to Athens. As the medium through which he warned, challenged,
counseled the people, and urged them to action, his poetry was the instrument of his
statesmanship.
It was probably before the end of the 5th century that the Greeks first drew up a list of
the Seven Wise Men who had been prominent intellectually and politically in the 6th
century. The earliest list, accepted by the Greek philosopher Plato, did not satisfy later
writers, who expanded it to 10 and even 17 to accommodate rival claimants. Every
version, however, contained four names that were not challenged. One of them was
that of Solon of Athens, a testimony to the abiding respect in which his memory was
held. ( T.J.C./Ed.)
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BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Modern accounts in English include Ivan M. Linforth, Solon the Athenian (1919,
reprinted 1971); Kathleen Freeman, The Work and Life of Solon (1926, reprinted
1976); and W.J. Woodhouse, Solon the Liberator (1938, reprinted 1965), dealing
mainly with the agrarian reforms.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The foregoing five and one other, whom I shall shortly list, are on all the lists, which
means they were universally admired to the point of worship. The alternative members
of “The Seven” are:
1. PERIANDER,
TYRANT OF CORINTH
(640--585 B.C.E.) The word “tyrant” in Greece did not have the connotations it has
today. It simply meant “absolute ruler”. He was a statesman, a philosopher, and a poet,
as well as a military man. He is, while not universally cited, on most of the lists. In the
th
4 century, a group described as “The Tyrant Haters” removed him from the list and
replaced him with a man viewed as a more traditional ‘wise man’; MYSON , of whom I
can find no further information. But he was not universally admired and his name was
added to the list some two centuries after the original list was created. I really can’t say
th
whether he was simply a 4 century example of a ‘politically correct choice’ or an actual
candidate for this list.
Not all of these people found their way into Britannica’s ken, but Periander did, here’s
his entry:
(d. c. 588 BC), second tyrant of Corinth (c. 628-588), a firm and effective ruler who
exploited his city's commercial and cultural potential. Much of the ancient Greek
representation of Periander as a cruel despot probably derives from the Corinthian
nobility, with whom he dealt harshly.
Periander was the son of Cypselus, the founder of the Cypselid dynasty of Corinth. To
promote and protect Corinthian trade, Periander established colonies at Potidaea in
Chalcidice and at Apollonia in Illyria. He conquered Epidaurus and annexed Corcyra.
The diolkos ("portage way") across the Isthmus of Corinth was perhaps built during his
reign. It appears that the commercial prosperity of Periander's Corinth became so
great that the tolls on goods entering its ports accounted for almost all government
revenues. Periander cultivated friendly relations with Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus,
and maintained ties with the kings of Lydia and Egypt. In the cultural sphere he was a
patron of art and of literature; by his invitation the poet Arion came to the city from
Lesbos. Sometimes reckoned as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, Periander
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was the supposed author of a collection of maxims in 2,000 verses.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. AKUSILAUS (sixth century B.C.E.): Philosopher, wrote major commentary on
Hesiod’s “Theogony”.
3. ANACHARSIS ( sixth century B.C.E.) He’s listed frequently but no one knows
much about him. He was a Scythian Prince, brother of Saulius, King of Thrace. He was
a contemporary and a friend of Solon, he visited Athens where he obtained a great
reputation for his great wisdom. On returning to Thrace, he was murdered by his
brother, for reasons unknown to history. But I would guess that it’s safe to assume that
the King of Thrace was both envious of his brother’s fame and fearful that he would be
supplanted by him.
He did, however make it into Britannica:
(early 6th century BC?), legendary Scythian prince included in some ancient Greek lists
as one of the Seven Wise Men and extolled as an exemplar of primitive virtue.
Herodotus describes how, after extensive travels abroad in quest of knowledge or as an
ambassador, Anacharsis returned home and was killed by the Scythians, either
because he wanted to introduce the cult of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) of the gods
or because of his attachment to Greek customs. Later authors, offering more details,
credit Anacharsis with numerous aphorisms and cite an interview between him and
Solon. The Cynic philosophers represented Anacharsis as a "noble savage," to be
contrasted with the "degenerate" civilized Greeks. Scholars have denied the
authenticity of 10 letters anciently ascribed to Anacharsis.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
4. PHERECYDES OF SYROS (sixth century B.C.E.) Religious figure, religious
philosopher wrote on subjects of Cosmology and Theology. Here’s what the Britannica
has to say about him:
(fl. c. 550 BC), Greek mythographer and cosmogonist traditionally associated with the
Seven Wise Men of Greece (especially Thales).
[You will notice from the Encyclopedia Britannica citation quoted below that we now
know where H.P.B. got her term for “Reincarnation”, she was, I fear, never original.]
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Pherecydes is credited with originating metempsychosis, a doctrine that holds the
human soul to be immortal, passing into another body, either human or animal, after
death. He is also known as the author of Heptamychos, a work, extant in fragments
only, describing the origin of the world. Pherecydes was characterized by Aristotle as a
theologian who mixed philosophy and myth. Tradition says that he was the teacher of
Pythagoras. He is not to be confused with Pherecydes of Athens, a genealogist who
lived about a century later.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Lastly: and probably the most important of the lot. This next man is most emphatically
“on all the lists” too.
7. THALES
OF MILETUS
(624 - 548 B.C.E.) What can one say about this very special person? Aristotle called
him “The Father of Greek Philosophy”, considering the source that’s an incredible
accolade! The man introduced Geometry to Greece. He was an astronomer who
accurately foretold an eclipse on 18th May 585 B.C.E. He was a philosopher of
obviously outstanding quality, the founder of the “Ionian School of Philosophy” which
included some of the greatest names in Greek philosophy.. A mathematician, a
scientist, polymath 0f wide spectrum ability, and as usual in men of his sort in those
days; an Initiate in the Mysteries of Greece and Egypt and Persia. Here’s what the
modernists at Britannica have to say about him:
NOTE:( I have very carefully used the term “modernists” to describe the authors of the
Britannica essay, as it is clear to me that as part of their academic fixations, they really
refuse to take what the ancients had to say abut one another seriously. In fact there is
very little about the people of long ago that these academics take seriously. So take the
following with a very large ‘grain of salt’.)
Thales of Miletus: (fl. 6th century BC), Greek philosopher remembered for his
cosmology based on water as the essence of all matter. According to the Greek thinker
Apollodorus, he was born in 624; the Greek historian Diogenes Laërtius placed his
death in the 58th Olympiad (548-545) at the age of 78.
No writings by Thales survive, and as no contemporary sources exist; thus, his
achievements are difficult to assess. Inclusion of his name in the canon of the
legendary Seven Wise Men led to his idealization, and numerous acts and sayings,
many of them no doubt spurious, were attributed to him. According to Herodotus,
Thales was a practical statesman who advocated the federation of the Ionian cities of
the Aegean region. The Greek scholar Callimachus recorded a traditional belief that
Thales advised navigators to steer by the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) rather than by the
Great Bear (Ursa Major), both prominent constellations in the north. He is also said to
have used his knowledge of geometry to measure the Egyptian pyramids and to
185
calculate the distance from shore of ships at sea. Although such stories are probably
apocryphal, they illustrate Thales' reputation. The Greek writer Xenophanes claimed
that Thales predicted the solar eclipse that stopped the battle between the Lydian
Alyattes and the Median Cyaxares, evidently on May 28, 585. Modern scholars believe,
however, that he could not possibly have had the knowledge to predict accurately either
the locality or the character of an eclipse. Thus, his feat was apparently isolated and
only approximate; Herodotus spoke of his foretelling the year only. That the eclipse
was nearly total and occurred during a crucial battle probably contributed considerably
to his exaggerated reputation as an astronomer.
In geometry Thales has been credited with the discovery of five theorems: (1) that a
circle is bisected by its diameter, (2) that angles at the base of a triangle having two
sides of equal length are equal, (3) that opposite angles of intersecting straight lines are
equal, (4) that the angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle, and (5) that a triangle
is determined if its base and the angles relative to the base are given. His mathematical
achievements are difficult to assess, however, because of the ancient practice of
crediting particular discoveries to men with a general reputation for wisdom.
The claim that Thales was the founder of European philosophy rests primarily on
Aristotle, who wrote that Thales was the first to suggest a single material substratum
for the universe--namely, water, or moisture. Even though Thales as a philosopher
renounced mythology, his choice of water as the fundamental building block of matter
had its precedent in tradition. A likely consideration in this choice was the seeming
motion that water exhibits, as seen in its ability to become vapor; for what changes or
moves itself was thought by the Greeks to be close to life itself. To Thales the entire
universe is a living organism, nourished by exhalations from water. (see also Index:
element)
Thales' significance lies less in his choice of water as the essential substance than in
his attempt to explain nature by the simplification of phenomena and in his search for
causes within nature itself rather than in the caprices of anthropomorphic gods. Like his
successors Anaximander and Anaxamenes, Thales is important in bridging the worlds
of myth and reason.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Thales had two disciples cum colleagues who were also of major importance in human
history. They were:
! Anaximander of Miletus.: born: Miletus, Ionia 611 B.C.E.; died: 547 B.C.E.
He was the close friend and chief disciple of Thales, and is known as The Second
Philosopher of the Ionian School. A Natural philosopher, and yet another Polymath, he
made a map (the first) of the known world. He is known as the “Founder of Greek
Cosmology” as he was, while not the first to discuss the subject, the first to develop an
actual codified cosmological system. He wrote the very first treatise on philosophy in
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Greek prose. He developed the theory that all that existed was composed of something
that came to be called “Atoms” and that there was a substance, imperishable and
immortal that was the essential stuff of all reality, and out of which all things rise and
back to which all things return..His Britannica entry reads as follows:
(b. 610 BC, Miletus [now in Turkey]--d. 546/545 BC), Greek philosopher often called
the founder of astronomy, the first thinker to develop a cosmology, or systematic
philosophical view of the world.
Anaximander is thought to have been a pupil of Thales of Miletus. Evidence exists that
he wrote treatises on geography, astronomy, and cosmology that survived for several
centuries, and that he made a map of the known world. As a rationalist he prized
symmetry and introduced geometry and mathematical proportions into his efforts to
map the heavens. Thus, his theories departed from earlier, more mystical conceptions
of the universe and prefigured the achievements of later astronomers.
Only one sentence of Anaximander's writings survives, however, so that reports from
later writers form the primary record of his discoveries. That sentence describes the
emergence of particular substances such as water or fire in metaphors drawn from
human society, in which injustices are penalized. For example, neither hot nor cold
prevails permanently, but each "pays reparations" in order to keep a balance between
them.
Anaximander derived the world from a non-perceptible substance called the apeiron
("unlimited"). This state preceded the "separation" into contrasting qualities, such as hot
and cold, wet and dry, and thus represents the primitive unity of all phenomena.
Anaximander subscribed to the philosophical view that unity could definitely be found
behind all multiplicity. A novel element in Anaximander's theory was his rejection of the
older notion that the Earth was somehow suspended or supported from elsewhere in
the heavens; instead, he asserted that the Earth remained in its unsupported position at
the centre of the universe because it had no reason to move in any direction and
therefore was at rest.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (1957); Charles H. Kahn,
Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960); Paul Seligman, The
Apeiron of Anaximander (1962).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
187
2. ANAXAMENES
OF MILETUS
(sixth century B.C.E.) Natural philosopher and Cosmologist, and still another Polymath,
was the close friend and disciple of Anaximander and continued his philosophical
development. He too found his way into Britannica:
(fl. c. 545 BC), Greek philosopher of nature and one of three thinkers of Miletus
traditionally considered to be the first philosophers in the Western world. Of the other
two, Thales held that water is the basic building block of all matter, whereas
Anaximander chose to call the essential substance "the unlimited." (see also Index:
element)
Anaximenes substituted aer ("mist," "vapour," "air") for his predecessors' choices. His
writings, which survived into the Hellenistic Age, no longer exist except in passages in
the works of later authors. Consequently, interpretations of his beliefs are frequently in
conflict. It is clear, however, that he believed in degrees of condensation of moisture
that corresponded to the densities of various types of matter. When "most evenly
distributed," aer is the common, invisible air of the atmosphere. By condensation it
becomes visible, first as mist or cloud, then as water, and finally as solid matter such as
earth or stones. If further rarefied, it turns to fire. Thus hotness and dryness typify rarity,
whereas coldness and wetness are related to denser matter.
Anaximenes' assumption that aer is everlastingly in motion suggests that he thought it
also possessed life. Because it was eternally alive, aer took on qualities of the divine
and became the cause of other gods as well as of all matter. The same motion
accounts for the shift from one physical state of the aer to another. There is evidence
that he made the common analogy between the divine air that sustains the universe
and the human "air," or soul, that animates people. Such a comparison between a
macrocosm and a microcosm would also permit him to maintain a unity behind diversity
as well as to reinforce the view of his contemporaries that there is an overarching
principle regulating all life and behaviour.
A practical man and a talented observer with a vivid imagination, Anaximenes noted
the rainbows occasionally seen in moonlight and described the phosphorescent glow
given off by an oar blade breaking the water. His thought is typical of the transition from
mythology to science; its rationality is evident from his discussion of the rainbow not as
a goddess but as the effect of sun rays on compacted air. Yet his thought is not
completely liberated from earlier mythological or mystical tendencies, as seen from his
belief that the universe is hemispherical. Thus, his permanent contribution lies not in his
cosmology but in his suggestion that known natural processes (i.e., condensation and
rarefaction) play a part in the making of a world. This suggestion, together with
Anaximenes' reduction of apparent qualitative differences in substances to mere
differences of quantity, was highly influential in the development of scientific thought.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
188
These three, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaxamenes introduced logical reasoning to
mankind and thusly helped mightily in the transition from mythology to science. If you
stop to think about it that’s really something! It certainly helped make the world a better
place for everyone!
Now joyfully, we find the first woman on our list:
SAPPHO OF LESBOS
( 612-580 B.C.E.)..Now we know that Sappho, the first woman on our list was one of
the greatest lyric poets that ever lived. This is an incredible feat she performed, she
lived almost 2600 years ago and in a world wherein women are usually made to be
invisible, she is very visible indeed! What an incredible person she must have been to
escape the suppression of woman’s fame! She was surely real because we know an
immense amount about her, all things considered. We know, for instance that she was
a Eupatrid, and as such probably a Mystae. We know that her Father’s name was
Scamandronymous, her Mother’s Cleis. She had three brothers, Charaxus,
Larichus, and Erigyus. She is believed to have been married to Cercolas, a wealthy
man from the Island of Andros; she had at least one child, a daughter named Cleis
after her Mother. This makes her far more of a real person than many of the people on
our list about whom we know very little indeed. But Sappho was a real person with a
family.
Her poetry was composed in the Lesbian-Aeolic dialect, and she is known to have
invented a variety of metre which is both named after her and important in the history of
poetry. This metre is called Sapphic and it was used by her contemporary and friend
Alcaeus, and in Latin by Catullus and Horace. A great deal of her poetry was “love
poetry” (but not erotic poetry) directed at woman friends. While Sappho’s name, or
rather, because of her, that of her homeland, has become a synonym for Female
homosexuals ever since, there is just no proof that she either was, or wasn’t, a
homosexual. Her poetry was admired extravagantly for it’s extreme beauty in her own
age, and down to ours. Does that mean that poets are to be considered to be either
metasapient or integrated personalities? No, it doesn’t, though many of that class of
individual were poets, as well as what else they were. But in this case, there is
something incredible about this woman who stands out like a beacon in history. A
woman famed for 2600 years in a world that prefers to forget women. That, to me,
means that she herself was an extremely incredible person aside from the beauty of her
poems.
Her Britannica entry follows:
also spelled PSAPPHO (fl. c. 610-c. 580 BC, Lesbos, Asia Minor), celebrated lyric poet
170
greatly admired in all ages for the beauty of her writing. She is said to exceed all other
poets, except Archilochus and Alcaeus, in the history of Greek literature in entering into
a close personal relation with the reader. Her vocabulary, like her dialect, is for the most
part vernacular, not literary. Her phrasing is concise, direct, and picturesque. She has
the power of standing aloof and critically judging her own ecstasies and pains; but her
emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in comparative tranquility.
Sappho is said to have been married to Cercolas, a wealthy man from the island
Andros. The tradition that she was banished with other aristocrats and went to Sicily for
a time is likely to be true; most of her life, however, was spent at Mytilene on the island
of Lesbos.
Her themes are invariably personal--primarily concerned with her friendships and
enmities with other women--although her brother Charaxus was the subject of several
poems. There are, in her work, only a few apparent allusions to the political
disturbances of the time, which are so frequently reflected in the verse of her
contemporary Alcaeus.
It was the fashion in Lesbos at this time for women of good family to assemble in
informal societies and spend their days in idle, graceful pleasures, especially in the
composition and recitation of poetry. Sappho, the leading spirit of one of these
associations, attracted a number of admirers, some from distant places. The principal
themes of her poetry are the loves and jealousies and hates that flourished in that sultry
atmosphere. Rival associations are fiercely or contemptuously attacked. For other
women, usually nameless, Sappho expresses her feelings in terms that range from
gentle affection to passionate love. Ancient writers over a period of time, having a large
volume of her work in front of them, alleged that Sappho was a lesbian. Her poetry
shows that she entertained emotions stronger than mere friendship toward other
women, but nothing in what is extant connects her or her companions with homosexual
practices.
It is not known how her poems were published and circulated in her own lifetime and for
the following three or four centuries. In the era of Alexandrian scholarship (especially
the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC), what remained of her work was collected and
republished in a standard edition of nine books of lyrical verse and one of elegiac. This
edition did not survive the early Middle Ages. By the 8th or 9th century AD Sappho was
represented only by quotations in other authors. Only one poem, 28 lines long, was
complete. The next longest was 16 lines. Since 1898 these fragments have been
greatly increased by papyrus finds, though no complete poem has been recovered and
nothing equal in quality to the two longer pieces preserved in quotations.
Related Internet Links:
Sappho
Poetry of Sappho
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
171
A contemporary, who belongs in our list is;
EPIMENIDES OF CRETE:
th
(FL. 6 or 7
TH
CENTURY B.C.E.)
(fl. 6th century BC?), Cretan seer, reputed author of religious and poetical writings. He
conducted purificatory rites at Athens about 500 BC according to Plato (about 600
according to Aristotle). All surviving fragments, including a line quoted by St. Paul (Titus
1:12), are attributable to other sources. Stories of his advanced age (157 or 299 years),
his miraculous sleep of 57 years, and his wanderings outside the body have led some
scholars to regard him as a legendary figure of a shamanistic type.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now this is the type of person I said I’d exclude isn’t it? But not really. Achilles yes,
Epimenides no! There’s no real indication that Epimenides was a myth. “Legendary”,
at least to me, means something different than “mythical”. To me, a “legendary” person
is one who is so famous in one particular metier that they have become a “legend’ for
their proficiency. Obviously, I don’t believe Shamans to be either myths or legends. In
any case, this man was sufficiently influential in his time period that Plato and
Aristotle, who lived long afterwards, saw fit to bring him into their teaching. I would
assume that his ‘foretelling’ was of a particularly accurate type. This is an instance that
is culturally and temporally specific. In that culture, at that time, “Seers” filled functions
that we today cannot really comprehend or know. It is also quite apparent that aside
from being a “Seer” Epimenides was a Priest as we see he was recorded as
conducting ‘purificatory rites”. The Hellenic civilization was heavily invested in seers and
prophesy. We need only look at Delphi and all the other oracles to see that his was so.
Perhaps this man was the High Priest of an Oracle Temple in Crete. We just don’t
know. But, he certainly fills the requirement of making a very strong impression on his
contemporaries.
Living around the same time was a man who is of incalculable importance in the
development of human civilization; He’s one of those people around whom so much
mythology as evolved that he is almost but hardly fictional. He is:
ZOROASTER:
Old Iranian ZARATHUSHTRA, or ZARATHUSTRA (b. c. 628 BC, probably Rhages,
Iran--d. c. 551, site unknown), Iranian religious reformer and founder of Zoroastrianism,
or Parsiism, as it is known in India. (See Zoroastrianism; Parsi.) (see also Index: Iranian
religion)
172
Life.
A major personality in the history of the religions of the world, Zoroaster has been the
object of much attention for two reasons. On the one hand, he became a legendary
figure believed to be connected with occult knowledge and magical practices in the
Near Eastern and Mediterranean world in the Hellenistic Age (c. 300 BC-c. AD 300). On
the other hand, his monotheistic concept of God has attracted the attention of modern
historians of religion, who have speculated on the connections between his teaching
and Judaism and Christianity. Though extreme claims of pan-Iranianism (i.e., that
Zoroastrian or Iranian ideas influenced Greek, Roman, and Jewish thought) may be
disregarded, the pervasive influence of Zoroaster's religious thought must nevertheless
be recognized.
The student of Zoroastrianism is confronted by several problems concerning the
religion's founder. One question is what part of Zoroastrianism derives from Zoroaster's
tribal religion and what part was new as a result of his visions and creative religious
genius. Another question is the extent to which the later Zoroastrian religion (Mazdaism)
of the Sasanian period (AD 224-651) genuinely reflected the teachings of Zoroaster. A
third question is the extent to which the sources -- the Avesta (the Zoroastrian
scriptures) with the Gathas (older hymns), the Middle Persian Pahlavi Books, and
reports of various Greek authors--offer an authentic guide to Zoroaster's ideas. (see
also Index: Sasanian dynasty)
A biographical account of Zoroaster is tenuous at best or speculative at the other
extreme. The date of Zoroaster's life cannot be ascertained with any degree of
certainty. According to Zoroastrian tradition, he flourished "258 years before
Alexander." Alexander the Great conquered Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenids,
a dynasty that ruled Persia from 559 to 330 BC, in 330 BC. Following this dating,
Zoroaster converted Vishtaspa, most likely a king of Chorasmia (an area south of the
Aral Sea in Central Asia), in 588 BC. According to tradition, he was 40 years old when
this event occurred, thus indicating that his birth date was 628 BC. Zoroaster was born
into a modestly situated family of knights, the Spitama, probably at Rhages (now Rayy,
a suburb of Tehran), a town in Media. The area in which he lived was not yet urban, its
economy being based on animal husbandry and pastoral occupations. Nomads, who
frequently raided those engaged in such occupations, were viewed by Zoroaster as
aggressive violators of order, and he called them followers of the Lie. (see also Index:
nomadism)
173
Zoroaster's teachings.
According to the sources, Zoroaster probably was a priest. Having received a vision
from Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, who appointed him to preach the truth, Zoroaster
apparently was opposed in his teachings by the civil and religious authorities in the area
in which he preached. It is not clear whether these authorities were from his native
region or from Chorasmia prior to the conversion of Vishtaspa. Confident in the truth
revealed to him by Ahura Mazda, Zoroaster apparently did not try to overthrow belief in
the older Iranian religion, which was polytheistic; he did, however, place Ahura Mazda
at the centre of a kingdom of justice that promised immortality and bliss. Though he
attempted to reform ancient Iranian religion on the basis of the existing social and
economic values, Zoroaster's teachings at first aroused opposition from those whom
he called the followers of the Lie (dregvant).
Ahura Mazda and the Beneficent Immortals.
Zoroaster's teachings, as noted above, centered on Ahura Mazda, who is the highest
god and alone is worthy of worship. He is, according to the Gathas, the creator of
heaven and earth; i.e., of the material and the spiritual world. He is the source of the
alternation of light and darkness, the sovereign lawgiver, and the very centre of nature,
as well as the originator of the moral order and judge of the entire world. The kind of
polytheism found in the Indian Vedas (Hindu scriptures having the same religious
background as the Gathas) is totally absent; the Gathas, for example, mention no
female deity sharing Ahura Mazda's rule. He is surrounded by six or seven beings, or
entities, which the later Avesta calls amesha spentas, "beneficent immortals." The
names of the amesha spentas frequently recur throughout the Gathas and may be said
to characterize Zoroaster's thought and his concept of god. In the words of the Gathas,
Ahura Mazda is the father of Spenta Mainyu (Holy Spirit), of Asha Vahishta (Justice,
Truth), of Vohu Manah (Righteous Thinking), and of Armaiti (Spenta Armaiti, Devotion).
The other three beings (entities) of this group are said to personify qualities attributed to
Ahura Mazda: they are Khshathra Vairya (Desirable Dominion), Haurvatat (Wholeness),
and Ameretat (Immortality). This does not exclude the possibility that they, too, are
creatures of Ahura Mazda. The good qualities represented by these beings are also to
be earned and possessed by Ahura Mazda's followers. This means that the gods and
mankind are both bound to observe the same ethical principles. If the amesha spentas
show the working of the deity, while at the same time constituting the order binding the
adherents of the Wise Lord, then the world of Ahura Mazda and the world of his
followers (the ashavan) come close to each other. The very significant eschatological
aspect of Zoroastrianism is well demonstrated by the concept of Khshathra (Dominion),
which is repeatedly accompanied by the adjective Desirable; it is a kingdom yet to
come.
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Monotheism and dualism.
The conspicuous monotheism of Zoroaster's teaching is apparently disturbed by a
pronounced dualism: the Wise Lord has an opponent, hriman, who embodies the
principle of evil, and whose followers, having freely chosen him, also are evil. This
ethical dualism is rooted in the Zoroastrian cosmology. He taught that in the beginning
there was a meeting of the two spirits, who were free to choose--in the words of the
Gathas--"life or not life." This original choice gave birth to a good and an evil principle.
Corresponding to the former is a Kingdom of Justice and Truth; to the latter, the
Kingdom of the Lie (Druj), populated by the aevas, the evil spirits (originally prominent
old Indo-Iranian gods). Monotheism, however, prevails over the cosmogonic and ethical
dualism because Ahura Mazda is father of both spirits, who were divided into the two
opposed principles only through their choice and decision. (see also Index: devil,
demon, creation myth, free will)
The Wise Lord, together with the amesha spentas, will at last vanquish the spirit of evil:
this message, implying the end of the cosmic and ethical dualism, seems to constitute
Zoroaster's main religious reform. His monotheistic solution resolves the old strict
dualism. The dualist principle, however, reappears in an acute form in a later period,
after Zoroaster. It is achieved only at the expense of Ahura Mazda, by then called
Ohrmazd, who is brought down to the level of his opponent, Ahriman.
At the beginning of time, the world was divided into the dominion of the good and of the
evil. Between these, each man is bound to decide. He is free and must choose either
the Wise Lord and his rule or Ahriman, the Lie. The same is true of the spiritual beings,
who are good or bad according to their choices. From man's freedom of decision it
follows that he is finally responsible for his fate. Through his good deeds, the righteous
person (ashavan) earns an everlasting reward, namely integrity and immortality. He
who opts for the lie is condemned by his own conscience as well as by the judgment of
the Wise Lord and must expect to continue in the most miserable form of existence,
one more or less corresponding to the Christian concept of hell. According to Avestan
belief, there is no reversal and no deviation possible once a man has made his
decision. Thus, the world is divided into two hostile blocks, whose members represent
two warring dominions. On the side of the Wise Lord are the settled herdsmen or
farmers, caring for their cattle and living in a definite social order. The follower of the Lie
(Druj) is a thieving nomad, an enemy of orderly agriculture and animal husbandry.
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Eschatological teachings.
The Gathas, the early hymns, many of which may have been written by Zoroaster, are
permeated by eschatological thinking. Almost every passage contains some reference
to the fate awaiting men in the afterlife. Each act, speech, and thought is viewed as
being related to an existence after death. The earthly state is connected with a state
beyond, in which the Wise Lord will reward the good act, speech, and thought and
punish the bad. This motive for doing good seems to be the strongest available to
Zoroaster in his message. After death, the soul of man must pass over the Bridge of
the Requiter (Cinvat), which everyone looks upon with fear and anxiety. After judgment
is passed by Ahura Mazda, the good enter the kingdom of everlasting joy and light, and
the bad are consigned to the regions of horror and darkness. Zoroaster, however, goes
beyond this, announcing an end phase for the visible world, "the last turn of creation."
In this last phase, Ahriman will be destroyed, and the world will be wonderfully renewed
and be inhabited by the good, who will live in paradisiacal joy. Later forms of
Zoroastrianism teach a resurrection of the dead, a teaching for which some basis may
be found in the Gathas. Through the resurrection of the dead, the renewal of the world
bestows a last fulfillment on the followers of the Wise Lord. (see also Index: last
Judgment, heaven, hell, apocalypticism)
Cultic reforms.
Zoroaster forbade all sacrifices in honour of Ahriman or of his adherents, the daevas,
who from pre-Zoroastrian times had degenerated into hostile deities. In the prevailing
religious tradition, Zoroaster probably found that the practice of sacrificing cattle,
combined with the consumption of intoxicating drinks (haoma), led to orgiastic excess.
In his reform, Zoroaster did not, as some scholars would have it, abolish all animal
sacrifice but simply the orgiastic and intoxicating rites that accompanied it. The haoma
sacrifice, too, was to be thought of as a symbolic offering; it may have consisted of
unfermented drink or an intoxicating beverage or plant. Zoroaster retained the ancient
cult of fire. This cult and its various rites were later extended and given a definite order
by the priestly class of the Magi. Its centre, the eternal flame in the Temple of Fire, was
constantly linked with the priestly service and with the haoma sacrifice.
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Influence and assessments.
After the conversion of Vishtaspa to such teachings, Zoroaster remained at the court of
the king. Other officials were converted, and a daughter of Zoroaster apparently
married Jamasp, a minister of the king. According to tradition, Zoroaster lived for 77
years, thus indicating that he died about 551 BC. After his death, many legends arose
about him. According to these legends, nature rejoiced at his birth, and he preached to
many nations, founded sacred fires, and fought in a sacred war. He was viewed as a
model for priests, warriors, and agriculturalists, as well as a skilled craftsman and
healer. The Greeks regarded him as a philosopher, mathematician, astrologer, or
magician. Jews and Christians regarded him as an astrologer, magician, prophet, or
arch heretic. Not until the 18th century did a more scholarly assessment of Zoroaster's
career and influence emerge. (F.K.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
J. Duchesne-Guillemin, "L'Iran antique et Zoroastre," in Histoire des religions 1, vol. 29
of Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, pp. 625-695 (1970), and La Religion de l'Iran ancien
(1962), two works by a leading Iranist scholar--the first volume includes a selected
bibliography, the second volume presents a very large bibliography and an excellent
history of studies of Zoroastrianism; G. Dumézil, L'Idéologie tripartie des IndoEuropéens (1958), the work of a French scholar of comparative mythology concerning
Indo-European culture; R.N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia (1963), concentrates on
Zoroaster and the respective religious sources, based on the findings of archaeological
and epigraphic investigations; J. Gershevitsch, "Zoroaster's Own Contribution," Journal
of Near Eastern Studies, 23:12-38 (1964); E. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World (1947,
reprinted 1974); M. Molé, Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l'Iran ancien (1963), upholds
certain connections between ritual texts and individual and cosmological eschatology;
G. Widengren, Die Religionen Irans (1965), by a leading Iranist and Semitist; R.C.
Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (1961), describes the later evolution of
Zurvanism and deals with a later stage in the Zoroastrian religion that became the
official religion of the Sasanian period.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another relatively problematical person is our next example; and he is a man who while
certainly not fictional, as his reality is attested to by some very reliable witnesses, is
nonetheless so much the center of mythology and legend that he comes very close to
being so shrouded by those myths and legends that we could have passed him by, But
he’s far too important to ignore and he is:
PYTHAGORAS:
Born: Samos, Ionia. Approx 582 B.C.E.
177
Died: Metapontum, Magna Græcia approx 500 B.C.E.
It is almost impossible to denigrate the importance of Pythagoras in the intellectual
development of the Western civilization. He is certainly of almost equal stature as ImHotep the Egyptian. Pythagoras was an Ionic Greek philosopher and metaphysician,
who, it is believed by many contemporary savants, was educated or mentored by a
family servant (Slave) who was a Druid Priest who had been captured and enslaved
during one of the invasions by the Keltoi of Ionia and Greece itself. There is good
reason to believe this to be true and there is much about Pythagoras and his teachings
that resembles the Druidic beliefs. The most important resemblance, for our purposes is
that like the Druids, Pythagoras left no written records of his teachings. Now it is
equally possible that none survived, that is the frequent fate of written material of that
age. However, in so many other cases at least some fragments survived or there where
quotations made by students. But not in this case, which to me means there were in all
likelihood, none available. The vegetarianism was also a hallmark of the Druidic
Priesthood.
He moved to Southern Italy (Kroton - Crotona)to escape the tyranny of the rulers of
Samos and founded the Crotona Sodality which was a Religious Fellowship or
Brotherhood. It is important to remember that Pythagoras was an essentially religious
teacher. None the less, he greatly influenced the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle, and it
is a very old tradition that Socrates studied with him for a period in his youth but left the
sodality because he was not amenable to authoritarian regimes, and could not resist
asking questions which was not acceptable in the sodality. It is an accepted fact in
some circles that Pythagoreanism was a major influence in the development of the
Theraputæ in Egypt and more important still, of the off shoot of the Theraputæ, the
Essene Orders. This is of vital importance as Christianity is a product of the Essene
Movement.
In addition Pythagoras is generally credited with the theory of the functional
significance of numbers in the objective world and in music. Many of the other
discoveries attributed to him such as the so-called “Pythagorean Theorem” etc. were in
all likelihood developed by members of the Pythagorean School at a later date.
The bulk of the intellectual tradition that apparently originated with Pythagoras himself,
as best we understand it, belongs to Mystical Wisdom rather than to actual Scientific
Scholarship. Whether it was his intention or not we’ll never know, but he is one of the
most important figures in the development of the so-called “Esoteric Tradition”.
Naturally he found his way into Britannica:
(b. c. 580 BC, Samos, Ionia--d. c. 500, Metapontum, Lucania), Greek philosopher,
mathematician, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood that, although religious in
nature, formulated principles that influenced the thought of Plato and Aristotle and
178
contributed to the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy (see
Pythagoreanism).
Pythagoras migrated to southern Italy about 532 BC, apparently to escape Samos'
tyrannical rule, and established his ethico-political academy at Croton (now Crotona).
It is difficult to distinguish Pythagoras' teachings from those of his disciples. None of
his writings has survived, and Pythagoreans invariably supported their doctrines by
indiscriminately citing their master's authority. Pythagoras, however, is generally
credited with the theory of the functional significance of numbers in the objective world
and in music. Other discoveries often attributed to him (e.g., the incommensurability of
the side and diagonal of a square, and the Pythagorean theorem for right triangles)
were probably developed only later by the Pythagorean school. More probably the bulk
of the intellectual tradition originating with Pythagoras himself belongs to mystical
wisdom rather than to scientific scholarship. (see also Index: number system)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Britannica has a separate entry on his philosophical school:
a philosophical school and religious brotherhood, believed to have been founded by
Pythagoras about 525 BC, holding: (1) that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical
in nature; (2) that philosophy can be used for spiritual purification; (3) that the soul can
rise to union with the divine; (4) that certain symbols have a mystical significance; and
(5) that all brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.
A brief treatment of Pythagoreanism follows. For full treatment, see Philosophical
Schools and Doctrines, Western: Pythagoreanism.
The organization was, in its origin, a religious brotherhood or an association for the
moral reformation of society rather than a philosophical school. The Pythagorean
brotherhood had much in common with the Orphic communities that sought by rites and
abstinence to purify the believer's soul and enable it to escape from the "wheel of birth."
The new order held sway for a time over a considerable part of Magna Græcia, but this
entanglement with politics led to the suppression of the society. The first reaction
against the Pythagoreans, led by Cylon, seems to have taken place in the lifetime of the
master. Cylon was able to bring about the retirement of Pythagoras to Metapontum,
where he remained until his death. In the middle of the 5th century, the order was
violently suppressed. Its meetinghouses were everywhere sacked and burned; mention
is made in particular of "the house of Milo" in Croton, where 50 or 60 Pythagoreans
were surprised and slain. Those who survived took refuge at Thebes and other places.
As a philosophical school the Pythagoreans became extinct about the middle of the 4th
century.
To the legacy of Pythagoreanism can be ascribed the following philosophical and
ethical teachings: the dictum "all is number," meaning that all things can be ultimately
179
reduced to numerical relationships; the dependence of the dynamics of world structure
on the interaction of contraries, or pairs of opposites; the viewing of the soul as a selfmoving number experiencing a form of metempsychosis, or successive reincarnation in
different species until its eventual purification (particularly through the intellectual life of
the ethically rigorous Pythagoreans); and the understanding, as in Pre-Socratic
tradition, that all existing objects were fundamentally composed of form and not of
material substance. Further Pythagorean doctrine applied number relationships to
music theory, acoustics, geometry, and astronomy; identified the brain as the locus of
the soul; and prescribed certain secret cultic practices.
Pythagoreanism deeply influenced the development of classical Greek philosophy and
medieval European thought (especially the astrological belief that the number harmony
of the universe decidedly affects all human endeavour). Pythagorean astronomical
concepts were acknowledged by Copernicus as a forerunner of his hypothesis that the
Earth and the other planets rotate in orbits around the Sun.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
A contemporary of Pythagoras, while not so famous, was a very important example of
the metasapient and a man who made a large and valuable contribution to the data
base of human knowledge and understanding. He was:
XENOPHANES:
(b. probably c. 560 BC, Colophon, Ionia--d. probably c. 478), Greek poet and rhapsode,
religious thinker, and reputed precursor of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which
stressed unity rather than diversity and viewed the separate existences of material
things as apparent rather than real.
Xenophanes was probably exiled from Greece by the Persians who conquered
Colophon about 546. After living in Sicily for a time and wandering elsewhere in the
Mediterranean, he evidently settled at Elea in southern Italy. In one of his poems, which
survive only in fragments, he declared that his travels began 67 years earlier, when he
was 25; if this is so, he would have been at least 92 at his death.
Xenophanes' philosophy found expression primarily in the poetry that he recited in the
course of his travels. Fragments of his epics reflect his contempt for contemporary
anthropomorphism and for popular acceptance of Homeric mythology. Most celebrated
are his trenchant attacks on the immorality of the Olympian gods and goddesses. In his
elegiac fragments he ridicules the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, condemns the
luxuries introduced from the nearby colony of Lydia into Colophon, and advocates
wisdom and the reasonable enjoyment of social pleasure in the face of prevalent
excess.
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Some critics consider Parmenides (fl. c. 450 BC) as the founder of the Eleatic school,
but Xenophanes' philosophy probably anticipated his views. The tradition that
Xenophanes founded the school is based primarily on the testimony of Aristotle, whose
views Xenophanes also anticipated. Among the few other Greek writers who
subsequently mentioned Xenophanes are Plato, who said that "The Eleatic school,
beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, starts from the principle of the unity of all
things," and Theophrastus, who summed up Xenophanes' teaching in the formula "The
all is one and the one is God."
Xenophanes was less a philosopher of nature in the manner of Parmenides, who
looked for abstract principles underlying natural change, than a poet and religious
reformer who applied generally philosophical and scientific notions to popular
conceptions. His system and critiques of the works of other thinkers appear primitive in
comparison with later Eleaticism, which developed its philosophy of appearance and
reality into a sophisticated system.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now, at this point it’s impossible to ignore Asia. During the Sixth Century B.C.E. there
were three men in Asia who influenced not just their contemporaries and their nations
but all nations and all peoples everywhere. They were:
In China:
1 LAO
TAN TZU (TSE), THE “MASTER LAO TAN”
( 600 - 517 B.C.E.) Also called Lao Lai Tzu, but known most frequently and popularly
as just LAO TZU, a Librarian of the Duke of Chou, Kung Fu Tzu(Confucius) sought
his advice, and he was famous in both his own time and ever since. He wrote the Tao
Te King, probably one of the two or three most influential books ever written. This is
what Britannica has to say about him:
Pinyin LAOZI (Chinese: "Master Lao," or "Old Master"), original name (Wade-Giles
romanization) LI ERH, deified as LAO-CHÜN, T'AI-SHANG LAO-CHÜN, or T'AISHANG HSÜAN-YÜAN HUANG-TI, also called LAO TUN, or LAO TAN (fl. c. 6th
century BC, China), the first philosopher of Chinese Taoism and alleged author of the
Tao-te Ching (q.v.), a primary Taoist writing. Modern scholars discount the possibility
that the Tao-te Ching was written by only one person but readily acknowledge the
influence of Taoism on the development of Buddhism. Lao-tzu is venerated as a
philosopher by Confucianists and as a saint or god by some of the common people and
was worshiped as an imperial ancestor during the T'ang dynasty (618-907). (See also
Taoism.)
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The life of Lao-tzu
Despite his historical importance, Lao-tzu remains an obscure figure. The principal
source of information about his life is a biography in the Shih-chi ("Historical Records")
by Ssu-ma Ch'ien. This historian, who wrote in about 100 BC, had little solid information
concerning the philosopher. He says that Lao-tzu was a native of Ch'ü-jen, a village in
the district of Hu in the state of Ch'u, which corresponds to the modern Lu-yi in the
eastern part of Honan province. His family name was Li, his proper name Erh, his
appellation Tan. He was appointed to the office of shih at the royal court of the Chou
dynasty (c. 1111-255 BC). Shih today means "historian," but in ancient China the shih
were scholars specializing in matters such as astrology and divination and were in
charge of sacred books.
After noting the civil status of Lao-tzu, the historian proceeds to relate a celebrated but
questionable meeting of the old Taoist with the younger Confucius (551-479 BC). The
story has been much discussed by the scholars; it is mentioned elsewhere, but the
sources are so inconsistent and contradictory that the meeting seems a mere legend.
During the supposed interview, Lao-tzu blamed Confucius for his pride and ambition,
and Confucius was so impressed with Lao-tzu that he compared him to a dragon that
rises to the sky, riding on the winds and clouds.
No less legendary is a voyage of Lao-tzu to the west. Realizing that the Chou dynasty
was on the decline, the philosopher departed and came to the Hsien-ku pass, which
was the entrance to the state of Ch'in. Yin Hsi, the legendary guardian of the pass
(kuan-ling), begged him to write a book for him. Thereupon, Lao-tzu wrote a book in
two sections of 5,000 characters, in which he set down his ideas about the Tao (literally
"Way," the Supreme Principle) and the te (its "virtue"): the Tao-te Ching. Then he left,
and "nobody knows what has become of him," says Ssu-ma Ch'ien.
After the account of the voyage of Lao-tzu and of the redaction of the book, Ssu-ma
Ch'ien alludes to other men with whom Lao-tzu was sometimes identified. One was
Lao-Lai-tzu, a Taoist contemporary of Confucius; another was a great astrologer
named Tan. Ssu-ma Ch'ien adds, "Maybe Lao-tzu has lived one hundred and fifty
years, some say more than two hundred years." Since the ancient Chinese believed
that superior men could live very long, it is natural that the Taoists credited their master
with an uncommon longevity, but this is perhaps a rather late tradition because
Chuang-tzu, the Taoist sage of the 4th century BC, still speaks of the death of Lao-tzu
without emphasizing an unusual longevity.
To explain why the life of Lao-tzu is so shrouded in obscurity, Ssu-ma Ch'ien says that
he was a gentleman recluse whose doctrine consisted in nonaction, the cultivation of a
state of inner calm, and purity of mind. Indeed, throughout the whole history of China,
there have always been recluses who shunned worldly life. The author (or authors) of
the Tao-te Ching was probably a person of this kind who left no trace of his life.
The question of whether there was a historical Lao-tzu has been raised by many
182
scholars, but it is rather an idle one. The Tao-te Ching, as we have it, cannot be the
work of a single man; some of its sayings may date from the time of Confucius; others
are certainly later; and the book as a whole dates from about 300 BC. Owing to these
facts, some scholars have assigned the authorship of the Tao-te Ching to the astrologer
Tan; while others, giving credit to a genealogy of the descendants of the philosopher,
which is related in the biography by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, try to place the life of Lao Tan at
the end of the 4th century BC. But this genealogy can hardly be considered as
historical. It proves only that at the time of Ssu-ma Ch'ien a certain Li family (see
above) pretended to be descended from the Taoist sage; it does not give a basis for
ascertaining the existence of the latter. The name Lao-tzu seems to represent a certain
type of sage rather than an individual.
Hagiographical legends.
Beyond the biography in the Shih-chi and sporadic mentions in other old books, several
hagiographies were written from the 2nd century AD onward. These are interesting for
the history of the formation of religious Taoism (Tao-chiao). During the Eastern, or
Later, Han dynasty (AD 25-220), Lao-tzu had already become a mythical figure who
was worshiped by the people and occasionally by an emperor. Later, in religious circles,
he became the Lord Lao (Lao-chün), revealer of sacred texts and saviour of mankind.
There were several stories about his birth, one of which was influenced by the legend of
the miraculous birth of Buddha. Lao-tzu's mother is said to have borne him 72 years in
her womb and he to have entered the world through her left flank. One legend gives an
explanation of his family name, Li: the baby came to light at the foot of a plum tree (li)
and decided that li ("plum") should be his surname. Two legends were particularly
important in the creed of the Taoists. According to the first, the Lao-chün was believed
to have adopted different personalities throughout history and to have come down to
the earth several times to instruct the rulers in the Taoist doctrine. The second legend
developed from the story of Lao-tzu's voyage to the west. In this account the Buddha
was thought to be none other than Lao-tzu himself. During the 3rd century AD an
apocryphal book was fabricated on this theme with a view to combating Buddhist
propaganda. This book, the Lao-tzu Hua-hu ching ("Lao-tzu's Conversion of the
Barbarians"), in which Buddhism was presented as an inferior kind of Taoism, was
often condemned by the Chinese imperial authorities.
Lao-tzu has never ceased to be generally respected in all circles in China. To the
Confucianists he was a venerated philosopher; to the people he was a saint or a god;
and to the Taoists he was an emanation of the Tao and one of their greatest divinities.
(Ma.K.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Holmes Welch, Taoism: The Parting of the Way, rev. ed. (1966); Max Kaltenmark, Lao
Tzu and Taoism (1969).
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Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. KUNG
FU TZU (TSE)- “THE MASTER KUNG FU”
(551 - 479 B.C.E.)He is best known to Westerners as “CONFUCIUS”. One of the most
influential social and educational and ethical philosophers that ever lived. This man
literally created the civilization that was China. One of the most important and influential
men who ever lived. Naturally he is found at length in Britannica:
Introduction
Confucianism, a Western term that has no counterpart in Chinese, is a world view, a
social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life. Sometimes
viewed as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion, Confucianism may be understood
as an all-encompassing humanism that neither denies nor slights Heaven. East Asians
may profess themselves to be Shintoists, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims, or Christians,
but, by announcing their religious affiliations, seldom do they cease to be Confucians.
(see also Index: Confucius)
Although often grouped with the major historical religions, Confucianism differs from
them by not being an organized religion. Nonetheless, it spread to all East Asian
countries under the influence of Chinese literate culture and exerted a profound
influence on East Asian spiritual life as well as on East Asian political culture. Both the
theory and practice of Confucianism have indelibly marked the patterns of government,
society, education, and family of East Asia. It is an exaggeration to characterize
traditional Chinese life and culture as Confucian, but Confucian ethical values have for
well over 2,000 years served as the source of inspiration as well as the court of appeal
for human interaction between individuals, communities, and nations in the Sinitic
world. (see also Index: Chinese religion)
For coverage of related topics, see SPECTRUM, section 825.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The historical context.
The scholarly tradition envisioned by Confucius can be traced to the sage-kings of
antiquity. Although the earliest dynasty confirmed by archaeology is the Shang dynasty
(18th-12th century BC), the historical period that Confucius claimed as relevant was
much earlier. Confucius may have initiated a cultural process known in the West as
Confucianism, but he and those who followed him considered themselves part of a
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tradition, later identified by Chinese historians as the ju-chia, "scholarly tradition," that
had its origins two millennia previously, when the legendary Yao and Shun created a
civilized world through moral persuasion.
Confucius' hero was Chou Kung, or the Duke of Chou (d. 1094 BC), who was said to
have helped consolidate and refine the "feudal" ritual system. This system was based
on blood ties, marriage alliances, and old covenants as well as on newly negotiated
contracts and was an elaborate system of mutual dependence. The appeal to cultural
values and social norms for the maintenance of interstate as well as domestic order
was predicated on a shared political vision, namely, that authority lies in universal
kingship, heavily invested with ethical and religious power by the mandate of Heaven,
and that social solidarity is achieved not by legal constraint but by ritual observance. Its
implementation enabled the Chou dynasty to survive in relative peace and prosperity for
more than five centuries. (see also Index: social control, feudalism)
Inspired by the statesmanship of Chou Kung, Confucius harboured a lifelong dream to
be in a position to emulate the duke by putting into practice the political ideas that he
had learned from the ancient sages and worthies. Although Confucius never realized
his political dream, his conception of politics as moral persuasion became more and
more influential. (see also Index: morality)
The idea of Heaven, unique in Chou cosmology, was compatible with the concept of the
Lord-on-High in the Shang dynasty. The Lord-on-High may have referred to the
progenitor of the Shang royal lineage so that the Shang kings could claim their position
as divine descendants, as the emperors of Japan later did, but Heaven to the Chou
kings was a much more generalized anthropomorphic God. They believed that the
mandate of Heaven (the functional equivalent of the will of the Lord-on-High) was not
constant and that there was no guarantee that the descendants of the Chou royal
house would be entrusted with kingship, for "Heaven sees as the people see and
Heaven hears as the people hear"; thus the virtues of the kings were essential for the
maintenance of their power and authority. This emphasis on benevolent rulership,
expressed in numerous bronze inscriptions, was both a reaction to the collapse of the
Shang dynasty and an affirmation of a deep-rooted world view. (see also Index: Chou
dynasty)
Partly because of the vitality of the feudal ritual system and partly because of the
strength of the royal household itself, the Chou kings were able to control their kingdom
for several centuries. In 771 BC, however, they were forced to move their capital
eastward to present-day Lo-yang to avoid barbarian attacks from Central Asia. Real
power thereafter passed into the hands of feudal lords. Since the surviving line of the
Chou kings continued to be recognized in name, they still managed to exercise some
measure of symbolic control. By Confucius' time, however, the feudal ritual system had
been so fundamentally undermined that the political crises also precipitated a profound
sense of moral decline: the centre of symbolic control could no longer hold the kingdom
from total disintegration.
Confucius' response was to address himself to the issue of learning to be human. In so
doing he attempted to redefine and revitalize the institutions that for centuries had been
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vital to political stability and social order: the family, the school, the local community, the
state, and the kingdom. Confucius did not accept the status quo, which held that wealth
and power spoke the loudest. He felt that virtue, both as a personal quality and as a
requirement for leadership, was essential for individual dignity, communal solidarity,
and political order. (see also Index: humanism)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The life of Confucius.
Confucius' life, in contrast to his tremendous importance, seems starkly undramatic,
or, as a Chinese expression has it, it seems "plain and real." The plainness and reality
of Confucius' life, however, underlines that his humanity was not revealed truth but an
expression of self-cultivation, of the ability of human effort to shape its own destiny. The
faith in the possibility of ordinary human beings to become awe-inspiring sages and
worthies is deeply rooted in the Confucian heritage, and the insistence that human
beings are teachable, improvable, and perfectible through personal and communal
endeavour is typically Confucian. (see also Index: self)
Although the facts about Confucius' life are scanty, they do establish a precise time
frame and historical context. Confucius was born in the 22nd year of the reign of Duke
Hsiang of Lu (551 BC). The traditional claim that he was born on the 27th day of the
eighth lunar month has been questioned by historians, but September 28 is still widely
observed in East Asia as Confucius' birthday. It is an official holiday, "Teachers' Day,"
in Taiwan.
Confucius was born in Ch'ü-fu in the small feudal state of Lu in what is now Shantung
Province, which was noted for its preservation of the traditions of ritual and music of the
Chou civilization. His family name was K'ung and his personal name Ch'iu, but he is
referred to as either K'ung-tzu or K'ung-fu-tzu (Master K'ung) throughout Chinese
history. The adjectival "Confucian," derived from the Latinized Confucius, is not a
meaningful term in Chinese, nor is the term Confucianism, which was coined in Europe
as recently as the 18th century.
Confucius' ancestors were probably members of the aristocracy who had become
virtual poverty-stricken commoners by the time of his birth. His father died when
Confucius was only three years old. Instructed first by his mother, Confucius then
distinguished himself as an indefatigable learner in his teens. He recalled toward the
end of his life that at age 15 his heart was set upon learning. A historical account notes
that, even though he was already known as an informed young scholar, he felt it
appropriate to inquire about everything while visiting the Grand Temple. (see also
Index: education, philosophy of)
Confucius had served in minor government posts managing stables and keeping
books for granaries before he married a woman of similar background when he was 19.
It is not known who Confucius' teachers were, but he made a conscientious effort to
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find the right masters to teach him, among other things, ritual and music. Confucius'
mastery of the six arts--ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and arithmetic-and his familiarity with the classical traditions, notably poetry and history, enabled him
to start a brilliant teaching career in his 30s.
Confucius is known as the first teacher in China who wanted to make education
available to all men and who was instrumental in establishing the art of teaching as a
vocation, indeed as a way of life. Before Confucius, aristocratic families had hired
tutors to educate their sons in specific arts, and government officials had instructed
their subordinates in the necessary techniques, but he was the first person to devote his
whole life to learning and teaching for the purpose of transforming and improving
society. He believed that all human beings could benefit from self-cultivation. He
inaugurated a humanities program for potential leaders, opened the doors of education
to all, and defined learning not merely as the acquisition of knowledge but also as
character building.
For Confucius the primary function of education was to provide the proper way of
training noblemen (chün-tzu), a process that involved constant self-improvement and
continuous social interaction. Although he emphatically noted that learning was "for the
sake of the self" (the end of which was self-knowledge and self-realization), he found
public service a natural consequence of true education. Confucius confronted learned
hermits who challenged the validity of his desire to serve the world; he resisted the
temptation to "herd with birds and animals," to live apart from the human community,
and opted to try to transform the world from within. For decades Confucius was
actively involved in politics, wishing to put his humanist ideas into practice through
governmental channels. (see also Index: political philosophy)
In his late 40s and early 50s Confucius served first as a magistrate, then as an
assistant minister of public works, and eventually as minister of justice in the state of
Lu. It is likely that he accompanied King Lu as his chief minister on one of the
diplomatic missions. Confucius' political career was, however, short-lived. His loyalty to
the King alienated him from the power holders of the time, the large Chi families, and
his moral rectitude did not sit well with the King's inner circle, who enraptured the King
with sensuous delight. At 56, when he realized that his superiors were uninterested in
his policies, Confucius left the country in an attempt to find another feudal state to
which he could render his service. Despite his political frustration he was accompanied
by an expanding circle of students during this self-imposed exile of almost 12 years. His
reputation as a man of vision and mission spread. A guardian of a border post once
characterized him as the "wooden tongue for a bell" of the age, sounding Heaven's
prophetic note to awaken the people (Analects, 3:24). Indeed, Confucius was
perceived as the heroic conscience who knew realistically that he might not succeed
but, fired by a righteous passion, continuously did the best he could. At the age of 67 he
returned home to teach and to preserve his cherished classical traditions by writing and
editing. He died in 479 BC at the age of 73. According to the Records of the Historian
72 of his students mastered the "six arts," and those who claimed to be his followers
numbered 3,000.
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Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Confucianism
FORMATION OF THE CLASSICAL CONFUCIAN TRADITION
According to Han-fei-tzu (d. 233 BC), shortly after Confucius' death his followers split
into eight distinct schools, all claiming to be the legitimate heir to the Confucian legacy.
Presumably each school was associated with or inspired by one or more of Confucius'
disciples. Yet the Confucians did not exert much influence in the 5th century BC.
Although the mystic Yen Yüan (or Yen Hui), the faithful Tseng-tzu, the talented Tzu
Kung, the erudite Tzu-hsia, and others may have generated a great deal of enthusiasm
among the second generation of Confucius' students, it was not at all clear at the time
that the Confucian tradition was to emerge as the most powerful one in Chinese history.
Mencius (c. 371-c. 289 BC) complained that the world of thought in the early warring
States period (475-221 BC) was dominated by the collectivism of Mo-tzu and the
individualism of Yang Chu (440-c. 360 BC). The historical situation a century after
Confucius' death clearly shows that the Confucian attempt to moralize politics was not
working; the disintegration of the Chou feudal ritual system and the rise of powerful
hegemonic states reveal that wealth and power spoke the loudest. The hermits (the
early Taoists), who left the world to create a sanctuary in nature in order to lead a
contemplative life, and the realists (proto-Legalists), who played the dangerous game of
assisting ambitious kings to gain wealth and power so that they could influence the
political process, were actually determining the intellectual agenda. The Confucians
refused to be identified with the interests of the ruling minority because their social
consciousness impelled them to serve as the conscience of the people. They were in a
dilemma. Although they wanted to be actively involved in politics, they could not accept
the status quo as the legitimate arena in which to exercise authority and power. In
short, they were in the world but not of it; they could not leave the world, nor could they
effectively change it.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Analects as the embodiment of Confucian ideas.
The Lun-yü (Analects), the most revered sacred scripture in the Confucian tradition,
was probably compiled by the second generation of Confucius' disciples. Based
primarily on the Master's sayings, preserved in both oral and written transmissions, it
captures the Confucian spirit in form and content in the same way that the Platonic
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dialogues embody Socratic pedagogy.
The Analects has often been viewed by the critical modern reader as a collection of
unrelated conversations randomly put together. This impression may have resulted
from the mistaken conception of Confucius as a mere commonsense moralizer who
gave practical advice to students in everyday situations. If a person approaches the
Analects as a communal memory, a literary device on the part of those who considered
themselves beneficiaries of the Confucian Way to continue the Master's memory and to
transmit his form of life as a living tradition, he comes close to what it has been revered
for in China for centuries. Dialogues are used to show Confucius in thought and action,
not as an isolated individual but as the centre of relationships. Actually the sayings of
the Analects reveal Confucius' personality--his ambitions, his fears, his joys, his
commitments, and above all his self-knowledge.
The purpose, then, in compiling these distilled statements centering on Confucius
seems not to have been to present an argument or to record an event but to offer an
invitation to readers to take part in an ongoing conversation. Through the Analects
Confucians for centuries learned to reenact the awe-inspiring ritual of participating in a
conversation with Confucius.
One of Confucius' most significant personal descriptions is the short autobiographical
account of his spiritual development found in the Analects:
At 15 I set my heart on learning; at 30 I firmly took my stand; at 40 I had no delusions;
at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven; at 60 my ear was attuned; at 70 I followed my
heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right. (2:4)
Confucius' life as a student and teacher exemplified his idea that education was a
ceaseless process of self-realization. When one of his students reportedly had difficulty
describing him, Confucius came to his aid:
Why did you not simply say something to this effect: he is the sort of man who forgets
to eat when he engages himself in vigorous pursuit of learning, who is so full of joy that
he forgets his worries, and who does not notice that old age is coming on? (7:18)
Confucius was deeply concerned that the culture (wen) he cherished was not being
transmitted and that the learning (hsüeh) he propounded was not being taught. His
strong sense of mission, however, never interfered with his ability to remember what
had been imparted to him, to learn without flagging, and to teach without growing
weary. What he demanded of himself was strenuous:
It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go deeply
into what I have learned, inability to move up to what I have heard to be right, and
inability to reform myself when I have defects. (7:3)
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What he demanded of his students was the willingness to learn: "I do not enlighten
anyone who is not eager to learn, nor encourage anyone who is not anxious to put his
ideas into words (7:8).
The community that Confucius created was a scholarly fellowship of like-minded men of
different ages and different backgrounds from different states. They were attracted to
Confucius because they shared his vision and to varying degrees took part in his
mission to bring moral order to an increasingly fragmented polity. This mission was
difficult and even dangerous. Confucius himself suffered from joblessness,
homelessness, starvation, and occasionally life-threatening violence. Yet his faith in the
survivability of the culture that he cherished and the workability of the approach to
teaching that he propounded was so steadfast that he convinced his followers as well
as himself that Heaven was on their side. When Confucius' life was threatened in
K'uang, he said:
Since the death of King Wen [founder of the Chou dynasty] does not the mission of
culture (wen) rest here in me? If Heaven intends this culture to be destroyed, those who
come after me will not be able to have any part of it. If Heaven does not intend this
culture to be destroyed, then what can the men of K'uang do to me? (9:5)
This expression of self-confidence informed by a powerful sense of mission may give
the impression that there was presumptuousness in Confucius' self-image. Confucius,
however, made it explicit that he was far from attaining sagehood and that all he really
excelled in was "love of learning" (5:27). To him, learning not only broadened his
knowledge and deepened his self-awareness but also defined who he was. He frankly
admitted that he was not born endowed with knowledge, nor did he belong to the class
of men who could transform society without knowledge. Rather, he reported that he
used his ears widely and followed what was good in what he had heard and used his
eyes widely and retained in his mind what he had seen. His learning constituted "a
lower level of knowledge" (7:27), a level that was presumably accessible to the majority
of human beings. In this sense Confucius was neither a prophet with privileged access
to the divine nor a philosopher who had already seen the truth but a teacher of
humanity who was also an advanced fellow traveler on the way to self-realization.
As a teacher of humanity Confucius stated his ambition in terms of concern for human
beings: "To bring comfort to the old, to have trust in friends, and to cherish the young"
(5:25). Confucius' vision of the way to develop a moral community began with a holistic
reflection on the human condition. Instead of dwelling on abstract speculations such as
man's condition in the state of nature, Confucius sought to understand the actual
situation of a given time and to use that as his point of departure. His aim was to
restore trust in government and to transform society into a moral community by
cultivating a sense of humanity in politics and society. To achieve that aim, the creation
of a scholarly community, the fellowship of chün-tzu (noblemen), was essential. In the
words of Confucius' disciple Tseng-tzu, the true nobleman must be broad-minded and
resolute, for his burden is heavy and his road is long. He takes humanity as his burden.
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Is that not heavy? Only with death does his road come to an end. Is that not long? (8:7)
The fellowship of chün-tzu as moral vanguards of society, however, did not seek to
establish a radically different order. Its mission was to redefine and revitalize those
institutions that for centuries were believed to have maintained social solidarity and
enabled people to live in harmony and prosperity. An obvious example of such an
institution was the family.
It is related in the Analects that Confucius, when asked why he did not take part in
government, responded by citing a passage from an ancient classic, the Shu Ching
("Classic of History"), "Simply by being a good son and friendly to his brothers a man
can exert an influence upon government!" to show that what a person does in the
confines of his home is politically significant (2:21). This maxim is based on the
Confucian conviction that cultivation of the self is the root of social order and that social
order is the basis for political stability and universal peace. (see also Index:
socialization)
The assertion that family ethics is politically efficacious must be seen in the context of
the Confucian conception of politics as "rectification" (cheng). Rulers should begin by
rectifying their own conduct; that is, they are to be examples who govern by moral
leadership and exemplary teaching rather than by force. Government's responsibility is
not only to provide food and security but also to educate the people. Law and
punishment are the minimum requirements for order; the higher goal of social harmony,
however, can only be attained by virtue expressed through ritual performance. To
perform rituals, then, is to take part in a communal act to promote mutual
understanding.
One of the fundamental Confucian values that ensures the integrity of ritual
performance is hsiao (filial piety). Indeed, Confucius saw filial piety as the first step
toward moral excellence, which he believed lay in the attainment of the cardinal virtue,
jen (humanity). To learn to embody the family in the mind and heart is to become able
to move beyond self-centeredness or, to borrow from modern psychology, to transform
the enclosed private ego into an open self. Filial piety, however, does not demand
unconditional submissiveness to parental authority but recognition of and reverence for
the source of life. The purpose of filial piety, as the ancient Greeks expressed it, is to
enable both parent and child to flourish. Confucians see it as an essential way of
learning to be human.
Confucians, moreover, are fond of applying the family metaphor to the community, the
country, and the universe. They prefer to address the emperor as the son of Heaven,
the king as ruler-father, and the magistrate as the "father-mother official" because to
them the family-centered nomenclature implies a political vision. When Confucius said
that taking care of family affairs is itself active participation in politics, he had already
made it clear that family ethics is not merely a private concern; the public good is
realized by and through it.
Confucius defined the process of becoming human as being able to "conquer yourself
and return to ritual" (12:1). The dual focus on the transformation of the self (Confucius
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is said to have freed himself from four things: "opinionated-ness, dogmatism, obstinacy,
and egoism" [9:4]) and on social participation enabled Confucius to be loyal (chung) to
himself and considerate (shu) of others (4:15). It is easy to understand why the
Confucian "golden rule" is "Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do
unto you!" (15:23). Confucius' legacy, laden with profound ethical implications, is
captured by his "plain and real" appreciation that learning to be human is a communal
enterprise: (see also Index: ethics)
A man of humanity, wishing to establish himself, also establishes others, and wishing to
enlarge himself, also enlarges others. The ability to take as analogy of what is near at
hand can be called the method of humanity. (6:30)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
In India:
SAKYA SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA, RAJA OF KAPILIVASTU
(563 - 483 B.C.E.)
Hindu religious reformer, called the “founder” of Buddhism. Of course he, personally
had nothing to do with the foundation of any religion, his disciples founded it around
their personal perceptions of his ideas after he died. He was as important a figure in
world history as it is possible to be. Because of that fact, I really don’t think I personally,
need produce a detailed introduction to him. As for myself, I admire him immensely
because I really don’t think anyone has ever been so genuinely concerned with the
amelioration of human suffering, and only with that, as he was:
Introduction
Buddhism is a Pan-Asian religion and philosophy that has played a central role in the
spiritual, cultural, and social life of the Eastern world and during the 20th century has
spread to the West. This article surveys Buddhism from its origins in the teachings of
the Buddha Gautama to its elaboration in various schools, sects, and regional
developments.
Ancient Buddhist scripture and doctrine developed primarily in two closely related
literary languages of ancient India, Pali and Sanskrit . In this article, Pali and Sanskrit
words that have gained some currency in English are treated as English words and are
rendered in the form in which they appear in English-language dictionaries. Exceptions
occur in special circumstances -- as, for example, in the case of the Sanskrit term
dharma (Pali: dhamma), which has meanings that are not usually associated with the
English "dharma." Pali forms are given in the sections that deal with Buddhists whose
primary sacred language was Pali (including discussions of the life and teaching of the
Buddha, which are reconstructed on the basis of Pali texts). Sanskrit forms are given in
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the sections that deal with Buddhists whose primary focus was on Sanskritic traditions.
(see also Index: Pali language, Sanskrit language)
For coverage of related topics, see SPECTRUM, section 823, and the Index.
The foundations of Buddhism
THE CULTURAL CONTEXT
Buddhism came into being in northeastern India during the period from the late 6th
century to the early 4th century BC, a period of great social change and intense
religious activity. There is disagreement among scholars about the dates of the
Buddha's birth and death. Most scholars in Europe, the United States, and India believe
that the historical Buddha lived from about 563 to about 483 BC. Many others,
especially in Japan, believe that he lived about 100 years later (from about 448 to 368
BC).
At this time in India, many were no longer content with the external formalities of
Brahmanic (Hindu high-caste) sacrifice and ritual. In northwestern India there were
ascetics who tried to go beyond the Vedas (Hindu sacred scriptures). In the literature
that grew out of this movement, the Upanishads, a new emphasis on renunciation and
transcendental knowledge can be found. But northeastern India, which was less
influenced by the Aryans who had developed the main tenets and practices of the Vedic
Hindu faith, became the breeding ground of many heterodox sects. Society in this area
was troubled by the breakdown of tribal unity and the expansion of several petty
kingdoms. Religiously, this was a time of doubt, turmoil, and experimentation.
A proto-Samkhya sect (a Hindu school founded by Kapila) was already well-established
in the area. New sects abounded, including various kinds of skeptics (e.g., Sañjaya
Belatthiputta), atomists (e.g., Pakudha Kaccayana), materialists (e.g., Ajita
Kesakambali), and antinomians (i.e., those against rules or laws; e.g., Purana
Kassapa). Among the most important sects to arise at the time of the Buddha were the
Ajivikas (Ajivakas), who emphasized the rule of fate (niyati), and the Jainas, an ascetic
movement stressing the need to free the soul from matter. Though the Jainas, like the
Buddhists, have often been regarded as atheists, their beliefs are actually more
complicated. Unlike early Buddhists, both the Ajivikas and Jainas believed in the
permanence of the elements that constitute the universe, as well as the existence of the
soul. (see also Index: Jainism)
Despite the bewildering variety of religious communities, many shared the same
vocabulary--nirvana (transcendent freedom), atman ("self," or "soul"), yoga ("union"),
karma ("causality"), Tathagata ("Thus-Gone," or "He Who Has Thus Attained"), buddha
("enlightened one"), samsara ("eternal recurrence," "becoming"), and dhamma ("rule,"
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or "law")--and most were based on the practice of yoga. According to tradition, the
Buddha himself was a yogi--that is, a miracle-working ascetic.
Buddhism, like many of the sects that developed in northeastern India at the time, was
constituted by the presence of a charismatic teacher, by the teachings this leader
promulgated, and by a community of adherents that was often made up of renunciant
members and lay supporters. In the case of Buddhism this pattern became the basis for
the Triratna--the "Three Jewels" of Buddha (the teacher), dharma (the teaching), and
sangha (the community)--in which Buddhists have traditionally taken refuge.
In the centuries following the founder's death, Buddhism developed in two directions.
One, usually called Theravada by its present-day adherents, remained relatively faithful
to what it considered to be the true tradition of the Buddha's teachings. The other is
called Mahayana, "the means of salvation available to a larger number of people," by its
followers, who call the first Hinayana, "the means of salvation restricted to a smaller
number of people" (or simply the greater and lesser vehicles).
In its spread, Buddhism influenced the currents of thought and religion in other
countries. In response to the diverse religious aspirations of the various Buddhist
communities, the strict law of karma was modified to accommodate new emphases on
the efficacy of ritual actions and various forms of devotional practice. Finally there
developed in India a movement called Vajrayana, or Esoteric Buddhism, the aim of
which was to obtain liberation more speedily. This movement was influenced by gnostic
and magical currents pervasive at that time.
For all the discussion on the two paths of salvation--the gradual and the instant--and
the various ways of interpreting the key Mahayana concepts of the "void" and the mindelement, the ethics remain fundamentally the same. The monastic organizations
suffered the influence of diverse historical situations, but the basic structure remains
intact. The Buddha, the original teacher, is always recognized as the revealer of
Buddhist truth. In the later doctrines, his preaching is not just that given to his first
disciples: he multiplies himself in numberless epiphanies--all manifestations of a single
immutable reality--and he emphasizes the certainty of the void and the relativity of all
appearances.
In spite of these vicissitudes, Buddhism did not negate its basic principles. Instead they
were reinterpreted, rethought, and reformulated, bringing to life an immense literature.
This literature includes the Pali Tipitaka ("Three Baskets"; three collections of the
Buddha's teaching) and the commentaries on it; these were preserved by adherents of
the Theravada tradition. It also includes many sutras and tantras that have been
recognized by the followers of the Mahayana and Tantric Buddhist traditions as
Buddhavacana, "the word of the Buddha," along with commentaries on these texts.
Consequently, from the first sermon of the Buddha at Sarnath to the most recent
derivations, there is an indisputable continuity--a development or metamorphosis
around a central nucleus--by virtue of which Buddhism is differentiated from other
religions.
(Gi.T./ J.M.K./F.E.R.)
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THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA GOTAMA
The term buddha, literally meaning "awakened one" or "enlightened one," is not a
proper name but rather a title, such as messiah (the Christ). Thus, the term should be
accompanied by an article, such as "the Buddha" or "a buddha" (because of a belief
that there will be innumerable buddhas in the future as there have been in the past).
The Buddha who belongs to the present world era was born into the Gotama (in Pali),
or Gautama (in Sanskrit), clan and is often referred to as Gotama. When the term the
Buddha is used, it is generally assumed that it refers to Gotama the Buddha.
According to virtually all Buddhist traditions, the Buddha lived many lives before his
birth as Gotama; these previous lives are described in stories called Jatakas that play
an important role in Buddhist art and education. Most Buddhists also affirm that the
Buddha's life was continued in his teachings and his relics. The following account,
however, focuses on the Buddha's "historical" life from his birth as Gotama to his death
some 80 years later.
The version of the story presented here is based on the Pali Tipitaka, which is
recognized by scholars as the earliest extant record of the Buddha's discourses, and on
the later Pali commentaries. The style and technique of these ancient texts, followed in
this biography, provide a record--sometimes symbolic, sometimes legendary, and
always graphic--of the life of the revered Teacher. Just as there has been a vigorous
search for the "historical Jesus" by Christian and other Western-oriented scholars, so
also among some Western Orientalists there has been a scholarly search for the
"historical Buddha," the history of whom the Buddhists themselves never questioned
and which had never interested them as a historical problem. This section concentrates
on Gotama the Enlightened One as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures and legends
that developed about the man, his teachings, and his activities.
fl. c. 6th-4th century, b. Kapilavastu, Sakya republic, Kosala kingdom [India] d. ,
Kusinara, Malla republic, Magadha kingdom
original name (Sanskrit) GAUTAMA, or (Pali) GOTAMA, also called SIDDHARTHA ,
founder of Buddhism, the predominant religious and philosophical system of much of
Asia.
The term buddha, literally meaning "awakened one" or "enlightened one," is not a
proper name but rather a title, such as messiah (the Christ). Thus, the term should be
accompanied by an article, such as "the Buddha" or "a buddha" (because of a belief
that there will be innumerable buddhas in the future as there have been in the past).
The Buddha who belongs to the present world era was born into the Gotama (in Pali),
or Gautama (in Sanskrit), clan and is often referred to as Gotama. When the term the
Buddha is used, it is generally assumed that it refers to Gotama the Buddha.
According to virtually all Buddhist traditions, the Buddha lived many lives before his
birth as Gotama; these previous lives are described in stories called Jatakas that play
an important role in Buddhist art and education. Most Buddhists also affirm that the
195
Buddha's life was continued in his teachings and his relics. The following account,
however, focuses on the Buddha's "historical" life from his birth as Gotama to his death
some 80 years later.
The version of the story presented here is based on the Pali Tipitaka, which is
recognized by scholars as the earliest extant record of the Buddha's discourses, and on
the later Pali commentaries. The style and technique of these ancient texts, followed in
this biography, provide a record--sometimes symbolic, sometimes legendary, and
always graphic--of the life of the revered Teacher. Just as there has been a vigorous
search for the "historical Jesus" by Christian and other Western-oriented scholars, so
also among some Western Orientalists there has been a scholarly search for the
"historical Buddha," the history of whom the Buddhists themselves never questioned
and which had never interested them as a historical problem. This section concentrates
on Gotama the Enlightened One as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures and legends
that developed about the man, his teachings, and his activities.
Birth and early life
The Buddha was born in the 6th or 5th century BC in the kingdom of the Sakyas, on the
borders of present-day Nepal and India. As the son of Suddhodana, the king, and
Mahamaya, the queen, the Buddha thus came from a Khattiya family (i.e., the warrior
caste or ruling class).
The story of the Buddha's life, however, begins with an account of a dream that his
mother Mahamaya had one night before he was born: a beautiful elephant, white as
silver, entered her womb through her side. Brahmans (Vedic priests) were asked to
interpret the dream, and they foretold the birth of a son who would become either a
universal monarch or a buddha. Ten lunar months after the conception, the queen and
her retinue left Kapilavatthu, the capital of the Sakya kingdom, on a visit to her parents
in Devadaha. She passed through Lumbini, a park that was owned jointly by the people
of both cities. There, she gave birth to the Buddha in a curtained enclosure in the park
on the full-moon day of the month of Vesakha (May). The purported site of his birth,
now called Rummindei, lies within the territory of Nepal. A pillar placed there in
commemoration of the event by Asoka, a 3rd-century-BC Buddhist emperor of India,
still stands.
Immediately upon hearing of the birth of the Buddha, the sage Asita (also called Kala
Devala), who was King Suddhodana's teacher and religious adviser, went to see the
child. From the auspicious signs on the child's body, Asita recognized that this child
would one day become a buddha, and he was overjoyed and smiled. Because he was
very old, however, he grew sad and wept, knowing that he would not remain alive to
see the child's subsequent Enlightenment. Suddhodana, because of this strange
display of alternate emotions, was concerned about possible dangers to the child, but
Asita explained why he had first smiled and then wept and reassured the king about the
child's future. Both the sage and the king then worshiped the child.
On the fifth day after birth, for the name-giving ceremony, 108 Brahmans were invited,
among whom eight were specialists in interpreting bodily marks. Of these eight
specialists, seven predicted two possibilities: if the child remained at home, he would
become a universal monarch; if he left home, he would become a buddha. But
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Kondañña, the youngest of the eight, predicted that he would definitely become a
buddha. Later, this same Kondañña became one of the Buddha's companions and was
one of his first five disciples. The child was given the name Siddhattha (Sanskrit:
Siddhartha), which means "one whose aim is accomplished."
On the seventh day after his birth, his mother died, and the child was brought up by her
sister Mahapajapati Gotami, Suddhodana's second consort.
A significant incident in the Buddha's boyhood is recorded in ancient Pali
commentaries. One day, the little Siddhattha was taken to the state plowing festival, in
which the king, with his ministers and the ordinary farmers, took part, according to the
custom of the Sakyas. The boy was left with his nurses in a tent under a jambu tree.
The nurses, attracted by the festivities, left the prince alone in the tent and went out to
enjoy themselves. When they returned, they found the boy seated cross-legged,
absorbed in a trance (Pali: jhana; Sanskrit: dhyana). The king was immediately
informed and saw his little son in the posture of a yogi (a practitioner of psychological,
physiological meditation techniques). Upon seeing his son sitting in this fashion, he
worshiped the child a second time. Many years later the Buddha himself, in one of his
discourses (the Maha-Saccaka-sutta, "The Great Discourse to Saccaka," of the Pali
Majjhima Nikaya, or the "Collection of the Middle Length Sayings of the Buddha"),
briefly mentions his attaining to the first jhana under the jambu tree.
The young prince was brought up in great luxury, and his father, always worried that his
son might leave home to become a wandering ascetic as the Brahmans had predicted,
took every care to influence him in favour of a worldly life. According to the Anguttara
Nikaya ("Collection of the Gradual Sayings of the Buddha"), the Buddha himself is
reported to have said later about his upbringing:
Bhikkhus [monks], I was delicately nurtured, exceedingly delicately nurtured, delicately
nurtured beyond measure. In my father's residence lotus-ponds were made: one of blue
lotuses, one of red and another of white lotuses, just for my sake. . . . Of Kasi cloth was
my turban made; of Kasi my jacket, my tunic, and my cloak . . . . I had three palaces:
one for winter, one for summer and one for the rainy season. . . . in the rainy season
palace, during the four months of the rains, entertained only by female musicians, I did
not come down from the palace.
At the age of 16, Siddhattha married his cousin, a princess named Yasodhara, also 16
years old. Although Suddhodana tried his utmost to make Siddhattha content by
providing him with luxury and comfort, the young prince's thoughts were generally
elsewhere, occupied with other concerns.
The Four Signs
The turning point in the prince Siddhattha's life came when he was 29 years old. One
day, while out driving with his charioteer, he saw "an aged man as bent as a roof gable,
decrepit, leaning on a staff, tottering as he walked, afflicted and long past his prime."
The charioteer, questioned by the prince as to what had happened to the man,
explained that he was old and that all men were subject to old age. The prince, greatly
perturbed by this sight, went back to the palace and became absorbed in thought.
Another day, again driving with his charioteer, he saw "a sick man, suffering and very ill,
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fallen and weltering in his own excreta." Because Siddhattha was perturbed, the
charioteer explained, as before, that this was a sick man and that all men are subject to
sickness. On a third occasion the prince saw a dead body and again the charioteer
provided the explanation. Finally, Siddhattha saw "a shaven-headed man, a wanderer
who has gone forth, wearing the yellow robe." Impressed with the man's peaceful
demeanor, the prince decided to leave home and go out into the world to discover the
reason for such a display of serenity in the midst of misery.
On his way back to the palace after seeing the yellow-robed ascetic, Siddhattha
received the news of the birth of his son, whom he named Rahula, meaning "Fetter" or
"Bond."
The Great Renunciation
Upon receiving this news, the prince decided to make what is known as the Great
Renunciation: to give up the princely life and become a wandering ascetic. Waking up
in the middle of the night, he ordered Channa, his charioteer and companion, to saddle
his favorite horse, Kanthaka, and went to the bedchamber to have a last look at his
sleeping wife and their son. He did not enter the chamber for fear of awakening his
wife, which would be a sure obstacle to his plan. He thought he would one day come to
see them again.
That night Siddhattha left the city of Kapilavatthu, accompanied by Channa. By dawn
he had crossed the Anoma River. He then gave all his ornaments to Channa, assumed
the guise of an ascetic, and sent Channa and Kanthaka back to his father.
As an ascetic, Gotama went south, where centers of learning and spiritual discipline
flourished, and arrived at Rajagaha (modern Rajgir), the capital of the Magadha
kingdom. Bimbisara, the king of Magadha, was impressed by the handsome
appearance and the serene personality of this strange ascetic and visited him when he
was seated at the foot of a hill. The king, after he discovered that the ascetic was a
former prince, offered him every comfort and suggested that he should stay with him to
share his kingdom. Gotama, however, rejected the king's offer, saying that he had no
need of those things that he had renounced and that he was in search of truth.
Bimbisara then requested that, when Gotama obtained the Enlightenment, he return to
visit Rajagaha again, to which Gotama agreed
The search for the truth
Leaving Rajagaha, Gotama went in search of teachers to instruct him in the way of
truth. Two of them the Buddha himself mentioned by name in several discourses. He
first went to Alara Kalama, a renowned sage, and expressed his wish to follow Alara's
system; Alara gladly accepted Gotama as his pupil. Gotama studied and rapidly
mastered Alara's whole system and then asked his teacher how far the master himself
had realized that teaching. Alara told him that he had attained the "sphere of no-thing."
Gotama soon attained the same mystical state himself. Alara admitted that that state
was the highest he could teach and declared that Gotama and himself were now equals
in every respect--in knowledge, practice, and attainment--and invited the Sakyan
ascetic to guide, along with him, the community of his disciples. The Buddha later
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spoke of this occasion in a sutta: "In this way did Alara Kalama, my teacher, set me, his
pupil, on the same level as himself and honoured me with the highest honour." Gotama,
however, was not satisfied with attaining the sphere of no-thing, though it was a very
high mystical state. He was in quest of absolute truth, nirvana, and thus he left Alara
Kalama.
He then went to Uddaka Ramaputta, another great teacher, who taught him to attain
the "sphere of neither perception nor non-perception," a higher mystical state than the
sphere of no-thing. Gotama, however, was not satisfied with this either, and he
continued his search for the truth.
Traveling through the Magadha country, Gotama arrived at a village called
Senanigama, near Uruvela, and, according to his own words, found "a beautiful stretch
of land, a lovely woodland grove, and a clear flowing river with a pleasant ford, and a
village for support close by." He was joined there by a group of five ascetics, among
whom was Kondañña, the Brahman who had predicted at the name-giving ceremony
that the child Siddhattha would definitely become a buddha one day.
Gotama's real struggle in his search for the truth began in the area around Uruvela,
near modern Gaya. Here, for nearly six years, he practiced various severe austerities
and extreme self-mortifications. These austerities were vividly described in several
discourses attributed to the Buddha himself (e.g., in the Majjhima Nikaya). What he
looked like and what happened to him is described in the following words from the
ancient text:
Because of so little nourishment, all my limbs became like some withered creepers with
knotted joints; my buttocks like a buffalo's hoof; my back-bone protruding like a string of
balls; my ribs like rafters of a dilapidated shed; the pupils of my eyes appeared sunk
deep in their sockets as water appears shining at the bottom of a deep well; my scalp
became shriveled and shrunk as a bitter gourd cut unripe becomes shriveled and
shrunk by sun and wind; . . . the skin of my belly came to be cleaving to my back-bone;
when I wanted to obey the calls of nature, I fell down on my face then and there; when I
stroked my limbs with my hand, hairs rotted at the roots fell away from my body.
Many later representations of the Buddha portray him in this emaciated state.
As a consequence of these severe bodily austerities, Gotama became so weak that he
once fainted and was believed by some to be dead. From these experiences, he
realized that such mortifications could not lead him to what he sought; he therefore
changed his way of life and again began to eat proper amounts of food.
His five companions, who had much faith in him, were disappointed at his rejection of
extreme asceticism and left him in disgust. Gotama thus remained alone in Uruvela,
regained his health and strength, and then followed his own path to Enlightenment..
The Great Enlightenment
One morning, seated under a banyan tree, Gotama accepted an offering of a bowl of
milk rice from Sujata, the daughter of the landowner of the village of Senanigama. This
was his last meal before his Enlightenment. He spent the day in a grove of sal trees
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and in the evening went to the base of a pipal tree (Ficus religiosa), now known as the
bodhi, or bo, tree, and sat cross-legged, determined not to rise without attaining
Enlightenment.
At that point, the greatest of Gotama's struggles began: Mara, the evil one, the tempter
who is the lord of the world of passion, determined to defeat him and prevent him from
attaining Enlightenment; he approached Gotama with his hideous demonic hordes.
Gotama, however, sat unmoved in meditation, supported only by the 10 paramitas
("great virtues") that he had perfected during innumerable past lives as a bodhisattva
("buddha-to-be") in order to attain Enlightenment. (In order to attain buddhahood, all
bodhisattvas [i.e., those who aspire to become buddhas] have to perfect, during
innumerable lives, these 10 paramitas: charity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, effort,
patience, truth, determination, universal love, and equanimity.) Mara was thus
vanquished and fled headlong with his armies of evil spirits.
The battle with Mara is graphically described in ancient Buddhist texts and depicted in
paintings on the walls of Buddhist temples. In the Padhanasutta ("Discourse on the
Exertion") of the Pali Suttanipata, one of the earliest texts, the Buddha states that,
when he was practicing austerities by the Nerañjara River in Uruvela, Mara approached
him, speaking such words as: "You are emaciated, pale, you are near death. Live, Sir,
life is better. Do meritorious deeds. What is the use of striving?" After some preliminary
words, Gotama replied:
Lust is your first army; the second is dislike for higher life; the third is hunger and thirst;
the fourth is craving; the fifth is torpor and sloth; the sixth is fear (cowardice); the
seventh is doubt; the eighth is hypocrisy and obduracy; the ninth is gains, praise,
honour, false glory; the tenth is exalting self and despising others. Mara, these are your
armies. No feeble man can conquer them, yet only by conquering them one wins bliss. I
challenge you! Shame on my life if defeated! Better for me to die in battle than to live
defeated.
Mara, overcome with grief, disappeared.
Having defeated Mara, Gotama spent the rest of the night in deep meditation under the
tree. During the first part of the night he gained the knowledge of his former existences.
During the second part of the night he attained the "superhuman divine eye," the power
to see the passing away and rebirth of beings. In the last part of the night he directed
his mind to the knowledge of the destruction of all cankers and defilements and realized
the Four Noble Truths. In words attributed to the Buddha himself: "My mind was
emancipated, . . . Ignorance was dispelled, science (knowledge) arose; darkness was
dispelled, light arose."
Thus Gotama, at the age of 35, attained the Enlightenment, or Awakening, and became
a supreme buddha during the night of the full-moon day of the month of Vesakha (May)
at a place now called Bodh Gaya (Pali and Sanskrit: Buddhagaya).
Contemplation on the truth
After his Enlightenment the Buddha spent several weeks (five or seven weeks
according to different accounts) in Uruvela, meditating on the various aspects of the
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dhamma that he had realized, particularly on the most important and difficult doctrine of
causal relations, known as the dependent origination or the conditioned genesis
(paticca-samuppada). This doctrine views everything as relative and interdependent
and teaches that there is no eternal, everlasting, unchanging, permanent, or absolute
substance, such as the soul, the self, or the ego, within or without man.
Four weeks after his Enlightenment, seated under a banyan tree, the Buddha is
reported to have thought to himself: "I have realized this Truth which is deep, difficult to
see, difficult to understand . . . comprehensible by the wise. Men who are overpowered
by passion and surrounded by a mass of darkness cannot see this Truth which is
against the current, which is lofty, deep, subtle and hard to comprehend."
With these thoughts in mind, the Buddha hesitated to try to explain to the world the
truth that he had just realized. At this point, according to the tradition, the Brahman
Sahampati intervened in order to convince the Buddha to accept his vocation as a
teacher. This great Brahmanic deity set forth for him an image of a lotus pond: in a lotus
pond there are some lotuses still under water; there are others that have risen only up
to the water level; and there are still others that stand above water and are untouched
by it. In a similar way, in this world there are people of different levels of development.
Thus challenged, the Buddha determined to proclaim the insight he had gained.
At the outset he faced the problem of choosing those who would be the first to hear him
preach the dhamma. He first thought of his two former teachers, Alara Kalama and
Uddaka Ramaputta, but they had died by this time. He then thought of the five
companions who had left him and were now staying in Isipatana near Baranasi
(Benares; now Varanasi) and decided to go there.
On meeting the five ascetics, the Buddha told them that now he was an arhat, a
"perfected one" (Pali: arahant), a "fully awakened one" (sammasambuddha), that he
had realized the "immortal" (amata), and that he wished to instruct and teach them the
dhamma. They replied to him:
But, Reverend Gotama, even by all that conduct, that practice, that austerity, you did
not realize this supreme knowledge, this supreme state. So how can you now realize it
when you live in abundance, when you have given up striving and have reverted to a
life of abundance?
The Buddha denied that he had given up striving and that he had reverted to a life of
abundance. He requested again that they listen to him. Again, however, they replied in
a similar manner. A third time the Buddha repeated what he had said and asked them
to listen to him, and they repeated their remark.
The Buddha then asked them a question: "Do you admit that I have never spoken
anything like this before?" They were struck by such straightforwardness and knew how
sincere and earnest he was. Convinced that he had attained what he claimed to have
attained, they no longer addressed the Buddha as "Reverend Gotama" but changed
their attitude toward him and answered him: "Lord, you have not." The Buddha then
delivered to them his first sermon, known as the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta
("Sermon on Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth"), at Isipatana, now called Sarnath.
An ancient stupa (a building containing a religious relic) still marks the spot where this
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event supposedly occurred.
The substance of this sutta is as follows: a man who has left home and gone forth
should not follow two extremes, namely self-indulgence and self-mortification. Avoiding
these two extremes, the Tathagata ("He Who Has Thus Attained"--i.e., the Buddha) has
discovered the middle path leading to vision, to knowledge, to calmness, to awakening,
to nirvana. This middle path is known as the Noble Eightfold Path consisting of right
view, right thought, right speech, right action, right mode of living, right endeavour, right
mindfulness, and right concentration. The First Noble Truth is that man's existence is
dukkha, full of conflict, dissatisfaction, sorrow, and suffering. The Second Noble Truth is
that all this is caused by man's selfish desire--i.e., craving or tanha, "thirst." The Third
Noble Truth is that there is emancipation, liberation, and freedom for human beings
from all this, which is nirvana. The Fourth Noble Truth, the Noble Eightfold Path, is the
way to this liberation.
The founding of the sangha
At the end of the sermon, these five ascetics, the Buddha's first disciples, were
admitted by him as bhikkhus (monks) and became the first members of the sangha
("community," or "order"). A few days later, this sermon was followed by the
Anattalakkhana-sutta, dealing with the doctrine of no-self, at the conclusion of which all
five bhikkhus became arhats ("perfected ones").
The Buddha spent about three months in the Varanasi/Benares region. During this
period an important and influential wealthy young man named Yasa became his
disciple and entered the order. His father and mother, along with his former wife, also
were converted. They were the first lay disciples to take refuge in the "Triple Jewel": the
Buddha, the dhamma, and the sangha. Later, four of Yasa's close friends followed his
example and entered the order. Enthusiasm for this new movement became so
impelling that 50 of their friends also joined them in the sangha. All these became
arhats in due course, and the Buddha soon had 60 disciples who were perfected ones.
The Buddha addressed this group in the following words and sent them out into the
world to spread his message of peace, compassion, and wisdom:
Bhikkhus, I am freed from all fetters, both divine and human. You, too, are freed from
all fetters, both divine and human. Wander forth, bhikkhus, for the good of the many, for
the happiness of the many, out of compassion for the world. . . . Let not two of you go
by one road [i.e., go in different directions]. Teach the Dhamma which is good at the
beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end. . . . There are people who will
understand the Dhamma. I, too, will go to Uruvela to teach the Dhamma.
The 60 disciples went in various directions to spread the teaching of the Buddha. The
Buddha himself set out for Uruvela. On the way he converted 30 young men, who then
entered the order. In the region of Uruvela he also converted three leading ascetics
along with a large number of their disciples. To these ascetics, formerly known as
"those with matted hair" (jatilas), the Buddha delivered the famous "Fire Sermon" (the
Adittapariyaya-sutta), which states that all man's existence is burning with the fire of
lust, the fire of hate, and the fire of delusion.
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From Uruvela the Buddha went on to Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha, fulfilling his
promise to visit King Bimbisara after his Enlightenment. Many people, including the
king, became his lay disciples. The king offered his park, Veluvana, as a monastery site
to the Buddha and his order. During this visit a very important event that had
far-reaching effects took place: Sariputta and Moggallana, two Brahmanic ascetics who
later became the Buddha's two chief disciples, joined the order. Sariputta had first
heard of the Buddha and his new teaching from Assaji, one of the original 60 disciples.
At the request of his father, the Buddha visited Kapilavatthu with a large number of his
disciples. In that city, where as prince he had lived in great splendour and luxury, he
went about begging for his food from house to house. His father, King Suddhodana,
was grieved and upset by this, but, upon learning that this was the custom of all
buddhas, he conducted the Blessed One and his disciples to eat a meal at the palace.
All the ladies of the court went to him to offer reverence, except his former wife,
Yasodhara. She refused, saying that the Blessed One himself would come to her if he
thought she had any virtue in her and that she would then worship him. The Buddha,
with his two chief disciples and the king, went to see her in her apartment. She fell at
his feet, clasped his ankles with her hands, and put her head on his feet.
The Buddha's father, his aunt Mahapajapati, Yasodhara, and large numbers of
Sakyans (who were fellow members of the Gotama clan) became his followers. On the
following day he ordained his half-brother Nanda and a few days later his son, Rahula.
All this troubled the old king so much that he asked the Buddha to lay down a rule that
no son should be ordained without the consent of his parents. Accordingly, the rule was
formulated, and it continues to be followed by the sangha.
Anathapindika, a banker of Savatthi (modern Sravasti), the capital of Kosala kingdom,
had met the Buddha at Rajagaha and had become deeply devoted to him. He invited
the Blessed One to his city, where he built for him the famous monastery at Jetavana.
This monastery in Savatthi became the virtual headquarters of the Buddha's activities.
There he spent most of his time and delivered most of his sermons. The Buddha and
his new teaching became so popular that monasteries were built for him and his
sangha in almost all the important cities in the valley of the Ganges, and the number of
his followers among all classes of people increased rapidly.
The order of nuns, bhikkhuni-sangha, was instituted after some hesitation. Ananda, the
Buddha's cousin and later his chief attendant and constant companion, pleaded with
the Master on behalf of women. The Buddha's own aunt Mahapajapati Gotami and her
friends were the first women to enter the order.
Members of some hostile sects, who became jealous of the Buddha's success and
popularity, made several attempts to vilify him.
Devadatta, one of the Buddha's cousins, an ambitious man of ability and guile, was his
rival from early days. He too joined the order but was never sincerely devoted to the
Master. He became popular and influential with some people, however, and, about
eight years before the Buddha's death, Devadatta conceived the idea of becoming the
Buddha's successor and suggested to him that the leadership of the sangha should be
handed over to him in view of the Master's approaching old age. The suggestion,
however, was rejected. The Buddha stated that he would not pass on the leadership of
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the order to anyone, not even to Sariputta or Moggallana. Rather, the sangha was to be
run in accordance with democratic principles. Its constitution was to be the vinaya
("discipline"), rules that the Buddha himself had laid down to guide the spiritual and
material life of the individual monks and nuns and to regulate the structure and
dynamics of monastic life.
After being rebuffed in this way, Devadatta vowed vengeance. He made three cleverly
designed attempts on the life of the Buddha, all of which failed. Devadatta next tried to
bring about a schism in the sangha, taking with him a group of newly ordained monks to
establish a separate community. All those who were misled by Devadatta, however,
were later persuaded to go back to the Master by Sariputta and Moggallana. After this
event Devadatta became seriously ill and died after about nine months of illness.
The death of the Buddha
After the Buddha had trained learned, well-disciplined followers and his mission was
fulfilled, at the age of 80, with a group of monks, he set out on his last journey, from
Rajagaha toward the north. As usual, he passed in leisurely fashion through cities,
towns, and villages, teaching the people on his way and stopping wherever he wished.
In due course he arrived at Vesali, the capital city of the Licchavis. The Buddha spent
that rainy season not in the park in Vesali, which had just been donated to him by
Ambapali, the celebrated courtesan of that city, but in an adjoining village called Beluva.
There the Buddha became seriously ill. He thought, however, that it was not right for
him to die without preparing his disciples, who were dear to him. Thus, with courage,
determination, and will, he bore all his pains, got the better of his illness, and recovered;
but his health was still poor.
After the Buddha's recovery, Ananda, his most devoted attendant, went to his beloved
Master and said:
Lord, I have looked after the health of the Blessed One. I have looked after him in his
illness. But at the sight of his illness, the horizon became dim to me, and my faculties
were no longer clear. Yet there was one little consolation: I thought the Blessed One
would not pass away until he had left instructions concerning the Order of the Sangha.
The Buddha, full of compassion and feeling, replied:
Ananda, what does the Order of the Sangha expect from me? I have taught the
dhamma without making any distinction as to exoteric and esoteric. With regard to the
Truth, the Tathagata has nothing like the closed fist of a teacher' (acariya-mutthi), who
keeps something back. Surely, Ananda, if there is anyone who thinks that he will lead
the sangha and that the sangha should depend on him, let him set down his
instructions. But the Tathagata has no such idea. Why should he then leave
instructions concerning the sangha? I am old now, Ananda . . . eighty years old. As a
worn-out cart has to be kept going by repairs, so, it seems to me, the body of the
Tathagata can only be kept going by repairs. . . . Therefore, Ananda, dwell by making
yourselves your island, making yourselves, not anyone else, your refuge; making the
dhamma your island, the dhamma your refuge, nothing else your refuge.
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Later the Buddha told Ananda that he had decided to die after three months and asked
him to assemble in the hall at Mahavana all the monks who were at that time residing in
the neighbourhood of Vesali. At this meeting, the Buddha advised the monks to follow
what he had taught them and to spread it abroad for the good of the many, out of
compassion for the world. He then announced that he had decided to die after three
months.
Leaving Vesali, the Buddha gazed at the city in which he had stayed on many
occasions and said: "This will be the last time, Ananda, that the Tathagata will behold
Vesali. Come, Ananda, let us proceed."
Stopping at several villages and townships, the Buddha eventually arrived at Pava and
stayed in the park of Cunda the goldsmith, who was already one of his devoted
followers. At his invitation the Buddha and the monks went to his house for a meal.
Cunda had prepared, besides various delicacies, a dish called sukara-maddava. This is
interpreted in the ancient Pali commentaries in several ways: (1) as pork (this is
generally accepted), (2) as bamboo sprouts trodden by pigs, (3) as a kind of mushroom
growing in a spot trodden by pigs, (4) as a rice pudding rich with the essence of milk, or
(5) as a special preparation (an elixir?) intended by Cunda to prolong the Buddha's life.
Whatever it might have been, the Buddha asked Cunda to serve him with
sukara-maddava and to serve the bhikkhus with other dishes. At the end of the meal,
the Buddha requested Cunda to bury in a hole whatever was left of the
sukara-maddava, saying that only a Tathagata would be able to assimilate it. This was
the Buddha's last meal.
After it the Buddha became sick and suffered violent pains but bore them without
complaint. He set out for Kusinara, accompanied by Ananda and other monks.
Explaining that he was tired, he stopped and rested in two places. On the way, the
Buddha said to Ananda:
Now it may happen, Ananda, that someone should stir up remorse in Cunda by saying
that the Tathagata died after eating his meal. Any such remorse in Cunda should be
dispelled. Tell him, Ananda, that you heard directly from my mouth that there are two
offerings of food which are of equal fruit, of equal profit: the offering of food before the
Enlightenment and the offering of food before the Parinibbana (the passing away) of a
Tathagata. Tell him that he has done a good deed. In this way Ananda, you should
dispel any possible remorse in Cunda.
The Buddha arrived at Kusinara (the modern Kasia, known in Sanskrit as Kusinagara)
toward evening, and, on a couch between two sal trees in the park Upavattana of the
Mallas, he "laid himself down on his right side, with one leg resting on the other, mindful
and self-possessed." This was the full-moon day of the month of Vesakha (May).
Ananda asked the Buddha what they should do with his remains. He told Ananda they
should not occupy themselves with honoring the remains of the Tathagata but should
rather be zealous in their own spiritual development. The lay devotees, he said, would
busy themselves with the remains.
Ananda left the immediate area and cried out: "My Master is about to pass away from
me--he who is so kind to me." The Buddha inquired where Ananda was and, on being
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told that he was weeping, called to him and said: "No, Ananda, don't weep. Haven't I
already told you that separation is inevitable from all near and dear to us? Whatever is
born, produced, conditioned, contains within itself the nature of its own dissolution. It
cannot be otherwise." Then, the Master spoke to the monks in praise of Ananda's
wonderful qualities and abilities. The Mallas, in whose realm Kusinara was located,
came with their families to pay homage to the Blessed One. A wandering ascetic
named Subhadda asked for permission to see the Buddha, but Ananda refused, saying
that the Blessed One was tired and that he should not be troubled. The Buddha,
overhearing the conversation, called Ananda and asked him to allow Subhadda to see
him. After an interview with the Buddha, Subhadda joined the order the same night,
thus becoming his last direct disciple.
The Buddha then addressed Ananda:
It may be, Ananda, that to some of you the thought may come: Here we have the Word
of the Master who is gone; our Master we have with us no more.' But, Ananda, it should
not be considered in this light. What I have taught and laid down, Ananda, as Dhamma
(Truth, Doctrine) and as Vinaya (Discipline), this will be your Master when I am gone. . .
. If the sangha wish it, Ananda, let them, when I am gone, abolish lesser and minor
precepts (rules).
The Buddha next addressed the monks and requested them three times to ask him if
they had any doubt or question that they wished clarified, but they all remained silent.
The Buddha then addressed the monks: "Then, bhikkhus, I address you now: transient
are all conditioned things. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence." These were the
last words of the Tathagata. A week later, his body was cremated by the Mallas in
Kusinara.
A dispute over the relics of the Buddha arose between the Mallas and the delegates of
rulers of several kingdoms, such as Magadha, Vesali, and Kapilavatthu. It was settled
by a venerable old Brahman named Dona on the basis that they should not quarrel over
the relics of one who preached peace. With common consent, the relics were then
divided into eight portions to the satisfaction of all. Stupas were built over these relics,
and feasts were held commemorating the Buddha.
Assessment of the personality and character of the Buddha
According to the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha was a very handsome man. Canki, a
highly respected Brahman leader, is reported to have said that "the recluse Gotama is
lovely, good to look upon, charming, possessed of the greatest beauty of complexion,
of a sublime color, a perfect stature, noble of presence." Buddhists came to envision
(and later represent) him as one endowed with the 32 bodily characteristics of a
mahapurusa ("great person").
He had a unique reputation as a superb teacher. His conversion and taming of
Angulimala, a murderer and bandit who was a terror even to Pasenadi, the king of
Kosala, is put forward as an example of his great powers and abilities. People who went
to see and hear him were fascinated and were so quickly converted to his new teaching
that his opponents described him as having some "enticing trick." King Pasenadi is
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reported to have said that those who went with the idea of confounding the Buddha in
debate became his disciples at the end. Full of compassion and wisdom, he is
recognized as knowing how and what to teach individual people for their own benefit
according to the level of their capabilities.
The Buddha, affectionate and devoted to his disciples, was always inquiring after their
well-being and progress. When he was staying in a monastery, he paid daily visits to
the sick ward. Once, he himself attended a sick monk neglected by others and made
the comment that "he who attends on the sick attends on me."
The Buddha refused to recognize the religious significance of the caste system that
was a long-established and respected institution in India and recognized the religious
potential of men and women of all social ranks. He also recognized the connection
between economic welfare and moral development. Trying to suppress crime through
punishment, he said, was futile. Poverty, according to the Buddha, was a cause of
immorality and crime; therefore, the economic condition of people should be improved.
He appreciated both natural and physical beauty. On several occasions he was moved
aesthetically, as he told Ananda how delightful certain places were to him. At Vesali he
told the monks that, if they had not seen the devas (gods) of Tavatimsa (Heaven), they
should look at the handsome Licchavis, beautifully and elegantly dressed in different
colors.
King Pasenadi could not understand how the Buddha maintained such order and
discipline in the community of monks, when he, a king, with the power to inflict
punishment, could not maintain it as well in his court. The Buddha, however, kept order
and discipline on the basis of a mutual love, affection, and respect that exists between
teacher and pupil.
Many miraculous powers were attributed to the Buddha, and he performed a number of
miracles during his ministry. At the same time, however, he did not consider magical
powers to be of primary importance. Once, when one of his disciples performed a
miracle in public, the Buddha reproached him and laid down a rule that his disciples
should not perform miracles before the laity. In his view, the greatest miracle was to
explain the truth and to make people recognize its importance.
Behind his philosophy and strict ethics, the Buddha had a quiet sense of humor. A
conceited Brahman, who was in the habit of denigrating others, questioned him as to
the qualities of a true Brahman. In a list of such high qualities as freedom from evil and
purity of heart, the Buddha gently included "not denigrating others."
The portrait of the Buddha, as can be inferred from the lines of the ancient texts, is thus
one of a man of great wisdom and great compassion, one who was moved by the
spectacle of human suffering and was determined to teach his fellow human beings
how that suffering could be confronted and overcome.
(Wa.R./F.E.R.)
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Bibliography
A short but helpful introduction for those new to Buddhism is Michael Carrithers, The
Buddha (1983). A more extensive treatment that is based on artistic as well as textual
evidence is provided in Alfred Foucher, La Vie du Bouddha (1949), available also in an
abridged English translation, The Life of the Buddha (1963, reissued 1972); it may be
supplemented by his Les Vies antérieures du Bouddha (1955), a survey of the
Buddha's previous lives. An excellent though technical study of the earliest sources is
André Bareau, Recherches sur la biographie du Buddha dans les Sutrapitaka et les
Vinayapitaka anciens, 2 vol. in 3 (1963-70).
In addition to works on the Buddha Gotama, readers may wish to consult three
important books on related topics: Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist
Sanskrit Literature (1932, reissued 1978), a classic; Marie-Thérèse De Mallmann,
Introduction à l'étude d'Avalokiteçvara (1948, reissued 1967); and Alan Sponberg and
Helen Hardacre (eds.), Maitreya, the Future Buddha (1988).
(F.E.R.)
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Before I continue with my listing of the Humanist Collective, I have to say that the sixth,
fifth, and fourth centuries before the common era have to be noted as producing the
most famous of the metasapient level people working for human betterment.
Every century has many fully integrated personalities, all over the world, working for that
same end as you will see. But the concentration of fully integrated personalities who
reached undying fame, in these three hundred years, and the vast importance of their
efforts are unparalleled. It is particularly impressive that so many of them were to be
found in the greater Hellenic culture. When one stops to think that Lao Tzu, Confucius,
Gautama The Buddha, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and this large
number of enormously great Hellenic philosophers all lived and walked the earth at
nearly the same time, it’s more than slightly impressive.
While you know I am saying that the metasapient and hyper-metasapient live, and have
lived, in probably equal numbers all through recorded Human History, and probably
before the “recording” part began, there is no when else in history that I can find so
many who achieved absolutely universal undying fame. The only period that
approaches this is the eighteenth century (“The Age of Enlightenment”) and perhaps
also the Renaissance. But they only “approach” they do not equal.
Now let us continue with our listing of Hellenic members of the Humanist Collective,
who might also be accurately described as “world servers” or “shepherds of mankind” in
this awesome period:
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Heracleitus of Ephesus
(535 - 475 B.C.E.) Born Prince of Ephesus he surrendered his succession rights to his
younger brother to pursue a life of philosophy. His most famous teaching is this: “The
most important thing for man is that the LOGOS=FIRE, the universal formula of things through which all natural events occur, and which all men should seek to assimilate”. To
Heracleitus “SOUL = FIRE. Now if we equate “fire” with “energy” which is an obvious
thing to do, Heracleitus of Ephesus was not at all far from what modern Quantum
Theory teaches. This is the kind of thing these people do, they explain abstract reality
to humans in terms the humans can comprehend.
And here is the Britannica’s “take” on him:
also spelled HERACLITUS (b. c. 540 BC, Ephesus, in Anatolia--d. c. 480), Greek
philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material
principle of an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book he
apparently wrote is lost. His views survive in the short fragments quoted and attributed
to him by later authors.
Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world around him,
Heracleitus also stressed the need for men to live together in social harmony. He
complained that most men failed to comprehend the logos (Greek: "reason"), the
universal principle through which all things are interrelated and all natural events occur,
and thus lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. A significant manifestation of
the logos, Heracleitus claimed, is the underlying connection between opposites. For
example, health and disease define each other. Good and evil, hot and cold, and other
opposites are similarly related. In addition, he noted that a single substance may be
perceived in varied ways--seawater is both harmful (for men) and beneficial (for fishes).
His understanding of the relation of opposites to each other enabled him to overcome
the chaotic and divergent nature of the world, and he asserted that the world exists as a
coherent system in which a change in one direction is ultimately balanced by a
corresponding change in another. Between all things there is a hidden connection, so
that those that are apparently "tending apart" are actually "being brought together."
Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all things, Heracleitus wrote that the world
order is an "ever-living fire kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures."
He extended the manifestations of fire to include not only fuel, flame, and smoke but
also the ether in the upper atmosphere. Part of this air, or pure fire, "turns to" ocean,
presumably as rain, and part of the ocean turns to earth. Simultaneously, equal masses
of earth and sea everywhere are returning to the respective aspects of sea and fire.
The resulting dynamic equilibrium maintains an orderly balance in the world. This
persistence of unity despite change is illustrated by Heracleitus' famous analogy of life
to a river: "Upon those who step into the same rivers different and ever different waters
flow down." Plato later took this doctrine to mean that all things are in constant flux,
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regardless of how they appear to the senses.
Heracleitus was unpopular in his time and was frequently scorned by later biographers.
His primary contribution lies in his apprehension of the formal unity of the world of
experience.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
born: Clazomenae, Ionia 500 B.C.E., died: Lampsacus, Mysia, 428 B.C.E. a disciple of
ANAXIMANDER, he resided for a long while at Athens.
Anaxagoras was a Philosopher. Mystae, Teacher of: Socrates, Euripides,
Thucydides and Pericles (among others). If a person can be judged by their works,
and a teacher by their students, then Anaxagoras was really something very special, at
least three of his students were major integrated personalities. He was banished from
Athens for impiety ( a hallmark of the integrated personality).
He was the first Greek philosopher to introduce the concept of intelligence (reasonnous) as a metaphysical principle in the explanation of physical reality and the nature of
the Human condition in the context of that reality. He regarded intelligence
(consciousness) not as creative but as regulative, as that which brought order out of the
original chaos. Only fragments of his writings survive which is unfortunate because he
was a very important teacher philosopher of the Human race. The Britannica views him
thusly
(b. c. 500 BC, Clazomenae, Anatolia [now in Turkey]--d. c. 428, Lampsacus), Greek
philosopher of nature remembered for his cosmology and for his discovery of the true
cause of eclipses. He was associated with the Athenian statesman Pericles.
About 480 Anaxagoras moved to Athens, then becoming the centre of Greek culture,
and brought from Ionia the new practice of philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry.
After 30 years' residence in Athens, he was prosecuted on a charge of impiety for
asserting that the Sun is an incandescent stone somewhat larger than the region of the
Peloponnese. The attack on him was intended as an indirect blow at Pericles, and,
although Pericles managed to save him, Anaxagoras was compelled to leave Athens.
He spent his last years in retirement at Lampsacus.
Only a few fragments of Anaxagoras' writings have been preserved, and several
different interpretations of his work have been made. The basic features, however, are
clear. His cosmology grows out of the efforts of earlier Greek thinkers who had tried to
explain the physical universe by an assumption of a single fundamental element.
Parmenides, however, asserted that such an assumption could not account for
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movement and change, and, whereas Empedocles sought to resolve this difficulty by
positing four basic ingredients, Anaxagoras posited an infinite number. Unlike his
predecessors, who had chosen such elements as heat or water as the basic substance,
Anaxagoras included those found in living bodies, such as flesh, bone, bark, and leaf.
Otherwise, he asked, how could flesh come from what is not flesh? He also accounted
for biological changes, in which substances appear under new manifestations: as men
eat and drink, flesh, bone, and hair grow. In order to explain the great amount and
diversity of change, he said that "there is a portion of every thing, i.e., of every
elemental stuff, in every thing," but "each is and was most manifestly those things of
which there is most in it."
The most original aspect of Anaxagoras' system was his doctrine of nous ("mind," or
"reason"). The cosmos was formed by mind in two stages: first, by a revolving and
mixing process that still continues; and, second, by the development of living things. In
the first, all of "the dark" came together to form the night, "the fluid" came together to
form the oceans, and so on with other elements. The same process of attraction of "like
to like" occurred in the second stage, when flesh and other elements were brought
together by mind in large amounts. This stage took place by means of animal and plant
seeds inherent in the original mixture. The growth of living things, according to
Anaxagoras, depends on the power of mind within the organisms that enables them to
extract nourishment from surrounding substances. For this concept of mind,
Anaxagoras was commended by Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle, however, objected
that his notion of mind did not include a view that mind acts ethically--i.e., acts for the
"best interests" of the universe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
J. Zafiropulo, Anaxagore de Clazomène (1948); F.M. Cleve, Philosophy of Anaxagoras
(1949).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
PARMENIDES OF ELEA
(active. C. 515 B.C.E.) Called “The First Monist”. Aristotle regarded Parmenides as
one of the principle founders of the field of metaphysics. He believed that “absolute
reality” has always existed, and remains forever, unchangeable, immobile, occupying
the whole of space.” He wrote his opinions in a didactic poem called “Nature”. His
central thought is the Unity and Permanence of Being; there is no “not-Being” or
change. He founded the philosophical school called “The Eleatic School”. I find his
philosophy very congenial with certain reservations all based on the question what is
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meant by “change”?
Here’s what Britannica has to say:
(b. c. 515 BC), Greek philosopher of Elea in southern Italy who founded Eleaticism, one
of the leading pre-Socratic schools of Greek thought. His general teaching has been
diligently reconstructed from the few surviving fragments of his principal work, a lengthy
three-part verse composition titled On Nature.
Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion,
are but an appearance of a single eternal reality ("Being"), thus giving rise to the
Parmenidean principle that "all is one." From this concept of Being, he went on to say
that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical. Because he introduced the
method of basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of Being, he is
considered one of the founders of metaphysics.
Plato's dialogue the Parmenides deals with his thought. An English translation of his
work was edited by L. Tarán (1965).
THE RIGOROUS ONTOLOGISM OF PARMENIDES AND MELISSUS
For a long time Xenophanes of Colophon, a religious thinker and rhapsode of the
6th-5th century BC, was considered the founder of the Eleatic school and Parmenides'
mentor. This ancient claim, however, has been successfully criticized by Reinhardt. It is
even possible that, on the contrary, Xenophanes was an older pupil of Parmenides. In
any case, his monistic view of a cosmic God, whom he may have equated
pantheistically with Being itself, was Eleatic in its contention that God is one and
ungenerated, that his seeing, thinking, and hearing are equally all-pervading (i.e., he is
not a composite), and that he "always remains in the same place, not moving at all."
Parmenides' poem Peri physeos ("On Nature") is divided into three parts: (1) a proem
(preface), in which his chariot ride through the heavens to the very seat of the goddess
Aletheia (Truth) is described and their initial conversation is related, in which she
announces that he is "to learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth
and also what seems to mortals, in which is no true conviction"; (2) the "Way of Truth,"
the main part, in which the real and unique Being is depicted; and (3) the "Way of
Opinion" (or Seeming), in which the empirical world--i.e., the single things as they
appear every day to every man--is presented.
Logical and linguistic approach.
Thus, at the very heart of Parmenides' philosophy lies the distinction made by the
goddess (in Fragment 2) between the two "ways of research." As noted earlier, the first
is the antinomy (or paradox) of those who think and say that everything is Being and
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who shun all assertions of Non-Being; and the second is that of those who think and
say that something is in a way and is not in another way--that a book is a book, for
example, and not a table. There is, however, also a third way that is far more erroneous
and fallacious than the second: that of Heracleitus, who acknowledged, just as
Parmenides did, the ontological antinomy of is and is not but reversed it, holding that
the real way of understanding things is to grasp their essential contradiction, their
intrinsic opposition to everything else. In this view, one must say that to be a table is
also not to be just a table and that to be a chair is not to be just a chair but to be also a
table, because not only opposite things but also things that are merely different are
bound to each other. Thus, life is death to Heracleitus, death is life, and justice would
be meaningless if it had no injustice to defeat.
In essence, then, the possible ways are three: (1) that of renouncing all contradictions
whatsoever (truth); (2) that of contradicting oneself relatively (seeming); and (3) that of
contradicting oneself completely and absolutely (Heracleitus). And Eleaticism chose the
first, the absolutely non-contradictory way that says that only what is, Being, is really
true.
Not-Being, in fact, can neither be recognized nor expressed, for, as Parmenides then
added, "for the same thing can be thought and can exist." And--if one may guess at the
words (now lost) that probably followed--what-is-not you can neither know nor say; thus,
to think is indeed the same as to say that what you think is. To this coalescence of
existing reality and the intellectual grasping of it, Parmenides also added the linguistic
communication of such knowledge. Each way of research, in fact, is at the same time a
way of speculation and a way of diction; i.e., both a way of searching for truth with one's
mental eyes and of expressing it in words. The primal source of the Eleatic philosophy
thus lies in the archaic sense of language, according to which one cannot pronounce
"yes" and "no" without deciding about the reality or unreality of the objects of the
statements. Thus, "yes," or "is," becomes the name of the truth; and "no," or "it is not,"
becomes that of its opposite.
This Eleatic principle may be illustrated by a passage from Aeschylus, a leading Greek
dramatist, who, in his Hepta epi Thebais (Eng. trans., Seven Against Thebes), judged it
very appropriate that Helen would have destroyed Troy, because her name--naïvely
derived from helein ("destroy") and naus ("ship")--marked her as a destroyer of ships.
Here nomen est omen: the language is not merely a symbol; it corresponds to reality in
its very structure. Thus, the Eleatic could not imagine a truth that is only expressible but
not thinkable nor one that is only thinkable but not expressible.
Monistic theory of Being.
From the premise of the essential coalescence of language and reality follows
Parmenides' theory of Being, which comprises the heart of his philosophy. The only true
reality is Eon--pure, eternal, immutable, and indestructible Being, without any other
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qualification. Its characterizations can be only negative, expressions of exclusions, with
no pretense of attributing some special quality to the reality of which one speaks.
In Fragment 8, verse 5, Parmenides said that the absolute Being "neither was nor will
be, because it is in its wholeness now, and only now." Thus, its presence lasts
untouched by any variation in time; for no one can find a genesis for it, either from
another being (for it is itself already the totality of Being) or from a Not-Being (for this
does not exist at all).
Obviously, this Parmenidean conception of the eternal presence of the Being conflicts
with Melissus' idea of the perpetual continuation of the Being in the past, in the present,
and in the future. Thus, if Eleaticism had been founded by Melissus, no one could have
really understood its actual doctrine. One could suspect in it only an aspiration to have
things capable of being really enduring. But even then the theory would hardly be
understandable, because what one wants is not stable things in general; one wants
good things to be firm and stable and bad things to be ephemeral. The perpetual
continuity of existence as espoused by Melissus was despised by Parmenides just
because "will be" and "has been" are not the same as "is." Only "is" is the word of the
reality--just because it is the right name for the right thinking of the right Being.
Among the consequences of this Eleatic conception is the rejection of every change
(birth, movement, growth, death) as pertaining only to the second-rate reality, which is
known and expressed through the second "way of research." Thus, the true and noncontradictory reality is extraneous to all of those happenings, great or small, that make
the constant stuff of all history.
Secondly, the real Being has no difference, no lack, no variety whatsoever in itself.
Melissus is here the true pupil of Parmenides, who said that the Eon is so closely
connected in itself that "all Being is neighbour of all Being": for Melissus developed this
theory by the negation of every form of kenon ("void"): the Being is an absolute plenum
just because every lack in its plentifulness would amount to a presence of some
Not-Being.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Next, I want to mention a man who proves it wasn’t happening only in Greece, for there
was an important Roman at this early date who, because of his dual interests in
education and language, added a great deal to the base of Human Knowledge. His
name was:
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CARVILIUS, SPURIUS:
(fl. Approx 520 B.C.E.)
A freedman, noted for establishing the first public school in Rome, and as the man who
arranged the Roman Alphabet in its final form. This is certainly someone who qualifies
and an extender of human knowledge. One need only stop for a moment and consider
the importance of these two things to see how this man fits into this list. For without
education knowledge is irrelevant and without language there can be neither knowledge
nor education. In fact without clear communication there can be no civilization worth the
name.
Now I’ve come to the 5th century B.C.E. I’ll start with :
LEUCIPPUS OF MILETUS:
(fl. 5th century BC, probably at Miletus, on the west coast of Asia Minor), Greek
philosopher credited by Aristotle and by Theophrastus with having originated the theory
of atomism. It has been difficult to distinguish his contribution from that of his most
famous pupil, Democritus. Only fragments of Leucippus' writings remain, but two works
believed to have been written by him are The Great World System and On the Mind.
His theory stated that matter is homogeneous but consists of an infinity of small
indivisible particles. These atoms are constantly in motion, and through their collisions
and regroupings form various compounds. A cosmos is formed by the collision of atoms
that gather together into a "whirl," and the drum-shaped Earth is located in the centre of
man's cosmos.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA:
(470 - 380 B.C.E.)
Called “the laughing philosopher”, Democritus was the most important Greek Physical
Philosopher. He perfected the theories of Atomism of his teacher Leucippus. He
studied in Egypt and Persia and was an initiate in all the mysteries. He wrote widely on
many philosophical and scientific subjects and his style was equal to Plato’s. Style is
not an insignificant factor! It is quite probable that it was Plato’s superior style of writing
that helped him to attain the status he has.
(b. c. 460 BC--d. c. 370), Greek philosopher, a central figure in the development of the
atomic theory of the universe.
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Knowledge of Democritus' life is largely limited to untrustworthy tradition: it seems that
he was a wealthy citizen of Abdera, in Thrace; that he traveled widely in the East; and
that he lived to a great age. According to Diogenes Laërtius, his works numbered 73;
only a few hundred fragments have survived, mostly from his treatises on ethics.
Democritus' physical and cosmological doctrines were an elaborated and systematized
version of those of his teacher, Leucippus. To account for the world's changing physical
phenomena, Democritus asserted that space, or the Void, had an equal right with
reality, or Being, to be considered existent. He conceived of the Void as a vacuum, an
infinite space in which moved an infinite number of atoms that made up Being (i.e., the
physical world). These atoms are eternal and invisible; absolutely small, so small that
their size cannot be diminished (hence the name atomon, or "indivisible"); absolutely full
and incompressible, as they are without pores and entirely fill the space they occupy;
and homogeneous, differing only in shape, arrangement, position, and magnitude. But,
while atoms thus differ in quantity, differences of quality are only apparent, owing to the
impressions caused on our senses by different configurations and combinations of
atoms. A thing is hot or cold, sweet or bitter, or hard or soft only by convention; the only
things that exist in reality are atoms and the Void. Thus, the atoms of water and iron are
the same, but those of water, being smooth and round and therefore unable to hook
onto one another, roll over and over like small globes, whereas those of iron, being
rough, jagged, and uneven, cling together and form a solid body. Because all
phenomena are composed of the same eternal atoms, it may be said that nothing
comes into being or perishes in the absolute sense of the words, although the
compounds made out of the atoms are liable to increase and decrease, explaining a
thing's appearance and disappearance, or "birth" and "death."
Just as the atoms are uncaused and eternal, so too, according to Democritus, is
motion. Democritus posited the fixed and "necessary" laws of a purely mechanical
system, in which there was no room for an intelligent cause working with a view to an
end. He explained the origin of the universe as follows. The original motion of the atoms
was in all directions--it was a sort of "vibration"; hence there resulted collisions and, in
particular, a whirling movement, whereby similar atoms were brought together and
united to form larger bodies and worlds. This happened not as the result of any purpose
or design but rather merely as the result of "necessity"; i.e., it is the normal
manifestation of the nature of the atoms themselves. Atoms and void being infinite in
number and extent, and motion having always existed, there must always have been an
infinite number of worlds, all consisting of similar atoms in various stages of growth and
decay.
Democritus devoted considerable attention to perception and knowledge. He asserted,
for example, that sensations are changes produced in the soul by atoms emitted from
other objects that impinge on it; the atoms of the soul can be affected only by the
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contact of other atoms. But sensations such as sweet and bitter are not as such
inherent in the emitted atoms, for they result from effects caused merely by the size and
shape of the atoms; e.g., sweet taste is due to round and not excessively small atoms.
Democritus also was the first to attempt to explain color, which he thought was due to
the "position" (which he differentiated from shape) of the constituent atoms of
compounds. The sensation of white, for instance, is caused by atoms that are smooth
and flat so as to cast no shadow; the sensation of black is caused by rough, uneven
atoms.
Democritus attributed popular belief in the gods to a desire to explain extraordinary
phenomena (thunder, lightning, earthquakes) by reference to superhuman agency. His
ethical system, founded on a practical basis, posited an ultimate good ("cheerfulness")
that was "a state in which the soul lives peacefully and tranquilly, undisturbed by fear or
superstition or any other feeling."
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
ATOMISM:
(from Greek atoma, "things that cannot be cut, or divided"), the philosophical doctrine
that explains complex phenomena in terms of aggregates of fixed unitary factors, and
the scientific view that the material universe is composed of relatively simple and
immutable particles too minute to be visible. The various visible forms in nature are thus
traced to differences in these particles and their configurations.
A brief treatment of atomism follows. For full treatment, see Philosophical Schools and
Doctrines, Western: Atomism.
In order to understand the historical development of atomism and, especially, its
relation with modern atomic theory, one must distinguish between atomism in the strict
sense and other forms of atomism. Atomism in the strict sense, as propounded by the
Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th century BC, should be
regarded as an attempt to reconcile with the data of sensory experience the thesis of
Parmenides that matter is unchangeable. Parmenides rejected the possibility of change
on rational grounds; change seemed to him to be unintelligible.
Democritus agreed with Parmenides on the unintelligibility and impossibility of
qualitative change but did not agree with him on the impossibility of quantitative change.
This type of change, he maintained, is subject to mathematical reasoning and
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therefore possible. By the same token, Democritus denied the qualitative
multiplicity of visible forms but accepted a multiplicity based on purely quantitative
differences. Consequently, the only differences between atoms, according to
Democritus, must consist in their size and figure. The infinite variety of
observable things could be explained by the different shapes and sizes of the
atoms that constituted them and by the different ways in which the atoms were
combined. Observable changes were based on a change in combinations of the
atoms. During such combinations or separations, however, the atoms themselves
remained intrinsically unchanged.
Other forms of atomism differed from that conceived by Democritus mainly in two
points. First, some atomists, notably Anaxagoras, did not restrict the differences
between the atoms to purely quantitative ones but accepted also differences in
quality. Secondly, some atomists regarded atoms as divisible, whereas
Democritus had regarded them as indivisible.
In Greek philosophy there were also transitions between qualitative and
quantitative forms of atomism. Plato characterized the atoms of the four elements
by different mathematical forms. Examples of qualitative atomism, based upon
the doctrine of the four elements, are also found in Indian philosophy.
In evaluating the importance of Greek atomism in the light of modern atomic
theories, it should be borne in mind that in Greek thought philosophy and science
still formed a unity. Greek atomism, then, was inspired as much by the desire to
find a solution for the problems of mutability and plurality in nature as by the
desire to provide scientific explanations for specific phenomena. While it is true
that some of the Greek atomists' ideas can rightly be considered as precursors of
later physics, the main importance of the old atomistic doctrine for modern
science does not lie in these primitive scientific anticipations. The great
achievement of the Greek atomists was that they took a general view of nature as
a whole, which made a scientific attitude possible. To this both the quantitative
and the qualitative atomism contributed, the former by drawing attention to the
mathematical aspects of the problem, the latter by drawing attention to the
empirical.
While Democritus' influence was eclipsed by that of Aristotle, there were a few
adherents of Democritean atomism in later times, notably Epicurus and the
Roman poet Lucretius, whose De rerum natura ("On the Nature of Things") of
about 60 BC constitutes one of the most exhaustive extant accounts of the
theory. The general tenets of atomism were revived under the influence of Arabic
217
philosophers during the medieval period and Pierre Gassendi and others in the
17th century. The concept of monads proposed by G.W. Leibniz about 1695
reflects the influence of atomism on other philosophical systems.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
ZENO:
(c. 495 BC-c. 430 BC), Greek philosopher and mathematician, whom Aristotle called
the inventor of dialectic. He is especially known for his paradoxes that contributed to the
development of logical and mathematical rigor and that were insoluble until the
development of precise concepts of continuity and infinity.
Zeno was famous for the paradoxes whereby, in order to recommend the Parmenidean
doctrine of the existence of "the one" (i.e., indivisible reality), he sought to controvert the
common-sense belief in the existence of "the many" (i.e., distinguishable qualities and
things capable of motion). Zeno was the son of a certain Teleutagoras and the pupil
and friend of Parmenides. In Plato's Parmenides, Socrates, "then very young,"
converses with Parmenides and Zeno, "a man of about forty"; but it may be doubted
whether such a meeting was chronologically possible. Plato's account of Zeno's
purpose (Parmenides), however, is presumably accurate. In reply to those who thought
that Parmenides' theory of the existence of "the one" involved inconsistencies, Zeno
tried to show that the assumption of the existence of a plurality of things in time and
space carried with it more serious inconsistencies. In early youth he collected his
arguments in a book, which, according to Plato, was put into circulation without his
knowledge.
Zeno made use of three premises: first, that any unit has magnitude; second, that it is
infinitely divisible; and third, that it is indivisible. Yet he incorporated arguments for
each: for the first premise, he argued that that which, added to or subtracted from
something else, does not increase or decrease the second unit is nothing; for the
second, that a unit, being one, is homogeneous and that therefore, if divisible, it cannot
be divisible at one point rather than another; for the third, that a unit, if divisible, is
divisible either into extended minima, which contradicts the second premise or, because
of the first premise, into nothing. He had in his hands a very powerful complex
argument in the form of a dilemma, one horn of which supposed indivisibility, the other
infinite divisibility, both leading to a contradiction of the original hypothesis. His method
had great influence and may be summarized as follows: he continued Parmenides'
abstract, analytic manner but started from his opponents' theses and refuted them by
reductio ad absurdum. It was probably the two latter characteristics which Aristotle had
in mind when he called him the inventor of dialectic.
That Zeno was arguing against actual opponents, Pythagoreans who believed in a
plurality composed of numbers that were thought of as extended units, is a matter of
controversy. It is not likely that any mathematical implications received attention in his
218
lifetime. But in fact the logical problems which his paradoxes raise about a
mathematical continuum are serious, fundamental, and inadequately solved by
Aristotle. See also paradoxes of Zeno.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
PROTAGORAS OF ABDERA:
(490-411 B.C.E.)
The Founder of Sophism. Protagoras was driven from Athens on a charge of atheism
because of his book; “ON THE GODS” which was publicly burned by Athens’’s
executioner. Protagoras is best known and remembered for his dictum: “Man is the
measure of all things; of those which are, that they are; of those which are not, that they
are not.”
This is what the Britannica has to say about him:
(b. c. 485 BC, Abdera, Greece--d. c. 410), thinker and teacher, the first and most
famous of the Greek Sophists.
Protagoras spent most of his life at Athens, where he considerably influenced
contemporary thought on moral and political questions. Plato named one of his
dialogues after him. Protagoras taught as a Sophist for more than 40 years, claiming to
teach men "virtue" in the conduct of their daily lives. He is best known for his dictum
"Man is the measure of all things," probably an expression of the relativity to the
individual of all perceptions and, according to some, of all judgments as well. He
acquired great wealth and reputation from his teaching, prompting his appointment as
lawgiver for the Athenian colony of Thurii in Italy. Though he adopted conventional
moral ideas, Protagoras expressed his agnostic attitude toward belief in the gods in
Concerning the Gods. He was accused of impiety, his books were publicly burned, and
he was exiled from Athens about 415 BC for the rest of his life.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
EMPEDOCLES OF ACRAGAS:
(Born: Sicily: Agrigentum, fl. 493-422 B.C.E.)
Poet(very great), Orator (considered the inventor of Rhetoric), statesman, GuruMagician, Founder of the Sicilian School of Medicine, Follower of Pythagoras and
Parmenides of Elea.
Let’s turn once again to Britannica for the ‘official’ story:
219
(b. c. 490 BC, Acragas, Sicily--d. 430, the Peloponnese, Greece), Greek philosopher,
statesman, poet, religious teacher, and physiologist.
According to legend only, Empedocles was a self-styled god who brought about his
own death, as dramatized by the English poet Matthew Arnold in "Empedocles on
Etna," by flinging himself into the volcanic crater atop Mount Etna to convince followers
of his divinity. To his contemporaries he did indeed seem more than a mere mortal;
Aristotle reputedly hailed him as the inventor of rhetoric, and Galen regarded him as the
founder of Italian medicine. Lucretius admired his hexametric poetry. Nothing remains
of the various writings attributed to him other than 400 lines from his poem Peri
physeos ("On Nature") and fewer than 100 verses from his poem Katharmoi
("Purifications").
Although strongly influenced by Parmenides, who emphasized the unity of all things,
Empedocles assumed instead that all matter was composed of four essential
ingredients, fire, air, water, and earth, and that nothing either comes into being or is
destroyed but that things are merely transformed, depending on the ratio of basic
substances, to one another. Like Heracleitus, he believed that two forces, Love and
Strife, interact to bring together and to separate the four substances. Strife makes each
of these elements withdraw itself from the others; Love makes them mingle together.
The real world is at a stage in which neither force dominates. In the beginning, Love
was dominant and all four substances were mixed together; during the formation of the
cosmos, Strife entered to separate air, fire, earth, and water from one another.
Subsequently, the four elements were again arranged in partial combinations in certain
places; springs and volcanoes, for example, show the presence of both water and fire
in the Earth.
Apparently a firm believer in the transmigration of souls, Empedocles declared that
those who have sinned must wander for 30,000 seasons through many mortal bodies
and be tossed from one of the four elements to another. Escape from such punishment
requires purification, particularly abstention from the flesh of animals, whose souls may
once have inhabited human bodies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Clara Elizabeth Millerd (Clara Elizabeth Millerd Smertenko), On the Interpretation of
Empedocles (1908, reprinted 1980).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another disciple of PARMENIDES was:
MELISSUS OF SAMOS:
220
(fl. 5th century BC), Greek philosopher who was the last significant member of the
Eleatic school of philosophy, which adhered to Parmenides' doctrine of reality as a
single, unchanging whole. Although Melissus defended Parmenides, he differed from
him in that he held reality to be boundless and of infinite duration (having a past and a
present). He is also known as the commander of the Samian fleet, which was victorious
over the Athenians in 441/440 BC.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now I come to another Greek of this period, HERODOTUS (c. 480 -425 B.C.E.)
Who was also the “inventor” of a major academic discipline, History. He is known to us
by two contradictory names. “The Father of History” and “The Father of Lies”. He was
actually “The Father of History”, but became known as “The Father of Lies” because of
the ignorance of his contemporaries and successors. He was a Mystae, and had
experienced the mysteries in the Greek Mystery Schools as well as the Egyptian and
Persian, but in his case what is interesting is that he was also a Mystae in the Druidic
Mysteries of the Keltoi (as the Celts were know to the ancient Greeks).
He traveled very widely and reported on his travels. This is what got him the less
pleasant of his two sobriquets. There was really no technical vocabulary for him to use
to describe both the things he saw and his experiences, and so he did the best he
could. He was one of the extremely few Greeks to make the voyage to the “Tin lsles” ,
or Britain; and his descriptions of his voyage got him into trouble. For instance he
claimed to have seen “floating islands made of crystal” and upon these islands he said
there were “snaky headed legless dogs who barked continually”. His contemporaries
thought these to be fantasies. But we know them to be ice floes with seals or sea lions
on them. It proves to us that he was a long way from Greece and the Mediterranean to
have seen them. Herodotus’ descriptions of the length of Egyptian History, which he
claimed to have received from the Egyptian Mystae at Heliopolis and Saïs, were also
seen as fantastic by his contemporaries. But Solon and Pythagoras also made the
same report, and of course modern archaeology knows he was right.
Here’s his story as Britannica sees it:
HERODOTUS:
(b. 484 BC?, Halicarnassus, Asia Minor [now Bodrum, Tur.]?--d. 430-420), Greek
author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of
the Greco-Persian Wars. (see also Index: historiography)
It is believed that Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus, a Greek city in southwest Asia
221
Minor that was then under Persian rule. The precise dates of his birth and death are
alike uncertain. He is thought to have resided in Athens and to have met Sophocles and
then to have left for Thurii, a new colony in southern Italy sponsored by Athens. The
latest event alluded to in his History belongs to 430, but how soon after or where he
died is not known. There is good reason to believe that he was in Athens, or at least in
central Greece, during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, from 431, and that his
work was published and known there before 425.
Herodotus was a wide traveler. His longer wandering covered a large part of the
Persian Empire: he went to Egypt, at least as far south as Elephantine (Aswan), and he
also visited Libya, Syria, Babylonia, Susa in Elam, Lydia, and Phrygia. He journeyed up
the Hellespont to Byzantium, went to Thrace and Macedonia, and traveled northward to
beyond the Danube and to Scythia eastward along the northern shores of the Black
Sea as far as the Don River and some way inland. These travels would have taken
many years.
Structure and scope of the History.
Herodotus' subject in his History is the wars between Greece and Persia (499-479 BC)
and their preliminaries. As it has survived, the History is divided into nine books (the
division is not Herodotus' own): Books I-V describe the background to the
Greco-Persian Wars; Books VI-IX contain the history of the wars, culminating in an
account of the Persian king Xerxes' invasion of Greece (Book VII) and the great Greek
victories at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale in 480-479 BC. There are two parts in the
History, one being the systematic narrative of the war of 480-479 with its preliminaries
from 499 onward (including the Ionic revolt and the Battle of Marathon in Book VI), the
other being the story of the growth and organization of the Persian Empire and a
description of its geography, social structure, and history.
There has been much debate among modern scholars whether Herodotus from the first
had this arrangement in mind or had begun with a scheme for only one part, either a
description of Persia or a history of the war, and if so, with which. One likely opinion is
that Herodotus began with a plan for the history of the war and that later he decided on
a description of the Persian Empire itself. For a man like Herodotus was bound to ask
himself what the Persian-led invasion force meant. Herodotus was deeply impressed
not only by the great size of the Persian Empire but also by the varied and polyglot
nature of its army, which was yet united in a single command, in complete contrast to
the Greek forces with their political divisions and disputatious commanders, although
the Greeks shared a common language, religion, and way of thought and the same
feeling about what they were fighting for. This difference had to be explained to his
readers, and to this end he describes the empire.
A logical link between the two main sections is to be found in the account in Book VII of
the westward march of Xerxes' immense army from Sardis to the Hellespont on the way
to the crossing by the bridge of boats into Greece proper. First comes a story of Xerxes'
arrogance and petulance, followed by another of his savage and autocratic cruelty, and
then comes a long, detailed description of the separate military contingents of the army
marching as if on parade, followed by a detailed enumeration of all the national and
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racial elements in the huge invasion force.
Herodotus describes the history and constituent parts of the Persian Empire in Books
I-IV. His method in the account of the empire is to describe each division of it not in a
geographical order but as each was conquered by Persia--by the successive Persian
kings Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. (The one exception to this arrangement is Lydia,
which is treated at the very beginning of the history not because it was first conquered
but because it was the first foreign country to attack and overcome the Greek cities of
Asia Minor.)
The first section of Book I, the history and description of Lydia and its conquest by the
Persians, is followed by the story of Cyrus himself, his defeat of the Medes and a
description of Persia proper, his attack on the Massagetae (in the northeast, toward the
Caspian), and his death. Book II contains the succession of Cambyses, Cyrus' son, his
plan to attack Egypt, and an immensely long account of that unique land and its history.
Book III describes the Persians' conquest of Egypt, the failure of their invasions to the
south (Ethiopia) and west; the madness and death of Cambyses; the struggles over the
succession in Persia, ending with the choice of Darius as the new king; the organization
of the vast new empire by him, with some account of the most distant provinces as far
east as Bactria and northwest India; and the internal revolts suppressed by Darius.
Book IV begins with the description and history of the Scythian peoples, from the
Danube to the Don, whom Darius proposed to attack by crossing the Bosporus, and of
their land and of the Black Sea.
Then follows the story of the Persian invasion of Scythia, which carried with it the
submission of more Greek cities, such as Byzantium; of the Persians' simultaneous
attack from Egypt on Libya, which had been colonized by Greeks; and the description of
that country and its colonization. Book V describes further Persian advances into
Greece proper from the Hellespont and the submission of Thrace and Macedonia and
many more Greek cities to Persian might, then the beginning of the revolt of the Greek
cities of Ionia against Persia in 499, and so to the main subject of the whole work.
Method of narration.
This brief account of the first half of Herodotus' History not only conceals its infinite
variety but is positively misleading insofar as it suggests a straightforward geographical,
sociological, and historical description of a varied empire. The History's structure is
more complex than that, and so is Herodotus' method of narration. For example,
Herodotus had no need to explain Greek geography, customs, or political systems to
his Greek readers, but he did wish to describe the political situation at the relevant
times of the many Greek cities later involved in the war. This he achieved by means of
digressions skillfully worked into his main narrative. He thus describes the actions of
Croesus, the king of Lydia, who conquered the Greeks of mainland Ionia but who was
in turn subjugated by the Persians, and this account leads Herodotus into a digression
on the past history of the Ionians and Dorians and the division between the two most
powerful Greek cities, the Ionian Athens and the Doric Sparta. Athens' complex political
development in the 6th century BC is touched upon, as is the conservative character of
the Spartans. All of this, and much besides, some of it only included because of
223
Herodotus' personal interest, helps to explain the positions of these Greek states in
490, the year of the Battle of Marathon, and in 480, the year in which Xerxes invaded
Greece.
One important and, indeed, remarkable feature of Herodotus' History is his love of and
gift for narrating history in the storyteller's manner (which is not unlike Homer's). In this
regard he inserts not only amusing short stories but also dialogue and even speeches
by the leading historical figures into his narrative, thus beginning a practice that would
persist throughout the course of historiography in the classical world.
Outlook on life.
The story of Croesus in Book I gives Herodotus the occasion to foreshadow, as it were,
in Croesus' talk with Solon the general meaning of the story of the Greco-Persian Wars,
and so of his whole History--that great prosperity is "a slippery thing" and may lead to a
fall, more particularly if it is accompanied by arrogance and folly as it was in Xerxes.
The story of Xerxes' invasion of Greece is a clear illustration of the moral viewpoint
here; a war that by all human reasoning should have been won was irretrievably lost. To
Herodotus, the old moral "pride comes before a fall" was a matter of common
observation and had been proved true by the greatest historical event of his time.
Herodotus believes in divine retribution as a punishment of human impiety, arrogance,
and cruelty, but his emphasis is always on the actions and character of men, rather
than on the interventions of the gods, in his descriptions of historical events. This
fundamentally rationalistic approach was an epochal innovation in Western
historiography.
Qualities as a historian.
Herodotus was a great traveler with an eye for detail, a good geographer, a man with
an indefatigable interest in the customs and past history of his fellowmen, and a man of
the widest tolerance, with no bias for the Greeks and against the barbarians. He was
neither naive nor easily credulous. It is this which makes the first half of his work not
only so readable but of such historical importance. In the second half he is largely, but
by no means only, writing military history, and it is evident that he knew little of military
matters. Yet he understood at least one essential of the strategy of Xerxes' invasion,
the Persians' dependence on their fleet though they came by land, and therefore
Herodotus understood the decisive importance of the naval battle at Salamis. Similarly,
in his political summaries he is commonly content with explaining events on the basis of
trivial personal motives, yet here again he understood certain essentials: that the
political meaning of the struggle between the great territorial empire of Persia and the
small Greek states was not one of Greek independence only but the rule of law as the
Greeks understood it; and that the political importance of the Battle of Marathon for the
Greek world was that it foreshadowed the rise of Athens (confirmed by Salamis) to a
position of equality and rivalry with Sparta and the end of the long-accepted primacy of
the latter. He knew that war was not only a question of victory or defeat, glorious as the
Greek victory was, but brought its own consequences in its train, including the internal
quarrels and rivalry between the leading Greek city-states, quarreling that was to later
culminate in the devastating internecine strife of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC).
224
Conclusion.
Herodotus had his predecessors in prose writing, especially Hecataeus of Miletus, a
great traveler whom Herodotus mentions more than once. But these predecessors, for
all their charm, wrote either chronicles of local events, of one city or another, covering a
great length of time, or comprehensive accounts of travel over a large part of the known
world, none of them creating a unity, an organic whole. In the sense that he created a
work that is an organic whole, Herodotus was the first of Greek, and so of European,
historians. Herodotus' work is not only an artistic masterpiece; for all his mistakes (and
for all his fantasies and inaccuracies) he remains the leading source of original
information not only for Greek history of the all-important period between 550 and 479
BC but also for much of that of western Asia and of Egypt at that time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The most important source on Herodotus' life is the History itself. Felix Jacoby,
"Herodotos" in Pauly-Wissowa Real-Encyclopädie, suppl. 2 col., 205-520 (1913), the
most thorough discussion of Herodotus' life and work (in German); John L. Myres,
Herodotus: Father of History (1953), an expert appraisal of Herodotus as a literary
artist; P.E. Legrand, Hérodote: Introduction, 2nd ed. (1955), a readable and illuminating
interpretation of the life and character of Herodotus (in French); Gietano De Sanctis,
Studi di Storia della Storiografia greca, pp. 1-71 (1951), a provocative discussion of how
Herodotus put his History together, what his purpose was, and the rationalism of his
predecessor Hecataeus; T.S. Brown, "Herodotus Speculates About Egypt," Am. J.
Philology, 86:60-76 (1965).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another very important individual in this time frame was:
ARCHELAUS (“PHYSICUS”):
(This ‘nickname’ was conferred upon him because he was devoted to the physical
sciences. There are no dates I could find for him. He cannot be found in Britannica.)
Archelaus (not to be confused with a Roman Era King of Cappodiocia of the same
name)
This man was a Philosopher of the Ionian School is said to have been a teacher of
Socrates (though in truth there are many people, including Pythagoras, who are
alleged to have been Socrates’ teacher) and of Euripides. He apparently held that
heat and cold were the principles of generation. Not too much else is known of him. But
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I will say this, in making this list I am not as much concerned as to what we, in our
times, think of someone. The important things to me are that their names came down to
us, and what their contemporaries thought of them. Now, no matter what Archelaus did
or didn’t do, no matter what else he may have been or not been, he was sufficiently
admired by his contemporaries to have been credited with teaching both Socrates and
Euripides! As these two men were universally admired to the point of worship, being
averred to be their teacher signifies great respect. Obviously, though this man left
nothing much in the way of records, he did leave an immense legacy of respect and
admiration, and that is the hallmark of an Integrated Personality!
Before I go on to the really “big fish” there’s another man I’d like to mention:
ARCHYTAS OF TARENTUM:
(fl. 400-350 BC, Tarentum, Magna Græcia [now Taranto, Italy]), Greek scientist,
philosopher, and major Pythagorean mathematician, who is sometimes called the
founder of mathematical mechanics. Plato, a close friend, made use of his work in
mathematics, and there is evidence that Euclid borrowed from him for Book viii of his
Elements. Archytas was also an influential figure in public affairs, and he served for
seven years as commander in chief of his city. (see also Index: Pythagoreanism)
A member of the second generation of followers of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher
who stressed the significance of numbers in explaining all phenomena, Archytas
sought to combine empirical observation with Pythagorean theory. In geometry, he
solved the problem of doubling the cube by constructing a three-dimensional model.
The conclusions that he then drew concerning continued proportions, expressed as a:b
= b:c = c:d, he applied to musical harmony. Thus, he was able to discern intervals of
pitch in the enharmonic scale in addition to those already known in the chromatic and
the diatonic scales. Rejecting earlier views that the pitch of notes sounded on a stringed
instrument is related to the length or tension of the strings, he proposed instead that
pitch is related to the movement of vibrating air. Incorrectly, however, he asserted that
the speed at which the vibrations travel to the ear is a factor in determining pitch.
Archytas' reputation as a scientist and mathematician rests on his achievements in
geometry, acoustics, and music theory, rather than on his extremely idealistic
explanations of human relations and the nature of society according to Pythagorean
number theory. Non-mathematical writings usually attributed to him, including a
fragment on legal justice, are most likely the work of other authors.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Next I come to:
HIPPOCRATES:
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Born: Cos. Approx 460 B.C.E.
Died: Larissa, Thessaly approx 377 B.C.E.
The “Father of Medicine” he is possibly but not entirely at least partially apocryphal due
to his alleged semi-divine status. The eighty seven treatises forming the so-called
“Hippocratic collection” may be his, or may be partially his, or may not be his at all.
The Britannica thinks highly of him.
(b. c. 460 BC, island of Cos, Greece--d. c. 377, Larissa, Thessaly), Greek physician of
antiquity who is traditionally regarded as the father of medicine. His name has long
been associated with the so-called Hippocratic Oath--certainly not written by him--which
in modified form is still often required to be taken by medical students on graduating.
(see also Index: Greece, ancient)
Life
Trustworthy information about Hippocrates' life is scanty. His younger contemporary
Plato referred to him twice. In the Protagoras Plato called Hippocrates "the Asclepiad
of Cos" who taught students for fees and implied that Hippocrates was as well known
as a physician as Polyclitus and Phidias were as sculptors. It is now widely accepted
that an "Asclepiad" was not a temple priest or a member of a physicians' guild but
instead was a physician belonging to a family that had produced well-known physicians
for generations. Plato's second reference occurs in the Phaedrus. Hippocrates is
referred to as a famous Asclepiad who had a philosophical approach to medicine.
Further, Hippocrates regarded the body as "a whole"--that is, as an organism. His
medical practice resulted from his collection of information regarding parts of the body
into an embracing concept and, thereafter, the division of the whole into its parts.
Meno, a pupil of Aristotle, specifically stated in his history of medicine the views of
Hippocrates on the causation of diseases, namely, that undigested residues were
produced by unsuitable diet and that these residues excreted vapours, which passed
into the body generally and produced diseases. Aristotle said that Hippocrates was
called "the Great Physician" but that he was small in stature (Politics).
These are the only extant contemporary, or near-contemporary, references to
Hippocrates. Five hundred years later, the Greek physician Soranus wrote a life of
Hippocrates, but the contents of this and later lives were largely traditional or
imaginative. Throughout his life Hippocrates appears to have traveled widely in Greece
and Asia Minor practicing his art and teaching his pupils, and he presumably taught at
the medical school at Cos quite frequently. His birth and death dates are traditional but
may well be approximately accurate. Undoubtedly Hippocrates was a historical figure,
a great physician who exercised a permanent influence on the development of
medicine and on the ideals and ethics of the physician.
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The Hippocratic Collection
From shortly after the Hippocratic period, references were made to named works by
"Hippocrates," and this tradition continued. The number of works "by Hippocrates"
known in ancient times was about 70, but the number now extant is about 60. They
became known as the Hippocratic Collection (Corpus Hippocraticum), of which the
earliest surviving manuscript dates from the 10th century AD.
Even in antiquity it was realized that not all the works attributed to Hippocrates had
actually been written by him--hence the later attempts to designate the "genuine works."
This endeavour started at least as early as the 2nd century AD and continues to the
present day. The works differ enormously in length and style, in the opinions expressed,
and in the types of their intended users. Some are written for professional physicians,
some for their assistants and students, some for laymen, and some are philosophical
works. From internal and other evidence the approximate dates of some of the treatises
are known, and it seems fairly certain that at least a century--and possibly much longer-separates the date of the earliest work from that of the latest. One feature is common:
all the works were written in the Ionic dialect, which thus became the language of Greek
science. (see also Index: Ionic-Attic)
There has long been general agreement that the collection constituted the library of a
medical school, probably that at Cos, and that, during the 3rd or 2nd century BC, it
passed to the great library at Alexandria, where the works were edited and made
available. The collection deals with the following subjects: anatomy, clinical subjects,
diseases of women and children, prognosis, treatment by diet and drugs, surgery, and
medical ethics. (see also Index: Alexandria, Library of)
Prominent among the works in the Hippocratic Collection were a treatise on Epidemics,
in seven books and written by at least two authors; On the Sacred Disease, a treatise
on epilepsy; Prognostics; Airs, Waters and Places; and Aphorisms, a collection of 412
short counsels regarding diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. E.A.U.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The only modern edition of the whole of the Greek text of the Hippocratic Collection is
Emile Littré, Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, 10 vol. (1839-61, reprinted 1961). This
work also gives a French translation of the complete collection and is the only complete
translation into any modern language. A selection of 28 of the treatises are given in
Greek text and English translation by W.H.S. Jones and E.T. Withington in
Hippocrates, 4 vol. ("Loeb Classical Library," 1923-31, reprinted 1957-59). An
excellent modern translation of 13 treatises may be found in John Chadwick and W.N.
Mann The Medical Works of Hippocrates (1950).
An excellent discussion of Hippocrates and his influence is in Charles Singer, Greek
Biology and Greek Medicine (1922). A shorter discussion, from a slightly different
aspect, is in Charles Singer and E.A. Underwood, A Short History of Medicine, 2nd ed.
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(1962). The whole Hippocratic question is very fully discussed, from the medical and
philological aspects, in H.E. Sigerist, A History of Medicine, vol. 2 (1961). For the
Hippocratic Oath, see W.H.S. Jones, The Doctor's Oath (1924); and Ludwig Edelstein,
"The Hippocratic Oath," Bull. Hist. Med., suppl. no. 1 (1943), reprinted in Edelstein's
Ancient Medicine (1967). For a modern discussion of the therapeutic armamentarium of
Hippocrates, see J. Stannard, Bull. Hist. Med., 35:497-518 (1961).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another of the metasapient, a famous AUTODIDACT (which as you know, I have
identified as another, and very important distinguishing hallmark of the metasapient)
who lived in the fifth century before the common era was:
GORGIAS:
Born: Leontini, Sicily: approx 485 B.C.E.
Died: Larissa, Thessaly: approx 380 B.C.E.
He was a Sophist and rhetorician, an independent cultivator of natural oratory, with a
gift for brilliant expression of a natural kind. When he visited Athens in 427 B.C.E. his
eloquence became the rage, and was afterwards the first literary inspiration of
Isocrates (q.v.). One of Plato’s dialogues is named after him which is an indication of
his significance.
And now before I come to one of the most important names on the list Socrates; I want
to introduce his first, and therefore most important teacher, who; thank goodness, is
one of the few women to gain sufficient fame to be remembered in history.
DIOTIMA:
(fl. 5th Century B.C.E.)
This woman was a Priestess from Mantinea, a city in Arcadia. She was the first teacher
of Socrates, a boy whom no one else would accept because of his Epilepsy. She saw
in him, what others missed, and so became the first guide of his thinking. I think it’s
obvious that she was an integrated personality.
SOCRATES:
(470-399 B.C.E.)
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Philosopher, Teacher, Gad-Fly ( He called himself, Socrates Morphantos, which
means Socrates the Gad Fly). He was the friend and colleague of Anaxagoras,
Archelaus, Pericles, Aspasia, and Alcibiades. Teacher of Xenophon, Plato, and
Phædon of Elis who was himself a major philosopher. (All of the afore going were, I
am absolutely convinced, surely integrated personalities)
Socrates was and still is, probably the most influential of all Greeks, just being the
teacher who produced Plato would have assured that, but he had far too many other
accomplishments to have his fame rested on that single basis. He has to have been
one of the most famous individuals of all times, and one of the most universally
admired. I don’t think his inclusion among the Metasapient will surprise anyone. I
suppose this would be expected to be a really long essay, but to be honest, I do not
think this man needs much in the way of introduction. Nor do I think his place in this
listing needs any explanation at all. But here’s the Britannica on him:
Introduction
Socrates of Athens, who flourished in the last half of the 5th century BC, was the first
of the great trio of ancient Greeks--Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--who laid the
philosophical foundations of Western culture. As Cicero said, Socrates "brought
down philosophy from heaven to earth"--i.e., from the nature speculation of the Ionian
and Italian cosmologists to analyses of the character and conduct of human life, which
he assessed in terms of an original theory of the soul. Living during the chaos of the
Peloponnesian War, with its erosion of moral values, Socrates felt called to shore up
the ethical dimensions of life by the admonition to "know thyself" and by the effort to
explore the connotations of moral and humanistic terms.
LIFE
Socrates was born in or about 470 BC, 10 years after the Battle of Salamis. His father,
Sophroniscus, was a friend of the family of Aristides the Just, founder of the Delian
League, from which the empire arose. The tale that his father was a sculptor rests on
Plato's reference to the mythical sculptor Daedalus as the ancestor, or work-lineage, of
Socrates. Although the philosopher's mother, Phaenarete, acted as a "midwife," this
fact implies nothing about her social status.
The memoir writer Ion of Chios mentioned meeting Socrates at Samos in the company
of the philosopher Archelaus, a pupil of Anaxagoras (Athens' first philosopher),
presumably during the military operations of 441-439. The connection between the two
men is also asserted by the musicologist Aristoxenus, whereas the tradition of
commentaries based on Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor, calls Socrates the
"disciple" of Archelaus.
Plato and Aeschines the Socratic, both writers of Socratic dialogues, agree with the
military historian Xenophon in depicting him as intimate with the leading figures of the
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Periclean circle (Aspasia, Alcibiades, Axiochus, Callias), dominant in Athens at the
time. Xenophon concurs with Plato in saying that he was well versed in both geometry
and astronomy, and this representation of Socrates agrees with the narrative of Plato's
Phaedo as well as the burlesque The Clouds, which was written by the playwright
Aristophanes. (see also Index: Pericles)
Socrates must already have been a conspicuous figure at Athens when Aristophanes
and Ameipsias both made him the subject of their comedies in 423, and, because they
made a special point of his neediness, he had probably suffered recent losses. (The
marked poverty of his old age is said in Plato's Apology to have been caused by his
preoccupation with his mission to mankind.)
Socrates was married, apparently late in life, to Xanthippe, by whom he left three sons,
one an infant. Xenophon speaks of her high temper; there is no evidence, however, that
she was a "shrew"; the sons, according to Aristotle, proved insignificant.
Socrates' record for endurance was distinguished. He served as a hoplite, perhaps at
Samos (440), and at several stations during the Peloponnesian War. (At Potidaea he
saved the life of Alcibiades.) In politics he took no part, knowing, as he told his judges,
that office would mean compromise with his principles. Once at least, in 406-405, he
was a member of the Boule, or legislative council, of 500; and, at the trial of the victors
of Arginusae, he resisted--at first with the support of his colleagues, afterward
alone--the unconstitutional condemnation of the generals by a collective verdict. He
showed the same courage in 404, when the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens,
wishing to implicate honourable men in their proceedings, instructed him and four
others to arrest Leon, one of their victims. Socrates disobeyed, and he says in Plato's
Apology that this might have cost him his life but for the counterrevolution of the next
year. (For the background to these events see GREEK AND ROMAN CIVILIZATIONS,
ANCIENT: Greek civilization in the 5th century.)
In 399 Socrates was indicted for "impiety." The author of the proceedings was the
influential Anytus, one of the two chiefs of the democrats restored by the
counterrevolution of 403; but the nominal prosecutor was the obscure and insignificant
Meletus. There were two counts in the accusation, "corruption of the young" and
"neglect of the gods whom the city worships and the practice of religious novelties."
Socrates, who treated the charge with contempt and made a "defense" that amounts to
avowal and justification, was convicted, probably by 280 votes against 220. The
prosecutors had asked for the penalty of death; it now rested with the accused to make
a counterproposition. Though a smaller, but substantial, penalty would have been
accepted, Socrates took the high line that he really merited the treatment of an eminent
benefactor: maintenance at the public table. He consented only for form's sake to
suggest the small fine of one mina, raised at the entreaty of his friends to 30.
The claim to be a public benefactor incensed the court, and death was voted by an
increased majority, a result with which Socrates declared himself well content. As a rule
at Athens, the condemned man "drank the hemlock" within 24 hours, but, in the case of
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Socrates, the fact that no execution could take place during the absence of the sacred
ship sent yearly to Delos caused an unexpected delay of a month, during which
Socrates remained in prison, receiving his friends daily and conversing with them in his
usual manner. An escape was planned by his friend Crito, but Socrates refused to hear
of it, on the grounds that the verdict, though contrary to fact, was that of a legitimate
court and must therefore be obeyed. The story of his last day, with his drinking of the
hemlock, has been perfectly told in the Phaedo of Plato, who, though not himself an
eyewitness, was in close touch with many of those who were present.
Main sources of information.
Socrates wrote nothing; therefore, information about his personality and doctrine has to
be sought chiefly in the dialogues of Plato and in the Memorabilia of Xenophon. As both
men were nearly 45 years younger than Socrates, they could speak from firsthand
knowledge about only the last 10 to 12 years of his life.
Xenophon, whose relations with Socrates seem not to have been close, has even been
suspected of drawing from Plato. His admitted deficiencies in imagination and capacity
for thinking do not make him the more faithful exponent of a philosophical genius.
Moreover, Xenophon's apologetic purpose calls for some discounting. His most
valuable statements are those that appear to be most at variance with his main thesis,
viz., that the prosecutors of Socrates were mistaken even from their own point of view.
Plato's more vivid picture has been suspected on the grounds that he used Socrates as
a "mouthpiece" for speculations of his own: the theory of "Ideas" or doctrine of "Forms"
is thus held to have been originated by Plato. There are serious reasons for denying
this assumption, though they have not yet convinced many scholars; in any case, to
employ it, without investigation, to discredit Plato's testimony begs the question.
In some important respects, Plato's testimony is confirmed by the extant writings of
Aeschines Socraticus. The Clouds of Aristophanes yields valuable information about
Socrates in his middle 40s, though allowance must be made for the work's character as
a burlesque. It should be compared carefully with the autobiographical statements put
into the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedo, which, though not "contemporary evidence,"
are clearly meant to express Plato's bona fide belief about his master's intellectual
history. Whichever way the evidence is interpreted, however, a Platonic view of
Socrates is available in the Dialogues that is valuable in its own right; hence the
following discussion will draw heavily upon the Dialogues as the primary source for the
portrait of Socrates.
Personal characteristics.
Though Socrates was a good fighting man, his outward appearance was grotesque.
Stout and not tall, with prominent eyes, snub nose, broad nostrils, and wide mouth, he
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seemed a very Silenus. But, as his friends knew, he was "all glorious within," "the most
upright man of that day" (Plato, The Seventh Letter [324e]). His self-control and powers
of endurance were exemplary; "he had so schooled himself to moderation that his
scanty means satisfied all his wants."
But Socrates was no self-tormenting ascetic: he "knew both how to want and how to
abound" and could be the soul of the merriment at a gay party. He had no sympathy
with the slatternliness of his friend Antisthenes nor with the godly dirtiness often
affected by the followers of Pythagoras (the philosopher of number). There was nothing
of the complacent self-righteousness of the Pharisee nor of the angry bitterness of the
satirist in his attitude toward the follies or even the crimes of his fellowmen. It was his
deep and lifelong conviction that the improvement not only of himself but also of his
countrymen was a task laid upon him "by God," not to be executed with a scowling face
and an upbraiding voice. Like St. Francis Xavier, he understood that to win men's souls
one must be "good company." Conscious of his own infirmities, he felt a profound
sympathy for the intemperate.
Socrates was a true patriot who felt that he could best prove his devotion to Athens by
setting his face resolutely against the attractions of specious and popular, but deadly,
false theories of public and private morality. When the city brought him to trial and
threatened him with death, his sense of civic duty forbade him to escape into exile
either before or after the trial. It was his very patriotism that made him an unsparing
critic of the Athenian "democracy" and so led to his being condemned to death.
Socrates possessed an unusually keen appreciation of the comic in human nature and
conduct that protected him at once against sentimentality and against cynicism. His
opponents in Plato call this his "irony" and treat it as an irritating affectation.
"Intellectually the acutest man of his age, he represents himself in all companies as the
dullest person present. Morally the purest, he affects to be the slave of passion" (W.H.
Thompson). No doubt, in part, this irony was "calculated"; it "disarmed ridicule by
anticipating it." But its true source is the spontaneous sense of fun that makes its
possessor the enemy of all pretentiousness, moral or intellectual. And it is certain that,
though the purity of Socrates is beyond question, he really had an ardent and amorous
temperament.
Religious beliefs.
Socrates was clearly a man of deep piety with the temperament of a mystic. He
regarded mythology, with its foolish or immoral tales about gods, as a mere invention of
the poets. But he found it easy to combine his own strong belief in God as ruler of the
world with the view that, in practice, one could worship God in the way prescribed by
"the usage of the city." God's existence is shown, he held, not only by the providential
order of nature and the universality of the belief in him but also by warnings and
revelations given in dreams, signs, and oracles. The soul of man partakes of the Divine;
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and, as Plato argued in the Phaedo, Socrates believed in the soul's immortality.
Aristophanes makes Socrates combine the parts of "infidel" physicist and hierophant of
a mysterious private faith and, in The Birds, presents him as presiding at a fraudulent
séance. He was regular, says Xenophon, in prayer and sacrifice, though he held that,
because only the gods know what is good for a man, his prayer should simply be "give
me what is good." It is clear from Plato that Socrates was quite familiar with
Pythagorean and Orphic religious ideas--with the doctrine of the divine origin and
destiny of the soul, for example--though he regarded the ordinary Orphic mystery
monger with healthy contempt. (see also Index: mysticism)
The evidence that Socrates had a markedly "mystical" temperament is abundant. Plato
tells of his curious "rapts," in one of which he stood spellbound for 24 hours in the
trenches. The accounts of the philosopher's "divine sign" tell the same story. This,
according to Plato, was a "voice" often heard by Socrates from childhood. It forbade
him to do things but never gave positive encouragement. According to Plato, it merely
gave prognostications of good or bad luck, and the occasions of its occurrence were
often "very trivial." Thus, it was neither an intuitive conscience nor a symptom of mental
disorder but an interior psychic audition.
Mode of life.
Socrates seemed to spend all his time in the streets, the marketplace, and, more
particularly, the gymnasia. He cared little for the country. Though he frequented by
choice the society of young men of promise, he also talked freely to politicians, poets,
and artisans about their various callings, their notions of right and wrong, the familiar
matters of interest to them. The object of all this dialogue was to test the famous oracle
of Apollo at Delphi, which had pronounced him the wisest of men. This pronouncement
was made before Socrates had become conscious of his mission to his fellowmen:
even at that early date, it is implied, he had the highest of reputations in circles
interested in wisdom. (This early date is attested by the fact that the Eleatics from
Megara and the young pupils of the Pythagoreans from Thebes and Phlious who were
attached to Socrates must have formed their connection with him before the
Peloponnesian War.)
Socrates set himself to convict "the god" of falsehood. But finding that those who
thought themselves wise were unable to give any coherent account of their wisdom,
Socrates had to admit that he was wiser than others, just because he alone was aware
of his own ignorance. This account is plainly tinged with the usual "irony." Socrates took
the Delphic oracle seriously enough to probe into its real import. He believed himself
charged with a mission from God to make his fellowmen aware of their ignorance and
of the supreme importance of knowledge of what is for the soul's good. This is proved
by his declaration that he was more than ready to face instant death rather than to
neglect his commission.
234
The poverty in which this mission had involved him and the austerity of the rule of life
that it entailed were notorious. Summer and winter, Socrates' coat was the same; he
had neither shoes nor shirt. "A slave who was made to live so," the Sophist Antiphon
said, "would run away." This self-imposed life of hardships was the price of his spiritual
independence.
His message, however, was variously received. Some of those whose false pretensions
were exposed by his trenchant criticizing regarded him with ill will; many thought him an
officious busybody. Among the younger men, many merely thought it good sport to see
their elders silenced. Others, such as Alcibiades and Critias, deliberately attached
themselves to him for a time "for private ends," believing that to learn the secret of so
acute a reasoner would be the best preparation for success in the law courts, the
council, and the assembly. Others sincerely hoped by associating with him to become
good men and true, capable of doing their duty by house and household, by relations
and friends, by city and fellow citizens. Finally, there was an inner circle that entered
more deeply into Socrates' principles and transmitted them to the next generation. But
these were not "disciples" united by a common doctrine. The bond of union was a
common reverence for a great man's intellect and character. It was, in the main, this
group--many from states that had been enemies of Athens in the recent war--that
collected around Socrates on the day of his death.
The accusation and its causes.
The explanation of the attack made on Socrates is simple. He had been on terms of
close friendship with the two men whose memories were most obnoxious to the
democrats: Critias, the fiercest spirit among the extremists of the "terror" of 404; and
Alcibiades, whose self-will had done so much to bring about the downfall of the
Athenian empire. The charge of "educating Alcibiades" was made prominent in the
pamphlet written a few years after the trial by the Sophist Polycrates, in justification of
the verdict. More than half a century later, the orator Aeschines reminds his audience
that Socrates had been put to death because he was believed to have educated Critias.
In point of fact, it was absurd to make Socrates responsible for the ambitions of
Alcibiades, and, as he reminded his judges, he had disobeyed an illegal order from
Critias and his colleagues at the risk of his life. But it is natural that he should have had
to suffer for the crimes of both men, the more so because he had been an unsparing
critic of democracy and of the famous democratic leaders and, furthermore, had not,
like the advanced democrats, withdrawn from Athens during the "terror."
Socrates was, in fact, suspected of using his great abilities and gifts to pervert his
younger associates from loyalty to the principles of democracy, and the convinced
democrats who had recovered the city in 403 were unwilling, as J. Burnet has said, "to
leave their work at the mercy of reaction." The motives of Anytus, an upright,
unintelligent democrat, are thus quite explicable: from his point of view, Socrates would
be at the best a moderate oligarch, and democrats who remembered the career of the
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statesman Theramenes, who had tried to mix oligarchy and democracy, could not be
expected to make a fine distinction between the moderate oligarch and the traitor.
The real grounds for the attack could not be disclosed in the indictment because of the
amnesty that had terminated the struggle, of which Anytus himself had been a main
promoter. Hence, the charge took the form of a vague accusation of "corruption of the
young." Probably for the same reasons, Anytus was ashamed to appear as the principal
in the matter and put forward the obscure Meletus, who might venture on "indiscretions"
more openly. If this was the same Meletus who prosecuted Andocides on the same
charge of "impiety," he must have been a half-witted fanatic--and this may explain why
the charge of irreligion was added. Xenophon suggests that the allusion was to the
"divine sign," but this cannot be correct. Meletus said nothing about the "sign" at the
prosecution, and Socrates is speaking with his "usual irony" when he pretends to guess
that the mention of "religious novelties" in the indictment referred to the "sign." In the
Apology, Socrates says that the prosecution is, no doubt, relying on memories of
Aristophanes' The Clouds, where he had been made to talk "atheism" as part of the
burlesque on men of science.
But there must have been more behind the charge. It seems likely that the prosecution
of Andocides revived the old scandal of the "profanation of the mysteries" that had
thrown Athens into a ferment on the eve, in 415, of the Sicilian expedition. The two
chief victims, Alcibiades and his uncle Axiochus, had both been among the intimates of
Socrates, and there is reason to think that others of his friends were affected. If this is
what lay behind the charge, it can be understood why its real meaning seems never to
have been explained: for in view of the terms of the amnesty, the matters in question
were not within the competence of the court.
Socrates himself treats the whole matter with contempt. His defense consists in
narrating the facts of his past life, which had proved that he was equally ready to defy
the populace and the Thirty in the cause of right and law, and in insisting on the reality
of his mission from God and his determination to discharge it, even at the cost of life.
The prosecutors had no desire for blood. They counted on a voluntary withdrawal of the
accused from the jurisdiction before trial; the death penalty was proposed to make such
a withdrawal certain. Socrates himself forced the issue by refusing at any stage to do
anything involving the least shade of compromise. The prosecution had raised the
question whether he was a traitor or, as he held himself to be, an envoy from God;
Socrates was determined that the judges should give a direct verdict on the issue
without evasion. This is not only what makes him a martyr but also what forbids us to
call Anytus a murderer.
DOCTRINE AND METHOD
Socrates was a man of the Periclean age, which witnessed one of the periodic
"bankruptcies of science." Cosmological speculation, which had been boldly pursued
from the beginning of the 6th century, seemed to have led to a chaos of conflicting
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systems of thought. The Rationalist Parmenides of Elea had apparently cut away the
ground from science by showing that the real world must be quite unlike anything that
the senses reveal and that, consequently, the interpretation of the world by familiar
analogies is inherently fallacious; and his pupil Zeno of Elea seemed to have shown
that even the postulates of mathematics are mutually contradictory. Thus, the ablest
men, such as the Sophists Protagoras and Gorgias, had turned away from the pursuit
of science and concerned themselves not with truth but with making a success of
human life. (see also Index: Socratic method, Eleaticism)
Socrates, as a young man, was enthusiastically interested in "natural science" and
familiarized himself with the various current systems--with the Milesian cosmology with
its flat Earth and the Italian with its spherical Earth and with the mathematical puzzles
raised by Zeno about "the unit" (i.e., the problem of continuity). There was a complete
lack of critical method. For a moment, Socrates hoped to find salvation in the doctrine
of Anaxagoras that "Mind" is the source of all cosmic order because this seemed to
mean that "everything is ordered as it is best that it should be," that the universe is a
rational teleological system. But on reading the book of Anaxagoras, he found that the
philosopher made no effective use of his principle; the details of his scheme were as
arbitrary as those of any other. (see also Index: Pre-Socratic)
The Socratic "hypothesis."
After this disappointment, Socrates resolved from then on to consider primarily not
"facts" but logoi, the "statements" or "propositions" that one makes about "facts." His
method would be to start with whatever seemed the most satisfactory "hypothesis," or
postulate, about a given subject and then consider the consequences that follow from it.
So far as these consequences proved to be true and consistent, the "hypothesis" might
be regarded as provisionally confirmed. But one should not confuse inquiry into the
consequences of the "hypothesis" with proof of its truth. The question of truth could be
settled only by deducing the initial "hypothesis" as a consequence from some more
ultimate, accepted "hypothesis."
The doctrine of Forms.
According to Plato, Socrates next proceeded to take it as his own fundamental
"hypothesis" that every term (such as "good," "beautiful," "man") that has an
unequivocal denotation directly names a selfsame object of a kind inaccessible to
sense perception and apprehensible only by thought. Such an object Socrates calls an
Idea or Eidos; i.e., a Form. The sensible things on which a man predicates beauty,
goodness, humanity, have only a secondary and derivative reality; they become this or
that for a time, in virtue of their "participation" in the Form.
Scholars in the 19th century usually assumed that this doctrine of Forms was
consciously devised by Plato after the death of Socrates. The chief argument for this
view is based upon the observation of Aristotle that Socrates rightly "did not separate"
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the universal from the particular as, it is apparently implied, Plato did. He might equally
have meant, however, that the doctrine of the Phaedo does not itself involve the kind of
"separation" to which he objects in the Platonic theory. On the other side, the doctrine is
expressly said in the Phaedo to be a familiar one, which Socrates "was always"
repeating; and, if untrue, it is hard to see what could be the point of such a mystification
and harder to understand how Plato could have expected it to be successful, especially
as most of the personages of the Phaedo were certainly still alive. If true, however, one
must be prepared to admit the possibility that he is also reproducing the thought of
Socrates in the Symposium and Republic, in which he speaks of a supreme Form, that
of Beauty, or Good, the vision of which is the far-off goal of all intellectual
contemplation. Unfortunately, no complete separation of the Socratic and the Platonic is
possible. (see also Index: "Republic, The," )
Logical methods.
On the logical side, both Plato and Xenophon bear out the remark of Aristotle that
Socrates may fairly be credited with two things: "inductive arguments" and "universal
definitions." The "universal definition" is an attempt to formulate precisely the meaning
of a universally significant predicate--i.e., to apprehend what the Phaedo calls a Form.
And it is from the practice of Socrates, who aimed at the clarification of thought about
the meaning of moral predicates as the first indispensable step toward the improvement
of practice, that the theory of logical division and definition, as worked out by Plato and
Aristotle, has arisen. (see also Index: induction)
The "inductive arguments" mean the characteristic attempts to arrive at such
formulations by the consideration of simple and striking concrete illustrations, the
perpetual arguments about "shoemakers and carpenters and fullers," which the
fashionable speakers in Plato profess to think vulgar. Induction, on this view of it, is not
regarded as a method of proof; its function is that of suggestion: it puts the meaning of
a proposed "definition" forcibly and clearly before the mind. The justification of the
definition, then, has to be sought in a consideration of the satisfactoriness of the
"consequences" that would follow from its adoption. Socrates himself sought for his
"definitions" principally in the sphere in which he was most interested: as Aristotle says,
he concerned himself with the "ethical," character and conduct, both private and public,
not with "nature" at large.
Ethics and politics.
With Socrates the central problem of philosophy shifted from cosmology to the
formulation of a rule of life, to the "practical use of reason." As the Apology relates, the
specific message from God that Socrates brought to his fellowmen was that of the
"care" or "tending" of one's "soul," to "make one's soul as good as possible"--"making it
like God," in fact--and not to ruin one's life, as most men do, by putting care for the
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body or for "possessions" before care for the "soul"; for the "soul" or psyche is that
which is most truly a man's self.
Socrates' view of the soul stands in sharp contrast with the Homeric and Ionian view of
the psyche as "the breath of life," which is given up when the man "himself," his body,
has perished, and also with the view prevalent in circles influenced by Orphic-type
religions, according to which the soul is a sort of stranger loosely inhabiting the body,
which "sleeps while the body is active, but wakes when the body sleeps"; instead, the
soul came in the 4th century to be viewed as the normal walking personality, the seat of
character and intelligence, "that," as Socrates says in Plato, "in virtue of which we are
called wise or foolish, good or bad." And as this usage of the word first appears in
writers who are known to have been influenced by Socrates (Isocrates, Plato, and
Xenophon), it may fairly be ascribed to his influence. Thus the soul is the man. (see
also Index: Ionian school)
A man's happiness or well-being, in Socrates' view, depends directly on the goodness
or badness of his soul. No one ever wishes for anything but true good--i.e., true
happiness. But men miss their happiness because they do not know what it is. For real
good they mistake things that are not really good (e.g., unlimited wealth or power). In
this sense, "all wrong-doing is involuntary." Men need to know true good and not
confuse it with anything else, so as to keep from using strength, health, wealth, or
opportunity wrongly. If a man has this knowledge, he will always act on it, since to do
otherwise would be to prefer known misery to known happiness. If a man really knew,
for instance, that to commit a crime is worse than to suffer loss or pain or death, no fear
of these things would lead him to commit the crime. To the professional Sophist,
"goodness" is a neutral "accomplishment" that can always be put to either of two uses,
a good one or a bad one. To Socrates, in contrast, knowledge of good is the one
knowledge of which it is impossible to make an ill use; the possession of it is a
guarantee that it will always be used properly. Thus, Socrates becomes--as against the
relativism of Protagoras--the founder of the doctrine of an absolute morality based on
the conception of a felicity that is the good not of Athenians or Spartans or even of
Greeks but of man as man, as part of universal humanity.
Politics, from this point of view, is the statesman's task of "tending" the souls of all his
fellow citizens and making them "as good as possible." The knowledge of good is also
the foundation of all statesmanship. The radical vice of ancient democracy, according to
Socrates, is that of putting society in the hands of men without true insight and with no
adequate expert knowledge. His main criticism, however, is that, though in some
departments democracy takes the advice only of a qualified expert, on questions of
morality and justice it treats any one citizen's opinion as of equal value with another's.
Even a Themistocles or a Pericles plainly had no knowledge of true statesmanship:
they gave the populace the things that tickled its taste, such as a navy and a
commerce; but they were no "physicians of the body politic," for they did not promote
"righteousness and temperance," the spiritual health of the community. Socrates
maintained that he alone deserved the name of statesman, because he understood, as
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the men of action did not, that knowledge of the absolutely good is the necessary and
sufficient condition of national well-being and felicity. Indeed, Plato's Republic may fairly
be viewed as a picture of life in a society governed by this Socratic conviction. How far
any of the special regulations of the Republic embody actual convictions of Socrates is
more than can be said, though it is significant that the Aspasia of Aeschines represents
Socrates as maintaining one of Plato's "paradoxes," the capacity of women for war and
for politics. (see also Index: "Dialogues")
Socrates exerted a temporary influence on a group of men who have come to be known
as "the minor Socratics," among whom the most important were Antisthenes of Athens
and Eucleides of Megara, with whom the Cynics and the Megarian school were
connected. It was mainly through his influence on Plato, however, who took up the
thought of Socrates and continued it in his own life's work, that Socrates' efforts bore
their full fruit for subsequent ages (see PLATONISM and PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS
AND DOCTRINES: Platonism). (A.E.Ta.)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
His best representative follows:
ARISTON ERECTHIDES [ PLATO]:
(427 - 348 B.C.E.)
What is there to say about this man? Plato is probably the most famous man who ever
lived. Plato, by the way, is not his name but his nickname. It derived from the fact that in
his youth he was a wrestler and had an extremely muscular physique. “Plato” is roughly
equivalent to our word “Hunky”. Odd isn’t it that the “most famous man” in history is
known to that history by a nickname meaning “Hunky”? While his views on proper
Government were elitist and oppressive and totally anti-Democratic they were the
product of his times, his experiences, and his environment. His antipathy to
uncontrolled Democracy was formed in the Athens of his youth when the Democratic
Faction caused his Teacher, Socrates, to be executed. I don’t think he ever really
recovered from the traumatic effects of this event.
Plato was also what we would call a Prince, and had Athens still been a monarchy his
elder Brother would have been King of Athens. His Grandfathers were Solon the
Lawgiver and Pericles. The almost entirely legendary Theseus of Athens was
believed to be his direct ancestor and he was a product of his genetics. He was our
primary source on the teachings of Socrates, he was a brilliant writer, and, thanks to
his founding the ACADEMY he has become one of the most intellectually and
philosophically influential men who ever lived.
THE ACADEMY:
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The Platonic school of philosophy which lasted from the time of Plato down to the time
of Cicero and beyond. It was named for The Grove of Academus which was a Public
Pleasure Ground (Park) about one mile North of ancient Athens, on land said to have
been presented in gratitude by the people of Athens, in the time of the Trojan War, to
the hero ACADEMUS (neither the War nor the Hero can be said to be certainly
historical). The grove was surrounded by a wall built by Hipparchus and it was further
adorned by Cimon, son of Miltiades, who bequeathed the grove to the citizens of
Athens. It was the resort of Plato, who taught in it’s groves for nearly 50 years. A
structure was eventually built there for his use.
The Academy is commonly divided into “The Old”, “the Middle”, and “The New”
Academies. The chief representatives of “The Old”Academy, after Plato himself, were
Speusippos (q.v.), Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Polemo, Crates, and Crantor.
The “Middle Academy” was founded by ARCESILAUS about 244 B.C.E.
The “New Academy” was founded by CARNEADES in about 160 B.C.E. Sometimes
the Academies of Philo and Antiocus are spoken of as the Fourth and Fifth Academies,
respectively.
Plato is the basis for an entire series of schools of metaphysical philosophy. “Platonism
(Humanism)” and “Neo-Platonism”; which between them have produced some of
histories most brilliant scholar-philosophers and which have been the venue for the
work of many of the metasapient. Integrated personalities are not always obvious but
this man was, he was “special”, very special indeed, and everyone from then to now
has known it. Plato’s Philosophy was not only the original source of all later NeoPlatonism, and the theosophy or Philalethian movement which grew out of NeoPlatonism, but of much of the Gnostic systems as well. More important still, it was NeoPlatonists in exile from the encroaching oppressions of Christianity that became the
Sufi Orders of Islamic Occultism-mysticism after the 7th Century of the Common Era.
Plato lived in the fifth century before the common era, he was influential then, he
is influential now. That’s the hallmark of an integrated personality.
Now, if you don’t think I am right about how important he was, take a good careful look
at what Britannica says about him:
The Academy and Sicily.
In about 387 Plato founded the Academy as an institute for the systematic pursuit of
philosophical and scientific teaching and research. He presided over it for the rest of his
life. The Academy's interests were not limited to philosophy in a narrow sense but also
extended to the sciences: there is evidence that Plato encouraged research in such
diverse disciplines as mathematics and rhetoric. He himself lectured (on at least one
occasion he gave a celebrated public lecture "On the Good"), and he set problems for
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his pupils to solve. The Academy was not the only such "school" in Athens--there are
traces of tension between the Academy and the rival school of Isocrates. (see also
Index: science, history of)
The one outstanding event in Plato's later life was his intervention in Syracusan politics.
On the death of Dionysius I in 367, Dion conceived the idea of bringing Plato to
Syracuse as tutor to his brother-in-law's successor, Dionysius II, whose education had
been neglected. Plato was not optimistic about the results; but because both Dion and
Archytas of Tarentum, a philosopher-statesman, thought the prospect promising, he felt
bound to risk the adventure. The plan was to train Dionysius II in science and
philosophy and so to fit him for the position of a constitutional king who might hold
Carthaginian encroachment on Sicily at bay. The scheme was crushed by Dionysius'
natural jealousy of the stronger Dion, whom he drove into virtual banishment. Plato later
paid a second and longer visit to Syracuse in 361-360, still in the hope of effecting an
accommodation; but he failed, not without some personal danger. Dion then captured
Syracuse by a coup de main in 357, but he was murdered in 354. Plato himself died in
348/347.
Of Plato's character and personality little is known, and little can be inferred from his
writings. But it is worth recording that Aristotle, his most able pupil, described Plato as a
man "whom it is blasphemy in the base even to praise," meaning that Plato was so
noble a character that bad men should not even speak about him.
To his readers through the ages Plato has been important primarily as one of the
greatest of philosophical writers; but to himself the foundation and organization of the
Academy must have appeared to be his chief work. The Seventh Letter contrasts the
impact of written works with that of the contact of living minds as a vehicle of
philosophy, and it passes a comparatively unfavourable verdict on written works. Plato
puts a similar verdict into the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedrus. He perhaps intended
his dialogues in the main to interest an educated outside world in the more serious and
arduous labours of his school.
All of the most important mathematical work of the 4th century was done by friends or
pupils of Plato. The first students of conic sections, and possibly Theaetetus, the
creator of solid geometry, were members of the Academy. Eudoxus of Cnidus--author
of the doctrine of proportion expounded in Euclid's Elements, inventor of the method of
finding the areas and volumes of curvilinear figures by exhaustion, and propounder of
the astronomical scheme of concentric spheres adopted and altered by
Aristotle--removed his school from Cyzicus to Athens for the purpose of cooperating
with Plato; and during one of Plato's absences he seems to have acted as the head of
the Academy. Archytas, the inventor of mechanical science, was a friend and
correspondent of Plato.
Nor were other sciences neglected. Speusippos, Plato's nephew and successor, was a
voluminous writer on natural history; and Aristotle's biological works have been shown
to belong largely to the early period in his career immediately after Plato's death. The
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comic poets found matter for mirth in the attention of the school to botanical
classification. The Academy was particularly active in jurisprudence and practical
legislation. As Plutarch testifies,
Plato sent Aristonymus to the Arcadians, Phormion to Elis, Menedemus to Pyrrha.
Eudoxus and Aristotle wrote laws for Cnidus and Stagirus. Alexander asked Xenocrates
for advice about kingship; the man who was sent to Alexander by the Asiatic Greeks
and did most to incite him to his war on the barbarians was Delios of Ephesus, an
associate of Plato.
The Academy survived Plato's death. Though its interest in science waned and its
philosophical orientation changed, it remained for two and a half centuries a focus of
intellectual life. Its creation as a permanent society for the prosecution of both humane
and exact sciences has been regarded--with pardonable exaggeration--as the first
establishment of a university.
Formative influences.
The most important formative influence to which the young Plato was exposed was
Socrates. It does not appear, however, that Plato belonged as a "disciple" to the circle
of Socrates' intimates. The Seventh Letter speaks of Socrates not as a "master" but as
an older "friend," for whose character Plato had a profound respect; and he has
recorded his own absence (through indisposition) from the death scene of the Phaedo.
It may well be that his own vocation to philosophy dawned on him only afterward, as he
reflected on the treatment of Socrates by the democratic leaders. Plato owed to
Socrates his commitment to philosophy, his rational method, and his concern for ethical
questions. Among other philosophical influences the most significant were those of
Heracleitus and his followers, who disparaged the phenomenal world as an arena of
constant change and flux, and of the Pythagoreans, with whose metaphysical and
mystical notions Plato had great sympathy.
Plato had family connections with Pyrilampes, a Periclean politician, and with Critias,
who became one of the most unscrupulous of the Thirty Tyrants who briefly ruled
Athens after the collapse of the democracy.
Plato's early experiences covered the disastrous years of the Deceleian War, the
shattering of the Athenian empire, and the fierce civil strife of oligarchs and democrats
in the year of anarchy, 404-403. He was too young to have known anything by
experience of the imperial democracy of Pericles and Cleon or of the tide of the
Sophistic movement. It is certainly not from memory that he depicted Protagoras, the
earliest avowed professional Sophist, or Alcibiades, a brilliant but unreliable Athenian
politician and military commander. No doubt these early experiences helped to form the
political views that were later expounded in the dialogues.
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GENERAL FEATURES OF THE DIALOGUES
The canon and text of Plato was apparently fixed at about the turn of the Christian Era.
By reckoning the Letters as one item, the list contained 36 works, arranged in nine
tetralogies. None of Plato's works has been lost, and there is a general agreement
among modern scholars that a number of small items--Alcibiades I, Alcibiades II,
Theages, Erastae, Clitopho, Hipparchus, and Minos--are spurious. Most scholars also
believe that the Epinomis, an appendix to the Laws, was written by the mathematician
Philippus of Opus. The Hippias Major and the Menexenus are regarded as doubtful by
some, though Aristotle seems to have regarded them as Platonic. Most of the 13
Letters are certainly later forgeries. About the authenticity of the Seventh Letter, which
is by far the most important from the biographical and the philosophical points of view,
there exists a long and unsettled controversy.
Order of composition.
Plato's literary career extended over the greater part of a long life. The Apology was
probably written in the early 380s. The Laws, on the other hand, was the work of an old
man, and the state of its text bears out the tradition that Plato never lived to give it its
final revision. Since there is no evidence that Plato began his career with a fully
developed system, and since there is every reason to believe that his thoughts
changed, the order in which the various dialogues were written takes on importance.
Only through it can the development of Plato's thought be adequately charted.
Unfortunately, Plato himself has given few clues to the order: he linked the Sophist and
the Statesman with the Theaetetus externally as continuations of the conversation
reported in that dialogue. Similarly, he seems to have linked the Timaeus with the
Republic. And Aristotle noted that the Laws was written after the Republic.
Modern scholars, by the use of stylistic criteria, have argued that the Sophist,
Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus (with its fragmentary sequel Critias), and Laws form a
distinct linguistic group, belonging to the later years of Plato's life. The whole group
must be later than the Sophist, which professes to be a sequel to the Theaetetus. Since
the Theaetetus commemorates the death of the eminent mathematician after whom it is
named (probably in 369 BC), it may be ascribed to c. 368, the eve of Plato's departure
for Syracuse.
The earlier group of dialogues is generally believed to have ended with the Theaetetus
and the closely related Parmenides. Apart from this, perhaps all that can be said with
certainty is that the great dialogues, Symposium, Phaedo, and Republic (and perhaps
also Protagoras), in which Plato's dramatic power was at its highest, mark the
culmination of this first period of literary activity. The later dialogues are often thought to
lack the dramatic and literary merits of the earlier but to compensate for this by an
increased subtlety and maturity of judgment.
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Persons of the dialogues.
One difficulty that initially besets the modern student is that created by the dramatic
form of Plato's writings. Since Plato never introduced himself into his own dialogues, he
is not formally committed to anything asserted in them. The speakers who are formally
bound by the utterances of the dialogues are their characters, of whom Socrates is
usually the protagonist. Since all of these are real historical persons, it is reasonable to
wonder whether Plato is reporting their opinions or putting his own views into their
mouths, and, more generally, to ask what was his purpose in writing dialogues.
Some scholars have suggested that Plato allowed himself to develop freely in a
dialogue any view that interested him for the moment without pledging himself to its
truth. Thus Plato can make Socrates advocate hedonistic utilitarianism in the
Protagoras and denounce it in the Gorgias. Others argue that some of Plato's
characters, notably Socrates and Timaeus, are "mouthpieces" through whom he
inculcates tenets of his own without concern for dramatic or historical propriety. Thus it
has often been held that the theory of Ideas, the doctrine of recollection, and the notion
of the tripartite soul were originated by Plato after the death of Socrates and
consciously fathered on the older philosopher.
Thought of the earlier and later dialogues.
There are undeniable differences in thought between the dialogues that are later than
the Theaetetus and those that are earlier. But there are no serious discrepancies of
doctrine between individual dialogues of the same period. Plato perhaps announced his
own personal convictions on certain doctrines in the second group of dialogues by a
striking dramatic device. In the Sophist and Statesman the leading part is taken by a
visitor from Elea and in the Laws by an Athenian. These are the only anonymous,
indeed almost certainly the only imaginary, personages of any moment in the whole of
Plato's writings. It seems likely, therefore, that these two characters were left
anonymous so that the writer could be free to use them as mouthpieces for his own
teaching. Plato thus took on himself the responsibility for the logic and epistemology of
the Sophist and of the Statesman and for the ethics and the educational and political
theory of the Statesman and of the Laws.
Doctrine of Forms.
There is a philosophical doctrine running through the earlier dialogues that has as its
three main features the theory of knowledge as recollection, the conception of the
tripartite soul, and, most importantly, the theory of Forms. The theory that knowledge is
recollection rests on the belief that the soul is not only eternal but also preexistent. The
conception of the tripartite soul holds that the soul consists of reason, appetite, and
spirit (or will). Each part serves a purpose and has validity, but reason is the soul's
noblest part; in order for man to achieve harmony, appetite and spirit must be subjected
to the firm control of reason. The theory of Forms has as its foundation the assumption
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that beyond the world of physical things there is a higher, spiritual realm of Forms, or
Ideas, such as the Form of Beauty or Justice. This realm of Forms, moreover, has a
hierarchical order, the highest level being that of the Form of the Good. Whereas the
physical world, perceived with the senses, is in constant flux and knowledge derived
from it restricted and variable, the realm of Forms, apprehensible only by the mind, is
eternal and changeless. Each Form is the pattern of a particular category of things in
this world; thus there are Forms of man, stone, shape, colour, beauty, and justice. Yet
the things of this world are only imperfect copies of these perfect Forms.
In the Phaedo Socrates is made to describe the theory of Ideas as something quite
familiar that he has for years constantly canvassed with his friends. In the dialogues of
the second period, however, these tenets are less prominent, and the most important of
them all, the theory of Forms, is in the Parmenides subjected to a searching set of
criticisms. The question thus arises as to whether Plato himself had two distinct
philosophies, an earlier and a later, or whether the main object of the first group of
dialogues was to preserve the memory of Socrates, the philosophy there expounded
being, in the main, that of Socrates--coloured, no doubt, but not consciously distorted,
in its passage through the mind of Plato. On the second view, Plato had no distinctive
Platonic philosophy until a late period in his life.
Socrates and Plato.
It may be significant that the only dialogue later than the Theaetetus in which Socrates
takes a leading part is the Philebus, the one work of the second group that deals
primarily with the ethical problems on which the thought of Socrates had concentrated.
This is usually explained by supposing that Plato was unwilling to make Socrates the
exponent of doctrines that he knew to be his own property. It would, however, be hard
to understand such misgivings if Plato had already been employing Socrates in that
very capacity for years. It is notable, too, that Aristotle, who apparently knew nothing of
an earlier and a later version of Platonism, attributed to Plato a doctrine that is quite
unlike anything to be found in the first group of dialogues. It was also the view of
Neoplatonic scholars that the theory of Ideas of the great earlier dialogues really
originated with Socrates; and the fact that they did not find it necessary to argue the
point may show that this had been the standing tradition of the Academy.
Few modern scholars, however, support this view. The differences between the early
and late periods are not as great as they have sometimes been represented: although
Plato's thought developed from the early to the late dialogues, it underwent no sudden
dislocation. The ideas of the early period may have been inspired by Socrates, but they
were Plato's own--for example, the theory of Forms could not have arisen with
Socrates. Plato nevertheless attributed it to him because he saw it as the theoretical
basis of what Socrates did teach.
THE EARLIER DIALOGUES
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In the Republic, the greatest of all the dialogues that precede the Theaetetus, there are
three main strands of argument deftly combined into an artistic whole--the ethical and
political, the aesthetic and mystical, and the metaphysical. Other major dialogues
belonging to this period give special prominence to one of these three lines of thought:
the Phaedo to the metaphysical theme; the Protagoras and the Gorgias to the ethical
and political; the Symposium and the Phaedrus to the aesthetic. But it should be noted
that Plato's dialogues are not philosophical essays, let alone philosophical treatises,
and they do not restrict themselves to a single topic or subject.
Ethical and political dialogues.
The Gorgias, the Protagoras, and the Meno, like several of the lesser dialogues, give
prominence to ethical and political themes. The Gorgias begins ostensibly as an inquiry
into the nature and worth of rhetoric, the art of advocacy professed by Gorgias, and
develops into a plea of sustained eloquence and logical power for morality--as against
expediency--as the sovereign rule of life, both private and public. It ends with an
imaginative picture of the eternal destinies of the righteous and of the unrighteous soul.
Gorgias holds that rhetoric is the queen of all "arts." If the statesman skilled in rhetoric
is clever enough, he can, though a layman, carry the day even against the specialist.
Socrates, on the other hand, declares that rhetoric is not an art but a mere "knack" of
humouring the prejudices of an audience. There are two arts conducive to health of
soul, those of the legislator and of the judge. The Sophist counterfeits the first, the
orator the second, by taking the pleasant instead of the good as his standard. The
orator is thus not the wise physician of the body politic but its toady. This severe
judgment is disputed by Polus, an ardent admirer of Gorgias, on the ground that the
successful orator is virtually the autocrat of the community, and to be such is the
summit of human happiness because he can do whatever he likes.
Socrates rejects this view. He does so by developing one of the "Socratic paradoxes":
to suffer a wrong is an evil, but to inflict one is much worse. Thus if rhetoric is of real
service to men, it should be most of all serviceable to an offender, who would employ it
to move the authorities to inflict the penalties for which the state of his soul calls. All of
this is in turn denied by Callicles, who proceeds to develop the extreme position of an
amoralist. It may be a convention of the herd that unscrupulous aggression is
discreditable and wrong, but "nature's convention" is that the strong are justified in
using their strength as they please, while the weak "go to the wall." To Socrates,
however, the creators of the imperialistic Athenian democracy were no true statesmen;
they were the domestic servants of the democracy for whose tastes they catered; they
were not its physicians. That would be a condition like that of the Danaids of mythology,
who are punished in Hades by being set to spend eternity in filling leaking pitchers. A
happy life consists not in the constant gratification of boundless desires but rather in the
measured satisfaction of wants that are tempered by justice and sophrosune. (see also
Index: political power)
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The Meno is nominally concerned with the question of what virtue is and whether it can
be taught. But it is further interesting for two reasons: it states clearly the doctrine that
knowledge is "recollection"; and it introduces as a character the democratic politician
Anytus, the main author of the prosecution of Socrates.
Whether virtue can be taught depends on what virtue is. But the inquiry into virtue is
difficult--indeed, the very possibility of inquiry is threatened by Meno's paradox
concerning the quest for knowledge. If a person is ignorant about the subject of his
inquiry, he could not recognize the unknown, even if he found it. If, on the other hand,
the person already knows it, inquiry is futile because it is idle to inquire into what one
already knows. But this difficulty would vanish if the soul were immortal and had long
ago learned all truth, so that it needs now only to be reminded of truths that it once
knew and has forgotten. To advance this argument, Socrates shows that a slave boy
who has never studied geometry can be brought to recognize mathematical truths. He
produces the right answer "out of himself." In general, knowledge is "recollection."
Socrates next produces the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge and infers that it is
teachable. But if virtue is knowledge, there must be professional teachers of it. Anytus
insists that the Sophists, who claim to be such professionals, are mischievous
impostors; and even the "best men" have been unable to teach it to their own sons. The
Meno ends with a distinction between knowledge and true belief, and with the
suggestion that virtue comes not by teaching but by divine gift. (see also Index:
immortality)
The Protagoras gives the most complete presentation of the main principles of Socratic
morality. In this dialogue Socrates meets the eminent Sophist Protagoras, who explains
that his profession is the "teaching of goodness"--i.e., the art of making a success of
one's life and of one's city.
Socrates urges, however, that both common opinion and the failure of eminent men to
teach "goodness" to their sons suggest that the conduct of life is not teachable. But the
problem arises as to whether the various commonly recognized virtues are really
different or all one. Protagoras is ultimately ready to identify all of the virtues except
courage with wisdom or sound judgment. Socrates then attempts to show that, even in
the case of courage, goodness consists in the fact that, by facing pain and danger, one
escapes worse pain or danger. Thus all virtues can be reduced to the prudent
computation of pleasures and of pains. Here, then, is a second "Socratic paradox": no
one does wrong willingly--wrongdoing is a matter of miscalculation. It is a puzzling
feature of this argument that Socrates appears to embrace a form of hedonism.
Metaphysical foundation of Plato's doctrine: "Phaedo."
In the works so far considered, the foundation of a Socratic moral and political doctrine
is laid, which holds that the great concern of man is the development of a rational moral
personality and that this development is the key to man's felicity. Success in this task,
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however, depends on rational insight into the true scale of good. The reason men forfeit
felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real. If a man ever knew with assurance
what the Good is, he would never pursue anything else; it is in this sense that "all virtue
is knowledge." The philosophical moralist, who has achieved an assured insight into
absolute Good, is thus the only true statesman, for he alone can tend to the national
character. These moral convictions have a metaphysical foundation and justification.
The principles of this metaphysics are expounded more explicitly in the following
dialogues, in which a theory of knowledge and of scientific method is also discernible.
The object of the Phaedo is to justify belief in the immortality of the soul by showing that
it follows from a fundamental metaphysical doctrine (the theory of Ideas, or the doctrine
of Forms), which seems to afford a rational clue to the structure of the universe.
Socrates' soul is identical with Socrates himself: the survival of his soul is the survival of
Socrates--in a purified state. For his life has been spent in trying to liberate the soul
from dependence on the body. In life, the body is always interfering with the soul's
activity. Its appetites and passions interrupt the pursuit of wisdom and goodness.
There are four arguments for thinking that the soul survives death.
First, there is a belief that the soul has a succession of many lives. The processes of
nature in general are cyclical; and it is reasonable to suppose that this cyclicity applies
to the case of dying and coming to life. If this were not so, if the process of dying were
not reversible, life would ultimately vanish from the universe.
Second, the doctrine that what men call "learning" is really "recollection" shows, or at
least suggests, that the soul's life is independent of the body.
Third, the soul contemplates the Forms, which are eternal, changeless, and simple. The
soul is like the Forms. Hence it is immortal.
The fourth argument is the most elaborate. Socrates begins by recalling his early
interest in finding the causes of being and change and his dissatisfaction with the
explanations then current. He offers instead the Forms as causes. First, and safely, he
says that something becomes, say, hot simply by participating in Heat. Then, a little
more daringly, he is prepared to say that it becomes hot by participating in Fire, which
brings Heat with it. Now if Fire brings Heat, it cannot accept Cold, which is the opposite
of Heat. All this is then applied to the soul. Human beings are alive by participating in
Life--and, more particularly, by having souls that bring Life with them. Since the soul
brings Life, it cannot accept Death, the opposite of Life. But in that case the soul cannot
perish and is immortal. (For further discussion of the theory of Forms, see
METAPHYSICS: Forms.)
Aesthetic and mystical dialogues.
Both the Symposium and the Phaedrus present the Forms in a special light, as objects
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of mystical contemplation and as stimuli of mystical emotion. (see also Index:
mysticism)
The immediate object of the Symposium, which records several banquet eulogies of
eros (erotic love), is to find the highest manifestation of the love that controls the world
in the mystic aspiration after union with eternal and supercosmic beauty. It depicts
Socrates as having reached the goal of union and puts the figure of Alcibiades, who
has sold his spiritual birthright for the pleasures of the world, in sharp opposition to him.
The main argument may be summarized thus: Eros is a reaching out of the soul to a
hoped-for good. The object is eternal beauty. In its crudest form, love for a beautiful
person is really a passion to achieve immortality through offspring by that person. A
more spiritual form is the aspiration to combine with a kindred soul to give birth to sound
institutions and rules of life. Still more spiritual is the endeavour to enrich philosophy
and science through noble dialogue. The insistent seeker may then suddenly descry a
supreme beauty that is the cause and source of all of the beauties so far discerned.
The philosopher's path thus culminates in a vision of the Form of the Good, the
supreme Form that stands at the head of all others.
Though the immediate subject of the Phaedrus is to show how a truly scientific rhetoric
might be built on the double foundation of logical method and scientific study of human
passions, Plato contrives to unite with this topic a discussion of the psychology of love,
which leads him to speak of the Forms as the objects of transcendent emotion and,
indeed, of mystical contemplation. The soul, in its antenatal, disembodied state, could
enjoy the direct contemplation of the Forms. But sense experience can suggest the
Form of Beauty in an unusually startling way: through falling in love. The unreason and
madness of the lover mean that the wings of his soul are beginning to grow again; it is
the first step in the soul's return to its high estate.
The "Republic."
In the Republic the immediate problem is ethical. What is justice? Can it be shown that
justice benefits the man who is just? Plato holds that it can.
Justice consists in a harmony that emerges when the various parts of a unit perform the
function proper to them and abstain from interfering with the functions of any other part.
More specifically, justice occurs with regard to the individual, when the three component
parts of his soul--reason, appetite, and spirit, or will--each perform their appropriate
tasks; with regard to society, justice occurs when its component members each fulfill
the demands of their allotted roles.
Harmony is ensured in the individual when the rational part of his soul is in command;
with regard to society, when philosophers are its rulers because philosophers--Platonic
philosophers--have a clear understanding of justice, based on their vision of the Form
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of the Good. (see also Index: normative ethics)
In the ethical scheme of the Republic three roles, or "three lives," are distinguished:
those of the philosopher, of the votary of enjoyment, and of the man of action. The end
of the first is wisdom; of the second, the gratification of appetite; and of the third,
practical distinction. These reflect the three elements, or active principles, within a man:
rational judgment of good; a multitude of conflicting appetites for particular
gratifications; and spirit, or will, manifested as resentment against infringements both by
others and by the individual's own appetites.
This tripartite scheme is then applied to determine the structure of the just society. Plato
develops his plan for a just society by dividing the general population into three classes
that correspond to the three parts of man's soul as well as to the three lives. Thus there
are: the statesmen; the general civilian population that provides for material needs; and
the executive force (army and police). These three orders correspond respectively to
the rational, appetitive, and spirited elements. They have as their corresponding virtues
wisdom, the excellence of the thinking part; temperance, that of the appetitive part
(acquiescence of the nonrational elements to the plan of life prescribed by judgment);
and courage, that of the spirited part (loyalty to the rule of life laid down by judgment).
The division of the population into these three classes would not be made on the basis
of birth or wealth but on the basis of education provided for by the state. By a process
of examination each individual would then be assigned to his appropriate rank in
correspondence with the predominant part of his soul.
The state ordered in this manner is just because each of the elements vigorously
executes its own function and, in loyal contentment, confines itself within its limits. Such
a society is a true aristocracy, or rule of the best. Plato describes successive deviations
from this ideal as timocracy (the benign military state), oligarchy (the state dominated
by merchant princes, a plutocracy), and democracy (the state subjected to an
irresponsible or criminal will).
The training of the philosophical rulers would continue through a long and rigorous
education because the vision of the Good requires extensive preparation and
intellectual discipline. It leads through study of the exact sciences to that of their
metaphysical principles. The central books of the Republic thus present an outline of
metaphysics and a philosophy of the sciences. The Forms appear in the double
character of objects of all genuine science and formal causes of events and processes.
Plato expressly denied that there can be knowledge, in the proper sense, of the
temporal and mutable. In his scheme for the intellectual training of the philosophical
rulers, the exact sciences--arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, astronomy, and
harmonics--would first be studied for 10 years to familiarize the mind with relations that
can only be apprehended by thought. Five years would then be given to the still severer
study of "dialectic." Dialectic is, etymologically, the art of conversation, of question and
answer; and according to Plato, dialectical skill is the ability to pose and answer
questions about the essences of things. The dialectician replaces hypotheses with
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secure knowledge, and his aim is to ground all science, all knowledge, on some
"unhypothetical first principle."
This principle is the Form of the Good, which, like the Sun in relation to visible things, is
the source of the reality of all things, of the light by which they are apprehended, and
also of their value. As in the Symposium, the Good is the supreme beauty that dawns
suddenly upon the pilgrim of love as he draws near to his goal.
THE LATER DIALOGUES
Formally the important dialogues the Sophist and the Statesman are closely connected,
both being ostensibly concerned with a problem of definition. The real purpose of the
Sophist, however, is logical or metaphysical; it aims at explaining the true nature of
negative predication, or denials that something is so. The object of the Statesman, on
the other hand, is to consider the respective merits of two contrasting forms of
government, personal rule and constitutionalism, and to recommend the second,
particularly in the form of limited monarchy. The Sophist thus lays the foundations of all
subsequent logic, the Statesman those of all constitutionalism. A second purpose in
both dialogues is to illustrate the value of careful classification as a basis for scientific
definition. (see also Index: negation)
The Sophist purports to investigate what a Sophist really is. The definitions all lead to
such notions as falsity, illusion, nonbeing. But these notions are puzzling. How can
there be such a thing as a false statement or a false impression? For the false means
"what is not," and what is not is nothing at all and can neither be uttered nor thought.
Plato argues that what is not in some sense also is, and that what is in some sense is
not; and he refutes Parmenidean monism by drawing the distinction between absolute
and relative nonbeing. A significant denial, A is not B, does not mean that A is nothing,
but that A is other than B; every one of the "greatest kinds," or most general, features of
reality--being, identity, difference, motion, and rest--is other than every other feature.
Motion, say, is other than rest; and thus motion is not rest--but it does not follow that
motion is not. The true business of dialectic is to treat the Forms themselves as an
interrelated system, with relations of compatibility and incompatibility among
themselves.
In the Statesman the conclusion is reached that government by a benevolent dictator is
not suitable to the conditions of human life because his direction is not that of a god.
The surrogate for direction by a god is the impersonal supremacy of inviolable law.
Where there is such law, monarchy is the best and democracy the least satisfactory
form of constitution; but where there is no law, this situation is inverted.
The Philebus contains Plato's ripest moral psychology. Its subject is strictly ethical--the
question of whether the Good is to be identified with pleasure or with wisdom. Under
the guidance of Socrates a mediating conclusion is reached: the best life contains both
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elements, but wisdom predominates. (see also Index: hedonism)
Philosophically most important is a classification adopted to determine the formal
character of the two claimants to recognition as the Good. Everything real belongs to
one of four classes: (1) the infinite or unbounded, (2) the limit, (3) the mixture (of infinite
and limit), (4) the cause of the mixture. It emerges that all of the good things of life
belong to the third class, that is, are produced by imposing a definite limit upon an
indeterminate continuum.
The Timaeus is an exposition of cosmology, physics, and biology. Timaeus first draws
the distinction between eternal being and temporal becoming and insists that it is only
of the former that one can have exact and final knowledge. The visible, mutable world
had a beginning; it is the work of God, who had its Forms before him as eternal models
in terms of which he molded the world as an imitation. God first formed its soul out of
three constituents: identity, difference, being. The world soul was placed in the circles
of the heavenly bodies, and the circles were animated with movements. Subsequently
the various subordinate gods and the immortal and rational element in the human soul
were formed. The human body and the lower components of its soul were generated
through the intermediacy of the "created gods" (i.e., the stars). (see also Index: idea)
The Timaeus combines the geometry of the Pythagoreans with the biology of
Empedocles by a mathematical construction of the elements, in which four of the
regular solids--cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron--are assumed to be the
shapes of the corpuscles of earth, fire, air, and water. (The fifth, the dodecahedron,
comprises the model for the whole universe.)
NOTE: This idea, expressed in the Timæus, has been the source of a great deal of
pseudo-metaphysical nonsense among occultists and esotericists.
Among the important features of the dialogue are its introduction of God as the
"demiurge"--the intelligent cause of all order and structure in the world of
becoming--and the emphatic recognition of the essentially tentative character of natural
science.
It is also noteworthy that, though Plato presents a corpuscular physics, his
metaphysical substrate is not matter but chora (space). The presence of space as a
factor requires the recognition, over and above God or mind, of an element that he
called ananke (necessity). The activity of the demiurge ensures that the universe is in
general rational and well-ordered, but the brute force of material necessity sets limits to
the scope and efficacy of reason.
The details of Plato's cosmology, physiology, and psychophysics are of great
importance for the history of science but metaphysically of secondary interest. (see also
Index: efficient cause)
The Laws, Plato's longest and most intensely practical work, contains his ripest
utterances on ethics, education, and jurisprudence, as well as his one entirely
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nonmythical exposition of theology. The immediate object is to provide a model of
constitution making and legislation to assist in the actual founding of cities. The problem
of the dialogue is thus not the construction of an ideal state as in the Republic but the
framing of a constitution and code that might be successfully adopted by a society of
average Greeks. Hence the demands made on average human nature, though
exacting, are not pitched too high; and the communism of the Republic is dropped.
Purely speculative philosophy and science are excluded from the purview of the Laws,
and the metaphysical interest is introduced only so far as to provide a basis for a moral
theology. In compensation the dialogue is exceptionally rich in political and legal
thought and appears, indirectly, to have left its mark on the great system of Roman
jurisprudence. (see also Index: Roman law)
In the ethics of the Laws Plato is rigid and rigorous--for example, homosexuality shall
be completely suppressed and monogamous marriage with strict chastity shall be the
rule.
NOTE: This is an instance of “Do as I say not as I do” for there is far too much historical
evidence that Plato himself was a homosexual. I think it shows that even great men can
be hypocrites! And yet, I have to ask this question: Are te Platonic Dialogues we have
today the same Dialogues that Plato produced? There is simply to much resemblance
to Judeo-Christian Theology in much of what we find in Plato for one not to legitimately
wonder if the Monks and Scholars who preserved his work, all of whom were
Christians, did not indulge in revisionism to make this enormously famous man a sort of
“precursor Christian” as it were. After all his Cosmology is an immensely far cry from
Hesiods’ “Theogony” which is a pretty clear depiction of Greek Religious beliefs. The
Cosmology of Plato as it has come down to us is far too close to Judeo-Christian
Monotheism to comfortably fit into the context of Platos’ culture and period.
(In the Republic the guardian class enters into temporary unions or "sacred marriages,"
with a community of wives and children, to foster a concern for the common good.) In
politics, Plato favours a mixed constitution, one with elements of democratic freedom
and autocratic authoritarianism, and he suggests a system for securing both genuine
popular representation and the proper degree of attention to personal qualifications.
The basis of society is to be agriculture, not commerce. What amounts to a tax of 100
percent is to be levied on incomes beyond the statutory limits. Education is regarded as
the most important of all the functions of government. The distinction between the
sexes is to be treated as irrelevant. (see also Index: education, philosophy of)
Careful attention is to be paid to the right utilization of the child's instinct for play and to
the demand that the young shall be taught in institutions where expert instruction in all
of the various subjects is coordinated.
Members of the supreme council of the state shall be thoroughly trained in the supreme
science, which "sees the one in the many and the many in the one"; i.e., in dialectic. In
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the Laws Plato instituted regulations which would ensure that trials for serious offenses
would take place before a court of highly qualified magistrates and would proceed with
due deliberation. Also, provision was made for appeals, and a foundation was laid for a
distinction between civil and criminal law.
The Laws also creates a natural theology. There are three false beliefs, Plato holds,
that are fatal to moral character: atheism, denial of the moral government of the world,
and the belief that divine judgment can be bought off by offerings. Plato claims that he
can disprove them all. His refutation of atheism turns on the identification of the soul
with the "movement which can move itself." Thus all motion throughout the universe is
ultimately initiated by souls. It is then inferred from the regular character of the great
cosmic motions and their systematic unity that the souls which originate them form a
hierarchy with a best soul, God, at their head. Since some motions are disorderly, there
must be one soul that is not the best, and there may be more. (There is no suggestion,
however, that there is a worst soul, a devil.) The other two heresies can be similarly
disposed of. Plato thus becomes the originator of the view that there are certain
theological truths that can be strictly demonstrated by reason; i.e., of philosophical
theology. Plato goes on to enact that the denial of any of his three propositions shall be
a grave crime.
The Laws strikes many readers as a dull and depressing work. Its prose lacks the
sparkle of the early dialogues; and Socrates, the hero of those works, would not have
been tolerated under a government of the repressively authoritarian style that the Laws
recommends. (J.B. /Ed.)
NOTE: I think it’s pretty obvious that Plato, who, after all was very young at the time,
and merely on the fringes of Socrates’ circle, had quite a distinct “love-Hate”
relationship with his hero.
Platonism after Plato
The term Platonism can be applied to any philosophy that derives its ultimate
inspiration from Plato. Though there was in antiquity a tradition about Plato's "unwritten
doctrines" (much discussed by German scholars since 1959), Platonism then and later
was based primarily on a reading of the dialogues. But these can be read in many
different ways, often very selectively, and it may be that all that the various kinds of
Platonism can be said to have in common is an intense concern for the quality of
human life--always ethical, often religious, and sometimes political, based on a
belief in unchanging and eternal realities, independent of the changing things of
the world perceived by the senses.
Platonism sees these realities both as the causes of the existence of everything in the
universe and as giving value and meaning to its contents in general and the life of its
inhabitants in particular. It is this belief in absolute values rooted in an eternal world that
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distinguishes Platonism from the philosophies of Plato's immediate predecessors and
successors and from later philosophies inspired by them--from the immanentist
naturalism of most of the pre-Socratics (who interpreted the world monistically in terms
of nature as such), from the relativism of the Sophists, and from the correction of
Platonism in a this-worldly direction carried out by Plato's greatest pupil, Aristotle.
GREEK PLATONISM FROM ARISTOTLE THROUGH MIDDLE
PLATONISM: ITS NATURE AND HISTORY
Since Plato refused to write his own metaphysics, knowledge of its final shape has to
be derived from hints in the dialogues and statements by Aristotle and, to a far lesser
extent, other ancient authorities.
According to these, Plato's doctrine of Forms was, in its general character, highly
mathematical, the Forms being somehow identified with, or explained in terms of,
numbers. Here may be seen the influence of the Pythagoreans, though, as Aristotle
says, the details of Plato's views on the mathematical constituents of being were not the
same as theirs. In addition Aristotle states that Plato introduced a class of
"mathematicals," or "intermediates," positioned between sensible objects and Forms.
These differ from sensible objects in being immaterial (e.g., the geometer's triangles
ABC and XYZ) and from the Forms in being plural, unlike the Triangle itself. (H.J.Bl.
/Ed.)
Aristotle himself had little use for this sort of mathematical metaphysics and rejected
Plato's doctrine of transcendent eternal Forms altogether.
NOTE: I have long believed that had all of Aristotle’s Metaphysical writings and so
much else of his work not disappeared, we would clearly see that Aristotle was very
greatly influenced by the “Pre-Socratic” philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander,
Anaxagoras, Leucippos, and Democritus. We seriously have to ask ourselves whether
Aristotle’s writings disappeared due to the exigencies of time or did the get disposed of
as inopportune by those who preserved his work for us? And of course, that leads us to
the obvious question: How much revisionism is there in what we still possess of
Aristotle’s work?
Something of Platonism, nonetheless, survived in Aristotle's system in his beliefs that
the reality of anything lay in a changeless (though wholly immanent) form or essence
comprehensible and definable by reason and that the highest realities were eternal,
immaterial, changeless self-sufficient intellects which caused the ordered movement of
the universe. It was the desire to give expression to their transcendent perfection that
kept the heavenly spheres rotating. Man's intellect at its highest was akin to them. This
Aristotelian doctrine of Intellect (nous) was easily recombined with Platonism in later
antiquity.
Aristotle, however, was not reacting only against Plato but also against Plato's
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associates and immediate successors as head of the Academy, namely Plato's nephew
Speusippus (c. 410-339 BC) and Xenocrates (396-314 BC). Speusippus, in particular,
accented the mathematical tendencies of the late Plato and abolished Forms in favour
of numbers. He also posited different principles for different sorts of entities and so was
accused by Aristotle of breaking the connections in reality.
Xenocrates identified Forms and numbers and began the long process of finding firm
doctrines in Plato by laying down that Forms were only of those things that exist in
nature. Xenocrates was also the first, as far as is known, to turn his attention to what
continued to be a subject of controversy throughout the history of Platonism, namely
whether the account of creation offered in the Timaeus was to be taken as
chronological or merely expository. He took the latter view, which turned out to be the
most favoured one in antiquity; Aristotle was on the other side.
Whether Xenocrates' three successors as head of the Academy (Polemon, Crates, and
Crantor) developed Platonism is uncertain. Crantor (c. 330-270 BC) was allegedly the
first to write commentaries on Plato, particularly on the Timaeus. After Crantor the
Academy was preoccupied for about two centuries with the serious questioning of
man's claims to knowledge. This began with Arcesilaus (316/315-c. 241 BC), who is
described as the founder of the Middle Academy.
There was a genuine desire to recover the critical, questioning, and agnostic attitude of
the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues as well as philosophical exasperation with the
dogmatism of some of the contemporary Hellenistic philosophers, especially the Stoics.
It is likely that Arcesilaus was influenced to some extent by Pyrrhon (c. 360-c. 272 BC
q.v..), founder of the tradition to which the name Skeptic was applied in antiquity.
The Skeptical Academics denied that certainty on any subject was possible and worked
out a sophisticated theory of probability as a guide to practical decision making. Their
critical dialectic and probability theory were best expounded by Carneades
(214/213-129/128 BC). Though he wrote nothing, he was regarded as the founder of
the New Academy. A return to dogmatic and positive philosophical teaching was
effected by Philo of Larissa (died c. 79 BC) and his pupil Antiochus of Ascalon, who
was head of the school in 79-78 BC. (see also Index: Stoicism, Skepticism)
The next important phase of Platonism, Middle Platonism or pre-Neoplatonism, was
significant through the influence that it exerted in more than one direction. In the
direction of Jewish culture (further described in a later section), it formed the Greek
philosophical background of the efforts of Philo Judaeus (Philo of Alexandria) to create
a philosophical system on the basis of the Old Testament heritage.
Though the origins of Middle Platonism are obscure, its main direction became clear in
the 1st century AD. It seems to have been linked from the beginning with the closely
related revival of Pythagoreanism (a philosophy holding that reality is number, and
sometimes showing, after the revival, a tendency to superstitious occultism).
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The somewhat Platonized Stoicism of Poseidonius (c. 135-c. 51 BC), whose dualism of
matter and reason enhanced the roles of emotion and will, may have influenced its
beginnings, as did the Stoicized Platonism of Antiochus; and Stoic influence, especially
in the ethical field, remained important in its later developments.
There was also a strong Aristotelian influence, though a minority of 2nd-century
Platonists, notably Atticus and, to a lesser extent, Gaius Calvenus Taurus, objected to
certain Aristotelian doctrines. Atticus was particularly offended by Aristotle's failure to
provide for providence.
The general characteristics of this revised Platonic philosophy (and the closely related
Neo-Pythagoreanism) were the recognition of a hierarchy of divine principles with stress
on the transcendence of the supreme principle, which was already occasionally called
"the One"; the placing of the Platonic Forms in the divine mind; a strongly otherworldly
attitude demanding a "flight from the body," an ascent of the mind to the divine and
eternal; and a preoccupation with the problem of evil, attributed either to an evil world
soul or to matter.
NOTE: Here we see clearly the inextricable connection between stoicism and
Christianity! By this time whatever it was Plato actually taught has already been lost
forever.
The best known of the Middle Platonists is the biographer and essayist Plutarch of
Chaeronea (c. AD 46-120). More important philosophically were other 2nd-century
figures: Gaius and two men possibly influenced by him, Albinus and Apuleius (better
known as author of the prose narrative The Golden Ass); Atticus; and Numenius of
Apamea. It was from the thought of these and other Middle Platonists, combined with
his own reading of Alexander and other Peripatetic commentators on Aristotle, that the
foremost Neoplatonist, Plotinus, started constructing his own interpretation of
Platonism, which was both profoundly original and firmly rooted in an established
school tradition. (see also Index: Judaism)
NEOPLATONISM: ITS NATURE AND HISTORY
Neoplatonism is the modern name given to the form of Platonism developed by Plotinus
in the 3rd century AD and modified by his successors. It came to dominate the Greek
philosophical schools and remained predominant until the teaching of philosophy by
pagans ended in the second half of the 6th century AD. It represents the final form of
pagan Greek philosophy.
It was not a mere syncretism (or combination of diverse beliefs) but a genuine, if
one-sided, development of ideas to be found in Plato and earlier Platonism--though it
incorporated important Aristotelian and Stoic elements as well. There is no real
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evidence for Oriental influence.
A certain Gnostic (relating to intuitive knowledge acquired by privileged individuals and
immune to empirical verification) tone or colouring sometimes may be discerned in the
thought of Plotinus. But he was consciously a passionate opponent of Gnosticism, and
in any case there was often a large element of popular Platonism in the Gnostic
systems then current.
Moreover, the theosophical works of the late 2nd century AD known as the Chaldean
Oracles, which were taken as inspired authorities by the later Neoplatonists, seem to
have been a hodgepodge of popular Greek religious philosophy.
Neoplatonism began as a complex (and in some ways ambiguous) philosophy and
grew vigorously in a variety of forms over a long period; it is therefore not easy to
generalize about it. But the leading ideas in the thought of philosophers who can
properly be described as Neoplatonists seem always to have included the following:
1. There is a plurality of levels of being, arranged in hierarchical descending order, the
last and lowest comprising the physical universe, which exists in time and space and is
perceptible to the senses.
2. Each level of being is derived from its superior, a derivation that is not a process in
time or space.
3. Each derived being is established in its own reality by turning back toward its superior
in a movement of contemplative desire, which is implicit in the original creative impulse
of outgoing that it receives from its superior; thus the Neoplatonic universe is
characterized by a double movement of outgoing and return.
4. Each level of being is an image or expression on a lower level of the one above it.
The relation of archetype and image runs through all Neoplatonic schemes.
5. Degrees of being are also degrees of unity; as one goes down the scale of being
there is greater multiplicity, more separateness, and increasing limitation--until the
atomic individualization of the spatiotemporal world is reached.
6. The highest level of being, and through it all of what in any sense exists, derives from
the ultimate principle, which is absolutely free from determinations and limitations and
utterly transcends any conceivable reality, so that it may be said to be "beyond being."
Because it has no limitations, it has no division, attributes, or qualifications; it cannot
really be named, or even properly described as being, but may be called "the One" to
designate its complete simplicity. It may also be called "the Good" as the source of all
perfections and the ultimate goal of return, for the impulse of outgoing and return that
constitutes the hierarchy of derived reality comes from and leads back to the Good.
7. Since this supreme principle is absolutely simple and undetermined (or devoid of
specific traits), man's knowledge of it must be radically different from any other kind of
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knowledge. It is not an object (a separate, determined, limited thing) and no predicates
can be applied to it; hence it can be known only if it raises the mind to an immediate
union with itself, which cannot be imagined or described.
Copyright Britannica 1998-1999
A younger contemporary of Plato’s was:
PHAEDO (PHAEDON) OF ELIS:
(415-350 B.C.E.)
He was the founder of ‘THE SCHOOL OF ELIS”, which was a competitor of Plato’s
“Academy”, and Aristotle’s “Peripatetic School” but his emphasis was different from
either of them. Born in Elis, he was enslaved as a boy in consequence to a war
between Athens and Elis. He was sold to the keeper of a “Boy Brothel” but Socrates
purchased him and gave him his manumission and he became (along with Plato and
others) one of Socrates’s students. On the death of Socrates, he returned to Elis
believing there was no place for him in Athens with Socrates dead. In many ways he
was deeper than Plato, but not nearly as popular. His teachings were, I imagine due to
his life experiences, primarily concerned with ethics and ethical behavior, they where
also more metaphysically oriented than either those of Plato or Aristotle. He too was a
very important fully integrated personality and deserved far more fame than Plato’s
dialogue “Phaedo” gives him. He, by the way, always denied vehemently the role
assigned him by Plato in the dialogue which bears his name.
Britannica has much less to say:
also spelled PHAEDON (b. c. 417 BC, Elis, in the Peloponnesus [Greece]), philosopher,
founder of a Socratic school of philosophy at Elis on the Peloponnese, and author of
works on dialectics and ethics.
Born of an aristocratic family, Phaedo was made a prisoner in the war with Sparta
(400-399 BC) and was sold as a slave. Bought and freed by an Athenian who was a
friend of Socrates, Phaedo became Socrates' disciple. Plato named one of his
dialogues after him. After Socrates' death, Phaedo returned to Elis and established his
school.
Many dialogues were attributed to Phaedo, but only the Zopyrus and Simon have
survived.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Now, it seems only logical to discuss Plato’s successor at the academy. His principle
student and nephew:
SPEUSIPPUS (Erechthides)
Born: approx. 407 B.C.E.
Died: approx 339 B.C.E.
(d. 339/338 BC), Greek philosopher who became head, or scholarch, of the Greek
Academy after the death in 347 BC of Plato, who had founded it in 387. A nephew and
disciple of Plato, Speusippus accompanied him on his journey to Sicily in 361. He was
also a partisan in his uncle's relations with political rulers, including Dionysius II of
Syracuse. (see also Index: Platonism)
Little survives of Speusippus' philosophical writings except a long excerpt from his
work On Pythagorean Numbers, a few other fragments, and reports by other writers.
Like his contemporaries and early successors in the beginning years of the Academy,
he stressed the importance of numbers and numerical combinations and deemphasized
ideas. The excerpt from Numbers, for example, explains the "perfections," or special
importance, of the number 10.
According to Aristotle's report, which is frequently criticized for representing Plato
inaccurately, Speusippus adopted the Platonic doctrine asserting the timeless
derivation of all reality from two opposite principles, often called "the One" and "the
indeterminate dyad," terms meant to explain the presence of both unity and multiplicity
in the universe.
His colleagues, however, viewed "the One" and "the dyad" as principles of good and
evil, respectively, but Speusippus denied the attachment of moral qualities.
NOTE: It’s obvious to me that there was a great deal of Persian dualism entering the
philosophy during these times.
Using numerical labels, he also organized reality into successively more spiritual
spheres. Between the spheres of pure numbers, or "mathematicals," and of the body,
or "the sensible," he inserted the sphere of the soul, considered immortal in all of its
parts. Though Speusippus is strongly criticized by Aristotle, his Homoia ("Similitudes"),
a comparative study of plant and animal physiology, has been favourably compared
with Aristotle's own History of Animals and conceivably reflects Speusippus' view that
no single thing can be defined unless all are, because classification and definition are
closely related.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The successor to Speusippus as head of the Academy over which he presided for 25
years was:
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XENOCRATES:
(d. 314 BC, Athens), Greek philosopher, pupil of Plato, and successor of Speusippus
as the head of the Greek Academy, which Plato founded about 387 BC. In the
company of Aristotle he left Athens after Plato's death in 348/347, returning in 339 on
his election as head of the Academy, where he remained until his death.
Xenocrates' writings are lost except for fragments, but his doctrines appear to
resemble Plato's as reported by Aristotle. Among them is the "derivation" of all reality
from the interaction of two opposite principles, "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad."
It is the dyad that is responsible for multiplicity, or diversity, evil, and motion, whereas
the One is responsible for unity, good, and rest. Numbers and geometrical magnitudes
are seen as the first products of this derivation. In addition Xenocrates divided all of
reality into three realms: (1) the sensibles, or objects of sensation; (2) the intelligibles,
or objects of true knowledge, such as Plato's "Ideas"; and (3) the bodies of the
heavens, which mediate between the sensibles and the intelligibles and are therefore
objects of "opinion." This tripartite division typifies the Academy's tendency to bridge the
gap between the two traditional modes of cognition, the mode of sense experience and
the mode of intellection.
A second threefold division in Xenocrates' thought separated gods, men, and
"demons." The demons represented semihuman, semidivine beings, some good and
others evil. To these beings Xenocrates attributed much of what popular religion
attributed to gods, and ritual mysteries were instituted to propitiate them, especially the
evil ones. Though it is uncertain how literally Xenocrates viewed the demons, his
demonology was highly influential, particularly on those early Christian writers who
identified pagan deities with evil demons.
The classical distinction differentiating mind, body, and soul has been attributed by
some to Xenocrates and by others to the Stoic philosopher Poseidonius. The same is
true of the related doctrine that men die twice, the second time occurring on the Moon
and consisting in the mind's separation from the soul to make its ascent to the Sun.
Sometimes considered an Atomist for his view that matter is composed of indivisible
units, he held that Pythagoras, who stressed the importance of numbers in philosophy,
was responsible for the Atomist view of acoustics, in which the sound perceived as a
single entity actually consists of discrete sounds. The same Pythagorean influence on
thinkers of the Academy can be seen in Xenocrates' devotion to tripartite divisions. Yet
another such division is found in his general view of philosophy, which he divided into
logic, physics, and ethics.
The origin of philosophy, he maintained, lies in man's desire to resolve his anxieties.
Happiness is defined as the acquisition of the perfection that is peculiar and proper to
man; thus, enjoyment consists in being in contact with the things that are natural to him.
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This doctrine, which suggests the primacy of ethics over speculation in philosophy,
foreshadows the Stoic view that ethical norms are to be derived from observation of the
natural world. Xenocrates admitted, however, that external items are important for
happiness, a notion that the Stoics rejected.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another pupil of Socrates, and still another luminary of this period was:
ANTISTHENES:
Born: Athens: approx. 444 B.C.E.
Died:: Athens: after 371 B.C.E.
(b. c. 445 BC--d. c. 365), Greek philosopher, of Athens, who was a disciple of Socrates
and is considered the founder of the CYNIC SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, though
Diogenes of Sinope often is given that credit.
Antisthenes was born into a wealthy family, and the philosophical ideas that he
developed had their roots in the contradictions and injustices that he found embedded
in society. He sought to build a foundation of ideas that would serve as a guiding
principle toward a happier, more thoughtful way of life. Antisthenes believed that
happiness was dependent on moral virtue and that virtue could be instilled through
teaching.
In teaching people how to be virtuous, Antisthenes demarcated two categories of
objects: (1) external goods, embracing such elements as personal property, sensual
pleasure, and other luxuries; and (2) internal goods, including the truth and knowledge
of the soul. He advocated great restraint on the part of an individual tempted to take
pleasure in external goods, and he encouraged his students to accept the burden of
physical and mental pain that accompanies the soul's search for its own inner wealth.
To dramatize his method of teaching, Antisthenes, after the myth of Hercules, would
stand on his platform of ideas and beliefs and "bark" at the folly and injustices of his
society. The Cynic (Greek: Canine, or Dog-like) school of philosophy long survived him.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Unfortunately, while many of Antisthenes’ ideas were wonderful and productive of
much that is good and useful in human society, these same ideas, or rather what I see
as a complete misunderstanding of them, were inculcated into the earliest Christian
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beliefs along with the beliefs of the STOICS and have disfigured and distorted
Christianity ever since
Now I’m going to introduce you to yet another major polymath:
EUDOXIS OF CNIDUS:
Born: approx 409 B.C.E.
Died: approx 356 B.C.E.
Another broad spectrum polymath: Astronomer, geometer, physician. He is said to have
introduced the use of the Celestial Globe into Greece; to have corrected the length of
the year; and to have adduced the fact that the altitude of the stars changes with the
latitude as proof of the sphericality of the Earth. Not bad for 2500 years or so ago, is it?
Here’s what Britannica has to say of him.
b. c. 400,, Cnidus, Asia Minor [now in Turkey]
d. c. 350 BC,, Cnidus
ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer who substantially advanced number
theory and gave the first systematic explanation of the motions of the Sun, Moon, and
planets. He introduced geometry into the science of astronomy and began the
necessary interaction between observation and theory that has characterized its
development ever since. His contributions are known through ample Greek sources,
including commentaries in Byzantine codices, even though none of his writings has
survived.
Life.
Eudoxus, son of Aeschines, learned mathematics and medicine at a school that rivaled
for a time that of Hippocrates of Cos. Impressed by his ability, a well-to-do physician
paid his way to Athens so that he could study at Plato's Academy, which had been
established in 387. He also spent 16 months in Egypt during the reign of Nectanebo I
(380-363). At Heliopolis, now a Cairo suburb, Eudoxus learned the priestly wisdom,
which included astronomy; there he wrote the Oktaëteris, his first major work,
concerning a calendar based on an eight-year cycle, perhaps from a study of Venus.
Earning his living as a teacher, he then traveled in the region of the Sea of Marmara
before returning to Athens, where he became respected throughout Greece as a
legislator. The few facts concerning his life are derived largely from the writings of
Diogenes Laërtius in the 3rd century AD.
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Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
I’m going to end the discussion of these extraordinary years with a man who was not a
pupil of Socrates but rather a pupil of Socrates’ most famous pupil; Plato. That man is
Aristotle.
Just in passing, let me say that I strongly hope that the discussion of this particular very
illustrious period has given you some idea as to the numbers of the metasapient who
might be living and working on this planet in any particular period. And I have been
talking for the last little while of a very small section of the planet’s surface.
The most particularly interesting thing about this period of Hellenic History is how very
many of the people living then achieved lasting fame. As I have said before this is not
usually the case. From this point onwards I am going to “glide through history” indicating
those whom I feel were important members of the humanist collective, and who
changed the world greatly for the better by grace of having lived at all.
But before I talk about Aristotle, there’s one Greek I will mention here because
although we know a great deal about what he taught, we know nothing at all of him. He
is one of those whom we know primarily because of the references other people made
to his work.
His name was:
CLEOMEDES and we know neither his place of birth, residence or era. This is
what we do know. He wrote a treatise on Astronomy and Cosmology entitled: “THE
CIRCULAR THEORY OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES”; in which he maintains that the
earth is spherical, that the number of fixed stars is “infinite”, and that the Moon’s
rotation on its axis is performed at the same time as its synodical revolution around the
earth. His treatise contains also the first notice of the theory of “atmospherical
refraction”. Now here’s an exemplar of what I mean. Here’s a man, who, in the time
before telescopes and other instruments to gather knowledge, gave us a theory that is
so completely close to an accuracy he should not have been able to attain.. Cleomedes
is an example of metasapiency for sure.
And now to Aristotle:
ARISTOTLE OF STAGIRA:
(384-320 B.C.E.)
He was clearly an Illuminated intelligence of the highest level. A polymath of truly
immense scope. More important even than his abilities as a Polymath is that he was an
originator, a creator. He was a philosopher, psychologist (in point of fact, he may very
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well have invented the field), logician, political-social thinker, biologist (another field he
led the way in) and probably most important of all he was the founder of literary criticism
(which definitely doesn’t mean he was a book critic).
His Father was a Doctor and also a Priest of Aesculapius (The Greek manifestationincarnation of Im-hotep-Thoth). Aristotle wrote widely and well on every topic under the
sun....the greatest majority of his work by far has been lost. Most importantly among the
“lost works” is his “METAPHYSICS” which is an immense loss as we therefore can only
infer by analogy what he thought on this very important subject. He is primarily regarded
as a largely materialistic philosopher, but this work might have changed history’s view of
him. But those of his works which remain to us more than adequately assure his place,
both in History, and in this list of the metasapient.
Because of his truly immense importance in the basic development of our modern
society and civilization, I’m going to spend quite a bit of time on him.
It is my impression, and that of many others, but an impression only based upon his
surviving works, that Plato and Thales and some of the others were advanced beyond
Aristotle in pure abstract philosophic thought, though it is obvious that had such a large
percentage of his written work not been lost, we might know better. It cannot be denied
that it was Aristotle who was antiquity’s greatest influence on modern society, and
even though they deny it to be so, on Christianity.
To be entirely honest, It is my own opinion that due to the loss of so much of his work,
and the adoption of a minor portion of his work as Roman Catholic Dogma, Aristotle’s
influence was unfortunately, forced to be not altogether positive, but positive or not, it is
undeniably of immense import. I think it’s quite safe to say that our society today is what
it is, largely due to Aristotle and his effect on both our scientific paradigm and the
Christian Religious Paradigm.
The works for which he was so widely known, and held in such immense repute among
the ancients, are lost....but such fragments that are left to us indicate they were, like
those of Plato, his teacher, in the form of dialogues written in a highly polished and
elegant political rhetorical style. These are referred to as the “Exoteric” writings, or
those intended for the general public outside of his school “The Lyceum”.
A second class of writings, has survived. These are called the “Esoteric” and are those
designed for use by the students of the Lyceum. These are known as the
“ACROMATIC WRITINGS”, and are known to us today as “THE TREATISES OF
ARISTOTLE”.
(NOTE: By the way, the usage of the terms “esoteric” and “exoteric” have nothing to do
with modern “occult” usage of those two terms. I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t
Aristotle’s use of these terms that inspired the Occult/Metaphysical Community to use
them.)
A third class of writings, the “HYPOMNEMATIC” or “MEMORANDA”, have been entirely
lost to us. Not even fragments remain. We know they existed because others referred
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to them.
The “Treatises” include first the logical works,( CATEGORIES, TOPICS, DE
INTERPRETATIONE, PRIOR ANALYTICS, SOPHISTICAL REFUTATIONS), known as
the ‘ORGANON” or “instrument”
Some nearly two thousand years later, in the sixteenth century of the Common Era, Sir
Francis Bacon (q.v.) Wrote “NOVA ORGANON” which was an advanced re-statement
of the same ideas by one of the most transcendentally great writers in the English
language.
For Aristotle, logic was PREPARATION for scientific knowledge, and not at all
knowledge the thing in itself. He was the first person to insist on rigorous scientific
procedure (humanity had to wait until Francis Bacon’s time to have an advanced
version of this methodology presented to it) and Aristotle’s method of demonstration
by the syllogism and by the dialectic, or reasoning from the opinions of others, became
standard philosophical method.
Aristotle maintained that all the human knowledge originates in sensible experiences
out of which the Soul perceives the Universal.
Aristotle’s “natural philosophy” contained in the eight books of the “PHYSICS”,
examines the physical universe, and by way of that examination, the Human Condition
as it relates to and through the physical universe. They include the really important
distinction between the substance (or essence) of a thing, and its accidental properties.
Other works in this group include”ON THE HEAVENS” (De Caelo), “ON COMING INTO
BEING AND PASSING AWAY” ( De Generatione et Corruptione), and
“METEOROLOGY” (Meteorology). [The ecclesiastical Latin titles were generated due to
Aristotle’s seminal influence on Roman Catholic theology and philosophy, and due to
Saint Thomas Aquinas].
“PARVA NATURALIA” and “DE ANIMA” are the titles of his works on psychology.
Aristotle wrote an introduction based on his long-term Biological studies called
“HISTORIA ANIMALUM”, in which he classified the animals, their methods of
reproduction, and their evolution (24 centuries before Darwin) Much of this treatise is
based upon “Hearsay” from the works of Herodotus (q.v.), popular rumors, and some
of it, pure fantasy (Bacon was far more careful to stick to the assiduous scientific
method he preached). Of course some of this may be Catholic revisionism.
Aristotle discusses theology, or primary philosophy, which he considered the highest
type of THEORETICAL science. Unlike his teacher, Plato, he did not posit a separate
world of “Perfect Forms” or “ideals”, but always finds form immanent in matter.
There are two Aristotelian ethical treatises, known as the “NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS”
and the “EUDOMIAN ETHICS”. According due to the former, Happiness is the goal of
life. Pleasure, fame, and wealth, however, will not bring one the highest “happiness”
which is achieved only through the contemplation of philosophic truth because it
exercises man’s peculiar virtue, the rational principle.
In Aristotle’s “POLITICS” (Eight Books), the good of the individual is identified with the
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good of the state (city-state}. The study of Human good is thus a political inquiry, as it is
in Plato. Aristotle discusses different types of government, finally preferring monarchy,
as an aristocracy of man and virtue, or constitutional government of the majority by a
minority of Eupatrids (The Well Born). Here this is made understandable by the Greek
experience of hostile anarchy among both so-called “Democratic” City-States, and,
especially in Athens, among the body of the Demos or people. This hostility and
animosity caused the downfall of the Greek City-States and for a long time had
rendered all the Greeks vulnerable to anyone who was more unified than they were. In
the end, it made Greece a Province of the Romans.
Slavery is considered natural in Aristotle’s politics because to him, some people are
adapted by nature to be the physical instruments of others. Now this is seen to be an
impossibly unethical position in our modern times, but in the context of his period, it is
not as impossible position as it would be today. When Aristotle lived, slavery was a
long accepted fact of any society of which he could possibly have known. He dealt with
it as a totally natural “fact of life” and put it in the context of the most moral application
of it that he possibly could.
One really important thing we must all learn is that it is not necessarily moral or ethical
to judge those who live in a different time and in a different social paradigm than ours
by our standards. If we do so, then no one at all passes muster. But then again, how
would we stand through their eyes?
Aristotle’s “RHETORIC” treats methods of persuasion; the “POETICS” is his great and
introductory contribution to the field of “literary criticism” which he originated.
Called by Dante “The Master of those who know”, Aristotle mastered every field of
knowledge which was known to the Greeks. His influence on Thomas Aquinas and the
medieval world through the means of the translation of the medieval Arabic scholar
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) was profound and endures to this day.
Now having listed Aristotle’s many works which survive at least in “fragments” or as
they are referred to by other philosophers and writers, we can only be awed by his
contributions. What would we have thought were the majority of his works not totally
lost to us?
Aristotle was the perfect example of what it is that a fully integrated personality is, and
does. He wasn’t anything like a “perfect human being” but then no one ever has
been or will be. In fact, I more than a little doubt that such a thing has ever existed,
exists now, or can ever exist in any possible future. For if humans were “perfect” they
wouldn’t need to evolve socially or personally, or be guided in that process..
The metasapient are not perfect either, and it is terribly unfair to expect them to be so.
Of course, in addition, there is the most important question of all: does the human race
have even the slightest idea of what “perfect” (in relationship to a human being) really
means? I do not believe it does. It most certainly has nothing at all to do with “purity” or
“innocence” whatever they may mean in a human context.
Aristotle was a brilliant and tremendously intellectually curious person vitally
interested in all things, who managed to make his interests and brilliance available to
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the human race to the betterment of that race. He, personally he seems to have been
actually a rather ill tempered person, terribly socially ambitious even though he was a
Eupatrid (only Eupatridae were eligible for positions in the Priesthoods). Most of his
attitude problems were caused by the fact that in a society in which physical perfection
and physical beauty was lauded and held up as an ideal, Aristotle like Socrates, was
denied entrance to the Mysteries because he was physically not perfect. Socrates was
an epileptic (which was seen as an affliction directly from the Gods) and was an
extremely ugly man. Aristotle is said to have had a “Club Foot” and he was “bow
legged” as well, and because of that condition he was not in proportion. Plato, who
liked his boys beautiful, kept Aristotle at more than simply “arms length”, which was
also the cause of much bitterness on the part of Aristotle And yet, flaws or no flaws,
Aristotle was one of this planet’s greatest metasapients.
Being metasapient has absolutely nothing to do with the personality. Integrated
Personalities, because of what they are, tend to be extremely idiosyncratic as
individuals. Many of the names on this list, were people known widely as being
“difficult”, “irritable”, and “annoying”. But they were metasapients just the same. It is the
“Mary Poppins” (Theosophical) view of the integrated personality, which is not simply
misleading, but totally wrong.
Now that’s what I personally, have to say about Aristotle. Now, let’s look at a small
sampling of Britannica’s very extensive entries on him.
b. 384 BC, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece
d. 322, Chalcis, Euboea
Greek ARISTOTELES, ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the two greatest
intellectual figures produced by the Greeks (the other being Plato). He surveyed the
whole of human knowledge as it was known in the Mediterranean world in his day.
More than any other thinker, Aristotle determined the orientation and the content of
Western intellectual history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system
that through the centuries became the support and vehicle for both medieval Christian
and Islamic scholastic thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western culture was
Aristotelian. Even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow, Aristotelian
concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking.
Aristotle's intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the
arts. He worked in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and botany; in psychology,
political theory, and ethics; in logic and metaphysics; in history, literary theory, and
rhetoric. His greatest achievements were in two unrelated areas: he invented the study
of formal logic, devising for it a finished system, known as Aristotelian syllogistic, that
for centuries was regarded as the sum of logic; and he pioneered the study of zoology,
both observational and theoretical, in which his work was not surpassed until the 19th
century.
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Even though Aristotle's zoology is now out-of-date and his thought in the other natural
sciences has long been left behind, his importance as a scientist is unparalleled. But it
is now of purely historical importance: he, like other scientists of the past, is not read by
his successors. As a philosopher Aristotle is equally outstanding. And here he remains
more than a museum piece. Although his syllogistic is now recognized to be only a
small part of formal logic, his writings in ethical and political theory as well as in
metaphysics and in the philosophy of science are read and argued over by modern
philosophers. Aristotle's historical importance is second to none, and his work remains
a powerful component in current philosophical debate.
The life of Aristotle
Aristotle was born in the summer of 384 BC in the small Greek township of Stagira (or
Stagirus, or Stageirus), on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece.
(For this reason Aristotle is also known as the "Stagirite.") His father, Nicomachus, was
court physician to Amyntas III, king of Macedonia, father of Philip II, and grandfather of
Alexander the Great. As a doctor's son, Aristotle was heir to a scientific tradition some
200 years old. The case histories contained in the Epidemics of Hippocrates, the father
of Greek medicine, may have introduced him at an early age to the concepts and
practices of Greek medicine and biology. As a physician, Nicomachus was a member of
the guild of the Asclepiads, the so-called sons of Asclepius, the legendary founder and
god of medicine.
Because medicine was a traditional occupation in certain families, being handed down
from father to son, Aristotle in all likelihood learned at home the fundamentals of that
practical skill he was afterward to display in his biological researches. Had he been a
medical student he would have undergone a rigorous and varied training: he would
have studied the role in therapy of diet, drugs, and exercise; he would have learned
how to check the flow of blood, apply bandages, fit splints to broken limbs, reset
dislocations, and make poultices of flour, oil, and wine. Such, at least, were the skills of
the trained physician of his time. It is not known for certain that Aristotle actually
acquired these skills; it is known that medicine and its history were later studied in the
Lyceum, Aristotle's own institute in Athens, and that later, in a snobbish vein, he
considered a man sufficiently educated if he knew the theory of medicine without
having gained experience practicing it.
This early connection with medicine and with the rough-living Macedonian court largely
explains both the predominantly biological cast of Aristotle's philosophical thought and
the intense dislike of princes and courts to which he more than once gave expression.
First period: in the Academy at Athens
While Aristotle was still a youth, his father died, and the young man became a ward of
Proxenus, probably a relative of his father. He was sent to the Academy of Plato at
Athens in 367 and remained there for 20 years. These years formed the first of three
main periods in Aristotle's intellectual development, years dominated by the formative
influence of Plato and his colleagues in the Academy. Aristotle doubtless interested
himself in the whole range of the Academy's activities. It is known that he devoted some
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time to the study of rhetoric, and he wrote and spoke for the Academy in its battles
against the rival school of Isocrates.
After Plato's death in 348/347 his nephew Speusippus was named as head of the
Academy. Aristotle shortly thereafter left Athens--in disgust, it is sometimes claimed, at
not being appointed Plato's successor. This interpretation of his motive, however, lacks
foundation, for evidence suggests that he was ineligible to be the school's head
because of his status as a resident alien who could not hold property legally. It is more
likely that his departure from Athens may have been linked with an anti-Macedonian
feeling that arose in Athens after Philip had sacked the Greek city-state of Olynthus in
348. Aristotle's 12-year absence from Athens nevertheless indicates that he valued
more the circle of friends who accompanied him on his travels--chief among them
Theophrastus of Eresus, his pupil, colleague, and eventual successor as head of the
Lyceum--than he did his membership in the Platonic Academy.
Second period: his travels
With him went another Academy member of note, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, whose
lethargy became the target of Plato's ridicule. Plato reportedly contrasted it with
Aristotle's more energetic manner: "The one needs a spur, the other a bridle . . . . See
what an ass I am training to compete with what a horse." The distinctive characters of
the two men, however, seem to have integrated well in establishing a new academy on
the Asian side of the Aegean at the newly built town of Assus.
At Assus, Hermeias of Atarneus, a Greek soldier of fortune, had first acquired fiscal and
then political control of northwestern Asia Minor, as a vassal of Persian overlords. After
a visit to the Athenian Academy he invited two of Plato's graduates to set up a small
branch to help spread Greek rule as well as Greek philosophy to Asian soil. Aristotle
came to this new intellectual centre. To this period may belong the first 12 chapters of
Book 7 of Aristotle's Politics. There he sketches the connection between philosophy
and politics, namely, that the highest purpose of a city-state (polis) is to secure the
conditions in which those who are capable of it can live the philosophical life.
Such a life, however, lies only within the capacity of the Greeks, whose superiority
qualifies them to employ the non-Greek tribal peoples as serfs or slaves for the
performance of all menial labour. Thus, citizenship and service in the armed forces are
considered to be the exclusive rights and duties of the Greeks. Aristotle's espousal of
an enlightened oligarchy, nonetheless, actually constituted an advance over the political
concepts flourishing at the time and it should be viewed in its context as a positive
development in the establishment of the noble civilization created by the Greeks.
At about the same time, Aristotle composed the work, now lost, On Kingship, in which
he clearly distinguishes the function of the philosopher from that of the king. He alters
Plato's dictum--for the better, it is said--by teaching that it is . . not merely unnecessary
for a king to be a philosopher, but even a disadvantage. Rather a king should take the
advice of true philosophers. Then he would fill his reign with good deeds, not with good
words.
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Aristotle thus strove to assure the independent role of the philosopher.
Aristotle was on good terms with his patron, Hermeias, and married his niece, Pythias.
She bore Aristotle a daughter, whom he called by her mother's name. In the Politics,
Aristotle prescribed the ideal ages for marriage--37 for the husband and 18 for the wife.
Because Aristotle was himself 37 at this time, it is tempting to guess that Pythias was
18. It is also possible that their own marital relations are reflected in his further,
somewhat cryptic, observation: "As for adultery, let it be held disgraceful for any man or
woman to be found in any way unfaithful once they are married and call each other
husband and wife." In his will Aristotle ordered that "Wherever they bury me, there the
bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions." Pythias did not
live long, however; and after her death Aristotle chose another companion, Herpyllis
(whether concubine or wife is uncertain), by whom he then had a son, Nicomachus.
She outlived Aristotle, and he made ample and considerate provision for her in his will
"in recognition of the steady affection she has shown me."
After three years at the young Assus Academy, Aristotle moved to the nearby island of
Lesbos and settled in Mytilene, the capital city. With his friend Theophrastus, a native
of that island, he established a philosophical circle patterned after the Athenian
Academy. There his centre of interest shifted to biology, in which he undertook
pioneering investigations. (The landlocked lagoon of Pyrrha in the centre of Lesbos has
been identified as one of his favourite haunts.) He appears to have felt it necessary to
justify this new attention to biology by rejecting the arguments that had classed it as an
inferior, unattractive study.
In his biological researches he focused on a new type of causation, namely teleological.
Teleological causation has to do with the aim, or end, of nature, a type that is distinct
from mechanical causation but one that is, nonetheless, operative in the inorganic
sphere. According to Aristotle, natural organisms--plants and animals--have natural
ends or goals, and their structure and development can only be fully explained when
these goals are understood. To admit the existence of such ends, or aims, in nature is
to argue teleologically (Greek telos, "an end") or to admit the idea of a final cause (Latin
finis, "end"). Teleology, and theory in general, is important in Aristotle's biology; but it is
always, in principle at least, subordinate to observation. Thus, confessing his ignorance
of the mode of generation of bees, Aristotle wrote in his treatise On the Generation of
Animals:
“The facts have not yet been sufficiently established. If ever they are, then credit must
be given to observation rather than to theories, and to theories only insofar as they are
confirmed by the observed facts.”
Associated with his researches into plant and animal life were his reflections on the
relation of the soul to the body. As revealed by his tract On the Soul, Aristotle distanced
himself from the Platonic conception of the soul as an independently existing substance
that is only temporarily resident in the body. With greater emphasis on the positive
value of material existence, he suggested instead that the soul is the vital principle
essentially united with the body to form the individual person. With some
acknowledgment to Plato, he then proceeded to define the soul as the form of the body
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and the body as the matter of the soul.
In late 343 or early 342 Aristotle, at about the age of 42, was invited by Philip II of
Macedon to his capital at Pella to tutor his 13-year-old son, Alexander. As the leading
intellectual figure in Greece, Aristotle was commissioned to prepare Alexander for his
future role as a military leader. As it turned out, Alexander was to dominate the Greek
world and defend it against the Persian Empire. Using the model of the epic Greek
hero, as in Homer's Iliad, Aristotle attempted to form Alexander as an embodiment of
the classical valour of an Ajax or Achilles enlightened by the latest achievement of
Greek civilization, philosophy. With his firm conviction of the superiority of Greeks over
foreigners, he instructed Alexander to dominate the barbarians--i.e., non-Greeks--and
to hold them in servility by refraining from any physical intermixture with them. Despite
this advice, however, Alexander later became committed to intermarriage; he chose a
wife from the Persian nobility and forced his high-ranking officers (and encouraged his
troops) to do likewise.
In other ways too the influence that Aristotle had on Alexander was negligible. Although
later, on his return to Athens, Aristotle enjoyed considerable political and economic
support from the Macedonians and perhaps received assistance in the organization of
his biological researches, it is not likely--as some have held--that Alexander collected
and dispatched to Aristotle specimens of rare animals from Persia and India; in fact,
Alexander's first penetration of the valley of the Indus did not occur until 328/327, less
than six years before Aristotle's death. Indeed, the relation between the two was
embittered by the execution of Aristotle's nephew, the historian Callisthenes of
Olynthus, who was charged with treason while accompanying Alexander to Persia early
in 328 in order to write a chronicle of the campaign. It has even been reported that
Alexander meditated revenge on Aristotle himself because he was a blood relative of
the victim. But Alexander was diverted by his preoccupation with the invasion of India.
Clearly, in matters of political ideology, a gulf separated Aristotle and Alexander.
Aristotle showed no awareness of the fundamental changes that Alexander's conquests
were bringing to the Greek world; indeed, he was opposed in principle to Alexander's
imperial policy because it diminished the importance of the city-state. On the other
hand, Alexander gratified his tutor by rebuilding the town of Stagira, Aristotle's
birthplace, which Philip II had destroyed earlier.
After three years at the Macedonian court, Aristotle withdrew and returned to his
paternal property at Stagira (c. 339). There he continued the associations of his
philosophical circle, which still included Theophrastus and other pupils of Plato.
Third period: founding and directing of the Lyceum
Aristotle remained in Stagira until 335, when, nearing 50 years of age, he once again
returned to Athens. At this time the presidency of the Academy became vacant by the
death of Speusippus, and Xenocrates of Chalcedon, his old associate in biological
research, was elected to the post. Although Aristotle appears never to have wholly
severed his links with the Academy, he nonetheless opened, in 335, a rival institution in
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the Lyceum, a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, situated in a grove
just outside Athens. The place had for some time been frequented by other
teachers--Plato even mentions it as having been one of Socrates' haunts--and the
name of the temple came to be applied to Aristotle's school in particular. But it was
probably only after Aristotle's death that the school, under Theophrastus, acquired
extensive property. From the fact that his instruction was given in the peripatos, or
covered walkway, of the gymnasium, the school has derived its name of Peripatetic.
Informal as the school may have been under Aristotle, it was very important to him
because, by coordinating the work of a number of scholars, he was able for the next 12
years to organize it as a centre for speculation and research in every field of inquiry and
to give lectures on a wide range of scientific and philosophical questions. The chief
difference between the new school and the Academy was that the scientific interests of
the Platonists centred on mathematics whereas the main contributions of the Lyceum
lay in biology and history.
On the death of Alexander the Great in 323 a brief but vigorous anti-Macedonian
agitation broke out in Athens. Aristotle, who had long-standing Macedonian connections
and was a friend of Antipater, the Macedonian regent of Athens, felt himself in danger.
He therefore left Athens and withdrew to his mother's estates in Chalcis on the island of
Euboea. There he died in the following year from a stomach illness at the age of 62 or
63. It was reported that he abandoned Athens in order to save the Athenians from
sinning twice against philosophy (referring to Socrates as the earlier victim).
Personality, character, and philosophical stance
The features of Aristotle, familiar from busts and engravings, appear handsome and
refined. An ancient tradition, possibly from an unfriendly source, says, however, that
Aristotle had spindleshanks and small eyes and that he spoke with a lisp. In
compensation for these physical defects, he was notably well dressed. His cloak and
sandals were of the best quality and he sported rings. Presumably he was rich, with
large family holdings at Stagira. One use that he made of his money was to collect
books. Plato, with a touch of contempt for Aristotle's devotion to reading and perhaps
not without some envy of his affluence, called him "the reader."
Aristotle was an intellectual but not devoid of passion. A story is told of Plato giving a
reading of his Phaedo, a purported record of Socrates' last day. The dialogue is moving
and solemn. As Plato was reading, however, his audience gradually melted away. In
the end, Aristotle alone was left. Probably fictitious, the anecdote was invented to
express a truth: Aristotle was, in fact, spellbound by the Socratic doctrine of immortality
as expounded by Plato. It not only interested him intellectually but also absorbed him
emotionally. His earliest works, dialogues written when he was still a member of the
Academy (now lost except for some fragments), were in part concerned with thoughts
of the next world and the worthlessness of this one.
The anecdotes related of him reveal him as a kindly, affectionate character, and they
show barely any trace of the self-importance that some scholars think they can detect in
his works. His will, which has been preserved, exhibits the same kindly traits; he makes
references to his happy family life and takes solicitous care of his children, as well as
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his servants.
This personal happiness is reflected in On Philosophy, perhaps the last of his strictly
literary works. After writing this work, which he completed in around 348, he devoted his
energies to research, teaching, and the writing of more technical treatises. The
greatness of On Philosophy, which survives only in fragments, is evident in its influence
on the thought of later antiquity; perhaps more than any other single work it established
philosophy as a profession.
In the extant part, Aristotle defines the specific role of the philosopher. Dividing the
historical development of civilization into five main stages, Aristotle sees the emergence
of philosophy as its culmination. First, men are compelled to devote themselves to the
creation of the necessities because without them they could not survive. Next come the
arts that refine life and then the discovery of the art of politics, the prerequisite of the
good life as Aristotle conceived it. To these necessities and refinements of life is added
the knowledge of their proper use in the fourth stage. Only with the emergence of the
well-regulated state comes the leisure for intellectual adventure, used at first for the
study of the material causes of existing things. Finally comes the shift from natural to
divine philosophy, when the mind lifts itself above the material world and grasps the
formal and final causes of things, realizing the intelligible aspect of reality and the
purpose that informs all change.
This divine philosophy gave its attention to the astral gods. Aristotle had experienced in
Athens the long intellectual struggle to discover perfect order in the heavens. He had
learned that perfection was not to be confined to the mathematical abstractions, to
which Plato had at first directed the attention of his pupils, but had come to recognize
that the visible heavens themselves could be accepted as the embodiment of the
divine. With the declaration of this intimacy between the deities and the work of their
hands in the material universe, Aristotle issued his manifesto, which is an optimistic
affirmation of the values of this world; simultaneously he rejected the Platonic doctrine
that the soul is imprisoned in the body and in need of struggling free from the bonds of
matter. It was by this stroke that Aristotle established his own identity in the history of
thought.
The Greek tradition
Early development
For some decades after his death Aristotle's own school, the Peripatos or Lyceum,
remained, in a truly Aristotelian spirit, a centre for critical research--not for the dogmatic
acceptance of a closed system. Aristotle's immediate successor, Theophrastus,
independently elaborated his master's metaphysics and psychology and added to his
study of nature (botany and mineralogy) and logic (theory of propositions and
hypothetical syllogisms). Various members of the Lyceum coordinated Aristotelian
thought with other current schools of philosophy. Thus Aristoxenus joined Aristotelian
and Pythagorean doctrines; Critolaus united Aristotle's theory of the influence of the
heavens on the world with the Stoic theory of providence; and Clearchus of Soli
combined Plato's views on the human soul with Aristotle's.
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Outside the Lyceum, the Stoic school was partly following Aristotle in its interest in
formal logic, the theory of meaning, and use of the categories (e.g., substance, quality,
relation). It was Aristotelian also in its empiricism, as well as in its concentration on
nature, in several aspects of natural science, and in its belief that man is intrinsically a
social being. The Skeptics sometimes relied on Aristotelian forms of argument to prove
their systematic doubts. Even Epicurus, who may have fought against Aristotle's early
theology and psychology and ignored his mature philosophy, was, nonetheless, near
him in his doctrine of the will and in his conception of friendship and the pursuit of
knowledge as the high aims that give satisfaction and pleasure to man.
Although relatively little was known of Aristotle's "esoteric" works until the 1st century
BC, his more popular, literary, and Platonizing writings influenced eclectics such as
Panaetius and his pupil Poseidonius; and this influence continued, helped by the
Roman philosopher and lawyer Cicero, well into the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Upon it
was based the tendency to establish a harmony between the thought of Plato and
Aristotle--a feature that recurred through the whole history of Aristotelianism--and
perhaps the ascription to Aristotle of the De mundo ("On the Universe"), a cosmological
treatise of the 1st century BC, which found favour with all of the different traditions until
the 16th century.
In the 1st century BC Aristotle's "esoteric" writings were organized into a corpus and
critically edited by Andronicus of Rhodes and other scholars. The edition was used by
Nicholas of Damascus, a historian and philosopher, in an attempt to expound Aristotle's
system. This may be viewed as the beginning of a new era of a scholarly and scholastic
Aristotelianism in which Aristotle had to be taken as the basis for the acquisition of true
knowledge in a number of fields. Individual works began to be commented and lectured
upon; organized philosophical studies began to have as their introduction Aristotle's
works on logic, especially the Categories. Thus the pattern was set for the next 17
centuries. Almost pure Aristotelianism, based on the "esoteric" works, lived on until the
4th century.
Many scholars--the most eminent of them being Alexander of Aphrodisias, who from
AD 195 held the Athenian chair of Aristotelian studies created by the Roman emperor
Marcus Aurelius--provided the works on logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy,
and psychology with detailed and penetrating commentaries meant for the specialist.
The interpretation of Aristotle was for many generations molded by these scholars.
Others--the greatest being Themistius, a professor in Constantinople in about AD
350--practically rewrote many of Aristotle's treatises in a more modern language and
more readable style.
This new, scholarly Aristotelianism had established itself sufficiently as the
philosophical and methodological frame of learning for it to be adopted, at least in part,
by most men of culture--including Ptolemy, the greatest astronomer of antiquity, and
Galen, the most eminent medical scientist.
Recent analyses of Aristotle's development and systematizing
Aristotelian scholars have generally concluded that a basis exists for a theory of
evolution in his thought but that the determination of the chronology and the degree of
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change presents a difficult set of problems. It is quite possible to agree with Jaeger that
during Aristotle's first years at the Academy he acknowledged Plato's teaching on
Ideas, and that he later rejected the theory. It is another matter, however, to suggest
that in his later years he renounced such Platonically influenced doctrines as the
immortality of the soul or the conception of a religious philosophy concluding in an
ultimate being termed God. Increased attention to data of the senses in subsequent
phases of his life, moreover, is not a sufficient argument for the emergence of an
empiricist Aristotle, who could not but oppose a spiritualist and idealist Plato. It is true
that Aristotle later criticized the doctrine of Ideas as inadequate and contradictory. But
he continued, nevertheless, to recognize the effectiveness of metaphysical thought in
arriving at the concept of a transcendent, nonmaterial, and subsistent intellect as the
necessary explanation for the fact that anything exists.
The consensus of modern commentators thus suggests that not every aspect of
Platonic idealism was rejected by Aristotle as his appreciation of empirical knowledge
and of the dynamic aspects of matter grew. Rather, alongside his experimental work in
biology and physics was his continued insistence on the crucial differences between
perception and thought, between accidental characteristics and the essential natures of
things.
The inconsistencies, contrasts, and varying degrees of emphasis on different modes of
thought throughout the Aristotelian corpus are not adequately explained either by
positing intervening editors and copyists or simply by different stages in Aristotle's
thought. He clearly attempted in all of the treatises to relate his own views to the whole
history of thought before his time.
On many occasions he was concerned, at the same point in the development of his
thinking, to state different views seen as alternative possibilities. Often his method was
deliberately aporetic; that is to say, he raised difficulties that he knew had to be faced
but for which he supplied no immediate or definitive solutions.
Left by Plato with a vast body of problems, Aristotle conscientiously pursued the ideal of
correcting and complementing the intellectual tradition bequeathed to him. To this end
he often followed parallel but distinct paths of investigation. His method was
exploratory, and he used it on whatever fertile soil he was free to work. Only relatively
late in life was he able to unify his results with any degree of success.
The philosophy of Aristotle does not unfold simply by deducing consequences from
assumed principles. Rather, it starts from aporiai, from puzzles or problems, and it
proceeds by piecemeal, tentative, and multiform attempts at solutions. The end result
that Aristotle in his optimistic moments hoped to achieve was indeed a fixed body of
knowledge, systematically ordered and deductively demonstrated. But his method of
inquiry was not deductive, and the finished system remained an aspiration rather than
an accomplishment.
Extant works
The works that have been preserved derive from manuscripts left by Aristotle on his
death; many of them were probably used by him as lecture notes. These are the
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"esoteric" writings of a concentrated, academic nature intended for the ears of the
initiates. From classical antiquity romanticized accounts circulated of the way these
manuscripts were preserved; e.g., in Plutarch's Sulla, chapter 26; and in Strabo's
Geography 13:54. According to these versions, Aristotle's and Theophrastus' notes had
been bequeathed to an old colleague, Neleus of Scepsis, whose heirs apparently were
not interested in the contents but, in order to prevent them from being confiscated for
the library of the kings of Pergamum, hid them in a cellar in Scepsis. Long afterward, in
the 1st century BC, the descendants sold them to Apellicon of Teos, a philosopher, who
brought them back to Athens. When Athens was conquered by Sulla in 86 BC, he
appropriated the books and sent them to Rome, where they were purchased by
Tyrannion the grammarian. The manuscripts suffered further maltreatment, first at the
hands of copyists, then through subjective restoration of worm-eaten passages and
systematic ordering irrespective of actual chronology, until Andronicus of Rhodes, the
last head of the Lyceum, acquired the copies and edited and published them about 60
BC.
The story is improbable. It is difficult to imagine that the Lyceum would have allowed the
manuscripts of its founder to have been so carelessly looked after. And it is now known
that the "esoteric" writings were not wholly ignored in the two centuries after
Theophrastus' death. It is true, nevertheless, that the Andronicus edition is the first
publication of Aristotle's works, even if the story of the edition's appearance was spread
by Andronicus to emphasize its novelty. The form, titles, and order of Aristotle's texts
that are studied today were given to them by Andronicus almost three centuries after
the philosopher's death, and the long history of commentary upon them began at this
stage.
These facts have affected the interpretation of Aristotle. The books of Aristotle that are
known today were, in effect, never edited by him. Thus, for example, Aristotle is not the
author of the work called Metaphysics; rather, he wrote a dozen little treatises: on the
theory of causes in the history of philosophy, on the chief philosophical problems, on
the multiplicity of meanings of certain key philosophical terms, on act and potency, on
being and essence, on the philosophy of mathematics, and on God. Those that the
editors thought worth collecting were given the title Metaphysics; i.e., the tract that is to
be read after the Physics. It is not surprising, then, that the Metaphysics and the other
works of Aristotle sometimes seem to lack unity or any clear progression of thought,
that they are sometimes repetitious and at times even contradictory. The texts
furthermore suggest that students or subsequent members of the Lyceum even revised
Aristotle's expressions. It is probable that Aristotle would never have released the work.
Andronicus, assisted by previous editors, imposed a logical and didactic order upon all
the writings, undoubtedly influenced by Aristotle's own emphasis on logic as the
propaedeutic (preparatory study) of all understanding. By ignoring the chronological
order of the treatises and by grouping dissertations from different periods under the
same title, the editors fashioned the Aristotelian corpus into a systematic whole. It is
quite likely that Aristotle himself had never thought of his writings in this way.
Aristotle's treatises reveal the philosopher at work. He defines the problem he is to deal
with, assesses the views of his predecessors, formulates his own preliminary opinion,
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considers whether there is a need to modify it in the light of difficulties and objections,
rehearses the arguments for different points of view--always searching, in short, for the
most adequate solution or resolution of his problem. The reader, therefore, sees
Aristotle at work, not dogmatically propounding a doctrine but often laboriously
developing a perspective or an insight that emerges from difficulties, contradictions, and
paradoxes. Not surprisingly, few syllogisms appear in Aristotle's treatises; the reader,
however, should perceive in them a structure that Aristotle himself terms "dialectical";
i.e., in the manner of a dialogue by an exchange of arguments for and against.
Writings
Aristotle's writings fall into two groups: the first consists of works published by Aristotle
but now lost; the second of works not published by Aristotle and, in fact, not intended
for publication but collected and preserved by others. In the first group are included (1)
the writings that Aristotle himself termed "exoteric," or popular--that is, those written in
dialogue or other current literary forms and meant for the general reading public--and
(2) those that he termed "hypomnematic," or notes to aid the memory, and collections
of materials for further work. Of these, only fragments are extant. Finally, the writings
that generally have survived, termed "acroamatic," or treatises (logoi, methodoi,
pragmateiai), were meant for use in Aristotle's school and were written in a concise and
individualistic style. In later antiquity Aristotle's writings filled several hundred rolls;
today the surviving 30 works fill some 2,000 printed pages. Three ancient catalogs list a
total of more than 170 separate works by Aristotle, a figure corroborated by references
and lists of titles in the extant treatises as well as by a number of citations and
paraphrases in early commentators. Cicero must have been alluding to Aristotle's
popular dialogues when he described in the Academica "the suave style of Aristotle . . .
. A river of gold." The extant works contain several passages of polished prose, but for
the most part their style is clipped.
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Those are merely skimming the surface, there are over 800 essays in Britannica
dealing with Aristotle and a truly vast bibliography. If you found this small introduction to
him fascinating, and I cannot see why one shouldn’t, then I strongly urge you to read
further, either in the Britannica or elsewhere. If anyone made the world a better place
for all who followed him in time, it was this man.
Our next example is the man who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Academy:
THEOPHRASTUS:
Aristotle's successor as head of his school at Athens was Theophrastus of Erebus (c.
279
371-c. 286 BC). All Theophrastus' logical writings are now lost, and much of what was
said about his logical views by late ancient authors was attributed to both
Theophrastus and his colleague Eudemus, so that it is difficult to isolate their
respective contributions. Most of what we do know about this man is thanks to the
works of ANDRONICUS OF RHODES (Q.V.)
Theophrastus was the first person in the history of logic known to have examined the
logic of propositions seriously. Still, there was no sustained investigation in this area
until the period of the Stoics.
Here is the Britannica’s entry for him:
(b. c. 372 BC, Eresus, Lesbos--d. c. 287), Greek Peripatetic philosopher and pupil of
Aristotle. He studied at Athens under Aristotle, and when Aristotle was forced to retire in
323 he became the head of the Lyceum, the academy in Athens founded by Aristotle.
Under Theophrastus the enrollment of pupils and auditors rose to its highest point.
Theophrastus was one of the few Peripatetics who fully embraced Aristotle's
philosophy in all areas of metaphysics, physics, physiology, zoology, botany, ethics,
politics, and history of culture. His general tendency was to strengthen the systematic
unity of those subjects and to reduce the transcendental or Platonic elements of
Aristotelianism as a whole. Of his few surviving works, the most important are Peri
phyton historia ("Inquiry into Plants") and Peri phyton aition ("Growth of Plants"),
comprising nine and six books, respectively. Of dubious origin are the smaller treatises
attributed to him on fire, winds, signs of weather, scents, sensations, and other
subjects. His notable Charakteres (many English translations) consists of 30 brief and
vigorous character sketches delineating moral types derived from studies that Aristotle
had made for ethical and rhetorical purposes; this work later formed the basis for the
masterpiece of Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères . . . (1699). In his ethical teachings,
famous because of the assaults of the Stoic philosophers, Theophrastus reiterated
Aristotle's notion of a plurality of virtues with their relative vices and acknowledged a
certain importance to external goods, which the Stoics held were mere luxuries for
human life.
Among Theophrastus' other works is the Physikon doxai ("Opinions of Natural
Philosophers"). As reconstructed by Herman Diels in Doxographi Graeci (1879), it
provides a foundation for the history of ancient philosophy.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now, I want to divert our attention from this relentless march of Hellenes, to the far East
and a man who really epitomizes the kind of person this list serves:
MENCIUS (Meng Tze):
(Latin), Chinese (Wade-Giles) MENG-TZU, or (Pinyin) MENGZI, original name (Wade280
Giles) MENG K'O, posthumous name TSOU KUNG, or DUKE OF TSOU (b. c. 372 BC,
ancient state of Tsou, China--d. c. 289, China), early Chinese philosopher whose
development of orthodox Confucianism earned him the title "second sage." Chief
among his basic tenets was an emphasis on the obligation of rulers to provide for the
common people. The book Mencius records his doings and sayings and contains
statements on the innate goodness of human nature, a topic warmly debated by
Confucianists up to modern times.
Early life.
Of noble origin, the Meng family settled in the state of Tsou, a minor state in the present
province of Shantung. Mencius was born there about 372 BC. In several respects his
life was similar to that of Confucius. Tsou and Lu (the state of Confucius' origin) were
adjacent states. Like Confucius, Mencius was only three when he lost his father.
Mencius' mother paid special attention to the upbringing of her young son. A traditional
story tells of her moving their home several times and finally settling near a school, so
that the boy should have the right kind of environmental influence, and of her
encouraging her son to persevere in his studies. Among the Chinese, the mother of
Mencius has been for ages upheld as the model mother.
As a young scholar Mencius had for his mentor a pupil of Tzu Ssu, who was himself
the grandson of Confucius. Thus, the continuity of the Confucian orthodoxy in all its
purity was assured. In due time Mencius became a teacher himself and for a brief
period served as an official in the state of Ch'i. He spent much time traveling, offering
his advice and counsel to the various princes on government by jen ("humanheartedness"), or humane government. The effort was foredoomed because the times
were chaotic, and the contending princes were interested not in humane government
but in power.
The Chou dynasty (c. 1111-256/255 BC) was founded on the feudalistic principle of a
sociopolitical hierarchy, with clearly defined prerogatives and obligations between those
of high and low status. As time went on, however, ambition and intrigue resulted in
usurpations and impositions, eroding the feudalistic system at the root and bringing on
a condition of political and moral disorder. This trend, which caused alarm to Confucius,
continued to worsen at an accelerating rate, and the age in which Mencius lived is
known in Chinese history as the period of Warring States (475-221 BC). Under such
conditions, Mencius' preachments to the princes on virtuous personal conduct and
humane government fell on deaf ears; yet he continued to speak his mind, even though
he knew that he was championing an unpopular cause.
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Philosopher for the people
According to Mencius, the ruler was to provide for the welfare of the people in two
respects: material conditions for their livelihood and moral and educational guidance for
their edification. Mencius had worked out a definite program to attain economic
sufficiency for the common people, and it is recorded in the book of Mencius three
times. He also advocated light taxes, free trade, conservation of natural resources,
welfare measures for the old and disadvantaged, and more nearly equal sharing of
wealth. It was his fundamental belief that "only when the people had a steady livelihood
would they have a steady heart."
While Mencius patiently exhorted the princes to cultivate the way of moral power and
to forsake the way of force and intrigue, he also reminded them emphatically of the
responsibility that came to them with the mandate of Heaven to govern for the good of
the people. With unusual courage, Mencius declared: "The people are the most
important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain come next; the sovereign
counts for the least." He also quoted for all to hear from the Shu Ching ("Classic of
History"), one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, the saying "Heaven sees as the
people see; Heaven hears as the people hear." The outspoken sympathies of Mencius
made him a champion of the common people and an advocate of democratic principles
in government.
Mencius' sojourn covered several states, but nowhere did he find a prince willing to put
his lofty principles of government into practice. His sense of disappointment grew with
the years and finally brought him back to his native state of Tsou, where he devoted the
remaining years of his life to the instruction of his pupils. The work Mencius is a
collection of the records of the doings and sayings of the master by his disciples,
arranged in seven books with two parts to each book.
Doctrine of human nature.
The philosophic ideas of Mencius might be regarded as an amplification of the
teachings of Confucius. Confucius taught the concept of jen, love or humanheartedness, as the basic virtue of manhood. Mencius made the original goodness of
human nature the keynote to his system. That the four beginnings, or "four principles"
(ssu tuan)--the feeling of commiseration, the feeling of shame, the feeling of courtesy,
and the feeling of right and wrong--are all inborn in man was a self-evident truth to
Mencius; and the "four beginnings," when properly cultivated, will develop into the four
cardinal virtues of jen, righteousness, decorum, and wisdom. This doctrine of the
goodness of human nature on the part of Mencius has become an enduring topic for
debate among the Chinese thinkers throughout the ages.
Mencius went further and taught that man possessed intuitive knowledge and intuitive
ability and that personal cultivation consisted in developing one's mind. Mencius said:
"He who has developed his mind to the utmost, knows his nature. Knowing his nature,
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he knows Heaven." Hence, all men could become like the great sage-kings Yao and
Shun, the legendary heroes of the archaic past, according to Mencius.
While Mencius has always been regarded as a major philosopher, special importance
was attributed to him and his work by the Neo-Confucianists of the Sung dynasty (AD
960-1279). For the last 1,000 years, Mencius has been revered among the Chinese
people as the cofounder of Confucianism, second only to Confucius himself.
Among the several translations of the Mencius into the English language, the one by
James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 2, Mencius, 2nd ed. (1893-95; 3rd ed.,
1960), is the standard one. W.A.C.H. Dobson's translation, Mencius: A New
Translation Arranged and Annotated for the General Reader (1963), is also worth
consulting. (Y.P.M.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Studies of his life and thought include Albert F. Verwilghen, Mencius: The Man and His
Ideas (1967); Fung Yu-lan (Yu-lan Feng), A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed., vol.
1 (1952, reissued 1983); and Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The
Thought of Mencius and Wang Yang-ming (1990).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Mencius could almost be described as the Archetype of the Metasapient, and the
model for a member of the Humanist Collective. His life was entirely humanistically
directed and devoted to the welfare of all people. He clearly left the world better than he
found it.
When you read the Britannica’s entry for this next person, you’ll wonder why he’s on
this list.
PYRRHON:
Pyrrhon also spelled PYRRHO (b. c. 360 BC--d. c. 272), Greek philosopher from whom
Pyrrhonism takes its name; he is generally accepted as the father of Skepticism.
Pyrrhon was a pupil of Anaxarchus of Abdera and in about 330 established himself as a
teacher at Elis. Believing that equal arguments can be offered on both sides of any
proposition, he dismissed the search for truth as a vain endeavour. While traveling with
an expedition under Alexander the Great, Pyrrhon saw in the fakirs of India an example
of happiness flowing from indifference to circumstances. He concluded that man must
suspend judgment (practice epoche) on the reliability of sense perceptions and simply
live according to reality as it appears. Pyrrhonism permeated the Middle and New
Academy of Athens and strongly influenced philosophical thought in 17th-century
Europe with the republication of the Skeptical works of Sextus Empiricus, who had
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codified Greek Skepticism in the 3rd century AD. Pyrrhon's teaching was preserved in
the poems of Timon of Phlius, who studied with him.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
As you can see this man was very influential, but why is he here? Because the element
of Skepticism which he introduced was a very important antidote for the excesses of
Religious belief that were at this time beginning to plague the world. I think it would be a
fair paraphrase of his work to say that he taught that in the life of any person, physical
reality, or what really is, is far more important than any hypothetical reality.
Our next individual is:
ARCESILAUS:
(b. 316/315 BC, Pitane, Aeolis [now in Turkey]--d. c. 241), philosopher who succeeded
Crates as head of the Greek Academy; he introduced a skepticism derived either from
Socrates or from Pyrrhon and Timon.
Refusing to accept or deny the possibility of certainty in knowing, Arcesilaus advocated
a skeptical "suspension of judgment" (epoche). The stoics (who held a theory of
"irresistible impressions") attacked him for thus paralyzing man and vitiating the goal of
philosophy, which they believed was to make man happy and vigorous. Arcesilaus
replied that a wise man need know only that his actions are "reasonable" (eulogon).
(see also Index: Stoicism)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
I would certainly whole heartedly agree with Arcesilaus’ point of view!
Next I come to :
EUHEMERUS:
also spelled EUEMEROS, or EVEMERUS (fl. 300 BC), Greek mythographer who
established the tradition of seeking an actual historical basis for mythical beings and
events. It is thought he was born at Messina, though some claim he was born at Chios,
Tegea, or Messene in the Peloponnesus. He lived at the court of Cassander, king of
Macedonia, from approximately 301 to 297 BC. He is chiefly known by his Sacred
History, a philosophic romance based upon archaic inscriptions that he claimed to have
found during his travels in various parts of Greece. (see also Index: Greek mythology)
In this work he systematized for the first time an old Oriental (perhaps Phoenician)
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method of interpreting the popular myths; he asserted that the gods were originally
heroes and conquerors who had earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects. This
system spread widely, and the early Christians, especially, used it as a confirmation of
their belief that ancient mythology was merely an aggregate of fables of human
invention.
The word euhemeristic is applied to such explanations of primitive myths. There is no
doubt an element of truth in this approach, for, among the Romans, the gradual
deification of ancestors and emperors was a prominent feature of religious
development. Among primitive people, it is sometimes possible to trace family and tribal
gods back to great chiefs and warriors. But it is not accepted by students of
comparative religion as the sole explanation of the origin of gods.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
One of the things that makes Euhemerus important in my eyes is that he was a very
important Iconoclast. His totally rational anthropocentric explanation for the origins of
the Contemporary Sacred myths of his time, and his view that those myths were simply
distortions of history was an important weakening of the strength of religion in his time,
and the memory of his philosophy ‘percolated’ in human memory continuing the
process.
There is a very important individual who lived in this same general time frame and he is
absolutely qualified for our list. He is:
EPICURUS:
Born: Samos; approx 342 B.C.E.
Died: Athens; approx 270 B.C.E.
This man was the founder of the eponymous school of philosophy called EPICUREANISM
which was very much maligned and misrepresented by later Christianity as they recognized
it as a prime obstacle in their path to dominion.
Epicurus studied under Xenocrates at Athens. He taught at Mytilene and Lampsacus. In
306 he opened a school at Athens (in a garden) where he spent the rest of his life. He is
said to have written 300 volumes but only the barest fragments remain. His will, 4 epistles,
and a list of 44 propositions containing the substance of his ethical philosophy were
preserved by Diogenes Laertes (q.v.) He taught that ‘pleasure’ is the only possible end of
rational action and that the Ultimate Pleasure was FREEDOM. He adapted the atomistic
theories of DEMOCRITUS (q.v.) While bringing chance into the equation.
Britannica’s views on him are:
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(b. 341 BC, Samos, Greece--d. 270, Athens), Greek philosopher, author of an ethical
philosophy of simple pleasure, friendship, and retirement. He founded schools of
philosophy that survived directly from the 4th century BC until the 4th century AD.
Early life and training
Epicurus was born on the island of Samos of Athenian parents who had gone there as
military settlers. His father, a schoolteacher, was named Neocles, his mother Chairestrate;
both were of the same village, the deme Gargettos. According to his own report, Epicurus
began his study of philosophy at the age of 14. One account has him turning to philosophy
when his schoolmaster could not explain the concept of chaos in Hesiod, an early Greek
philosophical poet. His first master is said to have been the Platonist Pamphilus of Samos.
Much more significant, however, is the report that Epicurus was for three years (327-324) a
student in the Ionian city of Teos, where his teacher was Nausiphanes, a disciple of the
naturalistic philosopher Democritus. It may have been from this source that Epicurus'
atomistic theory came, which he used not as a means of studying physics but as the basis
for a philosophical system that ultimately sought ethical ends. (see also Index: atomism)
At the age of 18, Epicurus went to Athens to perform the two years of military training
required for Athenian citizenship. While there he may have heard Xenocrates, second in
succession after Plato as head of his Academy, and Aristotle, who was then in Athens.
One year later Epicurus rejoined his parents at Colophon, where they had gone as exiles
when, at the close of the Lamian War, Athens lost Samos to the Macedonians. For the
next 10 years, there is virtually no record. It seems probable that Epicurus travelled and
studied, and it is reasonable to suppose that this was the period during which he developed
his philosophical outlook and confirmed it in exchanges with the Platonists and
Aristotelians. A letter written by him from Teos, addressed to his mother, was preserved by
Diogenes of Oenoanda. At the age of 32, Epicurus began to teach, first at Mytilene and
subsequently at Lampsacus, a period that lasted from 311/310 to 307/306.
In various places Epicurus met the disciples who were destined to follow him to Athens and
to become of great significance as vehicles through whom the Epicurean school would
achieve its mature development: at Mytilene, he met his first disciple, Hermarchus, who
eventually succeeded him as head of the Athenian school; and at Lampsacus, he met
Metrodorus and Polyaenus, whose death preceded the master's and whose sons Epicurus
provided for in his will; Metrodorus' brother, Timocrates; Leonteus and his wife, Themista,
who had been a hetaera (an independent courtesan); Colotes, whom Epicurus flattered
with the pet name Colotarion; and Idomeneus and his wife, Batis, sister of Metrodorus.
Thus, apart from his two years in Athens, Epicurus spent the first 35 years of his life in
Asia. This need not mean, however, that he developed an aversion to the literary circles in
Athens. Instead, his Asiatic ties, which he continued to cultivate intensely all his life
(including two or three actual journeys to Asia Minor) seem to have been reflected mainly
in his choice of words and style and, more significantly, in the ecumenical scope of his
philosophy.
The schools at Athens and elsewhere:
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When Epicurus and his followers came to Athens in 306, he bought a house and, in the
garden, established a school, which came to be known as Ho Kepos (The Garden). At this
time in Athens, cultural life was dominated by the Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of
Aristotle, both of which had passed into the hands of successors. These schools attracted
both the best theoretical students and those concerned with the application of philosophy
to politics and public life. Therefore, any school that hoped to endure through this period
had to enter into direct rivalry with the Academy and the Lyceum by establishing itself--as
did the Stoa a few years later--in the city of Athens.
What Epicurus brought to Athens was more a way of life than a school or a community.
Unlike both of the famous schools, ( The Academy and The Lyceum) it admitted women,
and even one of Epicurus' slaves, named Mouse. It taught the avoidance of political activity
and of public life, although, when one follower from a school outside Athens rose to
political power and then fell, he was succoured by the school. Quite different from the usual
connotations borne by the term epicurean today, life in the house and garden was simple.
Water was the usual drink, although a half-pint daily ration of wine was allowed, and barley
bread was eaten. During a famine Epicurus saved his students by doling out a few
numbered beans daily. There was no communal property, as was the case in Pythagorean
schools. Whereas the relationships of the members of the school were not platonic, in
either the contemporary or any later sense, there are only the attacks of Stoic opponents to
support any idea of sexual irregularity. Epicurus wrote clearly but in no highly organized
way. There was much correspondence with students in Athens and at other schools, some
letters being concerned with doctrinal matters but many seeming to be merely social and
friendly.
On the day in his 72nd year that Epicurus died painfully of prostatitis, he dictated an
affectionate and touching letter to Idomeneus--probably intended, in fact, for all of his
friends in Lampsacus--which displayed the spirit in which he had remained true to his
philosophy of repose and serenity even in the throes of pain. Epicurus' will left the house,
garden, and some funds to trustees of the school. Remaining funds were left to honour
Epicurus' deceased family and to celebrate his birthday annually and his memory monthly.
His slaves were freed, and provision was made that the daughter of Metrodorus should be
wed to someone in the Athenian school, with the approval of Hermarchus.
Writings and assessment
Diogenes Laërtius described Epicurus as a most prolific writer and preserved three of his
letters and the Kyriai doxiai ("Principal Doctrines"). The three letters are (1) To Herodotus,
dealing with physics; (2) To Pythocles (probably a disciple's abridgement), on meteorology;
and (3) To Menoeceus, on ethics and theology. The Kyriai consists of 40 short aphoristic
statements. Another major source is the papyri from the Casa dei Papiri discovered at
Herculaneum (1752-54), which include not only parts of his great work Peri physeos ("On
Nature"), originally in 37 books, but also numerous fragments of correspondence with his
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friends.
Many of Epicurus' methods made him comparable to a religious figure. The breadth of his
appeal in Rome during the 1st century BC is indicated by the fact that the poet-philosopher
Lucretius based his work on Epicurus (Lucretius in fact held Epicurus in reverential awe),
by the references to his thought by the statesman-moralist Cicero, and by the detailing by
the biographer Plutarch of how Cassius soothed the mind of Brutus with his Epicurean
ideas. Epicurus' atomistic theory was revived in the 17th century by Pierre Gassendi, a
French philosopher-scientist.
(C.D.)
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now, if I may digress for a moment; I am sure you have noticed that, while we’re here in
these very long ago centuries, other than Sappho, I am not giving the names of any female
integrated personalities. Why is that? Well, I can assure you that it’s clearly not because
there weren’t any, for there surely were. It is just that so very few names come down to us
of women who lived in this period. All the women whose names do come down to us,
come down primarily in association with some famous male figure. For instance Aspasia
with Pericles, and Xantippe with Socrates.
Those women who do come down as unique individuals (usually extremely unique), are all
people in legend and myth, and they have been so mythologized and glamorized that we
can have no way of knowing if they were real or not. Or, for that matter, what proportion of
which was what. I can hardly list people like Medea, Electra, and Antigone, when I have
no way of knowing if they were real or imaginary. This is one of those times when
Arcesilaus’ theories come strongly into play. Were I to list women like those instanced
above, I’d also have to list Isis and Demeter. That’s one of the biggest problems I face in
dealing with this topic, outside of Celtic History (and even there the majority of the women
characters are either Goddesses, or Queens, or tragic and probably symbolic figures) for
the most part until comparatively recently women have been anonymous and “invisible”.
I believe very strongly that there are and always have been as many women who were
metasapient as there were men, but history does not cooperate with me in helping to
demonstrate this. This is one of, if not the greatest disservice that history and historians of
the past have done to us. I really desire to present a list of women as well as men, but I
just can’t find them! There’s certainly a possibility that I am looking in the wrong places, but
I have looked everywhere I know. The head librarian in a major public library system told
me that if I “want books on that subject, you’ll have to write them yourself!”.The reference
materials on the subject which are available are all almost entirely limited to the late 18th
and 19th Centuries and, of course, the 20th century.
As I have tried to do with all of the males in this category, I have included very few
Crowned Kings and Ruling Hereditary Princes because, while they clearly fit into my
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category of “holders of the Sang Real”, and of course, their Mothers and Sisters do too; I
try to find my metasapient examples among those who are not Rulers but rather those
who have served the Human race rather than the other way around. Though I must admit
some Rulers and Princes have done so. But I am really trying to write about people who
had to strive for the position they received not those who were born into their power. For
the same reasons I have not included Queens and Princesses on this list. That is why
women like Semiramis and Cleopatra are absent.
One of the most unfortunate aspects of this situation is that in Cleopatra’s case, for
instance, we know she who she was only by way of her relationship to certain men. She
was a King’s daughter, a King’s sister (she poisoned him), and the rest of what we know
about her comes from her relationship with two men and a boy. Julius Caesar, Caesarion,
who was her son by Julius Caesar, and Marcus Antonius. But about Cleopatra the
person, the inner woman, the mental woman, we know next due to nothing at all. I am
perfectly sure there was one, and an interesting one too, but we don’t know her.
Another egregious instance is my own ancestress; Eleanore of Aquitaine who was
heiress to a great fortune and vast Duchy but is known to succeeding generations primarily
because she was married to two Kings in succession. First that of France, and secondly
that of England, and was the Mother of two Kings of England; Richard I, and John I. We
know almost nothing of her as a woman except that she lived to a very great age, was
argumentative, and independent to such a degree that her second husband Henry II of
England, locked her away in a Convent (for inspiring his sons to revolt against him). But
from what we know it’s completely clear that her admirable independence was all in
connection with ambition and power hunger, and she hardly made the world a “better
place”. More interesting yes, “better” no. But that is only what history, which in her period
was written almost entirely by clerics, tells us of her. She may have been totally different
than this. She certainly exercised an enormous influence on her times. But as far as we
know, she certainly didn’t change anything.
This makes it very hard to produce a list of this sort which has any pretensions at all to be
gender balanced. In those instances where I have included Ruling Figures or Sovereigns, it
is because their contributions were distinctly aside from their position, because we know
them as individuals for reasons aside from their status, and because those contributions
improved the status of the human race.
While, as you will see, there are some women who fit into this list and whose names and
identities cannot be avoided ( the 7th century B.C.E. poet, Sappho , for instance), women
who were so enormously influential that their names survived to come down to us no
matter how true it is that it has been men (and for a long time, primarily celibate and
probably misogynist ecclesiastics) who have written history.
It is however, very frustrating to try to locate women in history the way I have done with
their male peers. As an example of this frustration, I have a wonderful old Encyclopedia
Set (vintage 1894) which includes in its books two volumes called ‘THE CYCLOPEDIA OF
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NAMES”, which has about 75 to 100 names per page; in the first 8 pages only ONE
woman’s name appears, and she is Abigail, sister of King David, an Old Testament
figure and therefore ineligible for my list as she was most likely mythical, and in any case
did nothing at all to make the world better than she found it. Another case of a woman
solely identified by her relationship due to some man. Woman, unfortunately, have been
forced into a position of invisibility in history
This is a terrible thing, not simply because it reveals many millennia of
oppression and subjugation, but because it denies the entire human race very
important, nay urgent, information about the nature of the human condition.
Fantastically productive as it was, it is now time to leave antiquity and move forward in
time in this chronicle of those who left the world a better place than it was when they found
it. I think it’s time to move beyond the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries before the common era.
One of the most important things you will notice as we continue this list of people in the
West who have made the world a better place for all people to live in, is how very many of
them are either Platonists (Humanists) or the more mystically inclined “Neo-Platonists”, and
that is why Plato, in the long run, is a more importantly seminal figure than Aristotle.
From the time of his death it would not be inaccurate to state that the history of the
metasapients in the West has been a history of the Platonic lineage. What this long line of
valiant Platonists accomplished, and that accomplishment was as a result of actions and
writings that placed their lives at extreme risk, was to preserve for us the wisdom,
knowledge and understanding that had been driven underground with the triumph of
Christianity. Without them the secrets of the “Mysteries” would have been completely lost
to us, they were of course, not really mysteries but simply the comprehension of the
abstractions which make up the cosmos in which the human condition exists.
You will also notice that there are very few Christian “Saints”, or other religious figures, on
this list for the simple reason that far too few of them have made the world anything but
a worse place than they found it. In those rare cases when religious figures have made
the world a better place (and some of them have found their way on to this list) it has
largely been a fact that they did so in spite of, rather than because of, their religion.
Oddly enough, from the time of Aristotle, down to the First Century C.E. it has been very
difficult for me to find any names at all who qualify for my list. I am under the impression it
is because this was a time of Militarism and war, and because of that there was a kind of
silence that arose in the world of intellect and creativity. This was the period of Alexander
the Great, a veritable God of War, and after his early death there was a tremendous
scrabble for power among his Generals and relations for pieces of his Empire.
The naming of Alexander the Great leads me into an ancillary topic. Alexander was clearly
metasapient, but I am always emphasizing the idea that the metasapient are people who
“make the world a better place than they find it” and that’s entirely true. But, integrated
personalities there are, of another kind, and these are people who “leave the world
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an entirely different place than they found it”. Now that is not a negative judgement but
an entirely neutral one.
A thing, even the world, can be different “better” and/or different “worse”, but it can also be
different as in AN ENTIRELY CHANGED PARADIGM.
To be the catalyst and instigator of paradigmatic change, is; both because it is incredibly
dangerous, and because it is so very infrequently necessary, clearly the most rare form of
metasapiency, but these individuals do exist, and, and when they do, very spectacularly
so.
And so you will find integrated personalities of that classification too on this list, and the
first one I want to deal with, because he’s the first to change the entire known World of his
period; is Alexander III, King of Macedon, the pupil of Aristotle.
Was Alexander an integrated personality? Yes he was. Did he have a preternatural effect
on the people around him” He certainly did, and spectacularly so! Did he change the nature
of the world around him? He certainly did! The Classical world was entirely different upon
his death than it had been at his birth. There had been Empires prior to Alexander, but
they were limited. Alexander created Imperialism on a grand and sweeping International
scale. He didn’t live very long, but he swept through the world of men like a comet.
Alexander accomplished more in his short life than most men before and since have
accomplished in lives two or three times as long. What was his secret? Was it luck? No it
wasn’t. Was it genius? Partially. But then what was it? It was charisma and force of
personality, that is what it was! That is the combination of characteristics that makes all
metasapient-integrated personalities what they are. Genius, charisma, and force of
personality! And that is true even of the most reclusive scholarly adepts as well.
Alexander the Third, King of Macedon’s life only ran from 356 to 323 B.C.E. but what a
thirty three years it was! ( Is it not interesting that 33 years is also the life-span, or so we
are told, of “Jesus of Nazareth”?)
Alexander started out as King of a petty Greek kingdom in the Greek Confederation,
inherited that confederation’s leadership from his father, King Philip of Macedon, in
whose murder he may very well have connived, and went on to become undisputed ruler of
the then civilized world. His most important contribution, and it certainly wasn’t his military
conquests themselves, is that because of those conquests, he introduced Hellenism to
the then civilized world.
Hellenistic civilization as a wide phenomenon, began because of, with, and through the
actions of Alexander and accompanied his conquests; and what that meant was that the
people I have been talking about, and their thoughts, ideas, and perceptions, became
widely available to the human race. This, of course, was something these scholars and
philosophers could never have accomplished on their own. Alexander was a catalyst for
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human societal change, and this too is an important function of the association of the
metasapient which I call The Humanist Collective.
Here is a small part of the Britannica entry for him:
b. 356 BC, Pella, Macedonia
d. June 13, 323 BC, Babylon
also known as ALEXANDER III or ALEXANDER OF MACEDONIA, king of Macedonia
(336-323 BC). He overthrew the Persian Empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and
laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. Already in his lifetime
the subject of fabulous stories, he later became the hero of a full-scale legend bearing only
the sketchiest resemblance to his historical career.
Life
He was born in 356 BC at Pella in Macedonia, the son of Philip II and Olympias (daughter
of King Neoptolemus of Epirus). From age 13 to 16 he was taught by Aristotle, who
inspired him with an interest in philosophy, medicine, and scientific investigation; but he
was later to advance beyond his teacher's narrow precept that non-Greeks should be
treated as slaves.
Left in charge of Macedonia in 340 during Philip's attack on Byzantium, Alexander defeated
the Maedi, a Thracian people; two years later he commanded the left wing at the Battle of
Chaeronea, in which Philip defeated the allied Greek states, and displayed personal
courage in breaking the Sacred Band of Thebes.
A year later Philip divorced Olympias; and, after a quarrel at a feast held to celebrate his
father's new marriage, Alexander and his mother fled to Epirus, and Alexander later went
to Illyria. Shortly afterward, father and son were reconciled and Alexander returned; but his
position as heir was jeopardized.
In 336, however, on Philip's assassination, Alexander, acclaimed by the army, succeeded
without opposition. He at once executed the princes of Lyncestis, alleged to be behind
Philip's murder, along with all possible rivals and the whole of the faction opposed to him.
He then marched south, recovered a wavering Thessaly, and at an assembly of the Greek
League at Corinth was appointed generalissimo for the forthcoming invasion of Asia,
already planned and initiated by Philip.
Returning to Macedonia by way of Delphi (where the Pythian priestess acclaimed him
"invincible"), he advanced into Thrace in spring 335 and, after forcing the Shipka Pass and
crushing the Triballi, crossed the Danube to disperse the Getae; turning west, he then
defeated and shattered a coalition of Illyrians who had invaded Macedonia.
Meanwhile, a rumour of his death had precipitated a revolt of Theban democrats; other
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Greek states favoured Thebes, and the Athenians, urged on by Demosthenes, voted help.
In 14 days Alexander marched 240 miles from Pelion (near modern Korçë, Albania) in
Illyria to Thebes. When the Thebans refused to surrender, he made an entry and razed
their city to the ground, sparing only temples and Pindar's house; 6,000 were killed and all
survivors sold into slavery. The other Greek states were cowed by this severity, and
Alexander could afford to treat Athens leniently. Macedonian garrisons were left in Corinth,
Chalcis, and the Cadmea (the citadel of Thebes).
Evaluation
Of Alexander's plans little reliable information survives. The far-reaching schemes for the
conquest of the western Mediterranean and the setting up of a universal monarchy,
recorded by Diodorus, a 1st-century Greek historian, are probably based on a later forgery;
if not, they were at once jettisoned by his successors and the army. Had he lived, he would
no doubt have completed the conquest of Asia Minor, where Paphlagonia, Cappadocia,
and Armenia still maintained an effective independence. But in his later years Alexander's
aims seem to have been directed toward exploration, in particular of Arabia and the
Caspian.
In the organization of his empire, Alexander had been content in many spheres to
improvise and adapt what he found. His financial policy is an exception; though the details
cannot be wholly recovered, it is clear that he set up a central organization with collectors
perhaps independent of the local satraps. That this proved a failure was partly due to
weaknesses in the character of Harpalus, his chief treasurer. But the establishment of a
new coinage with a silver standard based on that of Athens in place of the old bimetallic
system current both in Macedonia and in Persia helped trade everywhere and, combined
with the release of vast amounts of bullion from the Persian treasuries, gave a
much-needed fillip to the economy of the whole Mediterranean area.
Alexander's foundation of new cities--Plutarch speaks of over 70--initiated a new chapter in
Greek expansion. No doubt many of the colonists, by no means volunteers, deserted these
cities, and marriages with native women led to some dilution of Greek ways; but the Greek
(rather than Macedonian) influence remained strong in most of them, and since the
process was carried further by Alexander's Seleucid successors, the spread of Hellenic
thought and customs over much of Asia as far as Bactria and India was one of the more
striking effects of Alexander's conquests.
His plans for racial fusion, on the other hand, were a failure. The Iranian satraps were
perhaps not efficient, for out of 18, ten were removed or executed--with what justice it is no
longer possible to say. But, more important, the Macedonians, leaders and men alike,
rejected the idea, and in the later Seleucid Empire the Greek and Macedonian element
was to be clearly dominant.
How far Alexander would have succeeded in the difficult task of coordinating his vast
dominions, had he lived, is hard to determine. The only link between the many units that
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went to make up an empire more disparate than that of the Habsburgs, and far larger, was
his own person; and his death came before he could tackle this problem.
What had so far held it all together was his own dynamic personality. He combined an iron
will and ability to drive himself and his men to the utmost with a supple and flexible mind;
he knew when to draw back and change his policy, though he did this reluctantly. He was
imaginative and not without romantic impulses; figures like Achilles, Heracles, and
Dionysus were often in his mind, and the salutation at the oracle of Amon clearly
influenced his thoughts and ambitions ever afterward.
He was swift in anger, and under the strain of his long campaigns this side of his character
grew more pronounced. Ruthless and self-willed, he had increasing recourse to terror,
showing no hesitation in eliminating men whom he had ceased to trust, either with or
without the pretense of a fair trial. Years after his death, Cassander, son of Antipater, a
regent of the Macedonian Empire under Alexander, could not pass his statue at Delphi
without shuddering. Yet he maintained the loyalty of his men, who followed him to the
Hyphasis without complaining and continued to believe in him throughout all hardships.
Only when his whim would have taken them still farther into unknown India did he fail to get
his way.
As a general Alexander is among the greatest the world has known. He showed unusual
versatility both in the combination of different arms and in adapting his tactics to the
challenge of enemies who commanded novel forms of warfare--the Saka nomads, the
Indian hill tribes, or Porus with his elephants. His strategy was skillful and imaginative, and
he knew how to exploit the chances that arise in every battle and may be decisive for
victory or defeat; he also drew the last advantage from victory by relentless pursuit. His use
of cavalry was so effective that he rarely had to fall back upon his infantry to deliver the
crushing blow.
Alexander's short reign marks a decisive moment in the history of Europe and Asia. His
expedition and his own personal interest in scientific investigation brought many advances
in the knowledge of geography and natural history. His career led to the moving of the
great centres of civilization eastward and initiated the new age of the Greek territorial
monarchies; it spread Hellenism in a vast colonizing wave throughout the Middle East and
created, if not politically at least economically and culturally, a single world stretching from
Gibraltar to the Punjab, open to trade and social intercourse and with a considerable
overlay of common civilization and the Greek koine as a lingua franca. It is not untrue to
say that the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity as a world religion, and the
long centuries of Byzantium were all in some degree the fruits of Alexander's
achievement.
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Alexander died, and his empire died with him, and then The Greek Confederation fell into
internecine strife and continuous civil war, there was only one winner of this Greek strife,
294
the only people who had learned what Alexander had to teach, The Romans!
During the period immediately following the dissolution of Alexander’s Empire the small
Italian City-State which had commenced it’s ambitions by conquering its immediate
neighbors became a truly World Spanning Empire, the true successor of Alexander. The
Romans were infinitely better organized than the Greeks. They were equally civilized but
only if by civilized you mean urban. But they were nowhere near as highly developed in
their intellectual lives. There would be no Romans who would be the absolute equals of
the philosophers and scholars I mentioned herein. Nearly equal, yes, some few, but not
completely so, and almost never originally so.
Here is what Britannica has to say on that subject:
The creation of a unified civilization
In the overall context of Western history, the degree to which the Mediterranean world
during the period of the empire became one single system, one civilization, is a matter of
the greatest importance. Clearly, one must distinguish between the life of the rural masses
and that of the urban minority. The former retained many traits of a way of life predating not
only Roman conquest but, in the East, the conquests of Alexander the Great centuries
earlier. However, the device of organizing conquered territories under cities responsible for
their surrounding territory proved as successful under the Romans as under the Greeks.
The intent of both conquerors may have been limited to ensuring political control and the
yield of tribute; however, in fact, they achieved much more: an approach to uniformity, at
least in the cities.
Copyright © 1994-2001 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Now I come to one of mankind’s most important technical inspirers:
EUCLID:
Greek EUCLEIDES (fl. c. 300 BC, Alexandria), the most prominent mathematician of
Greco-Roman antiquity, best known for his treatise on geometry, the Elements.
Life and work. Of Euclid's life it is known only that he taught at and founded a school at
Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I Soter, who reigned from 323 to 285/283 BC. Medieval
translators and editors often confused him with the philosopher Eucleides of Megara, a
contemporary of Plato about a century before, and therefore called him Megarensis.
Writing in the 5th century AD, the Greek philosopher Proclus told the story of Euclid's reply
to Ptolemy, who asked whether there was any shorter way in geometry than that of the
Elements--"There is no royal road to geometry." Another anecdote relates that a student,
probably in Alexandria, after learning the very first proposition in geometry, wanted to know
what he would get by learning these things, whereupon Euclid called his slave and said,
"Give him threepence since he must needs make gain by what he learns."
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Sources of the Elements.
Euclid compiled his Elements from a number of works of earlier men. Among these are
Hippocrates of Chios (5th century BC), not to be confused with the physician Hippocrates
of Cos (flourished 400 BC). The latest compiler before Euclid was Theudius, whose
textbook was used in the Academy and was probably the one used by Aristotle. The older
elements were at once superseded by Euclid's and then forgotten. For his subject matter
Euclid doubtless drew upon all his predecessors, but it is clear that the whole design of his
work was his own. He evidently altered the arrangement of the books, redistributed
propositions among them and invented new proofs if the new order made the earlier proofs
inapplicable. Thus, while Book X was mainly the work of the Pythagorean Theaetetus
(flourished 369 BC), the proofs of several theorems in this book had to be changed in order
to adapt them to the new definition of proportion developed by Eudoxus (q.v.). According to
Proclus, Euclid incorporated into his work many discoveries of Eudoxus and Theaetetus.
Most probably Books V and XII are the work of Eudoxus, X and XIII of Theaetetus. Book V
expounds the very influential theory of proportion that is applicable to commensurable and
incommensurable magnitudes alike (those whose ratios can be expressed as the quotient
of two integers and those that cannot). The main theorems of Book XII state that circles are
to one another as the squares of their diameters and that spheres are to each other as the
cubes of their diameters. These theorems are certainly the work of Eudoxus, who proved
them with his "method of exhaustion," by which he continuously subdivided a known
magnitude until it approached the properties of an unknown. Book X deals with irrationals
of different classes. Apart from some new proofs and additions, the contents of Book X are
the work of Theaetetus; so is most of Book XIII, in which are described the five regular
solids, earlier identified by the Pythagoreans. Euclid seems to have incorporated a finished
treatise of Theaetetus on the regular solids into his Elements. Book VII, dealing with the
foundations of arithmetic, is a self-consistent treatise, written most probably before 400 BC.
Other books of the Elements are not on this high mathematical level. In Book VIII, the
second of the three arithmetical books, are found cumbersome enunciations, needless
repetitions, and even logical fallacies. Apparently Euclid's exposition excelled only in those
parts in which he had excellent sources at his disposal.
Renditions of the Elements
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In ancient times, Hero and Pappus of Alexandria and Proclus and Simplicius all wrote
commentaries. Theon of Alexandria (4th century AD) brought out a new revision of the
work with textual changes and some additions; his version was the basis of all published
Greek texts and translations until, early in the 19th century, an important Greek manuscript
containing an ante-Theonine text was discovered in the Vatican. Three Arabic translations
were made in the middle ages: by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ibn Matar, first for the Abbassid caliph
Harun ar-Rashid (ruled 786-809) and again for the caliph al-Ma`Mun (ruled 813-833); by
Hunayn ibn Ishaq (ruled 808-873), in Baghdad, whose translation was revised by Thabit
ibn Qurrah (died 901); and by Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi in the 13th century. Euclid was first
made known in the West through Latin translations of these Arabic versions.
The first extant Latin translation of the Elements was made about 1120 by Adelard of Bath,
who obtained a copy of an Arabic version in Spain, where he travelled while disguised as a
Muslim student. Adelard also composed an abridged version and an edition with
commentary. Hermann of Carinthia translated Books I-XII from the same Arabic version.
Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114-87) translated the 15 books of Euclid from the Ishaq-Thabit
version. The first Latin translation to be printed was by Johannes Campanus in the 13th
century.
The first direct translation from the Greek without the Arabic intermediary was made by
Bartolomeo Zamberti and published in Vienna in Latin in 1505; and the editio princeps of
the Greek text was published at Basel in 1533 by Simon Grynaeus. But the most important
Latin translation of this period was by Federico Commandino in 1572. The first edition of
the complete works of Euclid was the Oxford edition of 1703, in Greek and Latin, by David
Gregory. All texts are now superseded by Euclidis Opera Omnia (8 vol. and a supplement,
1883-1916), edited by J.L. Heiberg and H. Menge. The first English translation of the
Elements was by Sir Henry Billingsley. The many later editions include Robert Simson's in
Latin and English, containing Books I-VI, XI, XII, and the Data, in 1756; and the definitive
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements by T.L. Heath, with introduction and commentary
(3 vol., 1908; 2nd ed., 1926).
Other writings.
Other extant works of Euclid include two belonging to elementary geometry: the Data,
containing 94 propositions, which demonstrates that, if certain elements in a figure are
given, then other things are given--i.e., can be determined; and a book On Divisions (of
figures), discovered in both Arabic and Latin versions and restored and edited in 1915,
which deals with problems of dividing a given figure by one or more straight lines into parts
that are equal or that have given ratios to one another or to other given areas.
The Optics of Euclid is extant in Greek in two forms, one being Euclid's own treatise, and
the other a critical revision by the Greek writer Theon. The Catoptrica ("Reflections") is not
by Euclid but is, rather, a later compilation from ancient works on the subject. The
Phaenomena, extant in Greek, is a treatise on the geometry of the sphere for use in
astronomy and is similar in content to the work, by Autolycus of Pitane, Moving Sphere.
297
The Elements of Music is attributed to Euclid by Proclus and Marinus, the latter being
another Greek commentator. Included in this work are two treatises that probably are not
by Euclid: the Sectio canonis ("Division of the Scale"), which gives the Pythagorean theory
of music with some later additions; and the Introductio harmonica ("Introduction to
Harmony"), written by Cleonides, a student of Aristoxenus, in which an identifiable tone
separates notes on the scale.
Four lost works in geometry are described in Greek sources and attributed to Euclid. The
purpose of the Pseudaria ("Fallacies"), it is said, was to distinguish and to warn beginning
students against different types of fallacies to which they might be susceptible in
geometrical reasoning. The Porisms, in three books, was an advanced work of which
Pappus gave a summary account. Although the word means "corollaries," Euclid
apparently meant a statement that was intermediate in significance between a problem and
a theorem. The Conics, made up of four books on conic sections, corresponded in content
to the first four books of Apollonius' Conics, although Apollonius added new theorems to
his own treatment. Euclid called the conics by their previous designations, sections of a
right-angled cone, an obtuse-angled cone, and an acute-angled cone, respectively; it was
Apollonius who first gave them the names parabola, hyperbola, and ellipse, the
descriptions of which he derived. Pappus also mentioned the Surface-loci, which is made
up of two books that probably dealt with loci on surfaces, perhaps also loci which are
surfaces, and with conic sections.
A fragment in Latin, De levi et ponderoso, which is included in Gregory's edition of Euclid,
contains a statement of the principles of Aristotle's dynamics but is not by Euclid.
Assessment.
Almost from the time of its writing and lasting almost to the present, the Elements has
exerted a continuous and major influence on human affairs. It was the primary source of
geometric reasoning, theorems, and methods at least until the advent of non-Euclidean
geometry in the 19th century. It is sometimes said that, next to the Bible, the Elements may
be the most translated, published, and studied of all the books produced in the Western
world. Euclid may not have been a first-class mathematician. He certainly was, however, a
first-class teacher of mathematics, inasmuch as his textbook has remained in use
practically unchanged for more than 2,000 years. ( B.L.v.d.W.)
Major Works
MAJOR WORKS. Euclid's extant works are collected in Euclidis Opera Omnia, ed. by J.L.
Heiberg and H. Menge, 8 vol. and a supplement (1916), containing the Elements, Books IXIII (The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, trans. by Sir Thomas Heath, 1952), Data
(Euclid's Data, restored to their true and genuine order, trans. by R. Jack, 1756), Euclid's
Book on Divisions of Figures, ed. by R.C. Archibald (1915), The Optics, and The
Phaenomena.
298
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, vol. 1, pp. 153-156 (1927, reprinted
1968), an extensive bibliography; B.L. van der Waerden, Ontwakende wetenschap (1950;
Science Awakening, 1954), a readable orientation to Euclid and his place in history;
Thomas L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, vol. 1, pp. 354-446 (1921, reprinted
1965), an authoritative survey of Euclid's works; Albert Lejeune, Euclide et Ptolémée, deux
stades de l'optique géométrique grecque (1948); Marshall Clagett, "The Medieval Latin
Translations from the Arabic of the Elements of Euclid, with Special Emphasis on the
Versions of Abelard of Bath," Isis, 44:16-42 (1953); and Glenn R. Morrow (ed. and trans.),
Proclus' Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (1970), three scholarly
studies.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
How’s that for a man who both changed the world, and made it a better (more
knowledgeable) place? If Euclid wasn’t Metasapient who was?
ZENO OF CITIUM: (Zeno the Phoenician)
(b. c. 335 BC, Citium, Cyprus--d. c. 263, Athens), Greek thinker who founded the Stoic
school of philosophy, which influenced the development of philosophical and ethical
thought in Hellenistic and Roman times. (see also Index: Stoicism)
He went to Athens c. 312 BC and attended lectures by the Cynic philosophers Crates of
Thebes and Stilpon of Megara, in addition to lectures at the Academy. Arriving at his own
philosophy, he began to teach in the Stoa Poikile (Painted Colonnade), whence the name
of his philosophy. Zeno's philosophical system included logic and theory of knowledge,
physics, and ethics--the latter being central. He taught that happiness lay in conforming the
will to the divine reason, which governs the universe. In logic and the theory of knowledge
he was influenced by Antisthenes and Diodorus Cronus, in physics by Heracleitus. None of
his many treatises, written in harsh but forceful Greek, has survived save in fragmentary
quotations.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Next I want to turn again to the Orient for another man who was another example of what I
call “The conqueror class”, but a highly unusual example:
ASHOKA (PIYADASI):
299
(d. 238? BC, India), last major emperor in the Mauryan dynasty of India. His vigorous
patronage of Buddhism during his reign (c. 265-238 BC; also given as c. 273-232 BC)
furthered the expansion of that religion throughout India. Following his successful but
bloody conquest of the Kalinga country on the east coast, Ashoka renounced armed
conquest and adopted a policy that he called "conquest by dharma (principles of right life)."
(see also Index: Mauryan empire)
In order to gain wide publicity for his teachings and his work, Ashoka made them known by
means of oral announcements and also engraved them on rocks and pillars at suitable
sites. These inscriptions -- the Rock Edicts and Pillar Edicts (e.g., the lion capital of the
pillar found at Sarnath, which has become India's national emblem)--mostly dated in
various years of his reign, contain statements regarding his thoughts and actions and
provide information on his life and acts. There is such a ring of frankness and sincerity in
the utterances of Ashoka that they appear to be true.
According to his own accounts, Ashoka conquered the Kalinga country (modern Orissa
state) in the eighth year of his reign. The sufferings that the war inflicted on the defeated
people moved him to such remorse that he renounced armed conquests. It was at this time
that he came in touch with Buddhism and adopted it. Under its influence and prompted by
his own dynamic temperament, he resolved to live according to, and preach, the dharma
and to serve his subjects and all humanity.
By dharma, as Ashoka repeatedly declared, he understood the energetic practice of the
sociomoral virtues of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, mercifulness, benevolence,
nonviolence, considerate behaviour toward all, "little sin and many good deeds,"
nonextravagance, nonacquisitiveness, and noninjury to animals. He spoke of no particular
mode of religious creed or worship, nor of any philosophical doctrines. He spoke of
Buddhism only to his coreligionists and not to others.
Toward all religious sects he adopted a policy of respect and guaranteed them full freedom
to live according to their own principles, but he also urged them to exert themselves for the
"increase of their inner worthiness." He, moreover, exhorted them to respect the creeds of
others, praise the good points of others, and refrain from vehement adverse criticism of the
viewpoints of others.
To practice the dharma actively Ashoka went out on periodic tours preaching the dharma to
the rural people and relieving their sufferings; he ordered his high officials to do the same,
in addition to attending to their normal duties; he exhorted administrative officers to be
constantly aware of the joys and sorrows of the common folk and to be prompt and
impartial in dispensing justice. A special class of high officers, designated "dharma
ministers," was appointed to foster dharma work by the public, relieve sufferings wherever
found, and look to the special needs of women, of people inhabiting outlying regions, of
neighbouring peoples, and of various religious communities. It was ordered that matters
concerning public welfare were to be reported to him at all times. The only glory he sought,
he said, was for having led his people along the path of dharma. No doubts are left in the
minds of readers of his inscriptions regarding his earnest zeal for serving his subjects.
More success was attained in his work, he says, by reasoning with people than by issuing
300
commands.
Among his works of public utility were the founding of hospitals for men and animals and
the supplying of medicines; and the planting of roadside trees and groves, digging of wells,
and construction of watering sheds and resthouses. Orders were also issued for curbing
public laxities and preventing cruelty to animals. With the death of Ashoka the Maurya
Empire disintegrated and his work was discontinued. His memory survives for what he
attempted to achieve and the high ideals he held before himself.
Most enduring were Ashoka's services to Buddhism. He built a number of stupas
(commemorative burial mounds) and monasteries and erected pillars on which he ordered
inscribed his understanding of religious doctrines. He took strong measures to suppress
schisms within the order (the Buddhist religious community) and prescribed a course of
scriptural studies for adherents. Tradition recorded in the Ceylonese chronicle Mahavamsa
says that, when the church decided to send preaching missions abroad, Ashoka helped
them enthusiastically and sent his own son and daughter as missionares to Ceylon. It is as
a result of Ashoka's patronage that Buddhism, which until then was a small sect confined
only to particular localities, spread throughout India and subsequently beyond the frontiers
of the country.
A sample quotation that illustrates the spirit that guided Ashoka is: "All men are my
children. As for my own children I desire that they may be provided with all the welfare and
happiness of this world and of the next, so do I desire for all men as well." (A.Se.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Amulyachandra Sen (ed.), Asoka's Edicts (1956), deals with all aspects of Ashoka's life
and work on the basis of archaeological and literary materials. D.R. Bhandarkar, Asoka,
3rd ed. (1955); and R.K. Mookergee, Asoka, 3rd ed. (1962), are studies based on
historical materials.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
The next name on my list is a man who fit’s three of the qualifications for metasapiency. He
was a Polymath, an Innovator, and the Founder of a school.
ERATOSTHENES:
Born: Cyrene, North Africa approx; 276 B.C.E.
Died: Alexandria, Egypt, approx: 196 B.C.E.
Astronomer, geometer, geographer, grammarian, philosopher. He was the founder of
astronomical geography and of scientific chronology. He measure the obliquity of the
ecliptic, and introduced a method of computing the magnitude of the Earth. How’s that for
being a polymath? He was certainly metasapient.
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Let’s let Britannica fill the story out a bit:
(b. c. 276 BC, Cyrene, Libya--d. c. 194, Alexandria, Egypt), Greek scientific writer,
astronomer, and poet, the first man known to have calculated the Earth's circumference.
(see also Index:geodesy)
At Syene (now Aswan), some 800 km (500 miles) southeast of Alexandria in Egypt, the
Sun's rays fall vertically at noon at the summer solstice. Eratosthenes noted that at
Alexandria, at the same date and time, sunlight fell at an angle of about from the vertical.
He correctly assumed the Sun's distance to be very great; its rays therefore are practically
parallel when they reach the Earth. Given estimates of the distance between the two cities,
he was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. The exact length of the units
(stadia) he used is doubtful, and the accuracy of his result is therefore uncertain; it may
have varied by 0.5 to 17 percent from the value accepted by modern astronomers. He also
measured the degree of obliquity of the ecliptic (in effect, the tilt of the Earth's axis) with
great accuracy and compiled a star catalog. His mathematical work is known principally
from the writings of Pappus of Alexandria.
After study in Alexandria and Athens, Eratosthenes settled in Alexandria about 255 BC
and became director of the great library there. He worked out a calendar that included leap
years, and he tried to fix the dates of literary and political events since the siege of Troy.
His writings include a poem inspired by astronomy, as well as works on the theatre and on
ethics. Eratosthenes was afflicted by blindness in his old age, and he is said to have
committed suicide by voluntary starvation.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Next, and yet another metasapient of great importance to humanity
HIPPARCHUS:
Born in Nicaea, Bythynia, and flourished between 160 and 125 B.C.E. He was a celebrated
Astronomer, considered the founder of all scientific astronomy. He catalogued the stars,
invented the Planisphere, and made a number of important discoveries including the
eccentricity of the solar orbit, some of the inequalities of the moon’s motion, and the
precision of the equinox. Which you’ve got to admit is a sufficient contribution to qualify for
metasapience.
But there’s lots more:
also spelled HIPPARCHOS (b. Nicaea, Bithynia--d. after 127 BC, Rhodes?), Greek
astronomer and mathematician who discovered the precession of the equinoxes,
calculated the length of the year to within 6 1/2 minutes, compiled the first known star
catalog, and made an early formulation of trigonometry.
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Life.
Hipparchus carried out his observations in Bithynia, at Rhodes, where he spent much
time, and also, it seems, at Alexandria. The year 127 BC is usually cited as the last date
known for his actual work, and a French astronomer, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre
(1749-1822), clearly demonstrated that some observations of Hipparchus on the star Eta
Canis Majoris could well have been carried out in that year.
Most of contemporary knowledge of Hipparchus is contained in the writings of Strabo of
Amaseia (flourished c. AD 21) and in the great astronomical compendium Almagest by
Ptolemy (flourished AD 127-151). Ptolemy often quotes Hipparchus, and it is obvious that
he thought highly of him; indeed, as a result of the slow progress of early science, he
speaks of him with the respect due a distinguished contemporary, although almost three
centuries separated the work of the two men. It is difficult always to determine to which of
them credit is due.
It is certain, however, that in all his work Hipparchus showed a clear mind and a dislike for
unnecessarily complex hypotheses. He rejected not only all astrological teaching but also
the heliocentric views of the universe that seem to have been proposed, according to
Archimedes (c. 287-212 BC), by Aristarchus of Samos (flourished c. 270 BC) and that were
resuscitated by Seleucus the Babylonian, a contemporary of Hipparchus. In this
connection, it is necessary to recall that strong arguments had been advanced against the
idea of the motion of the Earth, and the general climate of opinion had never been
favourable to following up the lead given by Aristarchus. Moreover, the system of movable
eccentrics, and that of epicycles and deferents, accounted well for most of the irregularities
observed in the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. These two systems were
based on the erroneous belief that all celestial movement is regular and circular, or at least
that it is best described in terms of a system of regular motion in circles. In the system of
movable eccentrics, the centres of the supposed orbits of bodies around the Earth were
themselves revolving around the Earth. In the other, epicycles were small circles
theoretically imposed on the great circular orbital paths, which were called deferents. The
epicycle-deferent mechanism was found with that of the movable eccentric in Ptolemy's
late form of the geocentric system of cosmology. It was, of course, this Ptolemaic
geocentric system that was handed down to western European science, but it must be
remembered that the views of Hipparchus had a profound influence on Ptolemy, as he
himself acknowledged. It was not until the 15th century that regular observations over very
long periods showed the geocentric hypothesis to be too complex to be acceptable and
Copernicus proposed that the Sun is the centre of the universe.
Few details are known of the instruments that Hipparchus used. It seems likely that he
observed with the usual devices current in his day, although Ptolemy credits him with the
invention of an improved type of theodolite with which to measure angles.
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Stellar observations.
Hipparchus is best known for his discovery of the precessional movement of the
equinoxes; i.e., the alterations of the measured positions of the stars resulting from the
movement of the points of intersection of the ecliptic (the plane of the Earth's orbit) and of
the celestial equator (the great circle formed in the sky by the projection outward of the
Earth's equator). It appears that he wrote a work bearing "precession of the equinoxes" in
the title. The term is still in current use, although the phenomenon is more usually referred
to merely as "precession." This notable discovery was the result of painstaking
observations worked upon by an acute mind. Hipparchus observed the positions of the
stars and then compared his results with those of Timocharis of Alexandria about 150
years earlier and with even earlier observations made in Babylonia.
He discovered that the celestial longitudes were different and that this difference was of a
magnitude exceeding that attributable to errors of observation. He therefore proposed
precession to account for the size of the difference and he gave a value of 45" or 46"
(seconds of arc) for the annual changes.
This is very close to the figure of 50.26" accepted today and is a value much superior to
the 36" that Ptolemy obtained.
The discovery of precession enabled Hipparchus to obtain more nearly correct values for
the tropical year (the period of the Sun's apparent revolution from an equinox to the same
equinox again), and also for the sidereal year (the period of the Sun's apparent revolution
from a fixed star to the same fixed star). Again he was extremely accurate, so that his
value for the tropical year was too great by only 6 1/2. (see also Index: sidereal period)
Observations of star positions measured in terms of celestial latitude and longitude, as was
customary in antiquity, were carried out by Hipparchus and entered in a catalog--the first
star catalog ever to be completed. Hipparchus measured the stellar positions with greater
accuracy than any observer before him, and his observations were of use to Ptolemy and
even later to Edmond Halley. To catalog the stars was thought by some of Hipparchus'
contemporaries to be an impiety, but he persevered. Hipparchus had been stimulated in
134 BC by observing a "new star." Concluding that such a phenomenon indicated a lack of
permanency in the number of "fixed" stars, he determined to catalog them, and no criticism
was able to deflect him from his original purpose.
Hipparchus' catalog, completed in 129 BC, listed about 850 stars (not 1,080 as is often
stated), the apparent brightnesses of which were specified by a system of six magnitudes
similar to that used today. For its time, the catalog was a monumental achievement.
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Lunar and solar work.
In his work on the Sun and Moon Hipparchus used the observations of others as well as
his own. He showed that the system based on movable eccentrics and that based on
epicycles and deferents were equivalent in the motions they gave for the Sun and Moon
and, indeed, for the planets. Both methods gave the position of the Sun correct to within 1',
and Hipparchus rejected the peculiar notion, prevalent in his day, that the Sun moved in
an orbit inclined to the ecliptic. Hipparchus also redetermined the inclination of the ecliptic
and obtained a value correct to within 5' of the modern figure.
The motion of the Moon is more complex than that of the Sun, owing to the perturbations
that the Moon suffers from both Earth and Sun; in consequence, there are more
irregularities to be taken into consideration. Hipparchus satisfactorily accounted for that
inequality of the Moon's motion that is now known to be due to the elliptical form of its orbit;
he utilized the system of circular epicycles and deferent but proposed that the deferent was
inclined at an angle of 5 to the ecliptic. His theory gave reasonably satisfactory results for
the motion at Full and New Moon. Hipparchus was dissatisfied however, for, as he
appreciated, the errors at quadrature (when the Moon stands at first and last quarters)
were too great. He concluded that there was some further inequality in the Moon's motion,
but he was unable to discover any means of solving this problem, and he said candidly that
he was leaving the solution of this question to those who were to follow him.
Hipparchus also attacked the problem of the relative size of the Sun and Moon and their
distance from the Earth. It had long been appreciated, of course, that the apparent
diameter of each was the same, and various astronomers had attempted to measure the
ratio of size and distance of the two bodies. Eudoxus obtained a value of 9:1, Phidias
(father of Archimedes) 12:1, Archimedes himself 30:1; while Aristarchus believed 20:1 to
be correct. The present-day value is, approximately, 393:1. Hipparchus followed the
method used by Aristarchus, a procedure that depends upon measuring the breadth of the
Earth's shadow at the distance of the Moon (the measurement being made by timing the
transit of the shadow across the Moon's disk during a lunar eclipse). This method really
gives the parallax (the apparent change in the position of a celestial body when observed
from two different directions), and thus the distance, of the Moon, the parallax for the Sun
being too small to give a significant result; moreover the accuracy obtainable for the
distance even of the Moon is poor. Dissatisfied with his results, Hipparchus attempted to
find the limits within which the solar parallax must lie for observations and calculations of a
solar eclipse to agree; he hoped that differences between solar and lunar parallax might
thus also be revealed. He obtained no satisfactory result from his efforts, however, and
concluded that the solar parallax was probably negligible. At least he appreciated that the
distance of the Sun was very great indeed.
Hipparchus was unsuccessful in forming a satisfactory planetary theory and was scientist
enough to avoid building hypotheses on insufficient evidence. In his work Hipparchus
adopted the generally accepted order for the Sun, Moon, and planets. With the Earth as
the centre, they were, in order from the Earth, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn.
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Contributions to mathematics.
It is to be expected that the astronomical work of Hipparchus should have led him to
develop certain departments of mathematics. He made an early formulation of trigonometry
and tabulated a table of chords--i.e., the length of the line joining two points on a unit circle
corresponding to the given angle at the centre; e.g., chord of 2 sin (/2): he is known to have
had a method of solving spherical triangles. It is also generally agreed that the theorem in
plane geometry known as "Ptolemy's theorem" was originally due to Hipparchus and was
later copied by Ptolemy. During the 18th century the French statesman and mathematician
Lazare Carnot showed that the whole of plane trigonometry can be deduced from these
formulas.
Geographical work.
Hipparchus criticized severely the geographical work of Eratosthenes (c. 276-c. 194 BC)
and himself did some work in this field. His main contribution was to apply rigorous
mathematical principles to the determination of places on the Earth's surface, and he was
the first to do so by specifying their longitude and latitude--the method used today.
Hipparchus was, no doubt, led to this method by his work on the trigonometry of the
sphere. He tried to measure latitude by utilizing the ratio of the longest to the shortest day
at a particular place instead of following the customary method of the Babylonians of
measuring the difference in length of day as one travels northward. Hipparchus also
divided the then known inhabited world into climatic zones, and suggested that the
longitude of places could be determined by observing, from these places, the moments
when a solar eclipse began and ended; but this bold scheme, while theoretically
satisfactory for a small area of the Earth's surface, was not a practical proposition in his
day.
(.A.R./Ed.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
J.L.E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (1906; reprinted as A
History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, 1953), a readable but scholarly book in which
the work of Hipparchus is clearly set out; George Sarton, A History of Science, vol. 2,
Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959), a volume
containing an excellent well-written résumé of Hipparchus and his achievements; Ptolemy,
The Almagest, reprinted in an English translation in "Great Books of the Western World,"
vol. 16 (1952), the main original source of references to the astronomical work of
Hipparchus.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
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And now:
ALEXANDROS CORNELIUS (POLYHISTOR):
fl. 1st century B.C.E.
Alexandros was yet another of the many polymaths on our list. He was a native of Mitylene.
During Cornelius Sulla’s campaigns in Greece, he was taken prisoner and sold to Sulla’s
relative CORNELIUS LENTULUS, who brought him to Rome to become pedagogue to
Lentulus’ children. He received (as was very common among highly educated
pedagogues) both his manumission and (unusually) The Roman Franchise. As was
customary he took the Gens or Clan name of his benefactor. (It is not really known whether
that was Cornelius Lentulus or L. Cornelius Sulla)
He died trying to save his books in a fire which destroyed his home in Lentulum. He wrote
a geographical-historical account in 42 books of nearly all the countries of the Ancient
World and many other works of which only the titles and fragments have survived.. Most of
these fragments provide important information on antiquarian subjects and Jewish history
which may just possibly indicate that while born in Mitylene, he was nonetheless of Jewish
ancestry. He was another of those who increased and preserved Human Knowledge. I
hope I have made it clear that the preservation of human knowledge is just as important in
making the world a better place as is the increase of human knowledge. This man did both.
ANDRONICUS OF RHODES:
(FL.1ST Century B.C.E.)
th
head of the
A “Peripatetic” (Or School of Aristotle) philosopher. He was the 11
Peripatetic School which was, in his time, at Rome in 58 B.C.E. He was the Editor of
treatises on Aristotle and Theophrastus (q.v.) The works Aristotle had published were
mainly dialogues in the popular style; his mature thought had been expressed in lectures to
his students, which had been transmitted through several generations in a state of
confusion, the disjointed segments of important treatises being thrown together with trivial
by-products of Peripatetic research. Andronicus disengaged the Master’s authentic works
from the miscellaneous material and arranged them in logical order, justifying his
procedure in a long treatise (later lost) in which he gave a biography of Aristotle, treated
with questions of authenticity and explained the structure of the Aristotelian system. He
also collected Aristotle’s letters and wrote commentaries on some of the treatises. He
proceeded in the same fashion in his edition of Theophrastus.
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A treatise “ON THE EMOTIONS” and a paraphrase of Aristotle’s “ETHICS” which were
printed under the name of Andronicus, were however, not written by him.
This man was a major factor in inducing the elite Romans to become Aristotelean which
was, in time, to have a major effect on the development of Christianity
Britannica has this to say of him:
also called ANDRONICUS RHODIUS (fl. 1st century BC), Greek philosopher noted for his
meticulous editing and commentary of Aristotle's works, which had passed from one
generation to the next in such a way that the presumed quality of the original texts had
been lost and much superfluous material added to many of the major treatises. Andronicus
studied the original texts to sift out extraneous material and arranged them in an order that
he thought reflected the workings of Aristotle's mind. After completing the editing, he wrote
a treatise that covered four topics: a defense of his procedure, a biography of Aristotle, an
exploration into the question of authenticity, and an examination of the Aristotelian system
of thought.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another important figure from this time is:
LUCRETIUS (Titus Lucretius Carus)
Born: Rome approx 96 B.C.E.
Died: Rome approx 55 B.C.E. (SUICIDE)
He was a philosopher and poet. His principle work was “DE RERUM NATURA” (“On the
Nature of Things”)The poem is the fullest extant statement of the physical theory of the
Greek philosopher Epicurus; it also alludes to his ethical and logical doctrines.
Britannica has quite a bit to say about him:
in full TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS (fl. 1st century BC), Latin poet and philosopher known
for his single, long poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). The poem is the
fullest extant statement of the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus; it also
alludes to his ethical and logical doctrines.
Life
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Apart from Lucretius' poem almost nothing is known about him. What little evidence there
is, is quite inconclusive. Jerome, a leading Latin Church Father, in his chronicle for the year
94 BC (or possibly 96 or 93 BC), stated that Lucretius was born in that year and that years
afterward a love potion drove him insane; and in lucid intervals having written some books,
which Cicero afterward emended, he killed himself in his 44th year (51 or 50 BC). Aelius
Donatus, a grammarian and teacher of rhetoric, in his "Life" of Virgil noticed that Virgil put
on the toga virilis (the toga of an adult) in his 17th year, on his birthday (i.e., 54 or 53 BC),
and that Lucretius died that same day. But Donatus contradicted himself by stating that the
consuls that year were the same as in the year of Virgil's birth (i.e., Crassus and Pompey,
in 55 BC). This last date seems partly confirmed by a sentence in Cicero's reply to his
brother in 54 BC (Ad Quintum fratrem 2, 9, 3), which suggests that Lucretius was already
dead and also that Cicero may have been involved in the publication of his poem: "The
poems of Lucretius are as you write in your letter--they have many highlights of genius, yet
also much artistry." Excepting the single mention in Cicero, the only contemporary who
named Lucretius was a Roman historian, Cornelius Nepos (Atticus 12, 4), in the phrase
"after the death of Lucretius and Catullus," and the only contemporary whom Lucretius
named was one Memmius, to whom he dedicated his poem, probably Gaius Memmius
(son-in-law of Sulla, praetor of 58 BC, and patron of Catullus and Gaius Helvius Cinna), for
whose friendship Lucretius "hopes."
De rerum natura.
The title of Lucretius' work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeos (On
Nature), as also of the didactic epic of Empedocles, a pluralist philosopher of nature, of
whom Lucretius spoke with admiration only less than that with which he praised his master
Epicurus.
Lucretius distributed his argument into six books, beginning each with a highly polished
introduction. Books I and II established the main principles of the atomic universe, refuted
the rival theories of the pre-Socratic cosmic philosophers Heracleitus, Empedocles, and
Anaxagoras, and covertly attacked the Stoics, a school of moralists rivaling that of
Epicurus. Book III demonstrated the atomic structure and mortality of the soul and ended
with a triumphant sermon on the theme "Death is nothing to us." Book IV described the
mechanics of sense perception, thought, and certain bodily functions and condemned
sexual passion. Book V described the creation and working of this world and the celestial
bodies and the evolution of life and human society. Book VI explained remarkable
phenomena of the earth and sky, in particular, thunder and lightning. The poem ends with
a description of the plague at Athens, a sombre picture of death contrasting with that of
spring and birth in the invocation to Venus, with which it opened.
Argument of the poem.
The argument in outline is as follows:
1. No thing is either created out of or reducible to nothing. The universe has an infinite
extent of empty space (or void) and an infinite number of irreducible particles of matter (or
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atoms)--though their kinds are finite. Atoms differ only in shape, size, and weight and are
impenetrably hard, changeless, everlasting, the limit of physical division. They are made up
of inseparable minimal parts, or units. Larger atoms have more such parts, but even the
larger are minute. All atoms would have moved everlastingly downward in infinite space
and never have collided to form atomic systems had they not swerved at times to a minimal
degree. To these indeterminate swerves is due the creation of an infinite plurality of worlds;
they also interrupt the causal chain and so make room for free will. All things are ultimately
systems of moving atoms, separated by greater or smaller intervals of void, which cohere
more or less according to their shapes. All systems are divisible and therefore perishable
(except the gods), and all change is explainable in terms of the addition, subtraction, or
rearrangement of changeless atoms.
2. The soul is made of exceedingly fine atoms and has two connected parts: the anima
distributed throughout the body, which is the cause of sensation, and the animus in the
breast, the central consciousness. The soul is born and grows with the body, and at death
it is dissipated like "smoke."
3. Though the gods exist, they neither made nor manipulate the world. As systems of
exceedingly fine atoms, they live remote, unconcerned with human affairs, examples to
men of the ideal life of perfect happiness (absence of mental fear, emotional turmoil, and
bodily pain).
4. Men know by sense perception and argue by reason according to certain rules. Though
the senses are infallible, reason can make false inferences. Objects can be seen because
they discharge from their surface representative films, which strike the eye just as smells
strike the nose. Separate atoms are in principle imperceptible, having no dischargeable
parts. The senses perceive the properties and accidents of bodies; reason infers the atoms
and the void, which exists to explain the perceived movement of bodies.
5. Men naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. Their aim should be so to conduct their
lives that they get, on balance, the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. They
will succeed in this only if they are able, through philosophy, to overcome the fear of death
and of the gods.
Literary qualities of the poem.
The linguistic style and spirit of the poem are notable. The problem of Lucretius was to
render the bald and abstract Greek prose of Epicurus into Latin hexameters at a time when
Latin had no philosophic vocabulary. He succeeded by applying common words to a
technical use. Thus, he used concilium ("assembly of people") for a "system of atoms" and
primordia ("first weavings") for the "atoms" that make up the texture of things. When
necessary, he invented words. In poetic diction and style he was in debt to the older Latin
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poets, especially to Quintus Ennius, the father of Roman poetry. He freely used alliteration
and assonance, solemn and often metrically convenient archaic forms, and old
constructions. He formed expressive compound adjectives of a sort rejected by Augustan
taste--e.g., "the light-sleeping hearts of dogs," "forest-breaking winds." He imitated or
echoed Homer; the dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides; Callimachus, a poet and critic; the
historian Thucydides; and the physician Hippocrates. His hexameters stand halfway
between those of Ennius, who introduced the metre into Latin, and Virgil, who perfected it.
There is also some incoherence of rhythm, as well as harsh elisions and examples of
unusual prosody.
The influence of Lucretius on Virgil was pervasive, especially in Virgil's Georgics; and it is
in clear allusion to Lucretius that Virgil wrote "Happy is the man who can read the causes
of things" (Georgics II, 490).
Lucretius spoke in austere compassion for the ignorant, unhappy human race. His moral
fervour expressed itself in gratitude to Epicurus and in hatred of the seers who inculcated
religious fears by threats of eternal punishment after death, of the Etruscan soothsayers
with their lore of thunder and lightning, of the false philosophers--Stoics with their belief in
divine providence or Platonists and Pythagoreans who taught the transmigration of
immortal souls. The first appearance of religio in the poem is as a monster that thrusts its
fearful head from the regions of the sky. Epicurus, not intimidated by these spectres, had
ranged beyond the "flaming ramparts of the world" through the infinite universe, broken into
the citadel of nature, and brought back in triumph the knowledge of what can and what
cannot be, of that "deep-set boundary stone" that divides the separate properties of things,
the real from the not real. And "so religion is crushed beneath our feet and his [Epicurus']
victory lifts us to the skies." (A.F.We.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Introductions are James H. Nichols, Jr., Epicurean Political Philosophy: The De Rerum
Natura of Lucretius (1976); and Diskin Clay, Lucretius and Epicurus (1983). D.R. Dudley
(ed.), Lucretius (1965), is a collection of essays by eminent scholars on various aspects of
the poem. Analyses of form, imagery, and philosophy include Richard Minadeo, The Lyre
of Science: Form and Meaning in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (1969); David West, The
Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius (1969); and Charles Segal, Lucretius on Death and
Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura (1990).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
My next subject is a man who was another example of the “Alexander Class” of the
metasapient, and that was Julius Caesar, another man who left the world entirely different
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than he found it. Alexander the Great changed his entire world, but Julius Caesar set our
world on the road to where it presently is. Our society is what it is, due in great part, to
causes set in motion by this man. He was the man who opened the Mediterranean World
to the World of Northern and Western Europe and neither world was ever the same again!
CAESAR, GAIUS JULIUS
(100 - 44 B.C.E.)
The this quotation, from the entry under his name, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1968)
says it all:
“Roman General, Dictator, and Statesman, whose career changed the course of the history
of the Greco-Roman world decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society has been
extinct for so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the average
educated modern man. But Caesar’s name, like Alexander’s, is still on people’s lips
throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nothing of Caesar as
a historic personality are familiar with his family name signifying a ruler who is in some
sense uniquely supreme or paramount - the meaning of Kaiser in German, Tsar in Slavonic
languages, and Qaysar in the languages of the Islamic world.”
In order for you to have the full picture of the man’s life and it’s effects I will add the entry
from the newer edition:
Introduction
A Roman general, dictator, and statesman, Gaius Julius Caesar changed the course of the
history of the Greco- Roman world decisively and irreversibly. The Greco-Roman society
has been extinct for so long that most of the names of its great men mean little to the
average, educated modern man. But Caesar's name, like Alexander's, is still on people's
lips throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds. Even people who know nothing of Caesar
as a historic personality are familiar with his family name as a title signifying a ruler who is
in some sense uniquely supreme or paramount--the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in
the Slavonic languages, and qaysar in the languages of the Islamic world. (see also Index:
Roman Republic and Empire)
Caesar's gens (clan) name, Julius (Iulius), is also familiar in the Christian world; for in
Caesar's lifetime the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was born, was renamed " July" in
his honour. This name has survived, as has Caesar's reform of the calendar. The old
Roman calendar was inaccurate and manipulated for political purposes. Caesar's calendar,
the Julian calendar, is still partially in force in the Eastern Orthodox Christian countries; and
the Gregorian calendar, now in use in the West, is the Julian, slightly corrected by Pope
Gregory XIII.
312
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CAREER
Caesar's gens, the Julii, were patricians; i.e., members of Rome's original aristocracy,
which had coalesced in the 4th century BC with a number of leading plebeian (commoner)
families to form the nobility that had been the governing class in Rome since then. By
Caesar's time, the number of surviving patrician gentes was small; and in the gens Julia
the Caesares seem to have been the only surviving family. Though some of the most
powerful noble families were patrician, patrician blood was no longer a political advantage;
it was actually a handicap, since a patrician was debarred from holding the
paraconstitutional but powerful office of tribune of the plebs. The Julii Caesares traced their
lineage back to the goddess Venus, but the family was not snobbish or
conservative-minded. It was also not rich or influential or even distinguished.
A Roman noble won distinction for himself and his family by securing election to a series of
public offices, which culminated in the consulship, with the censorship possibly to follow.
This was a difficult task for even the ablest and most gifted noble unless he was backed by
substantial family wealth and influence. Rome's victory over Carthage in the Second Punic
War (218-201 BC) had made Rome the paramount power in the Mediterranean basin; an
influential Roman noble family's clients (that is, protégés who, in return, gave their patrons
their political support) might include kings and even whole nations, besides numerous
private individuals. The requirements and the costs of a Roman political career in Caesar's
day were high, and the competition was severe; but the potential profits were of enormous
magnitude. One of the perquisites of the praetorship and the consulship was the
government of a province, which gave ample opportunity for plunder. The whole
Mediterranean world was, in fact, at the mercy of the Roman nobility and of a new class of
Roman businessmen, the equites ("knights"), which had grown rich on military contracts
and on tax farming.
Military manpower was supplied by the Roman peasantry. This class had been partly
dispossessed by an economic revolution following on the devastation caused by the
Second Punic War. The Roman governing class had consequently come to be hated and
discredited at home and abroad. From 133 onward there had been a series of alternate
revolutionary and counter-revolutionary paroxysms. It was evident that the misgovernment
of the Roman state and the Greco-Roman world by the Roman nobility could not continue
indefinitely and it was fairly clear that the most probable alternative was some form of
military dictatorship backed by dispossessed Italian peasants who had turned to long-term
military service.
The traditional competition among members of the Roman nobility for office and the spoils
of office was thus threatening to turn into a desperate race for seizing autocratic power.
The Julii Caesares did not seem to be in the running. It was true that Sextus Caesar, who
was perhaps the dictator's uncle, had been one of the consuls for 91; and Lucius Caesar,
one of the consuls for 90, was a distant cousin, whose son and namesake was consul for
64. In 90, Rome's Italian allies had seceded from Rome because of the Roman
government's obstinate refusal to grant them Roman citizenship, and, as consul, Lucius
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Caesar had introduced emergency legislation for granting citizenship to the citizens of all
Italian ally states that had not taken up arms or that had returned to their allegiance.
Whoever had been consul in this critical year would have had to initiate such legislation,
whatever his personal political predilections. There is evidence, however, that the Julii
Caesares, though patricians, had already committed themselves to the antinobility party.
An aunt of the future dictator had married Gaius Marius, a self-made man (novus homo)
who had forced his way up to the summit by his military ability and had made the
momentous innovation of recruiting his armies from the dispossessed peasants.
The date of Caesar the dictator's birth has long been disputed. The day was July 12 or 13;
the traditional (and perhaps most probable) year is 100; but if this date is correct, Caesar
must have held each of his offices two years in advance of the legal minimum age. His
father, Gaius Caesar, died when Caesar was but 16; his mother, Aurelia, was a notable
woman, and it seems certain that he owed much to her.
In spite of the inadequacy of his resources, Caesar seems to have chosen a political career
as a matter of course. From the beginning, he probably privately aimed at winning office,
not just for the sake of the honours but in order to achieve the power to put the
misgoverned Roman state and Greco-Roman world into better order in accordance with
ideas of his own. It is improbable that Caesar deliberately sought monarchical power until
after he had crossed the Rubicon in 49, though sufficient power to impose his will, as he
was determined to do, proved to mean monarchical power.
In 84 Caesar committed himself publicly to the radical side by marrying Cornelia, a
daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a noble who was Marius' associate in revolution. In 83
Lucius Cornelius Sulla returned to Italy from the East and led the successful
counter-revolution of 83-82; Sulla then ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia. Caesar refused
and came close to losing not only his property (such as it was) but his life as well. He found
it advisable to remove himself from Italy and to do military service, first in the province of
Asia and then in Cilicia.
In 78, after Sulla's death, he returned to Rome and started on his political career in the
conventional way, by acting as a prosecuting advocate--of course, in his case, against
prominent Sullan counter-revolutionaries. His first target, Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, was
defended by Quintus Hortensius, the leading advocate of the day, and was acquitted by the
extortion-court jury, composed exclusively of senators.
Caesar then went to Rhodes to study oratory under a famous professor, Molon. En route
he was captured by pirates (one of the symptoms of the anarchy into which the Roman
nobility had allowed the Mediterranean world to fall). Caesar raised his ransom, raised a
naval force, captured his captors, and had them crucified--all this as a private individual
holding no public office. In 74, when Mithradates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, renewed war
on the Romans, Caesar raised a private army to combat him.
In his absence from Rome, Caesar was made a member of the politico-ecclesiastical
college of pontifices; and on his return he gained one of the elective military tribuneships.
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Caesar now worked to undo the Sullan constitution in cooperation with Pompey (Gnaeus
Pompeius), who had started his career as a lieutenant of Sulla but had changed sides
since Sulla's death. In 69 or 68 Caesar was elected quaestor (the first rung on the Roman
political ladder). In the same year his wife, Cornelia, and his aunt Julia, Marius' widow,
died; in public funeral orations in their honour, Caesar found opportunities for praising
Cinna and Marius. Caesar afterward married Pompeia, a distant relative of Pompey.
Caesar served his quaestorship in the province of Farther Spain (modern Andalusia and
Portugal).
Caesar was elected one of the curule aediles for 65, and he celebrated his tenure of this
office by unusually lavish expenditure with borrowed money. He was elected pontifex
maximus in 63 by a political dodge. By now he had become a controversial political figure.
After the suppression of Catiline's conspiracy in 63, Caesar, as well as the millionaire
Marcus Licinius Crassus, was accused of complicity. It seems unlikely that either of them
had committed himself to Catiline; but Caesar proposed in the Senate a more merciful
alternative to the death penalty, which the consul Cicero was asking for the arrested
conspirators. In the uproar in the Senate, Caesar's motion was defeated.
Caesar was elected a praetor for 62. Toward the end of the year of his praetorship, a
scandal was caused by Publius Clodius in Caesar's house at the celebration there of the
rites, for women only, of Bona Dea (a Roman deity of fruitfulness, both in the Earth and in
women). Caesar consequently divorced Pompeia. He obtained the governorship of Farther
Spain for 61-60. His creditors did not let him leave Rome until Crassus had gone bail for a
quarter of his debts; but a military expedition beyond the northwest frontier of his province
enabled Caesar to win loot for himself as well as for his soldiers, with a balance left over for
the treasury. This partial financial recovery enabled him, after his return to Rome in 60, to
stand for the consulship for 59.
The first triumvirate and the conquest of Gaul.
The value of the consulship lay in the lucrative provincial governorship to which it would
normally lead. On the eve of the consular elections for 59, the Senate sought to allot to the
two future consuls for 59, as their proconsular provinces, the unprofitable supervision of
forests and cattle trails in Italy. The Senate also secured by massive bribery the election of
an anti-Caesarean, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. But they failed to prevent Caesar's election
as the other consul.
Caesar now succeeded in organizing an irresistible coalition of political bosses. Pompey
had carried out his mission to put the East in order with notable success, but after his
return to Italy and his disbandment of his army in 62, the Senate had thwarted
him--particularly by preventing him from securing land allotments for his veterans. Caesar,
who had assiduously cultivated Pompey's friendship, now entered into a secret pact with
him. Caesar's master stroke was to persuade Crassus to join the partnership, the so-called
first triumvirate. Crassus--like Pompey, a former lieutenant of Sulla--had been one of the
most active of Pompey's obstructors so far. Only Caesar, on good terms with both, was in a
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position to reconcile them. Early in 59, Pompey sealed his alliance with Caesar by marrying
Caesar's only child, Julia. Caesar married Calpurnia, daughter of Lucius Piso, who became
consul in 58.
As consul, Caesar introduced a bill for the allotment of Roman public lands in Italy, on
which the first charge was to be a provision for Pompey's soldiers. The bill was vetoed by
three tribunes of the plebs, and Caesar's colleague Bibulus announced his intention of
preventing the transaction of public business by watching the skies for portents whenever
the public assembly was convened. Caesar then cowed the opposition by employing some
of Pompey's veterans to make a riot, and the distribution was carried out. Pompey's
settlement of the East was ratified en bloc by an act negotiated by an agent of Caesar, the
tribune of the plebs Publius Vatinius. Caesar himself initiated a noncontroversial and
much-needed act for punishing misconduct by governors of provinces.
Another act negotiated by Vatinius gave Caesar Cisalpine Gaul (between the Alps, the
Apennines, and the Adriatic) and Illyricum. His tenure was to last until February 28, 54.
When the governor-designate of Transalpine Gaul suddenly died, this province, also, was
assigned to Caesar at Pompey's instance. Cisalpine Gaul gave Caesar a military recruiting
ground; Transalpine Gaul gave him a springboard for conquests beyond Rome's northwest
frontier. (see also Index: Gallic Wars)
Between 58 and 50, Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul up to the left bank of the Rhine
and subjugated it so effectively that it remained passive under Roman rule throughout the
Roman civil wars between 49 and 31. This achievement was all the more amazing in light
of the fact that the Romans did not possess any great superiority in military equipment over
the north European barbarians. Indeed, the Gallic cavalry was probably superior to the
Roman, horseman for horseman. Rome's military superiority lay in its mastery of strategy,
tactics, discipline, and military engineering. In Gaul, Rome also had the advantage of being
able to deal separately with dozens of relatively small, independent, and uncooperative
states. Caesar conquered these piecemeal, and the concerted attempt made by a number
of them in 52 to shake off the Roman yoke came too late.
Great though this achievement was, its relative importance in Caesar's career and in
Roman history has been overestimated in Western tradition (as have his brief raids on
Britain). In Caesar's mind his conquest of Gaul was probably carried out only as a
means to his ultimate end. He was acquiring the military manpower, the plunder, and the
prestige that he needed to secure a free hand for the prosecution of the task of
reorganizing the Roman state and the rest of the Greco-Roman world. This final
achievement of Caesar's looms much larger than his conquest of Gaul, when it is viewed in
the wider setting of world history and not just in the narrower setting of the Greco-Roman
civilization's present daughter civilization in the West.
In 58 Rome's northwestern frontier, established in 125, ran from the Alps down the left
bank of the upper Rhône River to the Pyrenees, skirting the southeastern foot of the
Cévennes and including the upper basin of the Garonne River without reaching the Gallic
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shore of the Atlantic. In 58 Caesar intervened beyond this line, first to drive back the
Helvetii, who had been migrating westward from their home in what is now central
Switzerland. He then crushed Ariovistus, a German soldier of fortune from beyond the
Rhine. In 57 Caesar subdued the distant and warlike Belgic group of Gallic peoples in the
north, while his lieutenant Publius Licinius Crassus subdued what are now the regions of
Normandy and Brittany.
In 56 the Veneti, in what is now southern Brittany, started a revolt in the northwest that was
supported by the still unconquered Morini on the Gallic coast of the Straits of Dover and the
Menapii along the south bank of the lower Rhine. Caesar reconquered the Veneti with
some difficulty and treated them barbarously. He could not finish off the conquest of the
Morini and Menapii before the end of the campaigning season of 56; and in the winter of
56-55 the Menapii were temporarily expelled from their home by two immigrant German
peoples, the Usipetes and Tencteri. These peoples were exterminated by Caesar in 55. In
the same year he bridged the Rhine just below Koblenz to raid Germany on the other side
of the river, and then crossed the Channel to raid Britain. In 54 he raided Britain again and
subdued a serious revolt in northeastern Gaul. In 53 he subdued further revolts in Gaul and
bridged the Rhine again for a second raid.
The crisis of Caesar's Gallic war came in 52. The peoples of central Gaul found a national
leader in the Arvernian Vercingetorix. They planned to cut off the Roman forces from
Caesar, who had been wintering on the other side of the Alps. They even attempted to
invade the western end of the old Roman province of Gallia Transalpina. Vercingetorix
wanted to avoid pitched battles and sieges and to defeat the Romans by cutting off their
supplies--partly by cavalry operations and partly by "scorched earth"--but he could not
persuade his countrymen to adopt this painful policy wholeheartedly.
The Bituriges insisted on standing siege in their town Avaricum (Bourges), and
Vercingetorix was unable to save it from being taken by storm within one month. Caesar
then besieged Vercingetorix in Gergovia near modern Clermont-Ferrand. A Roman attempt
to storm Gergovia was repulsed and resulted in heavy Roman losses--the first outright
defeat that Caesar had suffered in Gaul. Caesar then defeated an attack on the Roman
army on the march and was thus able to besiege Vercingetorix in Alesia, to the northwest
of Dijon. Alesia, like Gergovia, was a position of great natural strength, and a large Gallic
army came to relieve it; but this army was repulsed and dispersed by Caesar, and
Vercingetorix then capitulated.
During the winter of 52-51 and the campaigning season of 51, Caesar crushed a number of
sporadic further revolts. The most determined of these rebels were the Bellovaci, between
the Rivers Seine and Somme, around Beauvais. Another rebel force stood siege in the
south in the natural fortress of Uxellodunum (perhaps the Puy d'Issolu on the Dordogne)
until its water supply gave out. Caesar had the survivors' hands cut off. He spent the year
50 in organizing the newly conquered territory. After that, he was ready to settle his
accounts with his opponents at home.
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Antecedents and outcome of the civil war of 49-45.
During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar had been equally busy in preserving and improving
his position at home. He used part of his growing wealth from Gallic loot to hire political
agents in Rome.
Meanwhile the cohesion of the triumvirate had been placed under strain. Pompey had soon
become restive toward his alarmingly successful ally Caesar, as had Crassus toward his
old enemy Pompey. The alliance was patched up in April 56 at a conference at Luca
(Lucca), just inside Caesar's province of Cisalpine Gaul. It was arranged that Pompey and
Crassus were to be the consuls for 55 and were to get laws promulgated prolonging
Caesar's provincial commands for another five years and giving Crassus a five-year term in
Syria and Pompey a five-year term in Spain. These laws were duly passed. Crassus was
then eliminated by an annihilating defeat at the Parthians' hands in 53. The marriage link
between Pompey and Caesar had been broken by Julia's death in 54. After this, Pompey
irresolutely veered further and further away from Caesar, until, when the breach finally
came, Pompey found himself committed to the nobility's side, though he and the nobility
never trusted each other.
The issue was whether there should or should not be an interval between the date at which
Caesar was to resign his provincial governorships and, therewith, the command over his
armies and the date at which he would enter his proposed second consulship. If there were
to be an interval, Caesar would be a private person during that time, vulnerable to attack by
his enemies; if prosecuted and convicted, he would be ruined politically and might possibly
lose his life. Caesar had to make sure that, until his entry on his second consulship, he
should continue to hold at least one province with the military force to guarantee his
security.
This issue had already been the object of a series of political manoeuvres and
countermanoeuvres at Rome. The dates on which the issue turned are all in doubt. As had
been agreed at Luca in 56, Caesar's commands had been prolonged for five years,
apparently until February 28, 49, but this is not certain. In 52, a year in which Pompey was
elected sole consul and given a five-year provincial command in Spain, Caesar was
allowed by a law sponsored by all 10 tribunes to stand for the consulship in absentia. If he
were to stand in 49 for the consulship for 48, he would be out of office, and therefore in
danger, during the last 10 months of 49. As a safeguard for Caesar against this, there
seems to have been an understanding--possibly a private one at Luca in 56 between him
and Pompey--that the question of a successor to Caesar in his commands should not be
raised in the Senate before March 1, 50. This manoeuvre would have ensured that Caesar
would retain his commands until the end of 49. However, the question of replacing Caesar
was actually raised in the Senate a number of times from 51 onward; each time Caesar
had the dangerous proposals vetoed by tribunes of the plebs who were his agents -particularly Gaius Scribonius Curio in 50 and Mark Antony in 49.
The issue was brought to a head by one of the consuls for 50, Gaius Claudius Marcellus.
He obtained resolutions from the Senate that Caesar should lay down his command
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(presumably at its terminal date) but that Pompey should not lay down his command
simultaneously. Curio then obtained on December 1, 50, a resolution (by 370 votes to 22)
that both men should lay down their commands simultaneously. Next day Marcellus
(without authorization from the Senate) offered the command over all troops in Italy to
Pompey, together with the power to raise more; and Pompey accepted. On January 1, 49,
the Senate received from Caesar a proposal that he and Pompey should lay down their
commands simultaneously. Caesar's message was peremptory, and the Senate resolved
that Caesar should be treated as a public enemy if he did not lay down his command "by a
date to be fixed."
On January 10-11, 49, Caesar led his troops across the little river Rubicon, the boundary
between his province of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy proper. He thus committed the first act of
war. This was not, however, the heart of the matter. The actual question of substance was
whether the misgovernment of the Greco-Roman world by the Roman nobility should be
allowed to continue or whether it should be replaced by an autocratic regime. Either
alternative would result in a disastrous civil war. The subsequent partial recuperation of the
Greco-Roman world under the principate suggests, however, that Caesarism was the
lesser evil. (see also Index: Roman Civil War)
The civil war was a tragedy, for war was not wanted either by Caesar or by Pompey or
even by a considerable part of the nobility, while the bulk of the Roman citizen body
ardently hoped for the preservation of peace. By this time, however, the three parties that
counted politically were all entrapped. Caesar's success in building up his political power
had made the champions of the old regime so implacably hostile to him that he was now
faced with a choice between putting himself at his enemies' mercy or seizing the monopoly
of power at which he was accused of aiming. He found that he could not extricate himself
from this dilemma by reducing his demands, as he eventually did, to the absolute minimum
required for his security. As for Pompey, his growing jealousy of Caesar had led him so far
toward the nobility that he could not come to terms with Caesar again without loss of face.
The first bout of the civil war moved swiftly. In 49 Caesar drove his opponents out of Italy to
the eastern side of the Straits of Otranto. He then crushed Pompey's army in Spain.
Toward the end of 49, he followed Pompey across the Adriatic and retrieved a reverse at
Dyrrachium by winning a decisive victory at Pharsalus on August 9, 48. Caesar pursued
Pompey from Thessaly to Egypt, where Pompey was murdered by an officer of King
Ptolemy. Caesar wintered in Alexandria, fighting with the populace and dallying with Queen
Cleopatra. In 47 he fought a brief local war in northeastern Anatolia with Pharnaces, king of
the Cimmerian Bosporus, who was trying to regain his father Mithradates' kingdom of
Pontus. Caesar's famous words, Veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, I conquered"), are his own
account of this campaign. (see also Index: Pharsalus, Battle of)
Caesar then returned to Rome, but a few months later, now with the title of dictator, he left
for Africa, where his opponents had rallied. In 46 he crushed their army at Thapsus and
returned to Rome, only to leave in November for Farther Spain to deal with a fresh
outbreak of resistance, which he crushed on March 17, 45, at Munda. He then returned to
Rome to start putting the Greco-Roman world in order. He had less than a year's grace for
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this huge task of reconstruction before his assassination in the Senate House at Rome on
March 15, 44 (the Ides of March). (see also Index: Thapsus, Battle of, Munda, Battle of)
Caesar's death was partly due to his clemency and impatience, which, in combination,
were dangerous for his personal security. Caesar had not hesitated to commit atrocities
against "barbarians" when it had suited him, but he was almost consistently magnanimous
in his treatment of his defeated Roman opponents. Thus clemency was probably not just a
matter of policy. Caesar's earliest experience in his political career had been Sulla's
implacable persecution of his defeated domestic opponents. Caesar amnestied his
opponents wholesale and gave a number of them responsible positions in his new regime.
Gaius Cassius Longinus, who was the moving spirit in the plot to murder him, and Marcus
Junius Brutus, the symbolic embodiment of Roman republicanism, were both former
enemies. "Et tu, Brute" ("You too, Brutus") was Caesar's expression of his particular
anguish at being stabbed by a man whom he had forgiven, trusted, and loved.
There were, however, also a number of ex-Caesareans among the 60 conspirators. They
had been goaded into this volte-face by the increasingly monarchical trend of Caesar's
regime and, perhaps at least as much, by the aristocratic disdain that inhibited Caesar from
taking any trouble to sugar the bitter pill. Some stood to lose, rather than to gain, personally
by the removal of the autocrat who had made their political fortunes. But even if they were
acting on principle, they were blind to the truth that the reign of the Roman nobility was
broken beyond recall and that even Caesar might not have been able to overthrow the
ancien régime if its destruction had not been long overdue. They also failed to recognize
that by making Caesar a martyr they were creating his posthumous political fortune.
If Caesar had not been murdered in 44, he might have lived on for 15 or 20 years. His
physical constitution was unusually tough, though in his last years he had several epileptic
seizures. What would he have done with this time? The answer can only be guessed from
what he did do in the few months available. He found time in the year 46 to reform the
Roman calendar. In 45 he enacted a law laying down a standard pattern for the
constitutions of the municipia, which were by this time the units of local self-government in
most of the territory inhabited by Roman citizens. In 59 Caesar had already resurrected the
city of Capua, which the republican Roman regime more than 150 years earlier had
deprived of its juridical corporate personality; he now resurrected the other two great cities,
Carthage and Corinth, that his predecessors had destroyed. This was only a part of what
he did to resettle his discharged soldiers and the urban proletariat of Rome. He was also
generous in granting Roman citizenship to aliens. (He had given it to all of Cisalpine Gaul,
north of the Po, in 49.) He increased the size of the Senate and made its personnel more
representative of the whole Roman citizenry.
At his death, Caesar was on the point of starting out on a new military campaign to avenge
and retrieve Crassus' disastrous defeat in 53 by the Parthians. Would Caesar have
succeeded in recapturing for the Greco-Roman world the extinct Seleucid monarchy's lost
dominions east of the Euphrates, particularly Babylonia? The fate of Crassus' army had
shown that the terrain in northern Mesopotamia favoured Parthian cavalry against Roman
infantry. Would Caesar's military genius have outweighed this handicap? And would
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Rome's hitherto inexhaustible reservoir of military manpower have sufficed for this
additional call upon it? Only guesses are possible, for Caesar's assassination condemned
the Romans to another 13 years of civil war, and Rome would never again possess
sufficient manpower to conquer and hold Babylonia.
PERSONALITY AND REPUTATION
Caesar was not and is not lovable. His generosity to defeated opponents, magnanimous
though it was, did not win their affection. He won his soldiers' devotion by the victories that
his intellectual ability, applied to warfare, brought them. Yet, though not lovable, Caesar
was and is attractive, indeed fascinating. His political achievement required ability, in effect
amounting to genius, in several different fields, including administration and generalship
besides the minor arts of wire pulling and propaganda.
In all these, Caesar was a supreme virtuoso. But if he had not also been something more
than this he would not have been the supremely great man that he undoubtedly was.
Caesar was great beyond--and even in conflict with--the requirements of his political
ambition. He showed a human spiritual greatness in his generosity to defeated opponents,
which was partly responsible for his assassination. (The merciless Sulla abdicated and
died in his bed.)
Another field in which Caesar's genius went far beyond the requirements of his political
ambition was his writings. Of these, his speeches, letters, and pamphlets are lost. Only his
accounts (both incomplete and supplemented by other hands) of the Gallic War and the
civil war survive. Caesar ranked as a masterly public speaker in an age in which he was in
competition first with Hortensius and then with Cicero.
All Caesar's speeches and writings, lost and extant, apparently served political purposes.
He turned his funeral orations for his wife and for his aunt to account, for political
propaganda. His accounts of his wars are subtly contrived to make the unsuspecting
reader see Caesar's acts in the light that Caesar chooses. The accounts are written in the
form of terse, dry, factual reports that look impersonal and objective, yet every recorded
fact has been carefully selected and presented. As for the lost Anticato, a reply to Cicero's
eulogy of Caesar's dead opponent Marcus Porcius Cato, it is a testimony to Caesar's
political insight that he made the time to write it, in spite of the overwhelming military,
administrative, and legislative demands on him. He realized that Cato, in giving his life for
his cause (46), had made himself posthumously into a much more potent political force
than he had ever been in his lifetime. Caesar was right, from his point of view, to try to put
salt on Cato's tail. He did not succeed, however. For the next 150 years, Cato the martyr
continued to be a nuisance, sometimes a menace, to Caesar's successors.
The mark of Caesar's genius in his writings is that though they were written for propaganda
they are nevertheless of outstanding literary merit. A reader who has seen through their
prosaic purpose can ignore it and appreciate them as splendid works of art.
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Caesar's most amazing characteristic is his energy, intellectual and physical. He prepared
his seven books on the Gallic War for publication in 51 when he still had serious revolts in
Gaul on his hands, and he wrote his books on the civil war and his Anticato in the hectic
years between 49 and 44. His physical energy was of the same order. For instance, in the
winter of 57-56 he found time to visit his third province, Illyria, as well as Cisalpine Gaul;
and in the interval between his campaigns of 55 and 54 he transacted public business in
Cisalpine Gaul and went to Illyria to settle accounts with the Pirustae, a turbulent tribe in
what is now Albania. In 49 he marched, within a single campaigning season, from the
Rubicon to Brundisium and from Brundisium to Spain. At Alexandria, probably aged 53, he
saved himself from sudden death by his prowess as a swimmer.
Caesar's physical vitality perhaps partly accounts for his sexual promiscuity, which was out
of the ordinary, even by contemporary Greek and Roman standards. It was rumoured that
during his first visit to the East he had had homosexual relations with King Nicomedes of
Bithynia. The rumour is credible, though not proved, and was repeated throughout
Caesar's life. There is no doubt of Caesar's heterosexual affairs, many of them with
married women. Probably Caesar looked upon these as trivial recreations. Yet he involved
himself at least twice in escapades that might have wrecked his career. If he did in fact
have an affair with Pompey's wife, Mucia, he was risking his entente with Pompey. A more
notorious, though not quite so hazardous, affair was his liaison with Cleopatra. By dallying
with her at Alexandria, he risked losing what he had just won at Pharsalus. By allowing her
to visit him in Rome in 46, he flouted public feeling and added to the list of tactless acts
that, cumulatively, goaded old comrades and amnestied enemies into assassinating him.
This cool-headed man of genius with an erratic vein of sexual exuberance undoubtedly
changed the course of history at the western end of the Old World. By liquidating the
scandalous and bankrupt rule of the Roman nobility, he gave the Roman state--and with it
the Greco-Roman civilization--a reprieve that lasted for more than 600 years in the East
and for more than 400 years in the relatively backward West.
Caesar substituted for the Roman oligarchy an autocracy that could never afterward be
abolished. If he had not done this when he did it, Rome and the Greco-Roman world might
have succumbed, before the beginning of the Christian era, to barbarian invaders in the
West and to the Parthian Empire in the East. The prolongation of the life of the
Greco-Roman civilization had important historical effects. Under the Roman Empire the
Near East was impregnated with Hellenism for six or seven more centuries. But for this the
Hellenic element might not have been present in sufficient strength to make its decisive
impact on Christianity and Islam. Gaul, too, would have sunk deeper into barbarism when
the Franks overran it, if it had not been associated with the civilized Mediterranean world
for more than 500 years as a result of Caesar's conquest. (see also Index: Hellenistic Age)
Caesar's political achievement was limited. Its effects were confined to the western end of
the Old World and were comparatively short-lived by Chinese or ancient Egyptian
standards. The Chinese state founded by Shih Huang Ti in the 3rd century BC still stands,
and its future may be still greater than its past. Yet, even if Caesar were to prove to have
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been of lesser stature than this Chinese colossus, he would still remain a giant by
comparison with the common run of human beings (see also GREEK AND ROMAN
CIVILIZATIONS, ANCIENT: Ancient Rome). (A.J.T./Ed.)
MAJOR WORKS
Military commentaries: in seven books, Commentarii de bello Gallico, covering the years
58-52 BC, written in 52-51 BC (The Gallic War, 1917); in three books, Commentarii de
bello civili, covering the year 49-48 BC, written probably in 45 BC (The Civil Wars, 1914;
Caesar's War Commentaries, 1953).
De bello Alexandrino (The Alexandrian War, 1955); De bello Africo (The African War,
1955); and De bello Hispaniensi (The Spanish War, 1955), though ascribed by the
manuscripts of Caesar, are generally regarded as of uncertain authorship. Caesar's
speeches, letters, and pamphlets are all lost.
A translation of Caesar's works is available in the Loeb series (1914-55) and in the Penguin
Classics series (1951 and 1967).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now if having your name become a synonym for “supreme ruler” among peoples who
haven’t the slightest idea who you are, isn’t “having a preternatural effect on the world you
live in” I don’t know what is!
From what we know about Gaius Julius Caesar he possessed all the necessary
attributes. He was clearly a genius, and he had tremendous charisma and force of
personality. I think it’s pretty obvious that his was a high level of metasapiency.
Now there’s an obvious question that arises here. Considering what I’ve been saying all
along, while it’s absolutely clear that Gaius Julius Caesar left the world an infinitely
different place than he found it, what about the qualification that it had to be a “better place
than he found it”?
That depends on the meanings you wish to permit to be applicable to “a better place”. If
you mean only a “kinder, more gentle, peaceful place” then of course the answer is no, that
was not his effect on society.
But if you mean a more orderly place, then yes, Gaius Julius Caesar made the world of his
time a much more orderly place, and in time, because of the Pax Romanum which his
changes made possible, a far more peaceful place. Even if the pacification was coercive.
One must not forget that during the height of the Roman Empire, one could place a 12 year
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old girl on a public conveyance in a Romanized City on the Rhine River and send her,
unaccompanied, to Alexandria in Egypt, and never have to worry about her security on
the way. That is not true today.
The other far-reaching and long lasting effect of Gaius Julius Caesar’s life and work was
that the world got considerably bigger. It was Caesar who opened the “Classical
Civilization” of the Mediterranean to Northern and Western Europe, and conversely,
Northern and Western Europe to the Mediterranean Civilizations. The two civilizations both
gained and lost from this cross-pollinization, but it was the Mediterranean which gained far
more than they lost, while the Europeans lost far more than they gained.
One of the most malicious myths which has been foisted on Western Civilization is that it
received its most important and valuable in-put from the Classical Civilization of the
Mediterranean. That is totally untrue, for our most important tradition, that of personal
individual liberty, came from the Celts. The so-called “Democracy” of the Greeks (it was
actually a demagogically manipulative oligarchy) was so very limited and limiting as to be
almost meaningless.
And so, due to Gaius Julius Caesar’s life and career, the world he left behind him, was a
much bigger, more orderly, and far more diverse place, than the one he found at his birth.
It was anything but democratic or libertarian, but the tradition of those things, whether we
are talking of the almost totally independent personal liberty of the Kelts, or the rigidly
circumscribed “Democracy” of the Greeks, especially as time glorified them, provided the
seed for future events.
This was a very important mile-stone in the progression from totally hostile anarchy to
mutually beneficial world government and from there to individual .self-government.. A
progression which isn’t even half-way completed at this point in time.
An important Roman contemporary of Caesar and Pompey and one of the vitally important
group of people who added greatly to human knowledge was:
VARRO, MARCUS TERENTIUS
(b. 116 BC, probably Reate, Italy--d. 27 BC), Rome's greatest scholar and a satirist of
stature, best known for his Saturae Menippeae ("Menippean Satires"). He was a man of
immense learning and a prolific author. Inspired by a deep patriotism, he intended his work,
by its moral and educational quality, to further Roman greatness. Seeking to link Rome's
future with its glorious past, his works exerted great influence before and after the founding
of the Roman Empire (27 BC).
Varro studied with a prominent Latin scholar and with the philosopher Antiochus of
Ascalon at Athens. Though not attracted to a political career, he played some part in the
public life of the Roman Republic and rose to the office of praetor. He served with Pompey
the Great in Spain (76), became his pro-quaestor there, and also served under him in the
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war against the pirates (67).
In 59 Varro wrote a political pamphlet entitled Trikaranos ("The Three-Headed") on the
coalition of Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Crassus. He sided with Pompey in Spain (49) but
was pardoned (47) and appointed librarian by Caesar, to whom he dedicated the second
part of his Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum ("Antiquities of Human and Divine
Things"). Under the second triumvirate Varro was outlawed by Mark Antony, and his books
were burned, but his property was later restored by Augustus. He spent the rest of his life
in study and writing.
Varro wrote about 74 works in more than 600 books on a wide range of subjects:
jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, education, and literary history, as well as satires,
poems, orations, and letters. The only complete work to survive is the Res rustica ("Farm
Topics"), a three-section work of practical instruction in general agriculture and animal
husbandry, written to foster a love of rural life.
Dedicated to Cicero, Varro's De lingua Latina ("On the Latin Language") is of interest not
only as a linguistic work but also as a source of valuable incidental information on a variety
of subjects. Of the original 25 books there remain, apart from brief fragments, only books v
to x, and even these contain considerable gaps.
Of Varro's 150 books of the Saturae Menippeae, some 90 titles and nearly 600 fragments
remain. The satires are humorous medleys in mixed prose and verse in the manner of the
3rd-century-BC cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara. The subjects range from eating
and drinking to literature and philosophy. In these satires, Varro shows himself a man of
the old stamp, making fun of the follies and absurdities of modern times. He preaches a
simple life of old-fashioned Roman virtue and piety, opposes luxury and philosophic
dogmatism, and shows considerable skill in handling several meters and poetic manners.
The Res rustica appears in an edition with an English translation by W.D. Hooper and H.B.
Ash in the Loeb Classical Library (1934), which also offers De lingua Latina and an English
translation by R.G. Kent (1938). There is an edition (1953) of the Saturae Menippeae by F.
della Corte, who also wrote Varrone--il terzo gran lume romano (1954).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another individual of very great interest in this time period, but in Palestine, is:
HILLEL, Rabbi (Nasi or PRINCE):
Born: Babylonia in the first century B.C.E.
Died: Jerusalem in the 1st century C.E.
We don’t know his actual name, he was called Hillel because he was the Head of the
House of Hillel, a Rabbinical School. He was however, President of the Sanhedrin from 30
B.C.E. Until 9 C.E., appointed to that position by Herod I. He was born and lived in poor
circumstances, and went to Jerusalem to study the Torah and the Talmud under
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Shemaijah and Abtalion, becoming the re-organizer of Jewish life and the founder of
Talmudic Judaism.
By his introduction of the seven dialectical rules for the interpretation of the law, he gave its
study a rational basis. He also enacted many reforms which affected the whole social fabric
in Palestine of his time. He was the first of the Presidents of the Sanhedrin to be honored
with the title “Nasi” (i.e Prince or Patriarch) and the Patriarchate remained thenceforth
hereditary in his family until its extinction. He was particularly distinguished for his humility,
gentleness, and his liberal, humane spirit. From his numerous sayings (many of them
expropriated by the Christians to “Jesus”) may be mentioned: “Do not judge thy neighbor
until thou hast stood in his place!”; “Do not believe in thyself until the day of your death.”;
and the most celebrated of all: “Do not do unto others what thou woulds’t not have done
unto thyself, this is the whole of the Law, the rest, go and finish!”..That last injunction is
attributed in one form or another to almost every major spiritual leader in History
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has much more on him:
(fl. second half of the 1st century BC-c. first quarter of the 1st century AD), Jewish sage,
foremost master of biblical commentary and interpreter of Jewish tradition in his time. He
was the revered head of the school known by his name, the House of Hillel, and his
carefully applied exegetical discipline came to be called the Seven Rules of Hillel.
Hillel was born in Babylonia, where he received both his early and secondary education.
As a young man he went to Palestine in order to continue advanced studies under the
leading teachers of Scripture and the Oral Law who belonged to the group or party called
Pharisees. Although a strictly biographical account of Hillel's life cannot be set forth, for
virtually every narrative about him is encrusted with legend, the literary sources do combine
coherently to summon up what may be called the first distinct personality of Talmudic
Judaism, the branch of Jewish thought and tradition that created the Talmud, a
commentative work on the Oral Law. Put another way, it can be said that the life of Hillel is
more than a vague recollection of anecdotes or a name with a saying or two attached.
More than one story underscores Hillel's whole-hearted devotion to study. As with most of
the Talmudic sages, no miracles or supernatural performances are ascribed to Hillel, but
he is represented as a person of exemplary, even superlative virtues. He is, in the
traditional accounts, the model of patience, and, even when repeated attempts are made
by some to insult him, his equanimity and civility remain unaffected. He appears as a
fervent advocate of peaceful conduct, a lover of all men, a diligent student, a persuasive
and ready teacher, and a man of thorough and cheerful trust in God. In short, he appears
as the model of the ideal Jewish sage.
This idealization is not entirely storyteller's praises. Critical analysis of Hillel's sayings, of
his two legal enactments to relieve economic hardships in society, and even of the motifs
the legends seek to emphasize leave little doubt that Hillel did indeed affect the texture of
Jewish life profoundly.
While he is nowhere described as the originator of rules to guide the student in the
legitimate interpretation of Holy Scriptures, Hillel is unquestionably one of the most
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influential Talmudic sponsors and practitioners of a conscious, carefully applied exegetical
discipline necessary for the proper explanation of the contents of the Bible. The "Seven
Rules" he employed--some of which are reminiscent of rules prevailing in Hellenistic
schools where Homer was studied and interpreted--were to serve as the basis for more
elaborate rules in the 2nd century. Homilies or parables ascribed to Hillel reveal him as a
superb pedagogue. (see also Index: exegesis)
Along with his other gifts, Hillel had an epigrammatic felicity that is apparent in his sayings
and which inevitably contributed to their being long remembered. Significantly, in the
unique treatise of the Mishna (the authoritative collection of Oral Law), Pirqe Avot
("Chapters of the Fathers"), Hillel is quoted more than any other Talmudic sage. As head
of a school known as the House of Hillel, he succeeded in winning wide acceptance for his
approach, which liberated texts and law from slavishly literal and strict interpretation;
indeed, without him an uncompromising rigidity and severity might have developed in the
inherited traditions.
Hillel's appreciation of the socioeconomic needs of his age and of the large possibilities
that are inherent in biblical statements and values, plus his preference for persuasiveness
to get across his point of view, led to the adoption, with few exceptions, of the Hillelite view
of Talmudic teaching and to its establishment as the legal norm.
Talmudic sources speak of Hillel's promotion to patriarchal leadership after he had proved
his intellectual superiority to the incumbents then in office. In any event, the Jewish
patriarchs--the Roman term for the official leaders of the Palestinian Jews--down to about
the 5th century, when the patriarchate came to an end, were descendants of Hillel.
Many of the stories about Hillel, especially those in which he is contrasted with Shammai,
are among the most popular Talmudic tales in Jewish literature and folklore. J.Gol./Ed.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
In addition to the summary description in the general Jewish histories, see W. Bacher, Die
Agada der Tannaiten, vol. 1 (1890); A. Buchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety (1922);
L. Finkelstein, Ha-Perushim ve-Anshe Keneset Ha-Gedolah, (1950), English summary, pp.
vi-viii; L. Ginzberg, On Jewish Law and Lore, pp. 77-124 (1955); N.N. Glatzer, Hillel the
Elder: The Emergence of Classical Judaism (1956); and J. Goldin, "Hillel the Elder,"
Journal of Religion, 26:263-277 (1946). The nature of the material on Hillel is such as to
make impossible a solid reconstruction of his life along the lines of scholarship. The better
studies, listed in this bibliography, are ultimately speculative. The most useful presentation,
therefore, remains the chapter in Die Agada der Tannaiten (cited above).
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now it’s back to Rome and one of Rome’s greater intellectuals
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QUINTILIAN (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)
(b. c. AD 35, Calagurris Nassica, Hispania Tarraconensis--d. after 96, Rome), Latin teacher
and writer whose work on rhetoric, Institutio oratoria, is a major contribution to educational
theory and literary criticism.
Quintilian was born in northern Spain, but he was probably educated in Rome, where he
afterward received some practical training from the leading orator of the day, Domitius Afer.
He then practiced for a time as an advocate in the law courts. He left for his native Spain
sometime after 57 but returned to Rome in 68 and began to teach rhetoric, combining this
with advocacy in the law courts. Under the emperor Vespasian (ruled 69-79) he became
the first teacher to receive a state salary for teaching Latin rhetoric, and he also held his
position as Rome's leading teacher under the emperors Titus and Domitian, retiring
probably in 88. Toward the end of Domitian's reign (81-96) he was entrusted with the
education of the Emperor's two heirs (his grandnephews), and through the good agency of
the boys' father, Flavius Clemens, he was given the honorary title of consul (ornamenta
consularia). His own death, which probably took place soon after Domitian's assassination,
was preceded by that of his young wife and two sons.
Quintilian's great work, the Institutio oratoria, in 12 books, was published shortly before
the end of his life. He believed that the entire educational process, from infancy onward,
was relevant to his major theme of training an orator. In Book I he therefore dealt with the
stages of education before a boy entered the school of rhetoric itself, to which he came in
Book II. These first two books contain his general observations on educational principles
and are notable for their good sense and insight into human nature. Books III to XI are
basically concerned with the five traditional "departments" of rhetoric: invention,
arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. He also deals with the nature, value, origin, and
function of rhetoric and with the different types of oratory, giving far more attention to
forensic oratory (that used in legal proceedings) than to other types. During his general
discussion of invention he also considers the successive, formal parts of a speech,
including a lively chapter on the art of arousing laughter. Book X contains a well-known and
much-praised survey of Greek and Latin authors, recommended to the young orator for
study. Sometimes Quintilian agrees with the generally held estimate of a writer, but he is
often independent in his judgments, especially when discussing Latin authors. Book XII
deals with the ideal orator in action, after his training is completed: his character, the rules
that he must follow in pleading a case, the style of his eloquence, and when he should
retire.
The Institutio was the fruit of Quintilian's wide practical experience as a teacher. His
purpose, he wrote, was not to invent new theories of rhetoric but to judge between existing
ones, and this he did with great thoroughness and discrimination, rejecting anything he
considered absurd and always remaining conscious of the fact that theoretical knowledge
alone is of little use without experience and good judgment. The Institutio is further
distinguished by its emphasis on morality, for Quintilian's aim was to mold the student's
character as well as to develop his mind. His central idea was that a good orator must first
and foremost be a good citizen; eloquence serves the public good and must therefore be
fused with virtuous living. At the same time, he wished to produce a thoroughly
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professional, competent, and successful public speaker. His own experience of the law
courts gave him a practical outlook that many other teachers lacked, and indeed he found
much to criticize in contemporary teaching, which encouraged a superficial cleverness of
style (in this connection he particularly regretted the influence of the early 1st-century writer
and statesman Seneca the Younger). While admitting that stylish tricks gave an immediate
effect, he felt they were of no great help to the orator in the realities of public advocacy at
law. He attacked the "corrupt style," as he called it, and advocated a return to the more
severe standards and older traditions upheld by Cicero (106-43 BC). Although he praised
Cicero highly, he did not recommend students to slavishly imitate his style, recognizing that
the needs of his own day were quite different. He did, however, appear to see a bright
future for oratory, oblivious to the fact that his ideal--the orator-statesman of old who had
influenced for good the policies of states and cities--was no longer relevant with the demise
of the old republican form of Roman government.
Two collections of declamations attributed to Quintilian have also survived: the
Declamationes majores (longer declamations) are generally considered to be spurious; the
Declamationes minores (shorter declamations) may possibly be a version of Quintilian's
oral teaching, recorded by one of his pupils. The text of his Institutio was rediscovered by a
Florentine, Poggio Bracciolini, who, in 1416, came across a filthy but complete copy of it in
an old tower at St. Gall, Switz., while he was on a diplomatic mission there. Its emphasis
on the dual importance of moral and intellectual training was very appealing to the 15th and
16th centuries' humanist conception of education. Although its direct influence diminished
after the 17th century, along with a general decline in respect for the authority of classical
antiquity, the modern view of education as all-around character training to equip a student
for life follows in a direct line from the theories of this 1st-century Roman.
Quintilian advises the teacher to apply different teaching methods according to the
different characters and abilities of his pupils; he believes that the young should enjoy their
studies and knows the value of play and recreation; he warns against the danger of
discouraging a pupil by undue severity; he makes an effective criticism of the practice of
corporal punishment; he depicts the schoolmaster as taking the place of a parent. "Pupils,"
he writes, "if rightly instructed regard their teacher with affection and respect. And it is
scarcely possible to say how much more willingly we imitate those we like." (.L.C.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The best text of Quintilian is that edited by M. Winterbottom (Oxford Classical Texts, 2
vol., 1970). There is an English translation by H.E. Butler (with Latin text) in the Loeb
Classical Library, 4 vol. (1921-22). G.L. Spalding's edition with Latin commentary, 6 vol.
(1798-1834; vol. 6, index by E. Bonnell), is still useful. Three individual books have been
edited with full commentary and introductions: Book I by F.H. Colson (1924); Book X by W.
Peterson (1892; 2nd ed., 1939); and Book XII by R.G. Austin (1948). George Kennedy,
Quintilian (1969) is an introduction.
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Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Now we return to the Greek tradition with:
ANTIOCHUS OF ASCALON:
st
Born: Ascalon, Palestine; fl. 1 half of the first century B.C.E.
Eclectic philosopher, founder of the so-called “Fifth Academy”. He studied under the stoic
Menesarchius and under Philo. While Cicero was in Athens as a student Antiochus
which is quite a distinction as you will see in the discussion of Cicero. Antiochus spent the
greatest portion of his life working very diligently to revive and restore the original doctrines
of Plato’s Academy.
Let’s see what the Britannica has to say about him:
(b. c. 120 BC--d. 68 BC), Greek philosopher who followed Philo of Larissa as the head of
the Academy, charting a new course for Platonism. He built up his philosophical system on
a foundation of three schools: Platonism, Peripateticism, and Stoicism. Stoic ideas played
the most important role in his thinking. He rebelled against two Skeptics, Arcesilaus and
Carneades, both of whom had a strong influence on the direction of Platonism, and broke
the ground for a more positive direction.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
There was another important Jewish Philosopher at this time and he was:
PHILO JUDAEUS
Born: Alexandria (?) Approx 5 to 10 B.C.E.
Died: Alexandria
Approx 40 to 50 B.C.E.
Philo was a Jewish Aristocrat. Josephus the Jewish Historian cum General who lived at
the same period said that Philo’s family was the most aristocratic of all Jewish families,
and he was himself extremely well born. Philo’s brother Alexander Lysimachus was a
very high official in the Roman Administration of Egypt and a close friend of the Emperor
Claudius.
Philo’s primary effort was aimed at reconciling Judaism with the philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle and other eminent Greek philosophers. He also worked to reconcile being an
observant Jew with living in a period that was more modern than the Jewish Kingdoms had
been prior to their fall. He went to Rome as part of a delegation of prominent Alexandrian
Jews, after an anti-Jewish pogrom in 40 C.E. to plead with the Emperor Caligula for the
restoration of the Jews rights to practice their religion without interference as granted by
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the Emperor Augustus. The embassy was apparently not successful, but during the
course of it, Philo predicted that Caligula would be ‘punished’ and in two weeks Caligula
was assassinated. For all that it wasn’t his primary purpose he too contributed greatly to
the preservation of pre-Christian Hellenic philosophy.
“Philo Judeus can be translated as “Friend of the Jews” which leads me to wonder what his
real name was. In any event here is the Britannica Entry on this important figure:
also called PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA (b. 15-10 BC, Alexandria--d. AD 45-50, Alexandria),
Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher, the most important representative of Hellenistic
Judaism. His writings provide the clearest view of this development of Judaism in the
Diaspora. As the first to attempt to synthesize revealed faith and philosophic reason, he
occupies a unique position in the history of philosophy. He is also regarded by Christians
as a forerunner of Christian theology.
Life and background
Little is known of the life of Philo. Josephus, the historian of the Jews who also lived in the
1st century, says that Philo's family surpassed all others in the nobility of its lineage. His
father had apparently played a prominent role in Palestine before moving to Alexandria.
Philo's brother Alexander Lysimachus, who was a general tax administrator in charge of
customs in Alexandria, was the richest man in the city and indeed must have been one of
the richest men in the Hellenistic world, because Josephus says that he gave a huge loan
to the wife of the Jewish king Agrippa I and that he contributed the gold and silver with
which nine huge gates of the Temple in Jerusalem were overlaid. Alexander was also
extremely influential in Roman imperial circles, being an old friend of the emperor Claudius
and having acted as guardian for the Emperor's mother.
Philo was born between 15 and 10 BC. The community of Alexandria, to judge from the
language of the Jewish papyri and inscriptions, had for nearly three centuries been almost
exclusively Greek-speaking and indeed regarded the Septuagint (the 3rd-century-BC
translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek) as divinely inspired. During the century and a
half before Philo's birth, Alexandria had been the home of a number of Jewish writers
whose works exist now only in fragments. These men were often influenced by the Greek
culture in which they lived and wrote apologies for Judaism.
The Alexandrian Jews were eager to enroll their children of secondary school age in Greek
gymnasiums, institutions with religious associations dedicated to the liberal arts and
athletics; in them, Jews were certainly called upon to make compromises with their
traditions. It may be assumed that Philo was a product of such an education: he mentions
a wide range of Greek writers, especially the epic and dramatic poets; he was intimately
acquainted with the techniques of the Greek rhetorical schools; and he praises the
gymnasium. Philo's education, like that which he ascribes to Moses, most probably
consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, harmonics, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric,
and logic.
Like the cultured Greeks of his day, Philo often attended the theatre, though it had
distinctly religious connotations, and he noted the different effects of the same music on
various members of the audience and the enthusiasm of the audience for a tragedy of
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Euripides. He was a keen observer of boxing contests and attended chariot races as well.
He also mentions the frequency with which he attended costly suppers with their lavish
entertainment.
Philo says nothing of his own Jewish education. The only mention of Jewish education in
his work indicates how relatively weak it must have been, because he speaks only of
Jewish schools that met on the Sabbath for lectures on ethics. That he was far from the
Palestinian Hellenizers and that he regarded himself as an observant Jew is clear,
however, from his statement that one should not omit the observance of any of the Jewish
customs that have been divinely ordained. Philo is critical both of those who took the Bible
too literally and thus encountered theological difficulties, particularly anthropomorphisms
(i.e., describing God in terms of human characteristics), and those who went to excesses in
their allegorical interpretation of the laws, with the resulting conclusion, anticipating Paul's
antinomianism, that because the ceremonial laws were only a parable, they need no longer
be obeyed. Philo says nothing of his own religious practices, except that he made a festival
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, though he nowhere indicates whether he made more than one
such visit.
In the eyes of the Palestinian rabbis the Alexandrian Jews were particularly known for their
cleverness in posing puzzles and for their sharp replies. As the largest repository of Jewish
law apart from the Talmud before the Middle Ages, Philo's work is of special importance to
those who wish to discern the relationship of Palestine and the Diaspora in the realm of law
(halakah) and ritual observance. Philo's exposition of the law may represent either an
academic discussion giving an ideal description of Jewish law or the actual practice in the
Jewish courts in Egypt. On the whole, Philo is in accord with the prevailing Palestinian point
of view; nonetheless he differs from it in numerous details and is often dependent upon
Greek and Roman law.
That Philo experienced some sort of identity crisis is indicated by a passage in his On the
Special Laws. In this work, he describes his longing to escape from worldly cares to the
contemplative life, his joy at having succeeded in doing so (perhaps with the Egyptian
Jewish ascetic sect of the Therapeutae described in his treatise On the Contemplative
Life), and his renewed pain at being forced once again to participate in civic turmoil. Philo
appears to have been dissatisfied with his life in the bustling metropolis of Alexandria: He
praises the Essenes--a Jewish sect who lived in monastic communities in the Dead Sea
area--for avoiding large cities because of the iniquities that had become inveterate among
city dwellers, for living an agricultural life, and for disdaining wealth.
The one identifiable event in Philo's life occurred in the year 39 or 40, when, after a pogrom
against the Jews in Alexandria, he headed an embassy to the emperor Caligula asking him
to reassert Jewish rights granted by the Ptolemies (rulers of Egypt) and confirmed by the
emperor Augustus. Philo was prepared to answer the charge of disloyalty levelled against
the Jews by the notorious anti-Semite Apion, a Greek grammarian, when the Emperor cut
him short. Thereupon Philo told his fellow delegates not to be discouraged because God
would punish Caligula, who, shortly thereafter, was indeed assassinated.
Works.
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Philo's genuine works may be classified into three groups:
1. Scriptural essays and homilies based on specific verses or topics of the Pentateuch (the
first five books of the Bible), especially Genesis. The most important of the 25 extant
treatises in this group are Allegories of the Laws, a commentary on Genesis, and On the
Special Laws, an exposition of the laws in the Pentateuch.
2. General philosophical and religious essays. These include That Every Good Man Is
Free, proving the Stoic paradox that only the wise man is free; On the Eternity of the
World, perhaps not genuine, proving, particularly in opposition to the Stoics, that the world
is uncreated and indestructible; On Providence, extant in Armenian, a dialogue between
Philo, who argues that God is providential in his concern for the world, and Alexander,
presumably Philo's nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander, who raises doubts; and On
Alexander, extant in Armenian, concerning the irrational souls of animals.
3. Essays on contemporary subjects. These include On the Contemplative Life, a eulogy of
the Therapeutae sect; the fragmentary Hypothetica ("Suppositions"), actually a defense of
the Jews against anti-Semitic charges to which Josephus' treatise Against Apion bears
many similarities; Against Flaccus, on the crimes of Aulus Avillius Flaccus, the Roman
governor of Egypt, against the Alexandrian Jews and on his punishment; and On the
Embassy to Gaius, an attack on the Emperor Caligula (i.e., Gaius) for his hostility toward
the Alexandrian Jews and an account of the unsuccessful embassy to the Emperor headed
by Philo.
A number of works ascribed to Philo are almost certainly spurious. Most important of these
is Biblical Antiquities, an imaginative reconstruction of Jewish history from Adam to the
death of Saul, the first king of Israel.
Philo's works are rambling, having little sense of form; repetitious; artificially rhetorical; and
almost devoid of a sense of humour. His style is generally involved, allusive, strongly tinged
with mysticism, and often obscure; this may be a result of a deliberate attempt on his part
to discourage all but the initiated few.
Originality of his thought.
The key influences on Philo's philosophy were Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Pythagoreans, the
Cynics, and the Stoics. Philo's basic philosophic outlook is Platonic, so much so that
Jerome and other Church Fathers quote the apparently widespread saying: "Either Plato
philonizes or Philo platonizes." Philo's reverence for Plato, particularly for the Symposium
and the Timaeus, is such that he never took open issue with him, as he did with the Stoics
and other philosophers. But Philo is hardly a plagiarist; he made modifications in Plato's
theories.
To Aristotle he was indebted primarily in matters of cosmology and ethics. To the
Neo-Pythagoreans, who had grown in importance during the century before Philo, he was
particularly indebted for his views on the mystic significance of numbers, especially the
number seven, and the scheme of a peculiar, self-disciplined way of life as a preparation
333
for immortality. The Cynics, with their diatribes, influenced him in the form of his sermons.
Though Philo more often employed the terminology of the Stoics than that of any other
school, he was critical of their thoughts. (see also Index: Stoicism)
In the past, scholars attempted to diminish Philo's importance as a theological thinker and
to present him merely as a preacher, but in the mid-20th century H.A. Wolfson, an
American scholar, demonstrated Philo's originality as a thinker. In particular, Philo was the
first to show the difference between the knowability of God's existence and the
unknowability of his essence. Again, in his view of God, Philo was original in insisting on an
individual Providence able to suspend the laws of nature in contrast to the prevailing Greek
philosophical view of a universal Providence who is himself subject to the unchanging laws
of nature. As a Creator, God made use of assistants: hence the plural "Let us make man"
in Genesis, chapter 1. Philo did not reject the Platonic view of a preexistent matter but
insisted that this matter too was created. Similarly, Philo reconciled his Jewish theology
with Plato's theory of Ideas in an original way: he posited the Ideas as God's eternal
thoughts, which God then created as real beings before he created the world.
Philo saw the cosmos as a great chain of being presided over by the Logos, a term going
back to pre-Socratic philosophy, which is the mediator between God and the world, though
at one point he identifies the Logos as a second God. Philo departed from Plato principally
in using the term Logos for the Idea of Ideas and for the Ideas as a whole and in his
statement that the Logos is the place of the intelligible world. In anticipation of Christian
doctrine he called the Logos the first-begotten Son of God, the man of God, the image of
God, and second to God.
Philo was also novel in his exposition of the mystic love of God that God has implanted in
man and through which man becomes Godlike. According to some scholars, Philo used the
terminology of the pagan religions and mystery cults, including the term enthousiasmos
("having God within one"), merely because it was part of the common speech of the day;
but there is nothing inherently contradictory in Judaism in the combination of mysticism and
legalism in the same thinker. The influence of the mystic notions of Platonism, especially of
the Symposium, and of the popular mystery cults on Philo's attempt to present Judaism as
the one true mystery is hardly superficial; indeed, Philo is a major source of knowledge of
the doctrines of these mystery cults, notably that of rebirth.
Perhaps, through his mystic presentation of Judaism, Philo hoped to enable Judaism in the
Diaspora to compete with the mystery religions in its proselyting efforts, as well as in its
attempts to hold on to its adherents. That he was essentially in the mainstream of Judaism,
however, is indicated by his respect for the literal interpretation of the Bible, his
denunciation of the extreme allegorists, and his failure to mention any specific rites of
initiation for proselytes, as well as the lack of evidence that he was himself a devotee of a
particular mystery cult.
The purpose of what Philo called mystic "sober intoxication" was to lead one out of the
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material into the eternal world. Like Plato, Philo regarded the body as the prison house of
the soul, and in his dualism of body and soul, as in his description of the flight from the self,
the contrast between God and the world, and the yearning for a direct experience of God,
he anticipated much of Gnosticism, a dualistic religion that became important in the 2nd
century BC. But unlike all the Greek philosophers, with the exception of the Epicureans,
who believed in limited freedom of will, Philo held that man is completely free to act against
all the laws of his own nature.
In his ethical theory Philo described two virtues, under the heading of justice, that are
otherwise unknown in Greek philosophic literature--religious faith and humanity. Again, for
him repentance was a virtue, whereas for other Greek philosophers it was a weakness.
Perfect happiness comes, however, not through men's own efforts to achieve virtue but
only through the grace of God.
In his political theory Philo often said that the best form of government is democracy; but
for him democracy was far from mob rule, which he denounced as the worst of polities,
perhaps because he saw the Alexandrian mob in action. For Philo democracy meant not a
particular form of government but due order under any form of government in which all
men are equal before the law. From this point of view, the Mosaic constitution, which
embodies the best elements of all forms of government, is the ideal. Indeed, the ultimate
goal of history is that the whole world be a single state under a democratic constitution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
H.L. Goodhart and E.R. Goodenough, "A General Bibliography of Philo Judaeus," in
Goodenough's The Politics of Philo Judaeus, Practice and Theory, pp. 125-348 (1938), an
exhaustive classified listing of books and articles to date of publication; L.H. Feldman,
Scholarship on Philo and Josephus, 1937-1962 (1963), a classified critical bibliography;
Studia Philonica (annual since 1972), a journal, exclusively devoted to Philo, published by
the Philo Institute at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago.
Greek text.
Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland (eds.), Philonis Alexandrini Opera quae supersunt, 7
vol. (1896-1930), definitive, but lacks the fragments, the treatises extant only in Armenian,
and Pseudo-Philo.
English translation.
F.H. Colson, G.H. Whitaker, and R. Marcus, Philo ("Loeb Classical Library," 10 vol. and 2
supplementary vol., 1929-62), an extremely careful translation, with analytical introductions
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to each treatise.
Pseudo-Philo.
M.R. James, The Biblical Antiquities of Philo, prolegomenon by L.H. Feldman (1917,
reprinted 1971), a clear, accurate translation.
Introductory works and surveys.
E.R. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus, 2nd ed. rev. (1963); H. Chadwick,
"Philo," in A.H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval
Philosophy, pp. 137-157 (1967), the best balanced, brief, comprehensive survey of Philo's
thought.
Major works on Philo.
E.R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (1935,
reissued 1969), a challenging, if one-sided, presentation of Philo as a mystic; Samuel
Belkin, Philo and the Oral Law (1940, reprinted 1968), presentation of Philo as thoroughly
acquainted with Palestinian Halakha; H.A. Wolfson, Philo, 2 vol. (1947), stresses Philo's
relationship to Palestinian Pharisaic Judaism and his importance for the history of
philosophy; Samuel Sandmel, Philo's Place in Judaism (1956), a case study of the account
of Abraham in Philo as compared with rabbinic and other contemporary literature.
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Another very important figure, I introduced him earlier, who made a vital contribution to the
Human Race even though it was to a large extent degraded by Christianity was:
GALEN; (CLAUDIUS GALENUS)
Born: Pergamum, Mysia: approx. 130 C.E.
Died: Sicily approx 216 C.E.
Celebrated Greek Physician and philosophical writer, long the supreme authority in medical
science. He traveled in various countries (studying in Smyrna, Alexandria, and elsewhere),
visited Rome in 164 -168 C.E. , returned there in 170 remaining there for a number of
years. He is believed to have died in Sicily. He composed a large number (about 500)
works on medicine, logic, etc. Of which 83 genuine treatises and some others regarded as
doubtful have been preserved.
Here’s what Britannica has to say about him:
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byname of Greek GALENOS, Latin GALENUS (b. AD 129, Pergamum, Mysia, Anatolia
[now Bergama, Tur.]--d. c. 216), Greek physician, writer, and philosopher who exercised a
dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until
the mid-17th century. His authority in the Byzantine world and the Muslim Middle East was
similarly long-lived. (see also Index: medicine)
Early life and training.
The son of a wealthy architect, Galen was educated as a philosopher and man of letters.
His hometown, Pergamum, was the site of a magnificent shrine of the healing god,
Asclepius, that was visited by many distinguished figures of the Roman Empire for cures.
When Galen was 16, he changed his career to that of medicine, which he studied at
Pergamum, at Smyrna (modern Izmir, Tur.), and finally at Alexandria in Egypt, which was
the greatest medical centre of the ancient world. After more than a decade of study, he
returned in AD 157 to Pergamum, where he served as chief physician to the troop of
gladiators maintained by the high priest of Asia.
In 162 the ambitious Galen moved to Rome. There he quickly rose in the medical
profession owing to his public demonstrations of anatomy, his successes with rich and
influential patients whom other doctors had pronounced incurable, his enormous learning,
and the rhetorical skills he displayed in public debates. Galen's wealthy background, social
contacts, and a friendship with his old philosophy teacher Eudemus further enhanced his
reputation as a philosopher and physician.
Galen abruptly ended his sojourn in the capital in 166. Although he claimed that the
intolerable envy of his colleagues prompted his return to Pergamum, an impending plague
in Rome was probably a more compelling reason. In 168-169, however, he was called by
the joint emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius to accompany them on a military
campaign in northern Italy. After Verus' sudden death in 169, Galen returned to Rome,
where he served Marcus Aurelius and the later emperors Commodus and Septimius
Severus as a physician. Galen's final works were written after 207, which suggests that his
Arab biographers were correct in their claim that he died at age 87, in 216/217.
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Anatomical and medical studies.
Galen regarded anatomy as the foundation of medical knowledge, and he frequently
dissected and experimented on such lower animals as the Barbary ape (or African
monkey), pigs, sheep, and goats. Galen's advocacy of dissection, both to improve surgical
skills and for research purposes, formed part of his self-promotion, but there is no doubt
that he was an accurate observer. He distinguished seven pairs of cranial nerves,
described the valves of the heart, and observed the structural differences between arteries
and veins. One of his most important demonstrations was that the arteries carry blood, not
air, as had been taught for 400 years. Notable also were his vivisection experiments, such
as tying off the recurrent laryngeal nerve to show that the brain controls the voice,
performing a series of transections of the spinal cord to establish the functions of the spinal
nerves, and tying off the ureters to demonstrate kidney and bladder functions. Galen was
seriously hampered by the prevailing social taboo against dissecting human corpses,
however, and the inferences he made about human anatomy based on his dissections of
animals often led him into errors. His anatomy of the uterus, for example, is largely that of
the dog's.
Galen's physiology was a mixture of ideas taken from the philosophers Plato and Aristotle
as well as from the physician Hippocrates, whom