Scientia Arcana

Scientia Arcana Greg Kaser 2014 All rights reserved
SCIENTIA ARCANA:
UNCOVERING THE HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE OF THE
BIBLE, THE GNOSTICS AND ROSICRUCIANS
AND WHAT IT MEANS TODAY

MAKING SENSE OF RELIGION - AND SCIENCE

Greg Kaser
July 2014


Cover image: fresco by Rafael, The School of Athens, The Vatican, Rome.
Source: Wikimedia Creative Commons/ Tetraktys Ricardo Frantz


To Marina for insight



Page
Chapters

Foreword i
1 Pythagoras oxen 1
2 Adams loss, Eves gain 45
3 Raphaels trumpet call 67
4 Psyches journey 95
5 Newtons dilemma 121
6 Einsteins challenge 151
Afterword 199
Appendices

A The Axial Age 205
B Analogical reasoning 215
C Gnostic myths and Christian heresies 227
D The formation of Western civilization and the role of Islam 265
E Reconciling the salvation religions 283
F Glossary 305
References 315
Index 331


i


Foreword

The National History Museum in Bucharest provided a haven of calm from the citys bustle. It
was the spring of 1998 and I had been presenting at seminars on the European experience
in promoting local economic development in mining areas. As I wandered the museums
galleries, I was struck by the thought that while the evidence lies before us, collected and
collated by numerous scholars and curators, we have difficulty in shaping it into a coherent
narrative. The artefacts on display were grouped thematically and by their historical period in
glass cases and in separate rooms. In many ways this is, of course, helpful for the visitor.
But one must do an awful lot of walking to see the whole collection. Moreover, there are
plenty of distractions wonderful sculpture, silverware and precious ornaments, maps of
archaeological digs, hand written books, models of past battlefield encounters, and so on.
Amidst the cacophony and glitter it is often hard to get to the heart of the matter. Too often
the enquirer is faced with a host of theories and contending schools of thought.
But amongst these are also questions that are simply never asked. You have to search
among the obscure corners of scholarship, to explore the implications of an intriguing, but
terse, remark, or an allusion to a discarded hypothesis, and follow the thread of an argument
to its conclusion. As the TV series The X Files informed us, The truth is out there, but
where exactly is hard to find. It also reminds us that the truth is not whatever you want it to
be. There is a difference between saying that the search for the truth is never ending and
asserting that one viewpoint is as valid as another. The analysis of different perspectives
may help us get to closer to the truth, but this process must inevitably lead one to discard
some viewpoints as unconvincing. An unwillingness to explore odd connections combined
with a too ready acceptance of formulae that had gained the status of dogma, I came to
realise, was part of the problem in the on-going debate between the religious
fundamentalists and the proponents of a rigorous and unsentimental science.
Culture wars
There is surely no bigger issue today than the culture wars, though much criticism of
religion is misdirected, having become entangled around the expression of sexuality and
ignoring the metaphysics. In July 2010, for example, Anne Rice, the author of a series of
novels about stylish vampires, announced that she could no longer call herself a Christian,
although she remained committed to Christ.
1
Among her reasons was the Catholic

1
Catholic News Agency, 31 July 2010.
ii


Churchs position on women and homosexuals and its anti-science stance, which, as a
feminist, she could not condone. Fair enough, one may conclude. All the more so given the
Churchs record of harbouring and hiding the paedophile priests within its ranks, leading
many to desert it. That said, as one Catholic blogger commented, Anne Rice would find a
congenial home among the Episcopalians, as the Protestant Church of England is known in
the USA. The Episcopalian Church recognises womens ministry, blesses gay unions and
takes a strong stand on the social ills such as world poverty, unfair trade and the lack of
social justice. In any case, a significant body of Catholic opinion share her views, so she is
hardly alone even among the fairly orthodox. Furthermore, disquiet over the morality of
certain research procedures used in science and medicine is by no means unique to
Catholics or to Christians generally.
Other critics point to the Churchs history of warfare, torture, enslavement and, in modern
times, its collusion with the Nazis in genocide. These are, to be sure, valid issues of history
but they are not criticisms of religion as such. After all, few would accept a similar argument
that science was false because of its role in creating the atom bombs dropped on Japan. We
must for similar reasons reject any defence of religion founded upon the proposition that it
provides an essential ethical framework. Humanists too have ethical codes.
Surprisingly there is relatively little debate over the beliefs held by the religious. Belief, as an
object of critical examination, seems to be rather off limits. An exception to this general rule
relates to beliefs concerning the rights of different sections of society to recognition,
employment and equal treatment. Apart from these hot button issues, there seems to be a
general acceptance that beliefs are ones own affair. So much so, that beliefs and identity
are often treated as equivalent. For example, someone may state that as a woman of colour
I value diversity in the workplace; it suggests that the former implies the latter. In fact, it
seems, many people think of identity as forming their values and beliefs, rather than the
other way around. They construct their identity by reference to their perceived or desired
social standing or in relation to what sorts of things they consume. That then implies,
supposedly, their values.
2
Given this confused conflation of lifestyle with identity and values
it is not surprising that people take a relativist approach towards belief. Thus ideas that were
once held to be valid truths are to be judged not according to any rational criteria but seen as
optional additions that go towards forming ones own viewpoint (with which one is somehow
comfortable).

2
The politics of identity can become the basis for nationalism and, through phobic reversal, a means
of branding an opponent as anti-American, anti-Islamic, or similar.
iii


A British politician Sayeeda Warsi complained in 2011 of "the patronising, superficial way
faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media".
3
Her point, echoed by many
Muslims, is that the wider conversation occurring in Western societies tends to conflate the
topic of Islamic beliefs with patriarchal practices and traditional dress codes. As soon as
someone mentions Islam the question arises as to whether it is correct to stone adulterers,
or to enforce the wearing of a burqa, and these topics soon take precedence in the
discussion. Since the same sort of thing happens to Catholics, as already mentioned, we are
entitled to ask ourselves why? It is my contention that Western civilization has developed
unwritten codes of practice that make it difficult to discuss religious beliefs critically. Religion
used to be a subject of intense controversy but these days many people lack the conceptual
tools to engage with it as a topic of conversation. They are forced, as it were, into discussing
themes that make political sense but which do not address religious ideas, or truths, as
such. We have forgotten how to question religion and are thus at a loss to explain its
relevance to valid knowledge.
The debate between science and religion with which this essay is concerned is therefore as
much an argument about what constitutes valid knowledge as it is a consequence of the
culture wars. In Antiquity natural philosophers (we would now call them scientists),
metaphysicians and theologians shared a common intellectual framework: the Hermetic
paradigm. It provided a platform for astronomy and astrology, engineering as well as
alchemy, geometry and architecture, and for conducting magical and religious rites. The
code through which the Hermetic paradigm was expressed was based on analogy, although
mathematics was recognised as superior by its practitioners. Often the analogies were
narrated as myths, but behind the myth lay an arcane science. During the Middle Ages, the
Christian Church restricted intellectual discussion and pedalled a literal reading of the Bible.
The Renaissance revival of interest in Hermetic theories encouraged natural philosophers to
reject Church control of scientific exploration, but exposed them to charges of heresy and
witchcraft. The elaboration of the new paradigm for understanding what was true took place
largely in secret within Rosicrucian circles to avoid persecution by the Church.
Only within the more tolerant atmosphere in the late seventeenth century, following over a
century of religious warfare in Europe, could modern science emerge. The Cartesian
paradigm provided a rigorous methodology for science and separated it from metaphysical
and theological speculation. As a result God became the Designer, the Great Architect or
Clockmaker, which left science free to discover the laws of nature. The analogical reasoning

3
BBC News, 20 January 2011.
iv


used by the ancients was discarded and, as a result, religious ideas are nowadays only
poorly understood. Scientists strove to maintain the Deist compromise struck at the dawn of
the Enlightenment, which, despite its obvious weaknesses, still allows academic faculties to
retain their professional spheres largely undisturbed by cross-over arguments. The
philosopher Immanuel Kants depiction of his own times as an age of criticism remains
apposite today: the sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, become the
subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accord only
to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.
4
Contemporary secular
societies, in the words of liberal thinker Michael Ignatieff, appear to hold nothing sacred
except the liberty to get rich and the freedom to be sarcastic and sacrilegious. He offered no
solution to the problem, however, admitting that while we need to rethink what it means to
live together no free society can protect doctrines, beliefs and practices from criticism,
scorn, ridicule or belittlement.
5

The divergence of faith and reason in the West has undermined the relevance of myths as a
means of conveying truth. Indeed, it helps us ignore the difficulties, since if religion is just a
myth we can avoid asking the hard questions. The linkage between truth, belief and lifestyle
and the way one should live out ones time on Earth has been lost. For nowadays
peoples search for identity takes them away from themselves. Instead of finding
themselves they lose themselves, and become ciphers of social practice not the agents of
their own destiny.
Ironically, the re-emergence of the literalist devotees of the salvation religions has only
served to strengthen the Deist compromise, since their demand for equal teaching time for
the Biblical myths as established truth simply reinforces the misunderstanding between the
church and the academy. Besides which, the Cartesian paradigm has been undermined by
the dominance of stochastic expositions of physical and biological processes in terms of
probability. In all likelihood a new paradigm will be generated from these competing
intellectual currents. To move forward it will be necessary to recognise the respective value
of the Hermetic and Cartesian paradigms and, in particular, the relevance of a metaphorical
reading of the Biblical myths.

4
Kant, 1781 and 1787: Preface to the First Edition: p. 2.
5
Michael Ignatieff, We still have much to learn from Rushdies fatwa years, Financial Times, 15
September 2012: p. 13.
v


Four myths and a paradigm
The essay examines four Biblical myths, the construction of the Hermetic paradigm and its
replacement by the Cartesian paradigm of modern science. The myths concern the creation
of the cosmos, the story of how evil came into the world, of cosmic destruction and the last
days to come, and of the journey of the immortal soul. These myths are central to the
salvation religions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. I also indulge in a
number of digressions, to follow themes that are not central to the argument but which
elucidate and buttress the analysis. These are included as appendices.
In summary, the book presents an interpretation. It proposes that the myths of the ancients
contain a hidden science, with parallels to modern concepts. By unpacking the Biblical and
related myths to reveal the scientia arcana the analysis provides a route into the dilemma
facing educators today over the Intelligent Design controversy, which is a road block in
developing understanding between science and religion. It could also facilitate dialogue
between religions. An implication is that the clash of civilizations is better portrayed as a
paradigm shift. This is good news as it opens the possibility a reconciliation: between the
religious outlook (based on the Hermetic paradigm) and the scientific (founded in the
Cartesian paradigm).
The argument is supported by evidence from history and anthropology, philosophy and
literature, and the natural sciences. In crossing boundaries the book will unsettle many.
Some religiously inclined readers may be discomforted by my treatment of Bible stories as
myths. Rationalist proponents of science may consider the space I give to ancient
philosophers and more modern thinkers like the anthropologist priest Teilhard de Chardin as
being overly generous to their speculations. My aim is to provide rationalists and the devout
with a frame of reference to better structure their debates, giving all the chance to
understand the origin of the issues in contention. The scope covered is wide, encompassing
much of Western intellectual history. But I am offering only an interpretation not a new
theory; not a narrative, nor a comprehensive survey of a particular field of study. Neither is it
an endorsement of any particular creed. Although I may often be critical, the essay is not
intended as any kind of denunciation of those so critiqued. While I am clearly sympathetic
towards the Stoics, Gnostics and Rosicrucians, not to mention such modern figures as
Einstein, Jacques Monod, Jean-Paul Sartre, Teilhard de Chardin and even Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI, this in no way implies antipathy toward atheists like Richard Dawkins and
Stephen Hawking or to the Enlightenment generally. I recognise that ultimately I am putting a
vi


subjective spin on the intellectual history of the West. Accordingly I hope this essay, whilst
it does not take sides, will prove both stimulating and convincing.
Given such a breadth of view my survey relies on a wide base of largely secondary material
as evidence. Firstly it was constructed upon my library of history, economics, sociology and
psychology, including much collected from the esoteric fringe, and accumulated since
teenage. But the essay could never have been started without recourse to Wikipedia,
Google and the Catholic New Advent websites to check facts and explore hypotheses. One
evening, after grappling unsuccessfully with the fragmentary writings conserved from the
works of Heraclitus of Ephesus, and well-named the Obscure, I concluded that what I was
lacking was a framework that exposed the commonality of ideas in ancient philosophy.
Books on ancient philosophy were in fact often books on ancient philosophers. Each thinker
was treated separately, although they were, of course, compared and contrasted with one
another in an expository narrative.
6
Suppose, I considered, these ancient scholars actually
thought much the same things, and were simply arguing about relatively minor areas where
there was genuine uncertainty or contradiction. This line of investigation quickly coalesced
with my long-standing interest in mythology. Looking again at Hesiods cosmogony led me to
realise that the lineage of divinities was a code describing how phenomena were paired and
related to one another.
The trail I then followed took me to Zoroaster and Pythagoras. Much later, in 2009, I
discovered that my suspicions about the importance of Zoroaster and Pythagoras were
confirmed by the work of the Greek scholar Gemistus Plethon (c. 1355-1452) at the end of
the Middle Ages. Plethon had studied ancient Greek philosophy through Arabic sources and
from original works still available in Byzantine libraries. After studying in Edirne, formerly
Adrianopolis, the newly established capital of the Turkish Caliphate and an intended seat of
Muslim learning to rival Baghdad and Cairo, he travelled to Palestine before returning to
Greece. He translated the works of Plato and Plotinus into Latin, thus ensuring their wider
availability in the West. The Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologos (1425-1448) invited
Plethon to participate in the Council of Florence of 1439. It was an attempt to re-unify the
Latin Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and so strengthen Christendom against the
Turks. There he met several scholars who are regarded as among the founders of the
Renaissance, the rediscovery of ancient learning and art.

6
For example, Osborne, 2004.
vii


But Plethon was a controversial figure, eventually being denounced by the Orthodox
Patriarch and confined to internal exile in Mistra, a Greek city on the isolated Mani peninsula.
Plethon contended that Christianity, Islam and Judaism were part of an overarching
framework of metaphysics devised by Zoroaster and developed by Pythagoras and Plato.
Plethons hypothesis of a line of transmission from Zoroastrianism into ancient Greek
philosophy and Judaism, and thence into Christianity and Islam, became the consensus
during the Renaissance.
He was, however, misled on the period of Zoroasters life. Based on Plutarchs statement
that Zoroaster had lived five thousand years before the Trojan War, Plethon concluded that
Zoroaster had preceded Moses.
7
In point of fact, Plethon proposed that Zoroaster lived 726
years after the week of Creation, thereby putting him on par with Enoch (according to Biblical
chronology). This mistake led Plethon to conflate Zoroastrian ideas with those associated
with Orpheus, the legendary poet who was also supposed to have lived before the Trojan
War. As a result, Plethon advocated a return to polytheism, earning him, inevitably,
condemnation by the Church.
Later scholars have followed the trail of key ideas back to the Axial Age. For those who wish
to explore the history of ideas more fully, Arthur Koestlers The Sleepwalkers traces the
divergent tracks taken by religion and science since their Pythagorean synthesis in the sixth
century BCE.
8
Two other works are also worth mentioning. The Elixir and the Stone by
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh offers an introduction to the history of magic and
alchemy. The authors, along with Henry Lincoln, penned the best-selling and controversial
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail of 1982, a book that provided the background to Dan
Browns novel The Da Vinci Code. In The Elixir and the Stone, Baigent and Leigh follow the
development of the esoteric teaching known as Hermeticism through the centuries until its
displacement by Cartesian thought in the seventeenth century, and to its continuing
challenge to mainstream science.
9
For the philosophy, readers are invited to investigate
Bertrand Russells 1946 History of Western Philosophy, which provides a comprehensive but

7
See Plutarchs Isis and Osiris, chapter 45. Other sources make Zoroaster and Pythagoras near
contemporaries.
8
Koestler declared that the Pythagorean concept of harnessing science to the contemplation of the
eternal, entered, via Plato and Aristotle, into the spirit of Christianity and became a decisive factor in
the making of the Western world. Koestlers phrasing echoes Plutarchs comment: The
contemplation of the eternal is the aim of philosophy, as the contemplation of the mysteries is the aim
of religion; see Koestler, 1964: pp. 37 and 531.
9
Baigent and Leigh, 1997: pp. xxi, and 236-237.
viii


lucid account of the evolution of the reasoned speculation that occupies the terrain between
religious dogma and definitive scientific knowledge.
10
On the role played by the
Enlightenment thinkers there is no better exposition than Tzvetan Todorovs In Defence of
the Enlightenment.
11

The essay is an exploration into the history of ideas that will appeal to the open-minded. In
writing it I have opted for familiarity and accessibility over accuracy. Thus I call Zarathushtra
by the Greek-derived form of his name Zoroaster, by which the Persian prophet is better
known. Similarly I refer to Plato, not Platon, Aristotle, not Aristoteles, and, of course, to
Jesus rather than Yeshua. I have avoided reference to isms, but include a Glossary of
philosophical terms. All quotations from the Holy Bible come from the New Revised Standard
Version published in 1989 by the Oxford University Press. For the Holy Koran I have used N
J Dawoods translation issued by Penguin Classics in 1974.
I seek to offer some clarification for confused times. I hope to show how and why the
disjuncture between science and religion arose. I do not deal with the existence of God but
with the co-existence of religion and science. I indicate some steps on where genuine
dialogue might take us. I invite you on a journey. It is a path trodden previously by the
unorthodox; those who, like the poet William Blake, sought to rediscover the roots of
knowledge, now disturbed by superficial controversy:
All sects of philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of
every individual The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations
different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is every where called the Spirit of
Prophecy As all men are alike (though infinitely various), so all Religions and, as
all similar, have one source. The True Man is the source, he being the Poetic
Genius. (William Blake, 1788, All Religions are One)
12

10
Russell, 1946: p. 1.
11
Todorov, 2009.
12
Blake in Kazin, 1974: pp. 79-80.
1


Chapter 1: Pythagoras oxen
The Pythagoreans put forward the same teachings as I do, and hid their doctrine by
wrapping it up in words [rather than in mathematics], Johannes Kepler, Harmonices Mundi,
(1619)
13

We are apt today to imagine that religion and science are as distinct as myth from math.
That is far from being the case. The myths that underpin the major salvation religions were
the outcome of reasoned investigation and reveal the ancient, yet unfamiliar, knowledge of
the ancients a scientia arcana. In this essay I investigate the logic of the arcane science of
the mainly Greek-speaking philosophers of antiquity and its revival after the Renaissance
when modern science was born. I explain how this science forms the single trunk from which
todays clashing branches, rationalism and religion, stem. Many of the key ideas of antiquity
of Hermetic knowledge in particular are to be found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The books by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy demonstrate that early Christian teachings
overlapped with the Hermetic ideas that were circulating in the Greek speaking world at the
time.
14
What is less well understood is that these ideas represented some of the most
advanced thinking of that age. Today we dismiss the myths of antiquity including those
found in the Bible as imaginative fiction; in fact they reveal a consistent approach to
understanding the reality around us.
Nor is this just of esoteric interest. One of the most pressing questions of our time revolves
around the so-called culture wars. We must re-build understanding between the devout and
secular sections of society if we are to face up to common planetary challenges as a human
race and abandon closed-box thinking. In one corner are the champions of secularism, the
defenders of so-called Western civilization, and advocates of a science that is naturalistic
and evidence-based. In the other are those who hold faith with traditional dogma, some of
whom distrust material progress and the very findings of modern science itself. In the US,
Christian fundamentalists have taken their dispute with the theory of evolution to the courts,
demanding equal time to propagate Biblical writings in schools; and they are finding allies in
the UK, Australia and elsewhere, and even from among Muslims and other social

13
Kepler, 1619, 1997 edition: p. 12.
14
Freke and Gandy, 2000; and Freke and Gandy, 2002.
2


conservatives. In reaction, scientists like Richard Dawkins have criticised every tenet of
religion from the standpoint of reason. With his friend Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) he
even looked forward to winning the argument so as to destroy Christianity.
15
The camps
demand our allegiance in order to defend freedom of thought on the one hand or traditional
morality on the other. We have the option, of course, to stand aside, citing tolerance as
justification. It is quite possible to evade the issue altogether by putting modern cosmology
and evolutionary theory into one box marked provable by science and creationism into
another marked unproven or superstition. But how would a retreat into agnosticism help
build a global society in a world already wracked by tensions between politicised versions of
the great salvation religions and the well-resourced forces sheltering under the banner of
freedom?
My research into the hidden meaning of myths suggests another way to overcome the
culture clash between the champions of reason and the defenders of faith. Some of the
devout may continue to hold true to the literal meaning of their myths while others, along with
the rest of us, whether we are atheists, materialists or simply hedonists, can accept an
allegorical interpretation. No-one today takes a Disney animation at face value; we are so
accustomed to the format that we appreciate its intended meaning as a fantasy on the
triumph of virtue without losing any sleep over it. That said, myths are not fictions to be
discarded. Whichever way you read them, the myths make sense, rationally and ethically,
because they were devised to present a message for society in both overt and concealed
formats. The open format provided a literal interpretation for the masses, intended to ensure
that people obeyed the rules. The occult format was reserved for the initiated and
educated elite. Crucially, there is a compatible metaphysics that provides the foundation
for a common discourse between the church and the academy.
The research presented here offers an insight into the scientific meaning of the key myths
that underpin the great salvation religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism.
The myths recount the creation of the cosmos, the existence of evil and of humanitys part in
this, the last days and of the journey to be taken for a life after death. Not all will agree with
my interpretation of the four myths examined. In particular, the more dogmatic may be
offended. Others may contend that I pay only superficial attention to ancient and modern
controversies concerning who wrote what and why. My defence is that I have sought to get
to the root of the question. There is ample literature concerning the more obscure
differences within ancient philosophy and theology. My interest lies in uncovering what

15
Quoted from The Observer New Review, 18 December 2011: p. 4.
3


united these thinkers and in making their scientific conception comprehensible to a modern
audience. So, we will move fast across a terrain that may be familiar from Sunday school, or,
perhaps, the madrasa, to make sense of what has been often deliberately left unclear.
We shall encounter unsuspected connections. Above all, we shall find that the logic of
arcane science shows how prescient the ancients were in identifying the features of the
cosmos that we imagine misguidedly were only revealed to us by technological advance, but
were actually with us all the time.
The Hermetic paradigm
Before you reach the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican you must pass through the Stanza della
Segnatura, where documents were once signed. Marina and I were in Rome, that autumn of
1999, on a short break from our work in Moscow. Naturally we started our trip at the
Colosseum and the Forum, with lunch in a small trattoria serving the citys favourite dish of
veal saltimbocca, whose saltiness demands to be accompanied by several glasses of red
wine. But a tour of the Vatican is compulsory for the following day. Trekking through the halls
and corridors with the stream of other visitors it is all too easy to go with the flow and fail to
appreciate Raphaels great fresco painted in 1510-11 known as The School of Athens. This
magnificent work, which takes up a whole wall, imagines a gathering of the greatest
scientists, philosophers and artists from the ancient world. The sages are gathered in a circle
around Plato and Aristotle, with the former pointing towards heaven and the latter towards
the earth. Heraclitus of Ephesus is portrayed in lonely contemplation in the foreground. But
the others, including a felt-hatted Zoroaster, who holds a starry globe to symbolise his
mastery of astrology, are in earnest debate. Raphael included himself in one corner of the
picture, as the famous artist Apelles of Kos, who painted a portrait of Alexander the Great.
His contemporaries Michelangelo and Leonardo are respectively portrayed as Heraclitus and
Plato. In conversation with Zoroaster is the geographer and cosmologist Ptolemy, while
Euclid demonstrates geometry to some students. Another group are gathered around
Socrates, including his students, the historian Xenophon and the general and democrat
Alcibiades. Boethius, who is making notes for his compendium of philosophy, and a
turbaned Averros, peer over Pythagoras shoulder to look at his writings. Meanwhile
Parmenides declaims his verses unheeded. The blind Atomist Democritus, shown leaning
upon a chubby Epicurus, is similarly ignored in a corner, while, passing by, the
mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, and the only woman depicted, looks directly at the
viewer, as if to acknowledge both our presence and our interest in their ideas.
4


Gathered here are the greatest exponents of knowledge known to the medieval world. They
are shown together, in scholarly debate, as a college of science. The painting symbolises
the Renaissance view that knowledge and truth unite us, an attitude that now seems almost
lost. We have for too long accepted the notion that differences between traditions, cultures,
religions and civilizations are at the root of violent conflict. To be sure, peoples have warred,
while ideologues have sought to impose their views and suppressed dissent for centuries.
But the cacophony of disputation has obscured the common beliefs and values found among
peoples. A set of commonly held assumptions in science is called a paradigm. In the
definition provided by the historian of science Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) it is an entire
constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by members of a given
community.
16
A paradigm provides an intellectually coherent framework for research within
certain parameters. It must have a theoretical and an operational consistency. But
anomalous observations tend to be neglected until, every now and again, one paradigm is
supplanted by another, providing a fuller explanation of the evidence.
The current contest between science and religion is tied to the lengthy demise of a
particularly influential paradigm, which I have labelled the Hermetic paradigm. It has been
long accepted that the great world religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam stemmed from
the flowering of Hellenistic civilisation. According to Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), who gained
notoriety in 1842 for being sacked from his position as professor of theology for promoting
atheism, Christianity was the Greco-Roman worlds own product. His work, showed that
what Judaism brought to Christianity was strongly influenced by Alexandria, a major centre
of learning, and by Greek vulgar philosophy, that is, Platonism and Stoicism, in which
[form] alone it could grip the masses.
17
Aristotles works, together with what we now term
Neo-Platonism, were of particular significance to the theological development of Rabbinic

16
Kuhn, 1962: p. 175.
17
Friedrich Engels, 1894, On the History of Early Christianity, in Feuer, 1969: pp. 216 and 234-235.
Bruno Bauer wrote a series of critiques of the New Testament texts, going as far as casting doubt on
the historical existence of Jesus and condemning Pauls letters as forgeries, from the 1840s until the
1870s. Though Bauer collaborated with Karl Marxs communist circle, the latter often challenged his
conclusions, in particular, his anti-Jewish sentiments; see, for example, McLellan, 1976: pp. 80-83
and 132-135.
5


Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
18
Furthermore, the key ideas in the salvation religions also
including Zoroastrianism are to be found within the Hermetic paradigm as it emerged in the
sixth century before our common era (BCE). Looking at the history of ideas in this way
shows that ancient thinking contained a set of complementary theories, often expressed as
myths but also as philosophy. Furthermore, this store of ideas became the basis for both
science and religion as we know them today.
Before the seventh century BCE, creation myths often concerned a cosmic battle between a
high god and the dragon of disorder. In other words, two forces (or states of nature) vied for
supremacy. This story was altered subtly as philosophers from Persia and Babylon, and
maybe Egypt, realised that a more sophisticated narrative was needed. Perhaps this arose
as a result of the emergence of astrology, which archaeologists date to around this time.
Ancient cosmology became part of an over-arching set of theories concerning the nature of
reality, a metaphysical order. Specifically these ideas formed a coherent paradigm
explaining matter, energy, movement and development that could be applied to terrestrial
phenomena (the microcosm) as well as to astral phenomena (the macrocosm). Astrology, of
course, connects events in the heavens with those on earth. I call this the Hermetic
paradigm because it encompasses the motto As above, so below (Quod superius, quod
inferius) that is central to the Hermetic tradition. The motto is ascribed to the legendary
Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus.
19

It is my contention that the Biblical myths, shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims, are
metaphors expressing the arcane science of the Hermetic paradigm, which also
encompasses Hellenist philosophy and Zoroastrian religion. There is, in fact, nothing new
about this way of looking at myth. The anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss (1908-2009)
proposed that myths contained coded messages, and an inner logic, about how cultures
express their relationship with nature, their own kith and kin and wider society. Myths are a
way for pre-literate peoples to communicate their knowledge from one generation to another.
An analysis of some 353 Native American myths suggested to Lvi-Strauss that myths

18
According to the philosopher Leszek Koakowski, the great monotheistic religions, Christianity,
Islam and Judaism too, to a certain extent underwent a philosophical elaboration in the neo-
platonic conceptual instrumentarium [apparatus], with far-reaching implications for Western
civilization; see Koakowski, 1982: p. 197; see also MacCulloch, 2009: pp. 30-34; and Isaacs, 1976:
pp. 2-5.
19
The above comes from below, and the below from above the work of the miracle of the One, in
the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus; cited by Baigent and Leigh, 1997: p. 26.
6


encoded two forms of symbolic thinking, comprising of narratives and paradigms.
20
Each
myth can be interpreted as a self-contained story with a moral that addresses an important
social feature. For instance, in the famous Greek myth about Oedipus the moral injunction
that men should not have sex with their sisters, mothers or daughters is not simply a
statement that incest is taboo. According to Lvi-Strauss it is related to the necessity that
sisters and daughters have to marry men from other clans, to form marriage alliances, which
will preserve the social peace. Lvi-Strauss used the principle of metonymy, whereby one
thing can be substituted for another, to decipher the deeper meaning in each myths
narrative. This procedure is akin to listening to a melody, but if you want to hear the whole
symphony you must examine the larger set of myths and thus discover the hidden paradigm.
Here the messages are coded according to metaphor: one thing is like (or correlates with)
another. An analysis of the Biblical myths concerning creation, the origin of evil and
degradation, and those myths about the last days reveals their consistency with ancient
Greek and Persian philosophy and thus with the Hermetic paradigm that logically links these
common beliefs.
An Axial Age
The arcane science of the ancients, encoded within the Biblical myths, emerged during the
so-called Axial Age (see Appendix A for more information). Several historians of pre-modern
thought have noted the new directions taken from the seventh century BCE. They include
the philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), who termed this pivotal moment the Axial Age, as
well as specialists in esoteric history like Colin Wilson (1931-2013) and Yuri Stoyanov, and
the novelist Gore Vidal (1925-2012).
21
Jaspers argued that travelling scholars exchanged
ideas and developed a notion that, to adopt a contemporary maxim, another world is
possible. That is, a new moral order could be fashioned whereby troubled humankind would
be redeemed and through self-knowledge be able to forge a harmonious society. Moreover
this new order was also in tune with the cosmos itself, so that the moral order on the earth
and the metaphysical order in the heavens were capable of reinforcing each other.
22
It

20
A concise explanation of a complicated theory can be found in Leach, 1974.
21
See Wilson, 1973: p. 258; Stoyanov, 1994: p. 19. The historical novel Creation, 1981, by Gore
Vidal, is based on the same premise.
22
There is a large specialist literature on the Axial Age; see Eisenstadt, 1986; Karen Armstrong dates
the Axial Age from 800 to 300 BCE, with its end coinciding with the rise of Hellenistic science and the
skeptikoi (the inquirers); see Armstrong, 2006: pp. 354-56. The historian Felipe Fernndez-Armesto
has ascribed to the Axial Age a key position in the development of ideas that have shaped
civilizations, as did Arthur Koestler; see Fernndez-Armesto, 2004; and Koestler, 1964.
7


seems likely that the religious reforms associated with Zoroaster in Persia influenced Jewish
thinking during the period of Israels exile in Babylon. The first ancient Greek philosopher,
Pythagoras, is the link between Zoroaster, and Judaism, with Greek philosophy.
We do not know exactly when the Books ascribed to Moses were assembled following their
partial rediscovery in 624 BCE by the High Priest Hilkiah during building work in the Temple
of Jerusalem. David Rohl writes that the discovery of the Book of the Law stimulated the
writing of a great historical and didactic narrative which scholars have called the
Deuteronomist History [whereby] Hilkiah or the kings secretary Shaphan made
substantial editorial additions to the original Mosaic composition.
23
With King Josiahs
support, Hilkiah used the Book of the Law to launch a purification campaign. He closed the
houses of the sacred male prostitutes and those of the female devotees in the Jerusalem
Temple, banned the household gods (teraphim) which people kept at home, and destroyed
the poles (asherim) and standing stones or pillars (masseboth), associated with the goddess
Astarte and the god Baal, burning their images, slaughtering their priests and closing their
shrines throughout Judah, Israel and Samaria.
24
The Book of Kings records: before him
there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and
with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him (2
Kings, 24: 25). Then, twenty-five years later, in 598 BCE, Judah was conquered by the
Babylonians. Jerusalem was emptied and over 10,000 people force marched into an exile
which for some lasted nearly 140 years. Amongst the exiles were the descendants of the
High Priest Zadok, who had secured Solomons succession after King Davids death, in the
face of competing claims from his half-brothers. Zadok had overseen the building of
Solomons magnificent Temple around 968 BCE and his clan remained highly influential
within the priesthood.
25

The scribe Ezra, who was Hilkiahs great-grandson, is said to have brought the scrolls of the
Torah (the teaching) from Babylonia in 459 BCE after the Persians permitted the Jews to
return from exile to Jerusalem. Intriguingly the Persian sage Zoroaster (around 628-551

23
Rohl, 2003: p. 427; and Epstein, 1959: p. 51.
24
The massebah pillar was also called a betyl, home of the gods, by the Phoenicians and stood
singly or in groups of two or three before an altar or offering table; the asherah were posts of wood
meant to evoke the sacred grove of the cult of Astarte; see Markoe, 2000: p. 122.
25
Hilkiah was seemingly a descendent of Zadok; see Ezra, 7: 1. The Damascus Document, part of
the Dead Sea scrolls collection, calls the sons of Zadok the elect of Israel, the men called by name
who shall stand at the end of days; from Vermes, 2004: p. 132.
8


BCE, although these dates are contested), the Prophet Daniel (c. 621-559), who is said to
have served at the great kings court in Babylon until about 558 BCE and died in Persia, the
Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus (c. 624-546), and his students Anaximander (around
610-546) and Pythagoras (c. 570-497), were all active around this period. Heraclitus of
Ephesus (c. 535-475), Anaxagoras (c.500-428), who brought philosophy to Athens, the
Atomist Leucippus (who flourished around 440), and his follower Democritus of Abdera (c.
460-370), were part of the succeeding generations, and built upon the scientific ideas
pioneered by Thales and Pythagoras.
26
Since several of the Greek philosophers were said to
have studied in Egypt or under the magi, the Persian guardians of celestial fire and noted
astronomers, it is probable that considerable exchange of ideas between the Jews,
Egyptians, Persians and Greeks could have occurred in the fifth and sixth centuries BCE.
27

At this time, Egypt was a province of the Persian Empire, as were parts of Greece, under the
Achaemenid dynasty, which promoted Zoroastrian beliefs. In the books of the prophets of
the Exile Ezekiel, Isaiah and Daniel we find the earliest references to the doctrines that
God is the only god, about the salvation of sinners in the last days and on the resurrection of
the dead.
28
There is also the testimony of the Greek philosopher, and pupil of Aristotle,
Clearchus of Soli (writing around 320 BCE), who claimed that the wisdom of the Jews
derived from the magi and from the Indian Brahmins.
29
The Hebrew word for religion, dat, is
a loan from Persian.
30

26
Democritus was a pupil of a Pythagorean, according to Glaucus of Rhegium and wrote a book on
Pythagoras. He was also taught by the Persian Ostanes, the former mage to the great king Xerxes,
who encouraged Democritus to travel to Egypt and Persia; see Luck, 2006: p. 56. Although Heraclitus
was critical of Pythagoras, saying that while he had amassed much learning he lacked understanding,
he was nonetheless influenced by Pythagorean ideas of cosmic harmony; see Riedweg, 2005: pp. 49-
52 and 58.
27
According to Iamblichus, Thales of Miletus, considered to be the first true scientist, learnt from
Egypt the secrets of geometry. The historian Herodotus states that Thales was a Phoenician by
descent, to whom Iamblichus attributed the discovery of arithmetic; see Herodotus, 1972, The
Histories: Book 1, p. 109; and Riedweg, 2005: pp. 25-26. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (23-79
CE) stated that Pythagoras, Empedocles and Democritus all travelled abroad to study and the last
named learnt from a Persian magician called Ostanes (Natural History, Book 30).
28
See Kng, 1992: pp. 98-99 and 121-123.

29
Cited in Lane Fox, 1975: p. 484.
30
See Sand, 2009: p.125. Sand suggests that the exclusive monotheism that stands out on almost
every page of the Bible was the result of the remarkable encounter between Judean intellectual
elites, in exile or returning from exile, with the abstract Persian religions. This early monotheism
would become fully developed in its late encounter with Hellenistic polytheism. The symbiosis
9


Ancient scholars recognised the importance of two figures as central to the development of
thinking about the cosmos: Zoroaster and Pythagoras. Both advocated the importance of
learning and in leading a pure life. They taught that the cosmos consists of a hierarchy of
planes, as well as proposing the immortality of the soul. We find their ideas taken up by
many other later teachers and philosophers.
Zoroaster
Spitama Zarathushtras dates are uncertain. Although the language of the books ascribed to
Zoroaster, as he was known to the Greeks, indicate a very early date, perhaps around 1200
BCE, the archaeology relating to the worship of Ahura Mazda, which Zoroaster promoted,
points to the sixth century BCE.
31
Little is known of his life although the thirteenth volume of
the Spenta Nask, now lost, provided details quoted by later writers. Zoroasters father
Pourushaspa was a wealthy horse owner and his mother Dughdova, meaning milkmaid,
was a saintly figure, apparently surrounded by a golden light, day and night. According to
these sacred books, collectively called the Avesta, Zoroaster was born besides the river
Dareja, identified with the Aras that today forms the border of Iran with Armenia and
Azerbaijan. Medieval Arab writers recorded his birthplace in the region of Lake Urmia, at the
ancient town of Shiz, near Takb, in the West Azerbaijan district of Iran. These locations are
on an ancient trade route from the Black Sea into Central Asia and China, later called the
Silk Road.
32
He is said to have married three times. One wife, Havovi, was the daughter of a
senior courtier to prince Kavi Vishtaspa, the ruler of Bactria, which is now located in
Afghanistan, and he raised three sons and three daughters with her.
33

Zoroaster began preaching around the age of thirty. He is thought to have composed the
Gathas, a set of hymns concerning God and the cosmos, after spending seven years
meditating in a cave on a mountain, called Ushi-darena; possibly Mount Savalan, in
Kurdistan.
34
One day, perhaps in 595 BCE, beside a river, an angel, who introduced himself

between Judaism and Hellenism turned the former into a dynamic, propagative religion (pp. 125
and 161).
31
The ancient Greeks thought he lived six thousand years before their time but the Arab historian al-
Brn (973-1048) in his Chronology of Ancient Nations, written in 1000 CE, records that Zoroaster
appeared 258 years before Alexander the Great; cited in Nigosian, 1993: p.15.
32
See website <http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/urmia/index.htm>.
33
Details regarding Zoroasters family are taken from Nanavutty, 1999: pp. 19-22. Some scholars
have identified Vishtaspa with Hystaspes, the father of Darius the Great of Persia (549-486 BCE).
34
Cited in Rohl, 2003: p. 32.
10


as Vohu Manah, meaning Good Purpose, led him to six radiant figures, one of whom was
Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord.
35

36
From that day forward he began to preach. Queen
Hutaosa (Hutoxshi), wife of Vishtaspa, and who may have been a member of the
Archaemenid royal dynasty, granted him her protection in the face of a fierce backlash from
the magi, defending the polytheist tradition. In the Gathas, the author calls himself a priest
(zaotar) and one who knows (vaedemna).
37
His followers were organised into a fraternity
consisting of three grades: the Xvaetu (strong in spirit), the Verezena (fellow worker) and the
Airyamna (friend). He was killed at the age of seventy-seven, along with 80 priests, in a
Turanian raid on Balkh, Bactrias capital, whose ruins lie in northern Afghanistan, near
Mazar-e Sharif. Balkh also lies on the same ancient trade route that Zoroaster appears to
have followed from his birth in Azerbaijan to his fame and death in Afghanistan.
38

Xanthus of Lydia (fifth century BCE) called Zoroaster the greatest religious legislator of
ancient times. He was recognised as a mathematician, astrologer, wizard and mage.
39
His
ideas concerning the creation and destruction of the world and of the afterlife were highly
influential among the Greek philosophers, and especially upon Plato and Heraclitus.
40
For
example, Colotes of Lampsacus (third century BCE) asserts that Platos Myth of Er, an
account of the afterlife, was adapted from Zoroasters book On Nature. It is also likely that
Zoroastrian teaching influenced Judaism, during the Israelites captivity in Babylon.
According to the later collection of sayings ascribed to Zoroaster, known as the Chaldean
Oracles, Zoroaster considered that material forms were congruent with the ideals of the
Soul of the World (saying 143), which is similar to Platonic theory. He instructed: Learn the
Intelligible for it subsisteth beyond the Mind (saying 162) and that there is a certain
Intelligible One; whom it becometh you to understand with the Flower of the Mind (163). In

35
According to an analysis of the world ages scheme set out in the Bundahishn the foundation date
for Zoroastrianism has been calculated as 595 BCE; cited in Nigosian, 1993: p. 16.
36
The seven Amesha Spenta, or Holy Immortals, named in the Avesta are as follows: Spenta Mainyu
(the Holy Spirit); Vohu Manah (Good Thought or Right Inspiration) and Asha Vahishta (Good Order or
Justice); Spenta Armati (Holy Devotion); Khshathra Vairya (Empire or Dominion); Sarvatt or
Hauvartt (Corporeal Integrity or Good Health) and Amerett (Immortality). They form three pairs of
male and female principles; see Clark, 2001: pp. 28-29 and 168.
37
Clark, 2001: p. 3.
38
See Nigosian, 1993: p. 13.
39
Kriwaczek, 2003: p. 34.
40
See Stoyanov, 1994: p. 251, for references.
11


other words, there is a mode of understanding that goes beyond sensory experience
(passion) and intellectualisation (reason). In saying 169, Zoroaster states:
Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand the body alone, but only
by those who stripped of their garments arrive at the summit.
41

How a person can reach this highest level of knowledge is not made clear, but it must be
significant that the saying who knows himself knows all things in himself was attributed to
Zoroaster by the ancients. Moreover, Zoroasters reputation among the Greeks as a
mathematician, suggest a connection with Pythagoras, and offers a clue to the process by
which the highest degree of intelligibility was thought to be attainable.
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was the son of Mnesarchos, a merchant and gem engraver from the
island of Samos or from Tyre, a great port city of Syria. His mother Parthenis (meaning
Virginal) took on a new name, Pythas, after she and her husband visited the oracle at
Delphi. The oracle told them that their son would surpass all people in beauty and wisdom.
42

According to Iamblichus of Chalcis (c. 245-345 CE), who wrote a life of Pythagoras, he met
Thales when he was 18 or 20 years old, when Thales was already aged. By then he
probably already well travelled, since, as a youth, he visited Tyre and Italy (where he
eventually settled) with his father.
43
Around 535 BCE, Pythagoras went to Egypt, possibly as
the emissary of the new tyrant of Samos, Polycrates, and was accepted into the temple
priesthood of the goddess Isis at Diospolis (Thebes), after being rejected from other centres.
From there he travelled to Babylon, though Iamblichus account that this occurred in 525
BCE, after the victory of the Persians over the Egyptians at the battle of Pelusium, does not
fit with other facts we know about Pythagoras.
44
Iamblichus records that while he was there
he gladly associated with the Magoi and was instructed in their secret rites and learnt

41
The Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster in Westcott, 1895. Robin Lane Fox suggests the possibility that
the Chaldean Oracles incorporate some of the sayings of the Platonist Numenius; see Lane Fox,
1988: p. 198. Pliny the Elder stated that two million verses of Zoroaster were taken to Athens and
translated into Greek by Hermippus of Smyrna after Alexander the Great captured Persepolis, though
many texts were destroyed when the library was burned during its subsequent sacking by the victors.
More Zoroastrian books were destroyed after Iran converted to Islam.
42
Riedweg, 2005: p. 6.
43
According to Neanthes; cited by Ferguson, 2010: p. 15.
44
Kitty Ferguson argues that Pythagoras could not have been in Egypt or Babylonia in 535 BCE as
he left Samos to settle in Croton in 532 or 531, the date is the best established in Pythagoras life,
being attested by both Iamblichus and Diogenes Laertius; see Ferguson, 2010: pp. 24 and 53.
12


about a very mystical worship of the gods. He also reached the acme of perfection in
arithmetic and music and other mathematical sciences taught by the Babylonians.
Unfortunately, given that Zoroaster was probably already dead by this point, the story
reported by Aristoxenus of Tarentum (born c. 365 BCE), and repeated by Apuleius, that
Pythagoras studied in Chaldea with Zoroaster, is unlikely to be correct.
Pythagoras returned eventually to Samos. There he founded a school, called the
semicircle, where he tried to use his symbolic method of teaching which was similar in all
respects to the lessons he had learnt in Egypt. But, Iamblichus continues, the Samians
were not very keen on this method and treated him in a rude and improper manner. So,
around 532 BCE, Pythagoras settled in Croton, Scilly, where he founded an all-male society
or brotherhood, whose members were sworn to secrecy, with an inner circle known as the
mathematikoi, or mathematicians.
45
The Pythagorean symbolic method mentioned by
Iamblichus refers, of course, to mathematics. Pythagoras used pebbles or dots to represent
numbers to map the cosmos: from the highest empyrean sphere of celestial fire pyr means
fire in Greek via the superior sphere of the planets, to the inferior or terrestrial plane. The
lowest, mundane, level is that of our senses, while the superior plane is the sphere of the
archetypes which cast their shadow over the lower material plane. At the highest level, the
empyrean sphere establishes the frame for the operation of the two lower planes.
Presumably, only the mathematicians were able to understand both the workings of the
formative or ethereal plane and the actual elementary world because of their insight into the
empyrean or intelligible plane. In short, to understand physics one needs mathematics.
Pythagoras was credited by the ancients as being the first to bring to the Greeks all
philosophy (Isocrates, 436-338 BCE) and as having transformed the study of geometry into
a liberal education, examining the principles of science from the beginning and probing the
theorems in an immaterial and intellectual manner (Proclus, c. 450 CE). The historian Manly
Hall (1901-1990) notes that he was the first to call himself a philosopher, literally, a lover of
wisdom, because it meant to him one who attempting to find out, and not one who knows (a
sage or gnostic).
46

Pythagoras was convinced that reality is structured mathematically and therefore that the
discovery of its logical rules would enable us to understand the cosmos. His influence on the

45
J J OConnor and E F Robertson, Pythagoras of Samos, article on <www-groups.dcs.st-
and.ac.uk/history/Biography/Pythagoras.html>.
46
Hall, 1928, 2003 edition: pp. 192-3.
13


Hermetic tradition is such that some have seen no difference between him and the sage
Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary founder of Hermeticism. The astronomer Johannes
Kepler (1571-1630) wrote that either Pythagoras is playing Hermes [Trismegistus] (whoever
he was) or Hermes Pythagoras, suggesting that it is now impossible to decide whether
Pythagoras was the author of Hermetic thought, or derived his knowledge from the received
wisdom of the Egyptian god Thoth.
47
In any case Pythagoras was one of the key links
between Egyptian, Persian and Greek scholarship, and possibly Judaism as well.
48

Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus or Thrice Greatest is so called because he was considered
the greatest of philosophers, of priests and of kings, with 42 books of science,
medicine and theology ascribed to him.
49
He was credited with establishing the
modern calendar of 365 days a year. Supposedly Hermes was the son of Picos
(Zeus) and ruled Egypt during its antediluvian Golden Age.
50
Like Adams son Seth,
another legendary culture hero, who named the planets, he was prescient enough to
leave his wisdom carved on an emerald tablet that survived the Floods destruction,
or upon the walls of the pyramids of Panopolis (modern Akhmim). The Ancient
Egyptian god Thoth, who was also credited with devising the 365 day calendar, and
was identified with the Greek god Hermes, similarly bore the title Thrice Greatest. If
Hermes Trismegistus existed he should have lived in the fourth millennium BCE.
51

47
See Kepler, 1619, 1997 edition: p. 137. Quoted also in Roob, 1996: p. 90. Kepler was by no means
the first to suggest such a connection. The early medieval scholar Ab Maar is said to have
asserted that Hermes Trismegistus taught Pythagoras; see van Bladel, 2009: p. 126.
48
Hermippus of Smyrna (third century BCE) stated in his book On Lawgivers that it was from the
Jewish people that Pythagoras derived the philosophy which he introduced among the Greeks,
according to Origen; see Chapter 15, Book 1 of Contra Celsum.
49
Apparently, as late as the eighth century, twenty-two of Hermes Trismegistus works still survived in
the Muslim world: four on magic, five on astrology and thirteen on alchemy; cited by Baigent and
Leigh, 1997: p. 39.
50
For the legend of Hermes see Mango, 1994: pp. 194-195. Supposedly the antediluvian age lasted
2,362 years from the date of Creation, conventionally considered to have occurred around 5509 BCE
by Medieval chronologists (Mango: p. 193).
51
According to David Rohl, the Floods survivor Noah, known as Ziusudra of Uruk to the Sumerians
and Utn(u)apishtim to the Babylonians, lived around 3100 BCE; see Rohl, 2002: pp. 45-48. Rohl
derives the name Noah from Ut-nua-pish-tim.
14


Manetho of Sebennytos, who wrote an influential history of ancient Egypt for Ptolemy
II (285-246 BCE), allegedly based his account on the books of another Hermes
Trismegistus, who lived after the Flood and transliterated the first Hermes carved
hieroglyphic inscriptions into book form. This second Hermes was the son of
Agathodaemon, an epithet for Zeus, and the father of Tat, that is, Thoth. Manethos
own name is thought to mean Beloved of Thoth or Lover of Truth. In a Hermetic
book, The Perfect Discourse, Hermes Trismegistus is presented as the teacher of the
Greek father of medicine Asclepius, the Egyptian god Ammon, and Tat.
52
Christian
authors, such as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215 CE), argued that the postdiluvian
Hermes lived after Moses, and had the good sense to acquire the writings of Moses,
even if he did not use them all.
53

In late antiquity the antediluvian Hermes Trismegistus became identified with the
Biblical Enoch, Adams grandson, who warned of the Flood to come; for example, in
the Alexandrian chroniclers Panodorus (flourished around 395 CE) and Annianus
(writing in 412 CE). According to Jewish legend, Enoch was granted immortality
(Genesis, 5: 24). He shares this trait with Utn(u)apishtim, a Sumerian sage who
survived the Flood, from whom the hero Gilgamesh sought to learn the secret of
immortality in the Epic of Gilgamesh. (In the Bible, it is Methuselah who finds Enoch.)
Enoch (called Idrs in the Koran) was considered to be a prophet, teacher and wise
ruler, the inventor of astronomy, writing and arithmetic, and, according to some
Muslim scholars, such as al-Talib of Nishapur (d. 1038), of slavery and clothing.
The Arab mathematician and astrologer, Ab Maar of Balkh (787-886), also known
as Albusar, not only identified Hermes with Enoch but also with the Persian
discoverer of fire and metallurgy, clothing and agriculture, Hshang, the great
grandson of Gaymart, the first man.
54
This in turn links with the ancient Greek myth
of Prometheus, who gifted fire to people, and warned Deucalion of the coming Flood,

52
See van Bladel, 2009: p. 133.
53
According to Jewish chronology, Moses lived 175 years from 1812 to 1637 BCE.
54
See van Bladel, 2009: pp. 125-127, 138, and 154-157. Ab Maar studied in Benares (now
Varanasi) in India and wrote the Kitb al-Ulf (The Book of Thousands). It is claimed that Ab Maar
was taught astrology by the natural philosopher al-Kind (c. 801-866), who promoted Greek
philosophy among the Arabs. The ancient Persian hero Hshang (or Haoshyanha in Avestan) was the
father of Jamshd (Yima), the fourth king of the legendary Pddian dynasty. In the epic poem of the
Shhnma, Hshang battles the son of Ahriman, and leader of the giants, to become the first ruler of
humankind.
15


enabling him to re-populate the earth with his spouse Pandora.
Thus the ancients thought of Hermes Trismegistus as a culture hero for humanity,
from whom learning, writing and crafts originated. The maxim He who knows
himself, knows the All is attributed to him.
55

Pythagoras had realised that if mathematics could explain natural phenomena then rules
determine change. Events that appear to be random in fact follow a logic that that is
expressible in mathematical terms. Whichever direction you care to look you will see that the
rules the laws of physics and of nature are the same. In the midst of complexity there is
actually invariance. Whether the scale is microscopic or macroscopic the rules are there. So
in this specific sense we may concur with the Hermetic motto: As above, so below. The
apparent confusion of events is actually an illusion. Reality is ordered and intelligible, and
the former cannot be separated analytically from the latter.
Nor did Pythagoras see any contradiction between conceiving the cosmos to be a rule-
based system and in honouring Apollo, whom he considered to be the one God, according to
Aristotle. For Pythagoras, mathematical discoveries provided insight into the Supreme Mind.
In this respect he was probably following the axiom of Thales, who is quoted by the Roman
politician and scholar Cicero as saying that God is the Mind which shaped and created
[formed] all things from water (De Natura Deorum, i: 10). When Pythagoras realised that
mathematical rules underpinned reality he celebrated his discovery with a spectacular
thanksgiving ceremony to the god Apollo. Although we celebrate success with, maybe, a
glass of champagne, a banquet with a speech of recognition and awards, Pythagoras
marked his discovery with a sacrifice in which one hundred oxen were slaughtered, at that
time worth a fortune.
56

While a Nobel Prize winner expects to receive a cheque, Pythagoras gave away his wealth
to feed his neighbours. It marks a different frame of mind: an act of humility in the face of the

55
Harris, 1999: p. 103.
56
The theorem that so excited Pythagoras was that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum
of the squares on the other two sides of a right-angled triangle. The theorem may be the basis for
many relationships in nature, which are expressed as an equation where one parameter is equal to
the square of another parameter (the inverse square law). Pythagoras theorem has a similar basis,
whereby the relationship between any two points on a triangle is proportional to the square of the
distance between them; see Matthew Kaser in a personal communication to the author on 18 April
2012.
16


cosmic mysteries still to be uncovered and of sharing in success with ones community. The
Nobel ceremony on the other hand signifies the triumph of science over nature and the
veneration of the scientist, however well deserved, by society. The contrast demonstrates
the gap that has opened up between the ancients (more religious) mindset and the modern
worship of progress, which we must overcome if we are to appreciate once more the
scientific insights that underpin religion.
The picture we have inherited of Pythagoras appears, on the face of it, confusing. On the
one hand, he was a keen experimenter and mathematician; on the other, either a devout
believer in the gods and other divine figures like the Muses or simply a restless charlatan,
seeking supernatural knowledge from whatever source he could. For instance, Porphyry of
Tyre (c. 234-305 CE) recorded that in Crete Pythagoras underwent initiation by the priests of
Morgos, a sect also known as the Idaean Dactyls, legendary dwarves and servants of the
lame god of smiths, Hephaestus. They were, author Kitty Ferguson writes, into ancient lore
wizards and inventors of music and blacksmithing.
57
In setting out to discover the secrets
of the priesthoods, astrologers and craftsmen, Pythagoras was clearly determined to
understand the connections. His renown rests upon the fact that he was successful in these
endeavours: his insights into the mathematics of musical harmony, allegedly sparked by
listening to the different rings of a blacksmiths hammers, could be integrated into a wider
model of how the cosmos was organised. Ferguson states that Pythagoras concluded that
the specific numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 and the ratios between them were the primordial
organising principle of the universe.
58
Unfortunately there is little known for certain about his
own researches, mathematics or his Orphic poems.
59
The saying the world is built on the
power of numbers is attributed to him.
60

We know even less about Pythagoras wife Myia, or according to other sources, Theano, or
of his children: a son named Mnesarchos (after his grandfather) and daughter, also named
Myia, who married a celebrated wrestler, Milon, whom Pythagoras coached for the
Olympics.
61
While living in Croton he gained a reputation as a sage, teacher and religious

57
Ferguson, 2010: p. 67.
58
59
Ferguson, 2010: p. 51. A near contemporary of Pythagoras, Ion of Chios, attributed an Orphic
poem to him. Orpheus was the legendary bard, who failed to rescue his wife from the Underworld
after she had died.
60
Cited by Gibson and Gibson, 1969: p. 226.
61
Riedweg, 2005: pp. 10 and 109.
17


reformer. He also was involved in a reform of weights and measures and the introduction of
a new coinage.
62
Iamblichus relates that Pythagoras was an initiate in the Orphic mysteries
and modelled his ideas for ritual and worship on Orphic and Egyptian rites. Unfortunately
Pythagoras fame also made him enemies. As a result of a feud with a local aristocrat,
several of his followers lost their lives in an arson attack on the community, forcing the
Pythagoreans to flee Croton. Apparently depressed, Pythagoras, who was used to fasting for
several days while meditating, starved himself to death in the temple of the Muses at
Metapontum. Porphyry related that with his death, and that of his followers, also died their
knowledge except for a few obscure things which were repeated by those who did not
understand.
63
Nonetheless, Pythagoras took the search for truth in a new direction, towards
what we would recognise as science and a path which we still follow today. The Hermetic
paradigm was the result of the incorporation of Persian and Babylonian ideas into Greek
philosophy, an event in which Pythagoras played a key role as transmitter and interpreter.

62
63
Porphyry of Tyre wrote that Pythagoras left no book. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras
immediate successor was Aristaeus, who married the sages widow, Theano. Porphyry recorded that
Pythagoras son Mnesarchus took over as leader of the brotherhood after Aristaeus grew too old; see
Ferguson, 2010: pp. 48, 59 and 75.
18


Figure 1-1: The Ancient Hellenistic 4-3-2-1 scheme of reality
Earth/
Solid
Fire/
Brightness
Air /
Gaseous
Four Parts/ Elements
(or Phases of Matter)
Two
Polarities
One Source
of Power
Three Products
(or Emanations)
Physical
Appearance
Animating
Spirit
Essential
Form/ Idea
Pattern
Positive/
Lightweight
Negative/
Heavy
Water/
Liquid
Potential/
Energy/
Indestructible
Physical
Manifestation/
Matter
19


The 4-3-2-1 scheme
One becomes two; two becomes three; and out of the third comes the fourth.
Maria the Jewess (1
st
Century BCE).
64

Underpinning the philosophy and theology developed by ancient Greek-speaking scholars is
a straightforward, coherent and reasoned approach to the understanding of reality. As Figure
1-1 illustrates, reality was analysed as consisting of four parts, the elements, three products
(or emanations), two polarities and one source of power. I call this the 4-3-2-1 scheme. It
attempts to synthesise the core of the Hermetic paradigm in the series of the first four
numbers, known to the Pythagoreans as the tetraktys, the source and root of the ever
flowing nature.
65

The four elements
The four elements are well known and correspond to modern sciences concepts of the
phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gaseous. The ancients added fire as the fourth element,
which corresponds to the idea that energy is manifested as brightness and/or heat. Although
they were unaware of plasma, which is in fact the most common form of matter in the
universe, the properties of fire bear some similarity to plasma. The connection between the
phases of matter and the elements are illustrated in the diagram at Figure 1-2. The elements
are observable to the senses. Empedocles of Acragas (c. 490-430 BCE) is credited as the
first philosopher to have identified the four elements in his poem On Nature.
66

64
In his book on the occult liphas Lvi notes that one is being, two is movement, three is life [or]
the number of creation [and four is] the principle of all forms; Lvi, 1855, 2001 edition: pp. 45 and
53. Maria the Jewess, according to Zosimos of Panoplis (fl. 300 CE), originated the colour stages (or
kerotaksis) theory in the transmutation of metals: nigredo/ blackening, rubedo/ purpling, albedo/
whitening, and citrinitas/ yellowing that, supposedly, created lead or iron, copper, silver and gold from
mercury; see Haeffner, 2004: pp. 137 and 235-236.
65
According to the Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre, in Vita Pythagorae, 20; cited by
Riedweg, 2005: p. 29.
66
Sedley, 2007: p. 33, footnote 7.
20


The three products
The next abstraction is a little more puzzling. But it is familiar to anyone entering a
bookstore, where the section on Mind, Body and Spirit attracts usually more attention than
do the science shelves. The three products, or emanations, comprise, firstly, the design or
pattern; secondly, the animating spirit; and, thirdly, the physical appearance of things. For
the ancient Greek philosophers, intelligence (nous) gives direction to the spirit (pneuma),
which animates the body (hyle).
67
In todays language we can summarise them as
information, energy and mass, three of the properties of matter that are conserved in
physical systems.
68

67
In Platos Timaeus-Critias, the Pythagorean philosopher Timaeus explains that God constructed
the universe by endowing soul with intelligence and body with soul, so that it was in the very nature of
the universe to surpass all other products in beauty and perfection [or which was naturally the finest
and best]. It follows that we are bound to think that this world of ours was made in truth by God as
a living being, endowed thanks to His providence with soul and intelligence; Plato, 2008: p. 19. The
Stoics were in full agreement with this model according to Sedley, 2007: p. 227.
68
As in the law of the conservation of energy, for instance, whereby energy may be dissipated, and is
subject to entropy, but it is not destroyed. Another property of matter that is conserved is momentum.
Figure 1-2: The Elements and their Qualities
Gross
Dense
Subtle
Intangible
Moist Dry
AIR
WATER
EARTH
FIRE
21


The theory of emanations is best known to us through the writings of the philosopher
Plotinus in the third century of our Common Era.
69
But we can see the ideas in earlier
philosophers such as Plato (c. 429-347 BCE), whom Plotinus admired, and Platos own
student Aristotle (384-323 BCE). In Platos system, everything had three aspects: the
archetypal form or essence, which he sometimes termed the idea; the spirit (or soul); and
the corporeal, or physical, appearance. Nowadays, the triple division of reality into mind,
spirit and body is associated with New Age thinking. However, stripped of the mystical
undertones, we can appreciate the reasoning for suggesting that things were composed of
an information store and control function (the mind), an animating or moving force (the
spirit) and a material body for undertaking physical activity. (I should add that Christian
theologians dislike the concept of emanation because the one God is supposed to be
indivisible and transcendent; in other words, He exists beyond His creation. But this
objection misses the point that reality that is, creation can be analysed as, or broken
down into, these three aspects, regardless of whether you believe God to be immanent or
transcendent.)
70

The rationale for the triple aspects of reality is straightforward. For example, how does an
egg develop into a creature or a seed into a plant? Today we explain the process through
the operation of heredity and genetics. The information needed for the development of a
living creature is found in genes, passed onto the offspring by its parents. The ancients also
deduced that an organism developed from a pre-determined pattern, a generic form, an
essence or exemplar. Moreover, if there was an initial design, or ideal type, then how did it
come about? By analogy with human society, natural philosophers argued that a designer
was implied by the existence of complex formations, especially of living organisms. Plotinus
(205-270 CE) termed this the Divine Intellect and asserted that it was made up of the totality
of archetypal forms (the innumerable ideas which were reflections of the single concept at
creation).
The ancient philosophers argued that matter could not move without an animating force or
spirit the second emanation. We still use the word spirit to imply vitality. We even say she

69
The Pythagoreans replaced the concept of emanation with vibration.
70
See also Isaacs, 1976: pp. 20-23 and 55 for Judaic thinking on the relationship of emanations to
Gods power. Isaacs points out that Hellenistic Jewish theologians, apparently influenced by Stoic
concepts, describe the divine spirit, pneuma, and wisdom, sophia, as reflections, images, icons, or
effluences of Gods power. She cites the author of The Wisdom of Solomon and Philo of Alexandria to
argue that the pneuma and sophia are not the agents of God but the content of what is imparted (p.
55). This would be consistent with the theory of emanation.
22


was the life and soul of the party, meaning that she was the moving force at the event.
Words like spirit and soul are imbued with religious meaning, but we also use them in
more mundane ways in everyday conversation.
The nature of the soul
The word soul is used to mean several things and this gives rise to much confusion.
71

The words for spirit and soul each derive from breath. The Greek word often used
for the soul was pneuma and means breath, from which we derive our word
pneumatic. In Latin, spiritus and anima mean spirit and soul respectively. Spiritus is
linked to the word respire, while anima is to be found in our words animation or
animal, and is formed from an Indo-European root ane, also meaning breath. Some
confusion arises because the other Greek word for soul, psyche, was and is
associated with the mind, as in psychology. But in fact it is linked linguistically with
psychein, to blow or to breathe (English has a linguistic equivalent in the word sigh).
So originally the spirit was conceived as a warm breath, a subtle substance that
infused the entire body and gave it life. The spirit sustained a range of bodily and
mental functions that were invisible anatomically but which could be observed
nonetheless.
72
The soul was considered to have an immaterial but substantial
existence. We experience the results of the souls faculties (like pain, emotions,
memories and thoughts) but we can never observe it directly through touch, sight and
the other senses. From the descriptions in Plato and Aristotle, we can see that the
soul was thought to operate the instinctual, emotional, and rational aspects of being
alive. Conscious reason (the immortal soul) was located in the brain, baser instincts
in the navel and genitals, and willpower in the chest (the mortal soul which humans
and animals share). For the ancients, then, the soul existed substantially and was
necessary to all living organisms but was invisible to the senses. Moreover, they
were correct to deduce the existence of this invisible substance. Until modern times
we could not observe the signals of our nervous system although we feel the
effects or the hormones of our endocrine system and the bacteria of our digestive
system.

71
Urmson and Re, 1989, criticize the Pre-Socratic philosophers for an inconsistent usage of the
word psyche, following Homer, in which it meant sometimes life-stuff, sometimes consciousness-
stuff, and sometimes intelligence (p. 259).
72
See Isaacs, 1976: pp. 16-19.
23


In Aristotelian theory, the soul is also the potential of a being, its essential form,
which is realised, manifested or fulfilled, through its actual appearance, as matter.
According to Aristotle, form is the actus, the attainment, which realises matter.
73

Existence is the activation of essence, and it is an act not a thing. The actus et
potentia distinction is crucial to understanding ancient and medieval ideas concerning
the soul and spirit. The soul (the design for a being) was thought to exist in potentia,
that is, as a potential capability. Such potential cannot however exist autonomously
from the actuality (in actu) of matter. For example, we define intelligence as the
power (the potential) to acquire ideas (the actuality). The Greek terms for actus and
potentia are energeia and dynamis.
Thus the soul is the potential for a beings existence and the spirit is the active
impulse whereby the beings potential is realised as a living creature. It should be
noted that in Latin the soul, anima, is a feminine noun, whereas spiritus is masculine.
Ancient Greek is similar, with psyche being feminine and pneuma neuter (that is, of
neither gender).
Anything substantial must be capable of action or movement, that is, to have kinesis,
the opposite of stasis. If matter is composed of atoms, that is, of indivisible units, then
these must also be capable of movement to be acted upon by the forces of
attraction and repulsion.
Moreover, Plato proposed that while matter can be sensed touched, seen, and so
on the essential form could only be thought about. We might therefore equate form
to information. The word information, it should be noted, is derived from the Latin
informare, that is, to give form to something. So the pattern (or design) is quite
literally information, since it gives form to something. But information (or the soul, in
this sense) cannot exist without there being a conscious mind to understand the
pattern.
Sources: Wikipedia; New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia; Marie E Isaacs, 1976.

73
Cited by Burke, 1962: p. 227. Aristotle discussed the relationship between form and matter and
actus and potentia in his Metaphysics, Books 8 and 9, composed around 335 BCE.
24


The three products system implies that everything is infused with the life force, even crystals
growing within the earth. In The Wisdom of Solomon, the anonymous ancient Jewish author
praises Gods creation, saying Your immortal spirit (pneuma) is in all things (12: 1). Thales,
often described as the first scientist and the discoverer of electricity, for example, insisted
that a magnetic stone possessed a spirit since it was able to move iron. Vitalist theories
prevailed until the nineteenth century. In 1828 the German chemist Friedrich Wohler
synthesised organic compounds from inorganic sources and thus demystified the chemistry
of life. His experiments undermined the idea that living matter contained some special
additional property. Since then, mainstream science has discarded the notion of a vital force,
although it still lacks a sound theory for the existence of life.
According to the textbooks the characteristics of living organisms include the capacity for
development (growth); of responsiveness to stimuli (and often for movement); for nutrition (to
gain energy); and reproduction, through which the organisms complexity is sustained and
allows the species to evolve. Aristotle said much the same, as it happens. But these
characteristics of living organisms only tell part of the story, according to the hypotheses of
the Hungarian biologist Tibor Gnti, first published in 1971 but only now gaining
recognition.
74
The interesting feature of Gntis work lies in its synthesis of ancient
philosophy with modern chemistry. Gnti asserts that a living system must have within it the
information necessary for its origin, development and functioning; there must be a regulatory
or controlling part as well as an operating part. He argues that this control feature is provided
by the coding in DNA, the genes, and that this information is conserved even when the
molecules are damaged. Thus Plato was exactly right in observing that in everything alive
form is much more persistent than matter.
75

Another feature that is not always mentioned is that living organisms have a common
characteristic: they all die eventually. Aging is not yet understood fully, although it might be
connected to the way cells wear out as they use oxygen (which is a rather troublesome gas)
for growth or it could have a genetic origin. It is also clear that if living organisms were
immortal there would be no scope for evolution to select the fittest, since the less fit would

74
See Gnti, 2003.
75
Gnti, 2003: p. 14. The insight is being developed in mathematics through an approach called
structural realism by John Worrall, which asserts that there is a persistent mathematical form (or
structure) to phenomena; see Eric Scerri, Is it time to get real? New Scientist, 24 November 2012: pp.
30-31.
25


not be culled. So science still awaits a theory that explains how life preserves itself against
decay (entropy), by taking energy from its environment, for a more or less pre-defined period
and then dies. The mathematician and philosopher G W Leibniz (1646-1714) pointed this out
in 1712, suggesting that living organisms required a substantial chain or bond, vinculum
substantiale, to explain their wholeness.
76
A modern hypothesis, based on the soliton
phenomenon, whereby particular wave formations are capable of sustaining stable forms,
may prove to be an avenue of research worth following up.
77
The work of biologist Brian
Goodwin (1931-2009) on the rhythmic coherence of organic development using the
mathematics of chaos has also explored the relationship between the stability of form and its
transformation that preoccupied ancient philosophers. A similar point was made by Richard
Merrick on the central role of harmony in living structures, providing yet another insight of the
ancients that has been neglected.
78
In any case, the way information is organised appears to
be crucial to understanding the innate durability of complex phenomena.
This problem concerned the German biologist Hans Driesch (1867-1941), who revived
Aristotles theories to argue that an organisms development was immanent within the
embryo.
79
Today his hypothesis is considered obsolete, although in a sense the discovery of
the genetic properties coded within DNA are exactly what Driesch was searching for.
Driesch revived Aristotles term entelecheia, which is a combination of the Greek words
enteles (complete), telos (purpose) and echein (to have or possess). Entelechy is therefore
the endowment that gives expression to what is potential (that is, the actualisation or
realisation). The term entelechy seems to be compatible with modern genetic theory, where
genes are described as expressing themselves as particular characteristics (and it seems

76
Jolley, 2005: pp. 81-83.
77
S V Petoukhov, 1999, on <www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/sg/pet.htm> accessed on 28.11.2006.
According to Wikipedia, a soliton is like a topological defect which maintains its integrity even in the
face of powerful forces. There are many examples of organisation in the physical domain, as well as
among living systems, which hold entropy at bay (but, of course, never overcome it), so life may not
be uncommon in the universe. The point has also been made by Terrence W Deacon: life must
involve an intrinsic tendency to maintain a distinctive integrity against the ravages of increasing
entropy. It must be a self-maintaining system with some means to remember and regenerate; see
The importance of whats missing, New Scientist, 25 November 2011: p. 35.
78
Richard Merrick, 2009, The suppression of ancient harmonic science, NEXUS, 16/2, February-
March: pp. 45-48 and 75.
79
Driesch cut bits off embryos from sea-urchins to see how this affected their development. He
discovered that this mutilation did not mean that the sea-urchins were born with an organ missing.
This disproved the theory that embryos were tiny replicas of complete organisms that just grew
bigger.
26


that Gnti might also concur with this line of argument). As genes are assemblages of
information, which ensure the development of cells to perform specific functions, we could
be just as well discussing entelechy, a concept central to the philosophy of the ancients.
The Stoic philosophers held the view that the process of emanation was similar to that of
seeding, or, as we would put it, development. The progenitor of the Stoics, Zeno of Citium (c.
334-262 BCE), was recorded as asserting: that which emits seed of what is rational is itself
rational. According to later Stoic commentators, Zeno contrasted emanation with the
ejaculation of male semen. He emphasised the difference between this mythic image and
the more sophisticated model of the philosophers in providing an explanation of how
seminal principles (spermatikoi logoi) informed matter.
80

81
This theory provided a
developmental model of how the world and its creatures became endowed with intelligence
since matter contained the seeds of reason within itself from the start.
Another way of looking at the same idea is to recall that matter has three properties: mass,
energy and information content. Matter is a state of reality characterised by the possession
of mass and spatial dimensions
82
in other words, matter exhibits mass and of the
potential for changes when subjected to some force. Energy may be released from matter by
the application of force, and this release of energy is said to increase complexity. According
to the Standard Model, based on the work of Einstein and others, matter can be analysed as

80
See Sedley, 2007: pp. 223-225. The Stoic commentary states: The persuasiveness of [Zenos]
argument is obvious. For the stimulus of motion in every nature and every soul seems to be from the
commanding-faculty [that is, the mind], and all the powers sent out to the parts of the whole organism
are sent out as from the commanding-faculty as if this were a kind of well-head. Hence every power
that belongs to the part also belongs to the whole, because it has been transmitted from the
commanding-faculty in the latter. Therefore as the part is in respect of power [that is, it is animated],
so too, much prior to that, is the whole. And for this reason, if the world projects the seed of a rational
animal [being], not by frothy emission as man does, but in the sense that it contains seeds of rational
animals [creatures], the universe contains these not in the way in which we would say that the vine is
a container of grapes, that is, by inclusion, but because seminal principles [that is, the logoi] of
rational animals [humans, in other words] are contained in it. This theory was an improvement upon
the idea that each person possessed a fragment, a portion or bit, of the cosmic intelligence, or the
Mind of God.
81
One of the creation myths of the ancient Egyptians tells how Atum (Everything) arose out of the
chaotic waters of Nun to sit on the primal mound. There he masturbated and from his semen sprang
the gods from whom the cosmos was formed; see Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992a: p. 216; and
Guirand, 1968: p.11. Atum was worshipped as an aspect, or personality (kheperu), of the sun god Ra
with a major centre of worship at Heliopolis, where the benben stone, on which Ra-Atum had sat, was
believed to be located.
82
Philosophers call this the property of extension.
27


waves or particles. Modern science proposes that substantial reality (matter) is the same
basic stuff exhibiting both mass and energy.
83
(Until the dominance of quantum physics
scientists speculated that energy was related to ether, usually conceived as the medium
through which energy is manifested.)
84

The three Ns of science
Energy (from the Greek energeia) is the state of activity. If a thing has energy
it possesses the property of actuality (from the Latin actus, or actualness).
Potential (from the Latin potentia, as in our word potent) is only realised
through activity, so that it is actual once it has energy. All substantial things
may be said to possess energy as well as mass, which philosophers term
extension. There exists an equivalence between energy and mass, as
expressed in Einsteins famous equation E = mc
2
, where E is energy, m is
mass and c is a constant (the speed of light, called celeritas). The ancients
version of this formula is that existence (or actuality) comprises manifested
energy and mass, and derives from essence (the potential).
Entelechy (from the Greek entelecheia) is the state of becoming, in which a
thing is actively working to be itself; literally having an end within itself. It
denotes the drive, or impulse, propelling a being to self-fulfilment or becoming
complete (teleios is the Greek for complete or perfect). Aristotle used
entelechy synonymously with actuality.
85
It refers to what we would term
development and implies that the thing has a destiny. If the outcome of an
action or the behaviour or the development of something is predictable, then

83
Matter is made up of energetic particles known as fermions and bound together by force carriers
called bosons. These states of matter are respectively named after S N Bose (1894-1974) and Enrico
Fermi (1901-1954). They are opposites in the sense that +1 is the opposite of -1. In certain
combinations the composite has mass (whereas many other things in the cosmos, including light,
have no mass). Gauge bosons are thought to carry the four fundamental forces of physics
(gravitation, electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) much as the wind carries a
sound over a long distance, or a signal is carried by a radio wave. A physicist must look for a particle
at a particular wave length, some measurable only at very tiny scales. One particle has aroused wide
interest since it was predicted by Peter Higgs in 1964: the so-called God particle, or scalar boson, is
thought to give rise to forms that have mass it informs matter.
84
See David Wilcox, The Aether Science of Dr. N A Kozyrev, NEXUS, April-May 2007: p. 43. In the
standard model, bosons carry forces, thus rendering the concept of ether redundant.
85
Burke, 1969: pp. 261-2. Burke cites the Scholastics formula existence is to essence as act is to
potency.
28


the thing has entelechy. Usually only living beings are said to possess
entelechy. However, if there is a degree of uncertainty about the outcome,
then we must base our prediction on probability. Modern scientists have in
general discarded the concept in favour of probabilistic, or stochastic, models.
Entropy (from the Greek entropia) refers to the direction of change. Natural
processes are considered to be irreversible when energy or organisation is
dispersed and is no longer available, or is unrecoverable. Entropy increases
as an ordered state of matter becomes disordered and when energy becomes
dispersed. Order and disorder are both states of matter.
If a structure is subject to destruction then the scrap that remains has greater
entropy, as it is less organised and less useful. In terms of information,
entropy is equivalent to ignorance or missing information. Entropy increases
as the information you have become less precise or more uncertain. But you
cannot bring about an increase in the orderliness (and in the information
about) part of a system unless there is a corresponding increase in entropy
somewhere else in the system (more disorder and less information). This is
why, in sub-atomic physics, fundamental uncertainty exists: one can measure
a particles momentum but not its position, for example, as Werner
Heisenberg discovered in 1927. The reverse of entropy is the proportion of
energy in a system that is available for work (and the accuracy of information
that is available for measurement).
The Pythagoreans and Platonists called matter the wandering cause
because, without an intelligence (the nous) to guide its development to
persuade matter into becoming its form matter would move in an utterly
purposeless way, randomly and chaotically.
86
Although entropy is a modern
term, the ancients Greeks had an equivalent idea about the inevitability of
disorder.
So while we can say that entelechy (or development) harnesses energy (and
information) and entropy disperses it, they are inseparable features of
material existence.
Sources: Wikipedia; The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1977).

86
See Sedley, 2007: pp. 114-118.
29


Thus we can redefine the ancients triple emanations as three connected properties of
matter: information, energy and mass, which cannot exist without the other.
The two poles
The next idea is more familiar. The ancients saw the world as having two poles: light/dark;
upper/lower; lightweight/heavy, male/female; subject/object; love/hate and, later,
positive/negative. From these poles, two forces were observed: attraction and repulsion,
including, for example, the personal chemistry between friends and lovers. Philosophers
argued that the forces of attraction and repulsion (or sympathy and antipathy) were
necessary for the formation of matter. Units of matter, atoms, were not just points: they had
to have substance to fill space. Another atom could not fill the same space, so it was
repelled. But atoms could form larger agglomerations which were held together by the force
of attraction. Our theories concerning the fundamental forces of electromagnetism and
gravitation are a modern parallel.
It is important to remember that the two poles provide balance, with neither ever achieving
supremacy. Thus every god has his consort as with Jupiter and Juno or his sibling
Apollo and Diana, for example. In between light and darkness there are degrees of shade.
So there is a field of influence between the poles. Darkness was not necessarily equated
with evil among the ancients, although the identification of light with goodness and virtue and
the dark with impurity and vice became central to the salvation religions. It is therefore
preferable to see the contrasts as related features, light~dark, and so on, rather than
separate objects or substances, since every quality will find its place along the spectrum.
The one source of power
The ancient thinkers argued that two inferred the prior existence of one: a single source of
power or first cause. The singularity of the one source implied, for some, perfection and an
absolute potential for anything; in other words, the capacity for existence. Modern physics, of
course, defines energy as capacity or power, but it is misleading to identify energy with
potential as such (as explained already). The ancient terms for this are dynamis in Greek
and potentia in Latin. We could therefore say that the one source is the dynamo that
generates the flow of energy (and its related manifestations of information and mass),
without which nothing would exist. In mathematics, potential may be thought of as
comprising the fundamental feature of organised complexity, as suggested by the physicist
Paul Davies, from which the cosmos derives it openness and intelligibility. The cosmos is
not completely determined like clockwork, but neither is it completely chaotic, where
30


everything happens at random.
87
Its property of orderliness permits us to see patterns and
thus make sense of it.
Orthodoxy presents the presumed existence of a source of order, or first mover, in an
idealist fashion, as a supernatural being, transcending the reality perceived by our senses.
When coupled with the idea that our material world once existed in a purer form, and has
become contaminated, we can readily recognise the mainstays of religion. However, the
thesis that potentiality is a precondition for reality as it is experienced may also be
interpreted in a scientific and materialist manner. The potential for order is a precondition for
a cosmos organised according to stable rules, or laws of nature. In a stronger form, the
hypothesis may propose that not only does the cosmos have a fundamental inherent
orderliness to it, but that there is, in addition, a direction in its evolution. Pythagoras believed
that the cosmos has an inner harmony, which can be understood through mathematics, that
is, through abstract ideas that go beyond sense perception (but may be validated in
practice). Religious and scientific approaches are in this respect rather similar, and not
only in the ideas promoted by the likes of Pythagoras. Platos philosophy is also consistent
with the Pythagorean cosmology. After the death of his teacher Socrates, Plato left Athens
and spent some time travelling in Pythagorean circles, when he may have met Timaeus of
Locri in Italy. On his return, Plato founded an Academy for mathematics and philosophy.
Inscribed over its door was the motto Let no one unacquainted with geometry enter here.
88

His philosophy went on to have a major influence on religion. The philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900) claimed in 1885 that Christianity is Platonism for the masses.
89

None of this is, of course, proof of Gods existence. Nor did all ancient Greek philosophers
accept the proposition that the cosmos has an inherent orderliness or purpose. The Atomists
were notable dissenters, suggesting instead that the apparent organisation of reality was the
outcome of the random accretion of atoms, originally existing in a chaotic state. (We will
return to these themes in our final chapter.) Nonetheless, the 4-3-2-1 scheme helps us see
how ancient science and religion fitted together to provide a single explanation for

87
Davies, 1993: pp. 136-139; 170 and 182-183.
88
Apuleius reports that after the death of Socrates in 399 BCE, Plato studied Pythagorean doctrine
and then went to Egypt, with the intention of going even further to visit the Magi and Indians (De
Platone 1.3); quoted in Arthur J Droge, 1989, Homer or Moses? Early Christian interpretations of the
history of culture, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie, 26, Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck: p.
159. See also Karen Armstrong, 2006: p. 317.
89
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886 and 1917, Beyond good and evil, Prologue. In the original German the
phrase reads: denn Christenthum ist Platonismus fuer's Volk
31


creation. It indicates that if the cosmos is infinite and eternal then its source is also infinite
and eternal, two of the qualities most commonly attributed to God. Moreover, as the source
is an intrinsic feature of the scheme, then it might also be concluded that the source is
immanent with reality, just as God is supposed to be. Lastly, since the source is a pre-
condition for perceived reality, there is a parallel with the idea that God transcends His
creation, whilst also remaining part of material reality.
90

The two Ks of arcane science
Cosmos indicates an orderly or harmonious system. Pythagoras is credited
with being the first to use the word in relation to the universe. He may have
adapted the parallel Zoroastrian term asha or arta, the concept of a divinely
ordered creation, which also means truth. Thus in Zoroastrian thinking, order
and truth are the same and the opposite of the lie, druj.
Chaos is the antithesis of cosmos. The word chaos in Greek derives from the
Indo-European root ghen, meaning gap or gape, and is similar to the English
chasm. Chaos should be understood as a reverse simile of the cosmos; it is
its direct opposite and derives from a process of analogical reasoning.
Although the word gas, coined in the seventeenth century, is derived from
chaos, the random activity of molecules that characterise a gas are not
chaotic in the way the ancients imagined the Void of Chaos to be like. It can
only be imagined in relation to reality of the cosmos itself. It is everything that
the cosmos is not.
Source: Wikipedia

90
The word immanent has a Latin root with the meaning of in-dwelling. Transcend means to climb
over or surpass. The Catholic Encyclopaedia says God is "omnipotent, eternal, immense,
incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection". In contrast, the cosmos is
viewed as finite and time-bound. It follows, in orthodox Christian doctrine, that God is both
transcendent and immanent because He both created and sustains the cosmos. In Pantheism, God
and the cosmos are viewed as identical, usually because the cosmos is considered to be infinite and
eternal or because matter emanated, that is, flowed from, from God. The Catholic Church has
condemned both Pantheism and Emanationism as related errors.
32


The myth of creation
We made every living thing from water, The Koran, The Prophets, Al-Anbiya, 21: 30.
91

The 4-3-2-1 scheme may be interpreted as a progression from the potential for existence to
its manifested forms, including matter, heat and light, and the rules by which the cosmos
functions and evolves. This manifestation provides a clue to how the ancients understood
the creation of the cosmos. There is a great degree of agreement between the Judaic
scriptures, the Hellenistic scholars and the Zoroastrian tradition on how the cosmos came to
be created. The historian Robin Lane Fox suggests that the Biblical creation myth, part of
the so-called Priestly writings, was composed between 530 and 500 BCE, during the Jews
exile in Babylonia. This means that the Priestly contributions to the Bible were composed
after the conquest of Babylonia in 539 BCE by the Persians, who promoted the Zoroastrian
Good Religion and later permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem.
92
Coincidently it is also
the very time Pythagoras was in Babylon. Hermippus of Smyrna (third century BCE) asserts
that Pythagoras inherited ideas from Judaism as well as from the Egyptians.
93
According to
the later Platonist scholar Apuleius (c.123-180 CE), Pythagoras was instructed by the
Persian magi, and by the Chaldeans and Brahmans (Florida, 15). This suggests an
exchange of ideas occurred before the scriptures took on the form we know today, so we
should not be surprised to find similarities between the Zoroastrian and Biblical myths of
creation and the theories of ancient Greek philosophers.
Chapter one of the Book of Genesis states, In the beginning when God began to create the
heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the
deep, while the spirit [or wind] of God swept over the face of the waters (Genesis, 1: 1-2). In
Greek translations, the equivalent for the Hebrew word for breath, spirit and wind, ruach,
was pneuma.
94
God then calls forth light and separated the light from the darkness. Next, He
called forth a dome (the sky) and separated the waters that were under the dome from the

91
The Koran: p. 298.
92
Lane Fox, 1992: p. 78. Lane Fox argues that, while in Babylonia, Ezra or an unknown editor
amalgamated ancient narratives referring to Yahweh (the Yahwist J text) and the Elohist (E) text,
both originally compiled sometime before 722 BCE (when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was
conquered by the Assyrians and its people deported), with the more recently composed Priestly (P)
text, and the book of the law discovered by Hilkiah in 624, into the first five Biblical books, the
Pentateuch, which are traditionally attributed to Moses (pp. 53-86). See also Armstrong, 2006: p. 177.
93
Joost-Gaugier, 2006: pp. 13-22.
94
See Isaacs, 1976: pp. 15-17, 43.
33


waters that were above the dome (Genesis, 1: 7); and over the next four days He created
everything else. The sequence of creation is presented in Figure 1-3. The original waters
should be understood as comprising the primordial matter (materia prima) which was fluid as
it lacked form. In the Holy Koran, the sequence of creation is similar to that in Genesis, but
the materia prima is called smoke or water.
95
It echoes the well-known Babylonian creation
story described in the Enuma Elish, a poem recorded on seven clay tablets recovered from
the library of the Assyrian monarch Ashurbanipal the Great (685-627 BCE). This described
how the gods called forth light, the firmament, the land, and the luminaries from the formless
abyss, Tiamat, and, lastly, formed man from the blood of her son, the slain titan Kingu. Philo
of Byblos (c. 42-120 CE) recorded a rather similar account of creation in his now lost History
of the Phoenicians, based, he claimed, on the writings of an eleventh century Phoenician
priest, Sanchuniathon of Berytus (modern Beirut). According to Philo, the Phoenicians the
Greek name for the Biblical Canaanites believed that the cosmos originated when the wind
blew through chaos to form [Tia]Mot (mud). The observers, called the Zophasemin, assist
in the opening of the cosmic egg, thus separating the waters and earth from heaven. The
god Eliun heads the pantheon. Another writer, Mochus of Sidon, confirmed the Phoenician
view that the work of creation was undertaken in stages by the high god El, firstly from
ther, forming Ulomos (which corresponds to the Hebrew lm, the world); then the
craftsman Chusor (from Kothar, the skilled one), undertakes the task of forging the cosmic
egg and thus the universe as we know it.
96

95
The Holy Koran states that God throned above the waters made the heavens and the Earth in six
days. In another verse, it records He set upon the Earth mountains towering high above it. He
pronounced His blessing upon it and in four days provided it with sustenance for all alike. Then He
made His way to the sky, which was but a cloud of vapour, and in two days He formed the sky into
seven heavens; from The Koran: Surah 11: 7 and 41: 10-12: pp. 133 and 159.
96
Cited in Moscati, 1999: pp. 30-38; see also Markoe, 2000: p. 119.
34


Read in this way it seems that God did not create the cosmos from nothing. The divine wind
(breath) moved formless material to shape it. Matter was given its form. In other words, God
made order from chaos. The Biblical Wisdom of Solomon declares that God created the
world out of formless matter (11: 17). We should consider creation as the process of
ordering or forming the cosmos, and not as the act of making something from nothing. In
normal usage, the Latin word creatio (creation) simply meant something that had been made
whereby a table, say, is brought into existence from some planks of wood.
97
Most ancient
philosophers took this view. The Atomists considered that unorganised matter had always
existed in the Void. The Roman Atomist Titus Lucretius (95-51 BCE) in his poem Of the

97
Christian theology proposes that God brought the entire substance of things into existence from a
state of non-existence (nothingness) productio totius substantia ex nihilo sui et subjecti that is,
from no prior subject-matter; see the Catholic Encyclopaedia on <www.newadvent.org>. The
objection to this formulation that nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil) is somewhat
simplistic. It can equally well be argued that reality only exists after it has been formed or shaped into
things. Reality means that which exists, and is real to the senses it must be observable and
comprehensible. So we must ask whether it is possible to observe and/or comprehend something that
is formless. What does the void of chaos look like? An answer is that it the void appears to be
nothing. Only after the materia prima was shaped into some-thing can we appreciate it. Thus before
creation the materia prima looked like no-thing.
Figure 1-3: The Biblical creation sequence
The Spirit of God + The Waters of the Void
Light
THE HEAVENS
THE EARTH
Dark
Sun Moon
Planets Stars
1
st
Day
4
th
Day
2
nd
Day
Upper
Waters
(Ether)
Lower
Waters
(Matter)
3
rd
Day
Air
5
th
Day
Water
Seas
Earth
Land
Creatures of the Earth
Flying
Creatures
Swimming
Creatures
Walking & Creeping Humankind
6
th
Day
The Sky
Plants
The Luminaries
35


Nature of Things affirms that primal bodies are solid and eternal and that nothing from
nothing ever yet was born (Book 1). Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE to 51 CE), who influenced
early Christian theologians, adopted the Stoics distinction between God as the efficient
cause and materia prima as the affected cause. We may also note the similarity in the
description of creation presented by the Roman poet Vergil:
In the beginning, Spirit within strengthens Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then
Titan stars; and Mind infused through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with great Matter
(Aeneid, iv: 724 ff)
This interpretation is supported further by the fact that the word used for God in Genesis is
Elohim, from which the Arabic Allah is derived. The root El is thought to mean power as
in the el in electricity or brilliance/ luminosity in the Akkadian equivalent ellu.
98
The
creation myth in Genesis therefore describes the sequence in which the source of power
shaped formless material into real things.
It is clear that the creation myth familiar to us from the Holy Bible is consistent with a more
scientific, and materialist, understanding of reality.
99
Without much difficulty the Genesis
story can be re-worded as a physical process by which forms and structures took shape.
The creation myth thus becomes an explanation of how the cosmos evolved. However, as
we can see from the 4-3-2-1 scheme, the myth assumes not just a source of power (called
Elohim) but an idea about the inherent orderliness of reality.
Genesis Chapter 1 re-translated
In more scientific language the creation story of Genesis might read as follows:
In the beginning the powers energy activated the chaotic primary material.
This movement initially separated light from darkness and then the heavier
substances from the lighter. Next, the heavier substances congealed into
solid, liquid and gaseous forms and became the Earth with its land, seas and
atmosphere. In the Heavens the lightest substance (ther) congealed to form

98
The word Elohim is a plural implying that the Jews, like other Semitic peoples, once acknowledged
a pantheon of gods. Psalm 82 states God [Yahweh] has taken his place in the divine council; in the
midst of the gods he holds judgement. Karen Armstrong links the meaning of elohim to the psalms
reference to You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; Armstrong, 2006, pp. 46 and 66-67.
99
The same point was made in Goldstein, 1987: p. 21.
36


the sun and the other luminaries. From the earth plants came forth, and from
the seas and air emerged swimming and flying creatures. On land, now
covered by vegetation, came forth land animals and, lastly, humankind.
Even though such a reading of Chapter 1 is geocentric, or Earth-centred, and does
not explain how life evolved in Genesis it results from Gods will it is quite logical
and grounded in observable physical evidence, such as the behaviour of fluids when
heated and how heavier materials in a solution separate to form sediments. The
sequence that vegetation came first and that sea life preceded that of animal life on
land also makes sense from observing the food-chain.
The explanation appears simplistic in the light of modern scientific discoveries but it
is not wrong. Even though a pocket calculator is a more advanced instrument than an
abacus, the latter does not provide incorrect answers; it is just that a pocket
calculator can perform many more mathematical functions, answering questions the
ancients had not asked themselves. The arcane science of antiquity is not
necessarily erroneous even though it is less versatile.

Ordering the cosmos
And they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the One who exists, nor
did they recognize the Artisan for they went far astray on the paths of error. But I
learned both what is secret and what is manifest, for Wisdom, the fashioner of all things,
taught me. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding
perception of the Creator Let them know how much better than these [things] is the Lord,
for the author of beauty created them. The Wisdom of Solomon, 7: 21-22; 13: 1-5 (c. 150
BCE)
To the ancients, the orderliness of the cosmos was ascribed to God, a personification of
power, the first mover, originator of the chain of causation and the potential for everything we
see around us. But personification is more than a procedure whereby a feature of reality is
named God. Personification involved attributing human characteristics to this power and
potential, because it follows a process of analogical reasoning (for more on this refer to
Appendix B). God is not just a symbol for a metaphysical concept. He is an explanation for
why the cosmos exists. Thus God was also personified as an architect or demiurge, an
artisan or craftsman. It is an image at the heart of the Bible, for like Platos divine Craftsman,
the God of Genesis assembles His forms. He periodically stops to check to ascertain if the
37


works firstly the works of division (days one to three) and then the works of adornment
(days four, five and six) were indeed good. At its end, He rests and allows the cosmic
assemblage to operate by itself. The work is similarly performed in six acts in Zoroasters
cosmology. Ahura Mazdas first act of creation was to call into being through his Holy Spirit
(Spenta Mainyu) the six holy immortals (the Amesha Spenta), who symbolised the aspects
of God and the six virtues. These six divinities, or aspects of Gods person, went on to form
in stages: firstly, the sky, water and the earth; and subsequently, plants, animals and
people.
100
Prior to creation there existed the Void or Gap (Thwasha) as in the Bible story.
101

The image commonly used to describe the cosmos by Zoroastrians was that of an egg, in
which the shell is equivalent to the dome of heaven, wherein the stars are fixed, the white of
the egg are the waters, and the yolk is the land. Similar divinities also appear in Platos
mythical account of creation, in which God, as the Craftsman, delegates the task of
populating the Earth with living creatures to the gods, who were the first beings He
fashioned.
During the Exile, the authors of the Book of Genesis did not so much borrow an existing
creation story as buy into the new metaphysics that was to underpin the emergence of
science. Scholars from the periphery of the Persian Empire, like Pythagoras, came to
Babylon to study and returned to their own lands to teach this new way of understanding the
cosmos. Babylonia, ancient Chaldea, was during the sixth century BCE the intellectual hub
of an expanding world empire. After Cambyses conquest of Egypt in 525, the Jews were
permitted to return to their Promised Land because they were Persian loyalists. Jerusalem
was a strategic outpost that the Persian great kings had to hold if they were to control Egypt
to the south. By incorporating elements of Zoroastrian teaching, notably concerning the
creation and the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead and the religious role of a
saviour lord, the Jews signalled their affiliation to the Archaemenid dynasty. That the
returning Jews religion was no longer the same as that of the original exiles is clear from the
controversy surrounding the erection of two competing temples to the one God. The

100
In later, Middle Persian (or Pahlavi), versions of the Avesta and Bundahishn, each of the Amesha
Spenta was responsible for creating a part of the cosmos: Shahrevar (Khshathra) fashioned the stone
or crystal dome of heaven and metals; Ardvahist (Asha Vahishta) made fire and the luminaries;
Spendarmad (Spenta Armati) formed the earth; Hordad (Hauvartt) the waters; Amurdad (Amerett)
the plants; and Vahman (Vohu Manah) made the animals; while Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda) created
humankind. Hordad had two helpers Vata and Vayu to produce the air and wind, as well as the
fraward or fravashi, who are guardian or nurturing spirits. See Clark, 2001: pp. 52-54; and Hinnels,
1981: p. 13.
101
See the Timaeus and Critias; in Plato, 2008: p. 53. Plato calls God the Father of creation (p. 25).
38


reconstruction of Solomons temple on its old site was begun in 518 or 516 BCE but a rival
temple was also erected by those who had remained behind, on Mount Gerizim. The latter
group, who nevertheless followed the laws of Moses, became known as the Samaritans and
they claimed that Ezra had altered the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which are
ascribed to Moses.
102
The returning exiles, under Ezra, championed the right of all Jews to
sacrifice in the Temple precincts, in the face of accusations from some Levite priests that
they had been defiled from their sojourn among the Gentiles. Described as the sons of
Zadok, the returnees contended that God had renewed His covenant with the people, who
could now include all races. Thus Judaism opened itself to Gentile converts and was no
longer the exclusive religion of the original Twelve Tribes of Israel.
103

The new metaphysics linked the structure of the cosmos and the structure of perception and
understanding. The connections are illustrated in Figure 1-4. In this diagram, the series of
abstractions from sensory experience through the division into body, spirit and mind and the
polarities, is compared to the more familiar earth-centred map of the cosmos, consistent with
ancient models of the universe. We share with other animals a capability to interpret and
remember sensory data the elementary or hylic level of consciousness. It is also the level
where actions show results and where phenomena actually happen. In addition, humans
can, through their mastery of language, analyse data and relate one phenomenon to
another. But to achieve true knowledge science, in other words we must consider
sensory data in an abstract way, by using, for instance, mathematics and logic. This is the
empyrean level. Beyond this level we cannot intellectualise, however, for transcending the
empyrean heavens is God, who is unintelligible to us mortals.

102
See Wilson, 1999: p. 183. The Mount Gerizim Temple and the Samaritan town of Shechem (now
Nablus) were destroyed around 111 BCE by the Hasmonean king Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE); see
Sand, 2009: p. 160.
103
See Welch, 1935: Chapters 8-13; Ezra, 5: 1 and the prophecy in Zachariah, 8:11-23: I will not deal
with the remnant of this people [in exile] as in the former days, says the Lord of hosts. For there shall
be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies
shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. I have
purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Many peoples and
strong nations [also] shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favour of
the Lord. In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his
garment and saying Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. See also Kng,
1992: pp. 103-107, who talks of a paradigm shift in the interpretation of Jewish law under the Zadokite
scribe Ezra. The significance of the name Israel changes: it is no longer a kingdom but above all a
religious community identical with Judaism (pp. 106-107).
39


The Hermetic paradigms central proposition As above, so below refers to the theory that
the stars and planets, which are, of course, visible to us (and thus part of the sensory field of
knowledge), moved terrestrial phenomena and caused events on Earth. This assumption
underpinned the science of the ancients. The powers that control the world were thought to
be active at the ethereal plane, and the ancients believed that they could be influenced
through religious and magical rites.
It is important to remember that the influence of the Hermetic paradigm in Ancient and
Medieval times does not imply that there were not competing opinions. Indeed a number of
Pythagorean astronomers held modern views: Herakleides of Pontus (c. 390-310 BCE)
proposed that the Earth rotated on its axis, thus explaining the alternation of day and night,
and Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-230 BCE) believed the Earth circled the Sun. Since
Parmenides of Elea (fifth century BCE) most scholars have thought the Earth to be a sphere,
not flat, with some asserting that Pythagoras was the first Greek to consider this to be the
case.
104
The sixth century BCE was also an age of exploration, when fleets first
circumnavigated Africa and mapped the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coastlines.
105

Nevertheless, the paradigms internal consistency and comprehensiveness established its
primacy in metaphysics and theology, while its operational research programme of
geometry and architecture, astrology and alchemy, ethics and sophistry, theurgy and
religious rites, ensured its longevity.

104
See Koestler, 1959: pp. 46 and 50 and Russo, 2004: p. 67.
105
Herodotus, 1972: Book 4, pp. 282-285.
40


Figure 1-4: Hermetic map of the cosmos
Saturn
Jupiter
Mars
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Moon
ELEMENTAL
PLANE
ETHEREAL
PLANE
EMPYREAN
PLANE
Earth
Starry
Heaven
INTELLECTUAL
(OR RATIONAL
/DIALECTICAL)
LEVEL OF
KNOWLEDGE
SENSORY
LEVEL OF
KNOWLEDGE
INTELLIGIBLE
LEVEL OF
KNOWLEDGE
(e.g. BY USING
MATHEMATICAL
SYMBOLS)
4 Elements
3 Emanations
(Idea, Energy &
Manifestation/
Mass)
One
Source of
Power &
2 Polarities
41


Nor was ancient cosmology inconsistent with the myths of creation. We may see this by
comparing the theories of Anaxagoras with the poet Hesiods mythic narrative. Anaxagoras
rationalist views got him into trouble with the religious authorities of Athens and he had to
flee to Lampsacus to avoid prosecution for impiety in 450 BCE. He proposed that the
intelligence (nous) engineered, through a vortex, the separation of opposites (the two poles
of the 4-3-2-1 scheme) and their recombination as the four elements: dense, wet, cold and
dark came together here, where there is now earth.
106
The process of whirling in the vortex
separated the undifferentiated chaotic primal matter (composed of infinitesimal particles) into
substances of specific qualities, which then condensed at the base and centre of the vortex,
with lighter elements floating above the denser and to its periphery. The result is illustrated
at Figure 1-5.
107

106
Sedley, 2007: p. 10.
107
Sedley, 2007: pp. 4-10 and 32.
Figure 1-5: The vortex model of the cosmos
Adapted from David Sedley, 2007, Creationism and its critics in Antiquity, University of California Press: p. 6
The Earth with the
land surrounded
by the ocean
The Sun and Moon
circle the Earth with
one above it and
one below the
horizon
The rotation of the
Vortex causes denser
matter to coalesce at
the centre
Although the Earth is
shown as flat in this
diagram, a spherical
Earth could also be
assumed.
The celestial
sphere of the
Cosmos
42


On the face of it this physical model for the evolution of the cosmos seems to bear little
relation to the genealogical model used by Hesiod. In his poem the Theogony (The Birth of
the Gods), composed around 700 BCE, Hesiod set out a family tree of primordial deities
starting with Chaos. From Chaos arose the Earth (Gaia), the eternal seat of gods and men,
and the space beneath it, the Tartarus, or underworld.
108
Chaos also gave birth to a son,
darkness (Erebus), and a daughter, night (Nyx), who mate to produce brightness (ther),
and its counterpart, and sibling, day (Hemera). As Hemera enters Tartarus, her mother, Nyx,
leaves it, thus establishing the cycle of night and day on Earth. Gaias offspring were the
features of our planet, the sky (Uranus), sea (Pontus) and mountains (Ourea). Uranus then
coupled with his mother Gaia to father the twelve Titans, six male and six female, who may
be identified with the signs of the Zodiac. Uranus and Gaia are also the progenitors of the
seven luminaries (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) known to the
ancients. The genealogy continues with numerous other natural features, principles and
emotions. Thus we see that even in the earliest literature of the Greeks the cosmos was
imagined to derive from Chaos, through a process of separation (birth) and consolidation
(mating). Later sources identified the forces of attraction, Love, and of repulsion or
separation, Strife, with the deities Eros and Eris, considered by some to be the children of
Nyx.
109
Modern science sees four fundamental forces at work, rather than just the two
polarities, of which electromagnetism and gravitation are the most obvious to us.
Such representations of physical forces as divine persons were not meant to be accepted as
literal fact but simply as analogies of truths that were otherwise hard to understand.
According to Plato, Socrates spent the last hours before his execution in 399 BCE
discussing the myths of the afterlife. He ended the conversation by stating that I did not
mean to affirm that the description which I have given of the [journey of the] soul and her
mansions is exactly true a man of sense ought to say that. But I do say that something
of the kind is true (Phaedo, 114d).
110
One of the most eminent Arab philosophers and
interpreters of Plato and Aristotle, Ibn Rushd (better known in the West as Averros), in his

108
Hesiod, Theogony: 116-117.
109
See Grimal, 1991: pp. 53, 142-143 and 198. Eros and Eris were sometimes said to be the son and
daughter of the god of war, Ares (Mars). The philosopher Empedocles called them Kypris, Love, and
Ares, Strife, in his poem On Nature. Kypris is another name for Aphrodite (Venus), who was Mars
lover: see Sedley, 2007: p. 34.
110
Plato, Phaedo, 1999: p. 672.
43


dialogue The Incoherence of Incoherence, Tahafut al-tahafut (c. 1180), explained that the
myth portraying God as a Craftsman is nothing but a metaphor and a poetical
expression.
111
It is likely that many ancient and medieval philosophers took this view also.
We find in creation myths a description of physical processes that cannot be dismissed as
merely supernatural explanations. There is an underpinning logic to ancient thought. The key
feature of the cosmos lies in its orderliness, and it is this feature that permits us to
comprehend reality. Arcane science conceived of matter and indeed of reality as a whole
as having three fundamental properties which we can call information, energy and mass
(equivalent to the archetypal form/ idea, the animating spirit and the corporeal appearance).
These abstractions are consistent with a model of the cosmos in which the highest
empyrean plane of the intelligible frames the operation of the ethereal plane of archetypes,
which can be understood intellectually, and hence of the mundane terrestrial and material
world, which is the plane of experience. Zoroaster was credited with originating these ideas,
which also underpin the Biblical myths. Conceivably Pythagoras was the key figure who
brought the various traditions of antiquity together into what I have called the Hermetic
paradigm. He realised that the cosmic order could be understood with mathematics.
Moreover, the sacrifice of oxen by Pythagoras symbolises the continuity between his and
Zoroasters teaching that relate mathematical logic and the divine. The differences between
science and religion as means of understanding what is true or false are perhaps not as
great as is often made out. In the seventeenth century, Ren Descartes posited that any
truth claim necessitated the existence of an omniscient all-knowing being. A sceptical
scientist who doubts the existence of God must also accept that a complete understanding
of reality is also beyond comprehension, because only an omniscient being can know
everything. So when a scientist, in the pursuit of absolute truth, acknowledges the possibility
that everything can be known, he or she cannot at the same time dispute the possible
existence of God. We cannot even be certain of a partial truth unless we have a proven
theory of everything.
112
In short, for Zoroaster the path to God is through truth, and for
Pythagoras the path to truth is through mathematics.

111
Cited by Lyons, 2010: p. 182. Averros argued that if personification was taken literally, instead of
figuratively, then it implied that God was a kind of super human.
112
Of course, the sceptic can claim to be unconvinced that absolute truth is possible or gaining a
complete understanding is feasible. The arguments are laid out in Koakowski, 1982: pp. 82-89.
44


In subsequent chapters I will consider the other foundational myths contained in the Bible
and explain how these should be separated from their dogmatic and literal interpretation and
seen for the sophisticated understanding of reality that they indeed are.

45


Chapter 2: Adams loss, Eves gain

A great number of gods have also been derived from scientific theories about the world of
nature These impious tales are merely the picturesque disguise of a sophisticated
scientific theory.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2:63 (1
st
Century BCE).

In the second chapter of this investigation into the arcane science of the ancient Greek-
speaking world the basis for the major salvation religions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism
and Zoroastrianism I consider the myth concerning the travails of life and, in particular, the
story of Adam and Eve and its parallels from other traditions.
An unexplored aspect of the current debate between science and religion concerns the
contention that there once existed an age of abundance and harmony. The struggle for
existence and the resulting suffering, it is asserted, came about because Adam and Eve
disobeyed God. In accordance with a traditional reading of the Holy Bible, evil was attracted
into the world by the sin of the first couple. It was not present at the point of creation, when
God saw that His works were good. Biblical literalists, so-called creationists, therefore
reject the theory of evolution on the grounds that the competition for survival between
organisms, which is the motor for favouring the adaptation or extinction of species, cannot
have taken place when the earth was a paradise. Hence the anti-Darwin jibe popular among
modern creationists is if we come from slime and revert to slime, its not surprising that life
is slimy.
113
Biblical literalists believe that the cosmos and life on earth followed different laws
of nature before the Fall. They contend, in contradiction to the laws of physics, following
Newton, and, indeed, Darwins theory of evolution, which are predicated on the concept of
entropy, that disorder is not a fundamental feature of the material world. Suffering is the
result of peoples sin, not a natural condition.
114

The proposition of this essay is that the myths in the Bible, and other sacred texts, actually
convey a scientific comprehension of how the cosmos works, often compatible with modern

113
Quoted in Stephen Moss, Defying Darwin, The Guardian G2 Section, 17 February 2009: p. 9.
114
For creationists the doctrine that suffering arises from human sinfulness lets God off the hook, as
it were. Theologians have argued for centuries about why God permits evil to occur if He created a
perfect world, and why, since He has the power to put things right, does He not do so?
46


thinking, although expressed in allegory. For example, and contrary to the contemporary
assumption that Darwin invented a novel theory, the idea of evolution was central to the
Hermetic paradigm. To the ancients, matter was the same basic stuff but with additional
features and qualities that developed through a blossoming into greater complexity. In the
ancient theory of evolution qualities that were fit for purpose developed organically,
analogous to a plants flowering, in a natural cycle from seed to maturity and then to decay.
Minerals evolved within the earth just as organisms did, though over a longer timescale,
governed, of course, by the planets. Charles Darwin did not discover the process of
evolution; he simply provided an explanation for it. The literalist approach to reading sacred
texts misunderstands both their content and context.
So by analysing the hidden meaning of myths, like those of Genesis, we uncover the arcane
science within them. But if the Biblical literalists interpretation of the myth of the Fall is
correct, it follows that the concept of entropy as a fundamental feature of physics, and of the
evolution of life, are incompatible with scripture. In this case, then, arcane science and
modern science fail to coincide, and the thesis of the essay is invalidated. To address this
problem I present an interpretation of the myth of the Fall from an unusual perspective and
take a somewhat roundabout route through the issues. Firstly, I look at the beliefs in
supernatural beings to uncover what the ancients really meant when they talked about
angels, demons, fairies and genies. I will then examine the myths of how evil is supposed to
have come into the world, humanitys responsibility in this, and what is meant by evil.
Lastly, we will examine the multiple meanings of the myth, the symbolic gains and losses,
and the messages for humanity. We will find the Bibles myth of the Fall continues to make
sense without requiring us to abandon the findings of modern science.
Faith and fairies
Chapter one examined the Biblical creation myth and concluded that the story had a
scientific dimension, consistent with the theories put forward by the ancient Greek
philosophers. The modern world is, however, far less comfortable with the idea that
supernatural beings exist on our planet. We must nonetheless investigate the belief in
fairies, and their opposite numbers, the fiends or demons, if we are to understand the arcane
science of the ancients. According to Jewish lore, God created fairies and fiends at the end
of the sixth day. They are living organisms, but God ran out of time before the Sabbath day
of rest and He left them without bodies. We cannot therefore perceive them through our
normal senses. So what are these creatures? As we can see from the story of the Sleeping
Beauty, fairies personify the graces (beauty, good cheer, harmony and mirth). But what of
47


the fiends? One of the most feared was Lilith, who was said to kill new-born babies in
revenge for having been spurned by Adam in favour of Eve. From this we may deduce that
fiends are the cause of illness and unhappiness.
People would think me rather peculiar if I announced my belief in fairies, unless I was among
the audience of a Peter Pan pantomime. (And yes, I have, of course, done so!)
115
It would be
just as odd if I insisted that I believe in viruses. Who doesnt? But for the most part we take
the existence of viruses on trust. We have seen pictures of horrible looking green things with
protruding bits that are supposed to latch onto cells in our bodies to do us harm. The fact is
that I have never seen a virus, but take on trust my doctors assurance that if my illness is
viral I will normally recover from the infection. For ancient people without microscopes,
microbes were unknown but diseases nonetheless existed, resulting in painful symptoms
and, sometimes, death, just as they do today. When a doctor told someone that their illness
was the result of a curse and prescribed a few days in bed with plenty of hot lemon tea and a
visit to a gods temple or a saints shrine, who are we to argue that s/he got it all wrong? The
historian Procopius describing the plague that stuck Asia Minor in 542 CE recorded that:
During these times there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came
near to being annihilated. It started from the Egyptians who dwell in Pelesium.
Then it divided and moved in one direction towards Alexandria and the rest of Egypt,
and in the other direction it came to Palestine and from there it spread to the
whole world. This disease always took its start from the coast, and from there
went up to the interior. And in the second year it reached Byzantium in the middle of
spring, where it happened that I was staying at the time. And it came as follows.
Many persons saw apparitions of supernatural beings in human guise of every
description, and those who encountered them were seized also by the disease. Now
at first those who met these creatures tried to turn them aside by uttering the holiest
of names and exorcising them in other ways as well as they could, but they
accomplished absolutely nothing, for even in the sanctuaries where most of them fled
for refuge they were dying constantly. But in the case of some they saw a
vision in a dream or else to hear a voice foretelling to them that they were written
down in the number of those who were to die. But with the majority it came about that
they were seized by the disease without becoming aware of what was coming either
through a waking vision or a dream. (History of the Wars, Book II)

115
Audiences at performances of J M Barries Peter Pan (1904) are expected to call out I believe in
fairies in a ritual to revive the dying Tinkerbell.
48


These strange sightings did not stop the Emperor from instituting quarantine measures in an
attempt to limit the contagion or families from isolating their sick. In any case, for less virulent
infections, the remedies of ancient medicine were often quite sound. Nowadays we simply
do not understand the diagnosis. Talk of demons and wicked sprites, witchcraft and the evil
eye, disappeared from Europe as the seventeenth century drew to a close. The microscope
had been invented by 1618, alongside the telescope, and was used by Robert Hooke (1635-
1703) to describe cells and tiny creatures in his Micrographia (1665). Inspired by Hooke, the
Dutch lens maker Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) continued to expand the field of
microbiological knowledge, and in 1680 his discovery of bacteria was validated by the British
Royal Society. There was no longer the need to personify germs as bad fairies or demons
when they could be seen under a microscope. So we recognise instead the existence of
viruses and bacteria as the cause of much disease; and in other things invisible to the naked
eye such as the neural or hormonal origin of mental distress.
Consequently we have grown accustomed to thinking that religious belief is a matter of faith
in the supernatural. By contrast, in antiquity, religion and science were intermingled, while
occult, or unseen, powers were very much part of the natural scene. The connotation that
the religious are people faithful to a doctrine is actually modern, formed at the Reformation.
(I discuss this further in Appendix B.) In ancient times, people expressed their devotion to
the divine through prayer, by making sacrifice and taking part in ceremonies. They would be
confused if told that their belief in how the cosmos worked was a faith, when it seemed to
them simply to be true (in so far as anything could be known for certain). Once we
acknowledge this, we can better understand the real meaning of myth as rational
explanations of reality. It follows that the critics of religion, like Richard Dawkins, who accuse
the faithful of being superstitious believers in the supernatural are misdirecting their censure.
To be sure, for the most part, the faithful are holding firm to knowledge based heavily on
analogical reasoning, now considered a largely obsolete method in science. Certainly, if the
analogies found in the myths at the heart of the salvation creeds are accepted literally we
might well accuse their modern followers the fundamentalists of clinging onto out of date
ideas. But this is by no means a novel criticism. The poet and Christian polemicist John
Milton (1608-74) called the same uncritical attachment to scriptural text obstinate
literality.
116
Myths can be read, and indeed should be interpreted, another way: as
metaphors for explanations that can also be expressed logically. It is clear, for instance, that
Pythagoras analysed the cosmos mathematically as well as metaphorically. In using the

116
John Milton, 1643, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; cited in Beer, 2008: p. 144.
49


term arcane science I am referring to the fact that the ancients themselves employed logic,
into which only a small elite were educated (often through secretive initiation practices). But
at the same time they composed open source material in the form of myth and analogy for
mass consumption.
Gods fallen copies: humans and angels
The story of humankinds Fall is told through two connected myths: that of the first womans
foolishness and of the fallen angels, cast out of the heavens into the underworld (hell), and
who became devils. The story of the first womans transgression is known from many
cultures and introduces familiar themes. As with the story of the foolish Pandora, the first
woman according to ancient Greek legend, whose curiosity led her to open a forbidden jar,
women were blamed for the ills that from then onwards plagued the world. In these distinctly
patriarchal accounts, Gods perfect design was corrupted by womens foolishness. They in
turn remain sullied by that original pollution the first woman caused. Womens curse of
menstruation and painful childbirth is a collective punishment for curiosity and disobedience.
But the myth of the Fall is also of interest in understanding arcane science.
The fall of the angels
And Eve understood that [it was] the Devil [before her] and she fell on her face
on the earth and her sorrow and groaning and wailing was redoubled. And she cried
out and said: Woe unto thee, thou Devil. Why dost thou attack us for no cause?
What hast thou to do with us? What have we done to thee? For thou pursuest us with
craft? Or why doth thy malice assail us? Have we taken away thy glory and caused
thee to be without honour? Why dost thou harry us, thou enemy [and persecute us]
to the death in wickedness and envy?
And with a heavy sigh, the Devil spake: O Adam! all my hostility, envy, and sorrow is
for thee, since it is for thee that I have been expelled from my glory, which I
possessed in the heavens in the midst of the angels and for thee was I cast out in the
earth. Adam answered, What dost thou tell me? What have I done to thee or what
is my fault against thee? Seeing that thou hast received no harm or injury from us,
why dost thou pursue us?
The Devil replied, Adam, what dost thou tell me? It is for thy sake that I have been
hurled from that place. When thou wast formed. I was hurled out of the presence of
God and banished from the company of the angels. When God blew into thee the
breath of life and thy face and likeness was made in the image of God, Michael also
50


brought thee and made [us] worship thee in the sight of God; and God the Lord
spake: Here is Adam. I have made thee in our image and likeness. And Michael
went out and called all the angels saying: Worship the image of God as the Lord
God hath commanded.
And Michael himself worshipped first; then he called me and said: Worship the
image of God the Lord. And I answered, I have no [need] to worship Adam. And
since Michael kept urging me to worship, I said to him, 'Why dost thou urge me? I will
not worship an inferior and younger being [than I]. I am his senior in the Creation,
before he was made was I already made. It is his duty to worship me.'
When the angels, who were under me, heard this, they refused to worship him. And
Michael saith, 'Worship the image of God, but if thou wilt not worship him, the Lord
God will be wrath with thee.' And I said, 'If He be wrath with me, I will set my seat
above the stars of heaven and will be like the Highest.'
And God the Lord was wrath with me and banished me and my angels from our
glory; and on thy account we were expelled from our abodes into this world and
hurled on the earth. And straightway we were overcome with grief, since we had
been spoiled of so great glory. And we were grieved when we saw thee in such joy
and luxury. And with guile I cheated thy wife and caused thee to be expelled through
her [doing] from thy joy and luxury, as I have been driven out of my glory.
When Adam heard the Devil say this, he cried out and wept and spake: O Lord my
God, my life is in thy hands. Banish this Adversary far from me, who seeketh to
destroy my soul, and give me his glory which he himself hath lost. And at that
moment, the Devil vanished before him.
Source: The Life of Adam and Eve, xi: 2-xvi: 3 (1
st
Century CE).

The second story is also widespread, and known to many cultures. The rebellion of the fallen
angles against God has its parallel with the war of Olympian gods against the Titans in
Greek myth; a theme also present in Hittite and Babylonian traditions. There is however
some confusion as to whether the fallen angels were truly angels at all, or merely genies.
In Islam, angels are beings of goodness that cannot disobey God. Certainly Islam considers
Iblis (Satan) to rank among the genies termed jinn, who are thought to possess free will
like humans, but, as they are made from a subtle fire, are invisible to us. The word genie
51


comes from the Latin genius, a night spirit made from thereal fire.
117
Genies are also
supposed to be tutelary or guardian spirits. The Zoroastrian equivalents of these tutelary
spirits are the fravashis or fravahrs. Angels in the Zoroastrian tradition are the yazatas, or
yazad, spiritual beings worthy of reverence, who assist people in living righteously; demons
are known as daevas or div.
118

Apparently three types of being were created by God: spiritual beings, or fiery creatures, that
do not occupy space (angels/ genies); corporeal beings that occupy space but lack
spirituality (animals); and people, who are both corporeal and spiritual. The property of
extension, that is, of spatial presence, is crucial to understanding why matter was considered
to be less perfect than spiritual substance (often termed ther). Matter can be destroyed or
chopped into smaller pieces. But spiritual things cannot be destroyed, except through
annihilation by Gods will. Put in another way, matter is subject to entropy and exists in both
space and time, whereas spiritual beings are eternal, existing outside of time. If material
things, like our bodies, are deemed less perfect than spiritual things, such as our souls, it is
but a small (but erroneous) step to argue that evil resides in matter.
Angels are said to be the messengers of God. They convey information and guidance to
humanity. Under the influential scheme elaborated by Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa
Theologiae (1272-3), itself based on a fifth or sixth century text, The Celestial Hierarchy, only
the lowest of three hierarchies of angels, those nearest the Earth, communicate with people
as a matter of course. These include the guardian angels who guide individual destiny. The
beings called Watchers in the Book of Enoch, which is thought to have been composed
around 175 to 150 BCE, are identified usually with the fallen angels, but are more akin to
genies. Archangels guide humankind as whole: notably Gabriel who is said to have
appeared to several prophets, including Daniel, the Virgin Mary and Mohammed. Guardian
angels are reported to have intervened to help people at times of difficulty, as was the case
with the angel who led Simon Peter and others from prison in Jerusalem in 44 CE (The Acts
of the Apostles, 5: 19). Moreover, without angels to guide people it is difficult to see how

117
In Pauls Letter to the Hebrews (1: 7) God makes His angels winds, and his servants flames of
fire, a description echoing Psalm 104: 4: You make the winds Your messengers, fire and flame Your
ministers. Johns vision of heaven includes seven spirits before the Throne of God, who hold seven
stars, and they are seven flaming torches (Revelation, 1: 4, 2: 1, 3:1 and 4:5).
118
The Gathas make reference to several yazata, including Ashi, the former goddess of recompense;
Atar, fire; and Sroash, devotion. The Yashts, or hymns, mention Mithra (or Mihr), who uses his mace
to defeat Ahriman, and reminds one of the archangel Michael. See Clark, 2001: pp. 38-41, 48, 51-54,
142 and 180.
52


divine providence, or destiny, can unfold. Angels therefore personify the informational
content of the cosmos, providing information about the divine plan.
Angels are the first copy of the ideas of God, the first participation of that
blueprint formed directly from the mind of the divine Architect. St Augustine put this
beautifully when he maintained that the things of the world poured forth from God in a
double way: intellectually into the minds of the angels; and physically into the world of
things (Walter Farrel).
119

Information is, of course, unconstrained by space, echoing the old trick question regarding
the number of angels that may dance upon a point of pin. (The answer is any number since
an angel occupies no space.) But angels are not simply personifications of information.
Medieval scholars posited that angels inspired humans to use their imagination to make
sense of reality. We see patterns in our environment, not just the threats, or sources of food,
and mates, that are the totality of consciousness in other animals. Based on these patterns
common features and characteristics we can use our imagination to formulate and learn
adaptive strategies to overcome the constraints of our environment. For the most part,
people gain information piece by piece, we might even say in bits, through reasoning. But
angelic knowledge comes all in one go, as revelation. The word inspiration provides a clue;
to be inspired is to gain deep understanding. A spiritual experience is often associated with
the feeling that everything is suddenly connected and intelligible. More evidence comes from
the word genius, meaning exalted intellectual power. Traditionally, angels were created on
the second day, implying that they are beings of light, and thus of enlightenment. Angels
therefore personify inspiration.
But if angels guide people spiritually through information and inspiration, the fallen angels or
devils exert their influence not through the intellect but through instinct, corporeally.
Traditionally devils attack people through temptation and by encouraging obsession linked
to desire or fear and, less commonly, by possession, whereby a persons self-control is
wreaked. These manifestations of demonic attack are nowadays viewed rightly as mental
illness. Nonetheless, if we are to understand arcane science we must recognise that the use
of concepts like angels and demons was quite rational.
There is clearly a connection between genies and guardian angels and between jinn and
demons. Perhaps we can say that the lower ranks of angles, those who deal with people,
including archangels, together with the fallen angels are the same type of ethereal beings,

119
Farrel, 1938-42: Chapter 10 and on <www.domcentral.org/farrell/companion/default.htm>
53


and personify conscience (guardian angels), inspiration (archangels and similar) or
obsession (demons). The highest angelic orders, or choirs, known as the cherubim,
ophannin and seraphim, may be empyrean beings, composed of celestial fire and cannot be
perceived by humans.
120
This might explain why God is said to have ordered the angels to
bow to Adam. The lower angelic orders, or genies, realise themselves as apparitions, and
are thus capable of putting in an appearance in the material world, which was assigned by
God to humankind. (People have the capability to ignore their conscience, to disregard
Gods messages and, in the case of demonic temptation, to overcome their passions, so
neither angels nor demons may overpower humans.) This demand led to Satans rebellion
according to the Koran and the non-canonical Life of Adam and Eve. The apocryphal
Wisdom of Solomon adds that through the Devils envy, death entered the world (2: 24).
This brings us to the question of the wickedest archfiend of them all: the Devil himself. Our
English word devil derives from the Greek diabolos, meaning the calumniator, the spreader
of lies.
121
The personification of absolute evil in the form of the Devil is another example of
analogical reasoning, whereby an explanation is provided in human-like guise. Pope
Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) asserted him to be the head of all the wicked, meaning that
the Devil is the instigator of sin.
122
Jesus of Nazareth (c. 4 BCE 36 CE) in speaking of his
own demise called the Devil the ruler of this world (John, 14: 30), but implied that he will
not control the next world. In principle, the Devil is seen as the ruler of the imperfect material
world, the instigator of its corruption and bringer of harm.
The word evil means bad or harmful; which implies the question bad or harmful to whom?
Evil is supposed to happen when people sin (sin being an immoral act), and it is the result of
an action or event upon someone, not the particular form of sinfulness, immorality or vice.
123

120
According to the Testament of Adam, a book written around fourth century CE of which only
fragments remain, Before my sin saith Adam, I heard at this [fourth] hour, O my son [Seth], the noise
of their wings in Paradise; for the Seraphim had gone on beating their wings, making a harmonious
sound, in the temple set apart for their worship. But after my sin, and the transgression of Gods
order, I ceased to hear and see them. The Book of Enoch states that the hosts of heaven are the
cherubin, the seraphin, the ophannin and the angels of power over the earth and the water; see
Charles, 1917: 61: 10, p. 80.
121
Kng, 1992: p. 30.
122
Cited in The Catholic Encyclopaedia, < www.newadvent.org/cathen/04764a.htm>
123
The Catholic Encyclopaedia defines evil as the sum of the opposition to the desires and needs
of individuals; whence arises, among humans beings at least, the sufferings in which life abounds.
Thus evil, from the point of view of human welfare, is what ought not to exist.
<www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm>
54


The results of our actions, or those of Nature, may be categorised as either good or evil,
depending upon the harmfulness of the consequences. We do evil. We make harm happen.
Often such actions are undertaken from ignorance. As the philosopher Lars Svendsen
argues, some people do evil because they persuade themselves that good will result; the
assassination of a tyrant being an example. Others consider mistakenly that the evil they do
is, in fact, good; as, for instance, in the slaughter of unbelievers. Many more commit evil
thoughtlessly, by dangerous driving perhaps. A few are demonic, aware of their wickedness
and doing horrible things for their own sake; in other words, they are mad and bad.
124

Svendsen goes on to make the point that combating evil involves facing up to the
consequences of our actions, and that, in turn, involves discarding the excuses and illusions
we hold onto in order to give meaning to our situation.
125

The fact is that calling something an evil is, on our part, a sort of delusion. The philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) asserted that we are responsible for all destruction, whether
natural or as a result of human agency, because we attempt to ascribe blame for an event
that harms us (an evil, in other words). A cyclone is indeed the real cause of death and
devastation, but it cannot be blamed for the harm it brings it just happens. Nonetheless,
people often try to explain misfortune by looking for a blameworthy target: the curse of a
witch, or the failure to observe moral standards, or an inadequate sacrifice to the gods.
Similarly people may thank God for good luck. The Devils evil schemes are the mirror image
of divine providence, and the harm perpetrated by Satans demonic legions parallel the
efforts of our guardian angels to preserve us. In a sense, suffering is our own fault; either
because other people have inflicted pain on us or, in a case of bad luck, we seek to pin
blame on something regardless. We cannot at one and the same time consider a beneficial
investment the fruit of our perspicacity and blame our losses on a mischance that we never
saw coming. In Sartres view we should recognise these tendencies to obtain comfort from
an illusion that all events whether beneficial or harmful have either a providential or a
blameworthy cause. So if we find fault, when in fact there was no intentional or neglectful
act, by calling our misfortune an evil, we are not just deluding ourselves but storing up

124
Svendsen lists four types of evil acts: instrumental, idealistic, stupid and demonic; see Svendsen,
2010.
125
The most important question is not What is evil?, but rather: Why do we do it? Our basic
problem [is] a lack of reflection on how to gain control of evil and overcome both our animal
nature and delusions; Svendsen, 2010: pp. 231 and 233.
55


apprehension and anger.
126
Besides, humans not only suffer the pain and loss experienced
by other animals if injured, or when a companion dies or goes missing, but also feel anguish
as a result of our aptitude at seeing the chain of causation and even foolishly searching for
imaginary explanations.
127
From this standpoint, the Devil represents a way of explaining the
problems we meet from malevolent acts or the destruction of the things we have made.
The consequences of Eves transgression
The tale of Adam and Eve has many layers of meaning. To understand it one has to take
account of parallel versions of the story from other traditions. For example, it is doubtful that
Eve was duped by the Devils design. She may have simply made a mistake. A Moslem
version, quoted by W St. Clair-Tisdall, tells of a time before Adam and Eve suffered
expulsion from Paradise.
128
Azazil (in other words Satan), a demon who has already spent
three thousand years climbing up from the seventh level of Hell, arrives at the Gates of
Paradise to find a peacock sitting on a pinnacle.
129
The demon wants to enter Paradise but
the peacock tells him that he may not while Adam is there. Azazil promises to teach the
peacock a spell or prayer that will ensure that he will never grow old, never be rebellious and
never be expelled from Paradise. The peacock repeats the prayer to a serpent in the garden
who goes on to trick Eve into disobeying Gods commandment not to eat from the sacred
Trees, one of which grants intelligence and the other immortality. When God discovers what
has gone on He expels them all from Paradise.

126
For a discussion of Sartres views see Danto, 1975: pp. 67-69. Sartre set out these arguments in
his book Being and Nothingness (Ltre et le nant) in 1943.
127
In part the search for answers to a misfortune can be a positive coping strategy in the sense that
by coming to terms with a tragedy we can achieve closure. People who have faith in a divinely
ordered world often survive extreme situations better than others who fall into despair according to the
philosopher Leszek Koakowski; in Koakowski, 1982: p. 38. Faith has therapeutic benefit.
128
W St. Clair-Tisdall, Sources of the Quran, Chapter 5 on <www.truthnet.org/islam/src-chp5.htm>
129
It is interesting that the bird concerned is a peacock, which in ancient times was associated with
the goddess Juno, the queen of heaven, by the Romans. Despite being a male bird, the peacocks
impressive plumage is identified with womanhood; see Walker, 1988: pp. 231 and 406. The name
Azazil may derive from the three mouthed demon of ancient Persia, Azi, who is the constant foe of
the angel of fire, Atar; see Clark, 2001: p. 95.
56


The fall of humankind
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there He put the man
whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that
is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the Tree of Life also in the midst of the
garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God took the man
and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded
the man, You may freely eat of any tree of the garden; but of the Tree of Knowledge
of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had
made. He said to the woman, Did God say, You shall not eat from any tree in the
garden? The woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the
garden; but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of
the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die. But the serpent said to the
woman, You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave
some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
[Later] they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the
evening breeze, and the man and the woman hid themselves But the Lord God
called to the man, and said to him, Where are you? Have you eaten from the tree
of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman whom you gave
to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to
the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent tricked
me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the woman, I will greatly increase your
pangs in childbearing and to the man He said, Because you have listened to
your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, You shall not
eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of
your life. Then the Lord God said, See, the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil; and now he might reach out his hand and take also from the
Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever therefore the Lord God sent him forth from
the garden of Eden, to till the ground
57


He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden He placed the
cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the Tree of Life.
Source: Genesis, 2: 8-17 and 3: 1-24.

Let us look more closely at the story. In order to trick the peacock into letting him into
Paradise, the Devil promises the bird immortality. The foolish peacock repeats what he has
been told and is overheard by the serpent, who in turn whispers it to Eve, asleep on the
ground. But why does Eve pick the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and not
from the Tree of Life? Did the Devil really intend the peacock to tell the snake, who told Eve,
and who then encourages Adam to eat the fruit? The chain of coincidences could have
broken easily, thus thwarting the Devils scheme. Surely, it would have been much simpler
had the Devil promised immortality to the silly peacock by instructing the bird to eat the fruit
of the Tree of Life? In fact, to understand the story we need to consider variants from other
parts of the world.
130
The myth might then go as follows: the birds of the air overhear the
gods in the heavens talking about the Tree of Life, which grants immortality; the birds
chatter is then heard by the squirrels or monkeys of the forest canopy and then by the
snakes, dwelling on the ground. A sleeping woman, also on the ground, however,
misunderstands the animals talk and instead of eating from the Tree of Life, eats from the
Tree of Knowledge. This explains why people are not immortal like the gods but are just as
intelligent.
A polluted Earth
The Fall is a story not simply about acquiring knowledge and losing the chance of
immortality but also of the introduction of pollution and the submission of women to mens
authority. According to the Koran, Satans rebellion stems from his refusal to bow before
Adam. Iblis pride leads him reject Gods instruction. His act of defiance takes place before
Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. The non-canonical Life of Adam and Eve tells
the same story. So the traditional identification of the serpent with Satan becomes part of a
story of Satans revenge.
131
The Talmud offers the suggestion that Satans motives were to

130
I am indebted to Stephen Oppenheimers book Eden in the East: The drowned continent of
Southeast Asia, who has a chapter (14) on differing versions of the story from all continents for my
speculative reconstruction of the Adam and Eve myth; Oppenheimer, 1998.
131
The Life of Adam and Eve, which is thought to have been composed between 100 BCE and 70
CE, recounts the same story as is found in the Koran.
58


kill Adam and wed his wife, and [to] be king over the whole world (Talmud, Abot de Rabbi
Nathan 1).
But another more obscure tale, also in the Bible (Genesis Chapter 6), and expanded in a
non-canonical work, the Book of Enoch, explains how sinful thoughts came to dominate
peoples consciousness after Adam and Eves expulsion from Paradise. The Lord saw that
the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth (Genesis, 6: 5), and resolved to blot
out from the earth the human beings that I have created in a flood, from which He will save
only Noah and his family. The cause of this growth of wickedness was sex between women
and the fallen angels. The Book of Enoch records that the angels, the children of the
heaven, saw and lusted after the beautiful and comely daughters of men. These fallen
angels married women and their sons, the Nephilim, were arrogant giants and warriors of
renown (The Wisdom of Solomon, 14: 6; and Genesis, 6: 4). One of the texts among the
Dead Sea scrolls called them the Heavenly Watchers.
132
The author of the Book of Enoch
admonishes the fallen angels: And though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you
defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten [children] with the blood of
flesh (15: 4). The story is set after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, but in an
era known later as an age of heroes, of great longevity or of giants. It was also the point,
according to the Gnostic writer Justin, when festive adulteries and divorces among men in
honour of Babel Baalat, the consort of the Canaanite god Baal, also known as Aphrodite
took hold.
133
The apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon admonishes them for their detestable
practices, their works of sorcery and unholy rites, their merciless slaughter of children, and
their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood (12: 4-5).

132
Cited in The Damascus Document; see Vermes, 2004: p. 131.
133
In The Book of Baruch; cited by Harris, 1999: p. 107.
59


Enoch
Enoch, the city-builder, is introduced in three apparently conflicting genealogies
according to Genesis chapters 4 and 5. In the Yahwist, or J text, Adams firstborn son
Cain, the farmer, knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch (4: 17).
However, after Cain had killed his brother Abel, the herder, Adam then knew his wife
again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, whose son was Enosh (4: 25-26).
Despite the slight variation in the names Enoch and Enosh it appears that Genesis is
recording variant traditions regarding Enochs father, as being either Cain or Seth,
though both agree that his grandfather was Adam. As Seth is the ancestor of Israels
priesthood these verses may have been introduced to provide them with a
respectable lineage back to Seth rather than to the murderer Cain. To add yet more
confusion, Enoch, in a series of verses tracing the lineage of Noah, is also said to be
the son of Jared, whose great-great grandfather was Seth (5: 18). These verses are
thought to be the work of a later editor, known to scholars as the Redactor, possibly
Ezra. Part of the confusion occurs because the list [Cain-Enoch-Irad-Mehujael-
Methushael] in Genesis 4: 17-18 is also found in a different order in verses 5: 9-21.
The latter list bears a similarity to the former sequence of ancestors [Enosh (=
Enoch)-Kenan (= Cain)-Mahalalel (=Mehujael)] and then another set with [Jared (=
Irad)-Enoch-Methuselah (= Methushael)]. The different genealogies are shown in
Figure 2-1.
The name Enoch derives from founder (Anunnaki in Sumerian) or educator
according to archaeologist David Rohl. Rohl further identifies Enoch with the
Sumerian king Enmedurankis sage, or apkallu, Utuabzu, who was reputed to have
never died. Rohl proposes that Enoch lived around 4250 BCE and founded the cities
of Ur and Eridu, which he named after his son Irad. It is not generally realised that
figures like Enoch were Sumerians, since until Abraham there was no Jewish people
as such. Rohl makes the point that Sumerians are not listed as one of the peoples
whose descent the Book of Genesis trace back to Noahs three sons, Shem, Ham
and Japheth (chapter 10). He concludes from this omission that Shem was the
eponymous ancestor of the Sumerians and, as Genesis indicates, ancestor of the
Hebrews (the sons of Eber), who were therefore one and the same people.
134

134
See Rohl, 1998: pp. 134-135, 200-202 and 409-410; Rohl, 2002: p. 43; and Rohl, 2003: p. 34.
60


Genesis says that Enoch walked with God (5:24), while the Koran calls Enoch
(Idrs) a saint [a man of truth], and a prophet (Mary, Maryam, 19: 56).
135
According
to Islamic tradition, Enoch left Babylonia for Egypt in despair that so few of the
people listened to his call. This Koranic tradition mirrors Rohls theory that aspects of
Egyptian civilisation owed its origins to Sumerian traders.
136
One of Enochs
celebrated maxims is The real joy of life is to have wisdom".

The fallen angels also taught people the secrets of metallurgy and warfare, enchantment,
astrology and meteorology, writing, medicine and toxicology, including the use of drugs for
abortion (Enoch, chapters 8 and 69). The link with metal working is interesting and may be
connected to the discovery of metals in meteorites, since the fallen angels could be shooting

135
The Koran: p. 35.
136
See David Rohl, 1998: chapter 9. The Sumerian founders of Egyptian civilization, according to
Rohl, were the mysterious Shebtiu, or Senior Ones, mentioned in the inscriptions on a temple to the
god Horus at Edfu, which was consecrated in 105 BCE. These six, or seven, sages associated with
the gods Horus and Thoth may be linked to the seven Sumerian sages, the apkallu; see Rohl, 1998:
pp. 200-201 and 333-353.
Figure 2-1: The descendents of Adam
Adam
Seth
Enoch
Cain Abel Abel Cain/ Kenan
Irad
J Genealogy
Mehujael
Methushael
Seth
Adam Adam
P Genealogy
Consistent
Genealogy
Irad/ Jared
Jared
Mahalalel
Kenan
Enosh Enoch/ Enosh
Lamech
Methuselah
Lamech
Enoch
Methushael/ Methuselah
Mehujael/ Mahalalel
Japheth Jabal
Noah
Lamech
Jubal Tubal-
Cain
Noah
Shem Ham Japheth Shem Ham
Adapted from Munir Ahmed Khan, 2002, Noahs Flood in Bible, Quran and Mesopotamian Stories, Karachi
?
?
61


stars falling to earth. In the Enochian myth, all the crafts taught by the fallen angels involved
either chemistry and writing requires the use of ink or divination. The association of
science and technology with fallen angels, or demons, suggests not only that knowledge has
a spiritual source (genius), but also that learning a craft requires years of devoted practice,
which borders on the obsessional.
An ancient Greek version of the myth is referred to in Empedocles poem On Nature, written
before 450 BCE. During the Golden Age of Love, when Kypris, that is the goddess
Aphrodite, ruled, the world was inhabited by long-lived daemonoi living in blissful peace.
They did not have as a god Ares or Battle-cry, nor Zeus as king, nor Cronos, nor Poseidon,
but Kypris was queen (fragment B128). But these semi-divine people at that time the word
deamon meant a divine being committed the sins of animal slaughter, eating meat and
oath-breaking, and became mortal. Under the influence of Strife, whom Empedocles calls
Ares, the daemonoi were separated into men and women. In this tale, women are a source
of much woe to men, while men, in turn, cause grief in women. The twin nature of
mankind meant separation from the blessed ones. Accordingly, as mortals, we are
condemned to serve a sentence of reincarnation the transmigration of souls of ten
thousand years.
137

Lastly, we must examine the Zoroastrian version of the Fall. According to the Pahlavi Books,
dating from the ninth century CE, the Woman sometimes translated as the Whore Jeh
wakes the deceitful spirit Ahriman from his slumber of three thousand years. She excites him
by promising to introduce sin into the world and they have sex. As a result of their
intercourse all women have been defiled and menstruate.
138
So pleased is Ahriman that he
promises to grant Jeh her deepest desire. But the Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda, sends to Jeh a
vision of the Righteous Man Gaymart in the form of a handsome naked 15 year old youth.
So attracted is she to the vision of Gaymart that the Woman asks Ahriman to grant her wish
that she may serve the Man forever onwards: Give me desire for man that I may seat him in
the house as my lord she asks. The Devil is furious that God has tricked him, but
nonetheless grants her wish. Thus Gods plan was fulfilled, since without women the human
race cannot reproduce and manage the Earth.

137
Sedley, 2007: pp. 31-39, 47-49, 50-51 and 79. Empedocles was apparently an initiate into Orphic
rites and claimed to recall his past lives as a boy, a girl, a bush and a bird and a dumb fish in the
sea; cited in Urmson and Re, 1991: p. 87; see also Guthrie, 1952: pp. 166-169; and Benn, 1882:
pp. 23-24. Empedocles believed that the path to salvation involved celibacy and a vegetarian diet.
138
Menstruation is known as the kiss of Ahriman; see Clark, 2001: p. 147.
62


An on-going theme of the stories of the Fall of humans and angels is pollution. The curse
placed on women for Eves transgression was menstruation, which has traditionally been
regarded, by men, as defiling. The association of craft with the stain of pollution calls to mind
the image in William Blakes poem, Jerusalem (c. 1804), in which Englands green and misty
landscape is blotted by dark Satanic mills. The myth thus reminds us that industry has a
dual nature. Manufacturing is both a boon and a curse, as the same, not to say crafty,
technology can produce both swords and plough shears. The endowment of crafts gave
humanity power over nature, but these can also be misused. In many ancient societies,
craftsmen were considered a folk apart and unclean.
It may be for these reasons that neither of the two myths regarding the fallen angels was
accepted into the scriptural canon of the Holy Bible. The Enochian story where the fallen
angels lusted after women and sullied their angelic substance as a result of having sex with
mortals fits more readily with the supposed activities of devils as tempters, such as the
incubi and succubae who visit the sleeping with unconscious sexual arousal.
Capability, communication and corruption
The authors of the Book of Genesis may have adapted an ancient tale to explain the travails
of human life in the first era following creation. At one level the meaning of the myth is clear.
Originally, God gave humankind mastery over animals and harvests in abundance, but, after
the Fall, He permitted the afflictions of disease and natural catastrophe. Pastures and flocks,
fields and crops, buildings and tools, and family life itself are under constant assault from
wild nature and infection; in other words, evils beset us. Adam and Eves punishment was
never-ending labour, suffering, and a short life. For sure, humankind could, through its
knowledge of science and craft, rival God as a creator of things. But everything people did
would be undone; constant maintenance is required to sustain that which is man-made. The
price of disobedience was the entry of corruption into the world, not just because people are
free to choose sinful ways, but because it takes the form of destruction and mental suffering,
which makes all that is achieved appear futile. So, regaining Paradise entails ridding the
world of corruption, thus connecting the tale of Adam and Eves transgression with the final
conflict between light and darkness at Armageddon. Then, once again, under Gods direct
rule, the righteous will enjoy abundance once more and the wolf shall live with the lamb, the
leopard shall lie down with the kid and the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isaiah, 11: 6-7).
(We will address this aspect again in the next chapter.)
Notwithstanding, we need to be careful when interpreting the metaphors of analogical
reasoning. The famous phrase in Isaiah, often misquoted as the lion shall lie down with the
63


lamb, follows directly from a description where God is described as slaughtering the wicked,
and that righteousness shall be the belt around His waist, and faithfulness the belt around
His loins. (Isaiah, 11: 4-5). Both sets of verses express metaphors and we are not free to
pick and choose which ones are to be accepted literally. The anthropomorphic image of God
as a manly warrior killing his enemies is not to be taken literally. Nor can we accept as an
accurate prediction the description of a future when the earth will be full of the knowledge of
the Lord (Isaiah, 11: 9) complete with predators turning vegetarian. Furthermore, let us
recall that a weed is simply a plant the gardener does not want to see growing in that
particular spot. The evils of life are things that inconvenience us, to be sure, perhaps fatally,
but nonetheless an evil is only something that creates a problem for me or somebody else.
The more we seek a long lifespan, the more difficult it is to bear the ills of old age.
Symbolically, eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge allowed us to distinguish goods that
are to our advantage from evils that bring us problems, because we are able to foresee the
consequences of an event. So good and evil are two sides of the same coin.
The myth of the Fall reinforces Sartres account by suggesting that humans are responsible
for the evils that beset them. It explains that knowledge of good and evil is a uniquely human
attribute, which distinguishes our species, Homo sapiens, from other animals. Animals are,
to be sure, sentient beings like us, with the instinct to hoard food supplies, build nests and
guard their territory. But human intelligence enables us to make sense of our environment
(and of society) through the application of foresight and learning. We understand what it
means to make our homes, tools and relationships and we become upset when these are
destroyed. Goods and evils are emotive because we have invested our intellect and skills
into our labour and our relationships to transform the environment and bend nature to our
will. From this capability derives humanitys eagerness for exchange and investment in
goods and mutually beneficial obligations, including marriage, to one another. This faculty of
reasoning, of analysing patterns to understand causation, defines our intelligence. Moreover
the myth tells us that the faculty of reasoning came about after God created humans, as a
result of an action of our common ancestress.
But although we try to use the laws of nature for our own ends, we inevitably fail to make our
modifications last. Furthermore, had Adam and Eve eaten the fruit of the Tree of Life as well,
humans might have been in a position to challenge God; and this is why they were expelled
from Paradise, to prevent such a confrontation. Thus the myth of Adam and Eve brings
together a number of strands, explaining the origins of human misery and the futility of
manipulating the laws of nature, even though we have the capability. Nor need the
presumption which Eve and Adam displayed in eating the forbidden fruit be seen as an act
64


of deliberate disobedience; it symbolises the moment when our ancestors became Homo
sapiens and sought to take control of their destinies and collaborate in long-term projects to
mutual gain. Thus another message is: we may think we can control the physical world to
our advantage, but beware! As with many myths, it should not be accepted literally but taken
as a warning.
From amongst all of this planets species, humans seem to be unique in their ability to
categorise their environment into comparable features with specific attributes. Humans
abstract information from their senses and, using their language capability, plan their actions
to shape their environment. Mastery of nature rests upon the knowledge that comes from
naming things, which psychologists term categorisation. Our achievement in settling
everywhere, even in some of the most hostile terrestrial environments, derives from our
capability to categorise, memorise and communicate ideas to each other. Interestingly, in
Genesis 2, it is stated that Adam named the animals in a primal pure language, now lost to
us, with which he conversed with God. The many different tongues of humankind that were
born in the antediluvian era, long after the Fall, are, by contrast, mere prattle, in the phrase
of philosopher and psychologist Walter Benjamin (1892-1940).
139
The implication is that to
truly understand the cosmos we must rediscover the Adamite language.
140
Notoriously, the
occultist and mathematician John Dee (1527-1608) was misled by the fraudulent medium
Edward Kelley in 1583 into believing that the Adamite language was a spoken tongue.
141
But
it is clear that the Adamite language is more than a form of verbal communication. In the first

139
Benjamin, 1996: p. 65. According to Genesis, 11: 5-7, the Lord said: Look, they are one people,
and they have one language; and this [tower they are building] is only the beginning of what they will
do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and
confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one anothers speech.
140
The mystic visionary Joachim de Fiore (c.1135-1202) prophesied that in the Age of the Holy Spirit,
the Adamite language would be revealed once more and the Book of Nature would be open for
humanity to read; cited in Roob, 1996: p. 12.
141
According to occult tradition, God gave Adam seven semaphoras as keys of the world with which
he could communicate with the angels (described, for example, in the sixteenth century text Liber
Raziel). These secret semaphores or signs were also called the seals of angels (claves angelicae),
providing the opportunity to invoke angelic assistance, and were connected to the seven names of
God and seven planets (see Clucas, 2006: p. 243). Dr Dees own Book of Enoch (or Liber Loagaeth)
was composed in this tradition of cryptography. Around 1563 Dee seems to have obtained a copy of a
late medieval magical treatise called the Book of Soyga, possibly written by Johannes Heidenberg,
known as Trithemius (1462-1516), who wrote a manual on summoning angels and demons, the
Steganographia, which described a number of codes, including simple ones such as writing things
backwards and transposing A for Z. Tables for encryption from the Soyga were reproduced in Dees
Book of Enoch (see Jim Reeds in Clucas, 2006: pp. 177-205; and Ball, 2007: pp. 44-45).
65


chapter I indicated that Pythagoras contribution to arcane science lay in his suggestion that
the language we must use to understand the cosmos is that of mathematics. Through
science, therefore, we can overcome the obstacles that nature places upon our endeavours.
Science allows us to comprehend the cosmos and foresee the consequences of our actions,
in principle at least, if not, yet, in practice. As Dees near contemporary the astronomer
Johannes Kepler put it, with the Adamite language of mathematics we possess the capability
to see into the Mind of God.
142

142
Geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection of the Mind of God. That men are able to participate
in it is one of the reasons why man is an image of God; cited in Koestler, 1964: p. 535.
66


67


Chapter 3: Raphaels trumpet call

Flee from these [false astrologers and diviners] if you would enter the sacred paradise of
piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.
The Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster, attributed to Julian the Theugist (c. 170s CE).

My love of mythology was sparked around the age of ten by a gift from my mother of Tales
of the Greek Heroes. Its author, Roger Lancelyn Green (1918-1987), a friend of C S Lewis
and J R R Tolkien, had published several retellings of myths and legends for children. Myths
tend to presented as disconnected episodes but Green put the stories into a coherent
composition. Green wrote that although the tales had been recounted many times before,
my predecessors have taken isolated stories and re-told them at various lengths but they
have, as a rule, remained isolated. Here I have tried to tell the tale of the Heroic Age as that
single whole which the Greeks believed it to be. He explained how he had selected but
never falsified, using the original dialogue where he could, and he had full Classical
authority for everything in this book.
143
This has been my method also. In this chapter I
examine the myth of cosmic destruction, of the last days, and its implications for the present-
day conflicts that beset our shared planetary home. It is a myth rarely presented in a
complete form, despite its central importance to the salvation religions. To do so I have
looked beyond the last book of the Holy Bible, to excavate aspects of the myth from the
sayings of Mohammed, ancient Judaic texts, including the Dead Sea scrolls, and Hellenistic
philosophy.
For most people, the events described in the creation stories of Genesis are no more
believable than the tale of Harry Potter. But the travails of the boy wizard are just as much a
story about adolescence and standing up for yourself against powerful forces. The novels
are to be read on more than one level. In the same way, myths should be read for what they
tell us about reality and our own situation. Philo of Alexandria advised the readers of
Genesis to avoid treating the stories as fictions, and instead to see them as allegory with
implied meanings.
144
I call this analogical reasoning. Such reasoning involves drawing

143
Green, 1958: pp. 199-200.
144
De opificio mundi, 56: 157; quoted in Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992b: p. 160. Philo adapted
Pythagorean and Stoic techniques to study the Bible and draw out its allegorical meaning.
68


parallels between distant phenomena and those things with which we are far more familiar
(see Appendix B). Myths often involve the personification of natural forces, so that the
behaviour of those forces may become intelligible. Treating phenomena as if they are like
ourselves is a feature of pre-modern societies.
Anthropologists and scholars of ancient cultures have sought to identify the main differences
between pre-modern and modern thinking. It is important to emphasise that there is no
implication that pre-modern cultures are inferior in comparison to that of modern or civilized
people. In fact, the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss used his books, The Savage Mind
(La Pense Sauvage, 1962) and Mythologiques (1964-71), to argue just the opposite. He
gave examples of how contemporary French society used many of the same symbolic
devices as Native American tribal people to communicate. That said, one of the
distinguishing features between prehistoric, ancient or contemporary non-literate cultures
and modern culture lies in how you or I think of our relationship with others and the reality
around us. This is illustrated in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1: Relationship between an observer and the phenomena
or agent being observed
Inarticulate
Conceptualisation
Articulate
Conceptualisation
Affinity Detachment
Critical/ Logical
Reasoning:
Rational &
Neutral Attitude
Analogical
Reasoning:
Respectful &
Moral Attitude
Intuitive or
Instinctive
Understanding:
Empathic
Attitude
I / Thou I / It
69


Pre-modern people have an emotionally involved relationship with other agents or
phenomena whereas modern scientists have a detached or emotionally neutral attitude. The
archaeologists Henri Frankfort (1897-1954) and Henriette Groenewegen-Frankfort (1896-
1982) labelled these attitudes I /Thou and I /It. In the former case a pre-modern person
regards a force of nature with respect and similar to a person with its individuality, its
qualities, its will.
145
Thus a phenomenon, say a storm or a drought, involves the question of
who willed the event to take place, and what must those affected do to propitiate that force
for the good of the community. A respectful attitude and the personification of forces are part
of the rationale for the worship of gods. In contrast, a modern scientist thinks in terms of
impersonal forces, which can be modelled mathematically as a computer simulation or
manipulated by technology. In between these poles can be found the ancient Greek-
speaking philosophers, who used a mix of abstraction and metaphor. It seems that we have
a natural propensity to see agency at work in the world. Studies of modern day infants
suggest that humans are programmed to think that there is an agent behind all kinds of
phenomena, and that there is a purpose to most events they witness. Why this is the case is
not so clear, but it could be the outcome of an infants developing self-awareness: if I am a
being with desires and a will, then others must be similar to me. The idea that some
phenomena might happen without purpose, and for no good (or bad) reason at all, could well
be a late development in human history perhaps first put forward by the Atomists.
146

Interpreting the creation myth in Genesis as an example of analogical reasoning, means
treating it as an analysis of how things are now, not just as an origin story.
147
Similarly, the
Book of Revelation is not an account of the future, as such, but a series of visions
concerning the present and aimed at giving guidance to the early Christian Church. But first,
we must set the myth of the last days into the context of ancient cosmology.

145
Frankfort, Frankfort, Wilson and Jacobsen, 1949: p. 14.
146
Humans have a natural propensity to look for agents in the world around us; see Justin L Barrett,
Born believers, New Scientist, 17 March 2012: pp. 39-41. In personal correspondence with the author,
Dr Barrett wrote on 23 March 2012 children treat all displays of self-propelled movement that seems
to be goal-directed as agentive. Agency implies action for a purpose.
147
Lvi-Strauss argued against the idea that myths were simply explanations for phenomena in an
article (Lvi-Strauss, 1955). A myth provides less of an answer, in terms of meaning, than another
configuration of the initial problem; cited by Leader, 2000: p.110. In other words, Problem A is similar
to Problem B and they each possess the same structure, just as in topology a cube, a sphere and a
doughnut have invariant properties.
70


Four eras of the cosmic cycle
And this shall come at the day of judgement Cataracts of fire shall be let loose; and
darkness and obscurity shall come up and clothe and veil the whole world; and the waters
shall be changed and turned into coals of fire, and all of them shall burn, and the sea shall
become fire. Under the heaven there shall be a sharp fire that cannot be quenched, and it
flows until the judgement of wrath. And the stars shall be melted by flames of fire. And
there shall be a great gnashing of teeth among the children of men.
The Apocalypse of Peter, Chapter 5 (2
nd
Century CE)
148

The idea that the history of the world is divided into four eras was common to the Greek,
Persian and Semitic speaking peoples. Time was in general thought of as being cyclical, and
its rhythm was often divided into four segments:
Daily: morning, afternoon, evening and night;
Lunar: dark/ new, waxing, full, and waning phases;
Annual: spring, summer, autumn and winter;
Personal: infancy, childhood, adulthood and old age (senility);
Universal: original, early, penultimate and the current, and last, era.
Each stage presents its own challenges, opportunities and constraints. For example, the
season of spring was for sowing, summer for growing, autumn for harvesting and winter for
clearing. During infancy there is growing awareness; whereas the time for exploration (and
play) is childhood; for achievement we are granted adulthood; and old age is the time for
reflection. There are, of course, disadvantages apparent at each stage in the cycle, but it
makes no sense to think of the goods outweighing the bads or vice versa. Whilst I may
adore autumn, you look forward to the spring. So, according to a rational viewpoint, although
each of us has our own preference, we should make the most of each period of the cycle.
This line of reasoning can be found in most philosophies, whether they be stoic or utopian,
ascetic or hedonist.
Although the daily and annual cycles are very much part of our normal lives, the cosmic
cycle is clearly beyond our experience, but even so there was a fair degree of consensus in
antiquity that their and our current era was the fourth and final one. The Great Year had
twelve months and four seasons. In the Persian tradition, which may have been derived

148
Ehrman, 2005: p. 283.
71


from Babylonian astrology, the twelve months were each a millennium of one thousand
years, thus making the Great Year last 12,000 years.
149
According to present-day
astrologers, there are twelve ages of around 2,156 years each. We are currently in the Age
of Pisces, which began about 498 CE, although supposedly the Age of Aquarius is already
dawning. This would make a Great Year equal to nearly 26,000 years.
In chapter two we saw that Empedocles divided time into a cycle of ages, or eons, that
endured for 10,000 years.
150
The philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus was said to have
calculated the Great Year at 10,800 years. Heraclitus ideas are notoriously obscure,
especially as so much of his work is lost, and is often viewed as being at odds with the
mainstream of ancient Greek philosophy, in particular to Platonism. He believed that there
was a logic at work in the cosmos the logos which allows us (if we are wise enough) to
make sense of the reality, and to exploit it through technology. This logos holds always but
humans always prove unable to understand it, according to Heraclitus, for all things come
to be [or, come to happen] in accordance with this logos. For Heraclitus, all things are one,
because opposites need each other to define themselves. The logos, which is often
translated into Latin as ratio, from where we derive the word rational, animates the cosmos
and makes it comprehensible.
151
It is symbolised by fire, which is the source of
transformation and is the symbol of the light of intelligence. Heraclitus held that things were
in a constant state of flux, and that the cosmos had no beginning or end, but was governed
by the law of change. Heraclitus was famous for the metaphor he used to illustrate this
apparent paradox: you cannot step into the same river twice. We may interpret him to mean
that although each step you take into a river involves wading through constantly changing
flow of water, the river remains a river. It seems likely that Heraclitus imagined that a cyclical
process of renewal and destruction was at work in the cosmos.
152

149
See Clark, 2001: p. 50.
150
See Sedley, 2007: pp. 31 and 68.
151
Osborne, 2004: p. 93. She calls the logos the rationale by which the world works. One of the
fathers of the Catholic Church, Hyppolytus of Rome (d. 236), defined the logos not [as] the word in
the sense of being articulated by voice, but as a ratiocination of the universe, conceived and residing
in the divine mind (see Refutation of all Heresies on http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050110.htm).
152
Many of the Fragments quoting Heraclitus can be found in Osborne, 2004: chapter 5. Some
scholars have doubted whether Heraclitus thought that there was a cosmic cycle that ended in fiery
destruction and then began again. However there is evidence from the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus that
show that he was interested in astronomical cycles.
72


For the Stoics, who regarded Heraclitus as their precursor, there were four seasons, with
two great calamities: the Flood in the wet winter and the coming destruction by a
conflagration in the current era of the dry summer.
153
According to the Stoics, the world
conflagration, or ecpyrosis, would occur when the planets returned to the same positions
they occupied at the beginning of the current Great Year cycle. Earthly things will burn when
all the planets which now move in different orbits come together in the sign of Cancer, and
are so distributed in the same path that a straight line can pass through all their spheres,
wrote Seneca (Natural Questions, 3.29.1).
154
Their model was also accepted by many
followers of Plato, who alluded to the Flood myth in the tale about Atlantis.
155

The conflagration was an event that would re-shape matter, not annihilate it. According to
Diogenes Laertius, it is the Stoics opinion that there are two principles of all that there is:
the active and the passive. The passive principle is unqualified substance, that is matter; the
active is the rational organisation in matter [that is, the logos], namely God; for the latter,
being eternal, fashions through the whole of matter each separate thing. They say that
principles are not subject to generation [that is, creation] or destruction; elements are
destroyed in the conflagration. But also principles are incorporeal and without form; elements
are enformed (Bibliotheca historia, vii.134, probably third century CE).
156
Some scholars
identify the logos with the Spenta Mainyu (the Holy Spirit, seen as the active principle of
creation) from Zoroastrian doctrine, citing the common imagery used in both the Avesta , the
ancient Persian books of knowledge and law, now mostly lost, and the work of Philo of
Alexandria.
157

153
In ancient Persian myths, the first catastrophe takes the form of a terrible frost, rather than a flood.
The king Yima saves one man and one woman and specimens of animals to repopulate the world;
see Curtis, 1993: p. 26.
154
Quoted in Long, 2006: p. 129.
155
See also Sedley, 2007: pp. 107 and 119-120. Sedley suggests that Plato accepted the worlds
proneness to cataclysms and periodic renewal, but this was not spelt out because he left the
Timaeus-Critias unfinished.
156
Quoted in Posidonius, in Kidd: p. 74.
157
According to the Zoroastrian priest M N Dhalla, the Avestan texts refer to Spenta Mainyu and his
adversary Angra Mainyu as thworeshtar or the fashioners or cutters and, speaking about the work of
Logos, Philo speaks of him as Tomeus, 'the cutter,' employing the word of the same meaning. Again
as Spenta Mainyu or the spirit of light is shadowed by the opposite spirit of darkness, so Logos, says
Philo, is the Shekinah or Glory or Light of God, but he is also the darkness or shadow of God. This is
so because, he adds, the creature reveals only half the creator and hides the other half. The
intermediary Spirit of God occurs throughout the New Testament. Numenius of Apamea, writing in the
73


The Greek poet Hesiod, writing around 700 BCE, divided the four eras into a Golden Age
when gods and men lived together; then one of silver during which men neglected the gods,
and the next of bronze, an age of warrior giants. The current age of iron was the most
degenerate, although it started well-enough with the deeds of many heroes. More or less the
same division is alluded to in the Book of Daniel, although the prophet calls them four
kingdoms, each ruling over the whole of the earth (Daniel, 2: 31-45). The fourth kingdom, a
divided one made half of iron and half of clay, partly strong and partly brittle, is destroyed
by a rock and the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.
Traditionally, the four kingdoms are understood by Jewish sources to refer to the ages of
Adam, then of Noah, of Abraham and Moses, with the age to come being that of the
Messiah. But other commentators interpret the sequence to refer to the Babylonian, Persian,
Greek and Roman Empires, with the latter being supplanted by the kingdom of God.
For the Zoroastrians, the four eras represent stages in the duel between the Spenta Mainyu
(the Holy or Benevolent Spirit) and the Angra Mainyu (the Deceitful or Hostile Spirit) for
supremacy over the earth. According to the Greater Bundahishn, a ninth century collection of
traditions based on the now lost Damdat Nask, the first three thousand years were those of
ideal creation, when God created the menog, the spiritual or immaterial cosmos, with its two
forces. During this era, the fiendish force, Angra Mainyu or Ahriman, sleeps in darkness. The
next nine thousand years sees the struggle between good and evil take place in the getig,
the material world. The second quarter was also dominated by the Holy Spirit, with the
creation of the yazads, the angles who will help humanity, but Ahriman also marshals his
forces to launch an assault on Paradise. The attack is however only partially successful, and
although the Righteous Man, Gaymart, is killed, his seed enters the ground where it
generate a rhubarb plant, from which the first man and woman, Mashya and Mashyanag,
emerge. Moreover, Ahriman fails to destroy the divine fire of truth that can guide humankind.

second century, says that God has bestowed divine qualities upon a second god who acts in the
world as the power for good. The Supreme God or the First Principle, he adds, works in the spiritual
world, whereas the activity of the second god extends to the spiritual as well as material world. Origen
(c. 184-253 CE), writing shortly after him, says that God created logos or the Son. His relation to the
Father is the same as that which exists between Ahura Mazda and Spenta Mainyu. The Son or logos,
says Origen, is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father, but the Son is lesser than the Father.
Clement of Alexandria says that logos represents the will, power, and energy of God. He is the
creator on behalf of God. He has introduced harmony in the universe and conducts its affairs as the
pilot (Dhalla, 1938: pp. 158-9 on <www.avesta.org/dhall/history3.htm>). However, the connection
between the logos and the Spenta Mainyu, may have been in the opposite direction, from Neo-
Platonism into late Zoroastrianism, since the sacred texts known as the Avesta were redacted under
Shapur II (309-379 CE) as part of a campaign to enforce a single interpretation of Zoroastrian beliefs
in the Persian Empire; see Carter, 1918: p. 66. See also Hall, 1928: p. 50.
74


The third, and current, era is one where the Deceitful Spirit has prevailed. But as Ahriman is
unable to foresee the future he fails to appreciate that his attack on creation will ultimately be
in vain as humanity will help God restore the perfect cosmos, a renewal known as the
frashokereti, in the final era. At its conclusion the current era will witness the coming of the
saviour, the Soashyant, who will unify the pure ones to defeat evil for ever, and pave the way
for the resurrection of the dead, the Final Judgement, and the fiery destruction of the
world.
158
The sages of antiquity were mostly united in expecting the last days to be ones of
utter lawlessness, ignorance and heresy; that would, in turn, spur the cleansing of the earth
by fire and the beginning of a new golden age of peace, plenty, permanence and purity.
The observable cyclical pattern of life and the movement of the sun, moon, planets and stars
underpinned ancient thinking about the development of the cosmos. A cyclical pattern
permits us to view order and disorder, creation and destruction, as ultimately harmonious
features of reality. The cycles operate at different magnitudes: the life cycle of the butterfly is
far shorter than that of an elephant; while the procession of the suns rising and setting
through the constellations is far lengthier than its progress along the meridian (the solar
year). Belief in the cosmic cycle with its four eras and two world-wide catastrophes is central
to understanding the salvation religions approach to the last days and the Final Judgement.
The myth of the last days
The first references in the Bible to the myth of the last days come in the Book of Isaiah and
are linked to the fall of Lucifer. Isaiah was credited with giving the advice to Hezekiah, the
king of Judah, not to surrender Jerusalem when it was besieged by the Assyrians in 702
BCE. He was rewarded when the invaders were struck by plague. Accordingly a large
number of oracles were ascribed to Isaiah, though many seem to have been composed long
after his death, during or after the Jews exile in Babylonia. The Book of Isaiah brings
together several oracles recalling, firstly, the defeat of Lucifers revolt, the crushing of Israels
enemies and a prophesy about the last days.
The last days according to the Old Testament
How are you fallen from heaven, O Morning Star, son of Dawn!
How are you cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven;

158
See Clark, 2001: pp. 2, 7-10, and 50-55; Sarkhosh Curtis, 1993: pp. 20-24; and Stoyanov, 1994: p.
10.
75


I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit on the mount of assembly, on the heights of Zaphon;
I will ascend to the top of the clouds,
I will make myself like the Most High.
But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.
The Lord of hosts has sworn:
As I have designed, so shall it be;
and as I have planned, so shall it come to pass:
I will break the Assyrian in my land,
and on my mountains trample him underfoot;
his yoke shall be removed from them,
and his burden from their shoulders.
This is the plan that is planned concerning the whole earth
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,
and the earth will be shaken out of its place,
at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger.
See I am stirring up the Medes against them,
who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold.
Their bows will slaughter the young men,
they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;
their eyes will not pity children.
And Babylon the glory of kingdoms,
the splendours and pride of the Chaldeans,
will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.
All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth,
When a signal is raised on the mountains, look!
When a trumpet is blown, listen!
On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish
Leviathan the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent, and He will kill the dragon
that is in the sea. And on that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those
that were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land
of Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
76


For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of vindication by Zions cause,
And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulphur;
her land shall become burning pitch.
Night and day it shall not be quenched;
its smoke will go up forever.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.
A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
But it shall be for Gods people;
Now thus says the Lord:
When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned,
And the flames will not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.
I gave Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my sight
Isaiah, 13: 13 and 17-19; 14: 12-15 and 24-26; 18: 3; 27: 1 &12; 34: 8-10; 35: 4 & 8;
43: 2-4 (5
th
Century BCE).

These writings ascribed to Isaiah make favourable reference to the Medes and Persians,
notably to Cyrus who liberated the Jews from their captivity in Babylonia and is described as
the Lords anointed (Isaiah, 44 and 45). It is likely that there was a common origin to the
Judaic and Zoroastrian notions concerning the last days and the salvation offered to the
faithful, ideas which were repeated in later texts and also formed the basis for Muslim
beliefs.
159

159
For a tantalizingly brief discussion of Persian influence on the related doctrines concerning the
Messianic kingdom, the world to come and the resurrection of the dead see Jacobs, 1964: pp. 411-
421 and 439.
77


Similar themes are to be found five hundred years after Isaiah, with Judea now a Roman
Province. The warning from Rabbinic eschatological works and the Book of Revelation,
written around 95 CE, comes in the format of a dramatic vision (the word apocalypse means
a revelation) with a reassuringly happy ending, for the faithful at any rate. Heavenly portents
will signal a time of tribulation. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse indicate that war the
first rider will bring in its wake the other calamities of civil strife, famine and plague, with
death (Hades) following closely. The faithful are warned not to be taken in by the false
prophet or Anti-Christ, whom some Jewish sources call Armilus, but is known to Muslims as
the Dajjal, the one-eyed liar.
160
A figure called the Liar is also mentioned in one of the
Dead Sea scrolls, the Commentary on Habakkuk, who figures in the war between the Sons
of Light and the Sons of Darkness, the army of Belial, in the last days.
161
The scrolls,
discovered in 1947 hidden in a cave near to the ancient fortress of Qumrn, are thought to
have belonged to a Jewish sect known as the Essenes. Their Community Rule instructed the
Sons of Light to walk perfectly in the spirit of truth along the straight path of righteousness
that they called the Way.
162
The sects eschatological writings may date within a century
before or after the beginning of our Common Era.
163

The Liar and the Wicked Priest are portrayed as seeking to subvert the Sons of Light from
the Teacher of Righteousness. They are characters in an historic drama, encompassing the
past, present and future. The Liar is an authority figure who collaborates with the Empire to

160
According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Mohammed related that the Dajjal will emerge from a
crater on the border of Syria-Palestine with Iraq accompanied by a river and fire and spread
mischief right and left. Although the Dajjal will conquer Syria and threaten the holy centres of Mecca
and Medina he will be defeated by the returned Christ. Among the Dajjals followers will be Jews,
hypocritical Muslims and unbelievers (Kitab Al-Fitan wa Ashrat As-Saah [Book Pertaining to the
Turmoil and Portents of the Last Hour], sayings 7000, 7005 7015 and 7034, from the Sahih Muslim
collections of sayings, hadith; saying 4232 from the Sunan Abu Dawood collection; and sayings 3.106
and 9.239, of the Sahih Al-Bukhari collection). The name al-Dajjal is probably derived from the Syriac
meshiha dagla, or false messiah, a literal translation of the Greek pseudokristoi (Matthew, 24: 24)
according to Gil, 1997: p. 64.
161
Vermes, 2004: pp. 165 and 509-516.
162
Vermes, 2004: pp. 101-102, 109-111 and 134.
163
The dating of the scrolls is controversial but from graphic analysis and radiocarbon dating appears
to have been written between 200 BCE and 70 CE; Vermes, 2004: p.14. The Commentary on
Habakkuk, along with the War Scroll, imply the existence of the Jerusalem Temple before its
destruction by the Romans in 70 CE and mention the king of the Kittim, that is, the Roman Emperor,
and that the Roman legions make sacrificial offerings to their standards, an imperial practice. This
suggests that these books were composed in the first decades of the Common Era; see Baigent and
Leigh, 2001: pp. 214, 224-225 and 254; and Vermes, 2004: pp. 60, 164-165 and 512.
78


deceive the people and persecute Gods prophet, the Teacher of Righteousness. According
the Geza Vermes (1924-2013), one of the worlds leading scholars on the scrolls, the
Wicked Priest was Jonathon Maccabaeus (d. 143 BCE), one of the Maccabee brothers who
fought to restore the Laws of Moses against the Hellenizing supporters of the Greek
Seleucid emperors. Some Jewish traditionalists, known as the Hasidim, the Pious, objected
to Jonathons appointment as High Priest in 152 BCE and the founding of the Hashmonaean
dynasty, which ruled Judea until Roman times. The Essenes seem to have originated from
this split within Judaism and it resulted in their hounding by the Sadducees.
164
Vermes does
not identify the Teacher of Righteousness but offers circumstantial evidence that indicates
he might have been the author of the final chapters (7 to 12) of the Book of Daniel. The
Qumrn caves contained no less than eight partial copies of Daniel, along with other Biblical
books and several texts from the Book of Enoch. One of the scrolls, known as The
Damascus Document, has a clear reference to the prophecies in Daniel that describe the fall
of Babylon to the Medes and Persians, the conquests of Alexander the Great and to the
events leading to the uprising led by the Maccabees.
165

164
The theologian Hans Kng describes the Sadducees as the party of a rich Hellenized upper
class that collaborated with the Greek and Roman rulers of Judea; see Kng, 1992: pp. 117-121. The
name Sadducee is derived from Sadduc, a variant of Zadok (used by the historian Josephus); see
Baigent and Leigh, 2001: pp. 261 and 297. In other words, there were only political differences
between the Sadducees and the Sons of Zadok. Some elements of the Zadokite priestly clan were
aligned politically with the Greeks and Romans, while other sections were critical or in outright
opposition.
165
The Damascus Document may date to about 100 BCE and the Book of Daniel to after 164 BCE
according to Vermes, 2004: pp. 127 and 164; see also Wilson, 1999: p. 197. Although it is clear that
the final form of the Book of Daniel was composed sometime after 167 BCE as the prophecies relate
to the persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BCE), and
some chapters may be considerably older, this does not rule out a somewhat later date for the
additional chapters. There is, for example, an apparent reference in Daniel to the marriage between
Ptolemy VIs daughter Cleopatra Thea and the Seleucid usurper Alexander Balas that took place in
150 BCE; see Daniel, 11: 17 and 1 Maccabees, 10: 57. So the two documents may form part of a
single tradition or even have been composed by the same author, conceivably the original of the
Teacher of Righteousness.
79


The Essenes
The Essenes were a pietist sect critical of the Temple priesthood, which was dominated by
the Sadducees. The name Essaioi may derive from the designation Doers of the Law, Osei
ha-Torah or the Osim. Another suggestion, supported by Geza Vermes, is that it comes from
the Aramaic word for healers, assaya. Philo of Alexandria wrote that they are most fitly
called healers, in addition to being lovers of wisdom.
166

Pliny the Elder described the Esseni as having a retreat on the western shores of the Dead
Sea, although the sects members lived in the towns of Judea, as the historian Josephus and
Philo attested.
167

The Dead Sea scrolls shows that the Essenes departed from orthodox Judaism in certain
respects and Vermes suggests that they portray a distinctly Hellenistic concept of
immortality [which held] the flesh to be a prison out of which the indestructible soul of the just
escape. Another scholar describes how the sect dabbled in mysteries, such as foretelling
the future, casting out demons, and resorting to supernatural invocations for curative
purposes.
168
It suggests a parallel with Gnostic theories.
Moreover there are numerous parallels between the beliefs expressed in the scrolls and
those found among the early Christians. In his book Christian Beginnings, Vermes points to
idea of the Two Ways: the Way of Light in contrast to the Way of Darkness or Death; to the
use of the term sons of light, for instance in John, 12: 36; the image of the Christ as the
shepherd; the practice of exorcism; the communal meal; and to the ritual of baptism. Indeed,
early Christian sources called the Jewish followers of Jesus the Ebionites, meaning the
Poor, in an exact parallel with the Essenes possible name for themselves.
169

Among the Dead Sea scrolls were calendars based on the solar year, astrological materials
and rituals for purification, blessing and cursing. The Essenes seem, therefore, to have been
comfortable with the more esoteric elements of Judaism and Hellenistic culture generally.
This placed them at odds with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus was himself critical of

166
Cited by Vermes, 2013: p.17.
167
Cited by Wilson, 1969: pp. 26-30; Lane Fox, 1992: pp. 108 and 112; and Harris, 1999: pp. 42-45.
168
See Vermes, 2004: pp. 80-81 and 88; and Epstein, 1959: p. 102.
169
In Vermes, 2013: pp. 70, 75, 85-86, 90, 128, 136-137, and 148.
80


the Pharisees over their strict observance of the traditions of the fathers that ensured
personal purity. They, in turn, criticized Jesus on his lax interpretation of the Law and lack of
education.
170
Situating Jesus in this Jewish but also Hellenistic context does not make him
an Essene, but it explains why Christianity was later so willing to engage with, and recruit,
the Gentiles.
After the Jewish Revolt (CE 66-73), the Essenes seem to disappear from history. Doubtless
Roman repression played its part. But we may speculate that their traditions, rituals and
eschatological predilection made them ready converts to the cult around Jesus.

During these years of conflict, there were a number of martyrdoms that give credence to the
persecution alluded to in The Damascus Document, involving the sons of Zadok, the
leaders of the Hasidim, or Pharisees as they later became known. In the closing stage of a
rebellion around 90 BCE, the Hashmonaean king and high priest Alexander Jannaeus (103-
76 BCE) had 800 Pharisees crucified in Jerusalem and their wives and children killed before
their eyes.
171
Intriguingly, a list recounting the ancestors of Joseph, husband to Jesus
mother Mary, includes one named Zadok, along with Eleazar, another martyr from this
period (Matthew, 1: 15-16). It suggests a family connection with the Pharisees. If so, Jesus
pedigree would have made him a prime suspect in Roman eyes as a potential rebel religious
leader, for whom crucifixion was the likely mode of execution. This is just one of the several
striking parallels between Christian and Muslim narratives about the Messianic age and
Jewish history and its accompanying eschatology.
The figure of the Liar came to symbolise the accommodation by the Temple priesthood to
the Seleucid and Roman imperial power, which insisted that Jews and Christians pay
reverence to the emperors divinity. The erection of Caligulas statue in the Temple of
Jerusalem sparked riots in 39 CE and continuing disputes over the making of sacrifices in
honour of the Emperor led to the later revolt and the sack of the city; all of which is alluded to

170
See Vermes, 1973: pp. 17-19 and 37-39; and Pagola, 2009: pp. 319-323.
171
The Pharisees, from the Aramaic perishayya, meaning those set apart by their piety. The
Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed on the doctrine concerning the resurrection of the dead,
which the latter considered to be an innovation, not supported by ancient Jewish tradition; see Kng,
1992: 118-122; and Jacobs, 1964: pp. 411-413. Some rabbis, including the medieval scholar
Maimonides, argued that the new bodies given to the resurrected faithful would perish eventually in
the world to come since only the soul, the intellect, was immortal; Jacobs, 1964: pp. 413-419. The
Pharisees also accepted the existence of angels in contrast to the Sadducees; see Isaacs, 1976: p.
110.
81


in Revelation. The refusal to offer a sacrifice to the Emperor, as if he were divine, was an act
of civil disobedience by Jews and Christians, and led to periodic persecution. The myth of
the last days provided them with a narrative to sustain them through their times of tribulation.
For, in the myth, just as the demon-led forces of Armilus appear to triumph, the angel
Raphael will blow his trumpet to summon the faithful to rally around the Messiah, the Son of
Man. Men and angels will join battle with the heathen nations (Gog and Magog) and heretics
at Armageddon the scene of one of the bloodiest conflicts with the Egyptians in Israels
history.
172
According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Mohammed expected the battle with
the Romans to last four days and would be so terrible that nine-tenths of the warriors would
fall. The author of Revelation, claiming to be John the Divine, promises that although the
battle will be a close run thing (and the Israelites were defeated by the Egyptians in the
original encounter) the forces of wickedness will be overcome, ushering in an era of
universal peace. The Archangel Michael will for the second time bind the great dragon Satan
and imprison him in the depths of Tartarus, below even the realm of the dead, Hades. The
writer links this to the Second Coming of the Son of Man and to the Final Judgement of
souls. Those who are saved will be provided with new indestructible bodies to enjoy the
restoration of Paradise on earth. In this way will the human story that started with Adam and
Eve achieves its redemption and closure.
Zoroastrian tradition envisages the same battle as being fought between the world saviour,
the Saoshyant, and Azhi Dahaka, an ancient three-headed dragon, spawn of Ahriman.
173

According to the myth, in early times, Azhi Dahaka (or Zahkata, as he is known in Middle
Persian) possessed a man from Arabia, from whose shoulders then grew two serpents

172
In some sources, the battle takes place in the valley of Jehoshaphat. See the Jewish
Encyclopaedia on <www.jewishencyclopedia.com>. The hordes of Gog and Magog, in the Koran,
Yajuj and Majuj, are often identified as Scythians or Huns from the north. According to the Koran,
Dhul-Qarnain (the One with Two Horns) constructed an iron gate between two mountains in the
Caucasus to prevent the hordes of Gog and Magog from moving south. (Dhul-Qarnain probably refers
to Alexander the Great because his coinage depicted him with two rams horns symbolising his claim
to be the son of Zeus-Amun, which followed Alexanders visit to the shrine of Amun at Siwa in 331
BCE; see Rohl, 1998: p. 234; and Sarkhosh Curtis, 1993: p. 59.) In the last days, the Gates will be
levelled and on that day We will let them come in tumultuous throngs; from The Koran: The Cave,
Al-Kahf, 18: 99: p. 99. The Caucasian Gate at the Darial Gorge of the Terek River, Georgia, is a
possible location. In hadith 7015 from the Sahih Muslim collection of Mohammeds sayings, Jesus will
rally the faithful after killing the Dajjal, and lead them to a place of safety called Tur (meaning a
mountain), during the invasion of Gog and Magog. Traditionally Jesus is said to have ascended into
heaven on the Mount of Olives, Tur Zaita or Djabal al-Tur; see Houtsma, 1913-36: p. 869. A summary
of the Christian version of these future events may be found in Mango, 1994: chapter 11.
173
See Glass and Smith, 2003: p. 493.
82


(hence the three heads), and usurped the Iranian throne to rule as a tyrant for a thousand
years. Eventually he was defeated and imprisoned inside Mount Demavend, the highest
peak in Iran, by the legendary warrior and sage Thraetaona (Fariydun) and his ally, the
blacksmith Kaveh. When Azhi Dahaka breaks free from his chains in the last days, he will be
defeated once more by either the Saoshyant, or, in an alternative version, by another ancient
hero, Keresaspa (Garshasp), who will awaken to slay him.
174
There is a fascinating
correspondence between these ancient Persian stories about the distant past and the far
future with Christian and Muslim traditions, as well as a clear parallel with the Azhi Dahaka
myth in the legend of St George, who also killed a dragon. George, or Iorgos, was a tribune
in the Roman army, born under the Emperor Aurelian (270-275 CE). He became a Christian
martyr for refusing to make sacrifice to the Roman emperor during the so-called Diocletianic
persecutions.
175
In the legend, King Dadianos or Dacian, possibly the Emperor Galerius
(305-311) whose mother was from Dacia, subjected George to horrendous torture for seven
years before executing him. His cult was centred on Lod, ancient Diospolis, now in Israel,
where his mothers family held estates. The new Emperor Constantine promoted the
veneration of St George and commissioned over twenty churches dedicated to him, one of
which contains his tomb, in Lod.
176
It can be no coincidence that the Anti-Christ anticipated
by Mohammed in the last days, the Dajjal, will be pursued and killed by Jesus with a spear
at the Gate of Ludd, the Arabic for Lod.
177

174
Sarkhosh Curtis, 1993: pp. 26 and 34-36.
175
The Emperor Galerius launched a wave of persecution against Christians in 303, while he was
Caesar serving under the Emperor Diocletian, who went on to retire in 305. The Diocletianic
persecutions, as they became known, were in fact promoted by Galerius, a firm devotee of the old
gods, and only came to an end with the Edict of Toleration of 311, signed by Galerius, by now close to
death, and his two co-rulers, Licinius and Constantine. Constantine was acclaimed Emperor
(Augustus) by the Senate in 312 and legalised Christianity in 313 under the so-called Edict of Milan.
176
Stace, 2002: chapter 2 and p. 34; see also Jacobus de Voragine, 1998, The Golden Legend: pp.
118-120.
177
The collected sayings (hadith) of Mohammed recount that Isa, son of Maryam, that is, Jesus,
having descended from heaven to Damascus, would search for him [al-Dajjal] until he would catch
hold of him at the gate of Ludd and would kill him with a spear (sayings 7015 and 7023, from the
Sahih Muslim collections of sayings). Some sources claim that the Gate of Ludd is to be found in
Jerusalem, but the western gate for the road to Lydda/Lod is actually known as the Jaffa Gate since
the main destination is Jaffa/ Tel Aviv. In a Jewish text known as the Damascus Document,
discovered in 1896 but also among the Dead Sea scrolls, the Teacher of Righteousness enters into a
new covenant with those who remain true to the Law in Damascus. The reference to Damascus
alludes to a prophecy in the Book of Amos (5: 27); cited in Baigent and Leigh, 2001: p. 219; and in
Vermes, 2004: pp. 43, 54-60, 67-69 and 133-135. Thus, in the last days, Jesus will avenge the forced
83


Similar writings to the Book of Revelation were circulating in the synagogues of the Jews
dispersed after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Four Horsemen and the Beast, whose
number is given as 666 and is code for Nero, refer to calamities current at the time.
178
Nero,
of course, achieved infamy by launching a wave of persecution against Christians on the
pretext that they had instigated the great fire of Rome in 64. He was well versed in magic,
according to Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 CE), and was notorious for his cruelty.
179
There had
been earthquakes in 60, the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, famine in 92, and war between
Rome and Parthia from 58 culminating in the Jewish Revolt itself from 63-73.
By placing the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of Christians and Jews within
the greater drama of cosmic creation/ destruction and the Fall of humankind, synagogues
and churches were able to find an explanation for their tribulations and the prospect of a
hopeful outcome. The myths function is to be a warning as well as a source of comfort. It
seems to be saying that as calamitous as the current epoch may be, things will be far worse
when the world really is destroyed called the Cataclysm, Al-Infitar, in the Koran when the
sun ceases to shine, when the stars fall down and the mountains are blown away, [and]
when Hell burns fiercely (81-82) and restructured again without corruption. See, the day
is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the
day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it leaves them neither root
nor branch (Malachi, 4: 1). For then, everyone will have to cross over the Hellfire, or in the
Zoroastrian version, across a sea of molten metal as the minerals in the earth are melted.
180

Only the saints (you who revere My name, as recorded in Malachi, 4: 2) will make it
definitely into Paradise, while the rest must count on Gods grace, and mercy, to be saved.
But more than this, the myth of the last days offers a relevant story for all times.
Although myths ostensibly deal with the distant past or far future they concern, in actuality,
the here and now. This is as true of the myths of the last days as it is those about the
creation of the cosmos. The myth in the Book of Revelation, for example, appears to be

exile of the Sons of Light to Damascus under their Teacher of Righteousness by returning to
Jerusalem to confront their persecutor, the Liar, who had driven the faithful from the city and defiled
the Jewish Temple. After expelling him from the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus, or the resurrected George,
will slay the Liar at the city gates of Lod.
178
See Friedrich Engels, 1894, On the History of Early Christianity, in Feuer, 1969: p. 230.
179
See Luck, 2006: p. 69; and Lane Fox, 1988: p. 432.
180
In the Zoroastrian version the souls of the dead must cross the Chinvat Bridge, which in Islam is
called the Sarat Bridge. The sinful fall off the bridge into Hell.
84


about the world to come but it is also a warning to us to put right what is going wrong today.
One of the foremost authorities on mythology, Yves Bonnefoy, makes the point:
The function of the cosmological myth is not to define an objective image of the
universe but to reveal the way in which people experience their condition in the
world in other words, to express a certain understanding of human existence.
181

Another scholar of mythology, the philosopher Leszek Koakowski (1927-2009), echoes
Heraclitus in observing that the mythical form of time allows us to see in the mutability of
things not only change, but also accumulation and enduring values. Despite the
irreversible flow of events [there is a] purposeful order, hidden in the stream of
experience.
182
Myths help people address the constant change we experience through an
explanation whereby order is preserved, especially when people are living through a time of
crisis. The fact is that there are always plenty of ominous portents that signal the end-time.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are permanently on the loose because they are
structural features of a corrupted world.
The meaning of these allegorical figures is illustrated in the accompanying table (Table 3-1).
Each figure from Revelation can be identified as a social feature, which in turn reflects, at a
personal level, the seven deadly sins, or vices. The myth of the last days is a warning above
all. It is a clarion call to those who care about making good a fractured society to stand up for
the vision of a better one. For many religious people, this better world is the one to come,
that is, as we have discovered, the future era once the current cycle of time has been
completed. But this is not the only interpretation. Just as the myth of the last days concerns
the here and now, the concept of a society where virtue, wisdom and fairness reign which
in the Gospels is called the kingdom of God is also inherent to our own time.

181
Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992b: p. 162.
182
Koakowski, 2001: pp. 4-5.
85


Table 3-1: Apocalyptic Figures
Figure Type of
Calamity
Structural Feature of
Society
Personal
Vice
Accessory Other Features
1
st
Horseman War Oppression Wrath Carries a Parthian bow Rides a white horse
2
nd
Horseman Civil Strife/
Crime
Predation Envy Carries a short sword (a
macharia)
Rides a red horse
3
rd
Horseman Famine Exploitation Avarice Carries scales Rides a black horse
4
th
Horseman Pestilence Misery (Sickness,
Poverty)
Gluttony Carries Deaths scythe Rides a pale/ sallow, yellow-green
(chloros) horse a sickly colour
The Great
Whore of
Babylon
Luxury Inequality Lust Wears scarlet robes and is
decked with gold
Her fall is lamented by the rulers
and merchants (the rich)
The Beast/ Anti-
Christ/ The False
Prophet
Heresy Ignorance Folly The Beast uses tokens
(money) and miracles to
deceive
Only the followers of the Beast
who have its mark (666) on them
are permitted to buy & sell
The Great Red
Dragon
Conspiracy/
Sedition
Rebellion Pride Tries to kill the Lamb and
the Mother of the Saviour
With his tail he dragged down the
stars (the fallen angels)
Source: The Book of Revelation to John
86


In the salvation religions the myth of the last days is also the moment for the Final
Judgement of humankind by God. Additionally, Christians, Muslims and Zoroastrians
anticipate the resurrection of the dead at this point. It is clear from a comparison of these
beliefs that the paradise that awaits those who are saved will be found on earth, rather than
in heaven, that is, on the new earth formed after the conflagration. Paul of Tarsus (c. 5-67
CE) confirms this in his first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 15 Paul tackles the objection
by pagans and some Christians to the idea that the resurrection will involve bodies rising to
heaven. Critics were arguing that a terrestrial body could not become a celestial body. Paul
agrees with them that only the soul is spiritual and can rise to heaven, because Adam (and
we, his descendants) came from the earth, from dust. What I am saying, brothers and
sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable
inherit the imperishable. We will not all die, but we will all be changed and bear the
image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians, 15: 49-51). The resurrection of the dead will not
occur in the corrupted world we have inhabited since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Eden, but in a new age, when the Christ, the second man, will descend from heaven to
earth. This, Paul avers, will take place at the last trumpet call.
183

The kingdom of God
In a quite literal sense, then, the next world envisaged by the salvation religions is the one
that comes after the destruction of the current one, which is the fourth season of the cosmic
Great Year. It will be a world of matter, but re-formed more perfectly. But it is also possible to
understand the notion of the kingdom of God as referring to something that is already
present.
184
The Greek word normally translated as kingdom, basileia, also means
dominion or rule.
185
So the kingdom of God refers to the spreading influence of good, or of
the light that disperses the darkness, which happens when wise people follow the path of
righteousness. There is a similar meaning to the Persian equivalent, khshathra, used by
Zoroaster to describe the coming power or kingdom of God.
186
We can find this meaning in
several sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

183
See Jeffrey R Asher, 2000, Polarity and change in 1 Corinthians 15: A study of metaphysics,
rhetoric and resurrection, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 42. Mohr Siebeck.
184
This point is also made by Baigent, 2006: pp. 281-3.
185
The Catholic Encyclopaedia says the sway of the king (see
<www.newadvent.org/cathen/08646a.htm> accessed on 4.01.2008).
186
See Clark, 2001: p. 27.
87


Jesus of Nazareth on the kingdom of God:
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was
coming, and he answered, The kingdom of God is not coming with things
that can be observed; nor will they say, Look, here it is! or There it is! For, in
fact, the kingdom of God is amongst [or within] you.
Then he said to his disciples, The days are coming when you will long to see
one of days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you,
Look there! or Look here! Do not go; do not set off in pursuit. For as the
lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will Son
of Man be in his day. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too will it be in
the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking, and marrying and
being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood
came and destroyed them all.
They asked him, Teacher, when will this be, and what will the sign that this is
about to take place? And he said, Beware that you are not led astray; for
many will come in my name and say, I am he! and The time is near! Do not
go after them.
When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things
must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately. Then he said to
them, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will
be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there
will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. There be will signs in
the sun, the moon and the stars, and on earth distress among nations
confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear
and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of heaven
will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with
great power and great glory.
Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all
these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.
From the Gospel of Luke, 17:20-27; 21: 7-27 and 36.
*********
88


His followers said to him, When will the kingdom come?
It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, Look, here it is, or
Look, there it is. Rather the Fathers kingdom is spread out upon the earth,
and people do not see it.
Jesus said: If your leaders say to you, Look, the kingdom is in heaven, then
the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, It is in the sea, then
the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside
you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand
that you are the children of the Living Father. But if you do not know
yourselves, then you will dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.
From the Gospel of Thomas, 3 and 113.
187

*********
Jesus said to them Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son
of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will
also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel
For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and
then he will repay everyone for what has been done.
From the Gospel of Matthew, 19: 28 and 16: 27.
*********
When the blessed one said this, he greeted all of them and said Peace be
with you. Receive my peace. Be careful that no one leads you astray by
saying, look here or look there. The child of humility is within you. Follow
that. Those who seek it will find it. Go preach the good news of the kingdom.
For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and
then he will repay everyone for what has been done.
From the Gospel of Mary, 1: 9-13.
188

187
Gospel of Thomas, in Meyer, 1992: pp. 23 and 65; see also Ehrman, 2005: pp. 20 and 28.
188
Meyer, 2004: p. 19.
89


The allusion to the Son of Man, which simply means a human being, in the Gospel passages
quoted here, and other similar statements, indicate that Jesus is referring to a vision
recorded in the Book of Daniel concerning the time of the end
189
:
As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a Son of Man coming with the
clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient of Days [or, Ancient One] and was
presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all
peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be
destroyed. (Daniel, 7: 13-14).
There is a clear parallel with the Zoroastrian figure of the world saviour, the Saoshyant, the
Man of Peace, born from a virgin mother from the seed of Zoroaster, who will overcome
Ahriman and his allies and bring about the resurrection and Final Judgement of souls. It is
surely no coincidence that the Book of Daniel (12: 1-4) introduced the idea of resurrection
into Judaism, which some argue was originally a Zoroastrian belief.
190

It should also be noted that the resurrection of the dead ahead of the Final Judgement is
linked logically with the ending (and recreation) of the cosmos. The point is that the Great
Year has completed its cycle and the next one has to start. Those who are saved as a result
of a favourable judgement by God will walk through the fires of destruction into paradise.
Those condemned for their sins will be consumed by the flames and suffer everlasting
damnation. Souls recover their bodies in order to move into the next cycle of time. Another
way of approaching this idea is to remember that in the new Great Year the stars, sun, moon
and planets will repeat the motions they first made 26,000 (or 12,000 according to the
Zoroastrians) years earlier. Therefore, everything must be repeated once again. The
difference, for this new cycle, is that humankind will have learnt its lesson and the forces of
destruction will remain bound. Hence, the prediction, by the salvation religions, that the next
Great Year will be one of perfected creation.
In this way we can make sense of the references to reincarnation in the sayings ascribed to
Zoroaster and Pythagoras that have survived from ancient Hellenistic sources. For example,
the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster records that according to Zoroaster, in us the ethereal

189
Daniel, 8: 17. See also The Book of Enoch, in Charles, 1917: 46: 1-8: pp. 63-65. The meaning of
the designation Son of Man is discussed in Boyarin, 2012: chapter 2; and Vermes, 1973, 2001
edition: chapter 7. It is clear from Daniel and Enoch that the Son of Man wields the power and
authority of God.
190
Daniel, 12: 1-3.
90


vestment of the soul perpetually revolves [or reincarnates] (saying 97). This idea may not
refer to reincarnation in the Buddhist sense, but to resurrection and the repeat of the Great
Year cycle of the cosmos. Herodotus, in his Histories, states that the Egyptians were the
first people to put forward the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and to maintain that
after death it enters another creature at the moment of that creatures birth [and] the
whole period of transmigration occupies three thousand years.
191
Herodotus is stating that
every three thousand years, things begin again as a new cycle of life. We will discuss the
journey of the soul in chapter four.
Although there is a link between the idea of the next era, when a perfect world is restored,
and the concept of the kingdom of God, it is clear from the Gospels that Jesus of Nazareth
taught that the kingdom of God was something that could and should be part of the here and
now. So while we should be ready for the last days, we should not be waiting for them to
happen but get on with the task of perfecting ourselves and our societies. That message was
consistent with the Jewish prophetic tradition of Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel.
192
The faithful
are told to open their eyes, or wake up, to realise that the dominion of good is theirs to
achieve. The reign of God will last until the end of time, and not just for one thousand years
as many believe mistakenly. (The millennium, one thousand years, is an analogy for an era
and should not be taken literally.)
193
The myth of the last days makes more sense if it is
accepted as a warning that vice can predominate and suppress virtue all too easily. No one
should give up on this imperfect world bequeathed to us by Adam and Eves fall from
grace and put their hope in the next era, because they may not make through the fire. The
faithful should heed Raphaels trumpet call to make haste in building a society of virtue,
wisdom and fairness, even though it may not compare to the perfected world destined for the
next era.

191
Herodotus, 1972: Book II: 123, p. 178.
192
The rabbi and scholar Isidore Epstein (1894-1962) wrote the Messianic references throughout
Hebrew prophecy are essentially to an earthly future. It is the reign of the Lord of Righteousness
(Jeremiah, 23: 6) that is pictured. The end and aim of Messianism is to replace the present order
dominated by the senses lust, greed, violence, and passion by a social order which through
righteousness in knowledge and action creates a new earth and a new heaven; in Epstein, 1959: p.
62.
193
The point was made by Naji Mouawad in a broadcast about the Book of Revelation shown on
EWTN Live on 11 May 2011. One thousand years is mathematically ten to the third (10
3
); the number
ten symbolises totality; therefore three lots of the totality of time is the longest period one can imagine.
There is no word for better or best in Hebrew, so Jews say good, good, good when they wish to
express best.
91


Nonetheless, however suggestive the parallels between the theory of the Great Year, ending
in a conflagration, and the myth of the last days are, they will remain simply a possible
conjecture unless we can show connections between the writings of the early Christians and
the Stoics, who were among the strongest proponents of ecpyrosis. Actually this is not so
hard to demonstrate. Paul of Tarsus debated with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers while in
Athens around the year 46 and was invited to testify before the Council of the Areopagus, a
municipal authority (Acts, 17). He was deeply familiar with Greek philosophy as well as
rabbinical teaching. (Paul had studied in Jerusalem under the renowned rabbi Gamaliel,
according to Acts, 22: 3.) Over the past century, scholars have agreed that Paul often used
terms from Greek philosophy to expound the Gospel, while debating the degree to which
Paul was influenced by Platonism, Aristotle or Stoicism.
194
The legendary correspondence
between Paul and Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE-65 CE), has Paul writing I sow in a field
already fertile from the wisdom of the Stoics.
195
The author of these tantalisingly brief
missives intended to prove that Paul believed Stoicism prefigured Christianity. The classical
historian Robin Lane Fox has pointed to the parallels between Stoic and Christian attitudes
towards divine providence and their belief in the end of time.
196

Moreover, there is an important parallel between the Stoic and Christian missions. The
designation stoic does not refer to a particular psychological state but to the shady arcade
that ran alongside the market place, the agora, of ancient Greek cities. It was in the stoa of
Athens that the schools founder Zeno of Citium taught. Unlike the Platonists, who retired
into their academy to debate philosophy and mathematics, the Stoics propagated their
message directly to an, probably often indifferent, audience of buyers and sellers. They also
sought to appeal to people not as members of a city-community, of a polis, but as citizens of
the universe, as cosmopolitans. The Stoics imagined people as living together in a single
commonwealth, rather than being divided between rival city-states, and thus appear to have

194
See Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Stoicism in the Apostle Paul: A philosophical reading, in Strange
and Zupko, 2004: pp. 52-53; and Thorsteinsson, 2006. Marie Isaacs states that Paul stands firmly in
the tradition of Hellenistic Judaism, as represented by Philo of Alexandria, who had adopted Stoic
conceptions in commending Judaism to his pagan contemporaries and had given a Platonic
interpretation of the accounts of creation in Genesis. Pauls strategy as apostle to the Gentiles had a
clear parallel in Philos work; see Isaacs, 1976: pp. 60-61 and 78-79.
195
The correspondence is supposed to have been written around 58-64 CE, but was actually
composed up to 300 years later; see Ehrman, 2005: p. 164.
196
Lane Fox, 1988: p. 331. Arnold Toynbee observed: Christianity, like its forerunner Stoicism,
expressed itself intellectually in terms of Hellenic philosophy; Toynbee, 1972: p. 419.
92


supported the empire building of Alexander the Great, his successors the Diadochi and,
lastly, by the Romans.
197

More relevant, perhaps, is the evidence from Jesus of Nazareths own ministry. His methods
and rhetoric have been compared to the modus operandi of a movement of itinerant
provocateurs and healers known as the Cynics.
198
We may imagine the Cynics as
comprising the radical wing of Stoicism. Both Stoics and Cynics regarded desire as the
source of unhappiness, but whereas the Cynics advocated a life of poverty, the Stoics
cultivated self-awareness and a life lived in harmony with nature and fate. Clearly Jesus was
not a Stoic (or a Cynic), but he was probably fluent in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek and well-
read.
199
The fact that his immediate followers wrote in Greek, although they must have
spoken among themselves in Aramaic, implies that Jesus intended his message to be heard
by all nations. This is not to question the first Christians innate Jewishness, but it reinforces
the interpretation that Jesus intention as Messiah was not to liberate Judea from Roman
imperialism, but to transform the social and political order of the Empire and beyond, in
favour of peace and for the poor, who may well have formed the large proportion of early
Christian converts.
200

It seems, therefore, that Jesus was not an advocate of rebellion but of Jewish
accommodation to Hellenistic, and Roman, civilization, albeit on the basis of peace (shalom
in Hebrew, implying universal justice and genuine charity), grounded in the Laws of Moses.
Answering Pontius Pilate, Jesus said: My kingdom is not from this world (John, 18: 36). In
other words, his authority to rule came from God. As a Jew, Jesus supported the Laws that

197
See Jonas, 1958: p. 248. The creation of empires also served to form a large single market, which
suited the merchants. The Stoics viewed enterprise as serving a greater, universal, good.
198
The theory that Jesus ministry had Cynic parallels is set out in Crossman, 1991. The author was a
co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, which studied the sayings attributed to Jesus. However, although
the Gospels use the literary device of a chreia, a sharp response to a question favoured by the
Cynics, Jesus and his disciples did not adopt the Cynic dress code of tunic, staff and bag; see Asnal
and Desjardins, 1997: chapter 4.
199
The case for Jesus using Greek in his public ministry is made in Selby, 1989, and Thiede, 2005: p.
151; see also Pagola, 2009: pp. 50-51. According to John (8: 8), Jesus wrote a phrase in the sand
when confronting a lynch mob intent on stoning an adulteress to death, demonstrating his literacy. We
should also remember that Jesus, as Paul wrote, was rich and became poor (2 Corinthians, 8: 9),
giving up his comfortable life around 28 CE to undertake his wandering ministry. By profession he
was a builder or carpenter tekton in Greek and as a partner in the family business would have
enjoyed a decent standard of living; see Vermes, 2003: p. 398; and Pagola, 2009: p. 69.
200
Lane Fox, 1988: chapter 6 and especially pages 322-326; see also Eagleton, 2007: introduction.
93


Moses had revealed as originating from God while he was on Mount Horeb in Sinai almost
1,500 years earlier; but he got into political and theological trouble because he wanted to
see them applied humanely, consistently and without hypocrisy.
Moreover, Johns Gospel opens with the statement In the beginning was the Word [logos],
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It goes on to claim, referring to Jesus,
And the Word became flesh and lived amongst us, and we have seen His glory (John, 1: 1
and 14). Usually logos in the opening phrase in John is translated as the word, but as we
have seen, Heraclitus and the Stoics used logos to mean something closer to logic
especially since the Greek for word is lexis, not logos. According to the Roman author
Cicero, a Stoic himself, Zeno taught that a rational principle (ratio, the Latin equivalent to
logos) pervaded all nature and is furnished with divine power, and that this power belonged
to the stars.
201
(It is nonetheless possible that Heraclitus did not intend his use of the word
logos to carry the same meaning as the Stoics usage.)
202

Therefore, a more accurate interpretation of the opening verses of Johns Gospel would see
the Christ as the embodiment of divine reason. The first Christians interpreted Jesus
ministry, death and apparent resurrection as a decisive moment in human history, whereby
the logic that drove the cosmos explained its purpose and broke the endless cycle of Fate.
Earlier prophets had revealed the logos, but when Jesus appeared to them after his
crucifixion, the apostles realised that this was sign that the kingdom of God was at hand. The
Christ was with them to bring it about. It was the right moment to preach the good news to
all, even if this exposed them to ridicule and persecution. The logos, the active force in the
cosmos,
203
had moved things along by appearing on earth in the form of Jesus, they
concluded, and the world needed to be told.

201
In the Holy Koran the equivalent of the logos is the kalimah; see Salibi, 2007: p. 49.
202
Sedley states that Zenos Stoic colleague Cleanthes (c. 330-230 BCE) probably became the first
interpreter to see in [Heraclitus book] a reference to the immanent rational principle governing the
world, an understanding of Heraclitus which has been widely accepted ever since; see Sedley, 2007:
p. 226. The interpretation was repeated by Posidonius, who played a major role in formulating the
theories of cosmic sympathy and intelligence (p.207).
203
In the works of Philo of Alexandria, the logos is spoken of as both instrumental and also as that
which is imparted [that is, the word]. Logos is the man of God, His agent in the creation of man,
[whereas] pneuma is what is given to man at creation. Whereas the logos is the agent in the
creation of the universe, pneuma is the life principle itself; from Isaacs, 1976: pp. 55-56.
94


95


Chapter 4: Psyches journey

The Mind is the divine part of a human being, which is capable of rising to heaven.
The Corpus Hermeticum (2
nd
Century CE).
204

In the first three chapters I investigated the logic of the arcane science of the ancient Greek-
speaking philosophers and how this conception enhances the possibility of averting the
looming clash between modern rationalism and religion. I explained how these philosophers,
who were also scientists and mathematicians, and typified by Pythagoras, sought to
understand the order of the cosmos through mathematics. Their theories which I outlined
as the 4-3-2-1 scheme also underpin the myths of creation, of the last days, and how evil
came into the world, which are central to the salvation religions. In this fourth chapter I
examine the idea that each person has a soul which embarks upon a journey to heaven (or
hell) after death. When treated as allegory, this story is revealed as a search for self-
knowledge, self-control and wisdom.
Life after death
Almost all cultures envisage some form of life after death, which, of course, is the point
when a mammal ceases to move and loses its warmth. Neanderthal burials indicate their
reverence for the dead, so ideas about an afterlife seem to have emerged very early in
human history.
205
Evidence for burial grounds in Africa, Europe, India and China appears
among hunter-gatherers in Mesolithic times, dating back at least ten thousand years. The
practice of depositing grave goods in the tomb was intended to encourage the departed to
pass over and begin their journey. The living did not want the dead to remain on earth, to
haunt their old homes. Placing their favourite things in the grave reflected an anxiety that the
deceaseds attachments might prevent them from going on into realm of the dead. Ghosts
were people who had failed to pass over and it was fear of ghosts that led to establishment
of burial grounds away from habitation and the entombment of treasured possessions,
including, on occasion, the favourite wives of the patriarchal elite.
206

204
Freke and Gandy, 1997: p. 134.
205
See Rudgley, 1999: pp. 213-223.
206
See Burenhult, 2004: pp. 252, 282; and Dunan, 1963: p. 30. For India, see Misra, 2001; and on
China, see Rawson, 1980: pp. 16-17.
96


The idea that a good life is rewarded and a wicked one punished seems to have been
around for some four thousand years. As the tombs of the Middle Kingdom period reveal, the
ancient Egyptians had adopted the belief that a persons soul (symbolised by the heart)
would be weighed by a tribunal of the underworld god Osiris, the goddess of truth, Maat, and
the scribe of the gods, Thoth, in a trial of the individuals conduct during life. For those who
failed the trial, the penalty was extinction, by the Devourer Ammut.
207
At death the soul
leaves behind its body (khet), its life force (ka), and the personality (ba), and made its way
to the western edge of the world, accompanied by the dog god Anubis. The journey was
beset by peril, but Anubis helped the soul through seven gates and pylons to reach the Hall
of Judgement, presided over by Osiris. If the soul, or more correctly the conscience (the ib),
passed its test and was judged worthy, it was reunited with its ba and its ka to become an
immortal being (the effective one or akh).
These ideas re-appeared in Platos writings, which form the basis for Christian notions of the
soul. In three books, the Republic, the Phaedrus and the Timaeus-Critias, Plato imagined
the soul as comprising three elements. There is a lower soul, responsible for pulling one
towards satisfying the bodys appetites; and a higher or rational soul, which longs to attain
knowledge, truth and beauty. The lower, mortal soul is located in the trunk, and the rational
soul, said to be immortal, in the head. The third element is the will, which may choose which
direction, desire or reason, to follow.
208
Plato may have modified the Egyptian belief
described above on the reunion of the ib, ka and ba. He presented this three-fold unit as a
simpler duality comprising the spirit/ will (ka), or animating force which gives a living body its
warmth and capability to move, and soul (ba), the personality or mind.
209
(Plato visited
Heliopolis in Egypt in the 390s.)
210
This model was in turn adapted by Aristotle and later
philosophers like Philo of Alexandria. Here, the soul is conceived as having a number of
faculties, such as the capacity for reasoning, the capacity of conscience, of choice, and so
on. We can compare these ancient ideas quite straightforwardly with modern psychological

207
See Fernndez-Armesto, 2004: p. 95.
208
Osmond, 2003: pp. 15-25.
209
The ancient Egyptians associated the conscience and seat of the will, the ib, with the heart; the ka,
the life force, with the liver; and the personality, the ba, with the lungs. There was also the sa, perhaps
the sense of foreboding, which was associated with the intestines; we still speak of having a gut-
feeling when something is wrong. See The Gods of Ancient Egypt, 2006-8, Hachette.
210
The geographer Strabo (c. 64 BCE-24 CE) was shown the house in which Plato lived in Heliopolis,
near to modern Cairo. Diogenes states that Plato went to Cyrene, Italy and Egypt but Cicero records
that the visits were to Egypt and then Italy; cited by Guthrie, 1975: pp. 14-15.
97


concepts. Where the ancients might talk about the lower soul of passions, we would discuss
the drives or needs that are motivators. In modern terms the faculties of the rational soul
are mental capacities or aptitudes. The ancients thought that the body relied upon the soul
and spirit. Today, we see things the other way around. Mental processes are neural and
depend upon the body.
Just as the ancient Egyptians did, the salvation religions describe what happens after death
in terms of the souls journey. A good example from Christianity can be found in the fourth
century book entitled The Apocalypse of Paul. Most believers subscribed to the doctrine that
the soul had to fight off demons, which gathered at the time of death to ensnare it. The
demons set up a series of toll posts (telonia) at which the soul had to demonstrate that
through good deeds undertaken in life she could pay the dues of past sins. If the soul was
unable to pay the toll, or showed insufficient contrition, then the demons would seize it and
take it down to Hell.
211
The myth of the souls journey is also to be found in Platos writings,
as we shall see. It is no coincidence that a journey is often used as a literary device to
describe the process of self-discovery. A non-literal interpretation of the myth of the souls
journey shows that the issue at stake concerns the way to lead a good life and the path to
follow in order to achieve this.

A good death
And I [Paul] said to the angel, I wish to see the souls of the just and of sinners, and
to see in what manner they go out of the body. And the angel answered and said to
me, Look again upon the earth. And I looked and I saw all the world and I looked
carefully and saw a certain man about to die, and the angel said to me, This one
whom you see is a just man. And I looked again and saw all his works and all his
desires, both what he remembered and what he did not remember; they all stood in
his sight in the hour of need; and I saw the just man advance and find refreshment
and confidence, and before he went out of the world the holy and the impious angels
both attended; and I saw [that] the holy angels took possession of his soul, guiding
it until it went out of his body; and they roused the soul saying, Soul, know the body
that you leave, for it is necessary that you should return to the same body on the day
of resurrection, that you may receive the things promised to all the just.

211
See Mango, 1994: p. 164.
98


And there came to meet [the soul] the angel who watched every day [that is, the
guardian angel], and said to it, Be of good courage, soul; I rejoice in you, because
you have done the will of God on earth; for I related to God all your works just as they
were. Similarly also the spirit proceeded to meet it and said, Soul, fear not, nor be
disturbed, until you come to a place which you have never known, but I will be a
helper to you; for I found in you a place of refreshment in the time when I dwelt in
you, while I was on earth. And his spirit strengthened [the soul], and his [guardian]
angel received it, and led it into heaven And they led it along till it should worship
in the sight of God.
The [guardian] angel ran on ahead and pointed him out, saying, God, remember his
labours; for this is the soul whose works I related to you, acting according to your
judgement. And the spirit said likewise, I am the spirit of vivification inspiring it; for I
had refreshment in the time when I dwelt in it, acting according to your judgement.
And there came the voice of God and said, In as much as this man did not grieve
me, neither shall I grieve him; as he had pity, I will also pity; Let it [the soul] therefore
be handed over to Michael, the angel of the Covenant, and let him lead it into the
Paradise of joy, that it may become coheir with all the saints. And I looked around
upon that land, and I saw a river flowing with milk and honey, and there were trees
planted by the bank of that river, full of fruit.
From The Apocalypse of Paul, Chapters 14 and 22 (c. 388 CE)
212

212
Ehrman, 2003: p. 289-292.
99


Self-knowledge and wisdom
For the reasoning of mortals is uncertain, and our designs are likely to fail; for a perishable
body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the anxious mind. It is hard enough
to guess at what is on earth, and what may be achieved through labour; who, then, can
discover what is in the heavens? Who could have learnt Your intention, unless You had
granted Wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from above? And thus have the paths of those on
earth been straightened and people were taught what pleases You and were saved, by
Wisdom. The Wisdom of Solomon, 9: 14-18 (c. 150 BCE)
In chapter three, I drew attention to the notion of the kingdom of God contained in the
Christian Gospels and the warnings by Jesus of Nazareth to beware of false prophets. He
advised people not to look around for the kingdom of God somewhere else but to look in at
themselves. Without self-control and morals people will not find the kingdom of God, their
souls will never make it to the highest heaven or be reborn with new incorruptible bodies in
the next world. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus explained that not everyone who
says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will
of my Father in heaven. Everyone then who hears these words of mine will be like a wise
man who built his house on rock (Matthew, 7: 15-24). This drew upon a rich wisdom
literature in Hebrew that also existed in Greek translation. The Wisdom of Ben Sira,
compiled in Alexandria around 130 BCE, (in the Christian Bible it is the Book of Jesus, son
of Sirach), begins with the assertion that All Wisdom is from the Lord (1: 1). It advises:
One who is wise is cautious in everything; do not follow your base desires, but restrain
your appetites (18: 30). For the whole of Wisdom is fear of the Lord; this is the beginning
of acceptance and a life-giving discipline, and those who do what is pleasing to Him enjoy
the fruit of the tree of immortality (19: 18-20). Another similar work, dating from the same
period, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, a section from which is quoted above, advocates
the straight, or righteous, path to be followed by the wise. The same idea is apparent in
Islam, which advocates the path, Tariqa, to wisdom and self-knowledge. Indeed, the
philosopher Leszek Koakowski defined religion as a way of life in which understanding,
believing and commitment emerge together and that religious truth [is] preserved and
handed over in the continuity of collective experience into which the devout are initiated.
213

213
Koakowski, 1982: p. 218. Religion is a lived allegiance to an order of taboos (p. 194).
100


The dictum know thyself links into the Hermetic myth of the Journey of the Soul, in which
the soul moves between the earth and the highest heaven via the planetary spheres,
including those of the moon and sun. Each of the seven spheres, which were believed to be
nested beneath the starry dome of heaven, represents one of the seven virtues, and their
corresponding vices (see Table 4-1). In the so-called Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene
recounts a vision of the souls ascent to heaven, in which seven powers of wrath feature:
darkness, desire, ignorance, the death wish, the fleshy kingdom, of foolish fleshy wisdom
and the angry persons wisdom.
214
A similar planetary scheme for the souls journey after
death was set out by the Muslim scholar al-Kind.
215
The souls journey from earth up to the
highest heaven may therefore be understood as an allegory for achieving self-knowledge.
We must acknowledge our passions and master our desires if we are to avoid indulging in
the vices the seven deadly sins known to Christianity. But this is not all. Although the
obscurity of the many accounts of the souls nature creates confusion, the story of the souls
journey appears to indicate that wisdom is our goal, not simply self-knowledge.
The Hermetic journey of the soul
Birth is not the beginning of life
only of an individual awareness.
Change into another state is not death
only the ending of awareness.
Most people are ignorant of the truth,
and therefore afraid of death,
believing it to be the greatest of all evils.
But death is only the dissolution
of a worn-out body.
Our term of service as guardians of the world
is ended when we are freed
from the bonds of this mortal frame
and restored,
cleansed and purified,
to the primal condition of our higher nature.

214
See Meyer, 2004: p. 21.
215
Fakhry, 2009: p. 34.
101


After quitting the Body,
Mind, which is divine by nature,
is freed from all containment.
Taking on a body of light,
it ranges through all space
leaving the Soul
to be judged and punished,
according to its deserts.
Souls do not all go to the same place.
Nor to different places at random.
Rather, each is allocated
to a place that fits its nature.

Only a good soul is spiritual and divine.
Having wronged no one
and come to know God,
such a soul has run the race of purity,
and become all Mind.
After it leaves its physical form
it becomes a spirit in a body of Light,
so that it may serve God.

The vital spirit returns to the atmosphere
Then the soul mounts upwards
through the structures of the heavens.
In the first zone [of the Moon],
it is relieved of growth and decay.
In the second [of Mercury],
evil and cunning.
In the third [of Venus],
lust and deceiving desire.
102


In the fourth [of the Sun],
domineering arrogance.
In the fifth [of Mars],
unbalanced audacity and rashness.
In the sixth [of Jupiter],
greed and wealth.
In the seventh [of Saturn],
deceit and falsehood.
Having been stripped
of all that was put upon it
by the structures of the heavens [Fate],
the soul now possesses
its own proper power
and may ascend
to the eighth sphere
rejoicing with all those that welcome it,
and signing psalms to the Father.

From The Corpus Hermeticum (compiled no earlier than 2
nd
Century CE)
216

In his writings Plato introduced the Myth of Er to illustrate the problem of making lifes
journey without wisdom. Plato ascribes the story of Ers journey to and from Hades to
Socrates, his old teacher. Socrates tells of how Er, after being killed in battle, recovers
twelve days later, just as his comrades and family are about to light his funeral pyre. Er then
relates his souls experiences in the dimension of the dead. He discovers that the souls of
the deceased either ascend into heaven or are condemned by the judges to punishments
exacted in the underworld. For the just, their reward is bliss lasting one thousand years,
measuring ten times the good that they accomplished during life. The wicked will suffer ten
times over for the sins they committed. Some wrong-doers whose crimes were truly
monstrous must endure their punishments for eternity. Having served their time of a
thousand years, the souls are invited to choose another life, human or animal, and

216
Freke and Gandy, 1997: pp. 120-122.
103


accompanied by their genius (a daimon, equivalent to a guardian angel) they fly as shooting
stars to occupy their new body. It is the choices that these souls make that concerns Plato.
Er explains that souls that lived a good life and were rewarded with a blissful time in heaven
appeared to seek out a new life as a powerful tyrant. They seemed to expect that such a life
would give them the ease they had enjoyed up till now. In contrast, the soul of the hero
Odysseus, who had packed a score of adventures into his time on earth, sought out the
quiet life of an un-ambitious private citizen. Once the choice is made the souls fate is sealed
by the three Fates who are on hand to record the decision. Some, however, soon realise
their mistake. The one who chose the life of a tyrant, his mind having been darkened by
folly and sensuality, discovers that he is condemned to devour his own children. The soul
pleads to choose again, but it is too late. The souls must return to the world of the living,
crossing the barren plain of Forgetfulness, Lethes pedion, and drinking from its river of
Unmindfulness or Oblivion, Lethe, to act out the role they had chosen.
Socrates, according to Plato, concludes his lesson, given to Platos elder brother Glaucon,
thus:
And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state; and therefore
the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of
knowledge and seek to follow one thing only [and] choose always and everywhere
the better life as he has opportunity. Owing to inexperience and also because
of chance, many of the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil and an evil for
good. For if a man had always on arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first
to sound philosophy [the love of wisdom], and been moderately fortunate, he
might, as the messenger [Er] reported, be happy here, and also his journey to
another [after] life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would
be smooth and heavenly. Wherefore my counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the
heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always.
217

If a man, Socrates taught, is brought up morally, is educated well and learns to love wisdom
(philosophy, in other words), he can escape from ignorance, turn to the light and attain, as
much as human nature permits, the truth about himself and the world.
218

217
Plato, 1871, The Republic, Chapter 10, pp. 412-414; and Plato, 2004: pp. 64-68.
218
Cited from Plato, 2004: pp. viii and xviii.
104


Table 4-1: Provisional correspondence between the planets and the virtues/ vices
219

Virtues Archangels Planets Arch Fiends Vices
Faith Michael Sun Lucifer/ Satan Pride
Generosity Gabriel Moon Mammon Avarice
Prudence/ Zeal Raphael Mercury Astaroth or Belphegor Folly/ Sloth
Charity Jehudiel or Anael Venus Asmodai Lust
Fortitude Uriel or Samael Mars Azazel or Asmodai Wrath
Mercy Selaphiel Jupiter Semayaza or Leviathan Envy
Temperance Barachiel or Zachariel Saturn Beelzebub Gluttony

219
Despite some confusion in religious and occult traditions regarding the correspondence between the seven virtues, the deadly sins, the archangels and the
archfiends, it is possible to relate these to each other systematically. In the Book of Enoch, the seven archangels are: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel,
Raguel, Zerachiel and Remiel. The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches recognise Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel/ Sealtiel, Jegudiel/ Jhudiel
and Barachiel. A verse at Isaiah, 11: 2, is sometimes taken to refer to the seven archangels. The demonic correspondence is based upon Peter Binsfeld (c.
1545-1598) who wrote an influential work linking the archfiends to the seven deadly sins in 1589 (De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum/ Of the
confessions of warlocks and witches, Paris). See also Shah, 1972: chapter 20 which summarises the seventeenth century magical text called the Grimoire of
Honorius the Great.
105


The immortal soul
The Christian concept of an immortal soul conflates two ancient ideas into one: the
mind (and other intangible aspects of a living organism) and the spirit (the life force).
Both were substantial even though they could not be perceived directly and both
could be termed the psyche. Hans Jonas writes that the word pneuma was used in
early Christian, including Gnostic, writings to describe the spiritual self, for which
Greek, unlike some oriental languages, lacked an indigenous word, [while] the
term psyche [had] since the Orphics and Plato denoted the divine principle in us.
220

Plato argued that the spirit was the moving force for living organisms their source of
animation and that this implied that it was self-moving and must always have been
in motion. Thus the spirit is eternal in the same way as we speak of the conservation
of energy. Moreover, since life is the opposite of death, the vital element cannot itself
expire, although it could be scattered. The Atomists agreed that the spirit was
substantial, being made of very fine atoms, but when it left the body the spirit was too
fragile to survive and was dispersed by the wind. Jesus of Nazareth said it is the
spirit that gives life (John, 6: 63).
Pythagoras proposed that the soul derived originally from the highest heaven and
occupied the body during its lifespan, before moving on. He seems to have believed
in reincarnation, but along with others, following the Hermetic tradition, developed the
theory that the soul sought to return to its point of origin in the highest heaven. It
seems clear that the idea that the soul came from heaven to occupy a body is linked
to notions of astral influence upon terrestrial events.
Plato also asserted that the soul was not composed from anything, but was a unity,
and therefore could not be dissolved into parts and destroyed. If the soul is the
essence of a person, then it is his or her identity, which by definition is a unity.
Although the soul was indestructible it could be annihilated by Gods will.
It follows that once a soul is in occupation of a body it becomes reliant upon the
bodys means for perception and on the minds imagination. Although Aristotles
works are ambiguous on this point, it seems that the ancients did not identify the soul
with the intellect or mind (nous) as such. As with any other organ, the spirit moves

220
Jonas, 1958: p. 124.
106


the souls rational faculty (the mind) to function. Being integral with the body,
experiences and thoughts are impressed upon the soul, and express the individuals
temperament. Writers talk of the soul being imprisoned within the body and of gaining
cortices that bind it ever more firmly to the material. The soul, as it were, becomes
heavier, or grosser, and less spiritual. Plato records Socrates as saying that the
[psyche] is engrossed by the corporeal, which may be conceived to be that heavy,
weighty, earthly element of sight by which such a soul is depressed and dragged
down into the visible world.
221
This is why, in order to be free, the soul must cross
the river of forgetfulness. Thus after a life of fine food, drugs, sex and sleep an
addicts life, in other words the poor soul ends up in torment and unable to find its
way back to heaven.
There are a common set of beliefs in the salvation religions. Without initiation and the
guidance to follow the straight path of righteousness, a person risks condemning his
or her soul to eternal separation from God. Most souls will remain either earth-bound
(as ghosts haunting the things they cannot bear to leave behind) or in purgatory or
hell until the Final Judgement.
222
Only a few saints can be sure that their souls will
join God before the end of time.
Source: Osmond, 2003.

221
Plato, 1871, Phaedo: p. 626.
222
Plato, quoting Socrates, talks of the engrossed souls being dragged down after their bodies
deaths and prowling about tombs and sepulchres as ghostly apparitions of souls which have not
departed pure, but continue to wander until the desire which haunts them is satisfied and they are
imprisoned in another body; see Plato, Phaedo, in Jowett, 1999: pp. 626-627. Purgatory was thought
to be found just beyond the atmosphere, but beneath the sphere of the moon; see Mango, 1994: p.
165.
107


The straight path
He [Isa/ Jesus] is a Portent of the Hour of Doom. Have no doubt about its coming and follow
Me. This is the straight path. (The Koran, Ornaments of Gold, Surat al-Zukhruf, 43: 61)
223

If the soul is conceived of as the essence of a being, or archetype of an individual person,
then it is clear that full knowledge involves not simply being aware of ones body (and its
drives for warmth, food, security, sex and so on) but also an understanding of ones place in
the cosmic order. The myth implies that we need to attain spiritual awareness too. In a
literal sense this means understanding ones essence, or self-knowledge. Today the term
spiritual is associated with the supernatural, but, as was argued in chapters one and two,
this is not how the ancients perceived it. We should better think of the spiritual as referring to
the informational content of our being, both materially, socially and psychologically.
Materially, on earth, each one of us, and indeed all things, is characterised by our mass, our
energy and the information that makes us what we are. Today we would include genetic
information as one of these informational characteristics. With this in mind, we may equate
spiritual understanding with knowledge of our genome, our atomic composition and our
location on the tree of life. To be sure, for the ancients, the essence of a being appeared to
be much more straight-forward than it does today, as science has revealed how complex we
really are.
In social terms, self-knowledge involves an understanding of our relationships, rights and
responsibilities with other people. The historian and former Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong,
argues that the concept of a path to self-knowledge was a key feature of the Axial Age,
when the major world philosophies and religions emerged. She notes the similarities
between the thinking of the sages of ancient India, China, Persia, Israel and Greece, who
taught that self-knowledge involves self-sacrifice (bhakti in Sanskrit, shu in Chinese, and
kenosis in Greek). People needed to transcend their self-interest egotism if they were
to enjoy justice and equity as a society.
224
The discovery of the transcendent inner principle

223
The Koran: p. 152. An alternative translation is He [Isa] is a Sign of the Hour. Have no doubt
about it. But follow me. This is a straight path.
224
Armstrong, 2006: pp. 89, 130, 138 and 376. By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial
Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds. They
were becoming fully self-conscious discovering a spiritual technology [of introspection,
metaphysical contemplation and self-effacement] that would work only if people abandoned the
aggressively self-assertive ego. Axial Age religion would be conditioned by a sympathy that
enabled people to feel with others.
108


in man and the supreme [being] was according to the philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-1993)
central to the evolution of the Mystery cults, including Christianity.
225
It sets up a cycle of
learning about oneself. At the beginning we have to recognise how our minds are separate
from our bodies but by the end we must overcome any perceived alienation from our
materiality and re-establish inner coherence. Discovering ones whole identity implies the
recognition that the corporeal and the spiritual aspects of existence are inseparable but,
paradoxically, involves leaving behind our animal impulses along the way.
In psychological terms each one of us should seek to understand our psychic drives,
emotions and motivations and to exercise self-control. The injunction know thyself was
written above the shrine at Delphi to Apollo. The same words are ascribed to Jesus in the
non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, fragments of which are preserved in the so-called
Oxyrhynchus Papyri and the Coptic texts from Nag Hammadi discovered in Egypt. Clement
of Alexandria wrote that the greatest of all lessons is to know yourself, for when a man
knows himself he knows God.
226
It is repeated in the Gnostic Gospel of Truth: When you
come to know yourselves, as you will become known, and it is thus you will realise that it is
you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you will dwell
in poverty.
227
Illumination means that people realise the nature of their bondage, make a
moral commitment and gain understanding of their destiny.
228
As already mentioned, in the
Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene recounts how, in a vision, she saw the souls ascent to
heaven, overcoming the powers of darkness, desire, ignorance, despair, lust, foolishness
and wrath. What binds me is slain, the soul tells her, my desire is gone, my ignorance is
dead [and] I was freed through a heavenly image.
229

225
Jonas, 1958: p. 124.
226
Cited in Freke and Gandy, 2002: pp. 87 and 94. The full text from the Gospel of Thomas reads
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will understand that it is
you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and
it is you who are that poverty; in Meyer, 1992: p. 23. In Pauls Letter to the Galatians, Christians are
admonished: Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are
not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can
you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? (Galatians, 4: 8-9).
227
Cited in Harris, 1999: p. 4. In another translation it is written: Having knowledge he does the will of
the one who called him Each ones name come to him. He who has knowledge in this manner
knows where he comes from and where he is going; see Ehrman, 2005: p. 47.
228
Koakowski, 1982: pp. 175, 219. The Jews believe that the understanding of the Torah is
possible only through partaking in the life of the Jewish people (p. 182).
229
Meyer, 2004: pp. 21-22; see also Ehrman, 2005: p. 37.
109


The myth of the souls journey can be read as a metaphor for our lifes correct path. Jesus
instructed his followers to be wanderers, abandoning family and professional attachments
that tie you down to material comforts.
230
Following the straight, or narrow, path in life will
lead the soul to heaven.
231
Firstly, we must let ourselves be guided by our guardian angel,
the personification of our intellectual capacity and conscience. We must master the demons
that are our passions, in case these drives lead us into vice. That said, following the straight
and narrow path in life is not just about avoiding vice, for it involves the conscious adoption
of morals, the codes that mean we submit to the rule of good (that is, the vision of the
kingdom of God). Thus there is a social dimension to the virtuous life. Lastly, to be complete,
knowledge has to concern our own essence, and its position in the cosmic scheme. The
Corpus Hermeticum indicates that a soul must become all Mind, that is, to achieve full
awareness, if it is to survive as an entity after death. This image is consistent with Neo-
Platonist teaching that gnosis, knowledge, at its highest point involved direct experience of
the Mind of God, which framed the cosmos, reflecting the plan of its creator, God, acting as
the demiurge (from the Greek demiourgos, meaning artisan or craftsman). But this process
of illumination must take place during ones lifetime, for according to the so-called Gospel of
Philip, you must awaken while in this body; for everything exists in it: resurrect in this life.
232

One of the functions of religion is to educate people, usually in a phased process. In ancient
times, just as today, teachers instructed their students and then examined them to ascertain
whether the lessons had been correctly understood. Both pagans and Christians practiced
the stages of initiation in line with the Hermetic paradigm. In their book The Jesus Mysteries,
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy outline the levels of initiation as understood by Gnostic
Christians.
233
In a Gnostic work, The Book of Jeu (also called The Book of the Great Logos

230
See Meyer, 1992: pp. 41 and 87.
231
The Book of Isaiah includes several references to the straight path of righteousness: 26: 7; 40: 3;
and 59: 8; see also 57: 14; and 62:10. The metaphor is also found in Proverbs 4 and 5. There are
many references in the Holy Koran to the straight or right path: Surah 2: 142, 2: 213, 3: 51, 4: 68, 10:
25, 45: 18, 46: 13 and 60: 1; see The Koran: pp. 66, 128, 131, 267, 347, 354, 373, and 412. For a
Christian reference see Matthew 7: 13-14 and The Letter to the Hebrews 12: 13. In the Zoroastrian
Gathas, the seeker after truth is firmly set upon his path [of invigoration] which leads those [who
are] worthy to the House of Song (Yasna, 50: 4); and May that man of innate nobility instruct us
concerning the straight paths of salvation in this bodily life and that of mind. These are the paths
where Ahura Mazda Himself dwells (Yasna, 43: 3); in Nanavutty, 1999: pp. 109 and 145; and cited
by Clark, 2001: pp. 26 and 76.
232
Leloup, 2004: p. 57; and Ehrman, 2005: p. 41.
233
Freke and Gandy, 2000: p. 156. The authors appear to have drawn upon the work of Hans Jonas,
who published a two volume study of Gnosticism, Gnosis und sptaniker Geist (Gttingen:
110


according to the Mystery, part of a papyrus manuscript with many missing pages known as
the Bruce Codex), Jesus offers his disciples the Mysteries of the three baptisms, by water,
air and fire.
234
Each initiation represents a higher stage of knowledge achieved by study. At
the end of each stage is a symbolic ceremony of purification. Baptism by water indicates that
the initiate has overcome the bodily urges, called the hylic state in Greek, in which a person
identifies only with his or her body (hyle). In terms of the elements, water washes away the
contamination of earth; it is no coincidence that we use the word soil as a verb to mean to
pollute. Undergoing preparation for the next stage, the pupils must learn to understand their
personality, the psychic initiation, but at the same time they must recognise that their
personality is not their true essence and accordingly the Gnostics called the psyche the
counterfeit spirit. Initiation by air, allows the pupil to reach the next level, the pneumatic, or
spiritual identity. Lastly, for the Gnostics, there is a level achieved only through inspiration,
because gnosis implies a directly gained knowledge, not simply something that is taught.
235

The stages are illustrated in Table 4-2.

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 1934 and 1954), and an influential summary in English in 1958, to which
we have referred already.
234
The Bruce Codex contains fragments from the so-called Books of Jeu (alternatively Ieou or Iah,
that is, God); there is a reference to The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery, which is
taken by some translators to refer to the same work. These Coptic manuscripts are thought to have
been translated from Greek originals and to date from the mid-third century CE. The references to the
three baptisms are in chapters 43 to 47. Jesus promises his disciples that by going through these
initiations, which also involve being told the names of the demonic powers who will strive to prevent
their enlightenment, and being given the secret passwords, or seals, they will become the Sons of
the Pleroma. Pleroma means plenitude or fullness.
235
See Harris, 1999: pp. 12-15 and 104-106. Only on the basis of experience could the gnostic know
what it really means to be in the know; for this reason the primacy of experience is paramount (p.
13).
111


Table 4-2: Stages of initiation into knowledge
Element Level of
Identity
Gnostic
Description
Stage of
Initiation
Link with Aristotles
Four Causes
Earth Physical identity Body Hylic Material (where do I
come from?)
Water Psychological
identity
Personality
(apparent
image)
Psychic Formal (what sort of
being am I?)
Air Spiritual identity Spirit Pneumatic Efficient (who am I?)
Fire Mystical identity Light-Power Gnostic Final or Purposeful
(why am I?)
Adapted from: Freke and Gandy, 2000: p. 156; and Burke, 1969: p. 228

The so-called Gospel of Philip, which supposedly records the sayings of Jesus, explores this
metaphorical system clearly:
What is harvested in the world is composed of four elements: water, earth, wind and
light.
What God harvests is also composed of four elements: faith (pistis), hope (elpis),
love (agape), and knowledge (gnosis).
Our earth is faith, for she gives us roots.
Water is our hope, for it slakes our thirst.
Wind (pneuma) is the love through which we grow; and light is the knowledge
[contemplation] through which we ripen.
Grace is transmitted to us [by Jesus Christ] in [these] four ways.
236

As Freke and Gandy point out, Matthews Gospel tells us that while John the Baptist
baptised with water, one who is more powerful, that is, Jesus Christ, will baptise you in the
Holy Spirit [literally sacred breath] and fire (Matthew 3:11), the next two stages of

236
The Gospel of Philip in Leloup, 2004, p. 147.
112


initiation.
237
Moreover at each stage of initiation there is a question (or mystery) to resolve
and these may, in turn, be linked to Aristotles theory that there are four different types of
explanation, which he called the four causes. To reach the second level a student must
recognise that he or she has more than a material origin. This will in turn mean coming to
terms with our physical drives: hunger and thirst, disgust, fear, sexual arousal, pain and so
on. The passions are natural but without self-control anger (or love, or fear) can blind us to
the consequences of acting emotionally. At the second level of self-examination, the student
must learn that his or her personality is also to be regarded critically. The Gnostics called
our apparent identity the eidolon, which means image or counterfeit consciousness, or
phantom.
238
Moving beyond your own self-image involves grasping the concept that you are
an activated form, a being with potential, not an object.
The eidolon
According to Freke and Gandy, the eidolon, like a reflection in a mirror, is who we
appear to be, but not who we really are. In the Christian text Pistis Sophia, it is
called the counterfeit consciousness. [The Gnostic teacher] Basilides calls it the
parasitic psyche. Plotinus calls it the intruder. Our word idea an image in the
mind comes from the same root as the word eidolon. The eidolon is the I am the
body idea. We have identified ourselves with this idea, rather than the
Consciousness within which the idea arises. We have mistaken the image for the
essence.
239
The counterfeit spirit, antimimon pneuma in Greek, was identified by the
Gnostics with the animal nature within humans, but is, in effect, a functional definition
of identity: you are what you are, and not what you could be.
Achieving self-knowledge entails recognising that your selfhood, or identity, is not an
object, but an imaginary construct. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who used to
spend many hours in the Caf de Flore in Paris, argued that although the waiter,
Pierre, believed himself to be a waiter, and did all that he could to play the role of a
waiter (at least until the end of his shift), he was not a waiter. Often we identify
ourselves with our role when we speak of identity. In other words we claim to be
something that is external to us, and ignore the source of inspiration that is our

237
Freke and Gandy, 2000: p. 356; see also Isaacs, 1976: p.91; and Pagola, 2009: pp. 84-87.
238
239
Freke and Gandy, 2002: pp. 99-100.
113


calling or vocation, which is internal and unselfish. A vocation can take different
forms: to give oneself in marriage, for example, or to do good professionally or
through public service. No doubt Jean-Paul felt somewhat superior in that he was
living his inner calling to be a writer and philosopher. Sartre does not tell us whether
Pierre always wanted to be a waiter and loved his job, or whether he was simply
looking for work and accepted the first offer of employment that came along.
Notwithstanding, the point is that we make ourselves, and however much our lives
are circumscribed by lack of opportunity, oppression or exploitation, we still have
scope to construct our own world through the choices we exercise for ourselves and
with others.
240

The eidolon is therefore the person you mistakenly imagine yourself to be. In the
theories of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the habitual attitudes and responses (for
instance, rudeness or obsequiousness) that typify a persons character mask secret
envy, hostility or fear. Such character amour, as psychologist Wilhelm Reich (1897-
1957) explained, is a defence mechanism to prevent disturbing impulses from
becoming conscious. However, it also prevents spontaneous rapport and open
communication.
241
Reich linked the tendency of people to view themselves as objects
to the capability for conscious thought. As Sartre pointed out, consciousness requires
an object of which to be conscious. Through self-reflection people imagine that they
can be conscious of themselves though, as Sartre argued, this is a logical
impossibility, since I cannot be conscious of I, unless I pretend that I am an object.
This imaginary identity Freud called it the ego develops during early childhood to
channel the infants natural instincts and desires into socially acceptable demands
and responses. The ego is an image of your identity as a complete person which you
present to the world. Another of Freuds collaborators, Carl Jung (1875-1961), called
it the persona.
Psychoanalysis is a modern version of the Gnostic system of initiation, whereby we
are encouraged to understand our inner mental processes, accept responsibility for
our actions and take control. In metaphorical terms this education is frequently
described as an awakening or enlightenment, as we begin to see clearly and

240
Danto, 1975: pp. 58-61, 73-81. Sartre outlined these ideas in his book Being and Nothingness
(1943).
241
Rycroft, 1971: pp. 23-29, 81 and 94-95.
114


discard our illusions. Although often considered as an individual route to inner
balance, enlightenment must be accomplished at a social level if it is to provide the
base for a full and dignified life. For this reason, the Gnostic system was taught within
the framework of a mystic fraternity, the core for the (re-)gathering of humanity into
universal brother- and sisterhood.

It is at this point that most of us pause on our personal journey. Feeding the insatiable
eidolon our demands for recognition, food, sex and enjoyment makes us vulnerable to
the appeal of liberalism and its call for freedom from constraint. To be sure, we remain
aware that this is not what life is supposed to be about. We know that we also seek freedom
for development; to have the power for action, and the capability to take advantage of
opportunity. But unless this is handed to us on a plate, as it were, it is far easier to avoid
making the necessary investment. For many, it is enough of a struggle to get by day-to-day.
Thus, unfortunately, many people never discover their calling and, in psychoanalytic terms,
live neurotic lives because they have repressed their true self. We should be aiming to fulfil
our potential in life, but, all too often, we unconsciously construct an identity and
temperament as a defensive tactic to repress desires and conform socially. We must let go
of this apparent identity, which is essentially selfish, as it was constructed to shield us from
facing up to difficult choices, and because this is the only way to achieve wisdom. To reach
the third stage of initiation one must answer the question who am I? This, of course, links
with the accepted aim of education which is to allow students to reach their full potential and
achieve their vocation.
242
To achieve your calling you must be in tune with your capabilities,
whether these are practical, intellectual, musical, or entail other aptitudes, which the Greeks
called the Muses (see Table 4.3).

242
A modern commonly used approach to learning is the Dreyfus model, which has five stages of
competence: novice, experienced beginner, practioner, proficient and expert. The last stage may be
equated to the Masters level in academic learning.
115


Table 4.3: The Muses
Muse Name Domain Emblem Sphere
Urania Heavenly One Astronomy Globe & Compass Stars
Polyhymnia Many Songed Sacred Poetry Veil Saturn
Euterpe Delight Music Aulos (flute) Jupiter
Erato Lovely One Lyric Poetry Cithara (lyre) Mars
Melpomene Singer Tragedy Tragic Mask Sun
Terpsichore Delightful Dancer Dance Lyre Venus
Calliope Beautiful Voice Epic Poetry Writing Tablet Mercury
Clio Glory History Scrolls Moon
Thalia Festivity Comedy Comic Mask Earth
According to Pausanias (2
nd
Century CE) there were three Muses originally (Description of
Greece, 9, 29: 1). The three Muses corresponded to the competences required for education
in a largely non-literate society, namely memorisation, verbalisation (using songs or poems
that assisted memorisation) and practical application (exposition through gestures, drawing
pictures or making things). In later more literate times, the Muses were envisaged as the nine
daughters of Mnemosyne, the Goddess of Memory, who each ruled an art form.
Muse Name Domain
Mneme Memory Mind
Aoide Song or Voice Spirit
Melete Practice Body

The final stage of Gnostic initiation involves tackling the metaphysical question why am I?
Many ancient and medieval scholars envisaged this highest stage of knowledge as a
pathway to understanding God, not in a mystical way, which is a feeling of union that most
people will never experience, but through intellectual, artistic or practical inspiration. Once
again we see a connection with the Muses, who, of course, played an important part in
Pythagoras thinking.
243
But in answering your calling or vocation you are not simply doing

243
At Pythagoras college in Croton, each Muse had her own temple; see Bernard, 2003: p. 45.
116


your own thing. The exultation felt when you apply your particular competence lies in its
realisation and the activitys value; and it is by acting in harmony with nature and history that
you can fulfil your destiny within society. An awareness of ones value can only be measured
relative to the contribution made to meeting the needs and demands of family and
community. More prosaically, the ancients argued that virtue stemmed from the full use of
reasoning to gain knowledge, since with knowledge it is always obvious which is the right
path to follow. Socrates and Plato advocated right insight to correct the failings, as they
saw it, of a corrupted society.
244

Thus some Gnostics categorised people as captives (those imprisoned in darkness and
confusion), while others were the called (the spiritual) and the chosen (the enlightened).
245

These knowers, as they seem to have named themselves, were often the target of
philosophic and Christian criticism. They were accused of believing that the cosmos and its
creator were evil a doctrine termed Sethian, supposedly transmitted by Adam and Eves
third son, Seth and of libertinage, because, as they considered themselves to be already
saved, they could not commit sin however dissolute their behaviour. In a Gnostic text that is
part of the Nag Hammadi collection of codices, the descendants of Seth are said to have
dwelt in Sodom and Gomorrah, the notoriously wanton towns that God destroyed (Genesis,
19: 24-29).
246
As Hans Jonas explains, natural or psychical man can do no better than
abide by a code of law and strive to be just, that is, properly adjusted to the established
order, and thus play his allotted part in the cosmic scheme. But the pneumaticos, spiritual
man, is above the law, beyond good and evil, and a law unto himself in the power of his

244
Benn, 1882: p. 104. In Platos Crito, Socrates has a dream while in prison indicating the date of his
execution. He tells Crito that rather than try to escape before the due date, let us act accordingly,
since it is the way the god is pointing. In the view of the Platonists and Stoics, foreknowledge of ones
destiny is a divine gift that permits one to make the right moral choices; to seek to resist fate can only
make one discontented; see Sedley, 2007: pp. 232-234.
245
246
See Harris, 1999: p. 172. The text is known as the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit or
misnamed the Gospel of the Egyptians (actually the name of another work). The text may be read at
<http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/goseqypt.html>. The book purports to be a transcription from the
Stelae of Seth, which Seth is said to have carved on pillars upon a high mountain to survive the
Flood. It makes reference to the four eras of the world, the Flood and to the conflagration to come,
which are seen as disasters sent by the evil archons to destroy the incorruptible race of Seth. It
alleges that the jealous god of the Jews and the Old Testament, who sent the Flood, destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah, and will at the end of days send the conflagration and preside over the Final
Judgement, is actually an archon called Sakla (meaning the Fool) and is not the true God. Only the
pure elect from among Christians, the Sethians contend, belong to the race of Seth and Adam.
117


knowledge.
247
The Christian Bishop Irenaeus (130-202 CE) charged that even "the most
perfect among them [the Gnostics] shamelessly do all the forbidden things" (Against the
Heresies, I: 6: 3). Gnostic writings portray Seth as the progenitor of an elect line of power
and purity, whereas the descendants of Cain were a race of wickedness. Historian Yuri
Stoyanov asserts that there are indications that Melchizedek, Jesus Christ and even
Zoroaster were considered in some Gnostic circles as manifestations of the saviour and
revealer Seth.
248
Those knowers who had completed every stage of study, considered that
they had become perfect ones, teleiotes in Greek or perfecti in Latin, and imagined that they
were the elect of God, and were already destined for a heavenly afterlife. Matthews Gospel
records Jesus as instructing his followers to be perfect (Matthew 5: 48), just as God is
perfect. Pauls Letter to the Hebrews calls upon his beloved brothers and sisters to go on
towards perfection (6: 1). Interestingly, the notion of Gods perfection is a Stoic one,
reinforcing the conclusion that Christianity and Stoicism had much in common.
249
So while
condemning Gnostics the Church did not proscribe knowledge as such. Irenaeus grouped
several heretical thinkers, as he saw them, together as the knowing ones, but added that
they were falsely so called.
250
In other words, the Gnostics were not true knowers,
whereas the Church was.

247
See Jonas, 1958: p. 334. Jonas adds that authorised versions of the New Testament translate
psychikos as natural and pneumatikos as spiritual (p.124).
248
Stoyanov, 1994: p. 74. Melchizedek was the King of Shalem (identified usually as Jerusalem) and
Priest of the High God, El-Elyon, who blessed Abraham after the latters victory in a war against the
King of Sodom around 1833 BCE (Rohl, 2003: pp. 117-8). Abraham, then known as Abram the
Hebrew, paid a tithe of one-tenth of everything he owned to Melchizedek. In Jewish tradition
Melchizedek was fatherless and his mother died as he was born; Pauls letter to the Hebrews
describes him as without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days
nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever (Hebrews, 7: 3). The
Torah states that Melchizedek passed on Adams authority to Abraham (according to Rabbi Ishmael).
249
By contrast, Plato and Aristotle considered that perfection involved reaching a limit of excellence
and, as there were no limits to God, perfection was not one of His attributes.
250
Cited in Jonas, 1958: p. 32. Jonas goes on to draw a distinction between gnosis and theoria,
arguing that the former usually referred to knowledge of God, and thus was connected to the way to
salvation, whereas in the latter case the object of knowledge is the universal, and the cognitive
relation is optical, i.e., an analogue of the visual relation to objective form. Jonas states, Gnostic
knowledge is about the transcendent deity and the relation of knowing is mutual, i.e., a being
known at the same time, and involving active self-divulgence on the part of the known. In other
words, what is known is not an object but another being, and another subject, who reveals itself to
you. The mind is informed with the form it beholds (p. 35). Theoria was a term borrowed by the
Pythagoreans from the Orphic cults. It originally meant passionate sympathetic contemplation
118


For sure, the Church fathers had a point. To conclude that part of humanity is condemned to
damnation, while a smaller group are destined for salvation and that some self-proclaimed
authority figure, a guru, knows who they are introduces a division that seems to go against
the message proclaimed by Christianity and, moreover, pre-empts the Final Judgement. So
it is understandable that the racist or sectarian implications of Sethian doctrines led to the
condemnation of Gnostic tendencies within the salvation creeds. But the suppression of
heresy has, in the end, been at the expense of clarity. Surviving Gnostic writings preserve
the debate within emergent Christianity before the religion was moulded into dogma, while
Christian theologians were still exchanging ideas with Neo-Platonist and Stoic philosophers,
Jews and Zoroastrians, and competing for followers with the proponents of the Mystery cults
associated with Bacchus/ Dionysius, Osiris and Mithras. The first centuries of our Common
Era are ones in which the blending of mythic themes into a syncretic religious literature was
especially vigorous. Indeed, as Freke and Gandy have demonstrated, there are numerous
parallels between Christian imagery and tropes with those found in the Bacchic and Mithraic
mystic fraternities, as well as the accounts of the life of great sages, including Pythagoras.
251

In composing the canon of the New Testament under the direction of the Roman Emperor
Constantine, who legalised Christianity in 313 CE, the prelates included a number of texts
derived from pagan originals.
252
(More information on the Gnostics can be found in Appendix
C.)
The problem for us is that a straight forward message from ancient times is now obscure.
The moral ambivalence found in Gnosticism encouraged people like poet and magician
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) to assert that Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law.
253
We therefore need to be more aware of the intended meaning of the terms used by

resulting in revelation. Through its use in Pythagorean mathematics, it gained its current meaning;
see Bertrand Russell, 1946 (2004 edition), History of Western Philosophy, London: Routledge: p. 42.
251
See Freke and Gandy, 2000: chapter 3. Several tropes from the life of Jesus of Nazareth are
paralleled in accounts of the earthly life of Bacchus/ Dionysius: an epiphany (when the god reveals
himself or herself), a virgin birth, birth in a stable or cave, trial by a tyrant, a communion of bread and
wine, being put to death on a tree, and a rebirth.
252
Tony Bushby, 2007, The forged origins of the New Testament, NEXUS Magazine, June-July: pp.
51-57, 77. In 380, the Emperor Theodosius declared "Catholic Christianity" the only legitimate imperial
religion, thus ending state support for the traditional Roman religion and enforcing the Nicene Creed
and Canon Law adopted under Constantine in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea.
253
Crowley, 1971: p. 3. Crowley borrowed the dictum from the poet Franois Rabelais (c. 1494-1553),
who, in the second of his satirical novels The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (1534), writes of
the Abbey of Thlme, whose rule was Do as thou Wilt. Crowley renamed his home at Cefal, near
Palermo, the Abbey of Thelema in 1920. The noun thelema derives from the Greek for will or desire.
119


the ancients. Perfection to ancient philosophers simply meant that you had completed your
personal development as a human being, finished your studies, and were ready to live, as
the Stoics held, in harmony with nature, reason and yourself. Perfection, though attainable
by anyone, cannot be achieved alone. The goal consistent with the Hermetic paradigm is,
therefore, to build a society of Virtue, Wisdom and Fairness: this is the way to enter
paradise. The philosopher Plotinus asserted in his treatise against the Gnostics: Virtue,
which is born in the soul with Wisdom, makes God manifest. Without good conduct it is mere
words to talk of God (Enneads, 2, 9:15). Moreover, it is not necessary to await the next era,
after our current one is destroyed by fire, we should act now. The myth of our souls journey
to heaven is a way of telling us to keep to the straight path, develop as fully rounded people
enjoying healthy, moral, sociable and cultured lives, and to get on with sorting out the mess
around us before the toll on our Earth becomes excessive and triggers the end for everyone.
120


121


Chapter 5: Newtons dilemma

Our Philosophy is not a new invention, but as Adam after his fall hath received it, and
wherein Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras and others did hit the mark, and wherein Enoch,
Abraham, Moses, [and] Solomon did excel, but especially wherewith that wonderful book the
Bible agreeth.
The Rosicrucian Manifesto Fama Fraternitatis (c.1610)
254

La Signora always served me a three-course lunch, setting down a huge bowl of pasta to
begin with. The amount bore no reflection to the fact that I was her only guest at the small
pensione in June 1974. I was spending a month in Florence during my gap year to learn
Italian and soak up the culture before going up to Cambridge. My days involved morning
language classes and late afternoon lectures on literature, history and art at the British
Institute. In between there was time to enjoy lunch and tourism, with a walk along the Arno
River to work off the effects of the first. Time on occasion to climb to my favourite church, the
medieval San Miniato del Monte, built over the grave of Minias, a deacon of the early church,
martyred around 250 CE, and to admire the view of red roofs, domes and campanile from
the Piazzale Michelangelo on the way down again. Directly across the river stands the
Palazzo dei Giudici, housing the National Museum of the History of Science. When
eventually I got around to visiting the museum it turned out to be a veritable shrine to Galileo
(1564-1642). Here you can find his telescopes, his pendulum clocks, compass, loadstones
and instruments, made to the order of the Medici Grand-Dukes of Tuscany.
My Companion Guide to Florence relates that Galileo initially wanted to become a painter,
but his musician father discouraged him, saying that Florence already had enough painters
and persuaded his son to study mathematics. Galileos observations of the planets and
discovery of Jupiters moons convinced him of the truth of Copernicus heliocentric theory of
the solar system. Leaving for Rome to expound his views it was, perhaps, Florentine
arrogance that led him into the famous confrontation with the Church.
255
The moment
proved to be historic. Only some 150 years after the revival of interest in Hermetic lore, the
seventeenth century was to witness the collapse of the thousand year old Hermetic

254
Cited in Yates, 1975: p. 295.
255
Borsook, 1973: p. 169.
122


paradigm. Ironically, the paradigm shift towards the science we know today, the Cartesian
approach, was largely the work of the very people most committed to reviving ancient
wisdom, the mysterious Order of the Rosy Cross, and its fellow travellers such as Galileo.
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
This essay has argued that ancient philosophy and modern science are intriguingly
compatible, with an advocacy for mathematics at their centre. Many of those most reliably
identified as Rosicrucian sympathisers John Dee, Ren Descartes, Robert Fludd, Robert
Boyle, Robert Hooke, Jan Baptist van Helmont, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Michael Maer and Isaac Newton were accomplished mathematicians, of no lesser
standing perhaps than Pythagoras. Their interests lay in reviving the wisdom of the ancients,
much of it censored by the Church, but also in extending science, once again often bringing
them into conflict with religious authority.
Over a fifty year period at the start of the seventeenth century, scientists developed a
number of instruments, which, for the first time, allowed them to examine nature in detail.
Galileo played a major role in these advances. Around 1593 Galileo invented a device to
measure heat, the thermoscope, which Robert Fludd (1574-1637) improved upon in the
1620s to create the first thermometer. Galileo also built the first telescope in 1609 and a
microscope in 1624, although the latter invention is also credited to Sacharias Jansen (c.
1585-1632) in 1618. The barometer, to measure the pressure or density of gases, was
developed by Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) in 1643 to investigate Galileos hypotheses
concerning pressure and vacuum, enabling him to explain how winds were formed by
differences in atmospheric pressure. The first really accurate clock using a pendulum,
another technology that Galileo had investigated, was made by Christiaan Huygens (1629-
1695) in 1656. Armed with these instruments, scientists saw what the ancients had,
probably, never seen.
256
Galileos observations of the Earths neighbouring planets led him
to accept Copernicus theory and to realise that the sun itself was simply one of an infinite
number of stars.
As long as the geocentric, or Ptolemaic, system held sway, the Hermetic maxim As above,
so below could continue to be persuasive. However, once Copernicus had demonstrated
the heliocentric basis of the solar system, it became obvious that the theory of planetary
influence on terrestrial phenomena and events was invalid. At first, many scientists were

256
The evidence that Babylonian astronomers may have used telescopes was advanced by Edmund
Hoppe in 1926. It is known that Hipparchus of Nicaea (c.190-126 BCE) used optical instruments for
astronomical observations; see Russo, 2004: p. 272.
123


reluctant to discard the Hermetic paradigm. Isaac Newton, for instance, was attracted to an
alternative theory, proposed by his pupil William Whiston (1667-1752) that comets (rather
than the constellations) were responsible for catastrophes like the Flood and had signalled
major events such as the birth of Christ.
257
We do not know why Newton came to reject the
comet theory and to denounce his Cambridge colleague Whiston, but perhaps he realised
that the Hermetic paradigm could not be rescued so easily.
The revival of interest in the ancient world had been central to the Renaissance in the
fifteenth century. It was a period when Hermetic ideas flourished, but it had also sparked a
reaction from the orthodox. The association of Hermetic philosophy with alchemy and magic
brought about accusations of trickery, witchcraft and heresy. Natural philosophers concealed
their findings to avoid persecution, making it hard now to piece together the story of how
modern science emerged. Almost single handed Frances Yates (1899-1991), the historian of
the occult, has uncovered the links between modern science and the Hermetic tradition,
through the agency of one of the most notorious secret fraternities, the Rosicrucians.
The historical detective story presented by Yates suggests that the Rosicrucians were an
underground Protestant intellectual movement aspiring to reconcile ancient wisdom with
scientific discovery. The seventeenth century was a particularly dangerous time for free
thinkers as a result of the disputes between Catholics and Protestants. Universities were
controlled by the Church, of whatever denomination, while kings and princes sought to
impose one doctrine within their lands. So it is hardly surprising that the scholars associated
with the Rosicrucian movement never admitted to membership. Like Western communist
sympathisers during the McCarthyite purges they were fellow travellers, using anonymity,
ambiguity, code and evasion to conceal their true affiliations. Until the liberal Enlightenment
of the eighteenth century, few were open about being Rosicrucians, since manifested
dissent could invite investigation by the inquisition and the civil courts or denunciation and
worse from a sectarian lynch mob. Their motives in mixing the cabala, Neo-Platonism, magic
and science will remain obscure unless we take seriously their driving aspirations.
Frances Yates makes a convincing case for associating the publication of Rosicrucian tracts
with the tensions that led to the Thirty Years War in Germany. This is evident from the initial
document describing how Christian Rosencreutz, supposedly born in 1378 and living for
over a hundred years, obtained his arcane knowledge from his journeys to Damascus,

257
William Whiston, 1696, A New Theory of the Earth. Whiston succeeded Newton as the Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1702, but was forced from his chair for
holding unorthodox views on Christianity and later became a Baptist.
124


Egypt, Fez and Spain. The first manifesto, probably issued in 1610, the Fama Fraternitatis,
or a Discovery of the Fraternity of the Most Noble Order of the Rosy Cross, promised the
Orders support for the attempt by the Calvinist House of Wittlesbach to overcome threats to
the Holy Roman Empire (that is, Germany), from two directions: Catholicism and Islam.
258

The Wittelsbachs had sponsored the League of Evangelical Union in 1608 to protect
Protestant interests in Europe in alliance with Sweden and Denmark and with the backing of
the Bourbon king of France, Henry of Navarre. Henry had gained the throne in 1589 after
renouncing his Calvinist beliefs, thus ending thirty-six years of civil war between the
Catholics and Protestants in France. The Wittlesbach dynasty was related by marriage to
James Stuart, the king of Scotland and England, and to the House of Orange from Holland.
Both Scotland and Holland had recently converted to Calvinism. The Evangelical Union was
therefore a pan-European Protestant alliance. In the following year, the Imperial Habsburg
dynasty lined up the Catholic League under the Duke of Bavaria for the defence of the
Catholic religion and peace within the Empire. The second threat to Germany came from
the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Muslim Caliphate, and were pushing into central
Europe.
In their second manifesto of 1615 the Confessio Fraternitatis, the Rosicrucians condemned
both the Eastern and Western blasphemers, in other words, Islam and the corrupted
Papacy, the Roman seducers. It offered support to the Holy Roman Emperor, on the basis,
presumably, that he was no longer a Catholic Habsburg but a Protestant Wittlesbach, to heal
and restore their German fatherland. They issued their pamphlets in five languages,
probably Latin, German, French, English and Dutch, so as to be manifested to everyone. It
was, nonetheless, primarily a call for the world to awake out of her heavy and drowsy sleep,
and with open heart, bare-head, and bare-foot, [to] merrily and joyfully meet the new arising
Sun of religious reform and scientific discovery. This was to be achieved by reading the
Bible alongside the Book of Nature.
259

258
Allegedly after Christian Rosencreutzs death in 1484 his tomb lay undiscovered for 120 years until
1604, when the authors of the first Rosicrucian manifesto supposedly entered it; see Yates, 1975: pp.
300, 301-302 and 304.
259
Yates, 1975: p. 297. The idea of consulting the Book of Nature in order to see into the Mind of God
is an old one. In Islam, the Holy Koran states that the Glorious Book of Nature, the Kitabe Mubeen, or
the book that is manifested in nature, records every event according to the will of God; The Koran:
The Prophet Houd, Hud: 11: 6, and The Ant, Al-Naml, 27: 75: pp. 87 and 133. In the chapter
Revelations well Expounded, Fussilat, an equivalence is posited between the Book of Revelation, the
Koran, and the signs of God which are the night and day, and the sun and moon (Surah 41: 37; p.
161).
125


The manifestos indicate that reconciling the two books of scripture and nature was the
primary aim of Rosicrucian agitation. It was supposed that Christian unity and social peace
could be achieved if the same truth found in both books was acknowledged. It also explains
why the symbol of the cross and the rose were chosen by the movement. The cross is a
symbol of Christianity and of the four cardinal directions, thus, by implication, of the world as
a whole. The symbolism of the rose has, however, often been misinterpreted, since it is
associated with Venus, the goddess of love. But it has a more prosaic association with a
sweet scent. As Colin Wilson has pointed out, the alleged primary author of the Rosicrucian
manifestos, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), in his last testament made in 1634,
states: though I now leave the Fraternity itself, I shall never leave the true Christian
Fraternity, which, beneath the Cross, smells of the rose, and is quite apart from the filth of
this century.
260
Thus the red rose is an icon for an uncorrupted society, and has been
adopted by the socialist parties in recent times for this reason.
261

The Galileo connection
The Rosicrucian stratagem of reading the Holy Bible alongside the Book of Nature was
shared by Catholic dissidents, such as Galileo and the radical monk Tommaso Campanella
(1568-1639). In a letter of 1615, Galileo argued that Holy Scripture and the phenomena of
Nature proceed alike from the divine Word, that is, the logos. He hoped to avoid Church
censure for his theories by arguing that the Word of God can be read not only in the Bible,
where, moreover, it had often to be understood metaphorically, but also in nature, where it
had to be interpreted through mathematics.
262
It was an argument that may well have been
suggested by Campanella, a Dominican monk, who met Galileo in Padua in 1592 and
backed him against his orthodox critics while they both lived in Rome under the protection of
Pope Urban VIII in the early 1630s. Campanella used much the same phrase in advocating
the study of the whole book of God which is the world.
263
The phrase was used repeatedly
among the intellectual circle linked with a professor of mathematics, Michael Mstelin (1550-

260
Colin Wilson, Introduction to McIntosh, 1987: p. 10.
261
The Lutheran churchs symbol is a white rose.
262
See William R Shea, Galileo and the Church, in Lindberg and Numbers, 1986: p. 126. According to
Galileo, the Book of Nature is written in the mathematical language without its help it is impossible
to comprehend a single word of it; from Galileo Galilei, 1623, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer); cited by
Koestler, 1964: p. 535. A parallel formulation was suggested by Paracelsus, whereby the Light of
Nature, which makes the world intelligible, is complemented by the Light of Grace, the principle of
divine illumination; see Tilton, 2003: p.36.
263
Campanella, 1623, The City of the Sun: p. 2.
126


1631), from the University of Tbingen, which included Johannes Kepler and Andreae.
264

Kepler was critical of Hermetic mystification, criticising Fludd for example, yet [he] moved in
Andreaes circle, and seems to have been later associated with the Christian Unions and
was part of a network of correspondents that also included Galileo.
265

The concern for social reform among intellectuals sympathetic to Rosicrucian ideals is also
evidenced by their interest in what a perfected society might look like. There was an upsurge
of utopian literature at the start of the seventeenth century. Campanellas City of the Sun
(written around 1602 but only published in 1614), in Yates words, profoundly influenced
Andreaes Christianopolis (1619) and, in turn, Francis Bacons New Atlantis (posthumously
published in 1627).
266
Among the common themes in these works are the importance of
science, education for all, equality in living standards, a degree of democracy, although
women are to remain subordinate to men, and universal brotherhood.
267
The interest in
social transformation was not the product of wishful thinking but seems to be linked to the
prophecies of a medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore. Joachim divided history into three ages of
42 generations: the Age of the Father, characterised by the rule of law; the Age of the Son

264
Johannes Kepler, who was a relatively tolerant Lutheran Protestant, wrote to his former tutor
Michael Mstelin in October 1595 that God wants to be known from the Book of Nature; cited in
Ferguson, 2002: p. 190. Kepler dedicated his 1618 book Harmonice mundi (Harmony of the World) to
James I of England with the hope that James might bring harmony and peace among the divided
Christian churches; Ferguson, 2002: p. 342.
265
Yates, 1975: p. 267. Kepler corresponded with Galileo in 1599 through a Scottish intermediary
living in Padua, Sir Edmund Bruce, [possibly the same as James VI of Scotlands ambassador Sir
Edward Bruce (c. 1549-1611), Lord Kinloss] and a supporter of the heretical theologian Giordano
Brunos cosmological theories; cited in Ferguson: p. 232; and Koyr, 1957: p. 287, footnote 24 to
chapter 3: <http://www.sacred-texts.com/astro/cwiu/cwiu16.htm>). Bruce was a member of a circle in
Padua led by a former soldier and mathematician Giacomo Antonio Gromo, which studied alchemy
and other diabolical books, along with Simon Marius (Mayer) and Aurelio and Baldessar Capra;
quoted in Drake, 1978: p. 48. Mstelin and Marius were also correspondents (see
<http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/marius.html>) and according to Yates (1975: p. 194) were associated
through the Societas Christiana with Johann Valentin Andreae, who had also been taught by Mstelin
at Tbingen, as had been Kepler.
266
Yates, 1975: p. 176.
267
The proponents of universal education were influential within the Catholic Church, as part of the
Counter-Reformations evangelisation drive. Tommaso Campanella was a friend of the founder of the
Piarist Order, Jos de Calasanz (1557-1648), who from 1597 onwards established a network of free
schools for boys across Europe. The Piarist Order was however later engulfed in a sexual abuse
scandal and was closed down by the pope in 1646. As a recent history explains, Calasanz, the
patron saint of schools and education was actively covering up child abuse in his own schools;
Liebreich, 2005: pp. 78 and 84. Neither Calasanz, nor Campanella, were involved in the abuse itself,
which Calasanz regarded as the worst vice (p. 71).
127


based on faith; and the coming Age of the Holy Spirit during which love and freedom would
flourish and the Book of Nature opened. These ideas were linked to the more conventional
expectation of Christs second coming in the last days. In his Book of Wonders composed
around 1600 the German mystic Julius Sperber (c. 1540-1616) recounted his visions relating
to Joachims prophecies in which he envisaged that the third age was soon approaching and
would usher in democracy and enlightenment. Sperber maintained that after the expulsion
from Eden, Adam passed on the teaching he had received directly from God to his sons and
descendants including Noah, Hermes Trismegistus and Zoroaster. The heirs to this
knowledge, he later claimed, were the Rosicrucians, and he is often associated with the
other alleged authors of the manifestos.
268
The outcome from this attempt at reconciling
ancient philosophy, Jewish and Christian theology and scientific discoveries of the day would
be called theosophy.
The choice of organisational form adopted by the brotherhood is also significant. In many
ways the Rosicrucian order was a Protestant response to the success of the Society of
Jesus, the Jesuits, founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556). Like the mysterious
Rosencreutz, Loyola had visited the Holy Land and studied in Barcelona and Paris. He was
accused of being one of the illuminati by the Spanish Inquisition while at the universities of
Alcal de Henares and Salamanca in 1526 as a student, but was released and exonerated.
In 1540 he persuaded the Pope to allow him to found a religious order able to operate with
few restrictions.
269
The historians tell us that the Jesuits wore no special uniform; their
method combined infiltration, envelopment, forbearance and diplomacy. Theirs was a
polished fanaticism that was far more effective [and] they participated in the life of the
world around them and were dispensed from observances which restricted the activities of
other monks. As preachers, their language was familiar and they adapted it to appeal to
all classes. As propagandists, they appreciated the value of elaborate stagecraft in moving
the crowds.
270
They also respected and promoted the modern sciences and encouraged
education. The preface of the first printed edition of the Fama in 1614 actually called upon
Highly-illuminated Men [and] undeceiving Jesuits to join the Brotherhood, but warning its

268
McIntosh, 1987: pp. 37-39 and 53-54. Julius Sperber published a book sympathetic to the
Rosicrucians in 1615 (Echo der von Gott hocherleuchteten Fraternitet, des loblichen Ordens R.C.,
Danzig).
269
See Caraman, 1990: pp. 61-65, 70-71.
270
Dunan,1964: p. 57.
128


readers to beware of the deceiving and angry Jesuits.
271
This context helps us
understand why a few obscure pamphlets ignited a powerful intellectual movement towards
re-casting both science and religion on a rationalist, and mathematical, footing, and in which
three figures stand out: Descartes, Leibniz and Newton.
Unfortunately for the Rosicrucians, early victories by the Catholic League in the Thirty Years
War drove the Wittlesbachs out of Bohemia and their stronghold of the German Palatinate in
1620, and into exile in The Hague. Frederick V, the former Elector Palatine of the Rhine and
King of Bohemia, died of plague in 1632, leaving his widow, Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of
Charles I of England and Scotland, as the figurehead for the Protestant cause, until her son
Prince Charles Louiss restoration as Elector Palatine by the Treaty of Munster of 1648.
Despite the intervention of the French, Danes, Swedes and Dutch on the Protestant side, the
Catholics made big gains. Whereas Protestantism was the official religion in almost half of
Europe in 1590, by the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648, it had shrunk to one fifth.
272

Defeat forced a reappraisal on the Protestant side. In addition, the religious strife had led to
civil strife within Protestant countries such as Britain, Holland, Hungary, Sweden and North
America. Puritans tried to impose their ideals of praxis pietatis, active piety, upon the rest of
society, while radical sects sought to establish egalitarian communes. It was clear that social
peace could not be achieved by enforcing a single point of view and would have to evolve
through toleration of different views.
Tolerance and intellectual freedom
So it was that when two of Elizabeth Stuarts supporters, John Wilkins and Theodore Haak,
convened meetings in London in 1645, and later in Oxford, to discourse and consider of
Philosophical Enquiries, they initially followed the Rosicrucian formula of invisibility.
273

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), then a young man of eighteen joined the group, and described
them as the Invisible College. These men of so capacious and searching spirits, that
school-philosophy is but the lowest region of their knowledge [are] persons that
endeavour to put narrow-mindedness out of countenance, by the practice of so extensive a
charity, that it reaches unto every thing called man, and no other less than an universal

271
Quoted in McIntosh, 1987: p. 50. Yates comments (1975: p. 133-34) [Adam] Haselmayer
seems also to have given the impression that the Rosicrucian Order, with its attachment to Jesus,
was a kind of Jesuit Order, though with very different aims.
272
Parker, 1979: p. 50.
273
According to the memoire of John Wallis, a Professor of Geometry at Oxford and whose work was
to inspire Newton in formulating calculus; quoted in Yates, 1975: p. 223.
129


goodwill can content it. And indeed they are so apprehensive of the want of good
employment, that they take the whole body of mankind for their care.
274
As is well known,
the Invisible College became, in 1660, the Royal Society for Promoting Philosophical
Knowledge by Experiment. It was not the first such body to be set up. Several private
academies pursuing scholarship had existed in Italy for the previous two centuries, modelled
after Platos academy in ancient Athens. The earliest academies were established in
Florence in 1459, in Rome in 1471, and Venice in 1502, and were associated with the
Hermetic revival promoted by Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Cabalists Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494) and Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), and the publisher Aldus Manutius
(1449-1515).
275
In 1622, a professor of mathematics and medicine, Joachim Jungius (1587-
1657), an associate of Andreae, had established a philosophical society Societas ereunetica
in Rostock, Germany, which however dissolved within a short time. Jungius is suspected of
being one of the authors of the first Rosicrucian manifesto.
276
The most notable early
scientific academies were the Lincean Academy at Rome of 1603 and the short lived
Accademia del Cimento of Florence set up in 1657. More significant were the French
Acadmie Royale des Sciences, which gained royal support in 1666, the Spanish Royal
Society of Medicine and Other Sciences in Seville, founded in 1700, and the Berlin-based
Royal Prussian Society of Sciences of 1701. Science was no longer subservient to the
Church and scientists felt themselves free to debate questions in public.
The emergence of the Invisibles into the open, under a royal charter from King Charles II
was made possible by the new atmosphere of toleration provided by the Restoration of the
Stuart dynasty following the Civil Wars. A measure of toleration was extended to dissenting
Protestants and Catholics as long as they did not hold acts of public worship. Later, under
the 1689 Act of Toleration, some English Protestant dissenters (for instance, Baptists but not
Quakers) gained the right to worship together. In Germany too, the ending of the Thirty
Years War in 1648 had initiated the closure of a terrible chapter of sectarian conflict.
Although each territory was permitted to adopt one denomination, Catholics, Lutherans and
Calvinists were allowed to practice in private throughout the Holy Roman Empire. This same
formula of toleration of privately held opinion had been adopted in France in 1598 under the
Edict of Nantes, although its revocation by Louis XIV in 1685 led to flight of the Calvinist

274
Cited in Lomas, 2002: pp. 73 and 79. See also Yates, 1975: pp. 211-223. Boyle is said to have
been a friend of Andreae; cited in Chevalier Emerys, 2007: p. 116.
275
See Baigent and Leigh, 1997: pp. 110-123.
276
McIntosh, 1987: p. 65.
130


Huguenots to neighbouring Protestant countries and to America. In Sweden the church law
of 1686 permitted Christian worship outside of the Lutheran Church but, once again, only in
private. However, a conference in 1683 of Catholics and Protestants meeting in Hanover,
and attended by Leibniz, who promoted reconciliation with the Papacy, failed to achieve its
aim of Christian unity.
Frances Yates argues that the set-back to the Rosicrucian ideals in Europe became the
impulse for Puritanism, its successor ideology.
277
Puritans opposed the states control of
churches and in general supported freedom of conscience (with restrictions nonetheless on
Catholics, Jews, Muslims and communist sects). Puritans were at the vanguard of the
English revolution of the 1640s and many sought to build a more moral society within the
country or in the colonies. Most of these experiments failed within a short time as the
communities were unable to sustain themselves. The Puritan poet John Milton, who
accepted many of the Hermetic precepts, took a more practical approach to reform than did
the utopian polemicists.
278
Referring to the fictions of Francis Bacon, Michael Maer and
Thomas More, Milton commented that the challenge was to ordain wisely in this world of
evil and not to sequester out of the world into Atlantic and Utopian polities, which can never
be drawn into use, and will not mend our condition.
279
Milton supported Oliver Cromwells
Commonwealth and Free State of England, advocating the separation of church and state,

277
Yates, 1979: p. 207.
278
See Lieb, 1970: p. 229 for a review of the connections between Miltons imagery with Hermetic
symbols and alchemy. Milton attended St Pauls School in London during the early 1620s and was
friends with the headmasters son Alexander Gill. The father, also Alexander Gill, may have met the
German physician and alchemist Count Michael Maer on the latters visit to London in 1612 as part of
the Palatinates embassy seeking to arrange the marriage of Princess Elizabeth Stuart to Elector
Palatine Frederick V. Theodore Diodati, the father of Miltons closest friend, Charles Diodati, was
physician to Princess Elizabeth; see Beer, 2008: p. 19; and Ron Heisler, 1989, Michael Maer and
England, The Hermetic Journal. Maer states in his Symbola Aurea (1617) that he first encountered
Rosicrucians in England, who had derived their knowledge from the Muslim mullahs of the Barbary
Coast and Spain. Heisler notes that in 1609 a sensationally popular book had been published in
London, A True Historical Discourse of Muley Hamets rising to the three Kingdoms of Morocco, Fez,
and Sus. Dedicated to the great friend of Robert Fludd, John Selden, the anonymous author
(presumably Fludd) related the "adventures" of Sir Anthony Sherley, his sons and other English
"gentlemen in the Moorish regions, where, according to rumour, a magician king Abdela ruled (Tilton,
2003: p. 114). In fact this refers to Abou Fares Abdallah (1564-1608), the sultan of Marrakech and
Fez. Several English pirates and mercenaries fought in North Africa at this time. A review of Michael
Maers work can be found in Szulakowska, 2000: pp. 153-166; and in Tilton, 2003.
279
John Milton, 1644, Areopagitica: A speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing; cited in Beer, 2008:
p. 172. Milton may have been thinking of the Puritan colonies founded by the Rainborowe brothers,
Thomas and William, in 1640; see Tinniswood, 2013.
131


press freedom, universal education and public libraries. Elections for a Council of
Representatives were promised but never held. The Restoration of the Stuarts to the throne
and the re-establishment of a state church, despite the measure of toleration permitted,
meant that many Puritans emigrated to America where these ideals were eventually
incorporated into the US Constitution.
280
Furthermore, Yates noted changes in the Hermetic
milieu following the controversy over Galileo, which had pushed its sympathisers towards
what we would now recognise as a more scientific direction. She cites the example of
Descartes friend and patron Mersenne, a Catholic priest, mathematician and pioneer in
acoustics, who, in his Quaestiones in Genesim (1623), banished the astral linkings of
universal harmony, cutting off at the roots the connections of the psyche with the cosmos.
This appeased the witch-hunters and made the world safe for Descartes, which was what
Mersenne was trying to do. Mathematics replaces numerology in Mersennes harmonic
world; magic is banished; the seventeenth century has arrived.
281
While Galileo (and Kepler)
earned their keep by casting horoscopes, demonstrating their continued affiliation, or, at
least, that of their patrons, to the Hermetic paradigm, Descartes, Leibniz and Newton were
constructing another approach altogether.
282

Descartes
Ren Descartes is acknowledged as the founder of modern science. He embarked upon his
mission as a natural philosopher in 1619 after a mystical experience in Germany. Descartes
was by profession a lawyer, but he had studied the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry,
music and astronomy at the top Jesuit college in France, La Flche, in Anjou. There he met
his mentor Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), who was to help him avoid incurring the interest of
the Inquisition in later life. After graduating in law from the University of Poitiers in 1616 he
inherited some land and, having sold it, was able to live the life of a gentleman. He enlisted
in the army of the Catholic League led by Ferdinand of Styria, who had been elected Holy
Roman Emperor in August 1619, to fight in what became the Thirty Years War. While
stationed in Neuberg, Descartes had three vivid dreams on the night of 10-11 November
1619. In one of them he saw a phrase by the Roman poet Ausonius which posed the

280
See Huntington, 2004.
281
Yates, 1979: pp. 202-203. Mersennes book was a critique of the hermetic and cabalistic theories
associated with the Renaissance philosophers, notably Marcilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
and Francesco Giorgi, from a more orthodox Catholic standpoint.

282
Drake, with Swerdlow and Levere, 1999: p. 77. See also Campion and Kollerstorm, 2003.
132


question what path shall I follow in life? He interpreted this to mean that he should choose
the spiritual life that led to wisdom rather than a material life of debauchery.
283

Descartes participated in the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague a year later in
November 1620. As a result of the battle the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand was able to
recapture the city, from which he had been forced out in 1619 by the Protestants the
famous defenestration of Prague. During the subsequent reprisals, 27 leading Protestant
nobles were executed and the University was handed over to the Jesuits, who proceeded to
burn 60,000 books, including many from the extensive library of Hermetic and Cabalistic
works collected by the previous emperor Rudolf II (although some were removed to the
Vatican Library). Prague, under Rudolf, had been a haven for innovative thinkers, where
Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Michael Maer found refuge. Although
Descartes remained a Catholic these events must have reinforced his inclination to caution.
He wrote: During the following nine years [1619-28] I did nothing other than wander around
the world, trying to be a spectator rather than an actor in the dramas that unfold there. I
rooted out of my mind all the errors that could have slipped into it. Not that I thereby imitated
the sceptics on the contrary, my whole plan was designed only to convince myself, and to
reject the shifting ground and sand in order to find rock by using clear and certain
arguments.
284
But his sympathies were later revealed, as Francis Yates notes, when he
dedicated the Principes (1644) to Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of the Winter Queen
Elizabeth Stuart, who later invited him to relocate to Heidelberg in 1649, when her brother
was restored as Elector Palatine to the Wittelsbach seat.
285

It was during a stay in Ulm in 1620, that Descartes came into contact with a mathematician,
Johann Faulhaber (1580-1635), a known Rosicrucian.
286
Later Descartes was to assert that
he had found nothing certain in Rosicrucian doctrines, but admitted to having read
Campanella, Kepler and Ramon Lull, though he claimed not to remember their contents.
Even so, in the Discours de la Mthode he refers to his study of the great book of the
world.
287
His return to Paris in 1623 coincided with a mysterious publicity campaign by the

283
See Clarke, 2006: pp. 59-61.
284
Descartes, 1637, 1912 edition: Part 3: pp. 23-24; and cited in Clarke, 2006: p. 63.
285
Yates, 1975: pp. 153-154.
286
See Sorrell, 2000: p. 11. Faulhaber wrote a treatise on arithmetic from a Cabalist perspective
(Mysterium Arithmeticum, 1615: Ulm), which was dedicated to the Rosicrucian Brotherhood according
to Yates, 1975: p.114; see also pp. 150-151.
287
Descartes, 1637, 1912: Part 1: pp. 8-9.
133


Rosicrucians. Someone had put up posters proclaiming that the representatives of our
principle college of brothers of the Rose Cross, who are visiting the city, visible and invisible,
in the name of the Most High, towards whom the heart of the just is turned. We teach all
sciences without books, writings or signs, and we speak the languages of the countries
where we live in order to rescue men, our equals from error and death. Descartes deflected
accusations that he was a Rosicrucian by joking that since he was visible he could not be a
member of the invisibles; an ambiguous reply at best.
288
But the Rosicrucians were soon
accused of being in league with Satan and of holding sabbats. The French Jesuit Franois
Garasse denounced them as sorcerers in a book of 1623, while Mersenne similarly
considered them, and indeed Hermetic thinkers generally, to be magicians and subversives.
Indeed, Andreae soon dissociated himself from the Rosicrucians, calling the brotherhood
satanic.
289
Defenders however sought to portray the Rosicrucians as heirs of the Hermetic
tradition which had been falsely associated with witchcraft. Gabriel Nauds 1625 Apology
for Great Men Suspected of Magic listed Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Ramon Lull, Paracelsus, Agrippa and Pico della
Mirandola.
290

Even with the patronage of Cardinal Pierre de Brulle (1575-1629), a powerful advocate of
the Counter-Reformation, Descartes felt exposed in Paris and in 1628 left to settle in more
tolerant Holland. From there he produced a series of books on scientific method, physics,
chemistry and biology and corresponded with the leading thinkers of the day. He avoided
controversial issues such as whether the earth circled the sun, and never completed a
treatise on ethics. He fathered a daughter Francine in 1635 with his servant Helene Jans
while in Amsterdam but never married her. In 1649 he agreed to an offer from Queen
Christina of Sweden to take up residence in Stockholm, where he caught pneumonia and
died.
Descartes had planned to publish a book on physics and physiology entitled The World in
1633 but abandoned this when he learnt of the Inquisitions condemnation of Galileo. It was
eventually published in 1664, several years after his death. In it, Descartes explained natural
phenomena by means of a few clear laws: For God has established these laws so
wondrously that, even if we were to imagine that He created nothing more and even if He

288
Clarke, 2006: pp. 74-80.
289
Andreae, 1618; see Manuel and Manuel, 1979: pp. 293-299.
290
As well as Ficino, Pico and Agrippa, Mersenne criticised Robert Fludd in Quaestiones in Genesim,
1623; see Yates, 1975: pp. 139-147.
134


imposed upon it no order or proportion, but made it like the most confused and disordered
chaos [imaginable], the laws are enough to cause the parts of this chaos to disentangle from
each other and to become arranged in good order that they would have the form of a perfect
world.
291
In 1663, the Catholic Church placed Descartes works on the Index of Prohibited
Books, thus joining a list that already included Galileo, Milton, John Locke and his
contemporary Kepler.
Kepler had also argued for mathematical models of the cosmos. In a letter of 1605 Kepler
described his intention to show that the heavenly machine is not a kind of divine being, but
a kind of clockwork (and he who believes that a clock has a soul, attributes the makers glory
to the work), insofar as nearly all the manifold motions are caused by a most simple,
magnetic, and material force, just as all motions of the clock are caused by simple weights.
And I show [in Astronomia Nova, eventually published in 1609] how these physical causes
are to be given numerical and geometrical expression.
292
We see here the emergence of
the notion of God as the clockmaker, who set the cosmos into operation according to natural
laws, into which He never (or rarely) interfered.
Newton
It is said that Newton explored the land already discovered by Descartes.
293
Moreover, the
English Civil War shaped Newton in much the same way as the Thirty Years War had
affected Descartes. Both were very private men, cloaking their research in secrecy and
publishing but a selection. Given the risk of incurring the condemnation of religious
authorities this is perhaps not surprising. Besides, Newton was a pioneer and he knew it.
Gravitation is a familiar concept in the twenty-first century, but at the time it implied action at
a distance, a way of thinking about physics that had been denied as possible for over two
thousand years. The ancient Greek Atomists had insisted that although atoms enjoyed the
space of the void in which to move, it was only in collision that they either stuck together or
bounced apart again. There could be no force that did not follow from physical contact.
Moreover, Aristotle and other ancient authorities denied the possibility of a vacuum (and
accordingly criticised the Atomists on this account). As the writer Arthur Koestler (1905-
1983) explained in his history of cosmology:

291
Clarke, 2006: pp. 111-118.
292
Koestler, 1964: p. 345.
293
According to the French Physiocrat, Encyclopaedist and statesman, Jacques Turgot (1727-1781),
Newton described the land already discovered by Descartes; cited in Ogg, 1965: p. 317.
135


The pre-scientific European lived in a closed universe with firm boundaries in space
and time Space as such did not exist as an abstract concept, merely as an
attribute of material bodies their length, width, and depth; hence empty space was
unthinkable, a contradiction in terms, and infinite space even more so. Time, similarly
was simply the duration of an event. Nobody in his senses would have said that
things move through or in space or time how can a thing move in or through an
attribute of itself, how can the concrete move through the abstract? The total body
of knowledge was as limited as the universe itself; everything that could be known
about the Creator and His creation had been revealed in Holy Scripture and the
writings of ancient sages.
294

Newton found that in building the house of science he was demolishing the foundations of
ancient wisdom, and with it, religion. He must have realised that the scientific discoveries of
his day were taking humanity beyond the knowledge of the ancients. Modern people knew
more and were achieving more. Instead of history being a tale of degeneration since the time
of Adam and Eve, from a golden age to one of iron and clay, there was progress. Not only
do we stand on the shoulders of the ancients to see further, but our children will see further
still. For Newton this was a disturbing prospect. He studied history carefully, especially
Biblical chronology, seeking perhaps to ascertain its direction. These studies he never, of
course, published, because it may have become clear to him that the Stoic and Biblical
patters of history were being contradicted by current events. It has been suggested that
Newton calculated that the end of the world would not occur before 2060 and quite possibly
much later.
295
But if history was a narrative of progress rather than of degeneration, were the
expectations of a fiery catastrophe in the last days still credible at all? His own achievements
in mechanics were allowing humanity to take control of nature in ways never imagined
before.

294
Koestler, 1964: pp. 548-549. The Newtonian model in which objects existed within space and time
was criticised by Leibniz, who argued that space, and time, are concepts describing the relation
between things; see Jolley, 2005: p. 88-89.
295
Stephen D Snobelen, 2003, Statement on the date 2060, <www.isaac-newton.org>. Snobelen
cites Castillejo, 1981: p. 55; and Westfall, 1983: pp. 816-817. Newton based his calculations for the
Second Coming on verses from the Book of Daniel (7: 25 and 12: 7) and the Book of Revelation (11:
3, 12: 6 and 13: 5), which he interpreted as implying that the Church would be a corrupt institution for
1260 years (three and a half years, of 360 days, but where days stand for years). The question to be
settled was therefore the date when corruption set in. Newton considered several possibilities relating
to the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire (which he opposed) at the coronation of Charlemagne by
Pope Leo III in 800, and 1084, when Emperor Henry IV deposed Pope Gregory VII. Thus 800 plus
1260 years brings us to 2060 and from 1084 we arrive at 2344.
136


He even doubted himself. In a letter to his supporter Richard Bentley (1662-1742), Newton
advised him to discard the notion that gravity was an essential property of matter and implied
that there was no such thing as empty space, keeping open the possibility that gravity
worked through the medium of ether:
That Gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to Matter, so that one Body
may act upon another at a distance thro a Vacuum, without the Mediation of
anything else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from
one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity, and I believe no Man who has in
philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity
must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether
this Agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of
my readers.
296

It was on this very point that Leibniz chose to criticise the Principia in 1710 by accusing
Newton of reviving the absurd hypothesis of a vacuums existence. That a vacuum was
possible had, however, already been demonstrated by Evangelista Torricelli, Galileos
secretary, and publicised by Blaise Pascal (1623-62) in 1647. A famous mountain-top
experiment by Otto von Guericke (1602-86) in 1654 was credited with proving the case for a
vacuum beyond further doubt. In Oxford, Boyle and Robert Hooke undertook several more
experiments in the late 1650s and early 1660s on air pumps, providing accurate predictions
based on the relationship between air pressure and the volume of gas (Boyles Law).
297
The
problem was that some scholars still thought that weight was a property of the mass of an
object, and this determined the speed at which it fell to earth. So the Royal Society invited
John Desaguliers (1683-1744), then Newtons assistant, and a prominent Freemason, to
conduct an experiment in 1717 to prove that gravity operated uniformly in a vacuum by
showing that a light object (a sheet of paper) fell as quickly as a heavier one (a coin).
298

Newton was convinced that the orderliness of nature implied an Author. The world was the
perfection of Gods works, demonstrating that He is the God of order and not of confusion.
Truth, he considered, was ever to be found in simplicity and not in the multiplicity and

296
Letter to Richard Bentley in 1693; cited in Hall, 1970: p. 320. The original letter may be read on
<http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00258>.
297
Hall, 1970: p. 255.
298
Barrow, 2001: pp. 98-99. Apparently, the famous experiment using cannon balls carried out from
the Leaning Tower of Pisa was undertaken by Giorgio Coressio to disprove Galileos proposition that
objects fell at the same speed and not according to their weights; see Koestler, 1964: p. 435.
137


confusion of things.
299
He subscribed to the Rosicrucian formula that the Book of Scripture
and the Book of Nature each led to truth.
300
Although Newton has been accused of being a
Rosicrucian the only evidence, such as it is, comes from an examination of his interests. On
Robert Boyles death in 1691, Newton inherited his papers and his library certainly contained
Rosicrucian books by Thomas Vaughan and Michael Maer, complete with Newtons
annotations, along with the works of the medieval mathematician and mystic Ramon Lull (c.
1232-1315).
301
His unpublished writings show his esoteric interests to have been aligned
with the themes developed in this essay. A draft manuscript from around 1710 titled Irenicum
stated his opinion that all nations were originally of one religion and this religion consisted in
the Precepts of the sons of Noah. This religion, which was known to Abraham, Moses and
Pythagoras, was the Moral Law of all nations, to love God and ones neighbour.
302

Newtons conclusion was that the first religion was the most rational of all others till the
nations corrupted it. For there is no way (without revelation) to come to the knowledge of a
Deity but by the frame of Nature.
303
Thus J M Keynes, who secured for Cambridge many of
Newtons private manuscripts, described Newton not just as a pioneer of science but as the
last of the magicians.
304

Newtons dilemma lay in attempting to reconcile the new discoveries of science with ancient
knowledge, in particular that of the Bible and Greek philosophy. His interests indicate a link
with the Hermetic paradigm, while his commitment to experiment and mathematical models
demonstrate dedication to modern science. In fact, there is no better illustration of Newtons
modernity than his approach to the major controversy of his day, the reality of demons,

299
Isaac Newton, around 1670-90, Untitled Treatise on Revelation, section 1.1 point 9; on
<www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00135>.
300
Stephen D Snobelen, To discourse of God: Isaac Newtons heterodox theology and his natural
philosophy, in Wood, 2004: pp. 39-65.
301
Yates, 1975: pp. 243-244.
302
Westfall, 1983: p. 820. The title may be related to a book by Daniel Zwicker (1612-1678), Irenicum
irenicorum, 1658, which examined the theology of the early Christians. Zwicker was a Unitarian or
Socinian, that is, a Christian who does not hold with the doctrine that God is a Holy Trinity of three
persons; Newton apparently shared these views. Irenic works attempted to reconcile Christian
doctrines using reasoned argument, rather than polemic.
303
See <www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00077> from a manuscript on
the Original of Religions, written in the early 1690s.
304
Keynes declared in 1946: Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the
magicians; Keynes, 1947: pp. 27-34; cited by Baigent and Leigh, 1997: p. 238; and by Philip Ball,
Newtons Curse, New Scientist, 8 April 2006: p. 47.
138


ghosts and witchcraft. Newton considered demons to be distempers of the mind [of] mad
men and lunatics. Ghosts were imaginary and life after death wholly unlikely. Any belief
that men and women can really divine, charm, enchant, bewitch or converse with spirits is a
superstition. For Newton, the Devil and his imprisonment were a symbol of the spirit of
delusion reigning in the hearts of men, which he attempted to explain historically.
305
Newton
looked back to the earliest Christian writings to find a purer doctrine, uncorrupted, as he saw
it, by the ingress of Gentile accretions under the Popes and Emperors designed to make
Christianity more appealing to the credulous masses. In expressing such views, Newton was
siding with the rationalist and religious critics of the witch craze, such as the Rosicrucian
John Webster (1610-1682), whose book on alchemy was known to Newton, and Balthasar
Bekker (1634-1698), a supporter of Descartes and of the separation of natural philosophy
from theology.
306
By the time of Newtons death in 1727, the way was open for the
eighteenth century resurgence of mathematical physics on Newtonian principles and a new
age, less tense and more sceptical, less penetrating and more materialist had begun, in
the words of the historian of science Rupert Hall (1920-2009).
307

We can no longer be sure whether Descartes, Leibniz or Newton were more than
Rosicrucian sympathisers. Whereas Descartes was evasive about his connection to
Rosicrucian circles, Leibniz was simply non-committal.
308
He apparently joined a Rosicrucian
Society in Nuremberg in 1666, following his studies at the University of Jena, where he came
into contact with the Pythagorean ideas of Erhard Weigel (1625-1699).
309
When in London,
in 1673, he met Robert Boyle, a man who castigated Hermetick doctrine in public while

305
Cited by Stephen D Snobelen, Lust, pride and ambition: Isaac Newton and the Devil, in Force and
Hutton, 2004: pp. 155-181; and
<www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00216>
306
See Webster, 1677; and Bekker, 1691. On Websters Rosicrucian connections see Yates, 1975: p.
227.
307
Hall, 1970: pp. 324 and 335.
308
Even so, Bertrand Russell detected an esoteric aspect to Leibnizs philosophy; see Russell, 1946:
p. 531; and Jolley, 2005: 216. In his published works, Leibniz set out an orthodox if sometimes
incoherent philosophy, whereas his private papers reveal an unorthodox thinker, sympathetic to
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), whom he met in 1676. Spinozas work was also critical of Descartes
and his denial of the souls immortality led to his works being condemned by Jews, Catholics and
Protestants alike. Leibniz seems to have held the view that there is no soul without an animate body;
see Woolhouse, 2010: p. 29.
309
Yates, 1975: p.154. The activities and membership of this society are not attested sufficiently, but it
may have been devoted to alchemy, in which Leibniz continued to show an interest.
139


studying it, and alchemy, in private, recording his findings in code.
310
What is clear is that, for
all their personal commitment to some or other form of Christianity, they sought to shift the
gaze of science towards the Book of Nature, a clear Rosicrucian objective. The cosmos
manifested Gods creation of order from chaos. It had been set to work according to
straightforward rules and only human ignorance stood in the way of rediscovering those
secrets imparted originally to Adam, but subsequently lost. Confusion had prevailed too long,
in religion as well as science, because philosophers and law-makers had abandoned reason
in favour of deference to antique authority. Science and governance had to discover natures
laws and bring them to bear upon society and to establish rational rules of behaviour that
prohibited the arbitrary exercise of power by the princes and clerics. Through science came
technological development that allowed Europe to dominate the globe for the next two
centuries. Proponents of natural law, such as Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679), and Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), sought to limit the anarchy of war and
protect the civilian population and private commerce from arbitrary violation, plunder and
confiscation. That such a wide ranging research programme emerged from the calamity that
had produced the wars of religion and the witch craze owed much to the spread of
Rosicrucian principles and the advance of toleration.

310
Woolhouse, 2010: p. 4; and Baigent and Leigh, 1997: p. 234. Another founder member of the
Royal Society was Thomas Willis (1621-1675), an alchemist and collaborator with Robert Hooke,
Boyles assistant. Williss studies of the brain and the nervous system led him to conclude that the
brains cerebral cortex was the locus of the mind (the rational soul). His studies influenced John
Lockes theories about perception and led to the rejection of Descartes view that the soul was located
in the pineal gland (a traditional view since antiquity) through its control of the animal spirits; see
Clarke and Dewhurst, 1995: p. 74.
140


The Cartesian paradigm
The Cartesian paradigm contained a rigorous methodology for the pursuit of science and a
coherent intellectual framework for understanding nature through its mechanics. The
characteristics of the Cartesian approach to science, as set out in Descartes treatise the
Discourse on Method (1637) are objectivity, impartiality, rationality and freedom from any
context (in other words, a theory should apply to any context). The author of a recent critique
of Descartes method has stated: the Cartesian approach with its pinnacle role for
mathematics was extremely successful. It led to all of todays science and technology.
311

The approach implies that what is true and knowable is the product of scientific method, and
that those ideas which are not verifiable cannot be considered certain knowledge. Scientific
truths, in Descartes scheme, are verifiable (anyone can check it out), certain (no doubt
remains), complete (no further questions remain unanswered) and intelligible (they make
sense). For Descartes, the key feature lay in critical reasoning and a mild dose of
scepticism. As he explained: Since I wanted to devote myself solely to the search for truth, I
thought that I should act in the opposite manner, and reject as absolutely false anything
about which I could imagine the slightest doubt, so that I could see if there would not remain
after all that something in my belief which could be called absolutely certain.
312

The standard is set high and in practice scientists are rarely completely certain that accepted
theories are true. Taken to its extreme, all scientists would have to consider themselves to
be agnostics. Nevertheless, the scientific method has become a key feature of Western
civilization, being also applied to political issues and morality. For example, in politics, we
often seek to resolve a controversy by reference to the facts. But the focus on what has
worked up until now may constrain our imagination of what could be possible. In morality, we
try to eliminate cultural biases, which may lead to the charge of moral relativism. Irrational
beliefs and feelings may be distrusted to the point where all points of view become regarded
as self-serving. Such ways are looking at the world may be traced to Descartes. The
extension of Descartes approach to discovering the truth (an epistemology) into a set of
unquestioned assumptions about reality, providing a general philosophy that went alongside
the renaissance in science, allows us to speak of a Cartesian paradigm. Descartes, were he
alive today, might protest that this was not what he intended to achieve when he used mild

311
Devlin, 1997: p. 262.
312
Descartes, 1637, 1912 edition: Part 4: p. 26.
141


scepticism to cleanse science of the accumulated mass of ideas that relied on past authority
(for example, on Aristotle) and could not be verified anew.
313

Descartes method gained support not only from the spread of Newtons physics, but from its
coherence with the generally accepted view that natures secrets were awaiting discovery.
Newtons laws of motion were consistent with the mechanical model proposed by Descartes
(even if Descartes own theories on motion were discarded).
The mechanical model also influenced chemistry. Initially the seventeenth century natural
philosophers attempted to make better sense of ancient chemeia and Arabic al-kmiy by
experiment and systematisation. Alchemists sought to replicate the original creation of
diverse substances from simpler materials in the laboratory. Their efforts, while consistent
with the theory of transmutation and spagyric mechanics, turned out to be a false trail for
science.
314
The key to progress lay with the analysis of the structure of materials rather than
the attempt to reproduce their appearance. According to Aristotle, the differentiation of
primary matter into things (minerals, vegetables and animals, and their sub-species) was
related to their attributes, that is, to their sensual features that are observable. (This
definition is, in fact, tautological.) Galileo reduced the potentially infinite types of attribute to
three: number, movement and shape (which Locke divided further into solidity and
extension).
315
Descartes similarly argued that the essence of matter was extension: the
attributes of size, shape and motion.
316

313
Koestler writes that Galileo banished the [Aristotelian] qualities which are the very essence of the
sensual world colour and sound, heat, odour, and taste from the realm of physics to that of
subjective illusion. Descartes carried the process one step further by paring down the reality of the
external world to particles [atoms] whose only quality was extension in space [mass] and motion in
space and time [energy]; Koestler, 1964: p. 539.
314
The term spagyric was coined by Paracelsus from the Greek words spao and ageiro, which means
to tear apart and gather together; see Haeffner, 2004: p. 232.
315
Hall, 1970: p. 218.
316
Cited by Jolley, 2005: p. 37.
142


Transmutation and alchemy
The process of transmutation was a central proposition of ancient chemeia, the art of
casting materials. It was thought that all materials had evolved from primary matter
(materia prima) through transmutation. Ores, for instance, had grown from rock and
evolved additional features and qualities that made them useful, although all matter
had once been the same basic stuff. Under astral and planetary influence the metals
evolved, just as plants and animals had done. The theory was illustrated in the tree of
the philosophers (Figure 5-1), which shows the correspondence of the main metals to
the planets. We may regard the theory of transmutation to be an attempt to
understand the natural processes of development, including that of the Earth itself.
Alchemists sought to replicate transmutation in the laboratory, thereby revisiting the
work of the Creator. They were most successful in changing the colours of materials
through the application of tinctures or elixirs. The fact that despite considerable effort
serious chemists such as Boyle and Newton never succeeded in transforming lead
into gold should have been evidence enough to undermine the transmutation theory.
However, in celebrated experiments Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579-1644) and Boyle
had grown pumpkins from seed under controlled conditions. They demonstrated that
the volume of soil remained constant during the pumpkins growth, but their size was
related to the amount of watering given. The conclusion drawn was that water had
been transmuted into pumpkin flesh, strengthening the association between water
and the materia prima of creation.
317

Thus transmutation remained a viable proposition well into the seventeenth century,
although the trickery associated with alchemy meant that practitioners were often
subject to ridicule and prosecution. Nonetheless a fair number of alchemists claimed
success. In his survey of the occult, the writer Colin Wilson recounts several tales of
accelerated transmutation involving a catalytic powder, usually received by the
alchemist from a mysterious stranger, often Jewish. Paracelsus (1493-1541), the
name under which Philip Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim is known,
claimed to possess the crucial essence known as azoth. This was not merely a cure-
all but could apparently convert base metals into gold.
318
However it failed to bring

317
Hall, 1970: p. 124.
318
Wilson, 1973: pp. 312-314. The word azoth may be derived from the Arabic for mercury, al-z'q.
143


Paracelsus either wealth or happiness. In 1602 Alexander Seton claimed to have
converted lead into gold using a powder, given to him by a seaman he had rescued.
Seton repeated this feat several times across Europe in the presence of various
eminent scholars, notably in Basle. His luck ran out in Krossen (now Krosno in
Poland), when the Elector of Saxony, Christian II, imprisoned him. But, despite
torture, Seton refused to reveal his secret and escaped with his wife and another
alchemist Michael Sendivogius to Krakow in 1604, where he died of his injuries.
Sendivogius (c.1556-1636), inherited the black (or red) powder by marrying Setons
widow and, in Wilsons words, led a highly successful career as an alchemist,
working at the courts of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague and King Sigismund III at
Krakow, though, when the powder was exhausted, became a charlatan.
319
Rudolfs
physician and colleague of Sendivogius, Michael Maer (1566-1622), claimed in a
letter of 1611 to have almost perfected making the ultimate goldness from lead, but
never quite finished the great work.
320
The notorious Dr. Faust (c. 1480-1540)
supposedly turned lead into gold and water into wine around 1520 when in
Krakow.
321
Lastly there is the case of the notary Nicolas Flamel (c.1330-1418), who
was reputed to have undertaken successful transmutation in 1382 by following
instructions from a mysterious Book of Abraham the Jew. Flamel is perhaps the only
alchemist known to have been a wealthy man he endowed several churches and
hospitals in Paris but contemporary evidence for his achievement in transmutation
is wholly absent.
322

319
Wilson, 1973: pp. 320-321. See also Seligmann, 1975: pp. 184-185.
320
Cited in Tilton, 2003: pp. 71-74.
321
Cited in Ball, 2007: pp. 91-92.
322
Flamel (attributed), 1612, Le Livre des figures hiroglypiques; the text is available in Linden, 2003:
pp. 123-135. Flamels book supposedly reproduces images from the Book of Abraham the Jew, but
there is no evidence for its existence before the seventeenth century; see also Hall, 1928: p. 493; and
Seligmann, 1975: 186-187.
144


Although Descartes avoided using atomic theory probably because the Atomists were
regarded as atheists he propounded a theory of particles as the basis of all matter. He
introduced the term molecule, from the French molcule meaning "extremely minute
particle", in the 1620s, to describe how particles were hooked together to form different
materials. Chemistry began to investigate the composition and structure of materials rather
than classifying materials in terms of their properties and the proportions between the four
elements inherent within the material. Chemical changes could now be theorised in a more
complex way than had been possible within the spagyric mechanisms that framed alchemy.
These mechanisms were aligned, according to the tria prima theory of Paracelsus, with three
active principles of bonding and separation: solidity/fixity, fluidity/volatility and
flammability/combustion, which were in turn associated with salts, solvents and heat.
323
Solid
materials were thought to be composed of atoms linked together by strong bonds, which

323
See Haeffner, 2004: pp. 172 and 203. This theory is also known as the salt-mercury-sulphur theory
of transmutation; see Hall, 1970: pp. 227-228. Paracelsus was preoccupied with metallurgy and
pharmacology; see Boas, 1970: pp. 164-169.
Figure 5-1: The tree of the philosophers
Source: Derived from Alexander Roob, 1997, Alchemy and Mysticism; Kln: Taschen: p. 308;
Manley P Hall, 2003, The Secret Teachings of all Ages, New York: Tarcher/Penguin: p. 386.
Fe
Hg
Ag
Pb Cu
Sn
Au
Mercury
Silver
Gold
Iron
.
.
Venus
Copper
Mars
Mercury
Sun Moon
Lead
Saturn
Jupiter
Tin
Sulphur
Salt
NaCl
S
Heat
Earth
Fluidity
Solidity
The Earth combines the 4 Elements
The Kabalistic
Tree of the
Sephiroth has
a similar structure
Metals were
thought to
grow within
the Earth
145


could only be cut by dissolution, in acid, for example. Fluid materials were formed from
smooth atoms that glided past each other, but these materials could be reformed through the
process of conjunction, for instance, by crystallisation into salts. Fiery atoms were
considered to be so small that they could penetrate other materials. However chemeia could
not explain why so many different materials existed, except as a result of mysterious
transmutation from one to another. It was clear to Robert Boyle, expressed, for example, in
his The Sceptical Chymist (1661), that more than the four elements known to the ancients
(earth, water, air and fire) existed. This insight was validated in modern chemistry, following
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794), who showed that materials were compounds of
different elements, of which he identified 33, and which were, in turn, composed of
molecules. Today, some 118 elements have been identified, each consisting of one type of
atom.
The Cartesian paradigm also had repercussions for theology and psychology. It implied that
Gods role as the Creator lay largely beyond the cosmos: He established the order of the
universe from its chaotic state and gave it the laws of nature by which to operate. Seeing
that it was good, God retired from further active involvement. This was broadly acceptable to
many religious people, although, according to Christianity, God did intervene on occasion, in
sending the Christ, in the form of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and His angels, as the salvation
religions all agreed, to instruct humankind. Religious thinking could nonetheless
accommodate the proposition that God worked through nature, so miracles always had a
natural explanation as well as spiritual significance. Two of the earliest proponents of an
empirical approach to explanation were Charles Blount (1654-1693) and Bernard Le Bouyer
de Fontenelle (1657-1757). A probable Freemason, Blount published an essay Miracles
No violation of the Laws of Nature anonymously in 1683, while de Fontenelle, a noted
defender of Cartesian theories, wrote in a similar vein a book on prophecy, Histoire des
oracles (1687).
324
The theory that God stands wholly outside His creation is known as Deism
and its adoption by intellectuals coincided with the growth of religious toleration within civil
society.
In terms of psychology, the Cartesian paradigm implied a distinction between the body and
the mind or soul, with the latter equated to consciousness. In his work The World, Descartes

324
Deism was associated with unorthodox variants of Christianity such as Socianism and Anti-
Trinitarianism to which Newton is thought to have been sympathetic. In a letter to Sir Thomas
Sydenham, Blount described a manuscript entitled A Summary Account of the Deists Religion as
containing references to secret Pythagorean doctrines; see Corfe, 2007: pp. 52-54; and Hudson,
2009: pp. 58, 64 and 73. See also Blount and others, 1693, The Oracles of Reason.
146


divided things into two broad categories. Things were either material or spiritual, a
categorisation that reinforced Deism. He classed almost all phenomena as mechanical,
meaning that their workings could be understood in terms of movement and contact and
were expressible through mathematics. Human and animal bodies are also to be understood
this way. In this regard, Descartes had followed the discoveries made by William Harvey in
1628 about the circulation of blood and supposed that the bodys organs functioned like
parts of a machine. The body and all material things could thus be understood as involving
predictable cause/effect mechanics. All living creatures, except humans, merely had reflexes
that reacted to sensory stimuli. Only humans had a mind and the intelligence to reason and
thus to anticipate events. Humans were conscious beings. Descartes, however, offered no
explanation as to how humans had gained intelligence except, in accordance with the Book
of Genesis, from God. For Descartes, it was enough to concur with the accepted wisdom
that the human mind, the rational soul and our intelligence and capability for language was a
simply a gift from God that had permitted humanity to gain knowledge of the truth.
325

(Indeed, God may have designed the cosmos according to mathematical rules so that
humans could discover those rules using their intelligence and recognise the truth of Gods
existence and glory.)
Although buttressed politically and ideologically by the Deist compromise that allowed
scientists and theologians to avoid turf wars, the Cartesian paradigm was never without its
critics. Philosophers were reluctant to accept a purely mechanical explanation of
phenomena. Even so, a modification, conceived by the mathematician and philosopher
Gottfried Leibniz, in his Monadology (1714), never caught on.
326
Leibniz criticised Descartes
definition of matter in terms of its extension as failing to account for functionality and
development. What, for instance, turned an aggregation into unit? An army is composed of
men, but 10,000 men assembled together are not necessarily an army (a disciplined fighting
force); they may be a crowd of spectators at a sporting event or a mob on the rampage.
Similarly, there are billions of atoms in an organism, but what is it that makes one being a
human rather than a hedgehog? It is not enough to characterise the forms of matter in terms
of their structure and composition. We need to distinguish between beings and other things
that lack an essential unity. Organisms are clearly beings, but so might be water, rocks,

325
Augustine of Hippo writing in 427 in The City of God, stated It is God who has given man his
mind; Book 22: p. 1072.
326
Leibniz, 1714, Monadologie.
147


angels and God. Through this logic, Leibniz was able to infer the existence of what
theologians called substantial forms, or souls.
327

Leibniz also found Descartes explanation of development inadequate. The development of
an organism does not equate to its growth. For example, a foetus or an infant is not a
smaller version of an adult. Further, there are many examples of development in stages:
from an egg to a chrysalis to an insect, for instance. We can see that growth is the result of
development, just as temperature is related to heat, but they are not identical. Leibnizs
hypothesis was that things are assemblages of units, which he called, from Greek, monads
(a term originally proposed by the Pythagoreans). These units were not unlike atoms, but
since they are immaterial, monads were similar to what we would now call bits of
information. There is a striking resemblance between Leibnizs description that monads
express bodies and the theory of genes. Corporeal things reflect, or result from, a particular
unit of information, a monad, which also make up, in their totality, the Mind of God, the
cosmic design.
328
In this way Leibniz was seeking to rescue the Aristotelian theory that
things possessed properties (qualities) such as hardness, warmth, flexibility, colour and so
on. Both Descartes and Leibniz realised that the theory of qualities was unscientific, because
the list of properties that something can possess can be expanded constantly and does not
provide a valid explanation of why one thing differs from another.
The characteristics of an organism, Leibniz argued, stem, or emanate, from its essential
unity, or monad. An organisms characteristics, the functionality of its organs and its
development and growth are bound together and make it what it is. A bee will sting when
threatened. A plant will turn towards its main source of light. In other words, behaviour,
characteristics and development are informed by the information that make up, or form, the
organism. Nowadays we would explain this essential relationship in terms of genetics, where
genes are units of information that express themselves in biological features. So although
the terms employed by Leibniz, and the ancient and medieval philosophers he admired, are
unfamiliar to us, their explanations are just as sensible, even if they are not as rigorous or
complete as those of modern science. The Cartesian paradigm never resolved the problem
of development adequately, as the mechanical and kinetic model, although a great advance

327
Leibniz called beings that were composed of matter, organised into a unity by monads, and
animated by an active force, substances; see Jolley, 2005: pp. 39-41; and Woolhouse, 2010: pp. 18-
19, 21, 25-29. Every substance emanated from a substantial, though immaterial, form, while living
organisms had a much smarter substantial form, that could be called a soul; Leibniz, 1698, De ipsa
natura (On nature itself): 11 and 12; cited by Woolhouse: p. 28.
328
Jolley, 2005: pp. 57, 77-79.
148


in itself, could not explain the role of information in the reproduction of structures and
organisms.
In retrospect, the theory of monads can be seen as a last attempt to reconcile the Hermetic
paradigm with the discoveries of science. To be sure, Leibniz identified, correctly, the
defects in Descartes mechanical model, but his alternative was itself flawed. Monadology,
like the Hermetic paradigm, rested upon analogical reasoning (see Appendix B). The theory
that monads were a mirror of Gods design no less than Platos theory of forms is
founded upon a metaphor, an analogy. The subsequent success of the Cartesian paradigm
lay upon its use of logical reasoning. Leibnizs monadology, like Newtons alchemy, came to
be regarded as eccentric deviations in the development of science. It was their work as
logicians, in the mathematics of infinitesimal calculus in particular (and the bitter dispute
between the men as to priority) that is remembered.
Later philosophers, like Kant and Hegel were also to point out that Descartes, and indeed
Newton, had failed to explain human exceptionalism: why had an animal that was able to
think for itself and live under its own laws come into being, whereas all other organisms and
phenomena were subject to natural laws?
329
It followed that once explanations were put
forward for the evolution of human (and animal) intelligence the coherence of the Cartesian
paradigm began to unravel, as we shall see in the next chapter.
While the ancient and medieval analyses of reality contained sophisticated theories about
time, space, matter and energy, their, to us, old fashioned philosophical language, and its
use of analogical reasoning, obscure our understanding. The Cartesian paradigm introduced
a new terminology. From the seventeenth century, Western scholarship became
synonymous with scientific arguments; debates once expressed in theological terms, were
re-phrased in terms of natural laws. Experiments were undertaken to validate hypotheses.
The sixteenth century wars of religion and medieval persecution of heretics and witches
were soon left behind and scientists no longer had to fear denunciation and trial by church
courts. Religion became a private matter of conscience, while scientific discourse until then
often kept deliberately esoteric and private, to avoid persecution was opened up to the
educated public with the emergence of reading and discussion circles, public libraries,
academies, and universities, all free from church control. Tolerance, and the Deist
compromise, which stressed Gods role as the designer and clockmaker of the cosmos,
made room for a science free of theological constraints.

329
See Pinkard, 2000: p. 564.
149


The displacement of one paradigm by another involves the incorporation of past findings into
a novel framework, the re-labelling of principles and the rejection of obsolete theories. Not all
is discarded and not all preserved. The Rosicrucians feature in this conjuncture with one foot
in each camp. Kepler, a champion of observation and logic, had criticised Robert Fludd on
the grounds that his method is the business of alchemists, hermetists, and Paracelsians,
[whereas] mine is the task of the mathematician able to shine new light on the real
world.
330
Mersenne, similarly, expunged the theory of correspondence from the repertoire of
science. The Rosicrucians were, nevertheless, the crucible for the process of paradigm shift
through their close engagement with ancient Hermetic theories and their open-minded
pursuit of discovering the secrets of the Book of Nature. A stable framework for research
emerged because it was designed by its exponents to meet the challenge of their age: the
need to secure a peace in the midst of the religious wars unleashed by the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation.
331
The Cartesian paradigm offered freedom for research without
impinging upon the teaching authority of the Church: the Deist compromise, religious
toleration and academic freedom became self-reinforcing pillars of the Modern Age.

330
Kepler, 1619: Book 5; cited by Koestler, 1964: p. 403.
331
This is why Koestler could claim that the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was ripe
for its time; Koestler, 1964: pp. 529-530.
150


151


Chapter 6: Einsteins challenge

Although that great book of nature stands open to all men, yet there are few that can read
and understand the same.
The Rosicrucian Manifesto Confessio Fraternitatis (1615).
332

In the classroom no teacher can venture off their turf without trepidation. The science
teacher cannot discuss creation, while religious education is often constrained from
questioning scared texts. Science teachers will, correctly, argue that their teaching time is
limited and if they have to cover creationism, then why not astrology as well? The disconnect
that exists for students is mirrored in wider debate within society. From time to time
scientists and theologians gather to exchange opinions but these events are more likely to
be restricted to the recitation of platitudes than in permitting a meeting of minds. Everyone
can agree that the universe is a wondrous phenomenon and that we all need ethics if we are
to live in peace. Terry Pratchett, for instance, the author the of Discworld novels, has written
of our inborn sense of awe of all the majesty and apparent order of the universe and the
relevance of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in making this world a heaven, without
endorsing a belief in God.
333
The sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) called this feeling of
wonderment, this attitude towards reality, an enchantment, whereby the world is endowed
with meaning, transcending the prosaic, and which is a source of religious sensibility.
334

But such fine words disguise the fact that each camp believes its own truth and aims to find
fault with their adversary, as they see it, rather to seek a common understanding. It was this
impasse that led me to analyse the scriptures of the main religions the salvation creeds of
Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism, as well as the Hermetic tradition, found in

332
Cited in Yates, 1975: p. 302.
333
Terry Pratchett, letter to The Times, 4 September 2010. Another example is Jeff Forshaw,
Science, religion and a shared sense of wonder, The Observer, 28 October 2012, Forshaw writes that
science and religion are united [in inspiring] glory and wonder.
334
Max Weber gave lectures on Science as a Vocation in 1917-1919 in which he contrasted the
disenchantment of the world (Entzauberung der Welt), which took hold during the Enlightenment, with
pre-modern attitudes. For an interesting discussion of Webers and Tolkiens conceptions of
enchantment and magic see <www.patrickcurry.co.uk/papers/Iron-Cage-Iron-Crown.pdf>.
152


Stoicism and Hellenistic philosophy and so to uncover from a rational perspective the
arcane science of antiquity.
Today the danger of creating a society without prohibition and of a market without limits,
that is, of globalisation has sparked a reaction from amongst the fundamentalist faithful
that threatens a clash of civilizations. A few fundamentalists seek to re-impose the social
taboos and the restrictions on scientific enquiry that existed in past centuries. While many
people accept that boundaries need to be established in principle, one of the obstacles to
dialogue is the absence of a common frame of reference within which it may take place. The
consensus appears to be that religion and science are separate practices, as the biologist
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) advocated. Many scientists go on to argue that while
science teaches knowledge derived from logic, logos, religion is based upon irrationality and
myth, mythos.
335
Mythos is viewed as an expression of ideas that cannot be expressed
logically.
336
Moreover, even relatively liberal theologians appear to endorse the related
formula that while science tackles questions concerning how things come about, religion
seeks to provide answers as to why. Although Goulds apparent proposal for mutual
tolerance has appeal, it makes, in fact, the search for common ground more difficult. The
division of labour, while convenient, is, in reality, contradictory. If God is a supernatural being
and, fundamentally, inscrutable then we are probably unable to understand His will in any
meaningful way. So the why answers are not necessarily true answers at all (though some of
the devout may well continue to assert otherwise).
Besides, the how and the why questions are related. Scientists, for example, tell us that the
common sense notion of evolution giraffes evolved long necks in order to eat the leaves
from the tops of trees is formulated wrongly. Evolution by natural selection means that
proto-giraffes with slightly longer necks than others of their kind were more likely to survive
and reproduce, thereby conferring their genetic advantage onto their offspring. Nevertheless
the popular view is quite consistent with the idea that the function of a long neck is to permit
a giraffe to browse the leaves of tall trees. It answers a question on the purpose of a trait.
The statement about function is an answer to the question why do giraffes have long

335
See for example, Lawrence M Krauss, 2010, Faith and Foolishness, Scientific American, August,
p. 23; I dont know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose
between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo
Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationality whenever it arises, we will encourage irrational
public policy and promote ignorance over education.
336
Richard Holloway citing Karen Armstrong, The Observer The New Review, 19 December 2010:
p. 39.
153


necks? The evolutionary explanation answers a, perfectly valid, how question. In this
example the two explanations are compatible, or, as philosophers would say,
commensurate. (In any case, the clergy have no monopoly on answering why questions.)
Where we need to tread more carefully is in ascribing some good purpose to the path of
development. An example would be the statement: slavery was invented to relieve slave
masters from the burden of tedious work. Many people might be offended by the apparent
implication that slavery could provide benefits and might therefore be condoned. Moreover,
being asked to agree that the end justifies the means may be acceptable in politics but not in
science. Science seems to ban teleology, the study of purpose, and exclude it from its
repertoire altogether.
337
But by doing so, we rule out the possibility of addressing the larger
questions such as whether the orderliness of reality is fortuitous or providential; questions
that have haunted philosophy across the centuries. Furthermore, if one accepts the how/why
distinction there is nothing left for the scientists and the devout to discuss.
This essay has sought to show that the history and philosophy of science and religion are
linked more closely than the culture warriors would have us believe. Recognising the linkage
would permit both sides to revisit the issues at stake concerning the nature of the cosmos,
its orderliness and its tendencies. Within the myths and philosophical speculation of the
ancients there is something that is recognisably scientific. While we should be cautious of
interpreting ancient metaphysics in terms of modern debates in philosophy, neither should
we make the mistake of assuming that the ancients were unaware of these same
conundrums. By unpacking the contemporary debate over whether the inherent orderliness
of the cosmos implies the existence of a divine architect (the Intelligent Design controversy)
we may find that we are, perhaps, working towards the formation of an, as yet, unrealised
paradigm of synthesis.
In the first five chapters I investigated the logic of the Biblical myths in the context of the
occult knowledge of the ancient Greek-speaking philosophers. I demonstrated that these
myths reflected the arcane science of the ancients, much of which is compatible with modern
science. Ancient philosophers advanced the theory that mathematics can explain the
orderliness of the cosmos. Their approach which I outlined as the 4-3-2-1 scheme
shows that the myths of creation and of the last days, which are central to the salvation
religions, express scientific theories allegorically. They are not fantastic fairy stories
concerning the supernatural, but simply use analogy to provide a reasoned explanation of

337
Jacques Monod deemed the denial of teleology a profound epistemological contradiction in
science; see Monod, 1972: p. 31.
154


how the cosmos was formed and operates. Atheists and rationalists alike have lost touch
with the analogical mode of reasoning, while the many of the devout are convinced that
ideas expressed metaphorically are to be accepted literally (for more discussion of this, see
Appendix B). In this last chapter I examine how modern science has departed from its
Hellenistic, and esoteric, roots as the new paradigm, the Cartesian, took hold in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It goes on to explain how we might resolve the
difficulties that have emerged through a frame of reference that opens a common field for
debate.
The emergence of the salvation religions
Your religion is but one religion, and I am your only Lord. Therefore serve Me. Men have
divided themselves into schisms, but unto Us they shall all return. The Koran, The Prophets,
Al-Anabia, 21: 92-93.
338

The ancients did not imagine sacred knowledge to be divided into separate religions. To be
sure, there were competing schools of thought Platonic, Stoic, Cynic, Gnostic, Magian, and
so on but they shared a consistent metaphysical approach on how the cosmos was formed
and operated, including a pantheon of deities who were nevertheless deemed to arise from a
single originating source.
339
The currents of Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam
emerged from the same Greek-speaking milieu of the Mediterranean Basin and the Near
East.
340
This was a culture that shared a number of basic ideas and themes, often
expressed through allegory in the myths that still remain central to todays religions. They
reflect a set of ideas, a paradigm, that were not to be openly disseminated, but only to be
made available to the initiated as mysteries. These ideas deserve, nonetheless, to be
designated science. As historian of the occult Colin Wilson has stated: there is no secret
doctrine apart from science.
341
Moreover, there is a logic to this arcane science that not only

338
The Koran: p. 302.
339
In Greek a school of thought was a hairesis, from where we derive the word heresy; cited in Lane
Fox, 1988: p. 31.

340
The philosopher Hans Jonas credits Hellenistic civilization as the source of a dualist transcendent
religion of salvation: the incorporation of an oriental wave into Hellenistic culture was religious in
nature, offering salvation (or perfection) and a conception of God that was transcendent (or trans-
mundane) and maintaining a dualism of being God/the world, light/darkness, good/evil, life/death,
etc.; see Jonas, 1958: pp. 12-21 and 31-32.
341
Wilson, 1973: p. 425.
155


underpins religious thinking but, in my view, continues to makes sense today, whether we
are atheists, materialists or simply hedonists.
I have called the key assumptions underpinning the scientia arcana the Hermetic paradigm.
Two of its main formulators were the Persian sage Zoroaster, believed by the ancients to
have been both a religious reformer and an astrologer, and the Greek philosopher
Pythagoras, recognised as the synthesiser of Egyptian, Babylonian, Jewish and Persian
wisdom. Pythagoras was a renowned mathematician as well as the Greeks first philosopher
and influenced subsequent schools, such as the Platonists and the Stoics, who provided the
theoretical foundations for the salvation religions.
The Hermetic paradigm has, then, a multi-stranded history. The essential assumption was
As above, so below. The Stoic philosopher Posidonius of Apameia (c. 135-50 BCE) is
credited with propounding this theory of cosmic sympathy, according to which all things were
linked together by the logos. The Stoics were also supporters of the theory, propounded by
Heraclitus and the Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton (c. 470-385 BCE), whereby the cosmos
was periodically subject to destruction and regeneration (palingenesis): the Great Year
thesis. This theory had gained credibility as a result of astronomical observations and the
related diffusion of astrology around the Mesopotamian and Mediterranean regions. Interest
in astrology had, in turn, been boosted by the discovery, around 128 BCE, of the precession
of equinoxes by Hipparchus of Nicaea. This slow rotation of the starry heaven implied the
existence of a cosmic axis and was interpreted as providing proof of Stoic theories.
Moreover it is possible, although the evidence is circumstantial, that Hipparchus also
understood the mathematics of gravity and concluded that the Earth orbited the Sun. If so,
this might explain the rise in prominence of sun-worshipping cults such as that of Mithras,
whose central doctrines were kept secret and, as a result, remain obscure.
342

Astrology was therefore one of the pillars of the Hermetic paradigm. It was not an irrational
system, but flourished because its practitioners were able to make predictions that often
made sense. (We do not consider weather forecasting an irrational activity simply because
things turn out differently than expected on occasion.) The combination of astrology,
mathematics and physics into a coherent theory had an enormous impact upon the ancient
Hellenistic world and underpinned the evolution of the so-called mystery cults, including
Christianity. To be sure, this Pythagorean-Stoic cosmology became potentially obsolete
once it was accepted that it is the Earth that is rotating on its axis (and not the universe

342
See Ulansey, 1991: pp. 73-76; and Russo, 2004: pp. 292-296.
156


around its centre, the so-called hearth of the universe or watchtower of Zeus) that
explains the movement of stars and planets.
343
But hindsight should not deter us from
recognising the profound importance of the Hermetic paradigm for the ancients. The
paradigm proposed a model of cosmic symmetry, whereby there is a discrete set of
correspondences between everything. In turn it was grounded in analogical reasoning, which
supposes that one thing resembles another.
For the remainder of Antiquity, and well into the Middle Ages, the Hermetic paradigm
dominated intellectual and religious thought. It integrated salvationist doctrines within a
scientific framework, which only fell apart during the European religious wars of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. As a consequence of those wars, as discussed in chapter five,
Europeans opted for religious toleration and secularism. This reconciliation was based upon
the institutional separation of Church and State. It made religion a matter of private
conscience, separate from science, which, in turn, became a public project with state
sponsored universities, libraries and observatories. It permitted the Cartesian paradigm
which proposes a method of logical reasoning to supersede the Hermetic as the basis for
science. Even so, and notwithstanding all the disputation that characterised the transition to
the Modern Age, historians accept that there was a basic continuity within Western
civilization from its origins in ancient Greece. This continuity is evident from the esteem in
which Hellenist philosophy remains held and the emphasis upon rationality as a guiding
principle of scientific enquiry and even in politics. However, the compromise of toleration has
meant that the struggle over what is to be held as true continues to stalk Western
civilization. The Intelligent Design controversy is simply the latest manifestation of the failure
to reconcile religion with science and stems from the toleration of their separate
development. Above all, the salvation religions and the academy of science hold fast to their
distinct professional practices.
Pythagorean contamination of metaphysics
In contrast to the modern consensus that God is a supernatural being, ancient thinkers
imagined God as being immanent within the cosmos, which is the manifestation of His Mind.
God is not external to the cosmos but is both part of it and transcending it (being in and
out at the same time, as it were). They suggested that we may discover Gods purpose

343
According to Philolaus of Croton, Pythagoras pupil, the Earth revolved around the central fire, not
the Sun. In time, the Pythagoreans accepted a heliocentric model, first proposed by Aristarchus of
Samos. Ecphantos the Pythagorean apparently supported the heliocentric model; see Roob, 1996: p.
58.
157


through observing His natural laws. In doing so, we can perhaps infer that a transcendent
purpose is at work in the cosmos, which then provides possible answers to the why
questions. Therefore we can understand reality to the extent that we have knowledge, and
the science (and these words mean the same), of the material cosmos. The ideal (theorised
as the Mind of God) and the real (the cosmos) were seen as complementary features of an
ordered and harmonious system. Moreover, we must seek to understand the cosmos and its
purpose if we are to live virtuously, as God intends, in aligning our activities with universal
goals.
The ancients accepted that we need mathematics to deduce the laws of nature. But in
imagining Heaven as being both perfect and in control of destiny, some were led into
idealism and to a general distrust of the senses, as the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-
1970) suggested in his history of philosophy.
344
Russell contended that Plato had been
misled by Pythagorean mysticism into transcendental idealism. The Enlightenment
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) defined idealism as the assertion that we can
never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining. To
correct this philosophical scepticism he advanced the proposition that all knowledge of
things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only
in experience is there truth.
345
In other words, we must trust our senses and not rely solely
upon intellectual imagination, however logical. Idealism is thus criticised for supposing that
theories have their own prior existence and are not simply abstractions derived from sensory
data. For example, the Neo-Platonist Plotinus supposed that the Mind of God was a prior
emanation from God, and the cosmos was a subsequent emanation that imperfectly
reflected the Mind of God. Idealism confuses the concept (the noumena) for the thing itself
(the phenomena) and assumes the model put forwarded by scientists to be as real as that
which it describes and seeks to explain. Kant (and Russell) argued that while principles may
not be directly apparent to us, and have to be discovered by reasoning, they must be
nevertheless validated from experience (or experiment) if we are to enjoy certainty.

344
Russell, 1946: pp. 28, 45, and 221.
345
Kant, 1783: Section 13 and Appendix On what can be done to make metaphysics actual as a
science, p. 177.
158


The Mind of God
The concept of the Mind of God relates to the rationality of the cosmos and to what
God wished to create. Reality is a reflection of His plan. In the Hermetic paradigm,
the highest heaven, the empyrean plane, frames the cosmos. It is equivalent to the
Mind of God, assuming, of course, that God is to be thought of as analogous to a
person. Even so, the Mind of God is not like our human minds, in which thoughts
appear, decisions are made, memories stored and recalled, and arguments
rehearsed. Our minds operate within time, as sequences of feelings and ideas, but
God exists outside of time. So His thinking is forever valid.
One of the prime founders of modern philosophy, G W F Hegel (1770-1831), called
the Mind of God the Absolute Spirit or Mind (the word Geist has both meanings in
German), the principle by which the world is (in)formed. God, Hegel argued, does not
direct nature from the outside, like a puppeteer moving things around, because His
Spirit/Mind is intrinsic to the universe; it is latent in nature.
346
Cosmologist Stephen
Hawking has reminded us that this is equivalent to the Laws of Physics, which are
assumed to exist for eternity.
347
If we substituted the phrase Mind of God with the
words model, physical laws or mathematics, and of experiment in place of
experience, whatever the form the sensation, we might conclude that both the
ancient (idealist) and the modern (realist) approaches are not so different.

346
See Pinkard, 2000: p. 580. Hegel proposed in his lectures on the philosophy of religion in Berlin in
the late 1820s that the Absolute Spirit became manifested in the minds of an inspired human
community, who through reflection on their relation to nature, each other, and to the divine principle
itself became aware of a unity in the cosmos. As a Christian himself, Hegel considered the ancient
Hebrews to have been the first such community to recognise a spiritual deity, although the ancient
Persians and Egyptians had already moved beyond thinking of the gods as the embodiments of
natural forces. Christianity was, however, in his opinion the first and only non-exclusive religion of
humanity with a concept of God that was not culturally bound to a particular nation (Pinkard, 2000: pp.
582-589). For Hegel, Islam seems to have been dismissed, mistakenly, as an oriental religion
associated with the Arab nation.
347
If you like, you can call the laws of science God; cited by Manjit Kumar, Theories of Everything,
The Independent, 10 September 2010: p. 23. Hawking is not the first to have made this point. Einstein
referred to God to indicate the rational connections, the laws governing the behaviour of the
universe: both the fact that such laws seem to exist, and that they are, at least to some degree,
comprehensible by us; cited by Bernstein, 1973: p. 20.
159


The Mind of God metaphor has a Pythagorean parallel. Pythagoras spoke of an
eternal and everlasting being [that] he called Mnemosyne, the mother of the
Muses.
348
She was the personification of memory, a Titan, an elder god, venerated in
the Orphic cult as the deity who allowed its initiates to recall their past lives and
therefore advance through the process of reincarnation.
We may notice here a link with the Mind of God, since the Muses, such as Urania,
who inspires astronomy, are the means by which we discover the laws of Nature.
Before the word philosophy was coined, all teaching and speeches were deemed
performances and termed mousike, meaning the art of the Muses (and from which
we derive our word music). So Mnemosyne is the wellspring of inspiration and the
source of knowledge and science. All true ideas derive from Her, just as models of
the cosmos derive from our experience of reality. Nor should it surprise us that
Mnemosyne has a female aspect, as in Latin the Mind of God, mens divina, is also of
the feminine case.
Thus when scientists, Biblical literalists or Pythagoreans talk respectively of the
physical laws, of creation, and of cosmos, or of Mnemosyne or the Mind of God,
they are referring to equivalent concepts. They are using different modes of
reasoning to approach the same problem from alternative angles. We should be wary
of the Enlightenment discourse that found ancient wisdom contaminated, as Russell
would have us imagine, by Pythagorean ideas, to the detriment of logic.

Part of our contemporary confusion arises from our failure to appreciate the likelihood that
myth was deployed as a rhetorical device to present a credible case to a largely illiterate
population. This is clearly stated by the medieval Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averros).
In discussing the doctrine of the judgement of souls and their resurrection in the afterlife, he
explained that the images of punishment and rewards contained in the Koran were
representations provided to make them more readily intelligible to the masses who unlike
the philosophers cannot comprehend abstract, spiritual language.
349
The mythic form is a
vehicle for expressing ideas and, as we have seen, was used extensively by ancient and
medieval philosophers to illustrate the truths of the scientia arcana. That we no longer find
mythos convincing is not surprising but this is a problem of perspective.

348
Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae, 31; quoted in Riedweg, 2005: p. 30.
349
Fakhry, 2009: p. 121.
160


It is because we have lost sight of the Hermetic paradigm and abandoned the practice of
analogical reasoning that the early history of Western civilization has become so remote.
Unfamiliarity means that we no longer interpret myths in the way their authors probably
intended.
350
The result is that a segment of the population subscribes to a literal
interpretation, while another rejects myths as complete fiction, being hardly worth serious
consideration. Uncovering the original meaning allows us, in so far as we can tell, to recover
the reasoning upon which a myth is based. Thus, when we examine the founding myths of
the main salvation religions we find a coherent system of knowledge, albeit expressed
through analogy for the most part. To understand what the ancients believed we must make
sense of the idiom they used. Once we decode myths we discover that there is an arcane
science contained within them, demonstrating that the ancients had their feet as firmly
rooted in reality as we do.
Myths are, of course, a literary genre that tell a story, often as a cautionary tale. Even if the
setting of the myth is the distant past or the far future there is a moral for the present. We
can recognise this literary form in the modern genre of utopian fantasies, as the cultural
theorist Raymond Williams (1921-1988) pointed out. He argued that tales about a utopia, or
its opposite, a dystopia, were an extrapolation of our own conditions and forms of political
and social culture. They represented a desire displaced by alienation to live otherwise.
Mid-twentieth century dystopian novels, like Aldous Huxleys vision of a Brave New World
(1932), were myths written under the emblem of a story of the future and presenting a
current form of feeling, related primarily to contemporary society.
351
They are warnings
about our present, attempting to compensate for our collective frustration at living in
societies that seem unable to overcome their internal contradictions and injustices. Ancient
cultures similarly expressed their awareness and reaction to the contradictions and problems
of their societies, and about the meaning and purpose of existence, through myths involving
gods and demons. We have novels, science fiction, and even the study of history for, in
Benedetto Croces dictum, all history is contemporary history while the ancients
composed myths.
352

350
We can only speculate as to an ancient audiences reaction to a recital of a myth. David Sedley
suggests that in some instances the narrative of Platos Timaeus-Critias, which recounts the creation
of the world, was intended to be witty and light-hearted; see Sedley, 2007: p. 129.
351
Raymond Williams on Utopia and Science Fiction in Williams, 2005: p. 209; and Science Fiction
Studies, 46, 15 part 3, 1988, but first published in 1956; to be found on
www.depauw.edu/sfs/documents/williams.htm.
352
Croce, 1921: p. 12; first published in 1920 as Teoria e storia della storiografia, Bari: Laterza e Figli.
161


Accepting that certain sacred texts relate myths need not compromise the faith of believers.
Indeed, it was this very recognition that stimulated the author C S Lewis, who wrote the
Chronicles of Narnia, to return to Christianity. Discussing religion with his fellow professor of
literature, J R R Tolkien, in 1931, Lewis dismissed the Bible as myth. But, countered Tolkien,
suppose the myths are true? The men shared a fascination for mythology, and, of course,
went on to be myth-makers themselves. So, for them, a myth was a literary form. That said,
Tolkien argued, no myth was a lie and the myth of the Christ, central to Christianity,
provided a route to follow.
353
These words struck Lewis so forcefully that within a year he
was penning the first of several overtly religious novels. Myths presented a narrative that, by
analogy, offered an explanation. They demanded both an imaginative and reasoned
response, Lewis concluded. Only in Modern times, he thought, had myths and reason
separated, resulting in a crisis in knowledge.
354
As a result, in his Narnia novels for
children, Lewis consciously used motifs from ancient Greek myths to illustrate how history
and morality shaped his imaginary universe, though without the same proliferation of detail
delineated in Tolkiens Middle Earth.
Revisiting the Biblical myths
Moreover, ancient myths may have much to tell us. The tale of Eves transgression related in
Genesis reflects the concerns of an all-male priesthood striving to maintain its purity. It is, of
course, also partly about the foolishness of women, a motif found in many cultures. But the
re-telling in Genesis represents Eve in a more disturbing light. She is beguiled by Satan
through the serpents cunning and goes on to seduce her husband into disobedience. Her
sin becomes the source of pollution, as women were cursed from that time on with
menstruation and painful birthing. What may once have been a folk tale about the
unforeseen consequences of a misunderstood message conveyed by birds and animals
about the gods secrets of immortality and knowledge was turned by the Torahs redactors
into something more alarming, even devilish. Nevertheless, Eves gain lay in the faculty of
reason, which she seized of her own account. The myth tells us that our knowledge of good
and evil, to be able to reflect on events and foresee the consequences, was not God-given
humans did it by themselves.

353
See White, 2005: p. 146. A letter written by Tolkien to his publisher states: I believe that legends
and myths are largely made of truth [and] can yet be accepted by a mind that believes in the
Blessed Trinity, that is, by Christians; in Tolkien, 1999: pp. xiv-xv.
354
Duriez, 2005; pp. 56-58.
162


Casting a modern eye on the myth of the Fall the philosopher Leszek Koakowski suggests
that conceptualisation and experience move in opposite directions on the path of
knowledge. The God of Genesis saw that His creation was good, yet the creatures lacked
this knowledge. Our primogenitors had to do evil before they knew what good and evil was;
their sin led them to knowledge and made them human. The novelist Mikhail Bulgakov
(1891-1940), offered the same opinion in the words of his fictional demon Woland: where
would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without
shadow?
355
This is to give the myth a somewhat Luciferian slant, however. It is the
exceptional human ability to foresee consequences that permits our species to distinguish
good from evil, not our physical reaction to painful or pleasurable experiences, which we
share with other animals. Homo sapiens can reason the way ahead and so choose, by act or
omission, an outcome that is good, rather than one that involves harm. We have unique
tendencies to rationality and religiosity as integral features of our intelligence (or at least to
our ethics, which, Koakowski insists, are based upon norms of behaviour whereby some
things are permitted and others prohibited).
356
The religiously inclined would add that this
human capacity to recognise the good path was also the moment when our distant
ancestors became aware of a divine purpose at work in the world. The myth of Adam and
Eves disobedience relates the story of how we parted company from the rest of the animal
kingdom, and how our spiritual (or intellectual) nature was formed. Human reasoning did not
evolve naturally, according to this story; it was a faculty our ancestors discovered for
themselves. To this day, we continue to make discoveries through the application of
reasoning.
Koakowski also reasserted a link between sin and knowledge that was a central theme in
Gnostic theories. I use the description Gnostic with a degree of trepidation since Gnosticism
has been, correctly, associated with heretical views, even though there are clear parallels
with orthodox Christianity (as well as within Judaism and Islam). (Gnostic theories are
analysed more fully in Appendix C.) With this caution in mind, we can nonetheless gain a
valuable insight into the salvation religions from the Gnostic perspective. On the face of it,
the salvation religions offer the devout the possibility of eternal life. But this is not the end of
the matter. As the myth of the journey of the soul demonstrates, the way to Heaven, and to

355
Bulgakov, The Master and Margharita, (originally completed 1940 and published posthumously in
1966): p. 360. In Richard Peyear and Larissa Volokhonskys translation the question reads: What
would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared
from it?
356
See Koakowski, 1982: pp. 196-199.
163


rejoin the Pleroma of souls and angels that comprise Gods fullness, involves a quest. Each
stage of the journey symbolises a test of character. To progress further the individual must
overcome his or her innate temptation to sin: to indulge in gluttony, lust, wrath, jealousy and
so on. These stages are symbolised by the planets, whereby Mars represents wrath, for
instance. The path to Heaven involves surmounting each planetary sphere to advance ever
higher. This symbolism was common to several mystery religions. In the cult of Mithras the
initiate had to pass through seven gates arranged on ascending steps, representing the
planets. Those of Isis involved dressing and undressing seven (or twelve) times in different
costumes or animal disguises.
357
Their common terminology of rebirth shows how similar
these cults were to the Christian mysteries, which the Church calls sacraments, a word
taken from the Latin form of the Greek mysterion. So the myth about the souls path to
Heaven reflects the righteous way to lead ones life and provides an explicit connection with
a central belief of the Axial Age, that there exists only one route, the straight and narrow
path, to self-knowledge and wisdom.
The myth of the journey of the soul can be found in Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy as
well as in the Bible. The soul is like a unique identification code, the specification for every
thing that exists, past, present and future. It can therefore be said to be a fragment of the
Mind of God. During its fusion with matter, the code may become corrupted and so, when it
comes to the next phase of its cycle of incorporation, a persons next life could be as a baser
creature. At the same time, the rational soul, the mind, in humans, gives its bearers a degree
of autonomy. By living a good life one may perfect the soul, and restore the code as it
were. Once one acts as God intended, the soul is ready to re-merge into the Mind of God,
and return to its original state within the Pleroma.

357
Quoted in Jonas, 1958: p. 166.
164


The Pleroma
The Pleroma refers to the fullness of divine powers, and was thought to be
composed of emanations from the Mind of God.
Although J R R Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), was a
convinced Catholic, the mythology he developed is of great interest as he sought to
bring together features from many apparently different cultures. In his version of the
creation story, Tolkien blended Christian, Pythagorean, Neo-Platonist and
Zoroastrian elements into a myth he ascribed to the Elves of the First Age (we live in
the Third Age). The Elves were the Firstborn race to inhabit the Earth, whereas Men
were the Followers. In Tolkiens imagination the Elves myth of creation was recorded
in a text he called the Ainulindal, the Music of the Holy Ones.
358
According to this
supposed Elvish myth, Ilvatar (God) made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were
the offspring of His thought. Before aught else was made He spoke to them,
propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before Him and He was glad.
As in any choir or orchestra, this choir of angels sang only their own parts and were
unable to listen to the whole concert, which only their composer and conductor could
envisage. Ilvatar set them to sing a great work by which order was established in
the Void and Arda (the World) came into being.
But one of the Ainur, Melkor (Lucifer), sang a discordant tune and sought to make the
Earth his own little kingdom. A contest of musical themes shook the Timeless Halls
(Eternity) until Ilvatar spoke: Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is
Melkor; but he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilvatar, those things that ye
have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou,
Melkor, shall see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in
Me, nor can anyone alter the music in My despite. For he that attempteth this shall
prove but Mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself
hath not imagined. From this point onward, Arda becomes the location of the cosmic
battle between Ilvatar and Melkor, of which one episode is recounted in the The
Lord of the Rings, and, of course, continues until this day.

358
Tolkien, 1999: pp. 15-20. In his 1951 letter to his publisher, re-printed in The Silmarillion, Tolkien
stated that his myths were new and not directly derived from other myths and legends, but they
must invariably contain a large measure of ancient wide-spread motifs or elements (p. xv).
165


We see in this story an attempt by Tolkien to integrate the emanation theory of the
Neo-Platonist philosophers with the Zoroastrian story of how the Amesha Spenta
created the world and the Christian image of a choir of angels singing before God
through all Eternity. Everything that is real emerges from the Pleroma, which is the
whole set of Gods thoughts taking angelic form. Thus it came to pass that of the
Ainur some abode still with Ilvatar beyond the confines of the World; but others, and
among them many of the greatest and most fair, took leave of Ilvatar and
descended into it [and they are named] the Powers of the World, whom pagans
worshipped as gods but were denounced as demons by the followers of the salvation
religions. We may also note Tolkiens idea that the laws of nature operate like
musical forms, which, as Pythagoras realised, were also mathematical. Tolkiens
myth suggests that the cosmos is like a musical work, of variations on a theme
supplied by God. Satans song may be contrarian but it is nonetheless a response to
Gods initial tune. There is order, a set of patterns that recur with variation; but all
things are not pre-determined.

For the ancients, the soul was the essential form that permitted material things to perform
their allotted functions on earth. The spirit was an ephemeral property of matter, the energy,
which powered the movement of things and organisms. It left a living creature at the moment
of death, at the last breath. The forming property of matter was the encoded information that
determined a beings destiny; the soul in other words, from which derived a beings
entelechy. Being both immaterial, the soul and the spirit could be confused, and the same
word was used to describe the informational content, the unique identification code, and the
energy of living matter. (It should be recalled that seas, streams, mountains, and the air all
moved as a result of possessing their own souls, the nymphs and similar beings of myth.
They are the souls of what we would call inorganic matter. Plato asserted that the Creator
gave the whole world a soul.) In any case it is clear from numerous sources that the soul/
mind and the spirit/energy were distinct features.
Salvation and enlightenment
The salvation religions and ancient philosophy both offer deliverance through education, by
revealing a mystery to help you on your way in life and in any after-life. It is not the case
that ignorance as such breeds sinfulness, especially since, as thinking creatures, we already
possess the knowledge of good and evil. Rather, that without self-control and self-knowledge
you cannot master the innate drives, considered as our animal aspect, and escape from the
166


snares that often trap people into a debased way of life. It is what philosopher Alain Badiou
has termed animality, an attachment to self and identity.
359
In the Gnostic scheme you must
first reach the psychic stage so that you recognise this animal aspect within yourself and
learn to temper your instincts. On one level this involves recognising the dangers from
selfishness, anger and so on, but also in overcoming any addiction to excessive
consumption.
360
The next, pneumatic stage, requires you to overcome a mis-identification of
yourself termed the counterfeit spirit and discover your true vocation, the real you, and
the way to achievement and contentment. This route to knowledge and self-improvement
(known as perfection), we are told, leads on to finding God within yourself. It mirrors the aim
of education which is to enable people to achieve their full potential. Salvation is, therefore,
liberation from the demonic powers (the fallen angels or archons) that rule the material
world. It allows you to find your way into, and back to, the light and, eventually, the Pleroma.
In the Hermetic paradigm the stages of perfection allow us to discover what we really are
and what we should accomplish with our lives.
Education was the key to enlightenment and living an enriched life within Hellenistic
civilization. The Sophist Isocrates stated that what made a Hellene was not his race but
education.
361
The lowest, hylic, level is characterised by bewilderment, wherein the individual
is unable to make sense of what is going on around him or her and of how to deal with the
inner tensions generated by the contradictions within society. Yet on reaching the psychic
level, the student remains in confusion because, while realising that there is a path to follow,
he or she becomes frustrated, and maybe angry, at being unable to resolve the
contradictions all at once. For the pneumatic person the last passion to be overcome is fear,
which paralyses the individuals progress in achieving full wisdom. It is also the last obstacle

359
Quoted in Evelyne Pieiller, 2011, Communism revisited: Philosophy is back in the business of
living, Le Monde diplomatique, English Edition, May, 1105: p. 15.
360
According to sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, it is difficult to escape the
treadmill of work (compulsory in a class society) and consumption (driven by our animal instincts) to
make better use of the possibilities for enriching our lives; see Towards a New Manifesto?, New Left
Review, Series 2, 65, September/October 2010: pp. 34-40. Being human entails labour to sustain a
society, but where our work is expropriated by the powerful we tend to regard free time as a moment
to feed our basic desires for food, warmth, sex and sleep. While being clearly necessary, these often
become our sole sources of satisfaction, to the detriment of living a culturally developed and happier
social life. Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, made a similar point in 2012 when
criticising the idea that economic growth was good: [it] sets up the vicious cycle in which it is
necessary all the time to create new demand for goods and thus creates personal anxiety and
rivalry; quoted in The Observer, 24 June 2012.
361
Cited by Benn, 1912: p. 48.
167


to leading a virtuous life in the midst of the bad behaviour and immorality of those around us.
Emotions are part of what we are. Anger, attraction, fear and so on are features that we
share with other animals and while they may be base they are nevertheless necessary if we
are to survive in the world. But the higher mental functions allow us, through reasoning, to
foresee the consequences of our actions and to regulate our passions, and these are skills
that must be learnt. To progress one needs guidance to develop the psychological qualities
that will enable one to transform paralysis into action: to develop fortitude from awe, the
single mindedness to channel anger, and the determination to overcome trepidation. To
realise our latent capabilities, our potential, aptitudes must be recognised and the student
encouraged in developing them, step by step. The process of personal development is not a
linear progression but dynamic and open-ended: the pathways to fulfilment will be distinctive
and not everyone turns out identical, even if we share most of the same capabilities.
In the Christian story, after crucifixion, Jesus descended into the underworld to free trapped
souls (1 Peter, 3: 18-20). This myth is known as the Harrowing of Hell and it describes how
the divine light of reason (the logos, or the Christ) pierced the darkness to show the souls
their way up to Heaven. Until this event, Christians aver, all souls were imprisoned in Hades,
Sheol in Hebrew, the abode of the dead. Some pre-Christian theories, such as Platonism or
Pythagoreanism, imagined souls to be trapped in an endless cycle of transmigration
between bodies (including reincarnation as animals). Freeing souls from the cycle of
reincarnation, or from Hades, is, of course, yet another metaphor for enlightenment, in the
sense that the mind is a prisoner of material desires and emotions, or even, that the mind
can never escape its grounding in sensory experience.
The salvation religions can therefore be seen as responses to a wider metaphysical, and
idealist, framework which starts from the premise that our perception is subject to inevitable
distortion so that we never see reality as God intended it to be. Hans Jonas, a philosopher
deeply interested in Gnosticism and the ethical application of science and technology,
pointed out that ignorance (agnosis) is not the mere absence of information, but the
obscured mode of its opposite, knowledge, [and] represents the loss or perversion of it.
In the analogy used by Gnostics, what we perceive around us is not simply a partial
illumination of reality but a series of reflections of reality, as an image (eidolon).
362
We are
like people imprisoned in a cave in Platos famous metaphor whose only experience of
the world outside is gleaned from watching the shadows cast upon the caves walls and
never from direct observation. On the face of it there is no way for us to escape from the

362
See Jonas, 1958: pp. 163 and 175.
168


cave into the full light of day and to see for ourselves what is going on. But the ancients had
a solution to the problem. For sure, we cannot rely on our sensory perception alone to
understand the world (and the cosmos). We must use reason to analyse the principles that
form reality, which Plato termed ideas and his pupil, Aristotle, called forms. And although
Platos theories are often classed as idealist, because they seem to imply that reality is
formed according to principles or archetypes that are not apparent to us directly, in fact he
advocated a dialectic process of reasoning, whereby hypotheses are subjected to critique
and the test of evidence.
The primacy of the Church
Even though Christianity shared many features with other mystery cults, it forged a trajectory
of its own in the ancient world. The apostles founded a community quite unlike that of a
closed mystic fraternity, such as the Mithras cult, and more welcoming to people from
different cultures than was Judaism. They parted company, decisively, from the syncretic
Gnostic schools of thought, although the language used, was identical. The turning point
seems to have been the Jerusalem Council of 49 CE when Paul of Tarsus, supported by
Simon Peter, persuaded the other disciples to spread the Gospel of Jesus beyond the
Jewish community.
363
Thus was founded the Catholic, meaning universal, church, an
institutional innovation of profound significance for world history. Whether its establishment
was Jesus intention may be doubted but it was nonetheless consistent with his aims (in so
far as we can tell from the Gospels).
Jesus of Nazareth considered himself to be a teacher (a rabbi) and a shepherd to those
tribes of Israel which had lost their way. A major theme of Jesus ministry was his
condemnation of hypocrisy and the requirement to discard day-to-day concerns that held
people back from following the laws of Moses conscientiously; hence his prescription to live
like the lilies of the fields, to forsake ones kin, and to do to your neighbour as you would be
done by. (The Koran states similarly: On the Day of Resurrection neither your kinfolk nor
your children shall avail you.)
364
Jesus preached against the greedy rich, the merciless
judges and the sanctimonious priests. Jesus did not set out to overthrow the judges and
rulers or to replace the Temple priesthood. He wanted people to change their attitude

363
Simon Peter is quoted as saying that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who
fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him (The Acts of the Apostles, 10: 34-35).
364
The Koran: She who is tested, Al-Mumtahana, 60: 3: p. 267.
169


towards justice, charity and caring for others. As with other teachers, he advocated a
straight path, that is, a righteous way of life.
365

The institutional form for continuing Jesus work evolved from the emerging role of the
synagogue in Jewish life and also from the Hellenist model of civic pride. Synagogues
provided the opportunity for Jews to study and pray together and seem to have emerged in
Babylonia, where there were several esteemed rabbinical schools. The synagogue
movement took off as Judaism spread around the Near East in the third century BCE.
366
The
word synagogue is from the Greek for a place of assembly and in some regions Jews may
have used the Greek text of what became known as the Old Testament, the Septuagint,
rather than the Hebrew version.
367
Originally the only place where a Jew should render a
sacrifice was at the Jerusalem Temple, whereas pagan temples, where animal sacrifices or
food offerings could be made, existed everywhere. Every ancient city had its own local deity,
its festivals and sponsored public works and charitable organisations. Historian Robin Lane
Fox has described how these traditions were adopted by the Church and transformed into
celebrations of a local saint.
368
The church basilica or cathedral became the largest building
in town rivalling the pagan temples, but, like a synagogue, it was a place for teaching and
worship rather than for sacrificial offerings. Furthermore the Church was far more than a
means to signal civic purpose. It was primarily an institution for preaching, education,
inspiration and charity, willing to challenge state and clan power. In its mission to guide
peoples behaviour, the Church took over the key rites of passage that marked a persons
life span: birth, adolescence, marriage, parenthood and death. The Church became a
regulator of civil society, absorbing the roles previously exercised by the familys patriarch,
clan elders and the temple priests, who in the imperial system buttressed the rulers
authority. Lay associations of artisans and merchants sought protection under its wing. Its
catholic aspiration made the Church into a countervailing power, rivalling the state for
influence and ideological authority. This new role is symbolised by the bishops crosier, the

365
See 2 Peter, 2: 12-15: these people [who follow demons and are false prophets] are like irrational
animals, mere creatures of instinct; ... they have left the straight road and have gone astray; and
Psalm 16: 11: You show me [Lord] the path of life.
366
See Sand, 2009: pp. 144-145 and 173.
367
The Septuagint is a translation of the Torah into Greek, supposedly undertaken in Alexandria by 72
scholars appointed by Ptolemy II (283-246 BCE). Shlomo Sand proposed that the purpose of this
translation was to facilitate Jewish proselytising. It seems that Ptolemy, who was the Greek ruler of
Egypt, employed a Jewish bodyguard; see Sand, 2009: pp. 162-163.
368
Lane Fox, 1988: chapter 13.
170


shepherds crook that denotes his pastoral responsibility. Previously the staff of a high priest
represented his authority much as the mace denoted a kings legitimate power of coercion
over his subjects. The high priest used his stave to clear a path before him to avoid being
defiled by the milling commoners around. It set the priest apart from the people, whereas in
the case of a Christian bishop his crosier denotes him as the shepherd of his flock, with, to
be sure, authority, but also guardianship.
The Churchs reach and influence encouraged the state to seek to bring it under its control,
so that the ruler came to decide upon the appointment of bishops and oversaw its
propaganda. But the Churchs own rationale put it on a collision course with secular authority
since its prerogative has lain in its ultimate say over the compatibility of civil and family law
with Gods Law. The Church sought to bring justice into the traditional codes exercised by
clan elders and the laws of kings, princes and burghers. In this respect the Church can be
viewed as a progressive influence, seeking to ensure that justice was blind and treated all
petitioners fairly, regardless of status, birthright or wealth. The ancient Greek for the Church,
ekklesia, means an assembly, or gathering, of the community. The Muslim ummah, or
community, (in Hebrew, umah) is a parallel.
369
In fact both Christianity and Islam have
sought to create a unified community out of clans, tribes and nations, a fulfilment of their
origin in the civilization that has been developing out of Greek and Semitic roots for the last
three millennia, as Koakowski has explained.
370
This has given the West a different
character to the civilizations of India or China. (Western civilization also owes much to the
Arab world, as is explained in Appendix D.)
This, then, was the distinctive legacy of Jesus of Nazareth, a revolutionary who nonetheless
traced his ancestry on his fathers side to king David and on his mothers to Moses brother

369
MacCulloch, 2009: p. 26; Sand, 2009: p. 24.
370
Koakowski, 1982: pp. 215-227.
171


Aaron the lineage of the Levite priesthood.
371
The Church aimed to bring about the rule of
God in a sinful world, which, at some future point, would end in fiery catastrophe a belief
common in the Hellenistic and Persian worlds. Jesus promoted social enlightenment as a
means to defeat demonic rule, and not just as the path to individual salvation. This was a
new factor in history. Moreover the two aspects are complementary, especially when we
recall Jesus critique of hypocrisy. For without internal self-knowledge one cannot act with
fairness and charity. Although previous prophets and philosophers had argued for social
justice, it remains the case that Jesus followers promoted a novel system to institutionalise
his teaching to a society riven by oppression and deep inequality. Jesus sought through
teaching, inspiration and pastoral care to illuminate the path to virtue, wisdom and justice.
Christians, as his followers came to be known, founded the Church as the institution to carry
forward the mission, not as a matter of private conscience but in the public arena. The
Church then became intertwined with the Roman Empire, gaining a role as the states
favoured instrument of ideological control. Much of the priesthood was captured by the
Byzantine Empire, succumbing to Melchite, or pro-imperial, tendencies. The Muslim
Caliphate, when it became corrupted by power, is the ummahs Melchite equivalent within
Islam. (More information can be found in Appendix E.)
The Deist compromise
Having traced the Churchs origins we turn to its period of decline from the eighteenth
century onward, necessarily omitting consideration of its complicity in the crusades or
achievements as an educator during the Middle Ages. The Churchs power to try heretics
and witches had left many scientists and philosophers fearful, as the trial of Galileo in 1633
demonstrated. Mindful of the Churchs sanctions, Descartes was careful to submit his
writings to Romes censorship, and therefore never advocated openly an explanation on why
the Earth might circle the sun, although he most likely had concluded this to be the case.
Luckily for Newton, by the time he was undertaking his researches, Cromwells government

371
According to one of the Dead Sea scrolls, the Community Rule, the Messiah, who walks in the
way of perfection, will be a prophet of Aaron and Israel, that is, a descendent from the line of Aaron
and from the royal line of David and Solomon; see Baigent and Leigh, 2001: pp. 212-213; and
Vermes, 2004: p.110. Josephs ancestry is traced in Matthew, 1: 6-16, and Luke, 3: 23-31 and Marys
kin are described in Luke, 1: 5 and 36; see also Bertram, 2006: pp. 25, 34 and 82. The genealogies
for Joseph in Matthew and Luke are quite different, but agree at three points: 1) that Joseph was a
descendent of the Kings David and Solomon; 2) that one of his ancestors was Zerubbabel, son of
Salathiel, who is undoubtedly the Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, mentioned in Ezra, 3: 2, and who led a
group of Israelites back from exile in Babylon; and 3) Josephs grandfather was called Matthan or
Matthat. According to James of Ephesus (c. 180), Marys family were linked to the Temple priesthood;
see Phillips, 2001: p. 23; and Ehrman, 2012: p. 234.
172


had instituted a modest measure of religious toleration. As long as he could avoid the
accusation of witchcraft, which his experiments in chemistry could have attracted, Newton
was fairly safe to propose theories that lacked any scriptural foundation or basis in ancient
philosophy. As already noted, this would have caused Newton a degree of personal anguish,
since he realised that his efforts were taking science to new heights, unimagined by the
ancients. The notion that human history entailed progress was now in circulation.
So, although Newton did not himself subscribe to the analogy that God was a clock-maker
who set the cosmos on its regular path until the end of time, the image became central to the
Deist compromise between science and religion. It was in fact Leibnitz who charged Newton
and his followers with holding the watchmaker analogy.
372
Newton, nonetheless, considered
the solar system to be the work of an intelligent agent [and] not blind or fortuitous, but
very well skilled in Mechanics and Geometry.
373
God was accepted as the prime mover but
once He had set the wheels in motion, Nature operated according to her natural laws. Gods
interventions were no longer anticipated by the devout, at least until the last days. This
picture was more credible in Newtons day, when the Biblical chronology remained pretty
much intact, even if there was now general acceptance that the Earth rotated the Sun and
the stars were just very distant suns. Indeed Newton undertook extensive research into
ancient and medieval chronology in order to pinpoint the end of time itself, as we saw in
chapter five.
The liberal Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was an outcome of the religious
toleration and the Deist compromise. The movement sought to spread education and
science. Its principles also inspired a theory of progress pointing to the ultimate perfectibility
of humanity and the gradual evolution of a wider conception of personality and
individuality, according to historian David Ogg (1887-1965). In particular it challenged the
Churchs control of education, and, based on a suggestion derived from Newton, proposed
that morality could be reduced to simple natural laws valid for every person without regard to
status.
374
For example, the basic rule of morality according to Immanuel Kant was Always

372
According to Paul Davies, it was Robert Boyle who introduced the clockwork analogy; see Davies,
1993: p. 201.
373
Letter to Richard Bentley of 10 December 1692; cited in Koestler, 1964: pp. 536-537. The letter
may be read in full on <http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00254>.
374
Ogg, 1965: pp. 308 and 324. See also Todorov, 2009: p. 6, who states: religion was withdrawn
from the realm of the state but not from the lives of individuals. The majority of Enlightenment thinkers
identified not so much with atheism as with natural religion or deism.
173


act in such a way that you would be willing for it to become a general law that everyone else
should do the same in the same situation, which he termed the categorical imperative.
375

Reason was to replace dogma. But while Kants maxim may be eminently reasonable, it
remains just a proposition unless backed up by the dictates of conscience or, if you just do
not care about crossing moral boundaries, by the force of law (and the likelihood of being
shamed and punished).
Moreover, the conflict between church law and secular law intensified with the rise of
capitalism, which brought the profit motive to the fore and encouraged the cult of efficiency.
Koakowski has suggested that the habit of thinking in probabilistic terms, of measuring the
value of knowledge in terms of its testable usefulness, [and] of discarding beliefs having no
potential for increasing the human drive to dominate the earth was unthinkable without the
widespread use of money [in] compelling human minds to think in terms of efficiency.
376

The rise of capitalism put the Church on the defensive. The Enlightenment privatised
morality and belief, albeit after a period of persecution by the Church, itself divided and its
authority weakened by the Protestant Reformation. The legalisation of public toleration
permitted people to think as they pleased, within certain limits to be sure, and provided the
space for entrepreneurs to flourish, unmolested by ancient restrictions on predatory trading
and usury.
As a result, modern society in the West became comfortable with the idea that scientific and
religious knowledge may diverge and imply quite different truths. It is as if from this point
onwards Western civilization suffered from a sort of schizophrenia as to what constituted
acceptable belief. Religious belief became a private concern. Descartes had never sought to
challenge religious doctrine in formulating his methodology, simply to reserve an intellectual
space for the rigorous analysis of reality, but it nonetheless led to the separation of Church
and State, that is, to secularism and to Deism. In turn it was the Deist compromise that
opened up the discourse around the supernatural and created a category of believers. In
its original meaning, God is a supernatural being because He is superior to nature. But the
supernatural came to describe phenomena that were simply extraordinary and inexplicable.

375
Kant, 1788, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason): Chapter 1, Section 7, p.
28; see also Todorov, 2009: p. 115 for a discussion on the relevance of Kants criterion for justice in
Enlightenment thinking. The categorical imperative corresponds to the more ancient and universal
maxim do unto others as you would be done by. It provides a rationale for judging between what is
just and what is unjust: an action is good only if it corresponds to a maxim that can be applied
universally and thus equitably.
376
Koakowski, 1982: p. 225.
174


This allowed Western societies to prioritise knowledge that was efficient and useful (the
philosophy of utilitarianism), and to segregate those elements of ancient knowledge, which
contradicted the open pursuit of profit and technological advance, to the sphere of private
contemplation.
Emerging originally from within Rosicrucian circles as a means to establish the equivalence
of scriptural and scientific truths, the Cartesian paradigm became more than a method for
the pursuit of valid knowledge. It reflected the liberal and progressive philosophies
associated with a commercial economy and to the rise an aggressive and expansionary
capitalism. For example, Evelyn Baring, Britains nineteenth century consul-general of Egypt,
who was ennobled as Lord Cromer in 1892, averred that in comparison to the Oriental mind
the European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he
is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature sceptical and
requires proof before he can accept the truth of any proposition; his trained intelligence
works like a piece of mechanism. While conceding that the ancient Arabs had acquired a
higher degree of science in the medieval past their descendants are singularly deficient in
the logical faculty.
377
Lord Cromers attitude of superiority was typical of the age of
European imperial expansion and was founded on the successes Europeans had achieved
in scientific discovery, in the mastery of technology and in the conquest of Asia, Africa and
the Americas. To some extent these views were shared even by the opponents of liberal
ideas, the atheist revolutionaries of the French and Russian revolutions. Basing themselves
on Pythagorean doctrines, they believed the truth could only be discovered in nature,
through science, thus tempering the application of Cartesian-inspired efficiency but not
abandoning it altogether.
378

377
Lord Cromer, 1908, Modern Egypt, London: Macmillan; cited in Said, 2003: p. 38.
378
See Billington, 1980, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the revolutionary faith. Two of the most
influential figures, Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), a German-based illuminatus, and Sylvain Marchal
(1750-1803), who seems to have been a director of the French underground Social Circle and the
Society of Equals, wrote books on Pythagoras, in 1789 and 1804 respectively that located their
revolutionary aims within Pythagorean principles. They sought to implement the theories of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau about the natural life and to re-found society on the truths to be discovered in the
Book of Nature. They established revolutionary organisations throughout Europe and the Americas
with different circles of membership, the outermost and open aimed to attract liberals who supported
democracy, while the most secretive inner circle of illuminati were pledged to communism. The
professional revolutionary and illuminatus Filippo Buonarroti (1761-1837) traced the genealogy of
their ideas to the Persians, Egyptians, Jesus apostles and the Anabaptists; above all he followed
Weishaupt and [Marchals disciple] Bonneville in attaching special importance to the Jesuits, whom
he sought both to imitate and liquidate; see Billington, 1980: pp. 51, 62, 83-85 and 98-104.
175


The triumph of science
Although science and religion became distinct practices they continued to use the same
methods for obtaining knowledge: logic, analogy and speculative insight. Modern science
has, to be sure, not fully let go of the types of reasoning that were more common in the past.
Analogical reasoning involves drawing parallels between distant phenomena and those
things with which we are far more familiar. It remains very widely used in day-to-day life,
although to a lesser extent in science. Speculation is the mainstay of metaphysics and
generates pure theory, or insight, with ideas often inspired by other ideas. Religious
knowledge, of course, uses inspiration to a much greater extent than does science, relying to
a large degree upon prophecy and revelation. Nevertheless, some of the concepts in
mathematics are examples of pure theory. In set theory, for instance, cardinality allows one
to study infinity and derive conclusions that are at odds, as far as we can determine, with
reality. Moreover, speculative insight is not to be confused with irrationality.
Therefore what Stephen Jay Gould presented as a neat division of labour between the
magisteria of the Church and the Academy is actually the historical outcome of those
attempts in the eighteenth century to effect a workable compromise between the demands
for personal freedom in order to prosper from the market, to be creative artistically and
intellectually, and the duty to do the right thing, to enjoy peace and social justice. In fact the
survival of the salvation religions worldwide attests to their ability to mediate these moral
dilemmas. In a sense, the salvation religions appear remarkably fit for purpose in societies
characterised by extensive commerce and deeply embedded inequality. To be sure, so far,
the devout have not succeeded in establishing an earthly Kingdom of God, but then neither
did the anti-clerical revolutionaries achieve a Republic of Virtue in the eighteenth century or
Communism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
But bereft of the Church, as Koakowski argued, and lacking a legitimate moral authority,
Western civilization portends a society without taboos, a particular concern of
conservatives.
379
For the latter, the last three centuries have witnessed the unremitting
marginalisation of religion and the alleged death of God. Not only has religious authority
been superseded by secular and humanist claims but the progress of science has exposed
the flaws in the case for the existence of a Creator. The Deist compromise that arose out of
Newtons influence on Western thinking has looked increasingly shaky since the nineteenth
century.

379
Koakowski, 1982: pp. 196.
176


Until that point, no one imagined that the Earth had existed for more than a few thousand
years. The Hebrew calendars reference date is the creation of Adam by God in 3761 BCE.
The Christian scholars Theophilus of Antioch (died c. 183) and Hyppolytus of Thebes
(seventh century) calculated 5515 and 5503 BCE respectively.
380
In the seventeenth century
Johannes Kepler used the Holy Bible to deduce that Adam was created around 4977 BCE,
while the archbishop of Ireland, James Ussher (1581-1656) asserted that the date was 28
October 4004 (because he considered Jesus birth to have occurred in 5 BCE, not 1 CE).
381

As scientific enquiry blossomed during the nineteenth century it became clear that the
ancient chronology was incorrect. Geology soon established that the age of the Earth was to
be estimated in terms of millions of years, rather than a few thousand. In 1778 the naturalist
Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1709-1788) proposed that the Earth was at least 100,000
years old, and possibly millions.
382
Charles Lyell (1797-1875), whose work influenced
Darwin, demonstrated that rock formations had been undergoing continuous slow change
over at least 100 million years. Biology, with Charles Darwin (1809-1882) at the fore, showed
from the fossil record that evolution had occurred over an even longer timescale. By the
twentieth century, astronomy had revealed that the Solar System had formed around 4.6
billion years ago and the universe was nearly 14 billion years old.
Even more damaging to the Bibles reputation were the chaotic formation models in biology
and physics that ascribed the development of both the material cosmos and of organic life to
chance events. If God had intended humanity to live in the Garden of Eden such gradual
and unpredictable evolution was a strange way to go about things. But Darwins impact was
to be even more profound. Its influence ended the dominance of the cyclical theory of
evolution and replaced it with a progressive vision of continuous development. The ancients
had assumed that events indicated a rotational pattern to evolution (and even of involution).
The four-fold sequence of morning, afternoon, evening and night was a fundamental feature

380
See Mango, 1994: pp. 191-193. These dates for creation are consistent with Jewish tradition,
which placed Abrahams birth in 1812 BCE, some 3312 years after the Creation.
381
Kepler, 1596, Mysterium Cosmographicum; cited by Koestler, 1964: p. 262. There is also a
reference to 4000 BCE as the date of creation in Keplers 1606, De stella nova (my thanks to Kitty
Ferguson and Owen Gingerich for tracing this reference). See also Ussher, 1658, The Annals of the
World. Archbishop Ussher had been a student at Cambridge of William Perkins (1558-1602), the
founder of the Puritan movement among Protestants, which through his writings and that of his pupils,
such as the Dutch pastor Willem Teellinck (1579-1629), spread throughout Europe and to North
America and South Africa in the seventeenth century.
382
Leclerc de Buffon, 1779, Des poques de la nature.
177


of times unfolding. They expected to face oblivion in the future, to be followed, if the
salvation religions were to be believed, by a new morning, when all would again be young
and flawless, as it had been at the dawn of the world. Accepting the vast timescales of
cosmic change makes the expectation of the last days implausible on any scale of human
history. In a sense the devout literalists are correct to be so worried by Darwins theory, not
to mention contemporary cosmology.
M is for metaphysics
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for
the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
Albert Einstein (1954).
383

In 2010 the cosmologist Stephen Hawking launched a broadside in favour of a version of the
theory of everything the so-called M-theory that assumes the existence (if we can use
the word in this way) of multiple universes. M-theory has the advantage of being able to
account for the unusual coincidences that seem to be required to explain the characteristics
of our observable universe. Physicist Paul Davies has drawn attention to the fine tuning of
the laws of physics as being the Goldilocks factor, because the universe appears to be
just right for life. (This is somewhat misleadingly related to the Anthropic principle, which
asserts that we are correct to conclude that the universe is fit for life since we are here to
observe it.)
384
But, as Hawking admitted, no-one seems to know what the M stands for. It is
said to be short for master, miracle or mystery, but it could just as well be for
metaphysics.
385
Whatever the explanatory merits of M-theory, it posits the proposition that
our universe has a one in 10
500
chance of forming with the conditions that are just right for us
to sit around admiring it. Whilst plausible, M-theory appears to be unverifiable, the very
essence of metaphysical speculation.

383
Dukas and Hoffman, 1981: p. 43.
384
Davies, 2006.
385
Stephen Hawking, 2010, The Times, Eureka Supplement, 12, September: p. 20.
178


The Anthropic principle
The so-called Anthropic principle better termed a paradox follows from the
proposition that the cosmos operates according to rules that are apparent to an
observer. For this to occur both the cosmos and the observer must exist. Moreover,
only a cosmos with the capability for the evolution of life can be observed by
intelligent beings. Critics have pointed out that this is simply a truism. Nonetheless, if
we agree that the laws of physics are relatively simple mathematical relationships
expressible with a minimum of information, we must somehow also explain how it
came about that there is someone (with a mind) to understand it.
386
That implies that
more complex laws, with a greater informational content, must be at work, guiding
the development of the cosmos. This led mathematicians John Barrow and Frank
Tipler to argue that the laws of physics have to have properties that entailed the
generation of carbon-based creatures and, eventually, intelligent life.
387
Humans (and
maybe other types of intelligence, or self-aware knowledge carriers) were therefore
destined to evolve.
What used to be called the Laws of Nature are now envisaged as having appeared
during the emergence of the cosmos, in the Big Bang, and did not precede (or
transcend) it. For physicist Paul Davies, the tiny cosmos that inflated into the vast
universe we see today was indubitably orderly with very low entropy. He has
speculated that this initial cosmic state must have contained the capacity of self-
synthesis to possess a potential for lifes evolution. The initial cosmos must have
already contained sufficient information for life to get going when it inflated into the
one we inhabit. According to Davies, the universe is like a loop, whereby there is
(was or will be) a Big Bounce when our observable universe formed from the
remnant of a prior universe that had contracted to a tiny size. But because time is
relative as Einstein contended we cannot state that the cosmos as a whole has
any past or future, only that our planet has a past and future in relation to its star, and
our star in relation to its galaxy, and so on. Davies has sought to shed light upon the

386
Davies, 2006: p. 263.
387
Cited by Davies, 2006: p. 251; and Barrow and Tipler, 1986. Barrow and Tiplers theories use
similar language to that propounded by Teilhard de Chardin; they employ the term Omega Point for
example.
179


mystery of mysteries posed by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) of
why things exist at all.
388
Whether or not these ideas will bear fruit, it is clear that
science still has a long way to go before we have a comprehensive explanation.

The hypothesis that the cosmos we observe arose as a result of chance is, of course, by no
means new. The Atomists argued that atoms were distributed randomly in the Void (Chaos).
A void, which is a space without dimension, was necessary for movement to take place so
that structures could be formed through accretion. Epicurus (341-270 BCE), basing his
thinking on the proponent of the atomic structure of the cosmos, Democritus, considered that
the random collision of atoms in empty space was a sufficient explanation for reality, given
enough time.
389
There was no need to assume that a Creator was involved, but there had to
be movement for otherwise the atoms would not gather together. (Epicurus realised that for
this to happen there had to be two types of motion: straight and curved.) In essence, the
Atomists were providing a simpler theory, requiring the fewest assumptions about the nature
of matter. All atoms needed were space and energy for movement, along with erratic motion
and tiny hooks, or complementary shapes, to allow them to link up. For instance, earth
atoms coalesced readily, but the atoms of fire and air were spherical and could not congeal.
Only the most stable forms persisted, and these were the products of the earth element,
especially metals which were not easy to separate or melt. To suppose anything more about
why atoms formed specific combinations implied a theory of far greater complexity.
On the other side of the argument were Socrates, the Platonists and the Stoics.
390
One of
the latter, the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero (106-43 BCE), put forward a now

388
Wittgenstein is quoted as saying Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
389
See Sedley, 2007: chapter 5. Sedley argues that the Atomists concepts of infinity and equality of
distribution, isonomia, were crucial; see especially pp. 136-8 and 158-165. If atoms are distributed
equally within the chaotic Vortex there must be a finite number of arrangements (shapes) into which
they can group. Given eternity, the bounded world with its four elements had a chance of forming.
This theory was developed by Epicurus to resolve certain paradoxes inherent within Democritus
model, whereby an infinite number of atoms must imply an infinite number of arrangements and an
unbounded world in other words chaos only led to chaos. The assumption of distributive equality
means that, say, there is an equal number of odd and even numbers in an infinite set of numbers. The
Atomists hypothesised that atoms with different qualities, such as hot or cold, light or heavy, and so
on, were in equal proportions. Therefore when atoms accreted together they formed a finite number of
forms (mixtures of the elements) from which the cosmos derived.
390
It seems that Socrates may have been the first to argue the case for Intelligent Design to counter
the Atomists. He, and his pupil Plato, argued that God had designed the world with humanity in mind.
The evident intelligence manifested in the world proved, he argued, that it had not arisen by chance.
180


familiar argument that if you were to find a timepiece there had to be watch-maker or
craftsman who designed and made it. The timepiece to which Cicero was referring to was, of
course, the cycle of time as measured by the progress across the sky of the sun and moon
and the slow precession of the equinoxes against the starry dome. The constant and eternal
motion of the stars, Cicero wrote, wonderful and mysterious in their regularity, declares the
indwelling of a divine intelligence.
391

Reviewing his Greek predecessors, Cicero came down firmly on the side of creationists on
common sense grounds a notoriously dicey basis for drawing conclusions, but
nevertheless tricky to refute. Was it credible, he asked in On the Nature of the Gods, that if
you could throw the letters of the alphabet on the ground for long enough they would
eventually result in the Annals of Ennius, a particularly long work?
392
Although the odds are
distinctly poor, we cannot rule out this possibility, given sufficient time (and experience
suggests that 13 billion years might be ample). The astronomer Johannes Kepler recounted
an anecdote in his book De stella nova in response to the suggestion that the new star
observed in 1604 was a chance occurrence of atomic aggregation: If a pewter dish, leaves
of a lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, oil and slices of egg had been flying
around for all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that a salad would result. To which
his wife Barbara quipped, but [it would not taste] so nice as this one of mine!
393

Notice, however, how the Atomists smuggled into their theory an assumption that atoms
were capable of attachment and thus of forming complex formations. The tiny hooks were
the equivalent of electromagnetism, the nuclear forces and gravity. Without their hooks the
atoms could have gone on swirling forever and never coalesced. So Ciceros question turns
out not to be purely rhetorical. If we accept the possibility that random events led to the

Indeed, what would have been the point of creation if God had not had a purpose in mind? Gods
work had to be for good if it was to be the finest. Moreover, Gods plan encompassed all of humanity
and if people were to live together harmoniously they had to strive for virtue. He therefore was critical
of the suggestion that our god(s) are on our side, which brought him into conflict with the temple and
civic authorities. Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 BCE for impiety and corrupting the young of
Athens. Plato went on to argue that the design of the cosmos is not simply set up for human benefit
but for their ultimate, and eternal, salvation. The case is set out in Sedley, 2007: pp. 21, 82-90, 93-95
and 140.
391
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.55. The same argument was also put forward by Posidonius; see
Sedley, 2007: p. 207.
392
Ciceros argument is set out in Sedley, 2007: p.158.
393
Cited in Ferguson, 2002: p. 292.
181


amazing kaleidoscope of reality, we must also be prepared to contemplate that there is a
higher probability that nothing ever emerged from the Void of Chaos. The hooks on the
atoms (or, in modern science, the four fundamental forces of physics and other fine-tuned
laws) provide a way out of this difficulty, but only at the cost of raising additional questions.
Meanwhile, in this rehearsal of old arguments, the tables have been turned on the
creationists. Modern science is far more sympathetic to the approach of the Atomists, whose
speculations seemed to their contemporaries to be ridiculous. Those who are more
religiously inclined tend to feel that we owe it all to order. The how/ why distinction reflects
the division between the modern day Atomists, who subscribe to the fundamental
uncertainty of stochastic processes that is associated with quantum theory, and the vision of
a harmonious and whole universe advocated by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Kepler
and Newton.
394
It is possible that science will eventually reconcile quantum theory with the
theory of general relativity and have a theory of everything in M-theory. If, as Stephen
Hawking suggests, quantum field theory becomes the basis of physics, it will thereby put yet
more distance between the scientists and those who assert the cosmos to be orderly and/or
purposeful. The universe (or multiverse) will appear quite alien and strangely disturbing to
our expectation of technical functionality and intuitive sense of aesthetics.
Thus it seemed, as the twentieth century progressed, that the heavens were governed by
rules more fitting to those of Hell. The certainties of cause leading to effect appeared to be
undermined by quantum mechanics. Predictions cannot be precise but must entail
probability. Fundamental uncertainty, premised upon entropy, implies that explanations
cannot be based upon Aristotles model whereby one thing leads to another. The parallel
between the regulation of cosmos through chaos and antique beliefs in the role of demonic
powers was not overlooked. The writer H P Lovecraft (1890-1937), for example, expounded
a vision in his Cthulhu Mythos stories in which non-Euclidean calculus and quantum
physics were mixed with folklore, generating visions of other worlds that were totally
beyond description or even comprehension, [and] unspeakably menacing and horrible.
395

Many have found it hard to accept the conclusion that the abyss becomes the ultimate
reality.

394
A stochastic system is one which is subject to unpredictability and random fluctuations; Davies,
1993: p. 191.
395
H P Lovecraft, 1933, The Dreams in the Witch House, reprinted in a 1968 collection, At the
Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror: pp. 113 and 118. Lovecraft was apparently
inspired by a lecture by the physicist Willem de Sitter (1872-1934), who collaborated with Einstein.
182


Chance and necessity
The modern critics of the chaotic formation hypotheses have included a distinguished range
of figures from the scientist Albert Einstein to the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
The former asserted famously that God does not play dice with the world, while the latter
sought to reconcile traditional ideas with the findings of science.
396
As a German Jew,
Einstein (1879-1955) endured many of the travails of the twentieth century, being forced to
flee his home in Berlin in 1933 as the Nazis took power for the safety of the USA, but only to
find himself stalked by anti-communists while at Princeton during the Cold War. Although his
parents were not observant, he studied the Bible thoroughly as a boy (he was the only Jew
in a Catholic elementary school in Munich). His fathers business problems meant the young
Einstein was to a great degree self-taught. The family spent time in Italy and ended up in
Switzerland, where, in 1902, he obtained his first job as a patent clerk. He was inspired by
Pythagoras to study mathematics and then physics, and had enrolled at the Federal
Polytechnic School in Zurich in 1896, where he met his future wife, the Serbian
mathematician, Mileva Mari.
397
In 1905, on gaining his doctorate from the University of
Zurich, he published four major papers: on the photo-electric effect and energy quanta; a
stochastic model of Brownian motion; on the relativity of time and motion; and the
equivalence of matter and energy (which led to his famous equation E=mc
2
). His contribution
to problems that were at the time concerning Hendrik Lorentz (1853-1928), Henri Poincar
(1854-1912) and Max Planck (1858-1947) was recognised only gradually over the coming
years. Eventually Einstein was invited to become director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for
Physics in Berlin in 1914 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
His friend Max Born (1882-1970) later wrote that each of Einsteins 1905 papers was a
masterpiece [and] the source of a new branch of physics, namely quantum mechanics,
statistical mechanics, relativity theory and nuclear physics.
398
So Einsteins appreciation of
quantum mechanics cannot be doubted, but he remained perturbed that theoretical physics
could no longer describe reality as such, but only the probability of the occurrence of
phenomena. As he wrote in 1944 to Born, a champion of quantum field theory, you believe

396
Cited in Bernstein, 1973: p. 175. The original version of this quotation is I am, at any rate,
convinced that He is not playing at dice; see letter to Max Born on 4 December 1926; in Born and
others, 1971: letter 52.
397
They married in 1903 after the birth of one daughter but divorced in 1919, having another two sons
together. The same year Einstein married his cousin Elsa Einstein.
398
Cited in Bernstein, 1973: p. 134.
183


in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively
exists.
399
Einstein never managed to find a mathematical solution that satisfied his
conviction of an orderly universe, of course, and physics still searches for that theory of
everything. The fact that quantum field theory appears the best available model of sub-
atomic physics should not prevent us from recognising Einsteins objection as a challenge to
find a better theory.
Einsteins discomfiture may owe something to the fact that his own work on the principle of
relativity had displaced God and put the human observer centre stage. When Newton had
promulgated his laws of motion he had done so in relation to an observers position relative
to something else. It is perfectly reasonable to say that one observer is moving uniformly
with respect to another at a velocity of five miles an hour we can, in principle, look out the
window of a train and measure our velocity with respect to the ground but it is not
meaningful to say that the ground is absolutely at rest. At rest with respect to what? is the
question. Newton resolved the problem theologically. For him it was enough that rest
and motion were distinguishable in the consciousness of God (from physicist Jeremy
Bernsteins introduction to Einsteins ideas).
400
Einsteins general theory of relativity framed
the laws of physics in terms of what is observable. Thus the speed of light can be termed a
constant as no observer can see anything if, speculatively, he or she were travelling faster
than light; it is simply impossible and therefore unknowable. But if what matters to science is
how a phenomenon appears to behave there is no longer certainty that appearance reflects
reality. We remain trapped in Platos cave (even if our field of vision has been enlarged
enormously).
Einsteins celebrity brought him into high circles. In particular, he was introduced in 1927 to
the King and Queen of Belgium, Albert I (1909-1934) and Elizabeth of Bavaria, a Wittelsbach
princess. He corresponded regularly with them for the rest of his life. The royal couple
promoted the arts, medicine and sciences and, as convinced Catholics, sympathetic to the
social Christian movement, supported democracy and development at home and abroad.
Their daughter, Marie-Jos, herself a devout Catholic, also patronised intellectuals and
scientists and in 1955 supported the publication of the hitherto suppressed writings of the
Catholic priest and anthropologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Teilhard had
written extensively on science and religion, winning considerable recognition through his

399
Born and others, 1971: letter 81. See also Bernstein, 1973: p.177.
400
Bernstein, 1973: p. 41.
184


lectures, but was unable to publish his philosophical ideas in full during his lifetime due to
their incompatibility with traditional Church doctrine. In fact he called his essays his
clandestins.
401
His work indicates familiarity with ancient authors, notably with Heraclitus and
the Stoics, not to mention Plato and Aristotle.
Teilhard put forward a tentative view that the universe was the result of some cosmogenetic
process, by which he meant an evolution of matter to generate ordered structures at all
levels, from the sub-atomic to the universal, but also of increasing diversity and complexity.
In turn, through complexity, self-reflection or consciousness developed. For Teilhard this was
the discovery of God through evolving Matter.
402
Teilhard used the term cosmogenesis to
indicate a particular process of evolution, in which the evolution of matter cannot but coexist
with spiritual development. He applied this to the evolution of inorganic things, drawing a
parallel between the role of genes in determining an organisms development with the way a
crystal takes shape. He thought that even rocks had evolved into more complex formations
from simpler combinations. Though he did not use the term, this process of an inherent
direction, or predictability, in evolution implies entelechy.

401
King, 1996: pp. 225 and 233.
402
King, 1996: pp. 175 and 205. The logic is important here. David Sedley makes the point that
Platos myth of the Demiurge, as related in the Timaeus-Critias, in which the cosmos is compared to a
building, is premised upon the necessity of having an agent, the builder, and an origin. Sedley argues:
it is only on the premise that the world had a genetic origin [that] we can go on to infer that it is the
product of craftsmanship. The premise that the world had a genetic origin is needed by Timaeus in
order to ground his conception of divine craftsmanship; see Sedley, 2007: pp. 105-106. Teilhards
concept of cosmogenesis is part of an argument for the existence of God as the creator.
185


Teilhard and evolution
Teilhard de Chardins mystical experiences around the sacredness of Mother Earth,
controversial among Christians but also opening him to criticism from rationalists,
provide another entry point into understanding what he meant by cosmogenesis. He
wrote in 1953 to Lucile Swan, his long-time companion, that there was no better way
for rejuvenation, and even adoration, than to be in close contact with Mother
Earth.
403
Teilhard felt that rocks evolve, just as do living organisms. He rejected the
organic/ inorganic distinction and we should therefore consider the biosphere and the
lithosphere as connected intimately. He proposed that there was a direction in the
evolution of the cosmos, in the formation of stars and planets as much as in the
formation of minerals, plants and animals. He drew on an analogy between the
direction of evolution and a phrase describing God as the alpha and the omega,
that is, the beginning and the end of all things.
404
As has been argued already, if we
are to re-interpret Teilhards religiously inspired language in terms more acceptable
to modern science, we must substitute the word information for soul or spirit.
Teilhards apparent view that information (the soul/ spirit) is incorporated (incarnated)
into matter, as a pre-condition of the evolution of forms, thus reproduces Aristotles
schema for the working of entelechy. Teilhard was, of course, also putting a gloss on
the phrase in Genesis that the spirit of God swept over the waters (1: 2). Teilhard
called his theory of evolution the cosmic law of complexity consciousness.
405

403
Cited in King, 1996: p. 217. In his book The Heart of the Matter (1978: p. 98) Teilhard wrote: We
must admit that if the neo-humanisms of the twentieth century de-humanise us under their uninspired
skies, yet on the other hand the still-living forms of theism starting with the Christians tend to
under-humanise us in the rarefied atmosphere of too lofty skies. These religions are still
systematically closed to the wide horizons and great winds of Cosmogenesis and can no longer truly
to be said to feel with the Earth.
404
Book of Revelation: 1: 8: 21: 6; and 22: 13.
405
Cited by King, 1996: p. 175. It is similar to the Marxist law of the transformation of quantitative into
qualitative changes, sometimes known as the first law of dialectics; as explained by Cornforth, 1954:
p. 81. Thus we find that continuous, gradual quantitative changes leads at a certain point to
discontinuous, sudden qualitative change as in the phase change when boiling water becomes
steam (pp. 80-82). See also note 411 below.
186


Whether or not there is a direction to evolution is a matter of conjecture, although the
word evolve implies an unfolding, as in the opening out of a bud into a flower of
petals, and whereby something simpler becomes more complex and developed. An
image central to evolutionary theory is that of the tree of life: a single stem with ever
increasing branches in many directions. But although there are recognisable patterns
to the tree of life, the general direction of evolution, if any, is doubtful, and the
interaction of the biosphere with its sustaining hydro-, pedo- and atmospheres are as
yet unclear. The term cosmogenesis does not explain this as such, though it points
us in the direction of thinking about evolution as the working out of a seminal
principle (the logos) in way that generates both order and complexity, a factor crucial
to the formation of the cosmos as some scientists, like Paul Davies, recognise.
406

Teilhard nevertheless sought to answer one of the biggest why questions of all: why
are we here? He tried to answer it by placing humanity and its evolution (past and
future) into centre frame. Ancient philosophers had imagined that people were
created in order to work the Earth and serve the gods through sacrifices and worship.
Nature existed for humanitys convenience as did men for the gods. But the theory of
evolution by natural selection challenged this conception. Donkeys did not exist to
carry heavy loads for the benefit of hauliers. People and donkeys had evolved as
species through a combination of chance and necessity, as the Nobel prize-winning
biologist Jacques Monod explained.
407
The evolution of species occurs through
apparently unpredictable mutations, some of which survive through the struggle to
stay alive and reproduce.

406
Buried within its logical structure Life has the capacity to generate unlimited complexity that
places it partway between simplicity on the one hand and randomness on the other. One way of
expressing this quality is to say that the universe has organised complexity. The great mystery
is that [the world] is contingently ordered. Davies observes: if objects and events in the world
were merely haphazard and arranged in no specifically significant way, their particular arrangements
would still be mysterious. But the fact that the contingent features of the world are also ordered or
patterned is surely deeply meaningful. see Davies, 1993: pp. 111, 136 and 170.
407
Monod, 1972; Monod took his title Chance and Necessity from a fragment attributed to
Democritus: All things happen by virtue of necessity, the vortex being the cause of the creation of all
things. He misquoted this as Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.
Another translation has Everything happens according to necessity; for the cause of the coming-into-
being of all things is the whirl, which he calls necessity.
187


For a scientist like Jacques Monod (1910-1976), Teilhards views were animist, an example
of belief in a natural and purposeful force that gives things their useful properties.
408
Indeed it
is clear that Monod wrote his book Chance and Necessity (1970) in part as a rejoinder to
Teilhard. Yet Monod accepted that organisms are programmed to develop and behave in
particular ways. Living things embody information in their genes that define the essential
teleonomic project of transmitting from generation to generation the functional adaptation
[to] fulfil a unique primary project, which is the preservation and multiplication of the
species. Monod drew parallels between the chemical mechanisms that produced crystals
and those, assuredly more complex, that generated life. Crystals and organisms had
strange properties: they possessed invariant characteristics and a teleonomic apparatus
that programmed their development.
409
All of life is based upon a specific structure of cellular
chemistry, the DNAs sequence of nucleotide molecules. Species are variations upon this
single theme, endlessly evolving through the interplay of chance mutations and the necessity
of survival. Life is, as Richard Dawkins put it, the greatest show on Earth in its complexity,
diversity and mutual dependence.
410
Monod identified two key moments in evolution. The
first was the evolution of cells teleonomic apparatus, the mechanism by which they
learned to mobilise their chemical potential for reproducing themselves. The second
moment occurred when hominins gained the power to think, based on the brains capacity
for memorisation and imagination, which is an ability shared with many animals.
411
Although
the evolution of humans could not be foretold at the point when life on Earth emerged, once
Homo sapiens strode into history humanitys destiny become an open one.
Monod was an atheist socialist, in contrast to Teilhards religious affiliation, but both were
intrigued at the possibilities ahead for the evolution and purposeful development of this
intelligent ape. Teilhard looked forward to the further evolution of Homo sapiens into the
ultra human.
412
Monod too expected that the human species might be improved over ten

408
On animism, see Fernndez-Armesto, 2004: pp. 26-27.
409
Monod, 1972: pp. 24-25, 30, and 112-113. Monod states that owing to the regularity of its
structure as a whole, the DNA helix may be regarded as an aperiodic crystal (p. 104).
410
Dawkins, 2010: p. 426.
411
Monod, 1972: pp. 135 and 147. Monod admits that the origins of life and of human thinking are
cases where, as he puts it, the first law of dialectics might be warranted, though he considers the
difference between quantitative change and qualitative change to be meaningless in nature (pp. 139-
140).
412
Cited in King, 1996: p. 214; see also pp. 193 and 228.
188


or fifteen generations but was worried about the ethics of introducing deliberate and severe
selection, especially as liberal Western society appeared increasingly to lack humanist
values.
413
He considered humanitys animal heritage precious, seeing value in belonging
simultaneously to the animal kingdom and the kingdom of ideas [and] enriched by this
agonising duality. However, modernity demanded a thorough revision of ethical premises
and the forging of a new ethic of knowledge, by which he meant the taking of
responsibility for humanitys actions, with no excuse that we are pawns of nature, or of Fate
and the gods.
414
Without this recognition of our species socio-biological heritage, which
includes an inherent drive to seek out meaningful explanations, we will fail to accept our
duality as simultaneous subjects of nature and as creators. The hostility between science
and traditional values, Monod asserted, would continue to grow, threatening the
development of the kingdom that lies within man.
415
The necessity for a progressive
reconciliation between science and religion was an important theme to both Monod and
Teilhard, despite their differences, as it was for Einstein.
Previous generations may have made too much of the possibility of progress through
evolution, by placing humankind at its apex, to the degree that we have become over-
confident in the face of the threat posed by global warming and to the risk of our own
species extinction. Nevertheless it remains credible to imagine that the apparent orderliness
of the cosmos involves features of directionality and completeness. Einstein called this the
sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of
thought. His phrasing echoes the words of Galileo and the Rosicrucians, who advocated
learning from the Book of Nature and from the scriptures. In an essay on religion and
science he praised the heretics of every age who were filled with the highest kind of
religious feeling, mentioning Democritus, Francis of Assisi, Kepler, Newton and Spinoza.
They, he averred, knew no dogma and no [anthropomorphic] God conceived in mans
image. Einstein was convinced of the rationality of the universe, and the harmony of
natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the
systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
416

413
Monod, 1972: p. 153.
414
Monod, 1972: pp. 159 and 165.
415
Monod, 1972: p. 167.
416
Einstein, 1956, Religion and Science, published in Einstein, 2007: pp. 26-29. In another statement
Einstein wrote of the intelligence manifested in Nature, quoted in George, White and Chapman,
1935: p. 44.
189


Intelligence vs. intelligibility
On the face of it Einsteins insistence that there is a cosmic rationality, or, in another phrase,
of reason that manifests itself in nature, is surprising coming as it does from a scientist.
The culture wars have tended to force scientists into their own laager where better to repel
the forces of fundamentalism. The religion vs. science debate is, of course, part of a wider
struggle between moralists and liberals for hegemony, with the former contesting the decline
in ethics and decency and the latter defending individual liberty and freedom of expression.
The arguments about where to draw the line will always continue, making it even more
difficult to bridge the gap between believers and rationalists that is tainting the quality of
education around the world. The fact that many scientists consider the cosmos to be
suspiciously well ordered, fine-tuned and, indeed, providential, has only served to raise the
temperature of the controversy. The debate over the just so character of the universe has
given encouragement to those subscribing to the Intelligent Design viewpoint, themselves
convinced by scriptural evidence, and by the supposed flaws in mainstream scientific
theories.
The differences originate in the type of explanation given for the existence of the cosmos.
Philosophers have traditionally defined existence or being as a state of permanent presence,
although this is not exactly the case at sub-atomic scales of observation.
417
To explain the
orderliness of reality, the ancients theorised that a Creator god had constructed the cosmos,
where before there had been only a chaotic Void. As we have seen, others, the Atomists,
took the view that there was no Creator since the formation of the cosmos could have
occurred through the coalescence of atoms. Modern Atomists, like Stephen Hawking, posit
the hypothesis that multiple universes exist, where the laws of physics are different from
ours. All agree that a chaotic system is one where the sequence of events is unpredictable.
The question is how did the sequencing of events arise? Was it by chance or design? This is
why the retention of a concept like entelechy or cosmogenesis is so crucial for the God
fearing, as a pre-programmed sequence of development implies a First Cause, a key
argument for the existence of a Creator. (There are, of course, also the agnostics, who wait
to be persuaded by further evidence.)
At the heart of the problem is a question developed by Aristotle. The cosmos displays order
because it is a system of cause and effect, of contingency. Without a process whereby one
thing leads to another, and without time being one directional, nothing would ever happen.

417
Cited in Urmson and Re, 1989: p. 129.
190


Each event is contingent upon a previous event. Many have misunderstood the implications
of Aristotles theory of causes (or, more correctly, of contingency). In particular, with the
Desist compromise, came the view that the First Cause (identified with God) was a single
moment that set off the subsequent movement of things and of evolution. Hence the
simplistic argument by religious fundamentalists to the effect that scientists are wrong about
the Big Bang because they cannot explain what happened beforehand. (And while the Big
Bounce hypothesis proposes that our universe was the product of an earlier ones collapse
may help us understand cosmic inflation at the beginning of our universe, it only opens the
door to yet another mystery.) Aristotles chain of causation defines the direction of time,
whereby each cause-effect dyad is an event, and permits the laws of physics to operate.
Furthermore, the First Cause has never been completed; it reverberates for all time, and its
outcomes cannot be fully predicted. If the events initiated at the First Cause were to be
fulfilled then time itself would stop and the cosmos would be no more. For this reason,
Aristotle did not accept the notion that the cosmos really had a beginning or an end, though
it might well endure cycles of destruction and renewal.
We should, in addition, be wary of placing too great an emphasis on the disputes between
ancient philosophers since it seems that many of them apparently accepted the Atomists
theory of atoms (hooks and all), although the concept of the Void of Chaos was more
controversial. Rather, the debate, which in any case should be more correctly seen as an
academic contest in which the protagonists aimed to display their learning and rhetorical
skills, seems to have been concerned primarily with the role of the gods. The Atomists,
Stoics and Christians all agreed that the logos was crucial to the way nature and history
operated. The Atomist Leucippus stated, nothing happens at random [or in vain], but
everything for a reason (ek logos) and by necessity.
418
All events have a cause and a
consequence and the laws of nature determine the outcome of events. (For many of the
ancients, the gods, as personifications of natural forces, were subject to the logos and/or to
Fate.) Approached from a modern viewpoint, the debate between Atomists and creationists
may one day be resolved around the potential of fractal geometry, wave functions, or some
future branch of mathematics, to model the evolution of the cosmos and of life. If stochastic
processes can be understood more fully (as the working out of the logos mathematically) we
may be able to explain how the laws of physics came to be so fine-tuned, under conditions
of apparent disorder, as to permit our (fairly) comfortable cosmos to exist and how order
might have emerged from chaos.

418
Cited in Cohen, Curd and Reeve, 2005: p. 65.
191


Once again, Paul Davies has some interesting observations on this question. He
hypothesises that the cosmos is characterised by organised complexity. Although the
universe is complex, it is clearly not random. We observe regularities [which we have]
systematised into what we call laws. The laws of physics are analogous to computer
programmes. Given the initial state of a system (input), we can use the laws to compute a
later state (output). In principle, if we know the laws of physics, we could compute exactly
what happened in the past and what will happen in the future, but in practice the cosmos is
not completely determined because quantum mechanics seems to rule at the sub-atomic
level but neither is it fully chaotic.
419
We recognise patterns at the macroscopic level (our
normal mode of perception) because they recur, albeit with variation. This property is called
recursion by mathematicians. The laws of physics, the rules, which can be modelled as
algorithms, each generate a recurring sequence of contingent events that are similar but
nonetheless vary. This gives the cosmos both its open character everything is not
determined absolutely and its intelligibility.
420
As Pythagoras suggested, there is a
harmony to the cosmos, the music of the spheres, an idea that Tolkiens myth takes up as
being variations on a musical theme.
In principle, then, both chaotic and cosmogenetic modalities might be modelled
mathematically, so either may be considered respectable science. Notwithstanding, both are
speculative approaches, lacking sufficient proof to be accepted wholeheartedly by science,
and are thus exercises in metaphysics. In any case, it should be remembered that
mathematical models of reality are only as believable as their predictive results are
consistent. Mathematical models are simply sophisticated analogies for reality. One model
will be supplanted sometime by a more comprehensive one as science progresses. So
scientists should beware bragging about their models and, conversely, castigating the
deficiencies of a clerics metaphor. Scientific understanding would be stunted without
speculation and lost for words without analogy. Our day-to-day language is full of metaphors.
To abandon analogical reasoning would deprive us of a massive vocabulary for
communication, which higher mathematics cannot replace easily. The conversation between
science and religion may remain valuable even if the conclusions are not yet definitive.

419
Davies, 1993: pp. 29, 135, and 156-160.
420
Davies, 1993: pp. 170 and 182. In philosophy, following Kant, the noumenon (an intelligible) is an
idea of something that can only be thought of and is never perceived directly by our senses, though it
should be derived from sensory experience through the use of logic; see Kant, 1783: Section 32, p.
196.
192


In any case it is likely that few besides fundamentalists consider the early chapters of
Genesis to be anything more than an elaborate metaphor. As was argued in the first chapter,
the meaning of that metaphor is in effect a scientific explanation of creation. To accept the
Genesis myth as an analogy does not take us towards a supernatural origin of the cosmos,
but points to the need to explain the very orderliness of reality. In particular, once we realise
that the word creation implies an ordering of chaos, not the summoning of something from
nothing, the Biblical myth becomes a rational explanation rather than a fanciful fable. As this
essay has tried to show, ancient myths contain insights that have clear parallels in science.
These myths communicate explanations and resemble scientific theories. Following the
analogical trail of mythos may take us to the same destination as the deductive route to
logos. There is no reason to close off the discussion prematurely.
Instead, we must address the Intelligent Design question from another direction altogether.
Is the order we observe in the cosmos the ratios and rules by which physical and natural
phenomena are organised inherent and just waiting to be discovered by scientists? Or is it
the case that scientists invent the mathematics in order to describe reality ever more
precisely? In truth this conundrum is an example of the chicken or egg problem. To argue
over which came first is to miss the point because the question can be debated endlessly
and probably fruitlessly. The fact is that both statements are commensurate with one
another: the egg was laid by the chicken while the chicken hatched from the egg. In short,
how is it possible to study the cosmos if you do not already assume or have faith in its
inherent orderliness?
421
We may say without contradiction that the cosmos presents features
that render it intelligible to its observer and that it is the observant scientist who concludes
that it was ordered. In Einsteins aphorism, the eternal mystery of the world is its
comprehensibility.
422

Moreover, the property of intelligibility requires there to be a logic (from logos) or rationale
(from ratio) to the cosmos. So the religiously inclined should not object to discarding the
Intelligent Design hypothesis since they may still, reasonably, hold fast to the principle that
reality is ordered, even if its ultimate purpose (if any) remains unclear, and, perhaps, be
forever incomprehensible to us.

421
See Koakowski, 1982: p. 214.
422
Einstein, 1950; originally published as Physics and Reality, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute,
221/3, March 1936.
193


Comprehending order
We on earth are only just starting. The moment of awakening has begun. Heightened
consciousness is our goal.
Karl Jaspers (1949)
423

It has been humankinds privilege to have evolved on a planet with an environment
characterised by patterning and regularity. Order, it seems, it is a fundamental feature of the
cosmos. So it follows that we should give thanks and affirm, or worship, this feature of
orderliness as the source of all reality. (And conversely, abhor the ingress of disorder into
the world.) That said, the dominance of the religious viewpoint has been long broken. The
idea that God created the universe, as a builder constructs a house or a mechanic a
mechanism, seems as absurd today as the Atomists theories probably did two thousand
years ago. Indeed, the central proposition in the Intelligent Design theory of contemporary
creationists is an example of analogical reasoning as it suggests that the laws of nature
provide evidence of a (divine) intelligence with the latter term being a personification of a
natural characteristic.
424
The personification of an event or process by which order came
about and the cosmos was formed (these are tautologies, of course) signifies that there
is a myth being propounded, which was probably not intended to be taken literally by the
initiates. It indicates that an explanation for the masses is being proffered, while an occult
theory is being disguised. Moreover neither theory is satisfactory by itself. As the Marxist
philosopher Maurice Cornforth (1909-1980) pointed out, the prevailing philosophies
emphasise mens helplessness and limitations; they speak of a mysterious universe; and
they counsel either trust in God or else hopeless resignation to fate or blind chance.
425

Neither creationist nor Atomist perspectives seem to suit our ambitions.
Humans differ from other animals in that they have a mental capability to envisage patterns
in their environment. In part this capability is our natural heritage, and something we share
with other animals; in part it is humanitys creation through our development of language. In
the view of the linguist Noam Chomsky, human language displays recursion and it is this
trait, which is absent from animal communication, that enables us to reflect upon our

423
Jaspers, 1953: pp. 239 and 274.
424
Davies, 1993, makes this point in relation to the watch-maker analogy of creation; see p. 201.
425
Cornforth, 1954: p. 132.
194


experiences.
426
With memory, imagination and reasoning we can process huge quantities of
information to see the wood, and not just the confusing mass of trees. Only humans, as far
as we know, can analyse the properties of things and recognise their recurring features: the
trunk, branches and leaves of trees, for instance, with their basic form and their actual
variation. It arises from the human use of language to comprehend and analyse our
environment. We have the capacity to understand the cosmic principles, the laws of nature.
In this sense we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1: 27), since only humans stand a
chance of peering into the Mind of God in the memorable phrase of Stephen Hawking.
427

The cosmos reveals itself as intelligible, rather than being proof of intelligence at work, for as
long as we search for patterns we will keep on finding them.
While it might be the case that we are mistaken in seeing these patterns, which may not
really be there at all, the progress in mathematics and the sciences suggest that humanity is
indeed making sense of reality. A providential occurrence is just, after all, a pattern of a
special type difficult to replicate under controlled conditions. In any case, the features of
order/ disorder have a now you see it, now you dont quality to them. What often appears to
be disorderly the movement of a swarm of insects, perhaps turns out to be based on a
few rules of behaviour that each creature follows. From another angle, the solidity of
everyday objects around us is, at the atomic level, the result of quantum mechanics, where
fundamental uncertainty prevails. Properties like the solidity of matter and the causality of
events become apparent, or emerge, at particular scales. These differences in perceiving
order or disorder are often the result of a change of scale and perspective: reality at the atto
scale (one quintillionth, or 10
-18
) allows us to see an electron, whereas at the zeta scale
(10
21
), we might observe clusters of galaxies. At the sub-atomic scale, some physicists
hypothesize the existence of ten or eleven dimensions. Since the sensory and mental
capacities of animals evolved at our scale, humans naturally only recognise the three
dimensions of space and the passage of time. It may even be the case that the tune to
which sub-atomic particles move is beyond our capacity to compute. Quantum theory is
successful because it only predicts the performance of a quanta, or set, of particles, not
each one of them. Nevertheless these particles are performing all sorts of incomprehensible

426
Recursion, the process of repeating a phrase in a self-similar way, is a key property of language
and music. It is the basis for song, which the author has hypothesised to be a precursor to language
among hominins; see the authors correspondence with Professor Robin Dunbar of 30 June and 28
August 2005; see also Dunbar, 2004.
427
Hawking, 1988: p.193. If we do discover a complete theory it would be the ultimate triumph of
human reason for then we would know the mind of God.
195


tricks to a tune that (for now) escapes our computational powers, but which, we may infer,
was laid down at the very start of things.
Moreover, ancient mathematicians used quite simple instruments ruler, compass and
protractor for measurement and design. They had the abacus but not the electronic
computer for long calculations.
428
It was more natural for them to seek explanations for
phenomena at our scale by the use of analogies. An appropriate scale perspective allows
scientists to model phenomena that might not be explicable at another scale: for instance,
we can look at a molecule at the nano scale (10
-9
), understand how our cities work at the kilo
scale (10
3
), and model our planets climate at the mega scale (10
6
). Patterns are observable
at specific scales and we have only recently acquired the appropriate instruments to explore
the cosmos more fully. Ultimately, we may find that chaotic and cosmogenetic processes are
simply different ways of viewing the same reality.
This indicates that the apparent dichotomy between the Atomists, and their Epicurean
followers, who insisted that we were fooling ourselves if we thought there was an underlying
order to existence, and the Pythagoreans, Platonists and Stoics may be bridgeable after all.
Einstein realised that Euclidean geometry assuming flatness was insufficient to express
his ideas on relativity. To present his theory he needed another geometry that operated in
curved space. This he found in the work of Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) on differential
geometry. In doing so, Einstein helped displace the primacy enjoyed by Euclid and
Pythagoras in education. Another example is that of Zenos paradox, a mathematical puzzle
that was only solved more than two thousand years later using calculus.
429
So we have been
here before. Paradigms are constructed only to be superceded. Mathematics is now
explaining chaos. Once one can obtain predictions from apparently chaotic phenomena, that
had previously been inexplicable, we will have derived order from chaos. Algorithms are

428
See Russo, 2004: pp. 41 and 92.
429
Zeno of Elea (c. 450 BCE) contended that a fast runner (Achilles) could never overtake a slow
runner (a tortoise), who is given a head start, because by the time the fast runner reached the
slowers starting point, the slow runner would have already moved on some distance. The truth of the
paradox rests on the assumption that a distance has to be measured in units of space and even if
the unit of space becomes extremely small, there will always be some distance between the runners
(provided always that the slower had a head start). Real life tells us that Zenos conclusion that
Achilles can never overtake the tortoise is wrong, and Zeno also knew this clearly enough, of course.
But the explanation as to why it is wrong had to await the mathematics of calculus, which Leibniz and
Newton probably developed independently at about the same time in the 1670s. Infinitesimal calculus
abandons the assumption that all units of space can measured even when they are infinitely small by
a shortcut, as it were, of assuming that one unit is the infinite
th
in a series, which places a limit to the
calculation. It stops the tortoise from going just that little bit further forever and ever.
196


used in problem-solving, reasoning and learning, which are key functions central to artificial
intelligence. But to move on from where we are now may require both logical and analogical
reasoning, especially since the algorithmic or rule-based intelligence will remain largely alien
to us, and thus to the devising of a new paradigm.
430

Some fifty years ago, in his best-selling book The Morning of the Magicians, Louis Pauwels
(1920-1997) argued that the Cartesian paradigm required replacement in the light of the
discoveries that other creatures possessed intelligence and of the possibilities opened up by
artificial intelligence. Intelligence implies understanding or comprehension, of making sense
of what has been learnt, and the ability to think abstractly, for instance in order to solve
problems and plan ahead. From the evolutionary perspective, intelligence provides an
organism with improved survival opportunities by permitting it to take actions to avoid
foreseeable threats. Building upon systems theory, we can see that intelligence involves a
more comprehensive type of environmental awareness in which an organism understands its
context and rationalises its actions. We can therefore think of inherent intelligence as a
property not just of humans but of the interaction of organisms within natural systems, the
so-called distributed intelligence of the smart swarm, as a recent book termed it.
431

There is fit between the way intelligence works and entelechy. We recognise development
from its regularity, and if there is a pattern then there must have been a mould, which Plato
and Aristotle called an idea or a form. It is the mould that shapes the pattern. For the ancient
philosophers, the working out of the idea is the process whereby the form comes into being.
We call this process development. It has the property of entelechy. All life forms are an
expression of their idea, but the idea is not just a construct of our intellect; it has a real basis
in an organisms chemistry. We just happen to be able to recognise the regularity of our
environment and in our fellow creatures. Moreover, our relationship to the fundamental
features of the cosmos, its orderliness and intelligibility, is built on the essential unity of our
corporeal (or natural) and psychic makeup: of the brain and mind, the faculties of sense and
comprehension, and on our inherent abilities and learnt aptitudes. As far as we know, we are
the only creatures possessing this combination of capabilities. It has put us on a path to an
open destiny but one which requires a deep knowledge of the universe and of our own

430
The combination of the hive and immense computing power has been a stock image for the alien
threat in science fiction; see, for example, the cybernetic life forms, the Cylons, in the TV and motion
picture series created by Glen A Larsen, Battlestar Galatica.
431
Miller, 2010. Apparently bees can count up to four; David Robson, Whats the buzz? New Scientist,
24 November 2012: p. 44.
197


natures if we are to make it. Since science was reconfigured by Descartes it has lost its link
with earlier philosophy and is no longer able or willing to address the innate capacity of
human beings for creativity and depravity. We cannot rely on science to indicate the straight
path. At the same time many have lost confidence in traditional religion (and even in its
humanist offshoots). We will live in a state of contradiction as long as we see religion as the
antithesis of science and not its complement. So we should take both books, of scripture and
of nature, for the journey, for, as the Rosicrucians realised, they may be read without
contradiction.
That contradictory reading only took hold as a result of the conflict that arose between
science and religion in the West, the consequences of which remain with us. Pauwels
understood the importance of overcoming this longstanding conflict. We had to supersede
the Cartesian approach to science if our species was to develop further.
After the intellectual revolution that followed [Descartes] the Discours de la
Mthode, we have reached a stage where the immensity and complexity of the
new realities that have just been revealed were bound to alter the views we have
hitherto held as to the nature of human knowledge and revolutionise the ideas now
current as to Mans relationship to his own intelligence; in other words an attitude of
mind very different from what only yesterday we were still calling the modern
attitude, is now called for.
In raising mathematical thought to its highest degree of abstraction, Man perceives
that such thought is not perhaps his exclusive property. He discovers that insects, for
example, seem to possess a spatial sense which we lack; that there is, perhaps,
such a thing as a universal mathematical intelligence. It is essential that another
form of intelligence be set in motion. An analogical intelligence, if you like; or a
mystical illumination An awakened state.
Men, like Teilhard de Chardin, for example, who saw [that] this civilization,
criticised no less from the outside by the mystical worshippers of the past [that is, the
Church] than on the inside by the nave believers in progress [Science], had to be
saved.
432

432
Pauwels and Bergier, 1971: pp. 219-252.
198


Louis Pauwels considered that we ought to remain entirely aloof from the old controversy
between spiritualists and materialists that has characterised Western civilization since the
Enlightenment, if we are move forward as a human race.
433
Although he was writing at the
height of the Cold War, when there was a very real possibility of mutually assured
destruction, todays threat to our planets capacity to support life, as a result of global
warming, make Pauwels conclusions all the more relevant. Monod concurred that "there is
absolutely no doubt that the risk of the race committing suicide is very great. In my
opinion, the future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations."
434
The
time has come perhaps to recognise that a new paradigm is needed to supersede both the
Hermetic and the Cartesian frameworks, whilst acknowledging the intellectual debts owed to
each. Once we accept that the myths of religion are part of the Hermetic paradigm and
reveal an arcane science, we can take stock of both the shortcomings and virtues of mythos.
The Cartesian paradigm, which emerged in a troubled age but still underpins science, also
has its limitations alongside its merits as a means of gaining knowledge and wisdom through
logos. It may be time to move on from the disputes of the Enlightenment to make fuller use
of our intelligence to survive and prosper on and beyond our planet. As Einstein (apparently)
warned, the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we
were at when we created them.
435

433
Pauwels and Bergier, 1971: p. 254.
434
Cited in Monods obituary by Frank J Prial, The New York Times, 1 June 1976.
435
As chairman of the newly formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists Einstein made an
appeal for funds to "to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential" in the atomic age
"if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels." (New York Times, 25 May 1946). In a follow-
up interview with Michael Amrine in the New York Times Magazine published on 25 June 1946,
Einstein said that the human race finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.
Several variants of the quotation exist: Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness
that created them; The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of
thinking that created them.
199


Afterword

The 1990 romantic movie Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi
Goldberg, concludes with a scene showing Swayzes ethereal form of light entering Heaven.
The story revolves around the murder of a New York banker, played by Swayze, who
remains earthbound in an attempt to foil the killing of the principal witness to his death, his
girlfriend (Moore). With the help of a fake medium (Goldberg), Swayzes ghost accomplishes
his mission to save her and in so doing avenges his own slaying.
The images of the soul, the psyche, as a shining form and of Heaven as a place of light, into
which the soul will be reabsorbed, are common motifs in art. There is a clear link with the
notion of enlightenment and to the defining difference between humans and other terrestrial
life forms: the capacity to reason. Through reasoning we may appreciate the logic, the logos,
of the cosmos. If we understand that logic we have a duty to ensure that cosmic balance is
maintained. In the film, it is Swayzes responsibility to thwart another crime and bring about a
just revenge, with the murderers souls consigned to Hell by shadowy demons. Life, of
course, only has a neat ending in stories. But it is the story that we remember. That is why
myths are important. Modern myths, like Ghost, where good ultimately triumphs and
harmony is restored, talk to us in the same way.
I have stressed that this book is an essay of interpretation. I hope that it has revealed the
sophistication of the ancient prophets and philosophers. Their texts may now be difficult for a
modern reader to comprehend but they cannot be dismissed as mere Bronze Age nonsense,
as I have tried to illustrate. Neither can we pick out just the bits we fancy and ignore those
elements with which we may happen to disagree. Our reading needs to match the writings in
sophistication if we are to learn from them.
In that regard, I can do no better than to invoke the words of Rabbi Louis Jacobs (1920-
2006), whose readiness to think critically about belief stimulated arguments within British
Jewry in the 1960s:
Basic beliefs, which [supply information about the meaning of human life] cannot by
their nature be contradicted by new knowledge; [they] are known, in part at least,
through tradition but they are accepted by believing Jews not because they are
traditional but because they are true. Their nature is such that new knowledge
which is knowledge based on the discovery of new facts cannot possibly contradict
them. The beliefs which can be contradicted by new knowledge are based on
200


traditional opinions about the facts [and] must be abandoned if new knowledge of
the facts demonstrated the tradition is in error. If tradition can be mistaken with
regard to the second class of beliefs (the factual ones), it is fatuous to ask what
guarantee we have that it is not mistaken with regard to the first class (the
interpretive beliefs). Since tradition can be mistaken it is, indeed, never in itself an
adequate guide to belief. The thinking Jew accepts the beliefs of the first class as
being in the tradition because they are true. He need have no fear of betraying his
faith since his basic beliefs are not factual at all but interpretive and are secure from
contradiction by the discovery of new facts.
436

It is a fact that the Bible, the Koran and the Gathas use the same image of the straight path
to indicate the righteous way to live ones life. How we interpret the metaphor is another
matter, since, for example, the scriptures also prescribe punishments for transgressors that
can appear to us as cruel. Rabbi Jacobs adds some wise words on this question:
The fundamental interpretive beliefs are taught in the Bible and other classics of
Judaism. It is in no sense a question of the unaided human mind arbitrarily picking
and choosing the beliefs it is prepared to accept. It is rather a matter of such
fundamental beliefs as that of belief in the goodness and mercy of God. Jewish
tradition itself [treats] belief in Gods goodness as an eternal belief, to be accepted
by Jews at all times, while allowing laws such as the stoning of the rebellious son to
pass into oblivion. The non-fundamentalist Jew who accepts our argument is as
much a man of faith as the fundamentalist.
437

Such beliefs are not simply a set of ethical norms. The straight path, as I have suggested,
concerns finding yourself so that you can give back, and not just to feed your appetites;
nor is it purely about obedience to a moral code but involves good conduct through which
one becomes an example to others. For my part, I have no qualifications to be a guide and
to show anyone the way. It is the mission of the salvation religions to help us to find it. The
straight path may not be the most comfortable route, and many, indeed, prefer not even to
start the journey of self-improvement. In todays times of confusion, the politics of identity
only creates further barriers to understanding the ancients meaning. That I can call myself a
white, heterosexual male is just a description of what I have been since adolescence. It does
not tell me who I am or of what I am capable of achieving. Many people imagine that their

436
Jacobs, 1964: pp. 459-460.
437
Jacobs, 1964: pp. 464-466.
201


identity is what makes them. They let it dictate what they should buy, who their friends
should be, who to vote for and the type of lifestyle they aspire to. Actually, as the ancients
taught, it is by your words and deeds that you become yourself and by which you shall be
judged. So, take care on your own journey, and, of course, good luck!

202


203


APPENDICES

204


205


Appendix A: The Axial Age
Mans self-consciousness developed during the Axial Period, Karl Jaspers, The Origin and
Goal of History (1949).
438

The thesis that the major world religions and philosophies were conceived during a single
historical epoch was put forward by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, who termed this the Axial
Age or Achsenzeit in German. He claimed it to be a turning point in world history.
439
Jaspers
credited an earlier German philosopher, Ernst von Lasaulx (1805-1861), with putting the idea
forward in 1856: It cannot possibly be an accident that, six hundred before Christ,
Zarathustra in Persia, Gautama Buddha in India, Confucius in China, the prophets in Israel,
King Numa in Rome and the first philosophers Ionians, Dorians and Eleatics in Hellas
[Greece], all made their appearance pretty well simultaneously as reformers of the national
religion.
440

Although it is undoubtedly the case that several great sages lived around the same time (see
Figure A-1), the question remains as to how we can decide which of them belong to the Axial
Age? There are after all two thousand years separating Moses from Mohammed, so who is
in and who is outside the Axial Age?
A key controversy concerns the dating of Zoroasters life, since a late date makes the Axial
Age theory more convincing. A number of ancient Greeks, for instance Porphyry of Tyre (c.
234-305 CE), considered Zoroaster and Pythagoras to be near contemporaries but others,
and some modern scholars, prefer a much earlier dating. One of the latter, Mary Boyce
(1920-2006) favoured an early date of between 1100-900 BCE, based on the tradition that
Zoroaster composed the Gathas, or hymns to Ahura Mazda, in ancient Persian, or Old
Avestan. This language is similar to ancient Sanskrit and is thought to have been spoken in
the second millennium before our current epoch.

438
Jaspers, 1953: p. 194. The book was first published in German in 1949 as Vom Ursprung und Ziel
der Geschichte.
439
Jaspers, 1953.
440
Jaspers, 1953: p. 8; from Lasaulx, 1856: p. 115.
206


Figure A-1: Timeline for the Axial Age
CHINA
INDIA
WEST
ASIA
GREECE
800 700 600 400 500 300 200
YEARS BEFORE CURRENT ERA
Amos
Hosea
J and E versions
of the Pentateuch
Isaiah
Homer
Classics of Odes,
Documents, Music
and of Changes
Renouncers
Samnyasins
Sources: Karen Armstrong, 2006, The Great Transformation; authors research.
Upanishads
Yajnavalkya
Uddalaka
Hesiod
Deuteronomy
Hilkiah
Jeremiah
Zoroaster Job
Ezekiel
P version
of the Torah
Pythagoras
Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes
Kapila Patanjali
Confucius
(Kong Qiu)
Analects
Pseudo-
Isaiah
Chronicles
Heraclitus
Parmenides
Aeschylus
Ajita
Makkhali
Gosala
Mahavira
Vardhamana
Jnatrputra
Ezra
Zeno
Empedocles
Democritus
Anaxagoras
Euripides
Socrates
Plato
Mozi
Siddhartha
Gautama
Buddha
Vyasa Valmiki
Jixia
Academy
Yangxi
Huizi
Zhuangzi
Mencius
(Meng Ke)
Euclid
Academy
of Athens
Aristotle
Fajia
School of
Law
Xunzi
Laozi
Epicurus
Zeno &
the Stoics
Pyrrho & Sceptics
Shvetashvatara
Upanishad
Bhagavad-
Gita
Zou
Yan
Malachi
Daniel
Antigonus
of Sokho &
the Pharisees
Simeon
Yashts Visprad & Vendidad
Mahabharata
& the Puranas
Brahmanas Atharva-veda
207


But the fact that hymns were composed in ancient Persian does not mean that their
composer lived at the time when it was being used in day-to-day conversation. The English
poet John Milton was celebrated for the excellence of his Latin and wrote poems in the
antique style of Romans living 1,500 years before him. Latin remains in use within the
Catholic Church, although it has long since been superseded in the land of its origin by
Italian. Furthermore we know that Sanskrit was in use for worship as late as 500 BCE in
India, when the Rig Veda, the oldest portions of which are thought to have been assembled
around 1100 BCE, was given its current form and the Purnas, a collection of myths, were
composed.
441
Lastly, according to one tradition recorded in the Bundahishn, compiled in the
seventh century CE, Zoroaster lived 258 years before Alexander the Great (who ruled
between 336-323), which has led some scholars to suggest that Zoroaster died around 551
BCE.
442

The Axial Age thesis is strengthened with the likelihood that Zoroaster lived in the sixth
century BCE because his ideas about the final salvation of humanity parallel those that
emerged within Judaism while the Jews were in exile in Babylonia. Proximity in time and
space between Zoroastrian priests and the Jewish prophets, like Daniel, Ezra, and the
unknown author of the Book of Isaiah, would have enabled the cross-fertilisation of beliefs.
We also know that Greek philosophers, including Pythagoras, studied in Babylonia during
the same period.

441
See Keay, 2000: pp. 29-31 and 38. The dating of four Vedas to the period 1200 to 1000 BCE is
based on a sort of philological dead-reckoning by the Orientalist Max Mller (1823-1900). However,
if the finds of Painted Grey Ware pottery have been associated correctly with the Aryans, then it is
probable that the Vedas date from this period or somewhat later, as the earliest evidence of this
pottery style are dated no earlier than 1150 BCE. The Vedas reflect Iron Age Aryan society at a
period when it was already well established in the Punjab, along the banks of the Saraswati and
Yamuna rivers and before the Aryans had settled the Gangetic plain. The latter population movement,
which is thought to have occurred around 950/800 BCE, is the context for the events recounted in the
two much later epic poems (composed around 500 BCE): the Rmyana (Ramas Journey), by
Valmiki, and the Mahbhrata (The Great Tale of the Bhrata dynasty), attributed to Vyasa; see
Eraly, 2004: pp. 62, 68, 71 and 79; and Thapar, 1966: p. 30. Some scholars prefer an even later
dating for the Mahbhrata epic of around 300 BCE and of the early Purnas (300 BCE to 500 CE),
some of which according to tradition were also composed by Vyasa; see Doniger OFlaherty, 1975: p.
17.
442
A traditional date for the foundation of Zoroastrianism is 595 BCE; this could relate to the date
when Zoroaster had his first vision of God and His divine assistants, the Amesha Spenta. Alexander
the Great came to power in 336, almost exactly 258 years later. At the time of his first vision Zoroaster
was said to more than 30 years old and he died aged seventy-seven. Given these assumptions, he
must have died sometime between 558 and 548; if he had been 33 years old at the time of the vision
then he would have been born in 628 and died in 551.
208


Axial Age connections
So, if there was a degree of synchronicity between sages, in what way were their ideas
similar, and of what relevance is this to us today? According to Jaspers, a specific culture
emerged between 800 and 200 BCE in Europe and Asia, when man, as we know him
today, came into being.
443
Jaspers suggested that the great world religions came about
when the Axial sages applied logic to philosophical speculation. They nevertheless used
myths as analogies to explain their reasoning.
The Mythical Age, with its tranquillity and self-evidence, was at an end. The Greek,
Indian and Chinese philosophers were unmythical in their decisive insights, as were
the prophets [Zoroaster, Elijah, Jeremiah and Isaiah] in their ideas of God. Rationality
launched a struggle against myth (logos against mythos); a further struggle
developed for the transcendence of the One God against non-existent demons, and
finally an ethical rebellion took place against the unreal figures of the gods. Religion
was rendered ethical.
Myth, on the other hand, became the material of a language which expressed by it
something very different from what it had originally signified: it was turned into
parable. Myths were remoulded, were understood at a new depth during this
transition, which was myth-creating after a new fashion. This overall modification
of humanity may be termed spiritualisation. The unquestioned grasp on life is
loosened; the calm of polarities becomes the disquiet of opposites and antinomies.
Man becomes uncertain of himself and thereby open to new and boundless
possibilities.
What is new about this age, in all three areas of the world [China, India and the
West], is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his
limitations. He experiences the terror of the world and his own powerlessness. He
asks radical questions. Face to face with the void he strives for liberation and
redemption. By consciously recognising his limits he sets himself the highest goals.
In this age were born the fundamental categories within which we still think today,
and the beginnings of the world religions, by which human beings still live, were
created. For the first time philosophers appeared. Man proved capable of
contrasting himself inwardly with the entire universe. Together with his world and

443
Jaspers, 1953: p. 1.
209


his own self, Being becomes sensible to man [and] in speculative thought he lifts
himself up towards Being itself.
[While the paths to liberation and redemption] are widely divergent in their conviction
and dogma, common to all of them is mans reaching out beyond himself by growing
aware of himself within the whole of Being. What was later called reason and
personality was revealed for the first time during the Axial Period.
444

Jaspers was, however, less convincing in his attempt to explain why the Axial Age had
emerged, although it is clear that he considered the free exchange of ideas in the relative
freedom of small city states to be conducive.
445
According to Jaspers:
Endless possibilities were evolved in the free struggle of the spirit of a world rent by
power politics. Every force awoke and stimulated the rest. Through his highest
upsurge, however, man experienced all his distress, the insight into his imperfection
and imperfectability. The goal was redemption. Rational thinking developed and, in
conjunction with it, discussion [so that for] every position there was a counter
position. [Thus] insecurity became conscious. The world seemed to be growing
more and more chaotic.
In the end, the collapse took place. From about 200 BC onwards great political and
spiritual unifications and dogmatic configurations held the field. The Axial Period
ended with the formation of great States, which forcibly realised this unity (the unified
Chinese Empire of Tsin-Shi-Hwang-Ti, the Maurya dynasty in India, the Roman
Empire). These great change-overs from a multiplicity of States to world empires
took place simultaneously. The free conflict of spirits seems to have come to a
standstill [and] the imperial idea was realised in forms founded upon religion.
446

Free enquiry and disputation was replaced by orthodoxy enforced by the emperor. As a
liberal socialist and anti-Nazi, Jaspers was anxious to rescue the German philosophical
tradition of historical speculation as represented by Fichte, Hegel and Marx from the
dogmatic interpretations current in the 1930s and 1940s, the time of Stalin and Fascism. But

444
Jaspers, 1953: pp. 2-4.
445
Some writers have offered no explanation whatsoever. Arthur Koestler wrote of the miraculous
[pre-Christian sixth] century of Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-tze, of the Ionian philosophers and
Pythagoras as being a March breeze [that] seemed to blow across this planet from China to Samos,
stirring man into awareness; Koestler, 1964: p. 22.
446
Jaspers, 1953: p. 194.
210


the linkage between supposedly free thinking city states and the Axial Age sages is tenuous,
especially when one remembers that Zoroastrianism and Judaism were sponsored by the
rulers of the Persian Empire, and Platonism by another would-be emperor, Alexander the
Great, and his successors.
An alternative driver has been suggested by the anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1925-1995).
In the Axial Age a self-conscious transcendent had emerged. It was serviced by
something more like a clerisy [a priesthood] and less like a guild of shamans. The main
tool was writing, which disembodied the Word, and made it possible to revere it
irrespective of context. In pre-literate societies ritual events and chants were the main
means by which sacred ideas were signalled to people. That changed when a priest was
able to read out the word of God, as interpreted by a revered prophet. This was when the
authority of sacred scriptures emerged. Moreover, the expansion of the faith was also
connected with political centralisation. A literate clerisy was a good supplier of candidates for
the new royal bureaucracies.
447
Thus there was a mutually supportive relationship between
the development of state institutions and the ideological apparatus to enhance conformity
among the people. Generic salvation or wisdom doctrines were born, presumably from the
need to cater to a diversified and uprooted and frequently urban clientele, as trade and
manufacturing expanded, Gellner adds.
448
(The elements are discussed further at Appendix
D.)
The emergence of literature
The Axial Age can therefore be better understood as part of the development of a literary
culture, along the lines indicated by the philosopher and political activist Rgis Debray.
Literature emerged from the practice of writing down hymns, law codes, collections of
sayings or incantations, letters, and the dedications inscribed on monuments and tombs.
There is evidence for these types of literary works going back to at least 2500 BCE. The
earliest example of narrative literature is believed to be the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh,
which was preserved on clay tablets in the library of the Assyrian monarch Ashurbanipal the
Great (c. 685-627 BCE) in Nineveh (near modern Mosul, in Iraq). These are thought to date
from between 1300 and 1000 BCE, although older fragments have been dated to 2100 BCE.
But Sumerian cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphs, based on non-phonetic ideograms,
required years of study to master the thousand or so signs. It took the invention of the

447
Gellner, 1991: p. 84.
448
Gellner, 1991: p. 81-82.
211


alphabet where around 20-30 letters designated sounds for literacy to become
widespread. It is no coincidence that the word byblos for book derives from the Levantine
city of Byblos, which exported papyrus into Greece. Alphabetic writing was well established
in the coastal cities of Syria and Palestine by 1100 BCE, had spread to Greece by 750 BCE,
where the fully phonetic alphabet that we still use emerged, and displaced cuneiform in
Mesopotamia sometime after 500 BCE. It may have been adopted in India between 800-500
BCE.
449
The advance in writing brought by the alphabet and the scroll, of rolled up papyrus
or animal hide and later of parchment, permitted a literary culture to develop, which in turn
encouraged scholarly exchange. Initially epic poetry for public recitation was composed by
the Greeks Homer (around 850 BCE) and Hesiod (800 BCE), and the Indians Valmiki and
Vyasa (around 500 BCE) but, as is clear from the clustering of sages writing around 500
BCE, the compilation of sacred and philosophical literature concerning everything from the
cosmos to good conduct was not far behind.
Furthermore, Debray argues, What is written has an air of the prescriptive, a legislative
value [and gives authority to the phrase] So it is written. Inner faith has been reified;
the sacred trust has been frozen into dogma. We do not find the clergy, dogma, or the
Inquisition in oral society. As Lvi-Strauss reminded us, writing appears to be associated,
in a permanent manner, solely with societies founded on the exploitation of man by man.
450

Gellner contends that writing makes possible the codification and systemisation of
assertion, and hence the birth of doctrine. ... [Thus] doctrines can be defined and heresy
also becomes possible.
451

The great agrarian and trading empires of Eurasia encouraged an orthodox priesthood to
control the masses. Moreover, the price of internal unity was war with those professing
another religion, including external aggression. As despotic forces came to dominate
intellectual and spiritual life, Jaspers wrote, the great dogmatic religions, after the third
century AD, became factors of [internal] political unity. The Iranian religion became the

449
See Childe, 1964: pp. 200-201; Markoe, 2000: p. 111; Eraly, 2004: p. 59; and Lane Fox, 2009: p.
33.
450
Debray, 2004: pp. 74-80. Alphabetical simplification puts mysteries within reach. Thirty or
twenty-two signs rather than four or five hundred is a quantity that an entire tribe can master, not
merely an elite or the clergy. It transformed an esoteric practice of the sacred into a public service.
A secret social enclave into an outdoor cult. Every adult male can decipher the ancestral trust,
provided he has learned to read, and thus to pray. To worship, in this case, is to study, and to study
is to participate.
451
Gellner, 1991: pp. 73-74.
212


bearer of the Sassanian Empire from 224 onwards, the Christian religion the bearer of the
Roman Empire from the time of Constantine, Islam the bearer of the Arab Empire from the
seventh century. In contrast to the world of relatively free cultural exchanges in Antiquity,
divisions were fostered so that wars became religious wars.
452
Hence we lost the original
unity in spiritual ideas developed in the Axial Age, and must rediscover it if we are to face
down the threat from those fanatics who would reignite conflict between different peoples.
A second Axial Age?
This period of religious warfare lasted until the seventeenth century, when another
intellectual transformation took off and initiated the modern world we know today. Jaspers
was reluctant to designate the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
as a second Axial Age because these movements occurred in Europe and did not
encompass other continents except as a result of European colonisation.
453
However, recent
evidence for the transfer of technology and artistic motifs from China to Europe has been
presented by amateur historian Gavin Menzies.
454
Historians must investigate these
connections further to understand the cross-cultural engagements which we would now view
as forming the roots of globalisation. Finally, Jaspers hinted that we are experiencing a third
Axial Age, which genuinely involved communities and peoples right across the planet.
As already mentioned, after Jaspers, the Axial Age thesis was substantiated and refined
further by Ernest Gellner. For Gellner, the two profound intellectual revolutions in the history
of mankind comprised two great species of philosophy: Platonic and Cartesian. The
difference between them is fundamental. Platonism is the supreme expression of agro-
literate man, of a society endowed with a large and steady food supply, capable of
sustaining a minority elite [with] the capacity to codify, formalise, and preserve its ethos
and cognitive capital [that is, knowledge]. It is stable and aspires to stability. The
community is divided into the wise, the aggressive and the hard-working. Cartesianism, by
contrast, appears at the point of transition from such a social order to modernity, when the
wise cease to constitute a caste. Cartesianism is individualistic, and hence implicitly

452
Jaspers, 1953: pp. 58-59 and 195.
453
Jaspers, 1953: pp. 75-76. Europes exceptional spiritual achievements from 1500 to 1800, that
outshine science and technology Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Rembrandt,
Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, Bach, Mozart challenge comparison with the Axial Period of two and an half
millennia earlier. Is a second Axial Period to be discerned in these later centuries?
454
See Menzies, 2009. However, the authors hypothesis that a Chinese fleet sailed to the
Mediterranean is unconvincing.
213


egalitarian [whereas] Platonism makes man into a social animal, who cannot operate
on his own.
455

The story presented here is thus of two intellectual revolutions, which I have argued should
be thought of as the emergence of two paradigms, one conceived at the time of Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle in antiquity (the Hermetic paradigm), and the other by
scholars such as Galileo, Descartes, Kepler, Leibniz and Newton at the dawn of the modern
period (the Cartesian paradigm). By casting the story as paradigm shifts I am to some extent
breaking new ground, even if variations of the same thesis have been mooted before.
456
In
fact as early as the 1820s, Auguste Comte (1798-1857) offered a three stage transition in
the development of knowledge: the Theological [or Theocratic], or fictitious, the
Metaphysical, or abstract, and the Scientific, or positive. In the first stage, explanations are
provided in terms of the actions of supernatural beings: the dominion of Wills more or less
arbitrary. In the second, the age of Descartes and Leibniz, these ideas become rationalised
into abstract ideas such as Nature, Natural Law or Reason. The positive knowledge of the
third stage involves scientific methods of observation, experimentation and validation to
discover real causes and is based upon mathematics.
457

The first Axial Age involved a shift in viewpoint, whereby people saw themselves as separate
from Nature and could deploy reason to understand the cosmos, but retained animist
assumptions. The second great shift at the start of the Modern Age simply went a step
further to eliminate the residual mythical elements, now branded as superstition. The
Cartesian paradigm incorporated features of the Hermetic paradigm (such as the respect for
mathematics) but also modified the role of God in the cosmos. Following Comte, we might
view the Cartesian paradigm as a half-way house in the evolution of science. The paradigm
left room for God as Creator and Designer (consistent with the Deist compromise to extend
freedom of thought), and equated mental with spiritual processes, separate from the material
world which functioned according to divinely ordained rules. Since we now inhabit a time
when the Cartesian paradigm is being undermined we may anticipate another paradigm shift
to occur.

455
Gellner, 1991: pp. 118-121. Gellner adds, of the great literate civilizations, Hinduism is the one
closest to the Platonic blueprint (and I have always suspected that there is a historic link between the
two, although the evidence is lacking.).
456
Arthur Koestler asserted that AD 1600 is probably the most important turning point in human
destiny after 600 BC; Koestler, 1964: p. 222.
457
Comte, 1853: p. 2; cited in Braddock, 1975: p. 20. See also Comte, 1851: p. 10.
214


Even so, given that a work of history is, of course, a product of its own time as well as a
description of another and always as much about the present as it is about the past, we
must tread a little cautiously in theorising about periods and major shifts in intellectual
development, and neglecting the features of continuity.
458
We are inevitably reading history
in the light of our own time of an Age of Extremes.
459
We expect to see revolutions at every
turn, and emptied of meaning by constant overuse.
460
We must accept that there may be
no revolution or paradigm shift around the corner, and that our earlier tendency to interpret
the past in terms of grand narratives was unfounded. That said, paradigm shifts have
successively incorporated a previous understanding within a novel framework founded upon
the use of reason. They also expanded the base of the knowledgeable from the priesthood
to the professionals. So, will the next shift involve whole knowledge communities, as Jaspers
indicated, offering the opportunity of wider access to science and its application, or, as has
often been feared, will a technocracy emerge, where those with economic and political
power merge with the possessors of knowledge as our rulers? At least, we can say with
certainty, that the future is open to be changed.

458
Billington, 1980: p. 9.
459
As termed by historian Eric Hobsbawm, 1995.
460
Cited by Billington, 1980: p. 11.
215


Appendix B: Analogical reasoning

The salvation of the race from the spiritual standpoint has rested in the hands of
theologians, whose very literal doctrines and explicit formulas have given little impetus to
individual thought and idealism. Blind acceptance for twenty centuries has paralysed the
philosophical initiative. [Modern man] has forgotten how to think along abstract lines.
Manly P Hall, A Word to the Wise (1934)
461

Todays culture finds it hard to make sense of analogical reasoning, as the historian of
esoteric philosophy Manley Hall suggests. We have lost the capacity to interpret myths as a
form of analogical reasoning; and, because it is likely that the ancients did not understand
myths in a literal sense, we find ancient thinking mystifying.
The visible story of a myth obscured an occult truth, that was either too dangerous to talk
about openly or simply could not be explained any other way. The composers of myths,
some like Hesiod and Plato, known to history, and others, like the redactors of the Books
ascribed to Moses, who remain unidentified, were, of course, drawing upon long-established
traditions and tales. But they were composing for a purpose, often didactic, to express
metaphysical theories in a manner that was acceptable to their audience. The narration of
myths by professional actors and rhapsodes through recitals or songs, accompanied by
music, a chorus and dancers, was a feature of festivals, such as the Dionysia and
Panathenaea in Athens.
462
The earliest Greek-speaking scientists, like Thales, often wrote in
the form of poetry because this was the way their hearers expected things to be explained to
them. The rhythm of verse is a mnemonic device to aid memorisation. We know that both
Xenophanes (around 570-430 BCE), who had deduced from fossils that water had covered
the land in previous eras, and Empedocles of Acragas, author of a work on the origin and
evolution of life, wrote in verse. Lucretius De Rerum Natura, a discourse on the universe
written before 54 BCE, and Marcus Manilius Astronomica, composed between 10 and 14
CE, also followed an epic style of poetry.
463

461
Hall, 1934: p. 5
462
Plato, 2004: Introduction: p. xvi.
463
Manilius poem has been called a work of versified sums (A E Housman). See Mary Pendergraft,
2001, Manilius: Poetry and Science after Vergil, on
<http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/pendergraft.html> accessed on 24.08.2007.
216


Not all used poetry, of course. Plato framed his arguments in the form of dialogues between
protagonists, just as would have been the case when public debates were held in the citys
central square, the agora. But we should remember that Plato invented his own myths by
which to present his arguments; for example, with the story of Er and the soul. Myths use a
literary genre that we no longer employ in science. More to our liking are philosophers like
Aristotle whose work is in prose, not poetry, and employs logical argument rather than
convoluted mythical stories. To understand the latter we must unpack the analogical
reasoning to find the science within.
In chapter one I explained how Pythagoras discoveries in mathematics and harmonics,
which had revealed the essential orderliness of the cosmos, became a crucial component of
the Hermetic paradigm that framed the arcane science of antiquity. The heavens operated
according to rules, just as the earth did. Moreover, the heavens and the earth were inter-
related, as expressed in the Hermetic motto: As above, so below. Up to that point, the
ancients had used the tool of analogical reasoning to explain the hidden processes, that is,
the occult forces, behind natural phenomena. But now, arguably as a result of astrology (the
study of the stars), they could, in addition, use mathematics to investigate the nature of the
cosmos. Nonetheless the ancient scholars did not abandon analogical reasoning for
mathematics. While todays scientists use mathematics almost exclusively, and have
discarded the less precise tools of analogy and metaphor, the latter are still to be found
occasionally in order to describe mathematical concepts that are hard to envisage. For
example, in particle physics, scientists talk about the colours, flavours and right- or left-
handedness that pertain to certain sub-atomic particles as a way of visualising a quality that
has no everyday counterpart. Another example comes from string theory wherein the
additional and unobservable dimensions are described as being curled up so tightly that we
do not notice them. In biology, evolutionary theory uses metaphor from time to time as the
title of Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene (1976) shows.
464

Another example of science using analogy is the Gaia Hypothesis advanced by James
Lovelock.
465
With Lynn Margulis, Lovelock suggested that the planet should be thought of as
a finely balanced system, which if disturbed by humans, could become unstable with
unpredictable consequences. The planets living system (the biosphere) was interdependent
with the waters (the hydrosphere), the soils (pedosphere) and its gases (the atmosphere).

464
Dawkins, 1976.
465
Lovelock, 1979.
217


The world could be imagined as one being. So he revived the image of Mother Earth, or
Gaia, as She was known to the ancient Greeks. Analogies like this one can capture peoples
imagination in a way that mathematical presentations cannot.
Analogical reasoning involves drawing parallels between distant phenomena and those
things with which we are far more familiar. Myths are good examples of analogical
reasoning. They often involve the personification of natural forces, so that the behaviour of
those forces may become intelligible. At its simplest, we can look at the pictures at the edge
of old maps, showing the winds blowing from different directions and depicted as puffing
cherubs. Did the ancients believe that there was an actual being called Boreas, personifying
the North Wind, or did they regard such images as analogies? It has long been a matter of
debate whether the ancients conceived their myths to be true. The writings of the Stoics and
Atomists indicate clearly that many scholars recognised that the gods were personifications
of natural forces, or, in the case of historians like Herodotus and Euhemerus, that some
gods had originally been famous people. Whether or not the rest of society agreed with
these opinions, it remains the fact that they expressed themselves using such symbolic
devices, which literary theory calls tropes, for want of another form. If you lack barometer to
measure air pressure, you might as well think of the wind as the breath of a god-like
creature, even if you recognised, as did one of Greeces earliest natural philosophers,
Anaximander, that these were icons for a natural phenomenon.
Nor does analogical reasoning just imply that one phenomenon is like another (for then it
would be a simile rather than a metaphor). Instead it proposes that the phenomena being
compared may be explained by reference to the same operating principles; in other words,
that the rules governing one also govern the other. This assumption is fundamental to the
Hermetic paradigm.
Moreover, the question is not so much whether logical reasoning is better at discovering the
truth about the universe around us, but whether different types of reasoning are fit for
purpose. The ancients employed analogy because they had nothing better in their
intellectual toolbox. But their ideas expressed through myths were nonetheless valid. The
idea of a Creator god in the guise of a craftsman enabled the ancients to get to grips with
some of the mysteries of the cosmos and of existence. The physicist Paul Davies suggests
that Plato conceived of two deities, the Good and the Demiurge, as a way of conceptualising
the difference between being and becoming. The former is a state that exists and is
immutable. The latter is part of a process of change. The task of the Demiurge was to
fashion existing matter into an ordered state, using the Forms as a type of template or
218


blueprint. For Davies, the role of God, Platos the Good, is to provide the organising
principles upon which a contingent order rests. The processes of becoming are always
contingent, with each event depending upon a previous event and from their interaction. As
a result, reality is, as Plato proposed, an order characterised by complexity and
unpredictability.
466
While some ancient thinkers took these images literally, others
undoubtedly considered myths simply as metaphors for processes they did not fully
understand.
Faith and reason
Nor should our lack of familiarity with the way the ancients expressed their theories
invalidate those ideas or imply that they held irrational beliefs. Quite the contrary. We find in
ancient writings not only accurate descriptions of natural phenomena but also the echoes of
modern controversies. It is more plausible to think of the ancients as having their feet as
firmly planted on the ground as ourselves, but were simply expressing themselves
differently. By going back to the works of Pythagoras and his peers we can see how logical
and analogical reasoning were combined.
Some of their ideas became canonised into the doctrines of the salvation religions. So
typically we encounter religion, and its ancient scientific foundations, as if it were a matter of
faith in dogma rather than of open-minded enquiry. This trapped ancient knowledge within a
frame of unalterable truth, restricting free debate. Commonly, and erroneously, faith is seen
as those views that one holds despite evidence and reasons to the contrary.
467
But, to the
believers the opposite is the case: faith refers to holding firm to true knowledge in the face
of uncertainty. Without complete knowledge uncertainty is inevitable; there will always be a
risk of an unforeseen consequence or a detrimental outcome however carefully you plan
your activities. Even if you estimate the risk at one in a million you still need a decision rule
to tell you that such a risk is acceptable. This is what faith provides. Faith involves holding
firm to a position despite the uncertainty that exists. The opposite of faith is folly, which
arises from a disregard of evidence.
Having the confidence to take a course of action to, say, adopt a particular path in life (to
start a business, to commit to a relationship, to adopt a code of conduct or, simply, to cross a

466
Davies, 1993: pp. 35 and 182-183. Davies argues that the future is not implicit in the present,
whereby open systems enjoy a type of freedom arising from the indeterminism of nature (pp.
181-182).
467
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_rationality>
219


busy road) may be based on experience and calculation, but ultimately involves trusting your
judgement or the judgement of authority figures. In principle, therefore, there is no difference
between people who say that they put their trust in Providence and those who express
confidence in Science or Progress. Both statements concern faith. To be sure, in the West,
and since the Enlightenment, as the philosopher and historian Tzvetan Todorov has pointed
out, we have become more sceptical about science and religious authority, but nihilism the
belief in nothing remains a hard creed to follow, if not entirely pointless.
468
Another
philosopher Karl Jaspers noted that without faith we are left with mechanistic thinking,
the irrational and ruin.
469
On learning that there was good evidence for the existence of the
Higgs boson, physicist Peter Higgs declared: I had faith in the theory.
470

We need dialogue not just debates between protagonists if all parts of humanity are to
cooperate in resolving the very real global challenges ahead. Fortunately, the arcane
science of antiquity can help us make sense of the salvation religions and allow us to see
the connections between reason and faith.

468
Todorov, 2009: pp. 6-7. Before the Enlightenment, human beings lived, most of the time, under an
authority that was religious in nature. Indeed, religion was the greatest target of Enlightenment
criticisms, the aim of which was to allow human beings to control their own destiny. The principle
[adopted was] that no authority, no matter how well established and prestigious, is immune to
criticism. Knowledge has two sources, reason and experience, and both are accessible to everyone.
Reason was to be given priority as an instrument of knowledge, not as a motive for human conduct; it
was opposed to faith, not to passions. Indeed, the latter were, in their turn, to be released from
external constraints.
469
Jaspers, 1953: p. 220. By ruin, Jaspers meant the submission to instinctual drives to dominate,
engage in unrestrained sexual activity and so on.
470
Interview with Jessica Griggs, New Scientist, 21 July 2012, p. 28.
220


Metaphors and metaphysics
With Pythagoras, mathematics emerged as the language of science, but only the innermost
circles tried to express their ideas through geometry and this work is now largely lost to us.
The centrality of mathematics in science was consolidated with Newtons Principia (1687), in
which he laid out the main laws of physics using algebra, geometry and calculus. Science
diverged from religion in its use of formal logic and this has enabled scientists, such as
Einstein, to express ideas that appear counter-intuitive to the average person. The
consensus today is that science is simply a method for finding out about natural phenomena.
Science concerns only those hypotheses that are capable of being proved or disproved by
sufficient evidence. Metaphysics has in turn become the exclusive preserve of religious or
academic philosophy, despite the fact that much of cosmology is speculative. A dictionary of
philosophy states that metaphysics [while] having the avowed aim of arriving at profound
truths about everything, is sometimes held to result only in obscure nonsense about
nothing.
471
The divergence between scientists, academic philosophers and theologians,
allows each discipline to work within their own silos and makes it difficult for educators, or
the media, to tackle controversial subjects that stray across these professional boundaries.
We live in cultures where in one location you are permitted to believe in whatever takes your
fancy (as long as you are prepared to respect everyones elses beliefs or stance on life); but
in another you risk anathema and worse for dissenting from dogma. It is an open question
whether the academy has in practice been more open-minded than the church. The history
of science is littered with cases where the mainstream paradigm has marginalised
dissenters. Worryingly, each of the camps expects to win, eventually; this is, then, the
impending clash of civilizations. The fundamentalists are on a collision course, while the
agnostics hope to sit it out on the fence, and the rest of us are at risk of becoming collateral
damage.
Today, precisely in order to avoid the clash between modern rationalism and dogmatic
religion, there is a tendency to place knowledge in one box and belief into another. The
former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, once described the intelligent design
controversy as a being based upon a category error.
472
To cut a long story short, the
Archbishop was arguing that while science deals with the question how, religion answers

471
Urmson and Re, 1989: p. 202.
472
Interview with Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian, 21 March 2006: p. 11.
221


the question why. Hence, different kinds of question lead to different kinds of answers,
which cannot be reconciled. In much the same way, the biologist Stephen Jay Gould
presented a framework of this kind in order to, as he saw it, resolve the apparent conflict
between science and religion. He defined science as a practice of research and teaching
he called it a magisterium concerning the empirical. Religions domain of teaching authority
lies in theology and ethics. The two magisteria do not overlap. This framework is convenient
for teachers, because a science lesson does not have to involve itself in serious
metaphysics, while religious education can content itself with describing a tradition and in
discussing morality. The magisteria are separate but equal, with one centred on mythos and
the other on logos, as distinct paths to knowledge.
However, this stance of separating the how from the why will not save religion. As one
commentator, neuroscience professor Colin Blakemore, has explained, the process of
Christian accommodation is a bit like the fate of field mice confronted by a combine
harvester, continuously retreating into the shrinking patch of uncut wheat. Citing a public
debate at the University of Oxford between the biologist Richard Dawkins and the former
bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, in February 2009, Blakemore reports that Dr Harries
claimed for religion a territory that science can never invade, a totally safe sanctuary for
Christian field mice. Science is brilliant at questions that start how, but religion is the only
approach to questions that start why. But why questions can be recast as the kind of
how questions that science answers so well, leaving no rationale for religious explanations,
besides those around ethics.
473

In any case this neat division of educational activity is hardly tenable in practice. For a start,
it is important not to box-in science to exclude speculation. Science cannot advance without
the generation of ideas deserving of investigation. As was pointed out thirty years ago by the
philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), there exists not only an impasse
between faith and reason but also between an anything goes approach and the proposition
that only theories grounded thoroughly in logic and evidence are valid.
474
Bridging this divide
may be as uncomfortable for scientists committed to experimental rigour as it is for the
faithful devoted to dogma. Science is not sealed off from metaphysics. Ancient libraries

473
Colin Blakemore, Science is just one gene away from defeating religion, The Observer, 22
February 2009. See also a debate between philosopher Julian Baggini and physicist Lawrence
Krauss on Science vs. philosophy: which can answer the big questions of life?, The Observer: The
New Review, 9 September 2012: pp. 20-21.
474
Feyerabend, 1975.
222


contained scrolls or books that concerned ideas that were further along the shelf, that is,
beyond (the literal meaning of the adjective meta), from the texts on physics describing the
world as was encountered by the senses. But the scrolls lay together on the same shelf all
the same. We constrain our knowledge if we limit ourselves to analysing the empirical.
The interrelationship between different forms of knowledge is illustrated in Figures B-1 and
B-2. I make no claims concerning originality here, as this ground has been covered by many
noted philosophers, from David Hume (1711-1776) in the eighteenth century to Karl Popper
(1902-1994) and Van Quine (1908-2000) in the twentieth. Here, reasoning is divided into
three types: logical, analogical and inspirational. Science uses almost entirely logical
reasoning, mostly mathematics, in a box labelled logos. Common sense also uses a great
deal of logical reasoning, in that it is based upon experience and induction.
475
But both
common sense and religion also draw upon analogical reasoning. Unlike philosophers
people use analogy all the time in their everyday communication. Philosophers, however, do
not like analogy as a means for ascertaining the truth because it involves generalising from
the particular (something we know about already) to other contexts; it is a form of inference.
It is often dismissed as mythos, though, as I have suggested, this characterisation obscures
its validity. Logic proceeds from generalisations (axioms) to the particular, that is, through a
process of deduction; and this permits the enquirer to test the theory against evidence. That
said, as David Hume pointed out, a philosopher might well starve if he tried to live by the
rules of logic alone and ignored common sense.
476

475
Davies, 1993: p.27.
476
Hume, 1748, Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding, Section 4, Part 2, pp. 113-
118.
223


Figure B-1: Sources of belief
RELIGION
Evidential
Empirical
Mystical
Revelatory
Intuitive
SCIENCE
COMMON SENSE
Figure B-2: Forms of reasoning
RELIGION
Critical/ Logical
(Deductive)
Inspirational
Analogical
(Inductive/
Inference)
SCIENCE
COMMON SENSE
224


By contrast with analogical reasoning, revelatory or inspirational experiences are infrequent
occurrences. People who have such experiences often say that suddenly everything
appeared to be connected and they had a feeling of oneness with the world, the universe, or
God.
477
There is a sense that disconnected things are now meaningful. The author and
priest, Jerome Bertram, described this experience as similar to being in love, when one
interprets a glance from ones beloved as hugely significant.
478
Inspirational experiences
may also provide penetrating insights into problems, with unexpected connections
discovered, which may turn out to be fruitful avenues for logical investigation. Here Humes
proposition that invariable [or] uniform experience amounts to a proof and his advice
that a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, is helpful.
479
Analogy and
inspiration can therefore be helpful tools for reasoning, although they cannot be relied upon.
We must assess the degree to which insight gained from analogy or inspiration is consistent
with evidence or with testimony across the ages.
Despite the tendency towards dogmatism, the repertoire of religious inspiration provides the
basis for holding purist forms of rationalisation in check and keeping us in tune with reality.
The philosopher, priest and theologian John Macquarrie (1919-2007) supported the Hume
test to establish the validity of knowledge gained from insight and vision. He advocated
attunement to existence whereby the individual has become subtly aware of his total
situation.
480
Since no sharp division can be made between feeling and understanding if we
are to make full use of all our senses, Macquarrie argued that we should accept ways of
knowing that do not only rely upon facts. Although it is not a truth that is provable, and
presumably the only kind of testing to which it could be subjected would be to ask others to
participate in the vision or follow the road leading to it, insight that expresses itself in a
language evocative rather than descriptive is a valid source of knowledge. It has affinities
with such religious experiences as revelation and mystical vision; or with aesthetic
experiences of perceiving things in the depth of their inter-relatedness. The only language

477
See, for instance, Davies, 1993: pp. 226-227.
478
Sermon on 4 September 2010 at the Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, Oxford. The
journalist Raphael Behr echoed this in asserting that being dumped has a lot in common, emotionally
and cognitively, with losing faith; The Observer: The New Review, 19 September 2010.
479
Hume, 1999: Section 10, Part 1, p. 170.
480
John Waters talks of an experience of harmony with an invisible, infinite reality with a logic that
could be apprehended only by a process of feeling, of intuition; Waters, 2008: p. 100.
225


that in the end seems appropriate to talk about such matters is the language of myth and
poetry; or perhaps one can only become silent.
481
It is this way of knowing that permits
humans to conceive of something unthinkable which we must think all the same, in
Jaspers words.
482
Humans have a capacity for inner reflection on their experiences and for
imagination. We cannot access these experiences unless we permit expression through
analogy, especially when those ideas are hard to explain.
Reconciling the Ancient and Modern
Two intertwined themes are expounded in this essay. I have emphasised the difference
between the ways ancient and modern thinkers have sought to understand the world and
contrasted the employment of mythos and logos. It is clear that modern science scorns
mythos as a mode of explanation, yet, as I have suggested, it may, at least occasionally,
deploy analogy to facilitate insight when appropriate. It is also tempting to imagine that the
Atomists of Antiquity, or a natural philosopher like Aristotle, are more modern and scientific
than their apparently more religiously inclined Platonist or Stoic peers.
483
But this would
entail reading our times and prejudices onto the past and in any case appears to be
mistaken.
The break between science and religion is characteristic of modern times. It arose in
reaction to the wars of religion that plagued Christendom in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Prior to this, mythos and logos were both used as the basis of scientific enquiry as
well as in theology. The difference between Plato and Aristotle is that the former introduced
myths, most notably the myth of the Craftsman God, the Demiurge, while the latter did not.
However, the difference is more apparent than real. Aristotles explanation of how the
cosmos came to be also used the analogy of craftsmanship. In his Physics Aristotle
compared a building with the handiwork of nature. Each part of a building has its own
function: the kitchen for cooking, the bedroom for sleeping, the workshop for work, and so
on. A structure with an arrangement of functionally specific sub-systems manifests
intelligence, as Plato and Aristotle saw it, and demonstrated that a building, or a natural
system, was purposeful. Aristotle dispensed with the myth of the Divine Craftsman, but
retained an analogy with the creativity and purposefulness of craftsmanship. A craft is a skill,
technique or art, and it derives from the idea of possessing a power or force. A growing plant

481
Macquarrie, 1973: pp. 243-244.
482
Macquarrie, 1973: p. 246.
483
See, for example, Sedley, 2007: pp. 134 and 168.
226


or a bird building a nest are displays of purpose-driven craft in nature, just as a craftsman
builds a house or a boat. There is an inner, occult, force at work. The scientist can deduce
the essential form that has brought the structure, or system, into being by analysing its
actual manifestation.
484

Aristotle omitted a mythical Creator because he had dispensed with mythos to rely solely
upon logos. But it is still the logos of analogical reasoning. As for Plato, his creation myth is
merely the account by one party to a debate, namely the, possibly fictitious, Pythagorean
scholar, Timaeus of Locri. Platos own opinion is not included in this unfinished work of
around 360 BCE. The Timaeus-Critias is set during Socrates lifetime, forty years before it
was actually composed, at a point when Plato was still a young man, who listened to the
masters but kept largely quiet. Plato, it seems, has distanced himself from his own writings
by giving the speech to Timaeus. Through this device Plato was able to hold constant to his
teacher Socrates inclination that metaphysical speculation had little value unless backed by
evidence from physics. Such theorising, Plato is saying, is all very well for Pythagoreans, but
not for the followers of Socrates.
485
That said, we know that Platos interest in mathematics,
which he shared with the Pythagoreans, would have inclined him to a much more logical and
rigorous cosmology had he had the mathematics with which to tackle the problem.

484
Sedley, 2007: pp. 173-181.
485
See Sedley, 2007: p. 243.
227


Appendix C: Gnostic myths and Christian heresies
Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, [for] she is the tree
of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy. Keep hold of
instruction; do not let go; guard her for she is your life. Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of evildoers. Keep straight the path and all your ways will be
sure. Proverbs, 3: 13 and 16; and 4: 13-14 and 26.

The Gnostics have excited speculation in proportion to the obscurity of their writings: the
more difficult their works are to understand, the more far-fetched are the theories
surrounding them. At the heart of Gnosticism are a group of myths which may be seen as
providing a preface to the Book of Genesis. Indeed, modern scholars agree that Gnosticism
is characterised by an underlying myth: that humans have within them a divine part that
came from the higher realms.
486
Moreover, Gnostic myths offer a theory for the evolution of
the Pleroma, the divine fullness, explaining how the cosmos emanated from God and how
His design had been fulfilled. Like other ancient philosophers, the Gnostics used myth as an
explanatory device, to provide insights through metaphor, and although this appears to be
convoluted and obscure to us today, the arcane meaning illuminates several aspects of the
Hermetic paradigm. To understand the significance of Gnostic myths we must look for the
hidden message contained within them. We also need to be aware of the motivation for
elaborating these myths, which lay in the practices of mystic fraternities and Gnostic schools
that flourished in antiquity.
Gnostic schools of thought were part of a wider syncretistic religious movement that sought
to recover the universal truths and to assimilate the pagan gods into the monotheist
salvation religions within a single framework, derived from Platonism. The theosophist
scholar G R S Mead (1863-1933), noted that the Gnostic doctors could not believe that the
Jews were the only nation in the past to whom God had revealed Himself. Such men
thought that they saw in the Christian Gospel a similarity of doctrine and a universalism
which was consanguineous with the inner teachings of the ancient [pagan] faiths, and set to
work to endeavour to check the exclusive and narrowing tendencies which they saw so

486
Lewis, 2013: p. 17.
228


rapidly developing among the less instructed, who made faith superior to knowledge.
487

Gnostic theories thus sought to reconcile Judaism and emerging Christianity with ancient
Greek philosophy, along with Zoroastrian, Babylonian and Egyptian theologies.
Gnostic schools propagated their theories by a system of teaching that comprised distinct
stages of initiation and education. The full explanation was offered only to those who, as it
were, completed the course. Their ideas underpinned several Christian heresies and Gnostic
teachers were prone to forming their own sects, leading to criticism from Platonist
philosophers, as well as orthodox clerics. Some sects appear to have taught that the
material world was evil, being the work of a Satanic demiurge, and not directly that of God,
and thereby suggesting a fundamental estrangement between humanity and its Creator.
Platonic and Zoroastrian origins
Plato supposed that what we see as material things have ideal forms. Forms and ideas are
timeless whereas mundane phenomena are transitory. Beauty, for instance, is only
imperfectly revealed in a person and one can only imagine the ideal, never finding it in
practice. Moreover, everything on Earth is constantly changing, developing, or becoming,
something else. So, absolutes, ideas or forms, are never experienced; they may only be
comprehended through the power of reasoning. This theory did not only apply to
categorisation, but also to mathematics. Whenever we find evidence of straight lines, curves
or other geometric patterns in the world, we must conclude that a hidden structure is
shaping the reality we perceive.
488
As the author Jos Luis Borges (1899-1986) recognised,
we must use our imagination to truly grasp reality. In a way life is but a dream, an illusion,
from which we must awaken.
489
We must look beyond the real to perceive the true (while
still paying due attention to our senses in case we stumble over the actual objects in our
path, or get carried away by speculative metaphysics into pure fantasy). If we are to

487
Meade, 1896: p. xxiii (the book may be found at
<www.archive.org/stream/pistissophia003016mbp/pistissophia003016mbp_djvu.txt>). The same
points are made by Seligmann, 1975: p. 104.
488
Armstrong, 2006: pp. 316-317. Armstrong cites a quotation from mathematician Roger Penrose:
when one sees a mathematical truth, ones consciousness breaks through into this world of ideas
and makes contact with it (in Gottlieb, 2000: p. 170).
489
The two metaphors Life is a Dream and Time is a River considered by Borges to be central
in delineating our condition, are derived from ancient philosophy; see Edmund White, A walk on the
wild side in 70s New York, The Observer Review, 3 January 2010: p. 5. Borges gave a talk, one of
two talks he gave everywhere all the time with no variation. This talk was his on how the best
metaphors were clichs because theyre true: Life Is a Dream and Time Is a River and any effort to
invent newer, fresher images is false and misleading.
229


understand what is happening around us we have to think abstractly, looking to the realm of
ideas, which has its own logic, but always, of course, verifying theories and concepts against
the evidence from the real.
The writer Andr Nataf called Gnostic theories a sort of mystical existentialism, thereby
distinguishing them from those of Platonic essentialism or idealism.
490
The Gnostics
acknowledged that the starting point of the quest for knowledge is an awareness of ones
physical being. We start from where we are, and that the material world is the source of our
sensations and perception, which we then interpret in the mind. Knowing is presupposed by
being, as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has emphasised. Authentic knowledge is always
tested by experience and practice and it is the tension (or the dialectic process) between
consciousness and action that renders existence comprehensible.
491
Moreover, in order to
appreciate the ideal, or the good, we have to perceive the imperfect and evil. Thus
knowledge implies an understanding of both good and evil, which the Gnostics symbolised in
the image for eternity, a serpent swallowing its tail, called Ouroboros; it is a symbol
associated with the word Abraxas, from which we derive the conjurers spell
Abracadabra.
492
Furthermore, knowledge will never be complete and so the work of
science will never finish.
493
The implication follows that our understanding of the truth is
provisional. While we may recognise the orderliness in the cosmos it does not mean that we
can infer its purpose or destiny from our observation and theories.
494

490
Nataf, 1994: pp. 36-37. The same point was made by Jonas, 1958: By idealism in philosophy we
mean any doctrine which says that beyond material reality there is a higher, spiritual reality, in terms
of which the material reality is in the last analysis to be explained This theory separates matter
from motion: it thinks of matter as just a dead mass, so that motion always has to be impressed on
matter from the outside [But] the world does not consist of things but of processes, in which things
come into being and pass away; see Cornforth, 1954: pp. 22-27 and 42-43.
491
In Sartres language, what I have termed consciousness is viewed as an activity in which one is
projecting oneself upon ones surroundings; thus Sartre talks of a dialectic between project and
practice (or praxis); see Chiodi, 1978: pp. ix and 3-4; and Macquarrie, 1973: pp. 128-129. On the
acquisition of gnosis from experience see Harris, 1999: pp. 12-15.
492
See Seligmann, 1975: p. 111. The word Abraxas is a code that can be added up to 365 to
indicate the full circle of the horizon; see Flowers, 1995: p. 97.
493
As Karl Marx once observed: All science would be superfluous if the [outward] form of appearance
of things directly coincided with their essence; Marx, 1894: p. 956. Sartre also averred that existence
precedes essence; cited in Macquarrie, 1973: p. 67.
494
A point also made by Hume, 1748. In his essay, Hume argued that all our reasonings concerning
matters of fact are founded on a species of Analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the
same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. Where the causes are entirely
230


This background provides an entry point to understanding the rather complicated
relationship between Gnosticism and so-called dualism, whereby the world is characterised
as evil. It is a charge often levelled by orthodox Christians at the Gnostics. The conflation of
matter with the profane encouraged the heretical idea that creation was the work of the
demiurge (taken to be the partial mover or the hired hand, the craftsman) rather than that of
God Himself. In Genesis chapter one the Bible uses the name Elohim for God. Elohim has
the same root, El, as in the name Allah, to indicate the source of power. Chapters two and
three, describing how the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in order for humankind to live
there, use a formula Adonai YHWH, the Tetragramaton, or five letters, to indicate a name
that should never be spoken. Biblical scholars surmise that the Tetragramaton should be
pronounced Yahweh although, of course, orthodox Jews think it should not be uttered
aloud and David Rohl has drawn attention to Yahwehs similarity to the Babylonian god Ea,
whose name he thinks was pronounced Ya.
495
It was Ea who created humankind with the
help of the goddess Ishtar and later advised Ziusudra (Noah) to build his ark when El sent
the Flood to destroy the world.
So the God of Genesis has two aspects deriving from the Babylonian high gods El (Allah),
the Creator but also the Destroyer, and Ea (Yahweh), who is normally considered to be
humanitys helper. The Yahwist account has been identified with the Aaronid priesthood,
descended from Moses brother Aaron, which controlled the Ark of the Covenant, kept for
several centuries in the Jerusalem Temple. The Elohist account is seen as the work of the
Levite priesthood of the northern kingdom of Israel, which was destroyed by the Assyrians in
732 to 721 BCE, leaving the Jerusalem Temple as the sole guardian of the books of the

similar, the analogy is perfect, and the inference, drawn from it, is regarded as certain and conclusive.
[However], when we infer any particular cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the
other, and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities, but what are exactly sufficient
to produce the effect. Allowing, therefore, the gods to be the authors of the existence or order of
the universe; it follows, that they possess that precise degree of power, intelligence, and
benevolence, which appears in their workmanship; but nothing farther can ever be proved.
[Moreover,] the question is entirely speculative as it could just as well have been argued that the
universe could [have] proceed[ed] from the fortuitous concourse of atoms since it is impossible for
you to know anything of the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to
the full, in the effect (Sections 9 and 11, pp. 165, 189-190). In relation to religious philosophers, he
concluded: Though I should allow your premises, I must deny your conclusion (p. 197).
495
Rohl, 2003: pp. 36-38 and 173-175.
231


Torah.
496
These two Hebrew traditions about the one God allowed later synthesisers to
reconcile Genesis with Platos myth of the demiurge, which speaks of God as the artisan or
craftsman who made the world. The version of the Book of Genesis we know today treats
El/Ea as one Supreme Being, although the editorial process left traces of the earlier
traditions in the text.
In the Timaeus-Critias, written around 360 BCE, Plato recounts a dialogue between a
Pythagorean philosopher called Timaeus of Locri, a Greek city in Italy, and his old teacher
Socrates. According to Timaeus, God proclaimed that I am the craftsman and father;
anything created by me is imperishable unless I will it.
497
There is a Biblical reference to
God being the source of the wisdom of the artisan in the Wisdom of Solomon, originally
written in Greek in the second century BCE: from the greatness and beauty of created
things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator [and] it is Your will that works of
wisdom should not be without effect (13: 5 to 14: 5). Wisdom, Sophia, is a breath [or
emanation] of the power of God [and] because of her purity she pervades and penetrates
all things (7: 24-25). Platonists, Jews and Christians used a similar set of images in seeking
to understand the creation of the cosmos, and its future destruction.
The Pleroma referred to the fullness of divine powers, and was thought to be composed of
emanations from the Mind of God, known as ons. It is Platos realm of ideas. The ons
are like principles or archetypes: abstractions that allow us to analyse reality in the realm of
ideas. Gnostics developed the concept of the ons as a way of assimilating the pagan
pantheon of gods, alongside Platos ideas, within a monotheist framework. The early
Christians were familiar with this vocabulary as we can see from the reference by Paul of
Tarsus to the Pleroma in his letter to the Colossians. In this letter Paul, or an imitator, warns
his congregation against being misled by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human
traditions [or] according to the elemental sprits into the worship of angels. Paul
emphasises that the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily in Jesus Christ (Letter to the

496
Lane Fox, 1992: pp. 58-59. Aaron was also a descended of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob.
The tribe of Levi received no lands in Canaan when Joshua conquered these territories in the
fourteenth century BCE because they acted as the Israelites priests and received a tithe.
497
Plato, 2008, Timaeus and Critias: p. 30. The perishable nature of the world, its entropy, was
explicable to the Pythagoreans because God, the demiurge, delegated the task of creating living
organisms to the gods, whom He had created to inhabit the heavens (see pp. 28-30). The gods could
be blamed for problems but God was always both great and good. In Zoroastrian, Christian and
Muslim versions the old gods were demonized and their role in creation became that of the angels.
232


Colossians, 2: 8-9, 18).
498
The Pleroma, as the perfect fulfilment of knowledge, is contrasted
with the emptiness of the outer darkness, the Kenoma.
We may think of ons, which represent segments of the Pleroma, as if they were a scientific
category. For instance, an ancient natural philosopher might say that birds are a species of
fauna that lives in the air. Birds have defined qualities that enable them to fly and nest in
trees. Today a biologist would say that birds are adapted to their ecological niche and that
they belong to the class aves, containing many orders, genera and species of birds. When
we are talking about birds, moderns and ancients are using the same words. But when an
ancient philosopher talks of an on, or a modern biologist is lecturing about a species,
neither is discussing a real phenomenon. The point of this exercise is not to prove that
modern biologists are more informed though, of course, they are, and have superior
models but to illustrate a parallel. A species is a concept, just as an on is. An on and
a species are both ways to categorise things. However hard you search, you will never come
across a species in real life; the concept only exists in the realm of ideas. Nevertheless a
species is a meaningless concept unless we use it to analyse the creatures that we actually
encounter in life.
When we read about hierarchies of ons in Gnostic texts we should understand that we are
dealing with categories. ons provide a means to categorise reality into progressively larger
bundles of concepts. The biggest bundle of ideas imaginable is the universe. But no human
can possibly think about something so immense, so if the universe exists (and we have good
reason to suppose that it does) then so the argument goes only God could have thought
of it. In a way God and humankind are similar. Adapting Descartes famous dictum, Cogito
ergo sum, I think therefore I am, we come up with a slightly different formulation: If it is
conceivable, so am I.
499
It follows that the ons are not identical to God, but emanations
from God, that is, His thoughts, or, collectively, the Mind of God. The higher ons, like
infinity or eternity, are just about conceivable by humans but not perceptible to the senses.
(In contrast, God is inconceivable and can only be imagined in metaphors.) Furthermore it
follows that only the lowest ons ideas like beauty come close to being sensible. But
they will always remain ideas, accessible to reason alone, not to sight, hearing, touch, taste
or smell. Gnostics also suggested that every on was a pair of male and female aspects a

498
The authenticity of Pauls letter to the Colossians has been doubted; see MacCulloch, 2010: pp.
97, 140, and 1025 (note 53).
499
Descartes, 1644, 1912 edition, Les Principes de la Philosophie: Part I: VII: pp. 27 and 167.
233


syzygy since no emanation can exist without presupposing the existence of its source (the
monad) and the polarities (the dyad).
500

A synthesis of beliefs
The cosmopolitan cities of Alexandria, Antioch and Babylon were the setting for Jewish,
Persian, Chaldean and Greek philosophers attempts to reconcile their traditions. Interest in
the Torah grew among Platonists after it was translated into Greek around 250 BCE. The
other Biblical books were translated by about 130 BCE and the four Gospels were in any
case composed in Greek so that they could gain a wide circulation. Zoroastrian books had
been translated sometime after Alexander the Greats conquest of Persia in 330 BCE.
Gnostics set to work melding Hellenist cosmology with the Book of Genesis and the other
non-canonical works, such as the Book of Enoch. They also drew upon the Zoroastrian
myths of the creation, in which six holy immortals (the Amesha Spenta) were tasked by God
to form the cosmos. In the myth of twin powers, the struggle between the Holy Spirit (Spenta
Mainyu) and the Deceitful Spirit (Ahura Mainyu or Ahriman) dominates the evolution of the
cosmos.
501
In an unorthodox variant from Zoroastrianism, the myth forever pits order, light
and enlightenment against chaos, darkness and ignorance. Another common element to
Gnostic theories was the myth of Sophia (meaning Wisdom). An extensive literature
concerning Wisdom, chokmah in Hebrew, flourished within Judaism, which conceived
Sophia as Gods helpmate. Moreover, such attempts to uncover the continuity in universal
truth were not restricted to the Gnostic fringes of philosophy but had been central to
mainstream metaphysical speculation for centuries.
The Greek Platonist scholar Plutarch (46-120 CE) refers to the many fabulous stories told
by the wisest of men that there are two gods, as it were, the one the Artificer of good and
the other of evil. Plutarch expounded the myth of the twin powers thus:

500
The artist and historian Kurt Seligman (1900-1962) states the Chaldeans never accepted a god
without dividing him into male and female principle; see Seligmann, 1975: p. 105.
501
G R S Mead states that the Gnostics drew from the wisdom Egypt, Chaldea, Babylonia, Assyria,
Phoenicia, Ethiopia, the books of Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato, of the Magi and Zoroaster; and
even perhaps in some indirect way from those of the Brahmans (see Meade, 1896: p. xxiv). It is also
thought that Buddhism was known to Gnostic circles in Babylonia. According to Bishop Cyril of
Jerusalem (c. 315-386 CE), considered one of the fathers of the church, a heretic named Terebinthus
of Turbo, a pupil of Scythianus of Alexandria, had visited India around 50 CE and brought back the
doctrine of the two principles; he called himself Buddas. Terebinthus lived in Babylon where, Cyril
alleges, probably incorrectly, Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, grew up as a slave in his household
(see Catechetical Lectures, 6: 21-24 on <www.newadvent.org/fathers/310106.htm>).
234


Oromanzes [that is, Ahura Mazda or Ohrmazd], born from the purest light, and
Areimanius [Ahriman], born from darkness, are constantly at war with each other;
and Oromanzes created six gods, the first of Good Thought, the second of Truth, the
third of Order, and, of the rest, one of Wisdom, one of Wealth, and one the Artificer of
Pleasure in what is Honourable. But Areimanius created rivals, as it were, equal to
those in number. Then Oromanzes enlarged Himself to thrice his former size, and
removed Himself as far distant from the Sun as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and
adorned the Heavens with the stars. Twenty-four other gods He created and
placed in an egg. But those [daemons] created by Areimanius, who were equal in
number to the others, pierced through the egg and made their way inside; hence
evils are now combined with good.
This very ancient opinion comes down from writers on religion and from lawgivers to
poets and philosophers; it can be traced to no source, but it is in circulation in
many places; in as much as Nature brings, in this life of ours, many experiences in
which both good and evil are comingled, or better, to put very simply, Nature brings
nothing that which is not combined with something else, we may assert that it has
come about as the result of two opposed principles and two antagonistic forces, one
of which guides us along a straight course to the right, while the other turns us aside
and backwards.
But a destined time shall come when it is decreed that Areimanius, engaged in
bringing pestilence and famine, shall be utterly annihilated and shall disappear; and
then shall the Earth become a level plain and there shall be one manner of life and
one form of government for a blessed people who shall all speak one tongue (Isis
and Osiris, 45, 46 and 47).
The idea that there is a strife of opposites underpinning material reality, and permitting
change, goes back at least to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
502
Plato, as already
noted, emphasised the absoluteness of the ideal sphere. Thus we can see that the myth
recounted by Plutarch contrasts the intrinsic duality found in the real world of matter with the

502
In his work On Nature, Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote that all things happen by strife and necessity.
Nature is not an unchanging Being but something that is forever Becoming, whereby everything
flows. Heraclitus is seen as the founder of process philosophy, outlined in modern times by Alfred
North Whitehead (1861-1947), along with Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and others. In process
philosophy, categories, the basic units by which we analyse what exists, are not to be confused with
reality, which is constantly evolving. Thus reality is better conceived as a process of change rather
than as a collection of stable things, which may be categorised.
235


perfection and unity that characterises the ideal or spiritual sphere, accessible only through
reasoning. From this we must conclude that material existence is less perfect than the ideal;
and it is this truism lying at the heart of the dualist controversy which has sustained
philosophical speculation, in one form or another, for almost three thousand years.
The same idea is found within Jewish esoteric thought, as revealed in the Dead Sea scrolls.
In the Community Rule it is stated that God created man to govern the world, and has
appointed for him two spirits in which to walk until the time of His visitation [in the last days]:
the spirits of truth and falsehood. Those born of truth spring from a fountain of light, and
those born of injustice spring from the source of darkness. All the children of righteousness
are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of darkness
are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of Darkness. The Angel of
Darkness leads all the children of light astray for God has established the spirits in equal
measure until the final age and their struggle is fierce.
503
The writers of these documents,
thought to have been the Essenes, viewed the world as a caught up in a struggle between
the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. In later Rabbinic theology, two impulses were
thought to be constantly at war within individuals: the yeser hara, or evil impulse, and the
yeser hatov, or good impulse.
504

Gnostic myths portrayed the world as having been created by the archons, beings or powers
that had emanated from God, but not through Gods own actions. Earth is situated between
the heavens, ruled by God, the personification of Order, and the underworld, the dominion of
Gods adversary or Chaos. Gnostic myths describe how the latter gained the upper hand on
Earth. Through ignorance these powers implemented Gods design imperfectly. This
explained why the world of matter is so flawed and replete with evils.
In the Pistis Sophia (the title means Faith in Wisdom), supposedly an account by the
apostle Philip of teachings revealed by Jesus after his resurrection, and which details his
journey through the heavens, the creator of the world is a blind demiurge called
Yaldabaoth.
505
The latter name is probably derived from the Hebrew yalda bahut, meaning
Son of Chaos. The choice of the Apostle Philip as the author of the Pistis Sophia is not

503
Quoted in Vermes, 2004: pp. 101-103; and in Harris, 1999: p. 43.
504
Cited by Isaacs, 1976: pp. 31 and 107.
505
The Pistis Sophia is thought to date from around 200 CE, but some sections may be older. It is
structured as a Socratic dialogue, making it quite different from the gospels or apocalyptic literature.
Philip is said to have died in Hierapolis, in Phrygia. See also The Secret Book [Apocryphon] of John in
Ehrman, 2005: pp. 298-306.
236


accidental. Philip, who was preaching in Samaria and exorcising unclean spirits, was
challenged by the magician Simon Magus. But Simon realising that the name of Jesus Christ
was the more powerful method of exorcism submitted to Christian baptism (Acts of the
Apostles, 8: 9-13). Simon Magus (living around 40 CE) was considered one of the first
Gnostic heretics. In Philips story, Sophia is the victim of Satans machinations. The Pistis
Sophia depicts Yaldabaoth as an emanation of Authades, the Arrogant One. One of the
Apostle Simon Peters letters gives us a clue as to Authadess true identity. The name in its
plural form is used to describe the fallen angels who despise authority [and], bold and
wilful, are not afraid to slander the glorious ones (2 Peter, 2: 10).
In the Sethian versions of the myth, Yaldabaoth was the child of Sophia and disordered
matter, and was an attempt by her to imitate the Fathers creation in an act of hubris.
506
Thus
the knowledge of the perfect design which God had intended to be created, and which is
reflected in the Pleroma was contaminated. Sophia, realising her mistake sought to hide
her son Yaldabaoth in a cloud. So he grew up in ignorance of the Pleroma and imagined he
was the one and only god. According to the Apocryphon of John, the first name [of the
demiurge] is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas [The Fool], and the third is Samael [Blind
God]. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said I am God and there is
no other God beside me, for he is ignorant of the place from which he had come.
507

Yaldabaoth had six sons, whose names reflect the names attributed to God in the Old
Testament. Together these seven archons, or governors, were correlated with the planets,
and the Olympian pantheon: Yaldabaoth (or Sabbateon) with Saturn; Iao, Sabaoth and
Adonaios with Jupiter, Mars or the Sun; Astaphanos with Venus; Elaios with Mercury; and
Horaios (or Athoth) with the Moon.
508
Astaphanos may be another name for Lucifer; for

506
In the Valentinian version (explained in the System of Ptolemaeus), Sophias daughter, Achamoth
(from hachmuth in Aramaic and chokmah in Hebrew, meaning wisdom), is Yaldabaoths mother; see
Harris, 1999: p.108. In the Gospel of Philip, Achamoth is described as ordinary wisdom; see Leloup,
2004: p. 69.
507
See Davies, 2005: pp. 67 and 71; and Ehrman, 2005: p. 302.
508
According to Origens Contra Celsum these were the names given by the Ophites to the archons.
In the Apocryphon of John, Iao, that is Yahweh, is Yave, and Elaios, or, more familiarly, Elohim
[Power], is Eloim. Yave is righteous but Eloim is unrighteous and Yave he set over the fire and the
wind, and Eloim he set over the water and the earth. In other words, Yave is identified with the Holy
Spirit (or Spenta Mainyu) and Eloim with the Deceitful Spirit (Ahriman). The remaining names are
given as Sabaoth [(Lord of) Hosts], Adonai [Lord], Astaphain or Astaphaios [Brilliance?],
Horaios/Horus [the Limiter, from horos meaning limit or horizon] and Athoth [the Reaper]. See also
Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 29 and Seligmann, 1975: p. 109. Hans Jonas calls the Apocryphon of John
a work of the Barbelo-Gnostics, a sect with theories similar to the Valentinians; see Jonas, 1958: pp.
237


according to the Book of Isaiah, Lucifer is called the Morning Star, as the planet Venus was
often referred to in Antiquity (14: 12). In another text from the Nag Hammadi library, On the
Origin of the World, written near the end of the third century CE, Astaphaios is linked to
Sophia (his female name).
509
The collective power of the archons, considered tyranny, was
called heimarmene, Universal Fate, and could not be thwarted.
510

In this way the Sethians, in an Ophite (or Luciferian) twist to the myth, identified Yahweh, the
God of Moses, with the demiurge, and alleged that Sophia was his mother. Matter was
regarded as evil (not merely impure), while the spirit represented the good or absolute. It has
been suggested that the sects descendants are to be found among the Yezidis, a deviant
Zoroastrian cult with a following among Kurds. They are accused of worshiping Satan, whom
they call Taws Melek, an archangel who rules the world with six other angles.
511
The
designation Ophite, or Naassene, from the Hebrew naha, was used to describe those who
considered that the serpent in the tale of the Fall usually identified with Satan had
actually been humanitys liberator, and was even identified with the Christ (since the
Messiah was also a liberator).
512
That said, we must be cautious in identifying the demiurge
and Yaldabaoth with Gods adversary, Satan (or Ahriman), because the latter knew about
Heaven (having fallen from there), while the former was in ignorance of the spiritual realm,
existing only at the psychic level.
513
It seems more likely that Yaldabaoth was Satans son
than Satan himself.
To disguise their deception, the Sethian versions of the myth of Sophia portray her as
impious and lascivious. Attempting audaciously to know more than is possible about God,
Sophia puts herself beyond the Pleroma and creates an abomination, Yaldabaoth. She is

40 and 177. According to the Apocryphon of John, Barbelo, possibly meaning Virgin was the first
on to be emanated from God; she was also called Forethought (Pronoia). She conceived and bore
a spark of light the only begotten Son, the Christ, and has a parallel to Mary the Mother of God in
orthodox Christianity; see Davies, 2005: pp. 21-25 and 35; and Ehrman, 2005: pp. 299-300.
509
See Ehrman, 2005: p. 309.
510
See Jonas, 1958: p. 43.
511
See Rohl, 1998: p. 150. Taws Melek is imagined as a peacock and was placed in charge of the
world having refusing Gods request that he bow down before Adam: How can I submit to another
being? I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust (cited in Wikipedia at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yezidi>.
512
See Jonas, 1958: pp. 93-94.
513
Jonas, 1958: p. 193.
238


shown to be the author of her own misfortune and suffering. Gnostic sources call her Sophia
Prunikos, Wisdom the Wanton, and Aristera, She of the Left Hand.
514
Among the
ancients, the left side of the soul was associated with fear and ignorance, from which we
derive the word sinister.
According to the Gnostics, Sophia, was among the last ons to be emanated. This also
means that she is closest to people and her imprisonment on Earth symbolised the way
human intelligence is locked within an animals body. It is no accident that our species has
come to be called Homo sapiens, since the Greek Sophia is translated as Sapientia in
Latin. Yaldabaoth tried to keep people in ignorance. So he forbade Adam and Eve to eat
from the Tree of Knowledge. But to thwart him, Sophia became a serpent to advise Eve to
try the fruit, thus instigating a struggle between humankind and the demiurge. At last, with
the arrival of the Christ (Gods only son and the Saviour), humanity won through, although
Yaldabaoth succeeded in deceiving the Jews to have Jesus crucified by the Romans. The
Sethian sect further alleged that the brothers Cain and Abel were not Adams sons at all, but
the offspring of Yaldabaoth, who had seduced Eve.
515
As a result Seth was the true firstborn
son of both Adam and Eve and the rightful heir to their knowledge, gained directly from
conversing with God in the Garden of Eden.
The Apocryphon of John, a document found at Nag Hammadi (the ancient Chenoboskion in
Upper Egypt), goes on to enumerate the names of the lesser archons, termed angels, each
with power over the different organs of the human body and numbering 365, one for each
day of the year. These lesser archons emanated from the original six sons of Yaldabaoth.
The book thus provides an exorcist with the names of the (fallen?) angels who control
access to the ons, and which can unlock the pathway to the archetype of the organ in
question, or to find the most propitious day on which to cast a spell. These names are the
keys by which the exorcist can compel the angels, or demons, to heal a sick patient. Some
of the names of these archons are to be found in later magical grimoires, such as the Key of
Solomon. While he is not always a reliable guide, the occult scholar Sayed Idries Shah
(1924-1996) was probably correct to surmise that this work, a textbook for ceremonial magic
purporting to be written by King Solomon, who, according to legend, was able to bend
demons to his will, existed, in one form or another, from very remote antiquity. Certain of its
Words of Power, the actual arrangement of its processes, point to Semitic and even

514
Jonas, 1958: pp. 177 and 190.
515
See the Apocryphon of John in Davies, 2005: p, 129:
239


Babylonian origins. It may have entered Europe through the medium of the Gnostics,
Cabalists and similar magico-religious schools.
516
(Another history confirms that the
medieval and Renaissance grimoires originated in the first centuries of our Common Era.)
517

At the end of his list of names, the author of the Apocryphon states The number of the
angels are 365. Now there are other ones whom I did not mention to you, adding
helpfully, but if you wish to know them, it is written in the book of Zoroaster. The Greeks
and Romans tended to think of the Zoroastrian Magi as sorcerers. The Stoic scholar Pliny
the Elder described the Magi as being skilled in three arts: medicina (healing powers), religio
(ritual), and artes mathematicae (including astrology). In this context religio implied the art of
praying and invocation to the governing powers of the world, which in Greek was known as
theurgia. Iamblichus wrote that the theurgist, by virtue of mysterious signs, controls the
powers of nature (On the Mysteries).
518
It thus appears that there was a long-standing
tradition of theurgy, the practice of sacrifice and incantation to divine powers, among the
Magi, which was suppressed by the Sassanid dynasty in the second half of the third century
CE.
519

516
Shah, 1972: p. 9. The Apocryphon of John states: And the archons created seven powers for
themselves, and the powers created for themselves six angels for each one until they became 365
angels; see Ehrman, 2005: pp. 301-302. The seven powers are Athoth, he has a sheeps face; the
second is Eloaiou, he has a donkeys face; the third is Astaphaios, he has a [hyenas] face; the fourth
is Yao, he has a [serpents] face with seven heads; the fifth is Sabaoth, he has a dragons face; the
sixth is Adonin, he has a monkeys face; the seventh is Sabbede, he has a shining fire-face. This is
the seveness of the week.
517
Owen Davies states that The Testament of Solomon was written in Greek sometime before 500
CE, and gave rise to several variants, including the Latin text called the The Key of Solomon and the
translation of the Arabic Almandal. A compendium of 224 astrological, alchemical and Hermetic works
known as the Ghyat al-Hakm (The Aim of the Sage), and known in Europe as the Picatrix, was
compiled in Spain around the middle of the twelfth century. It was ultimately derive[d] from Greek,
Syrian, Persian, and even, Indian influences from antiquity. The cities of Toledo and Constantinople
seem to have been key centres for the translation of Hermetic, Cabalistic and Arabic books into Latin.
For example, the Kyranides, a book on medicines and natural magic, such as charms, love potions
and amulets, allegedly from Persia probably dates to no earlier than the first few centuries CE,
which corresponds to the period when Gnosticism was most active. The Sworn Book of Honorius,
later misnamed as the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, was ascribed to Honorius of Thebes, a
mathematician of the fourth century CE, who compiled a compendium in order to preserve ancient
magical knowledge from the Christian book-burners. See Davies, 2009: pp. 12, 26-29, 34, and 80-81.
518
See Luck, 2006: pp. 51-53 and 70.
519
See Zaehner, 1972: pp. 13-14 and 25. The Zoroastrian high priest Kartr, whose influence seems
to have been strongest in the years from around 250 until 295 CE, unleashed a wave of persecution
against Brahmans, Buddhists, Christians, Manicheans and devil-worshippers, dvsn, to establish
Mazdean orthodoxy within the Persian Empire. Zaehner identifies the devil-worshippers with the
240


The existential approach to Gnostic theories is helpful as it allows us to understand how the
different strands from the Hermetic paradigm provide the framework for the salvation
religions. The leading scholar on Gnosticism and philosopher Hans Jonas explained this in
his study of 1958 and it is worth quoting his account at length.
Not only the body but also the soul is a product [that is, an emanation] of the
cosmic powers, which shaped the body in the image of the divine Primal (or
Archetypal) Man [in other words, the on representing humanity] and animated it
with their own psychical forces: these are the appetites and passions of natural man,
each of which stems from and corresponds to one of the cosmic spheres and all of
which together make up the astral soul of man, his pyche. Through his body and his
soul man is part of the world and subject to the heimarmene. Enclosed in the soul is
the spirit, or pneuma (called also the spark), a portion of the divined substance; and
the Archons created man for the express purpose of keeping [the spirit/ pneuma]
captive in the world. Thus, as in the macrocosm man is enclosed by seven spheres,
so in the human microcosm the pneuma is enclosed by seven soul-vestments [the
passions]. In its unredeemed state the pneuma thus immersed in soul and flesh is
unconscious of itself, benumbed, asleep, or intoxicated by the poison of the world: in
brief, it is ignorant. Its awakening and liberation is effected through knowledge
[gnosis]. As a famous Valentinian formula (cited by Clement of Alexandria) puts it,
What liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where
we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we
are redeemed; and what is birth and what rebirth.
This knowledge, however, is withheld from [man] by his very situation, since
ignorance is the essence of mundane existence. In particular, the transcendent God
is unknown in the world and cannot be discovered from it; therefore revelation is
needed. [The bearer of revelation] is a messenger from the world of light [in the
heavens] who penetrates the barriers of the [seven] spheres, outwits the Archons,
awakens the spirit from its earthly slumber, and imparts to it the saving knowledge.
[This saving] knowledge of the way [offers] the souls way out of the world,
comprising the sacramental and magical preparations for its future ascent and the
secret names and formulas that force the passage through each sphere. Equipped

sorcerers, or ytkh sect, which was denounced in a tenth century compendium of wisdom, the
Dnkart, for teaching that virtue goes unrewarded and that there is no escape from the punishment
of sin. This proposition might be a reference to the theory of the transmigration of souls.
241


with this gnosis, the soul after death travels upwards, leaving behind at each sphere
the psychical vestment and becomes reunited with the divine substance, that
is, the Pleroma or fullness, which is the spiritual world of ons around the godhead,
expressing his inner abundance.
[As Irenaeus explained], perfect salvation is the cognition itself of the ineffable
greatness [of God]: for since through Ignorance came about Defect and Passion, the
whole system springing up from Ignorance is dissolved with knowledge. Therefore
knowledge is salvation of the inner man; and it is not corporeal, for the body is
corruptible; nor is it psychical, for even the soul is the product of the Defect and is as
a lodging to the spirit: spiritual therefore must also be the form of salvation.
520

Christian Gnostics used the myth of Sophias entrapment in the material world as a way to
symbolise the degraded access to full knowledge which people had until she was freed by
Jesus Christ. According to the Pistis Sophia, Sophia was deceived by the Arrogant One,
Authades, presumably Satan or Ahriman, into exploring the material world by a false light,
because of its resemblance to the light in which she had trusted and is imprisoned by the
snares of guile.
521
Her son Yaldabaoth then steals Sophias light to deceive the human race.
After his death, Jesus descended into the underworld of chaos and heard Sophias cries of
repentance and pleas for rescue. She called out to Jesus:
Forget not my song, Light, for Arrogant and his lion-faced power [Yaldabaoth] have
opened their mouths against me; they have mocked me; they have acted with deceit
towards me; they have surrounded me, seeking to take away my power, and they
have hated me because I loved thee. Let darkness fall on Arrogant, and may the
ruler of the outer darkness remain at his right hand; they loved to descend into the
darkness; let them remain there; may all the light powers which are in him cease;
and may all the powers of his emanations be without light; let no one give ear to
the power of his emanations which are in chaos. I have been like matter that is
fallen, I have been driven this way and that like a daemon of the air. My power

520
Jonas, 1958: pp. 44-45, 177 and 176; see also Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 78:
2; and Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses, I, 21: 4.
521
A fragment of Manichaean text discovered in the Central Asian city of Turfan states: [Ahriman or
Az] captured the fair Soul and fettered it within the impurity. Since he/she had made it blind and deaf,
it was unconscious and confused, so that [at first] it did not know its true origin; cited in Jonas, 1958:
pp. 69 and 341.
242


perished and my matter hath been bound, because of my light they have taken
away.
Jesus tells his disciples that he then rescued Sophia from chaos, despite the pursuit of the
Arrogants demons, and led her out of all the darkness with the help of the archangels
Michael and Gabriel, sent on Gods instruction to aid Jesus. Sophias light power was
restored to her and her material body became shining throughout and she became entirely
radiant. With this the emanations of Arrogant collapsed, a host of them, because its mighty
radiance and Jesus took the light from Yaldabaoth, the lion-faced power, before trampling
upon the serpent-headed emanation, and the seven-headed basilisk (Iao) and the dragon-
faced power (Sabaoth), bending them to Gods will once more.
522
The myth has a parallel in
Psalm 91: For He will command his angels to guard you in all your ways; you will
tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
The lamentations of Sophia have a parallel in the myth of the Egyptian goddess Isis search
for the remains of her slain husband Osiris and symbolises the individuals journey towards
full understanding and psychological wholeness in the face of lifes predicaments.
523
Hans
Jonas explains that Sophia experiences a series of emotions in her mental trauma: grief,
because she could not get hold of the light; fear, lest besides the light also life might leave
her; bewilderment, added to these; and all of them united in the basic quality of ignorance.
But then, in the final stage another state of mind ensued: the turning (conversion) toward
the Giver of Life [followed by] supplication and prayer. Sophia weeps, screams, goes
silent and finally laughs with relief. We should note that these emotions are linked to the four
elements, so that the tears of grief have a parallel in water; fear with the instability of air; the
inarticulacy of bewilderment or consternation with the earth; and joyful supplication with
fire.
524
We see in this another version of the Gnostic approach to education and the
perfection of the individual, which was the key factor in recruiting followers.
The emergence of sects
Mystic fraternities and colleges were rooted in sectarianism and doctrinal schism. The
success of the original Christian apostles encouraged a small number of charismatic
individuals to establish their own groups of followers, from among those hoping to learn their

522
Extracts from Pistis Sophia, Books 1 and 2; in Meade, 1896: p. 97-139; see also Ehrman, 2005: p.
302 and note 516 above.
523
Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992b: pp. 189-190.
524
Jonas, 1958: pp. 187-189.
243


destiny and discover whether or not they were heaven-bound. Simon Magus, Valentinus (d.
161) and Marcion of Sinope (c. 85-160), and later Mani (c. 216-276), all founded sects
promising the knowledge of individual salvation. They enticed Christians, Jews and
Zoroastrians away from their churches, synagogues and temples by setting up rival groups
or fraternities that claimed to offer deeper understanding of the mysteries. Their example has
been followed to the present day, providing the comfort of delusion to the followers and, all
too frequently, wealth and bed-mates for the sects leader. Fame as a healer would have in
any case attracted followers and donations. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles
contain many examples of exorcism and healing. Such gifts were thought to derive from
special knowledge about the powers that controlled the world; these are the secrets of the
so-called mystery religions, of which Christianity was one, according to several historians.
525

Furthermore some Gnostic teachers may have considered themselves to be so perfect that
they could abandon moral norms. To be sure, the conduct of the clergy in the orthodox
churches has provided ample impetus to people wanting reform, for the church itself cannot
be free from sin and error any more than any other social institution. Yet, despite the attempt
of Gnostic teachers to develop their insights into a syncretistic system, and to set out new
universal truths, they were never recognised as genuine prophets beyond the circle of their
immediate followers.
Since the primary objective of Gnostics was knowledge, the fraternities attracted knowledge
seekers who were prepared to go all the way. Gnostic sects practiced asceticism in order to
purify themselves and put forward a staged programme of instruction for their adherents.
The potential for distorting teaching, promoting fanaticism, and abusing their members were
recognised then as it is today. Sects arouse suspicion because they recruit by offering

525
Initially Christianity kept its mysteries secret from the uninitiated. Jesus commended his disciples
not to cast their pearls before swine (Matthew, 7: 6); while Paul wrote to the Corinthian faithful that he
fed them milk not meat (1 Corinthians, 3: 2). These practices are reflected in the structure of the
Mass, the Christian service of worship, whereby the Lords Prayer is recited at the point for taking
communion, because in earlier times only fully initiated Christians, that is, those who had been
confirmed, were able to participate in this section of the service; see
<www.newadvent.org/cathen/05032a.htm>. The theory that Christianity was a mystery religion,
similar to Mithraism, was advanced in the nineteenth century by German scholars such as Gustav
Anrich, The Ancient Mystery Cults and their Influence on Christianity, 1894; and Richard Reitzenstein
(1861-1931), The Hellenistic Mysteries in the light of their Basic Ideas and Influence, 1910. The
theologian Samuel Angus (1881-1943), who published The Mystery-Religions and Christianity, 1925,
explained how Christianity eventually triumphed over its competitors and the influence of the
Gnostics. Walter Burkert however, in his 1987 book, Ancient Mystery Cults, challenged the
designation that these cults were salvation religions, arguing that initiation mystery was an optional
element for the devotee, usually associated with the fulfilment of a vow to the deity in question.
244


short-cuts to enlightenment through the sale of manuals, trinkets and talismans, and by
levying tithes on members incomes. The leader surrounds himself (and occasionally herself)
with a cult of personality and encourages members to cut themselves off from alternative
sources of authority, from their families, the state or the church. Sects reinforce their control
over their members through peer pressure, by instituting communal living arrangements, or
imposing distinctive dress codes that set them apart from others in society. The fact that a
sects real focus is upon their leader (and his or her theories) is disguised by the elevation of
some often minor difference with other similar schools of thought into a defining badge of
loyalty.
Millenarian concerns that the last days were close also stimulated a sense of religiosity,
encouraging people to search for personal salvation. Well before Jesus of Nazareth, sects
such as the Essenes, the Notzrim (or Naaseni or Nasaraioi), Sethians and Zurvanite
Zoroastrians were integrating Jewish, Greek and Persian myths and deities into a single
narrative.
526
Other sects emerged after Christianity began to spread: the Mandaeans, the
Simonians, Marcionites, Valentinians and Manicheans, and others who professed to be
more in line with mainstream Christianity. Our fragmentary knowledge about these sects is
based upon the hymns, prayers, incantations and myths generated by the fraternities, and
from the denunciations issued by orthodox clerics and philosophers. The most influential
fraternity was that around the cult of Mithras, which had emerged long before Christianity.
This fraternity was open to men only, but others accepted both men and women, which was
controversial in a patriarchal society where gender segregation was normal. Bishop Irenaeus
of Lyon alleged that the Gnostic followers of Valentinus took multiple wives under the
pretence of living with them as adopted sisters. Hyppolytus of Rome accused some Gnostics
of conducting secret orgies. To be sure, the charge of immorality was also levelled by the

526
Hyppolytus called the Naasseni and Sethians Ophites, though they called themselves Gnostics,
by which he meant that these sects had received their knowledge from the serpent that had deceived
Eve in the Garden of Eden. Hippolytus called the Ophites the grand source and progenitors of heresy:
these doctrines, then, the Naasseni attempt to establish, calling themselves Gnostics. But since the
error is many-headed and diversified, resembling, in truth, the hydra that we read of in history; when,
at one blow, we have struck off the heads of this [delusion] by means of refutation, employing the
wand of truth, we shall entirely exterminate the monster. For neither do the remaining heresies
present much difference of aspect from this, having a mutual connection through [the same] spirit of
error. (see Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, 5: 6, on
<www.newadvent.org/fathers/050110.htm>). Jewish sects like the Essenes, the Notzim, Mandaeans
and Sethians were considered heretical, Minim, by Rabbinical Judaism. Simon Magus seems to have
been a Nasoraean or a Mandaean. The term Notzrim was used by orthodox Jews to refer also to
Christians; see also Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992b: p. 185. In the Koran Christians are termed
Nasara; see Salibi, 2007: p. 47.
245


Roman authorities at orthodox Christians. Apparently it was common up to the end of the
third century for unmarried male presbyters and female deacons to live together. The Roman
scholar and magistrate Pliny the Younger (c. 63-112 CE) had two deaconesses tortured to
discover whether Christians engaged in orgies and cannibalism. He discovered only a
wicked and immoderate superstition and no evidence of criminal behaviour.
527

In the competition for recruits some sects sought to portray orthodoxy as misguided or false.
One recruitment device used by the sects was to claim possession of a book containing
secret revelations, such as the Apocryphon, or Secret Book, supposedly composed by the
evangelist John. The Sethians sought to trump the Jewish Torah by claiming authority from
Adams son Seth, known as the father of all the generations of the just. Moses, the
supposed author of the Torah, had been misled, the Sethians alleged, by the evil twin power,
thus undermining the Jews most sacred books. In fact the Christian Gospels themselves
may have been written with this purpose in mind; not only to provide an authoritative
apostolic account of Jesus teachings and life, but also to prove to Jewish audiences that he
was the Messiah and had come to found a new covenant, supplanting that which God had
made with Abraham and Moses.
Christian critics of the Gnostics describe how each school was founded by a leader, who had
split his sect from the rest of the faithful, often after some disagreement. Simon Magus,
active during the lifetime of the Apostles, was rejected by Simon Peter for trying to bribe his
way to obtaining the healing powers conferred by the Holy Spirit (Acts of the Apostles, 8: 18-
24). His followers, mostly fellow Samaritans, considered him to be a major emanation and
great power. Simon Magus wrote a book, now lost, entitled The Great Revelation.
528

Cerinthus (who lived around 100 CE), was an adversary of both the Apostle Paul and John
the Evangelist. Believing that Christians should remain faithful to Jewish laws, he promoted
a version of Matthews Gospel, also known as the Gospel of the Hebrews. Two other
influential Gnostics, Basilides (around 120) and Valentinus, may have both studied in
Alexandria but later became rivals. Each claimed to have obtained Jesus hitherto secret
teachings: the former from Matthew and the latter from Paul.
529
Basilides was a pupil of

527
See Lopes, 1997: p. 4. Christians were accused of immorality, incest and cannibalism; see
Ehrman, 2012: pp. 164-168. On Pliny, see Lane Fox, 2006: p. 576.
528
Simon Magus was said to have been inspired by Dositheus, a Gnostic disciple of John the Baptist.
Followers of Simon Magus included Saturninus and Menandes, both of Antioch, who were active
around 125 CE; see Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 24-25.
529
In the third century, Archelaus states there was also a preacher among the Persians, a certain
Basilides not long after the times of our Apostles, who being himself a crafty man decided to
246


Matthews interpreter Glaucos. He professed to have received secret sayings by Jesus,
which Matthew had only shared privately with Glaucos. Basilides may have compiled the
Traditions of Matthias. Valentinus professed himself to be a pupil of Theudas, one of Pauls
disciples, who maintained that Paul had disclosed teachings obtained from visions in which
he had conversed with Jesus Christ. When, perhaps in 136, Valentinus lost the election for
Bishop of Rome he founded his own breakaway sect.
530
His contribution to Gnostic theory
may have been the Gospel of Truth, which deals with Seth as well as Jesus.
531

Another figure, Marcion, also declared himself to be a champion of Pauls confidences. He
sponsored a version of Lukes Gospel, which, according to Tertullian (c.160-220), expunged
all things that oppose his views. (Luke had been Pauls companion.) Although a rich
merchant, Marcion was excommunicated in 144 after being passed over for a bishops
position. (His large donation, presumably a bribe, was returned to him by the church.) A
noted opponent of Marcion, Tatian of Assyria, himself defected from orthodoxy around 172
and promoted an ascetic brand of Gnosticism that renounced alcohol, meat and sex. His
followers came to be called Encratites, literally the abstainers. He made a synthesis of the
existing gospels called the Gospel of the Mixed or Diatesseron, which became widely used
in Syria. As a self-styled Apostle of Jesus Christ, Manis determination to construct a hybrid
set of sacred texts may well have been inspired by Tatians Diatesseron and another (now
lost) Gospel synthesis prepared by Bardesanes the Parthian (c.154-222), who is reputed to
have been a Gnostic follower of Valentinius.
532
It appears that the so-called Ophites made
use of the Gospel of Thomas and the Sethian Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit and
claimed secret knowledge disclosed by Mary Magdalene, Jesus companion at the time of
his ministry in Judea, and from James the Just, who is identified by some as Jesus
brother.
533
The founders of this sect are supposed to have been a Chaldean, Euphrates, and

maintain that dualism which was likewise in favour with Scythianus (Acts of Disputation between
Archelaus and Mani). Apparently Basilides studied the magical theories of Simon Magus and learnt
from Simons pupil Menandes of Antioch; see Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 25.
530
Tertullian records the story of Valentinus schism. According to Irenaeus, writing around 180,
Valentinus came to Rome from Alexandria during the time of Pope Hyginus (c. 136-140), a Greek
philosopher elected pope around 136 apparently on an anti-Gnostic platform; see Lopes, 1997: p. 3.
531
See Jonas, 1958: pp. 309-310.
532
See MacCulloch, 2010: pp. 171 and 182 and Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 30.
533
See Btz, 2005: p. 129; and Baigent, 2006: pp. 299-301. Michael Baigent mentions that the so-
called Gospel of Mary of Magdala, which came to light in Cairo in 1896, uses similar language to the
Gospel of Thomas. The case for James being the brother of Jesus is set out by Jeffrey Btz, who
pays tribute to Michael Baigent and the co-authors of the The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, whose
247


Celbes of Carysta, also known as Acembes.
534
There is relatively little information on other
Sethians; their texts found at Nag Hammadi list Zostrianos, Marsenes and Allogenes as
visionaries, though we nothing more about these figures. Lastly, we may mention Justin the
Gnostic (who lived after c.150 and before c. 230 CE), the probable author of the Book of
Baruch, named after the scribe of the prophet Jeremiah.
The route to knowledge
In general Gnostic sects considered that their path to knowledge was superior to the ways
advocated by orthodox Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. Through Gnostic training an
adept could reach a higher level of understanding. Most people were living at the hylic, or
material, level of understanding. Their fate was to perish in the general conflagration at the
end of this current era. The more knowledgeable people, from among the pagan
philosophers or faithful Jews, had reached a level of spiritual understanding, the psychic
stage. For example, they understood that there were absolutes that should be striven for;
they had mastered their passions that prevented them using their powers of reason; and
they were able to follow rules from their own volition (and not simply because they impelled
to do so by coercion or material reward). But to acquire complete understanding and gain
the light one had to become a pneumatic and a gnostic. The word gnosis implies knowledge
gained from direct experience, and not simply from second-hand accounts or from inference.
In Latin the word gnosis was rendered as scientia. Thus, the quest for gnosis is actually
equivalent to the process of discovery backed up by verification. True enlightenment came
from inspiration, which in religious terms meant listening to and watching out for the
messages transmitted by God, through His angels, or perhaps even from the study of
astrology. Under Valentinus system the knowledge seeker must listen to their guardian
angel. But such ideas had to be validated from experience to be considered true.
Lacking full knowledge, the Jews, many Gnostics contended, had only a partial
understanding of the cosmos and of God. Sophias entrapment on Earth meant that the

work changed my life. The difficulty with the theory that James and Jesus were full brothers arises
from the instruction Jesus gave to his beloved disciple John at his execution to take care of his
mother Mary (John, 19: 27). Jesus would not have given this responsibility to John if he had closer
relatives to rely on. It is nonetheless conceivable that the apostles James and Jude were half-brothers
to Jesus, sons of Josephs first wife perhaps, before he married Mary (as described in the second
century apocryphal Proto-Gospel of James), or were close kin, whom he grew up with; see Bertram,
2006: pp. 78-83. They were not present at the crucifixion so perhaps Jesus had no option but to ask
John to be responsible. In a patriarchal society women were not supposed to travel without a man
and Mary would have needed a male relative to accompany her home after her sons execution.
534
Bonnefoy and Doniger, 1992b: p. 185 and 190. The Ophites are also called Perates.
248


Jews could only perceive the aspects of God symbolised by the figures of the Craftsman, or
demiurge, and Lawgiver. In other words, they envisaged the cosmos as existing under
natural laws, which is supposedly only part of the picture. Judaism had recognised the
demiurges works but not the rationale (the logos) framing the cosmos. To the Jews, Gods
will appeared arbitrary and sometimes even cruel. Thus they did not enjoy a full
understanding of the divine, nor of the cosmos. Their understanding of God was invalid,
Gnostics alleged. Hellenist philosophy was, Gnostics maintained, similarly under-developed.
It was characterised by an arrogance that assumed natural philosophy had already
discovered all that there was to know. Through science people could achieve a high level of
understanding, but, the Gnostics argued, this cannot be sufficient. The pride of the
philosophers would, if everyone followed them blindly, lead the world to destruction.
There is a parallel here with the path to self-knowledge. At the psychic level an individual
imagines he or she is identical to their social nature (the counterfeit spirit, or the persona
you want others to see you as). They do not recognise their true essence or vocation and
thus need to find themselves. Since the counterfeit self derives from the reflection of ones
identity as it is perceived by others, the process of finding ones self involves a period of
solitude.
535
Several prophets, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed, for instance, sought
isolation in the wilderness. We need time away from society to allow ourselves the space to
forget ones needs for recognition, affiliation and affection, and open up to the possibility for
inspiration. In the myth of Sophia, this higher level of understanding is symbolised by the
union of Sophia and Christ in the bridal chamber. The light of God (sophia) is aligned, or
fused, with Gods reason, the Christ (logos). For a Gnostic, sophia and logos are
inseparable. (For orthodox Christians, Christ redeems Sophia, by balancing humility with
knowledge.) According to the Gnostics, therefore, it took the synthesis of Judaism and
Hellenist philosophy, as found in Christianity, to reveal the fuller picture. Jews were still at
the psychic stage along with pagan sages.
536
Unless they acknowledged the Christ and
received the blessing of the Holy Spirit, envisaged as a ball of bright fire, thus reaching the

535
A journalist who lived alone in a cottage in rural Wales for five years described that instead of
introspection [and] growing self-awareness, I began to forget myself. His focus shifted almost
entirely outward to the natural world. It was as if we gain our sense of self from our interaction with
other people; from the reflection of ourselves we see in the eyes of another. Alone, there was no need
for identity, for self-definition. The experience left him with a core of peace and deeply
comfortable in my own skin; Neil Ansell, My life as a hermit, The Observer Magazine, 27 March 2011:
p. 30.
536
Much of Gnosticism is a dialogue with Judaism [with] a distrust of the Jewish account of
creation, according to MacCulloch, 2010: p. 122. MacCulloch speculates that the Gnostics were
renegade Jews.
249


next level of spirituality, the pneumatic stage, Jews, and the pagan sages, were condemned
to wait at heavens door, and never to pass through.
The problem is not that Jews and pagans were immoral. Ancient people had indeed striven
to follow the straight path of righteousness. They were well aware of virtue and what a good
life entailed. But no matter how much someone tries to tread the straight path, no one can
achieve a perfect life in an impure world. Adopting the ascetic life of a hermit or withdrawing
from the day-to-day cares and challenges by joining a monastery will always be a minority
sport. For how can a hermit survive without anothers charity? Nor is a monastic community
sustainable without the existence of families living beyond its walls from which to recruit new
monks and nuns.
No one may disengage fully from society and none are sinless. Even saints cannot be
assured of a place in heaven.
537
The exceptions cited by the salvation religions prove the
rule. Christians believe that Jesus mother Mary was sinless and taken up to heaven at the
end of her life. Muslims believe that Mohammed was also borne to heaven at his death. Both
religions assert that Jesus ascended into heaven to sit at Gods side, although Muslims
consider that this occurred before the crucifixion, and Christians insist this took place after
the resurrection. In any case, the rest of us must await the Final Judgement.
Gnosticism within Christianity
Before an orthodox form of Christianity became fully developed, early Christians seem to
have taken Gnostic ideas for granted. Many of the controversies that afflicted the early
Church become easier to understand within a Gnostic framework. As Colin Wilson has
commented, Christianity and Gnosticism should not be regarded as antagonistic, but as
different expressions of the human craving to escape the futility of human existence.
538

They shared the same impulse to seek salvation and expressed themselves in a common
vocabulary. Indeed the similarity can be seen in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus to the
early Christians. He addresses them as brothers in light, refers to the process of
illumination that leads to the adoption of a new way of life based upon wisdom, and alludes

537
According to the Catholic Church, the proof of sainthood must include a miracle. This
demonstrates that the holy man or woman has reached heaven and is able to intercede with God,
who has the power to intervene in earthly events. No miracle means that the holy person has not yet
reached heaven.
538
Wilson, 1973: p. 259.
250


to the archons (the rulers of this age).
539
But the differences are also evident. Paul makes
no claim to possessing additional secret knowledge beyond that revealed to the apostles by
Jesus. He warns against those who deceive people into worshipping angels (the archons, in
other words) and of listening to plausible [but] human wisdom.
540
Significantly, Paul
sought to build not a sect but a church.
Paul and the archons
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for once you were darkness, but now
in the Lord you are light. And so [until now], brothers, I could not speak to you as
spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with
milk, not solid food, for you were not ready. Yet among the mature we do speak of
wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are
doomed to perish. But we speak Gods wisdom, secret and hidden, which God
decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understand this;
for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord. Now we have received not
the spirit of the world, but the [Holy] Spirit that is from God, so that we may
understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words
not taught by human wisdom [philosophy] but taught by the Spirit, interpreting
spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
You must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are
darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their
ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned
themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice any kind of impurity. Put to death
therefore whatever in you that is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and greed (which is idolatry). You were taught to put away your former way of life,
your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts and to be renewed in the spirit of your
minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness
of God in true righteousness and holiness We are Gods servants, working
together; you are Gods building. Like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation,
and someone else is building on it. Do you not know that you are Gods temple?

539
Paul appears to be familiar with an episode recounted in the Gospel according to John in which
Jesus tells his disciples to become children of light (John, 12: 36).
540
Paul writes to the Corinthians, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words
or wisdom (First Letter to the Corinthians, 2: 1-5).
251


[Clothe] yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge
according to the image of its creator. Live as children of light. For you
yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
When they say, there is peace and security, then suddenly destruction will come
among them and there will be no escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness,
for that day to surprise you like a thief, for you are all children of light and children of
the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So let us not fall asleep as other do,
but let us keep awake and sober. (From The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians,
2: 6-7 and 12-13, and 3: 1-16; Letter to the Ephesians, 4: 17-24 and 5: 6-8; Letter to
the Colossians, 3: 5-10, and The First Letter to the Thessalonians, 5: 2-6)
541

Moreover, an important segment of Christian Gnostics did not share the Sethian
identification of the God of the Old Testament with ignorance and sinfulness. Many early
Christians believed not only that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and the redeemer of
humanity from its original sin, but had liberated all past and future generations, including
those whose souls were already trapped in the underworld of Hades, or in the endless cycle
implied by the transmigration of souls from one body to another (as Pythagoras and Plato
had taught). The rule of the archons, and of planetary influence, the tyranny of pitiless Fate,
heimarmene, was now over.
542
All were thus capable of being saved at the Final Judgement.
From this perspective Judaism and Hellenist philosophy had revealed only part of the
salvation narrative. Until the Christs coming, in the shape of the ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth, wisdom had been limited, symbolised by Sophias imprisonment by material
desires; once she was redeemed, by marriage with the Saviour, the fullness of wisdom had
been made available to humankind. Previously even the most knowledgeable layers of

541
While Pauls letters to the Corinthians are accepted as authentic by most scholars there are doubts
concerning the apostles authorship of the letters to the Ephesians and, as mentioned in note 498
above, to the Colossians. Other Pauline letters that might have been written by imitators are the
letters to Timothy and Titus, that to the Hebrews and 2 Thessalonians; see MacCulloch, 2010: p.
1025, note 53 and Ehrman, 2012: chapter 3 and pp. 22, 188 and 221. The differences in vocabulary
and style could have arisen if Paul had employed a local scribe a professional letter writer, trained in
rhetoric who could well have contributed to the final text.
542
See Jonas, 1958: pp. 205 and 254-255. Christians declared that Jesus had liberated people from
subjection to a destiny written in the stars, heimarmene, hitherto considered by the ancient
philosophers, such as Aristotle to have been one of the two origins of religion (the other being
dreams). They did not deny the influence of the stars and planets but set this in the context of Gods
Providence, pronoia, as did the Stoics and Pythagoreans. When heimarmene (fate) and pronoia
(providence) were aligned there was harmonia (harmony) in the cosmos (pp. 249 and 257-259).
252


society were condemned to endure continual reincarnation. Armed with such convictions the
Christians felt themselves to be the true missionaries of salvation.
Christianity expanded despite official persecution. At the Council of Jerusalem in 49, in
response to Peter and Pauls wish to convert non-Jews, the apostles agreed to spread the
gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. Simon Peter took prime responsibility for preaching
among the Jews of Palestine and Syria and later left for Rome. His brother Andrew went to
Bithynia, a region adjoining the Sea of Marmara; he founded churches along the southern
coast of the Black Sea, to the north in Scythia, and ended his days in Greece. John the
Divine and Jesus mother Mary are said to have gone to Ephesus in Caria (today part of
western Turkey), while his brother, James the Greater, may have visited Iberia (now Spain
and Portugal). Matthews and Thomas missionary work took them to Persia, from where
Thomas departed for India. Simon went to Egypt and later Persia. Bartholomew and Jude
visited Armenia; Philip travelled to Phrygia; while his brother James the Just remained in
Jerusalem.
543
Barnabas and Paul travelled widely through Syria, Cyprus, Asia Minor and
Greece, with the latter eventually ending up in Rome, after surviving a shipwreck off Malta. It
seems clear that initially the proselytising impetus was driven by an expectation that Jesus
Christ would soon return to usher in the kingdom of God.
544
Messianic hopes were also
prevalent among Jews in the same period, which was in an expansionary phase according
to historian Shlomo Sand.
545

The political dramas of the Jewish uprisings, Roman repression and the destruction of the
Temple of Jerusalem were interpreted as being part of the cosmic struggle between light and
darkness. In the face of Roman suspicion, affirming ones faith in the teachings of Judaism,
or in Christ, and even in Isis and Osiris, meant taking a stand, and risking persecution. For
the faithful, such a stand implied a sense of righteousness. They believed that they were
following the true path and were rejecting the false pantheon of what came to be called the
pagan gods. To many Roman eyes their stance put them into the camp of its main rival for
control of the long distance Eurasian trade routes, the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. Since
Christians and Jews often refused to make sacrifice at city temples, to pay taxes for the

543
See Mango, 1994: pp. 184-185.
544
In Pauls Letter to the Hebrews he writes of living in these last days (1: 2); see also 1 Corinthians
(10: 11), and Jude (18). In Mark (13: 30) Jesus tells his disciples that the days of suffering will take
place within this generation. But see Bertram, 2006: chapters 16 and 17.
545
Sand argues that Judaist proselytising peaked in the Hellenistic Mediterranean region in the fourth
century CE, after which Christianity began to prevail; see Sand, 2009: pp. 150-177.
253


upkeep of temples, or to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor, they were not simply
theological dissidents we would call them conscientious objectors but potential
subversives. Christianitys call to the poor and enslaved also appeared threatening to a
social order built upon extremes of wealth and status.
As the apostles who had known Jesus passed away two things became urgent. Firstly,
Christians had to preserve the teachings imparted to them by Jesus, not only by writing them
down but by developing a durable institutional form in the shape of churches in every city.
The latter process eventually meant establishing an orthodox doctrine (including a copy of
one of the gospels) and a priestly hierarchy supported from the donations of the laity.
Secondly, Christians needed intellectual frameworks that provided convincing reasons for
adopting Christianity. At one level, Christians had to find an approach that embedded its
moral and spiritual teaching into day-to-day practice. So, for instance, a group of Christians
had to find reasons for getting together regularly even if this laid the communicants open to
persecution. This they found in the ceremonial re-enactment of Jesus last supper with his
disciples (holy communion), praying together and listening to readings from the scriptures
and a preachers homily.
At another level, however, the faithful had to face the up to the disappointment engendered
by the apparently indefinite postponement of the last days. Christs Second Coming was
always to be expected but was never imminent. It created the rationale for adopting a
lifestyle of renunciation, fasting and chastity in monasticism but also encouraged movements
like Montanism.
546
This ascetic and enthusiastic movement, which glorified martyrdom,
considered ordinary Christians, that is, those who did not accept that the Holy Spirit had
spoken through its founder Montanus, to be psychici, and so not fully spiritual. They could
console themselves with the thought that Christs second coming was not yet due because
there were, as yet, insufficient numbers of the pure. Once the full complement of converts
had been achieved, God would gather together the faithful at the mount of Zion, that is, at
Jerusalem (although Montanus believed that his village of Pepusa in Phrygia, a central
region of modern Turkey, would be the assembly point). As Montanism encouraged people
to give up on family life, the Church in due course prescribed the tendency and instead

546
Montanus of Phrygia preached around 156 CE but his movement continued to be influential for a
further two centuries, despite Church condemnation, and survived in rural Phrygia until the seventh
century; see<www.newadvent.org/cathen/10521a.htm>; and Mango, 1994: p. 95. He and two women
seers, Maximilla and Priscilla, were denounced as false prophets, but won the support of Tertullian (c.
150-223). Montanus is quoted as proclaiming: "The Lord hath sent me as the chooser, the revealer,
the interpreter of this labour, this promise, and this covenant, being forced, willingly or unwillingly, to
learn the gnosis of God."
254


promoted monasticism for those who felt themselves so called. A letter attributed to Paul
denounced those who renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and the
teachings of demons. These heretics forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods,
which God created to be received with thanksgiving. For everything created by God is
good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy, 4:
1-4). The Montanist tradition lived on nevertheless in later heresies like that of the medieval
Cathars, who appear to have called themselves the friends of God and apparently lived
ascetic lives.
547

While there are elements of the Gnostic approach to be found in Montanism, the latters
emphasis on enthusiasm put it odds with the Gnostics central message of education as the
route to righteousness. The wise were to be commended, whereas Montanism merely
encouraged the enthusiastic. In this, both Gnostic and orthodox would agree. The kingdom
of God is not a state of affairs to be awaited in the future, but instead needs to be
constructed in the present. The strengthening of the Church as an institution must be seen in
this context. Marks Gospel records how Jesus predicted the destruction of the Jerusalem
temple: not one stone will be left here upon another (Mark, 13: 2). Apparently writing after it
was levelled by the Romans, the writer of the Book of Revelation states: I saw no temple in
the city [of God] for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb [and] the
nations will walk by its light. In his visions he saw a great multitude that no one could count,
from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
As one theologian has commented, the Temple in the New Jerusalem is the body of
Christ the community of all nations.
548
The Church is to Christians what the ummah is to
Muslims and Jews, a community open to all. We should note the similarity in the words

547
Pegg, 2008: p. 169. Pegg cites a letter by Cardinal Henri de Marcy, the papal legate
accompanying the anti-Cathar crusade of 1181 in Provence, southern France, which describes the
heretics as desiring lives of evangelical simplicity; dismissed baptism, marriage and the sacraments
of the Church; scorned priests and Mosaic law; denied that the Lord God made heaven and earth;
and believed that Christ, having no human birth, possessed no physical body (p. 21). However, Pegg
states that no Provenal heretic was ever styled Cathar (by choice or accusation) during the years
of the crusade. Their ideas, considered by the preacher Bernard de Clairvaux as nothing new or
extraordinary but only trite commonplaces long vented among the heretics of old, led later heresy
hunters to call them the Cathari, meaning the pure, in line with the terminology adopted at the First
Council of Nicaea in 325 (pp. 22-23).
548
Btz, 2005: p. 183 and Revelation, 21: 22-24 and 7: 9.
255


community and communion, as the Church is composed of those who share in the ritual of
eating bread and drinking wine together.
549

Another early controversy that beset Christianity concerned the nature of Jesus Christ. As
the eminent historian of early Christianity, Carsten Peter Thiede (1952-2004), has pointed
out, it is significant that, in several Gospel episodes concerning Jesus reappearance after
his execution and burial in 36 CE, the disciples did not recognise him immediately.
550
Mary
Magdalene mistook him for a gardener when she and the apostle John discovered the empty
tomb (John, 20: 14-18), while the two disciples on the road to Emmaus also failed to
recognise Jesus until he broke bread with them (Luke, 24: 13-31). The notable occasion on
which Jesus was recognised by the disciples took place when doubting Thomas asked to
touch the very wounds inflicted at the crucifixion (John, 20: 19-28). The recounting of this
episode is intended to demonstrate that even Thomas had been convinced that a physical
resurrection had taken place, and, despite Jesus ability to appear suddenly in a shuttered
room, that the risen Christ was no phantom. Conversely it also suggests that there may have
been a Thomasine tradition circulating among the first Christians similar to that later
propounded by the Gnostics.
This theory that Jesus was fully human was later termed Monarchianism, which was
essentially another name for Gnosticism.
551
The Gnostic Cerinthus taught that the Christ had
descended upon Jesus at his baptism but then deserted him before the crucifixion. Gnostics
proposed that within Jesus there dwelt a power (dynamis) that issued directly from God. The
Pistis Sophia describes the Messianic aspect as a phantom, which had merged with Jesus

549
The key idea is that the Church forms the Eucharist, the Eucharist forms the Church. It is by
eating the Body of Christ, the Eucharist, that we become members of the Body of Christ, the Church;
see Bertram, 2007: p. 38.
550
Thiede, 2005: pp. 112-114. For a discussion of the date of the crucifixion see Lane Fox, 1991: p.
304.
551
Irenaeuss tract against the Gnostics is entitled On the Monarchy [sole rule] of God; see Christie-
Murray, 1976: p. 40. Monarchianism was put forward by a tanner called Theodotus, who was
excommunicated in 198, and his disciple Artemon. The bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata,
defended the viewpoint that wisdom of God and the logos dwelt within the man Jesus just as we live
in a house. Paul was censured for heresy in 266 and deposed as bishop in 272, despite much local
support. The heretical Paulicians supposedly sustained his legacy, becoming a popular movement
that controlled parts of Eastern Anatolia, in an alliance with the Caliphate, but eventually succumbed
to a full-scale war launched by Emperor Basil I in the 870s. Some of the rebels along with another
ascetic sect called the Massalians (the Prayers) were resettled in the Balkans and may have provided
the basis for the later Bogomil heresy; see Haldon, 2005: pp. 72 and 203; and Stoyanov, 1994: p.
107.
256


during his boyhood. The Christ phantom left Jesus before he died and then reappeared to
the disciples. This is similar to the Docetist, or Illusionist, theory, which Clement of
Alexandria stated had been promulgated by a pupil of Valentinus, called Cassianus. Marcion
seems to have held the same belief. The Docetist theory suggests that Jesus only appeared
to be a man so as to deceive his executioners, who, as the agents of Satan and/ or
Yaldabaoth, were attempting to prevent him from liberating souls from their entrapment in
the underworld. The Holy Koran takes a similar view, stating that the Jews killed their
prophets unjustly but only imagined that they had crucified Jesus (Isa) because he was
made to resemble another (Women, Al-Nisa, 4: 155-157).
552
The Sethians also
promulgated the substitution theory: in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus is
quoted as telling his disciples that it was another upon whom they placed the crown of
thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over the wealth of the archons and the offspring of
their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance.
553

Basilides propounded a variation in which Simon of Cyrene, who had been forced to help
Jesus carry his cross through the streets of Jerusalem to the place of execution, was
crucified in Jesus place. A number of legends have been subsequently built upon Basilides
substitution theory, which permitted their authors to speculate that Jesus had escaped with
Mary Magdalene to Provence and fathered a lineage that went on, five hundred years later,
to become the Merovingian kings of France. This is one of the principle themes of The Holy
Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln and
forms the back story in thrillers from Dan Brown and Chris Kuzneski.
554
The story of how
Mary, Martha and Lazarus were sentenced to death by being put into a derelict ship that was
left to drift out into the Mediterranean and eventually reached Marseilles was retold by
Jacobus de Voragine (1230-1298) in his Legenda Aurea; but he omitted any mention that
Jesus accompanied them.
555
Lastly, it should be mentioned that the theory that Jesus
married Mary Magdalene is contradicted by the Gnostic gospels as well as having no basis
in the canonical books of the New Testament. In the so-called Gospel of Mary, for instance,

552
The Koran: p. 382. Another translation states: they [the Jews] did not kill him; they did not crucify
him; but they were taken in by similarity; cited in Salibi, 2007: p. 49.
553
Cited in Harris, 1999: p. 100. The story is also found in The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter from the
Nag Hammadi library in which Christ informs Peter that the man on the cross is the substitute; cited
in Ehrman, 2012: p. 214.
554
Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, 1982; Brown, 2003; and Kuzneski, 2007.
555
Voragine, 1998: p. 166.
257


Peter voices concerns regarding Marys testimony as to Jesus words to her: Did he really
speak with a woman in private, without our knowledge? Should we all turn to and listen to
her? Did he prefer her to us? Had Mary been Jesus wife, Peter would not have had a
problem with the veracity of a private conversation between spouses.
556

The doubting Thomas story narrated in John lends credence to the theory that the Gnostic
gospel that is attributed to Thomas was composed early on. Traditionally the first Gospel, in
rather poor Greek, was that by John Mark, Simon Peters interpreter in Rome. He managed
to escape Neros persecution and died in Alexandria in Egypt. The Coptic, or Egyptian,
Church reveres Mark as its founder. The second (though some scholars think it pre-dated
Mark), is named after Matthew, or Matthias. It may have been derived from the lost Gospel
of the Hebrews, which was said by Ignatius of Damascus to have been composed in
Aramaic by Matthew in Jerusalem whilst Simon Peter and Paul were in Rome, that is
sometime between 55-65 CE.
557
The Gospel of the Hebrews may have been used by the
mainly Jewish Jerusalem Church.
558
Matthew went on to preach to the Zoroastrians in
Persia. The story of the Magi from the East who visited the newborn Christ to pay him
homage is patently inserted to show that Jesus is the expected saviour of Zoroastrianism,
the saoshyant (Matthew, 2: 1-12).
559
Matthew is supposed to be buried near Batumi, in
Georgia. Luke, who was Pauls companion, wrote the third Gospel, as an authorised
version for Christians, along with the Acts of the Apostles. He is said to have died in the
Greek city of Thebes around 84 CE. Johns Gospel was the last to be composed, perhaps
while the evangelist was living in Ephesus, apparently in part to amplify and correct the so-
called Gospel of Thomas. The latter incorporates the sayings of Jesus, or oracles, and
seems to be based on their original Aramaic versions, and therefore could have been written
after Matthews and Lukes gospels but before Johns. Thomas established the Church of the
East and his collection of Jesus sayings might have formed the basis of the gospel named

556
Cited in Meyer, 2004: p. 22.
557
An early Christian theologian, Papias of Hierapolis or Phrygia (writing between 110-138 CE) states
that Matthew compiled the sayings [or oracles] of Jesus in the Aramaic language and others
translated them as best they could. He also said that Mark had written a book based on the
preaching of Peter about Jesus; see Ehrman, 2012: p. 226; also cited in Freke and Gandy, 2000: p.
272; and Phillips, 2001: p. 49.
558
See Vermes, 2013: p. 85. The Jerusalem Church seems to have been called a sect of the Poor
(Ebionites) or Nazarenes.
559
Matthew is the only evangelist to mention this episode; see Clark, 2001: p. 155.
258


after him; he left for India around 52, where he worked for another twenty years.
560
If so, the
major gospels were written between 50 and 90 CE and apart from the oracles and the
Gospel of the Hebrews were all composed in Greek.
561
The so-called Gospel of Philip,
actually a commentary on Christian beliefs, was probably compiled in the second century.
Montanists, Monarchianists and Docetists drew from the same set of ideas about how the
man Jesus could also be the Christ who survived death and underwent resurrection, even if
they did not agree how the mortal body and the divine power of the logos were combined.
We have already noted how this approach viewed Judaism and Hellenist philosophy. What
is also clear, from a study of heresy by theologian and historian David Christie-Murray, is
that some early Christians regarded God as a Being who can only be comprehended
partially, or sequentially. Christie-Murray explains that the Monarchianists held views that
appear akin to what has become known as process theology. In other words, knowledge
evolves in stages, and we do not conceive knowledge all at once or completely. He
summarised Monarchianist thinking as follows:
The Trinity is not the three Persons of what came to be the orthodox Trinitarian
belief, but relations of God to mankind. Thus God revealed Himself as Father when
He acted as Creator in the beginning. As the incarnate Redeemer of the New
Testament He revels Himself as the Son. He reveals Himself as the Holy Spirit in His
work as Paraclete (intercessor or advocate), Guide of the Church, Comforter and
Sanctifier of Souls. The work of the Creator and of the Son was regarded as having
been completed, and when the mission of the Spirit is ended (presumably when the
faithful have been harvested at the end of time), God will put away His three

560
Thomas is supposed to have landed on an island at the mouth of the Periyar River in Kerala, on
the coast of the Arabian Sea, and died on the other side of southern India at Mylapore, near Madras
(now known as Chennai), on the Bay of Bengal; see Mitchell, 1997: pp. 397 and 522. Another
tradition relates that Thomass remains are to be found in Edessa, todays Urfa, in eastern Turkey.
The credibility of an Indian mission gains support from the fact that after the discovery [during the
Andhra period from the second century BCE to the third century CE] of the monsoon winds shortened
the long and tedious coastal routes and brought in a nearer [shorter] oceanic route across the
Arabian Sea. This was the period when Roman influence in India was at its height. In fact, the entire
Southern peninsula under the Andhra dynasty was in direct communication with Rome so that
Roman gold poured into all parts of India in payment for her silk, spices, gems and dye-stuffs.
Between 200 BC and 250 AD the Andhras not only carried out trade with Western Asia, Greece,
Rome, Egypt, China and other eastern countries but also set up embassies in some of these
countries; from an exhibit at the Maritime Heritage Gallery of the National Museum, Delhi, consulted
on 24 February 2012.
561
See Lane Fox, 1991: p. 202. Other scholars, such as Geza Vermes, date the four gospels about
20 years later, that is, between 70 and 110/120 CE; see Vermes, 2003: pp. xi-xii.
259


[personas] and resume the single, simple and undifferentiated Being that He
fundamentally is.
562

In spite of their apparently heretical character, Gnostic ideas permeate Christian doctrine
and may also be found in the other salvation religions, including Islam. Many philosophical
terms in Arabic are borrowings from the Greek and parallel their similar usage by
Christians.
563

Knowledge or mysteries?
While Christian critics traced the Gnostics heresy to their Hellenist philosophical roots in
Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Plato, this by no means implied that the orthodox belittled
knowledge as such. Hyppolytus of Rome (d. 236), who wrote a learned treatise, the
Refutation of All Heresies, commended the venerable simplicity of unassuming truth, the
knowledge arising from the logos. By means of this knowledge his readers might escape
the approaching threat of the fire of judgment, and the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus,
where never shines a beam from the irradiating voice of the Word [the logos]. They would
no longer be enslaved by lusts or passions. Hyppolytus concluded Know yourself; that is,
discover God within yourself, for He has formed you after His own image (10: 30).
564
That
these words could equally well have come from a Gnostic indicates that there existed an
underlying intellectual framework inspiring orthodox and heterodox alike; a framework that
was present at the earliest phases of Christianitys development.
What was perhaps lost in the tussle between the Gnostics and the orthodox clerics, later
backed by the imperial state of Rome, was the element of personal liberation through
education that the Gnostic schools provided. The Church preferred to extend its blessings
through rituals and the rote-learning of the catechism, rather than through a process of
education in the tradition of Socrates, whereby questions could be debated as well as
answered. A good example of the Churchs attitude is the way it administers the sacraments
to the faithful. The word sacrament comes from the Latin sacramentum, which in Greek is
translated as mysterion. In other words a sacrament signifies a special truth. The

562
Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 40. It was perhaps inevitable that the Catholic Church not only
condemned the Monarchianists in the second century but also some of the works of Henri Bergson in
the twentieth century for promoting theories that were akin to process theology. The priest Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin, who held similar views, was never allowed to publish his philosophical writings in
his lifetime.
563
The historian Kamal Salibi lists a number of these; see Salibi, 2007: chapter 4.
564
See Hyppolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, 10: 30, on <www.newadvent.org/fathers/050110.htm>
260


sacraments of baptism and confirmation symbolise the advance from the hylic and psychic
stages respectively to the pneumatic, though these terms are not used by orthodox
Christians.
565

At baptism the convert is supposed to renounce Satan, that is, to declare that the material
world is not intrinsically valuable. The water symbolically cleans the material body, indicating
the remission of inherent sinfulness. The baptism ceremony is usually performed in infancy
and so is devoid of any educational content. Since the confirmation ceremony takes place at
adolescence and is intended to make the believer perfect, it requires some prior education
but this usually amounts to accepting basic dogma. The anointment with oil blessed by a
priest, the chrism, symbolises the illumination of maturity, and the spiritual transition
associated with the pneumatic stage.
566
The chrism is an ointment, made from olive oil and
an aromatic balsam, which, through its use in anointing the believer, symbolically protects
him or her as a protagonist in the faith.
567
Interestingly, the Apostle Philip is said to have
taught that the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden was an olive tree and that its oil enlivens
humankind (Gospel of Philip, 94).
568
In the last rites, performed before death, the believer
must repent his or her sins, but in this case the anointment with oil signifies the extension of
Gods mercy by offering a protective salve, or seal, for the souls onward journey. In principle
the oil for the last rites should be applied to eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet, and, in the
case of men, the loins, indicating how the believer has sinned in the past and sealing them
as conduits for sin in the future; but it is usually applied simply to the forehead. The
recognition and renunciation of a sinful life should be the final step in achieving gnosis,
though once more, there is no explicit educational content. Although the rituals associated

565
See Lang, 2002: pp. 186-189 for a Catholic interpretation of the sacraments that demonstrates,
despite its protestations to the contrary, the similarity links between the sacraments and the stages of
initiation of the Gnostics. Lang writes that water restores the soul to a state of pristine purity, while
oil is a metonym for the Spirit that cures our spiritual blindness (pp. 129 and 189).
566
According to the so-called Gospel of Philip, None can see themselves [reflected] in water or in a
mirror unless there is light; none can see themselves in light unless there is a mirror or water to reflect
them. That is why we must be immersed [baptizai] in water and light; the light is in the oil of
anointment [chrisma]; cited in Leloup, 2004: p. 105.
567
See Lang, 2002: chapter 4.
568
The Tree of Life lives in the middle of another garden; it is the olive tree from which the oil of
anointment is drawn. Thanks to it, resurrection is possible. The Tree of Knowledge of happiness
and unhappiness killed Adam; but the tree of true knowledge, the Tree of Life, enlivens humankind.
To be anointed with oil is higher than to be immersed in water. It is when we are anointed, not when
we are immersed in water, that we become Christians (Philip, 92, 94); see Leloup, 2004: pp. 121-
125.
261


with the sacraments marking key moments in a believers life remain intact in Christianity,
their meaning has become disconnected from the Gnostic framework within which the rites
can be properly understood. Today they seem more adapted to life in or before the sixteenth
century, when patriarchy prevailed, infant mortality was high, schooling was mostly
unavailable and adolescents went to work not to college.
In Christianity then, the mysteries have been turned into rites of passage that are largely
divorced from education. To be sure, the Church established schools and colleges in the
Middle Ages to ensure a flow of qualified recruits into the clergy, capable of refuting the
ignorance and heresies abounding among the populace. Later, as part of the Counter-
Reformation, the Catholic Church opened schools for the poor. But doctrine and orthodoxy
were prized over enquiry and innovation. Following a long struggle, culminating in the
European Enlightenment, the Churchs control over education was overthrown and schools
and universities became free institutions. But in the process something was lost as well as
gained. At the centre of a religion are teachings regarding the way to live ones life.
Institutions like universities and even art galleries have to a degree supplanted the role of
religion in modern times, but, as the writer Alain de Botton has pointed out, they do not try to
answer the difficult questions regarding the path to lead in life.
569
In an irreligious epoch, the
veneration extended to the arts and sciences offers a poor substitute for religious guidance.
In the past, the Christian churches provided a comprehensive framework for living ones life,
with its mysteries (the sacraments) becoming linked to lifes key stages in socialisation, the
construction of identity, family formation and reproduction. Early Christians referred to their
framework for living as the Way (hodos, in Greek) or the Way of the Lord (Acts of the
Apostles, 18: 25).
570
It was a far more extensive intrusion into the life of the devout than that
offered by a fraternity to its members. Transforming mystic fraternities into a church was a
way of coming to terms with Roman and Persian persecution. It formed an institution that
offered its members mutual support and guidance in preparation for their tribulations and the
anticipated last days. The mysteries became rites of passage instead of stages in an
education, and, in turn, the marginalisation of education and enquiry meant that a more
hierarchical and dogmatic culture came to prevail within the churches.

569
Alain de Botton, What humanities should teach and Are museums our new churches? A point of
view, BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 14 and 28 January 2011; on <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-
12136511> and <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12308952 > accessed on 30 May 2011.
570
See Salibi, 2007: p. 8; and Pagola, 2009: p. 282. The Gospel according to Mark cites a verse from
Isaiah (40: 3) in order to allude to the straight way of the Lord (Mark, 1: 3).
262


It is also easy to be misled by the intensity of the arguments that characterised the first
centuries of Christianity into thinking that their disagreements were more than superficially
significant in the life of worshippers. Many issues that troubled the clerics revolved around
formulae that were designed to express a consensus on the interpretation of the good
news. The Gospels and other early apostolic writings were themselves inconsistent and left
many questions open. The Sophistic clerics attempted to explain the Christian message to
Greek-speaking peoples using the philosophical systems developed by the Platonists and
Stoics. Gnosticism, if we can ever consider the range of writings grouped together under this
label as a fully coherent set of ideas, is to be understood in the context of Hellenistic culture.
Those clerics and theologians who became accepted as Fathers of the Church, the
orthodox, managed to hit upon the correct formulae. Those who were denounced as
heretics had advocated the erroneous formulae. But all had been trying to explain the same
mysteries using a similar vocabulary (though this is now difficult for modern readers to
understand).
As we have seen, the problem with Gnosticism lay in its tendency for generating sects,
which sought to separate the chosen from the damned. For this reason, the Church bore
down on Gnostics. But in many ways Gnostic theories were central to Christianity. By
prohibiting sectarianism and denouncing schism, the Church adopted a system of collective
leadership. The term patristic is used to describe the authority given to the fathers of the
Church, who developed a corpus of knowledge based as much upon ancient philosophy as
on the interpretation of divine revelation. Individually the Church fathers are not regarded as
infallible guides, and some of them were criticised for error. Several had even been heretics
themselves, including Augustine of Hyppo, Origen and Tertullian. But taken together the
Church has a body of writing that sums up its knowledge. Judaism went through a similar
process, with its knowledge gathered together in the Talmud.
The reason why Gnostic writing have attracted such interest since the nineteenth century is
precisely because they reveal a time when Christianity was a community of many voices,
including some womens. As these texts were rediscovered a fuller, although incomplete and
contradictory picture emerged, incorporating pre-Christian metaphysics, taken from Hellenist
philosophy, and the myths from Judaism and Zoroastrianism. That syncretistic assimilation
of different traditions into Gnostic theories was facilitated by their earlier common origins, as
this essay has sought to demonstrate. In a sense, Gnosticism is part and parcel of the
Hermetic paradigm and thus woven into the fabric of the salvation religions. The
fundamental model of spiritual development, which the devout must follow, involving the
263


mastery of ones instincts and passions, encouraging education and taking the straight path
through life is as much a Gnostic one as it is orthodox.
It also illuminates our present condition. Andr Nataf has pointed out that Gnosticism, like
initiation, is not a conversion to goodness, but the transmutation of evil into good, and of
solipsistic despair into solidarity with ones fellow man. The pursuit of wisdom is a quest for
redeeming knowledge and a quest for oneself. The Gnostic wants to proclaim himself the
ally of creative divinity. Evil enters the designs of the Creator, but, to be rid of it, according to
Gnosticism, the Creator needs man to overcome his misunderstanding. When men find
themselves again [that is, discover their true selves], evil will be transcended on earth as
well as in heaven. Thus, mankind is not the source of evil, although it must be held
accountable for its permanence. The essential drama is that of the soul, fallen and
imprisoned in matter. The Gnostic quest is to take responsibility for the fall, with a view to
preparing for the resurrection, that is, for salvation.
571
The value of Gnostic myths lies in
their exposition of the fundamental dilemmas within the human condition: what should we
do with the time between eating and sleeping, when, unlike other animals, we review our
own lives and achievements? The answers offered may be helpful to us, regardless as to
whether they are entirely convincing, in negotiating our own paths through life alongside
those upon whom we depend.

571
Nataf, 1994: pp. 36-37.
264


265


Appendix D: The formation of Western Civilization and the role of
Islam
In about 1819 the word civilization, hitherto singular, began to be used as the plural It no
longer represents the supreme moral and intellectual value that it seemed to embody in the
eighteenth century. Today we feel somewhat uneasy about using the word civilization in
its old sense, connoting human excellence. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations
(1987)
572

Western civilization appears to be at a crossroad. It is, many claim, under siege from within
and without. There is surely no bigger issue today than the potential clash of civilizations, a
geo-political hypothesis espoused by Samuel P Huntington (1927-2008) that suggested that
America is threatened by a resurgent Islam and a rising China.
573
Huntington, along with
fellow historian Niall Ferguson, sees the superiority of Western civilization giving way as
science, technology and capitalism the tools that enabled Europeans to dominate the rest
of the world for some five hundred years spread around the globe, thus enabling all
peoples to benefit from progress.
574
Some fear the consequences, while others welcome the
displacement of the West from its dominant position within the international community.
Given this political context it is important to ensure clarity of terminology. In using the term
Western civilization I do not mean to imply the exclusion of Islam, as it is just as much an
heir of Hellenism as Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, as this essay has sought to show.
The labels of civilization and the West have connotations, going beyond religion, that call
for elucidation.
The features of civilization
A civilization is a cultural formation. Every society has a culture that enables it to disseminate
its members experiences, collective knowledge, technology and customs and to transmit
them to succeeding generations. Civilization is a type of culture that is associated with
hierarchal or stratified societies, where power (whether coercive, ideological or economic) is
exercised through specialist roles in a sophisticated political economy. The assertion, made
by archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957), that a surplus of foodstuffs to support

572
Braudel, 1995: pp. 6-7.
573
Huntington, 1996.
574
Ferguson, 2011.
266


a new urban population of specialised craftsmen, merchants, priests, officials and clerks
usher[ed] in civilization remains widely accepted.
575
Such societies consist of many inter-
locking networks with urban/rural settlement patterns and extensive forms of exchange
involving, for example, trade, migration, inter-communal marriage, and so on. Complex
societies including our own comprise multiple groups and communities, often with
divergent interests, and manifest considerable inequality. The features of civilization include
common communication media (a lingua franca, literature, artefacts and architecture, rituals
and traditions, music, money and other recognised symbols) that enable a complex social
formation to engage in exchanges of goods, services and ideas. Rules are needed for
hygiene and fair trade and to control anti-social behaviour or inter-communal friction. These
define a shared set of values, status and prestige which permit the establishment of the key
institutions of authority, learning and exchange a state, with a standing army, a
bureaucracy and permanent judiciary; an official religious cult; and, last but not least,
organised markets. In comparison to pre-civilized societies, where political authority is
founded in a chieftain and exercised through personal or clan loyalty, and a shaman is the
source of spiritual knowledge concerning the duties of the communitys members, civilization
is culture on a scale to impress. Archaeologist David Wengrow argues that urban civilization
is village culture reproduced on a monumental scale, with an emphasis on collective rather
than exclusive [household] participation.
576
Art historian Kenneth Clark said that civilization
exudes confidence.
577
From public monuments to institutes of learning, civilization displays
itself in terms of its size, breadth, cohesion and depth. Arthur Koestler wrote that a
civilization is not defined by the sum of its science, technology, art, and social organisation,
but by the total pattern which they form, and the degree of harmonious integration in that
pattern.
578
It consists of the institutional structures that unite diverse communities into an
interlinked and complex society over the long term.
579

575
Childe, 1964: pp. 30-31. According a modern textbook, the establishment of [a] surplus seems to
have been a prerequisite for the development of civilization; in Lenski, Lenski and Nolan, 1991: p.
155.
576
From the perspective of history, Wengrow writes, civilizations are shown to be the outcomes of
mixtures and borrowings, but always on a prodigious scale; in Wengrow, 2010: pp. 74 and 175.
577
Clark, 1969: p. 4. Huntington similarly stated that civilization is a culture writ large; Huntington,
1996: p. 41.
578
See Koestler, 1964: p. 527.
579
Civilization thus represents a response to the growing challenges posed by the expansion of trade
(local and long-distance), of infrastructure development (public works for flood control, irrigation, water
267


Scholars have identified several major civilizations, the most prominent being Western (or
European), Islamic, Chinese and Indian, with many others of more limited scope, as far as
world history is concerned Byzantine/Russian, Tibetan, Japanese, West African, East
African, Meso-American, Andean, and so on.
580
The historian most closely identified with this
sort of typology was Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) in his Study of History (1934-1961), but
we must also mention Fernand Braudel (1902-1985), whos Grammaire des civilisations
(1963) aimed to provide a framework for total history, and Lev Gumilev (1912-1992).
581
For
these historians, each civilization had a distinctive character, a persona or collective
personality, and a relationship with a people or ethnos, where often religion is the
strongest feature.
582
In a more mystical take, Daniel Andreev (1906-1957) proposed that
civilizations have either an angelic or demonic character.
583
All have sought to locate the
essence of a civilization in a people (the body) and a religion (its soul).
584

For Gumilev, the essence of a civilization lay in the development of the ethnos that formed
it: a civilization, as a phase of development, is a time favourable for the accumulation of
material culture, for the regulation of living, and an obliterating of local ethnographic features
inherited from past epochs.
585
He links civilization with the formation of a people from a
grouping of tribes. The Russian people, for instance, emerged out of the merging of many
tribal nations Khazars, Varangians, Cumans, Mordvins and Mongols - many of whom have
disappeared from history. To be sure, this gives civilization in Russia certain features that
are not found among, say, the British people, who are also the product of several nations
(including Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans, Scots and Welsh). But here we are in

supply, roads and inns, and so on) as populations grew, and of political power (for example,
theocratic, kingship over chieftains, and imperial conquest); see Service, 1975. Service cites (p. 9)
Walter Goldschmidt for this approach: what is consistent from culture to culture is not the institution;
what is consistent are the social problems. What is recurrent from society to society is solutions to
these problems; in Goldschmidt, 1966: p. 31. Civilization seems to have evolved independently in
relatively few locations: Mesopotamia/Egypt, China, Meso-America and possibly in the Indus Valley,
which may have been influenced from Mesopotamia.
580
See for example the discussion in Huntington, 1996: pp. 40-48.
581
See Toynbee, 1972: p. 72; and Braudel, 1995.
582
Tonybee, 1972: p. 46; and Braudel, 1995: pp. 31 and 35.
583
Andreev, 1997, The Rose of the World, which was composed in the 1950s while he was in prison.
584
I am indebted to Shlomo Sand for this analogy; see Sand, 2009: p. 80.
585
See Gumilev, 1979: chapter 6; on <http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/English/ebe6a.htm>.
268


danger of confusing the formation of a nation and its people with civilization, and the two
concepts are not identical.
Although Huntington asserts that religion is a central defining characteristic of civilization; it
may not be the defining feature of civilization as is often portrayed.
586
To be sure, in the
Roman Empire the state cult played its part in bolstering the authority of the Emperor, as he
was also the Pontifex Maximus, or high priest. But Roman law and the bureaucracy were
probably more significant in holding the constellation of communities and provinces together.
In Chinese civilization a dominant philosophy, Confucianism, is a central feature, while
Western civilization is increasingly secular, with an idealisation of democracy and the rule of
law as its principal ideology.
Even if we were to widen the sense of religion to include any dominant philosophy, since
this also helps bind people together with common values, there remain difficulties. Religion
can, without doubt, be important to preserving a society. Every society must provide its
members with security across several dimensions. To survive, a society has to guard against
external human threats, internal anarchy, and against natural disasters and persistent
shortages. It must also maintain morale in the face of calamity. A religion or philosophy that
provides answers (whether or not these are truly effective) on what to do, what can be hoped
for and what can be achieved, allows its adherents to recover and rebuild their lives more
readily after a disaster.
587
Religion can influence selfish and short sighted behaviour as well.
In a complex society, such as our own, with a decentralised market economy, selfishness
and short sightedness can induce perverse beggar my neighbour tactics that threaten long
term cohesion and prosperity. The salvation religions, with their universal moral codes and
belief in a Final Judgement, can temper this tendency. But while cultural practices like
religion can enhance the security and sustainability of societies, they may also entrench
social inequality through the validation of oppression and the exploitation of women and
outsiders. It is the relationship between civilization and social power that renders civilization
vulnerable to ideological and political change. It is therefore not at all obvious that religion or
philosophy are the decisive feature of civilization. It would thus be a mistake to classify
civilizations according to their religion or philosophy. We need to examine other features to
understand why civilization differs across our planet.

586
Huntington, 1996: p. 47.
587
See Blackburn, 1990: pp. 165-168.
269


A civilization is therefore not reducible to a single ethnic group, a geographical or ideological
feature or to a particular mode of production and livelihood. The point is that some societies
are civilized, not that they are different civilizations; we should talk of civilized Romans,
instead of Roman civilization. To this end we may be better off defining civilization as having
Roman, or Chinese, or Western characteristics, and so on (to adapt Mao Zedongs
adage).
588
More importantly, since civilization functions as a means to integrate complex
societies, we must look to the ways through which integration is facilitated and maintained.
We need to examine these as the distinctive characteristics of civilization.
Origins of Western civilization
The distinctive characteristics of civilization that differentiate the Western variant from its
Sinic or Indic counterparts may be traced to the strategies that evolved to permit social and
economic integration.
589
Social integration can take many forms: by acculturation, through
the forging of common values and beliefs; through occupation; and by means of extending
citizenship and education to all comers. Through acculturation there can be a blending of
languages, clothing, cuisines, music, and so on, to accompany the diffusion of technologies
and ideas. This need not result in the disappearance of a communitys traditions or
language, although this may happen as a minority community is assimilated. Acculturation
has nevertheless been the main strategy in nation forming, through, for example, the
development of a national culture and a sense of nationhood. As a strategy for integration,
nation building has a recent, and conflict ridden, history. Nation building has been
accompanied, unfortunately, by the suppression of other nations, setting up in turn
competing demands for recognition and national rights. This conflict around nationalism has
been one of two factors (along with the emergence of socialism) contributing to the rise of
barbarity in what historian Eric Hobsbawm has called our modern Age of Extremes.
590

In any case, perhaps the oldest integration strategy was to reserve particular occupations to
specific communities and assign a distinct status to that community or group. In the caste

588
In a speech to musicians on 24 August 1956 Mao Zedong asserted that the Chinese revolution
has Chinese characteristics. The phrase was adapted by Deng Xiaoping and widely adopted to
describe the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics followed by China; see, for instance,
General Secretary Hu Jintaos speech on the occasion of 90
th
anniversary of the founding of the
Chinese Communist Party on 1 July 2011.
589
Elman Service states that one of the main functions of an authority system is to integrate society;
Service, 1975: p. 102.
590
See Hobsbawm, 1995: p. 563; and, Hobsbawm, 1997: pp. 258-259.
270


system, still, of course, prevalent in South Asia, status restricts the range of social and
economic exchange and erects entry and exit barriers to changing status and livelihood. The
result is that people tend to remain within caste boundaries throughout their lives, unable, for
instance, to marry someone from another caste or, for the great majority, to improve their
economic situation. But the caste barriers also limit competition for the livelihood niche that
caste members have either secured for themselves or which has been granted to them by
the state. The anthropologist Elman Service (1915-1996) asserted that all archaic
civilizations were caste societies in the sense that roles in the political economy were
hereditary.
591

Another integration strategy is to allow for social mobility or to disregard social status when
conducting business. Religion can act as an integrating mechanism by giving each member
of the religious community equal status. As is explained in Appendix E, a religion uses
doctrine, codes of conduct, rites and rituals to unify its members. But religion also excludes
non-believers and may reinforce social barriers by legitimating inequalities. Those societies
where equality of status is combined with fair opportunity permit greater social mobility and
reduce social exclusion. In China, West Asia and Europe it was possible to improve ones lot
through education and enterprise. Education is especially important to facilitating social
mobility, provided that entry is not restricted by status and wealth but by aptitude (that is,
through merit).
Thus, in Europe and West Asia, the potential barrier posed by social status was overcome
by the development of civic status. This model appears to have been pioneered in ancient
Greece where citizenship became a route for social and economic integration. The Greeks,
and before them the Phoenicians, colonised the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins
creating a network of city-states. Their inhabitants were citizens of a polity (from the Greek
word for a city, polis). These became the basis for republican ideals of democracy, open-
minded enquiry and the right to undertake ones business without interference. Citizenship
could be acquired by birth (either inherited or as a consequence of being born in a
prescribed locality) or by adoption. In the latter case, an aspiring citizen has to swear
allegiance to the polity, thereby accepting joint responsibility for the res publica (the public
thing in other words, the state) with his or her fellows. Unlike national identity, which is
always exclusive and may be hard to adopt convincingly, since someone is always ready to

591
Elman Service also considered that true chiefdoms with hereditary centralised authority, allowing
the peaceful transfer of power from one leader to the next, and an aristocracy of hierarchically
ordered ranks and privileges could be thought of as caste societies; see Service 1975: pp. 293-295
and 301.
271


accuse an immigrant of retaining their previous allegiance, civil status is available more
widely and more straight forwardly, at least in principle. For instance, the British politician
Norman Tebbit argued in 1990 that even second and third generation Asian migrants to the
UK were not true Britons as they tended to cheer on Pakistan or India at cricket matches.
592

Conversely, there is no degree to civil status: you are either a citizen of Ruritania or you are
not; and if you are you have the same rights as all other Ruritanian citizens.
To be sure, all communities hold assemblies where common issues are decided upon. But in
a democracy it is your right to participate in the assembly that identifies you as a citizen of
equal worth. In other types of popular assembly it is your social status that determines your
right to participate and to be granted a hearing. In Indian villages today it remains difficult for
the downtrodden, the dalits, to participate in local assemblies, despite their constitutional
rights. The democratic and civil institutions that were spread from the Atlantic Ocean to
Indian Ocean put men on an equal footing, although women, slaves and foreigners were
excluded until recent times. That said, the polis was not closed to foreigners altogether. Paul
of Tarsus was a Jew and a tentmaker a professional running his own small business who
enjoyed Roman citizenship despite never visiting Rome until towards the end of his life.
The idea of the West
The roots of Western civilization are traceable to the ancient Greeks, and in particular to
Athens, with its traditions of democracy and philosophy. These ideas, and the artistic
heritage and fashions that went with it, spread widely. The Greeks, following the Phoenician
example, colonised the Mediterranean basin and, with a little help from Alexander the
Greats victories over the Persian Empire, also founded cities across Western and Central
Asia. By the start of our Current Era, Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia (controlled by the
Parthian Empire) to the east, Egypt, Ethiopia and Arabia to the south, and the Roman
Empire to the west, had all been influenced profoundly. In turn, the Greeks absorbed
features from the cultures into which they had settled. Hellenistic civilization was Greek
speaking but, according to the historian Gustav Droysen (1808-1884), who coined the term
in 1836, it incorporated three oriental traditions: transcendental monotheism from the Jews,
astrological fatalism from the Babylonians and radical dualism from the Persians. It was a
syncretistic and cosmopolitan culture and it laid the foundation for the subsequent
development of Western civilization.

592
A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they
cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you
are?; quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 23 April 1990.
272


To appreciate the influence of Hellenistic civilization we should remember that one did not
have to be of Greek origin to be a part of it. Greek was a language spoken widely, by
merchants, scholars, soldiers and politicians, who may well have spoken one or more
additional lingua franca Aramaic, Persian, or Latin as well as their mother tongue. Later,
after the Arab conquest of Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Iran, Arabic was added to the
repertoire. Trade spread ideas. Buddhists could be found in Babylon, Christians in India and
Zoroastrians from Anatolia to Afghanistan.
Some scholars argue that Western civilization is a branch of a Central civilization formed by
the merger of three earlier civilizations, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Aegean into one world
system under the Greeks and Romans.
593
Others have chosen to label the constellation of
thriving cities that became home to republican democracy, fostered Hellenic rationalism and,
in due course, monotheism, as Hellenistic, European, or Western. Although it is clear that
they are talking about the same thing, there are implications from the choice of label.
As Droysen outlined, Hellenistic civilization took in Jewish and Persian religious traditions
through assimilation into a syncretic framework that allowed different ideas to be discussed
and debated. Jews remained Jews and Hellenes remained attached to their pantheon of
gods and their cults. But the common assumptions that formed the Hermetic paradigm
encouraged philosophers and ideologues to debate, to dispute and to synthesize. Philo of
Alexandria is an example of a Jew who used Neo-Platonic ideas to explore theology. The
early fathers of the Church set out Christian ideas within the framework of the Hermetic
paradigm and wider Hellenistic philosophy. This intellectual movement worked within the
Sophistic tradition of rhetoric and reasoned argument, drawing upon Neo-Platonism and
Aristotles works as well as Jewish scholarship.
594
Alongside these Christian and Jewish

593
David Wilkinson has relabelled Western civilization as Central civilization to emphasize the
progressive broadening of its extent and eventual incorporation of other regions, such as South Asia
and Southeast Asia, through commerce, the spread of Islam and European colonisation, which meant
that the Central civilization came to dominate the globe. However, Wilkinsons sequence of expansion
confuses the theory of an expanding market system with what I would call the soft infrastructure that
comprises civilization. To use the terms world system and civilization interchangeably, as Wilkinson
does, is also to confuse the economy with culture. See David Wilkinson, 2004, The power
configuration sequence of the Central world system 1500-700 BC, Journal of World-Systems
Research, X, 3, Fall: pp. 655-720.
594
See MacCulloch, 2010: pp. 141-154. Key theologians included Justin (d. 165), Ireneaus (d. 202),
Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160-220), Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215), Origen (c. 184-253) and
Augustine of Hippo (354-430). See also Kerferd, 1981; Kerferd states that the Sophistics emphasised
rhetoric and oratory in education and proposed that no area of life or the world as a whole should be
immune from understanding achieved through reasoned argument (p. 2).
273


theologians were philosophers like Plotinus, who provided a synthesis of theist metaphysics
that was highly regarded, despite its pagan background. By designating this civilization as
Hellenistic we are emphasising the joint Greek, Jewish and Persian inheritance of
Christendom.
Furthermore, Western or European civilization has to a great extent defined itself in
relation to an Oriental other, which it attempted to colonise from the sixteenth century
onwards. In fact, Western and European mean the same thing, since the name Europe
possibly derives from the Phoenician word for the west, ereb, the place where the sun sets.
(The Latin terms, occident and orient refer respectively the horizons for the setting and the
rising sun.)
595
To the Phoenicians, Greece was to the west and Mesopotamia and Persia to
the east. It was due mainly to Phoenician exploration that the extent of the Old World
became known to the ancients. During the sixth century before our common era Phoenician
ships sailed at least as far as the English Channel to ascertain the shape of Europe and
circumnavigated Africa on an expedition commissioned by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II, a
feat not repeated until the voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1497-8.
596
But it was only much later
in history that an east~west division was established, when Hellenistic civilization suffered a
severe set-back in Western Europe with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Civilization held
on in those regions that were eventually converted to Islam and only after several centuries
was it restored fully to Western Europe. The disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West
left communities there highly insecure and caught in a cycle of economic decline, as we shall
see in the next section.
By labelling the allegedly defining features of post-Hellenistic civilization as Christian or
Western, historians have tended to marginalise the roles of Islam and Zoroastrianism. The
learning of antiquity, much of which was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, was
transmitted through the medium of Christianity and Islam. This involved, crucially, the

595
Similarly the Phoenicians called the east, asa (modern Asia) and Africa derives from the
Phoenician for dust, afar, presumably in reference to the Sahara desert.
596
According to Avienus of Volsini (fourth century CE), Himilco undertook a four-month voyage to
Brittany around 525 BCE. Hanno sailed from Carthage to the Gulf of Guinea off the West African
coast around 500 BCE. Herodotus (c. 484-425 BCE) recounts that the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho (610-
595 BCE) sent a Phoenician fleet down the Red Sea into the southern ocean and every autumn put
in where they were on the Libyan [African] coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next years
harvest. Then, having got in their grain they set sail again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars
of Hercules [Straits of Gibraltar] in the course of the third and returned to Egypt. See Herodotus,
1972: Book 4, pp. 283-284; and Markoe, 2000: pp. 188-189. Herodotus also states that the Persian
monarch Darius sent Scylax of Caryanda around 510 BCE to explore the Indus delta (p. 285).
274


incorporation of the Sophistic tradition and the Hermetic paradigm into each of the major
salvation religions. The transmission of ancient knowledge to modern times was thus filtered
through religion, which explains, in part, why we find it today difficult to comprehend and to
make it part of our day-to-day discourse. The modern secular West that developed from the
European Enlightenment movement has become estranged from its own roots. I consider
these elements in turn.
The decline and rise of the West
There is little doubt that the Roman Empire was in crisis by the early fourth century. Whilst
the power base of the Roman Emperors lay in the army, the latter was not capable of
holding the Empire together, and, indeed, was the source of political instability and
numerous civil wars. As the impact of peasant risings, growing brigandage, and Teutonic
raiding and piracy undermined prosperity from the mid-third century onwards, Roman
emperors attempted to control the situation through repression. The peasantry was forced to
labour for their manorial overlords, artisans were corralled into guilds, and taxes, and the
size of the army, were increased. The imperial power of the so-called Dominate sought to
introduce oriental ceremonial practices whereby emperors styled themselves as dominus et
deus (lord and god), which only served to encourage civil disobedience from the devotees of
the salvation religions.
597
This became the political rationale for the persecution of Jews,
Christians, Zoroastrians and the followers of the goddess Isis, cults that flourished among
the urban artisans and merchants. Previously, emperors had described themselves more
modestly as Romes First Citizen.
598
Through the Dominate the Roman emperors sought to
instil imperial patriotism by reviving the cult of divinity. But the crackdown on religious
minorities only created further tensions within society and alienated their followers, leading,
for example, to mutinies among troops who sympathised with the persecuted.
To a degree, therefore, Emperor Constantines decision to tolerate Christianity was simply a
recognition that his predecessor Diocletians policy of repression had not worked. But this
policy reverse, and his successors decision to link Christianity to the imperial cause, was
also a stroke of genius that perhaps rescued the ideal of the pax romana and Hellenistic
civilization from oblivion. To be sure, Constantine (306-337 CE) may have taken a leaf from
his Iranian rivals book. The Sassanid dynasty in Persia, which came to power in 224 CE,
established Zoroastrianism as the state religion with an officially sanctioned priestly

597
See Anderson, 1978: pp. 86-103.
598
Lane Fox, 2006: pp. 490 and 543.
275


hierarchy. From being a pernicious superstition (in the words of the historian Tacitus),
Christianity emerged as the Empires stabiliser, converting the countryside of Celtic pagans
into Latin-speaking subjects while preserving the core of Hellenistic civilization.
599

Thus Hellenistic civilization and the by now Christian-oriented Dominate in the Eastern
Empire proved more resilient to the Teutonic invasions than was the case in the Latin West,
where army revolts, high taxes and conscription undermined loyalty and defences so
decisively that it fell easy prey to relatively small and lightly equipped armies from Central
and Eastern Europe. While the Roman Empire largely survived in the Eastern Mediterranean
basin under its Byzantine rulers, in the West barbarian tribal confederations took power.
Their influence can be seen in the names of todays Western European countries and
regions: the Anglo-Saxons took over much of Britain (and founded England); in Gaul, it was
the Franks (hence France); in Spain, the Visigoths and Vandals (Andalusia); the Lombards
invaded northern Italy (Lombardy); and although the Huns left no ethnic trace in Pannonia,
the country they settled is still called Hungary. The Voelkerwanderung, or migration of
peoples, was followed by the so-called Dark Ages, when cities were abandoned, trade
atrophied and learning was lost. In the words of Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, a
world empire was replaced by a patchwork of chiefdoms or ranked societies governed by
primitive political forces for whom market systems were inappropriate.
600
The fusion of
Teutonic rule with Roman institutions, cooked slowly through four centuries of exceptional
insecurity, created the unique synthesis, later known as feudalism, as historian Perry
Anderson describes in his masterly study Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (1974).
601

With the ninth century re-establishment of the (by now) Holy Roman Empire in the West
under the Carolingian and Saxon dynasties, with the strong backing of the Church, emerged
the feudal order and a commitment to rediscover the literature and science of antiquity. The
epic tale was revived, for instance, but in place of the Olympian gods and heroes Hercules,
Perseus, Theseus and Odysseus poets looked to Dark Age heroes like Arthur of Britain,
Siegfreid the Vlsung, Dietrich of Bern, Walter of Aquitaine, Bradamante and Roland, who
battled dragons, elves and sorcerers. It took however another two centuries to restore a
degree of security in the face of Arab and Viking raids. The resurgence of production and

599
Lane Fox, 2006: p. 595; Anderson, 1978, pp. 135-136.
600
Hodges and Whitehouse, 1983: pp. 170-171.
601
See Anderson, 1978: Part II, Chapter 3 especially.
276


learning within monasteries was a key element of Carolingian strategy to revive the
economy.
Medieval revival
Two sources of ancient knowledge were available for the revival of learning in the Latin
West. Byzantine libraries still stocked the classical literature of antiquity. But in fact many
scholars looked to Arab sources, including Arabic translations from ancient Greek works. In
borrowing from Arabic sources, the Latin-speaking clergy and scholars took advantage of a
massive intellectual effort by the caliphs of Baghdad and Crdoba to collect and systematise
all science and learning.
The Abbsid dynasty promoted the use of Arabic as the language of government and
undertook the enormous task of translating the wisdom of the ancients from Greek and
Persian. According to the medieval historian Ibn Khaldn (1332-1406), the second Abbsid
Caliph, Ab Jafar al-Mansr (754-775 CE), began the systematic collection and translation
work. Ibn Khaldn records that until the Arabs settled, and became a sedentary people, after
their conquest of the Near East, they had, what he called, a natural lifestyle, based on
agriculture and animal husbandry, without conveniences and luxury. Under the Abbsids,
the Arabs adopted the civilization of their Byzantine Greek, Persian and Indian rivals.
602

Ibn Khaldn on the establishment of Islamic civilization
[The] sciences were most extensively cultivated by the two great pre-Islamic nations,
the Persians and the Greeks. According to the information we have, the sciences
were greatly in demand among them, because they possessed an abundant
civilization. The intellectual sciences are said to have come to the Greeks from the
Persians, when Alexander killed Darius and gained control of the Achaemenid
empire. At that time he appropriated the books and sciences of the Persians.
When the Greek dynasty was destroyed and the Roman emperors seized power and
adopted Christianity, the intellectual sciences were shunned by them, as religious
groups and their laws require. [But] they continued to have a permanent life in
scientific writings and works that were preserved in their libraries.
Then God brought Islam, and its adherents gained an incomparable victory. They
deprived the Byzantines, as well as all other nations, of their realms. At the

602
See Ibn Khaldn, 1967, The Muqaddimah: p. 92.
277


beginning, they were simple and disregarded the crafts. Eventually, however, the
Muslim rule and dynasty flourished. The Muslims developed a sedentary culture,
such as no other nation had ever possessed. Then they desired to study the
philosophical disciplines. [The Caliph] Ab Jafar al-Mansr, therefore, sent to the
Byzantine emperor and asked him to send translations of mathematical works and
some physics. Later on, [the Caliph] al-Mmn came. He had a desire for
science. He sent ambassadors to the Byzantines emperors; they were to discover
the Greek sciences and have them copied into Arabic; he sent translators for that
purpose. As a result, a good deal of the material was preserved and collected.
Muslim scientists assiduously studied the Greek sciences. They became skilled in
the various branches They considered [the First Teacher, Aristotle,] the decisive
authority as to whether an opinion should be rejected or accepted [but] they [also]
surpassed their predecessors in the intellectual sciences. The Muslim
philosophers wrote commentaries and abridgements of them. Al-Frbi and Ibn Sn,
known as Avicenna, for instance, did this, and, later on, the Spanish philosopher Ibn
Rushd, or Averros. In a way [Avicenna] opposed Aristotle on most problems and
expressed his own opinion on them.
603

The Caliph al-Mmn (813-833) established a library in the new Abbsid capital of
Baghdad in 830, which was known as the Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom (or of
Science). The library and academy was modelled as much on Persian and Indian examples
as on the famous Hellenistic library of Alexandria.
604
As Ibn Khaldn relates, the Abbsid
rulers sent for copies of works from Greek Byzantium, but they also collected books from
further afield. A delegation of Indian sages visited Baghdad around 771 bringing works on
astronomy, geography and mathematics.
605
At the western end of the Muslim world, the
Caliph al-Hakam II (961-976) of Crdoba also founded a library of 400,000 books and
supported the translation of works into Arabic.
606
This magnificent centre of learning, which
involved the transport of thousands of antique columns from Carthaginian and Roman cities,

603
Extracts from Ibn Khaldn, 1967: pp. 372-385.
604
Fakhry, 2009: p. 9; Lyons, 2010: p. 63; Wallace-Murphy, 2006: p. 97.
605
Lyons, 2010: pp. 70-71.
606
Wallace-Murphy, 2006: p. 108.
278


was destroyed in 1010 by Berber rebel soldiers.
607
The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was
similarly sacked, by the Mongols in 1258.
The encouragement of learning encompassed the translation of philosophical and scientific
works from the Greek, Persian, Syriac (a successor language to Aramaic) and Sanskrit into
Arabic and their systematic analysis and synthesis. The theories of Plato, Aristotle and
Plotinus were used to embed Islam into a rational framework of knowledge and to interpret
the Koran, bringing the Mutazilah school into conflict with the literalists, the Zhir, and other
traditionalists.
608
The school influenced the foremost Muslim philosopher of this period, al-
Kind (c. 801-866), who led the House of Wisdoms translation and research effort. He called
mathematics the first philosophy, and wrote a book on the use of Indian numerals, along
with others on medicine, astrology and alchemy.
609
Although he took forward several of the
themes propounded by the Mutazilites, he disagreed on some aspects, such as on the
existence of atoms, which he rejected. His older colleague, al-Khwrizm (c.783-850), also
studied Indian systems of calculation, including the decimal system, their use of zero and
what became known as algebra, from the title of his treatise of 830 The Book of Restoring
and Balancing (Kitab al-jabr wal-muqabala).
610
He was known as Algoritmi in the West, from
which the word algorithm is derived.
The absorption of Greek learning into the Kalm, a systemised theology of Islam, was
encouraged by the first Abbsid caliphs, who were apparently also seeking to reconcile the
breakaway party of Ali, Mohammeds son-in-law, the Shah sect, with the main Sunn
current. However, under Caliph al-Mutuwakkil in 847, the Mutazilah school of theology and
the Shah were repressed and religious authority passed decisively to the community of
scholars, the ulama.
611
The caliph also forced Christians to wear yellow clothing and closed
churches.
612
Al-Kind fell from favour under al-Mutuwakkil and his writings were neglected.

607
Robertson, 1975: p. 499.
608
See Fakhry, 2009: pp. 18-25.
609
Fakhry, 2009: p. 30.
610
Lyons, 2010: pp. 71-75.
611
See Berkey, 2003: pp. 126-127.
612
MacCulloch, 2010: p. 262.
279


Al-Kind contended that the Arabs were the true inheritors of Greek philosophy, which
Christians had neglected and distorted.
613
To a degree al-Kind was correct. Bishop Basil of
Caesarea (330-379), appears to have been the first scholar to reject ancient Greek natural
philosophy in favour of a purely Biblical account of the cosmos, which, he asserted, should
be understood literally, not allegorically. He and his supporters, known as the School of
Antioch, propounded the theory that the earth was flat and the heavens formed a vault
above it, in accordance with a description that the heavens are like a tent spread over the
earth (Isaiah, 40: 22).
614
Another bishop, Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) claimed that the
world resembles a wheel or disk, with the continents grouped together within an
encircling ocean.
615
At its centre was Jerusalem. His encyclopaedia, the Etymologiae written
in the early 600s, proved popular throughout the Middle Ages, and though based extensively
on Aristotles works and a compendium by the Roman author Boethius (480-525 CE), it
incorporated other texts uncritically, including the cosmology of Anaximander, from where
the flat Earth theory was sourced. Not all churchmen accepted the flat Earth model however,
as the example of the Venerable Bede of Northumberland (c. 672-735), whose study of Pliny
convinced him that the Earth was a sphere, demonstrates.
616

Despite his mistakes, Isidore was a keen educator and presided over the Council of Toledo
of 633, which agreed to found schools attached to every cathedral in Spain. These were to
study Greek and Hebrew, alongside the arts, the law, medicine and the sciences. The
Emperor Charlemagne backed the foundation of cathedral schools throughout his realm,
which encompassed much of western and central Europe. Bishop Fulbert of Chartres (c.960-
1028) founded a college for the study of theology sometime after 990.
617
The example led to
the establishment of similar colleges in Bologna (c.1088), Paris (c.1160) and Oxford
(between 1133 and 1167), often involving the migration of scholars from one centre to
another. These fledgling universities commissioned and collected Latin translations of Arabic
works, including contemporary Arab and Jewish scholarship. Philosophers such as the
Muslim Ibn Rushd, known as Averros (1126-1198), the Jewish Rabbi Moses Maimonides
(1138-1204), and the Christians Michael Psellos (c. 1017-1078) and Thomas Aquinas

613
Lyons, 2010: p.77.
614
See Mango, 1994: pp. 169-171.
615
Lyons, 2010: p. 46.
616
Lyons, 2010: p. 35.
617
Wallace-Murphy, 2006: pp. 113 and 119.
280


(c.1225-1274) synthesised Aristotle with their respective theologies.
618
These books were
then themselves translated and disseminated widely. For example, Averros works on
Aristotle were translated into Latin by Michael the Scot (c. 1175-1232), who had studied
Arabic in Toledo. Scot, who later gained notoriety as a wizard, also translated Avicenna (c.
980-1037) and served as court astrologer and physician to the Holy Roman Emperor, the
scholarly Frederick II (1220-1250).
619
Another prolific translator of Arabic books from the
libraries of Toledo, including works by al-Kind, al-Khwrizm and al-Frbi (c. 872-950), was
Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114-1187).
In science, Europeans copied maps and star charts, instruments for timekeeping, reckoning
position and measurement, and the recipes for potions and poisons for medical or more
nefarious purposes. From Byzantine libraries the works of Galen, Euclid and Ptolemy
passed through the translators and scholars of the House of Wisdom into the Latin West, as
Jonathan Lyons recent history of how the Arabs transformed civilization shows. Arab
originality in medicine, optics, chemistry, geography, meteorology and astronomy took
science forward, as did their mathematics.
620

However the restoration of ancient learning did not follow an altogether smooth path in either
the House of Islam or Christendom. The Sophistic tradition of disputation was not accepted
by many theologians. They tolerated rhetoric and debate as a useful tool in public life but not
as a means of interpreting sacred scripture. For example Ab Hmid al-Ghazli (1058-1111)
accepted logic and mathematics but rejected physics and metaphysics as being replete with
error. The problem, for many Muslim theologians, lay in the attempt by philosophers to
interpret the analogies found in the Holy Koran. For example, in a famous verse, it is stated
that over six days God created the heavens and the earth and then ascended His throne
(The Heights, Al-Araf, 7: 54).
621
The dictum of the jurist Mlik Ibn Anas (c. 711-795) to
question not such verses was nonetheless challenged by Averros, who wrote a careful
rebuttal of al-Ghazli in 1180, the Fasl al-Maql (The Decisive Treatise). Averros books
had the distinction of being burned in Muslim Crdoba in 1195 and in Christian Paris in

618
Wallace-Murphy, 2006: p. 120. Thomas Aquinas read both Averros and Maimonides.
619
See Lyons, 2010: pp. 158-161 and 173.
620
The powers of Arab learning refashioned Europes intellectual landscape, shaping the
groundbreaking work of Copernicus and Galileo; in Lyons, 2010: p. 5.
621
The Koran, 1974: p. 250.
281


1277, along with works by Thomas Aquinas.
622
Maimonides was denounced by other rabbis
at the time he wrote and his works were also burned in Paris in 1250. The medieval Church
on several occasions condemned Aristotles physics, as did Muslim clerics, for holding to the
theory that the universe was eternal. Nevertheless Aristotelian thought, along with that of
Plato and the Sophistic tradition of debate was adopted by the Scholastic movement, which
was to dominate the new universities of Europe until the Renaissance. Scholasticism was
disputatious, sceptical, analytical, and that remained the characteristic of Western
intellectual exploration according to historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, and it had its
precedent in the method used in Islamic higher education.
623
Furthermore, it is evident that
the Islamic Kalm influenced the Scholastics profoundly, in particular Aquinas, but also the
mathematician, mystic and alchemist, Raymond Lull (c.1232-1315), whose works were at
one point condemned by the Church, though he was to be beatified some 500 years later in
1857.
624

The House of Islam and Christendom were each heirs of the knowledge and science of
antiquity. The effort under the early Abbsid caliphs to gather, translate and analyse the
philosophy, science and mathematics of the Greeks, Persians and Indians was subsequently
transmitted to the Latin West. There, the massive social and economic dislocation from the
collapse of the Roman Empire had meant that the Church became the guardian of ancient
knowledge, although much was nonetheless lost. The rediscovery of Hellenistic learning
(and absorption of Indian, Persian and Arab mathematics and astrology) in the twelfth
century was undertaken by educated clerics. Inevitably, and despite the efforts of Thomas
Aquinas to consolidate and systematise all knowledge fitting for a good Christian education,
controversies emerged within Christendom. From the cathedral schools free-standing
universities emerged not content to remain within the limits of received doctrine. Knowledge
also spread beyond the clergy, some of it as occult currents of dissent that, in turn, sparked
reaction and repression by the Church. Nor should the role of Jews as interlocutors between
Islam and Christianity be overlooked. For all that, the division between East and West
became embedded, as cultural theorist Edward Said (1935-2003) has explained: Islam and

622
Fakhry, 2009: pp. 80, 118-119 and 124.
623
MacCulloch, 2010: p. 399.
624
Fakhry, 2009: p. 173. Lull learnt Arabic and encouraged its study at the new universities; see
Caraman, 1990: p. 80.
282


its representation as the Orient has been an integral part of European material civilization
and culture.
625

As we have noted, the Hermetic paradigms central analogy, picked up by the salvation
religions, concerns the relevance of education to following the straight path in life. In
antiquity mystic fraternities offered people the chance to learn this philosophy, the occult
aspect of pagan cults. As Christianity emerged, the new religion found it easy to incorporate
this approach to fostering a Christian community, separate from the rest of society. Of
course, there was an inevitable tension between the commitment to education and doctrinal
principles within the Church. Such a tension also existed within Islam. But for all the efforts
of dogmatists, literalists and traditionalists to obliterate the Sophistic method through
questioning and debate (the dialectical approach), to evade the use of reason to interpret
analogy, and to restrict the very terms of debate, the commitment to scientific enquiry and to
education was never extinguished in Europe, North Africa or in West and Central Asia.
Whatever we call this civilization and the designation Western is clearly too restrictive at
its heart lies scientific method and openness to debate and education as means for self-
improvement.
From our contemporary vantage point, we can see that the Western variant of civilization
took its own path after the Middle Ages, buoyed by its international trading activity and
colonisation. Many historians have explored the factors behind Europes relative success
over subsequent centuries. In any case, it remains clear that its achievement was founded
upon a willingness to adopt ideas and technology from other parts of the world and a
commitment to a civilization that employed education to unlock its peoples resourcefulness.
Perhaps with the emergence of an interdependent world we are seeing a convergence,
whereby a single global civilization emerges, but such a prospect is put at risk if the clamour
over an impending clash of civilizations drowns out the opportunity to find common ground.

625
Said, 2003: p. 2.
283


Appendix E: Reconciling the salvation religions

Religion is the manner or mode by which all human beings become conscious of truth for
themselves.
G W F Hegel (c. 1827)
626

Around 740 CE Khagan Bulan of the Khazars, a Turkic people living in what is now southern
Russia and Ukraine, summoned representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to
present their creeds. The Khagans predecessor Irbis had forged a loose empire of steppe
peoples and he now wanted to strengthen their unity by establishing a single religion among
them. There was, however, a problem. If the Khaganate adopted Christianity it implied an
alliance with Byzantium, centred on Constantinople, and would earn the enmity of the House
of Islam. Similarly to favour Islam meant submission to the Caliph, ruling from Damascus,
and whose armies had briefly occupied the Khazar capital Atil on the Volga delta in 737. So
the Khazars chose Judaism, from which both Christianity and Islam had sprung, but whose
kingdom had been eradicated by the Romans and its people scattered, thus no longer
posing any threat to the Khazars dominion.
This episode is, to be sure, a tale of political cunning by a ruler whose interests were best
served by remaining on friendly terms with each of the stronger states with whom the
Khazars traded. (Jewish merchants may have dominated trade with the Caliphate and
Byzantium.) But the Khazars choice was not simply a strategic move. In adopting one of the
salvation religions, the Khazars were accepting an advanced system of ideas, incorporating
ancient Greek philosophy and the theology from a line of prophets stretching back to
Abraham and Moses. It represented a prestigious moral and scientific ideology.
627
Moreover,
from the point of view of an outsider, the differences between the three religions were

626
Cited by Pinkard, 2000: p. 579.
627
The historian Richard Fletcher has pointed out that Europeans rarely used the term conversion to
describe their abandonment of paganism and adoption of Christianity. Instead they used verbs such
as accepting or submitting to Christianity. What you accepted or submitted to might be described
as a fides, which we usually translate faith but which was used with a rather wider meaning along the
lines of body of Christian observance or even with the social sense of Christian community. It might
also be described as ritus, more than a rite in a narrow sense, rather a set of cultic or propitiatory
rituals, or as a lex, literally law, but by extension customs, tradition, right behaviour, proper way of
doing things. See Fletcher, 1998: p. 515.
284


probably of lesser significance than their common core. After all, each offered the prospect
of eternal life to those who converted, based on the observance of the same set of rules (the
Ten Commandments). Rather than considering the salvation religions to be separate sets of
beliefs, we should imagine them as brands of the same system of thought or as variations of
the same truth, as revealed by many prophets.
Religion is a practice that binds people together, stemming from the Latin relegere, to gather
together or to weave bonds.
628
Roman religio was the fusion of civil and sacred authority into
the person of the Emperor, who also acted as the High Priest, or Pontifex Maximus, and
required everyone to offer a sacrifice upon his alter. In other respects, people were pretty
much free to believe in whatever philosophy they wished and become a devotee of any
number of cults or none. That all changed when Christianity was adopted as the Empires
religion. From then on, what you believed was a sign of loyalty, not so much whether you
observed certain rites. Christendom became a place where heresy was persecuted and non-
Christians regarded with suspicion. Ironically Christendom found its antagonist in militant
Islam, itself ready to expand its dominion in the name of God. We shall see that the
antagonism between Christendom and the House of Islam owes more to their particular, and
intertwined, history than to theology.
Rites and wrongs
For the most part, we view doctrine as the key binding agent in a religion and the element
that makes one religion different from another. It is of course the correct understanding of
doctrine that allows us to distinguish between orthodoxy and heresy. But this is by no means
the whole story. Other binding agents are a religions rites, its moral codes, sacred texts and
myths. For Jews, Muslims and Zoroastrians, rites appear to be more relevant to defining
their religion than doctrine, which Christians tend to regard as the most important feature.
Rites affirm cultural identity. Philosopher Rgis Debray contends that to be a Jew is not to
profess a doctrine, but to share a culture and thus to practice rites and repeat the
gestures that tend to distinguish us from our neighbours, far more than our private thoughts
and beliefs.
629
The Five Pillars of Islam consist of the affirmation of belief in one God and
His prophet Mohammed, prayer, alms-giving (including paying the tithe or zakat), fasting
during Ramadan and the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. These are all rites; indeed, they are rites

628
Debray, 2004: p. 91. Debray continues: Religion binds, to be sure, such is its definition; but in
order to do so it antagonises. And if it did not divide, it would not bind (p. 100).
629
Debray, 2004: p. 103.
285


of passage to the state of salvation. Inevitably the creation of a community following its own
internal rules of behaviour sets up a distinction between us and them. In turn, there has
been a tendency among the orthodox to regard others as unclean; attitudes that persist even
now in the West and South Asian countryside and were only recently eradicated within much
of Europe. Purification rites, in accordance with the Yasna (the Liturgy) and the Vendidad
(Laws against the Demons) are central to traditional Zoroastrianism.
630

The emphasis upon rites may go some way towards explaining the ambivalence found in the
traditional sayings of Mohammed, the hadth, and in the Holy Koran, towards Zoroastrians,
Christians and Jews. Zoroastrians are denounced as fire-worshippers but in other contexts
accepted as worshippers of the same one God as Muslims. Jews are also held to be wicked
in some texts but nevertheless considered to be fellow Peoples of the Book, along with
Christians, and worthy of salvation at the Final Judgement.
631
However they are all accused
of idolatry. The Koran alleges that the Jews say that Ezra is the son of God, while the
Christians say that the Messiah is the son of God. Such are their assertions, by which they
imitate the infidels of old. God confound them! How perverse they are! They worship their
rabbis and their monks, and the Messiah, the son of Mary, as gods besides God; though
they were ordered to serve one God only. So fight against such of those to whom
Scriptures were given as believe neither in God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what
God and His Apostles have forbidden, and who do not embrace the true faith, until they pay
tribute (the jizya) out of their own hand [that is, willingly] and are utterly subdued
(Repentance, Al-Tawba, 9: 29-31).
632

Jews will find the charge that they worship the prophet Ezra bizarre. Christians may respond
that they do not worship Jesus as a Son of Man, but as the incarnation of the divine. They
distinguish between the worship of God and the veneration of saints. Many Muslims also
venerate saints, though the purist Wahhbi current condemns the practice. A Zoroastrian
would point out that they do not worship fire as such, but the source of the fire: you shall
harken to the soul of Nature and adore the great spirit that permeates Nature and the whole

630
See Clark, 2001: p. 144. The Koran describes idolaters and pagans as unclean (9: 28); in The
Koran: p. 323.
631
In the Holy Koran, it is stated that the true believers [that is, Muslims], the Jews, the Sabaeans,
the Christians, the Magians [that is, the Zoroastrians], and [those who are associated with Allah from
among] the pagans shall be judged on the Day of Resurrection; from The Koran, Pilgrimage, Al-Hajj,
22: 17: p. 402-403.
632
The Koran: p. 323.
286


universe in different forms and shape, of which fire is one, according to Zoroaster.
633
Similar
arguments could be advanced by Hindus, whose priests ritually dress their statues of gods
and goddesses. Nevertheless the theological explanations often appear at odds with the
ritual practices of ordinary devotees who seek to touch or kiss statues, icons and the relics of
saints in the hope of a cure from illness or to gain comfort at a time of anguish. It has been
these practices which, in Christianity, led to the iconoclast controversy of the eighth century
and the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth.
Yet even if the Holy Korans charge of idolatry was warranted, it has been its elevation into a
justification for subjugating non-Muslims, the infidel, despite its own injunctions against
forced conversion, that has pitted Islam against the rest. Indeed the significance placed by
Islam upon ritual, and the tendency to dismiss as irrelevant the stated doctrine of the other
salvation religions, is itself a form of fetishism. That it remains the touchstone for determining
relations between Islam and the other religions was evident from the reaction to the Popes
comments of 2006. In a lecture, Pope Benedict XVI cited a debate that took place around
1391 between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (1350-1425) and a Persian
scholar. The exchange was recorded while Constantinople was under siege by the Turks. An
outcry of condemnation followed the Popes apparent endorsement of the Byzantine
Emperors critique of Islam as a religion advocating coerced conversion: Show me just what
Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only bad and inhumane,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
634

To be sure, the Emperors criticism is an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.
Throughout the Middle Ages and after, Christian crusaders and the armies of Islam vied for
territory and converts. In the eleventh century, the crusaders initial successes in Palestine,
when Jerusalem was taken in 1099, were compensated by the Muslim conquest of the
Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia. At the Council of Lyons in 1245, spurred by the
recapture of Jerusalem by an Egyptian and Turkish army, the Catholic Church declared
Muslims to be wicked and launched the ultimately unsuccessful sixth and seventh
crusades. Meanwhile Spanish and Portuguese crusaders had re-conquered most of the

633
The Gathas Ahunaviati, Yas. 30: 1-2; cited in the Kamal-ud-Din, 1925: p. 40 on www.aaiil.org. The
verses may also be found in another translation: I will now declare to earnest listeners, and even to
the initiate, concerning the adoration and praise due to Ahura [the Lord of Life] through the Good Mind
[that is, Vohu Mana]; in Nanavutty, 1999: p. 78. The temple fire is said to indicate the presence of
divine righteousness, asha; see Clark, 2001: p. 95.
634
Lecture by Pope Benedict XVI to representatives of science at the University of Regensburg,
Germany, on 12 September 2006.
287


Iberian Peninsula by 1252. But Muslim Turks soon gained full control of Anatolia and then, in
1396, the Balkans. Similarly Muslim forces from Afghanistan took over northern India by
1205 and the Deccan by 1313. At the same time as Christianity was being spread by the
sword and musket to the Americas and the Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, Muslim sultanates were being established in southeast Asia (the most powerful
being Melaka and Aceh); the Turks took Hungary in 1541; while the Mughals extended Islam
deep into southern India. It should also be noted that even after the Pope announced the
Catholic Churchs last crusades in 1664-1669 to recover Crete and Hungary, Europe went
on to aggressively colonise the world, and in the process overthrew those same Muslim
empires and sultanates.
The spread of Islam
The crusades and armed jihad reflected the confrontation that had emerged when Islam and
the Byzantine Empire first clashed in the seventh and eighth centuries. Driven out as trouble
makers by the merchants of Mecca, many of whom were Jewish (or Arab converts to
Judaism), Mohammeds followers sought to establish a distinct community from their new
base in Medina until they were strong enough to return. Following their victory at Badr in
624, when the group attacked a caravan of traders and defeated a superior force, a sign
taken to indicate Gods backing for their enterprise, Mohammed instituted several practices
that were to form core elements of the new religion. Interestingly, as the historian Maxime
Rodinson pointed out, several of these seem designed to distinguish Mohammeds group
from Jews, implying that a close prior affinity with Judaism had existed. Rodinson suggested
that the Muslim direction of prayer towards Mecca was designed to reverse the Jewish
practice of turning towards Jerusalem; Muslim men had to comb their hair into a parting,
whereas Jews left their hair loose; and all Muslims were required to fast during Ramadan in
place of the fast at Yom Kippur.
635
The Muslim day of rest is Friday, whereas the Jews do
not work on a Saturday (the Sabbath).
636
Mohammed traced his paternal ancestry to

635
Rodinson, 2002: p. 170 (originally published in 1961). Mohammed was himself a trader and his
ideas resemble Judaism in many respects, so we should not imagine him to be anti-Semitic. Historian
Diarmaid MacCulloch prefers to see Islamic practices, for example, prostration upon prayer mats, in
relation to Christian custom at the time, though he acknowledges that Mohammed had a more
intimate relationship with Judaism; see MacCulloch, 2010: p. 258.
636
Christians pray in the direction of the rising sun, rest on Sunday and fast at Lent. The link with the
sun came about during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306-337), who was
himself a devotee of the sun god Sol Invictus, until his deathbed conversion to Christianity. The sun
god, Sol in Latin and Helios in Greek, was identified with Apollo, the god of light (and thus an aspect
of the sun), truth and prophecy, the arts and medicine, and also coupled with the Persian god Mithras.
288


Ishmael, the firstborn son of Abraham, the traditional instigator of many of Judaisms
practices, including male circumcision.
637

It was these circumstances, having been reduced to becoming a guerrilla band of outlaws,
and detached from the Arabian and Jewish commercial milieu of which Mohammed had
once been a member, that set the sect upon a path of confrontation. It also led Mohammed
and his followers to set up a public treasury to provide for widows and orphans of the
fighters, a police force and schools and, after Mohammeds death, the institution of the
Caliphate that supplanted traditional monarchs and princes. Furthermore the Bedouin
tradition of raiding for booty became established as a permissible activity among Muslims,
putting them on a collision course with the neighbouring Byzantine and Persian empires as
they extended the range of their raids out of Arabia.
Thereafter the spread of Islam has the characteristics of a mass movement. Reportedly
Muslim armies were welcomed in Syria and Egypt, where much of the peasantry suffered
from a form of serfdom, while many in Persia were keen to do away with the oppressive
caste system of priests, warriors, secretaries, and commoners.
638
The historian Fernand
Braudel alludes to a wave of liberation from the empires and the formation of a new form of
government under a Caliph (meaning the successor).
639
Initially the Arab conquerors

Apollo was the main deity worshipped by Pythagoreans. The title Sol Invictus, meaning unconquered
sun, was associated with Mithras, the god at the centre of a mystic fraternity that emerged in Asia
Minor around 70 BCE. Constantine and other Roman Emperors reformed Christianity to make the
religion more palatable to pagans; see Ulansey, 1991: pp. 73 and 107.
637
Wilson, 1999: p. 30.
638
A significant proportion of peasants were legally registered as attached to the land they farmed
(coloni adscripticii) and were effectively bonded to their landlord, a situation similar to serfdom.
Although free peasants (coloni liberi) also existed they had to pay taxes directly to the state; see
Haldon, 2005: p. 151. It is thought that coloni had to surrender one third of their produce in tax; see
Mango, 1994: p. 44. A description of the ancient Persian caste system was provided by the Persian
scholar Al-Brn (973-1048): When Ardashir ben Babak (224-241 CE) restored the Persian empire,
he also restored the classes or castes of the population in the following way: The first class were the
knights and princes; the second class the monks, the fire-priests, and the lawyers; the third class the
physicians, astronomers, and other men of science; the fourth class the husbandmen and artisans.
And within these classes there were subdivisions, distinct from each other, like the species within a
genus; in Sachau, 1910: p.100
(<www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_alberuni_frameset.htm>).
639
Braudel, 1995: pp. 44-45. Maxime Rodinson states that the Arab armies overran the weak
opposing armies, captured cities, many of which were left open to them, and took in hand the
administration of vast areas, the populations of which submitted without a murmur; Rodinson, 2002:
p. 295.
289


allowed slaves who converted to Islam to claim their freedom, though this practice was later
halted in deference to the slave-owners, with slavery remaining a major feature of the
political economy. Although the lands conquered by the Arabs were considered booty, fay,
and the collective property of the community, the ummah, peasants were left in possession
of their plots and were enabled to escape from bondage to their landlords.
640
A land tax (the
kharaj) was levied on every landholder, whatever their religion, but this was supposedly a
lower burden than had been the case under Byzantine and Sassanid rule.
641
Muslims were
required to pay a sort of income tax, the zakat, which went towards founding mosques,
schools, hospitals and charities. Non-Muslim People of the Book, that is, Christians and
Jews, did not have to contribute and were excused military service but had instead to pay a
poll tax, the jizya. As is clear from the writings of Imam Malik bin Anas, one of the founders
of Muslim jurisprudence, Zoroastrians were also granted equivalent status as Peoples of the
Book; were required to pay the jizya; and were not considered idolaters.
642
The later closure
of Zoroastrian temples and destruction of their scriptures seems to have taken place well
after the Arab conquest of Iran was completed in 644, in the midst of the growing sectarian

640
The historian Ibn Khaldn reports that each Arab horseman received a share of booty worth
30,000 gold pieces, where one gold piece, the solidus, was equivalent to a months wage for an
artisan; see Mango, 1994: pp. 39-40. Arab armies of 30,000 men overcame Persian forces of 120,000
and Byzantine forces of 400,000: the secret of [these victories] lay in the willingness of the Muslims
to die in the holy war against their enemies because of their feeling that they had the right religious
insight, and the corresponding fear and defeatism that God put into the hearts of their enemies; see
Ibn Khaldn, 1967: pp. 126, 162 and 255.
641
It is not clear whether Syrian and Egyptian peasants gained materially from the Arab overthrow of
Roman Imperial rule or simply expected an amelioration of their circumstances. In any case, they saw
an end to their taxes being remitted to Constantinople to support the Emperor, his court and the army,
and the parasitical senatorial elite. A series of wars between the Byzantine Roman Empire and
Sassanid Persia had meant that higher taxes were being raised from the peasantry. The former
imperial estates were divided up and awarded to the victorious Arab warriors; see Anderson, 1979:
pp. 498-499; Haldon, 2005: pp. 169 and 232-233; and Ste. Croix, 1981: p. 658.
642
See Friedman, 2003: pp. 77-78. Mohammed wrote to the commander of his forces invading
Yemen in 629 that every person, whether a Jew or a Christian, who becomes a Muslim is one of the
Believers, with the same rights and duties. Anyone who clings to his Judaism or Christianity is not to
be converted and must [pay] the poll tax incumbent upon every adult, male or female, free or bond;
cited by Sand, 2009: p. 180. At that time, Yemen was divided between Jewish and Christian
communities vying for control of trade through Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, with the Byzantine
Empire and Ethiopia supporting the latter.
290


conflict between Sunn and Shah traditions which brought the Abbsid Caliphate to power
in 750.
643

The readiness of many people to adopt Islam owed as much to its offer of fairer government
as to the incentive to avoid the jizya tax and the other discriminatory restrictions imposed
upon the dhimmi (loyal non-Muslims); but it also suggests that ordinary people saw no great
difference between the teachings of Islam as compared with Judaism, Christianity and
Zoroastrianism.
644
Egypt and Mesopotamia were in any case strongholds of unorthodox
brands of Christianity and many may therefore have welcomed the ending of imperial control
of the Orthodox Church, which the dissidents denounced as being pro-imperialist or
Melchite.
645
It appears that the Jews of Palestine, Syria, Egypt and, later, of Spain welcomed
their deliverance from Christian oppression by their ethnic cousins, the Ishmaelites Arabs
were thought to be the descendants of Abrahams eldest son Ishmael, while Isaac, the
second son, was the ancestor of the Israelites. A contemporary Jew described how God
inspired the Ishmaelite kingdom to aid us in liberating Jerusalem from the Byzantines.
646
A
modern historian has described how the early years [of Muslim rule] were characterised by

643
According to Saunders the mosque supplanted the fire-temple after the Abbsid revolution of
750, although as late as the tenth century there were still fire-temples in every big Persian city;
Saunders, 1965: pp. 100, 104. Under the early Abbsid Caliphate a policy of Shuubiyyah was
adopted, which stressed the brotherhood and equality of all races that had adopted Islam (p. 104).
644
See Berkey, 2003; Berkey sees no sharp distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim during the
Umayyad Caliphate and a very gradual articulation of a separate Muslim identity in this early period
(pp. 92-93).
645
Monophysitism was popular in Egypt and Syria and Nestorianism in Mesopotamia. Many peasants
apparently dissented from the Melchite Orthodox Church: In Egypt and Syria in particular
Monophysitism became established in the rural population, according to Haldon. Nestorian and
Coptic Christians collaborated with their new Arab rulers; see Haldon, 2005: p. 29; and Saunders,
1965: p. 46. Nestorius (c. 386-451), who, according to the Council of Constantinople of 680-1,
thought as the Jews, taught that Jesus had two natures divine and human and denied that Mary
was the Mother of God. Nestorianism was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431.The
antithesis of Nestorianism was Monophysitism. This doctrine had been propounded by Eutyches (c.
380-456), who preached that the human and divine natures of Jesus were dissolved into one,
implying that Jesus was not wholly human. The view was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in
451. As Cyril Mango comments: The Monophysites, who had overwhelming support in Egypt and
Syria, opposed the Council of Chalcedon for dividing, as they saw it, the person of Christ into two
natures and believed in the unity of the incarnate Christ, a unity that derived from (ek) the two
natures, human and divine. Ek for the Monophysites, en (in) for the Catholics the difference
amounted to one letter; Mango, 1994: p. 95.
646
See Sand, 2009: pp.180-181, 202-210. In the Maghreb, however, some Berber tribes that had
converted to Judaism resisted the Arab conquest, according to the medieval historian Ibn Khaldn.
291


a freer exchange of ideas, where individuals adhering to each of the three faiths drew
creatively on a common pool of stories and traditions to shape their understanding of the
scriptures. The formation of Islam as we know it today, he argues, took place during the
Abbasid Caliphate, and came to be shaped by the mass conversion of non-Arabs.
647

Therefore to suggest that the spread of Islam had a revolutionary social character does not
mean that religious motives were reducible to political ones. It would be a further mistake to
regard Mohammeds distinction between the House of Islam and Peace (Dr al-Salm) and
the House of War (Dr al-Harb) as implying the impossibility of concord between the two
communities. They are not intended to mean that the world is divided into two contending
blocs. The word dr, or homeland, implied a form of government and accompanying, but
differentiated, rights for all inhabitants, whatever their beliefs or ethnicity. In using the term
House of Peace, Muslims indicate that the inhabitants have submitted to the rule of God; by
contrast strife reigns in the House of War. This is not because Muslims and non-Muslims
cannot live side by side but is the result of the unwillingness of people in the House of War to
accept what Christians would call the dominion of the Lord. Their society remains trapped,
as Muslims (and many Christians) would see it, by immorality, exploitation and oppression.
The causes of strife within the House of War are its internal contradictions. But poverty,
social exclusion and underdevelopment continue to afflict many parts of the House of Islam
as well. The roots of these evils, which feed fanaticism, are structural problems that must be
addressed from within the ummah, the community itself. Too often Muslim commentators
appear to treat such problems as if they were the consequences of the past and current
misbehaviour of the kuffr, the unbelievers.
648
Such a distorted perspective seeks to justify
waging jihad, the struggle to counter evil, against non-Muslims (and those Muslim

647
Berkey, 2003: p. 96. Historian Arnold Toynbee commented that the transformation of Christianity
and Islam into religions for all Mankind was achieved by the followers of the founders. It was not the
intention of the founders themselves. Toynbee found it significant that the eventual secession of the
gentile Christian Church from Jewry, which followed in spite of Pauls and Peters concordant desire
to avoid the breach, has not been the only case of its kind. Six hundred years later, another new
missionary religion inspired by Judaism, namely Islam, parted company with Jewry, as Christianity
had done, in order to convert the gentiles to the truths and precepts that the Jews had discovered but
had not effectively disseminated. It was the Arabs Zoroastrian and Christian non-Arab converts
who eventually gave Islam itself an organisation and a theology [around the ideal of] universality
comparable to what had previously been done for Christianity; see Toynbee, 1972: pp. 336-338.
648
The designation kuffr or kafir, usually translated as unbeliever, literally means someone who
conceals the truth. It implies the denial of God, just as infidel suggests one who lacks faith in God.
There is, though, a contradiction in labelling the People of the Book, who acknowledge the God who
spoke to Abraham to be the one God (Genesis, 15: 6), as being deniers of God and unbelievers.
292


hypocrites who have adopted foreign ways).
649
But since the world economy is
interdependent with everyone, as consumers, producers or investors, participating in the
globalization of economic and cultural activities to one degree or another we must all take
responsibility for fixing what has gone awry. It would be a step forward if both Christians and
Muslims accepted that their common goal of establishing a community of virtue would be
better achieved through collaboration, education and by peaceful and democratic means
for worldwide House of Peace.
Above all it is not sufficient to go on repeating the statement that Islam is a religion of peace,
as if it was a magical phrase that whitewashes the past. No one should ignore the history of
discord that lies behind the current tensions between Islamist currents and the rest in an
increasingly secular world. Averting a clash of civilizations, whatever form that may take,
must involve addressing the complicity of religious authorities in past wars and persecution.
Many religious people advocate a cathartic process of dialogue so that a shared
understanding of what went wrong in applying the ideals enunciated by the prophets can be
formulated. In ecumenical thought this is called the purification of historical memory.
Western churches have been more open to self-criticism, situated as they are within a
modernist culture. But this capacity to be critical of oneself builds upon a long-standing
cultural tradition. Christianity originated as a Jewish sect but emerged onto the world stage
dressed in Hellenistic philosophy. It has sheltered two modes of reasoning: that from reason
and from revelation. Coupled with the idea that God is revealed in nature and history,
through His logic (logos), these strands meant that Christianity came to accept that it could
not challenge the validity of reasoning on the basis of revelation alone. Christianity has
ceded ground to science and acknowledged the validity of the critical voices of those it had
previously sought to silence, such as Galileo. The idea of tolerance became accepted in
Europe and the Western hemisphere but not seemingly throughout Muslim lands.
Within Islam the phrase enemies of God still has currency. The historian Bernard Lewis
has questioned whether the idea that God has enemies, and needs human help to identify
and dispose of them makes sense.
650
Even if the answer is yes, is it then correct to use
violence against them, unless it is in self-defence? Can Muslims accept people from other
religions as part of their community? Issues such as these, concern the consistency of Gods

649
Fanatical jihadis cite the Korans injunction to Mohammed: O Prophet, strive against the
unbelievers and hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home in The Koran:
Repentance, Al-Tawba, 9: 73, p. 328.

650
Lewis, 2003: p. 22.
293


teaching. How should we reconcile apparent contradictions and ambiguities in revelation?
Christianity, drawing upon its Hellenistic legacy, appeals to reason to supplement and
interpret revelation. This was the sub-text of Benedicts lecture. What might a universal
House of Peace that included non-Muslims, look like? If it could be shown that the divine
messages of revelation are consistent from prophet to prophet, then should not the House of
Peace provide an inclusive roof for people of several faiths?
Morality and the fundamentalists
Modern concepts of human and other basic rights have outlawed medieval notions of crime
and punishment. The moral codes of the salvation religions, as contained in the Old
Testament or the Holy Koran, are broadly compatible with each other. But in most countries
contemporary concepts of human rights and tolerance mean that the scriptural punishments
are no longer prescribed, such as the death penalty for adultery, sodomy, witchcraft and
apostasy, and of branding or mutilation for lesser offences. Christians have found it easier to
accommodate and in many cases to advocate law reform because the Gospels provide
examples of Jesus emphasis on love and the avoidance of hypocrisy. A clear instance is
that of Jesus intervention to stop the stoning of a woman accused of adultery (John, 8).
There are nonetheless strong doctrinaire currents within the salvation religions favouring a
return to patriarchy, piety and the prescription of, what they see as, deviant behaviour, such
as homosexuality.
In fact the issues around the application of ancient moral codes are a common feature of
debate within the religions, rather than being a separating factor. Each religion is being
forced to come to terms with its own history of violence, intimidation and persecution,
particularly as it has affected women, slaves, and non-conformists. Now that international
migration is making all parts of the world more socially diverse, and the old territorial and
cultural markers are being superseded by secular education and fashion, as well as
universally applicable legal norms, peoples are being forced to recognise each other as
neighbours, not as foreigners. So while a few zones of exclusivity may remain, every religion
is having to take account of what the neighbours think and accept outsiders into their midst.
Muslims rightly demand respect from their non-Muslim neighbours, but need to themselves
honour the respect due to all those within and without the ummah.
In this context we should take note of the unnamed Persian scholars reply to the Byzantine
Emperor, in the exchange cited by the former Pope. The scholar stated clearly that
Mohammed had sought to amalgamate the best features of Judaism and Christianity. "The
Law of Mohammed follows the middle path and proclaims ordinances which are bearable
294


and in sum gentler and more humane. Hence it is moderate in all respects and takes
precedence over other laws. Indeed, it fills the shortcomings of the old Law by the
supplements which it brings; on the other hand it reduces the exaggerations of the Law of
Christ. [It also avoids] the mediocrity and the imperfection of the Law of the Jews on the
one hand, and on the other hand, the elevation and height of the precepts of Christ, their
harshness; that they are excessive and impractical so far for men; because they force, so to
speak, our terrestrial nature to mount up to Heaven. It thus avoids both faults and strives for
moderation in everything. Thereby it appears better than all the Laws that have preceded
it.
651

The Persian was making the point that although Christians are supposed to go the extra
mile they often cannot achieve the lofty goals in practice. Pious people from whatever
religion have a duty to be charitable but if we were to follow Jesus words to the letter
Christians should give away to the poor everything they dont actually require in meeting
their own needs. In practice pious Christians probably behave much as Muslims, Jews and
other moral people do (and if a Christian feels guilty at not doing enough he or she may seek
absolution). In any case, moral codes are not only about personal behaviour but concern the
ordering of society as a whole. Questions on how we should treat strangers, the poor,
victims of crime as well as the criminals are debated constantly. Concerns over the proper
emphasis on notions of justice, charity, dignity, rights and responsibilities and so on, form
part of a shared conversation between and within all religions and philosophies.
652
If judges
did not have to weigh competing claims, and only had one sentence to pass for each and
every violation, then they would no longer be in business. In particular, the salvation religions
have never subscribed to a single set of absolute and eternally valid prescriptions. The
shara is, after all, a compilation of rulings; Roman law the basis of Western legality was
reinterpreted through Christian and, later, secular eyes; while international law is still

651
See www.tertullian.org/fathers/manuel_paleologus_dialogue7_trans.htm
652
An interesting point was made in a radio talk given by the former Chief Rabbi in Britain, Dr
Jonathan Sacks (BBC Radio 4, 27 November 2009). In Genesis (18), God tells Abraham to teach his
children to keep to the way of the Lord by doing zedakah umishpat, justice and judgement. Dr Sacks
explained that zedakah is impossible to translate into English as it means both justice and charity.
Now in English justice is one thing but charity is something else entirely. Suppose I give you a
thousand pounds. If I do so because I owe you a thousand pounds, thats justice. But if I do so not
because I owe you anything but because I can see that you need it, thats charity. Its either one thing
or the other. But according to the Bible it can be both because everything belongs to God. We
merely hold [the world] in trust, and one of the conditions of that trust is that we share some of what
we have with people in need. Zedakah means that justice must be tempered by charity if a society is
to be seen as fair. See www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20091127.shtml.
295


evolving. Fundamentalists may well be correct to defend the integrity of principles, but their
just application always requires interpretation and judgement to fit the circumstances of the
case.
Furthermore, in pointing out that Jews and Christians impose unrealistically high standards
of behaviour, the Persian scholar was not suggesting that these religions are wrong, merely
that Islam takes account of certain human weaknesses. A Muslim should not therefore
conclude that Islam is a more correct path to follow in life, but only that it is better suited to
the way individuals, families and society operate. The moral code is the same in theory (the
Ten Commandments of Moses) and should be followed wholeheartedly and without
hypocrisy (Jesus dictum to love God and love thy neighbour), but it should also be practical.
The implications are far reaching, suggesting that all peoples of the Book must honour each
others respective codes and recognise the relative merits of the founding prophets
approaches to the righteous way of living.
Belief and prophets
The last set of binding agents within a religion is its doctrines and myths. Although Judaism
and Islam seem to place more emphasis on rites as their defining elements, there are,
notwithstanding, differences in doctrine. Jews have no set principles of faith, although the
thirteen principles listed by rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides,
are accepted by many.
653
Amongst these is the belief in Moses, chief of the prophets, as
transmitter of the five books of teaching, the Torah. There are, in orthodox Sunn Islam, six
articles of belief: in the oneness of God, in his prophets and messengers, in angels, in the
scriptures (including the Bible and the Koran), in the Day of Judgement and the Resurrection
of the Dead, and in Destiny. All these beliefs are in principle similar to those found in
Judaism and Christianity, though clearly Muslims differ in proclaiming Mohammed as the last
prophet. Christians added a New Testament into the Bible, but otherwise they share the
Good Book, or Tanakh, with Jews and Muslims.
By contrast Christianity is marked as a religion defined principally by its doctrines.
654
When
Paul of Tarsus wanted to accept Gentiles into the early church, he had to argue the case for
a relaxation of the Jewish regulations regarding diet, male circumcision and other

653
See Jacobs, 1964. Maimonides expanded on the ten principles set out by the Gaon (Head) of the
Talmudic Academy of Sura, Saadia ben Joseph of Fayum (882-942), in his Book of the Doctrine of
Faith and the Grounds of Knowledge (Emunoth ve-Deoth) completed in 933; see Kng, 1992: p. 173;
and Epstein, 1959: p. 190.
654
See for example Christie-Murray, 1976: p. 8.
296


observances with James and some of the other Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem in 49
CE. Pauls success in obtaining a waiver on such rites was vital to winning converts.
655
The
common core of Christianity is the Apostles Creed, comprising of twelve articles of belief
and originally drawn up in the second century, which was adopted, with some modifications,
by the churches in 325 at the Council of Nicaea. Of these articles, five or six could be
accepted by Jews and Muslims. Furthermore, Christians and Muslims could accept all of
Maimonides thirteen articles of faith. Table E-1 illustrates the core beliefs of the salvation
religions, and the elements that distinguish them from each other. As can be seen there is a
large core of doctrine that is common.
There are no shared scriptures between Zoroastrianism (Mazdayasna) and the other
salvation religions. But all four Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam broke
new ground by incorporating a democratic notion of justice into the cosmic order. Pagan
religions offered the prospect of divine retribution upon the wicked, but if you wanted help
you had to petition a god to favour your request, much as a king might hear a plea. A
sacrifice might also be in order. Paganism had imagined an afterlife of punishments for the
wicked and sometimes an unending cycle of reincarnation, from which people could never
escape. Zoroaster (and after him, Jesus and Mohammed) taught that people must make a
firm commitment to the straight path of righteousness, and shun wickedness, if they were to
gain redemption at the Final Judgement. The chance to regain Paradise was open to all men
and women. Moreover, not only was personal salvation possible but the fate of the world
also hung in the balance. Helping God fight Ahriman/ Satan to achieve a victory and
establish the dominion of the good was a task assigned to humankind, and is pivotal to the
evolution of the cosmos. These features are to be found in each of the salvation religions.
Indeed there is a case to be made that the ancient Jews and Zoroastrians saw each other as
co-religionists. A verse in the Book of Isaiah appears to suggest that salvation will be
available to foreigners, perhaps implying the Jews Persian allies.

655
Historian Arnold Toynbee observed that but for the converts, Christianity might have remained a
minor Jewish sect, and Islam might have remained merely an Arab national imitation of Judaeo-
Christian monotheism. The people whose good offices enabled Islam, as well as Christianity, to grow
to its full spiritual and cultural potential were the South-West Asian heirs of the combined Syria and
Hellenic cultures. The non-Arab converts to Muhammads religion saved Islam; see Toynbee,
1972: p. 338).
297


Outcasts and others
And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the
name of the Lord, and to be His servants, all who keep the Sabbath, and do not
profane it, and hold fast My covenant these I will bring to My holy mountain, and
make them joyful in My house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will
be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord God, Who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to
them besides those already gathered.
The Book of Isaiah 56: 6-8.

To be sure, Islam rejects the orthodox Christian doctrines concerning the divinity of Jesus
Christ and of the Holy Trinity, but so did early Christians like Arius and Nestorius, though
they were condemned for heresy. Arguably, Christianity regards Islam as just another
tradition of spiritual knowledge, although in error on certain points. We find confirmation of
this attitude in one of the earliest Christian commentators on Islam, John of Damascus (died
c. 749), who treated Muslims as if they were a heretical branch of Christianity. John was
apparently at school with the future Caliph Yazd I (680-683), who appointed him his
secretary or counsel.
656
This was a time, according to the medieval historian Ibn Khaldn,
when Greek was still the language of administration, with the early Umayyad Caliphate using
Jews, Christians and Persians extensively in their governments and continuing to live in their
tents in the Bedouin manner.
657
So John is an informed observer, who knew the Koran and
the hadth, as well as being a noted Hellenist, astronomer and mathematician and later

656
Caliph Yazd I is a controversial figure in Islam, having led the army that defeated and killed
Husayn ibn Al, the grandson of Mohammed who disputed Yazds right to inherit the Caliphate, at the
battle of Karbal in 680. He was accused of being an immoral tyrant, more interested in hunting and
court luxury. As a young general he had led the unsuccessful siege of Constantinople of 668. He died
in 683 during a punitive expedition against the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which involved the
burning of the sacred al-Kabah shrine, said to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael.
657
See Ibn Khaldn, 1967: pp. 192 and 221. Ibn Khaldn states that it was under the fifth Umayyad
Caliph Abd al-Malik (685-705) that Arabic was introduced as a language of state administration (p.
199).
298


recognised as one of the Fathers of the Church. His assumption that Islam was a misguided
form of Christianity held sway until the early nineteenth century.
658

Johns purpose in The Heresy of the Ishmaelites (746) was to provide Christians with
debating points that would confound Muslims. To substantiate his charge that Mohammed
was a false prophet, John advanced three pieces of evidence. He firstly argued that there
are no prophecies in the Old Testament foretelling of Mohammeds mission (as there are
supposed to be about the Christ). Secondly, John considered the Koran to be doubtful as it
was transmitted to Mohammed while he slept, or was in a trance, and so he did not receive
the messages consciously (this contention is disputed). Thirdly, John condemned
Mohammeds ideas about Jesus as unorthodox.
659
These objections no longer seem as
convincing as they might have been to Johns intended audience; and perhaps were not
even then considered significant except by an intellectual elite, schooled in rhetorical
contest.
Moreover we have to look into what is not stated to understand the full picture. For instance,
the subtleties of Pope Benedict XVIs lecture have escaped many. Aside from the
permissibility or otherwise of coerced conversion, the Emperor implied that there is little else
to distinguish Islam from Christianity. As is clear from John of Damascus book, we may view
Mohammeds emphasis on the single nature of God within the context of the controversies
around the issue in the first centuries of Christianity. This is also the case with the Muslim
insistence that God should not be portrayed in art and sculpture, which amounts to a stance
taken by Mohammed in relation to the iconoclast controversy. In this sense, Mohammed was
seeking to settle once and for all questions that had caused dissention within Christianity.
Islam is thus akin to an unorthodox form of Christianity (or of Judaism). Muslims and
Christians have complementary ways of looking at each other. Muslims see Christians as
fellow People of the Book and Christians see Muslims as having diverged from orthodoxy
but recognise them nonetheless as followers of the true religion. Although Christians and

658
See Said, 2003: pp. 61-64.
659
John of Damascus alleged that Mohammed had composed his own heresy and ideas about
Jesus with an Arian monk; in Fount of All Knowledge, Part 2: Heresies in Epitome. Arianism was an
influential current of Christianity, named after Arius (c. 250-336), which denied both Jesus divinity and
the Trinity. Some Arians were also iconoclasts, who opposed the veneration of images and relics. It
was condemned as heretical at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in 325 and 381
respectively. Other sources claim that Mohammed learnt about Christianity in Syria from a Nestorian
monk called Sergius.
299


Muslims think that the Jews were wrong to have rejected the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth,
they accept Judaism as the original valid religion.
So if the thinking contained within the salvation religions is broadly accepted collectively,
should not the four religions also accept the authority of all those who brought the Words of
God to their nations? In other words, the salvation religions might recognise the validity of
the inspiration of their respective prophets. The Koran tells us that God raised an apostle
among every nation, saying: Serve God and avoid false gods; and There is no nation that
has not been warned by an apostle (the Bee, Al-Nahl, and The Creator, Al-Fatir, 16: 36 and
35: 24).
660
In the Gathas we read that God wanted Zoroaster to spread His word to all: Now
I will speak of the word which the most holy Ahura Mazda has told me as the best for all
mankind to hear (Gathas, 45: 5). Although Jesus of Nazareth told his disciples I was sent
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he also announced that the good news of the
kingdom [of heaven] will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the
nations (Matthew, 15: 24 and 24: 14). In his gospel, the evangelist Luke of Antioch recorded
the instruction that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in the Messiahs
name to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem (Luke, 24: 47).
Therefore to establish a firm basis for working together, the salvation religions, and
especially Christianity, must re-examine their connivance in past condemnations of each
others prophets, particularly because their involvement was linked so closely with political
motives.
661
A case in point is Christianitys attitude towards Zoroaster. Under the Roman
Emperor Justinian the Great (527-565), a debate was staged between Paul the Persian, a
noted scholar but also a Nestorian Christian, and Photinus, a Manichaean, and other
Orthodox churchmen, on the questions of dualism and predestination. Reportedly the
emperor himself intervened in the debate and used it to justify an edict to outlaw the
Manichaeans. Manichaeism espoused both dualism and predestination, ideas which
contradict the notions that Gods creation is good and that humans possess free will. These
views led to the suppression of the sect by Zoroastrians, Christians and Muslims alike.
Within Christendom, the edict of 527 against Manichaeism additionally declared Zoroaster to

660
The Koran: pp. 180 and 306.
661
In the Zoroastrian tradition we find an episode when Christianity was condemned during the reign
of Yazdegerd II (438-457). The prime minister Mihr-Nas wrote to the Armenian nobility calling upon
them to adopt the Good Religion of the Mazdeans. The edict censured Christians as being deaf and
blind and deceived by the demons of Ahriman and because they mock at the name of Fate and
greatly insult Fortune; cited in Zaehner, 1972: pp. 40-42 and 59.
300


be the father of dualism and of all oriental heresies.
662
Justinian went on to put the Platonic
Academy of Athens under strict control as part of his campaign to suppress paganism in
529, forcing many of its scholars into exile in Persia, where they founded a new academy at
Gundeshapur.
663
Later, in 533, Justinian prohibited the study of the Hebrew Torah and the
Mishnah, the compendium of tradition and teaching; again following the pattern of a
theological debate, in this case at the Council of Churches at Constantinople, to provide a
certain justification.
664
All these measures were aimed at suppressing potential sources of
dissension within the Byzantine Empire as much as they concerned establishing uniformity
of belief.
665
(A campaign against the zandiqa as Muslims termed the devotees of the Zend

662
See the Catholic Encyclopedia on www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm; dualism is the name
given to the idea that good and evil are opposing principles; see also Sarah Stroumsa and Gedaliahu
G Stroumsa, 1988, Aspects of Anti-Manichaean polemics in Late Antiquity and under early Islam,
Harvard Theological Review, 81/1: pp. 37-58. Paul the Persian wrote an introduction to the philosophy
of Aristotle, which was delivered before the Sassanid King Chosroes I (531-579). According to one
source Paul the Persian converted to Zoroastrianism later in life. Although Zoroastrianism is often
linked to dualism, it is incorrect to describe it as dualist. Dualism was a characteristic of Zurvanite
Zoroastrianism, which seems to have arisen through the incorporation of Gnostic ideas, or possibly
from Indian influences; see Clark, 2001: pp. 9 and 143. It may have predominated in south-western
Iran and Babylonia. A Treatise on Demons, supposedly written by the Byzantine philosopher Michael
Psellus, against the Bogomils, called dualism a Euchite doctrine that acknowledged three principles, a
father and two sons, the elder whom controlled the underworld and fought with his younger brother,
who ruled the heavens, for domination over the earth; the writer considered them to be devil-
worshippers. This doctrine coincides with the Zurvanite cosmogony as described by Eznik of Kolb in
the fourth century (the sect of three principles). Manichean ideas were probably also inspired by the
Gnostics. See Zaehner, 1972: pp. 29-30, 37-38 and 70; and Hamilton, Hamilton and Stoyanov, 1998:
p. 227.
663
Cited in Kriwaczek, 2003: p. 106. Gundeshapur is now called Gotwand and is in Khuzestan,
western Iran. Pagan books were burnt in 562; Mango, 1994: p. 135.
664
Justinians law permitted the Jews to worship in their synagogues and to read from the Greek
translation of the Tanakh, the Septuagint, which was also accepted by Christians (as the Old
Testament), hoping by this measure to protect the Jewish congregations from the deceit of their own
rabbis who, under the cloak of hieratic and largely incomprehensible language, introduced misleading
interpretations; cited in Mango, 1994: pp. 91-92. Presumably the insistence upon the usage of Greek
in synagogues was aimed at making it easier for government spies to understand the proceedings.
665
The Emperor Theodosius II abolished the Jewish Patriarchate around 425. The Persian Great
Kings were also concerned with suppressing religions other than Zoroastrianism. Bahram I (273-276)
and his successors persecuted Brahmans, Buddhists, Christians and Manicheans. Shapur II (309-
379) oversaw the adoption of the theology propounded by durbd of Makrn as orthodox
Mazdayasna (or Mazdaism). Under Peroz I (459-484), the Jewish Academies of Sura and
Pumbeditha were closed; see Zaehner, 1972: pp. 4, 12 and 25; and Epstein, 1959: pp. 128-129. The
Jews allegedly assisted the Persians during the wars of 609-628, following which the Emperor
Heraclius ordered all Jews to be baptised; Mango, 1994: pp. 92-93.
301


Avesta, the collection of sacred, liturgical and historical texts of the Zoroastrians, who were
accused of Manichaean heresy, began in the eighth century.)
666

As already noted, for centuries Christian writers, beginning with John of Damascus,
inveighed against Mohammed as a false prophet and an impostor.
667
John was writing
while the Caliphate and the Byzantines were fighting for control of Cyprus and the
Mediterranean shipping routes.
668
Another was Peter the Venerable (c. 1092-1156) who,
while commissioning the first translation in 1143 of the Koran into Latin, compared
Mohammed to the Anti-Christ and considered his views heretical.
669
Peters books on Islam
were published against the background of a new crusade launched in 1146 by Bernard of
Clairveaux (1090-1153).
670
The polemics issued against Zoroaster and Mohammed cannot
be regarded as serious theological objections, and must be viewed against the backdrop of
violence and persecution that was occurring at the time.
The charge of heresy was levied in order to maintain unanimity within the priesthood. The
word orthodoxy means correct doctrine. In Greek orthos means right or straight. So we are
reminded of the straight path in life and of the staff of authority carried by bishops, which in
the Latin Catholic Church was called a crosier: a shepherds crook symbolising the guidance

666
Fakhry, 2009: pp. 12 and 44. The term zindq, was first used by orthodox Zoroastrians to describe
Manichaean heretics and came to be applied in Islam to all types of heresy. It is derived apparently
from the Persian for free-thinker; see Ramazan Bicer and Osman Sezgin, 2007, A Belief Crime in the
Ottoman [period]: Being a Zindiq (Heresy) at
<www.metanexus.net/Magazine/tabid/68/id/10074/Default.aspx> and Bowker, 1997; see also Berkey,
2003: p. 100.
667
See for instance the influential encyclopedia entry on Mohammed by Barthmely dHerbelot, 1697,
Bibliothque orientale, ou dictionnaire universel contenant tout ce qui fait connatre les peoples de
lOrient, Paris: cited by Said, 2003: p. 65. The entry states that the famous impostor Mahomet [was]
author and founder of a heresy. Said explains that the term impostor was used because these
Christian polemicists accused Mohammed of pretending to be a true prophet (p. 72).
668
A Muslim expedition was launched to conquer Cyprus in 648 and in 655 the Muslims won the
Battle of the Masts against the Byzantine navy.
669
Peter the Venerable supported John of Damascuss contention that Islam was similar to Arianism
in its depiction of Jesus; see also Lyons, 2010: p. 153.
670
Bernard of Clairveaux was asked by the pope to preach in support of what became the second
crusade (1147-49). Bernard championed the Cistercian monastic order and the Templars with
missionary zeal. He and Peter the Venerable, who was a Benedictine monk, crossed swords in the
controversy over the rationalist views of Pierre Ablard (1079-1142), whom Peter defended. Abelard
achieved notoriety by his secret marriage to Hlose (1101-1164), who bore him a son, while his pupil.
Her uncle and his kinsmen castrated Ablard when they discovered the pregnancy. The lovers both
took monastic orders and their correspondence has become famous for its erudition.
302


that a bishop exercised over his flock. By contrast, a heretics transgression was to preach or
teach some doctrinal variation that was not acceptable to the priesthood. However the issue
of internal discipline within the priesthood became, within the Melchite church of the later
Roman Empire, conjoined with the emperors objectives for maintaining social order.
Theological arguments led to sectarian discord and sometimes to inter-communal riots.
When combined with heightened religious fervour (associated with expectations that the last
days were close at hand) and state suspicions that heretics were in league with the empires
enemies, a wave of mass persecution could be unleashed against perceived outsiders. Jews
often found themselves the victims. Fears about heretics within their society encouraged
Christians to distrust outsiders more than ever, with Muslims becoming viewed as aliens. It
was this meshing of civil power and sacred authority that created the conditions for the
persecution of heretics and Jews and for the crusades. Toleration, since the end of the
seventeenth century, and the formal separation of the Christian churches from the state
have enabled ecumenical dialogue to begin. The Pope has owned up to the Churchs past
persecution of the Jews. But the Christian churches have yet to re-examine their complicity
with the state in the very process of how separate religions were formed.
Lastly there are the shared myths of the salvation religions. As this essay has sought to
demonstrate, the common myths about creation, the entry of evil into the world, of the last
days and the journey of the soul, may be interpreted metaphorically. That was in all
likelihood the way ancient priests and philosophers understood the myths. Indeed, one of the
accusations levelled against the Manicheans by the philosopher Simplicius of Cilicia (c. 490-
550 CE) was that they took their myths literally. By implication, Simplicius understood the
Biblical myths allegorically.
671
For them, as illuminati, the myths were analogies, whereas for
the masses the myths were to be understood literally. This in no way implies that myths are
untrue, nor that the arcane science contained within the myths is false. Modern science
has moved on, and the Biblical explanations as to how the cosmos and life evolved may be
obsolete, but the messages for society and the individual remain valid. In particular, the
salvation religions should re-assess the myths of the last days. Millenarian expectations
coloured the perception of one religion by another (and it is probable that this applies even
now to the contemporary Islamist radicals). These expectations that the last days were near
at hand, led the pious to view dissenters as agents of the Anti-Christs advancing corruption.

671
Cited by Stroumsa, 1988: p. 40: they [the Manicheans] do not think it right to understand any of
the things they say allegorically as one of their sages informed me. Simplicius was one of the
Neo-Platonist philosophers who went into exile to Persia after Justinian purged the Academy of
Athens.
303


They saw the signs that herald the last days all around them; they imagined that the great
battles of the time of tribulation were around the corner; they felt threatened and turned on
the imagined Fifth Column that lived among them. The crusades were not just wars abroad;
they were conducted against the internal enemies of Christendom: the Jews, the Bogomils
and Cathars (accused as being the heirs of Manichaeism), the Templars and the
Anabaptists. Muslims too saw enemies within the community: Jews, Christians and
Zoroastrians, and the Sf brotherhoods. These fears also fed bitter sectarian strife between
Sunn and Shah traditions. Similar fears may have lain behind an example of Jewish
persecution of Christians that took place around 524 in the Yemeni city of Najrn, a centre
for Christians and Zoroastrians. The massacre of al-Ukhdud, when a large number were
burnt alive in a trench, appears to have been carried out by the Jewish rulers of Himyar to
counter Byzantine influence in southern Arabia. The incident triggered an invasion by
Christian forces from Ethiopia to establish a small Christian enclave.
672

No religious community has been immune from murderous zeal, from entanglement with
oppression and from the persecution of dissenters and minorities. From the purification of
historical memory will come mutual respect; and from respect we will develop common goals
and action. It is not just a matter of promoting tolerance. There is far more that unites the
salvation religions than divides them. Recognising that there is a common basis in the
salvation religions (and, indeed, in scientific knowledge) does not compromise other aspects
and forms of religious devotion. Unfinished business remains to be done to secure
reconciliation between the salvation religions and to put an end to the cycle of conflict. Our
global society still has much to do if we are to find lasting peace, security and sustainable
development.

672
See MacCulloch, 2010: pp. 244-245. The massacre is referred to in the Koran; see The Koran:
The Constellations, Al-Buruj: 85: 4: p. 48.
304


Table E-1: The Beliefs of the Salvation Religions Compared
Zoroastrianism (Mazdayasna) Common Core of Beliefs Christianity
Zoroaster
(Zarathustra)
proclaimed the
authority of
Mazda (God)
The Gathas
hymns
The Holy Spirit
(Truth) and the
Spirit of
Destruction
(Falsehood) are in
contention for
eternity
Judaism Other Doctrines Holy Trinity Harrowing of Hell
One God who is
the Creator
Torah (Books of
Learning)*
Soul survives
death and is
rewarded or
punished
Angels
Jesus was the
Messiah
Jesus rose from
the dead
Gospels (and
other books of the
New Testament)
Validity of
prophecy
Power of prayer
Coming of the
Messiah
Resurrection of
the Dead
Destiny/
Providence
Free will
Other Books of
the Old
Testament*

Mohammed is the
Last Prophet

The Holy Koran
records the Word
of God

Final Judgement The Devil Islam
* Not accepted by Zoroastrians

305


Appendix F: Glossary
673

I have avoided the use of philosophical jargon and isms as far as possible. For those who
wish to study the issues raised further I include a glossary of key terms.
Abstract entity Properties of things, such as redness or motherhood,
which are common to a set of similar things. May be called
universals. In contrast, particulars are concrete things that
exist within space and time, that is, within nature.
Agnosticism The opinion that complete knowledge is not possible. For
example, an agnostic contends that it is not possible to
know whether or not God exists.
Analogical
explanation
Explanation in terms of a parallel instance if there are
resemblances between the phenomena
Analogy A comparison between things that partially resemble one
another.
Analytic truth A proposition whose truth is guaranteed by the meaning of
the terms and the laws of logic. For example, All bachelors
are unmarried, where the predicate is already present in
the statement. Also known as a necessary or essential
truth, it is contrasted with synthetic truth. The proposition is
associated with rationalism.
Antinomies A pair of contradictory propositions.
A priori Latin term: from the former. Capable of being known
independently of experience. Mathematics is said to
express a priori (analytic) truths by rationalists because
these truths may be discovered through reasoning.
A posteriori Latin term: from the following. Capable of being deduced
from facts and experience. A logical method favoured by
empiricists.
Atheism The opinion that God does not exist.
Atomism The theory that minute, unchangeable and indestructible
particles are fundamental to matter. Leucippus of Abdera
was the first to formulate the theory in the early fifth century
BCE. The Atomists stated there is nothing but atoms and
the void in which atoms move. They accepted materialism
and were accused of atheism.
Belief An opinion that an idea or statement is true.

673
Adapted from Bullock, Stallybrass and Trombley, 1988; Urmson and Re, 1989; Jolley, 2005;
Woolhouse, 2010; Websters New World Dictionary of the American Language; and Wikipedia.
306


Biology The study of life.
Body A mass of extended matter.
Causality The relation between cause and effect. There are two
types of causality. A necessary cause implies that if x
causes y, then y was caused by x. A sufficient cause
implies that although x causes y, y may also be caused by
w. The presence of y does not imply the presence of x.
Causality is a central feature of determinism.
Chemistry The study of matter.
Cognition The mental processes involved in the acquisition,
organisation and use of knowledge.
Consciousness A mental state of awareness when the senses are
operating.
Contingent truth Truths whose opposites do no imply a contradiction. For
example, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon or ice is cold
to the touch.
Cosmos A complete and orderly system. For example, the universe.
Cosmogenesis The process by which the cosmos develops. The term is
associated with the theories propounded by Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin who argued that the universe was not a static
order but is evolving from inanimate matter to life and
consciousness with a single source of guiding energy that
drives (or guides) the process towards its conclusion (the
Omega Point).
Cynicism The philosophy of Antisthenes and Diogenes the Dog of
Sinope and his movement (founded c. 350 BCE), which
sought to live without shame, convention, comfort and
property.
Deduction The process of ascertaining the truth from valid premises. It
may be contrasted to induction.
Deductive
explanation
Explanation in terms of logic or cause. The approach is
used extensively in physics.
Deism The doctrine that God does not intervene actively in nature,
which operates according to natural laws. God exists, as in
theism, but is wholly transcendent and not present in the
cosmos. It suggests that God can be found through
reasoning, since He is beyond sensory experience, and
contradicts immanentism.

307


Determinism The theory that every event is caused by prior events in
accordance with the laws of nature. It assumes that
subsequent events can be predicted accurately. It suggests
that choice by humans (free will) is illusory we can only
exercise choice within binding constraints and thus
contradicts existentialism.
Deterministic
explanation
Explanation in terms of a model with known initial
conditions and predictable outcomes. There is no
randomness in moving from one state to another state of
development.
Doctrine A doctrine is a codification of beliefs. A code is a coherent
collection of principles, rules or teachings.
Dogmatism An approach to explanation that assumes that a doctrine is
true.
Dualism The theory that everything is derived from two principles or
categories (or kinds of things).
Epistemology The study of knowledge.
Eschatology The study of the last times.
Ecumenism The commitment to finding common ground between
churches and religions.
Empiricism The theory that all knowledge is grounded in, or derived
from, experience. Experience is a necessary base for
knowledge. Concept-empiricism holds that all ideas or
concepts are derived from experience; there are no innate
ideas and the mind is a blank slate until it receives
sensory data. Knowledge-empiricism holds that all
legitimate claims to knowledge are to be justified by an
appeal to experience. Empiricists contend that analytic
truths are not essential but simply established definitions
grounded in language. It denies rationalism. Empiricism is
associated with the philosophy of Locke, Berkeley and
Hume in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Epicureanism The philosophy of Epicurus and his school (founded c. 306
BCE). Also known as hedonism and linked to Atomism and
materialism, it is based on the idea that tranquillity (or
peace of mind) is the goal of life. Since the cosmos is
composed of atoms formed without the intervention of the
gods, there is no such thing as destiny and no need to fear
death and punishment in the afterlife.
Epistemology The study of knowledge. It aims to define knowledge,
identify its sources and establish its limits.
308


Essence An essence is a characteristic of a thing.
Essentialism An approach that categorises things according to their
common properties or attributes. An essentialist statement
would say that certain properties possessed by a group of
things are universal to those things; for example, all
animals are mortal or that the British are polite. It follows
that terms or words should have a single meaning. It is
allied to rationalism and realism.
Ethics The study of moral issues.
Existentialism The doctrine that humans are self-creating beings that
must choose their destiny, unlike other animals or things
that have a natural existence. Developed since the 1840s
following Sren Kierkegaard, who proposed that humans
are free to make moral choices and carry personal
responsibility for these.
Explanation The process or outcome (or conclusion) of explaining how
or why something occurs as a sequence of events/
causality.
Extension The property of spatial dimension. Matter is an extended
substance. Similar to mass.
Fact Something that is true or has occurred.
Fallacy of
composition
The fallacy of inferring from what is true of the parts to what
of true of the whole, or from what is true of the members of
a series to what is true of the series itself.
Fetishism An illusion in which a material object possesses imaginary
characteristics or powers; for example, money is endowed
with the property of value and is accepted as a repository
of purchasing power. Fetishism is similar to idolatry,
whereby a statue or other object is revered as an
embodiment of a divine spirit with magical powers.
Fideism The doctrine that religious beliefs cannot be rationally
justified and must be accepted on faith alone.
Final causes Causes that appeal to a goal or purpose.
Form A structure that satisfies a function. Form is immanent to
the thing being observed. For example, a table consists of
matter (wood, glue, nails, etc.) and form (how it is put
together).
Functional
explanation
Explanation in terms of why something exists.

309


Gnosticism The doctrine that knowledge is possible. For example, a
gnostic contends that science can explain how things come
about or that there is meaning to life.
Humanism The doctrine that human reasoning and the dignity of
human beings should be the base for morality, aesthetics
and politics. It rejects moral norms that are founded upon
the commands of what it views as a supernatural being.
Religious thinkers regard humanism as a form of idolatry,
whereby humanity is substituted for God.
Idealism The doctrine that holds that reality is ultimately mental or
spiritual in nature, or at least non-material. In a weaker
sense, idealism suggests that only ideas are the objects of
knowledge and is therefore consistent with rationalism.
Idea A unit of thought that expresses a meaning.
Ideology The study of ideas to understand the source of ideas and
beliefs. Often used to describe the beliefs of an ideologue
who subscribes to a doctrine.
Immanentism The doctrine that God is wholly present in the cosmos that
is His creation. It need not imply that God is the actor who
makes everything happen. It suggests that one can find
God in reality, for instance through a mystical experience,
and not just through the exercise of reason.
Induction The process of ascertaining the truth from generalisations
based on facts. This could involve a generalisation based
on probability or upon a statistical relationship. The
approach is used extensively in epidemiology, medicine
and economics. It may be contrasted to deduction.
Inference The theory of proof or the process of believing the truth.
Intention The sense of a term or the concept which is being
expressed.
Knowledge An understanding of the facts. For example, science.
Logic The study and use of valid forms of argument.
Metaphysics A branch of scientific speculation in which statements
cannot be verified from experience.
Materialism The theory that reality is material or physical in nature. It
denies substantial existence to immaterial minds (except
as states of the mind related to brain activities) and to
abstract entities. Materialists seek explanations that are
verifiable from nature and contend that things can be
perceived by an observer.
310


Matter An extended substance, which means that it has mass and
can be measured. Matter is a phenomenon grounded in
monads that express its form and qualities, according to
Leibniz.
Methodology The study of methods and procedures for undertaking an
activity. It investigates the aims, principles of reasoning and
rationale of an activity.
Mind The faculty of thought and the seat of consciousness and
intellect. Thoughts are substantial and are phenomena, but
they take up no space and hence differ fundamentally from
matter.
Mode A particular property or trope of substance.
Monad Unity. According to G W Leibniz, a simple, perpetual,
immaterial soul-like substance endowed with perception.
An unconscious monads perception is limited to sensation,
so plants and some animals, like insects or jellyfish, do not
have souls. The monads of rocks and minerals exist in a
stupor and lack sensation altogether. A conscious monad
permits consciousness and, in humans, thinking. Such
animals have souls. Phenomena are grounded in, or
emanate from, sets of monads. Monads underpin all
material reality, not just living things. A dead creatures
monads express the phenomena of decay and
decomposition. So the soul remains with the body after
death (and only the spirit, or animating energy, leaves).
Monads and matter are inseparable. Similar to information.
Monadology The study of forms, entelechies or monads, as expounded
by Leibniz.
Monism The theory that there is only one kind of thing in the
universe.
Nativism The theory that the human mind contains innate ideas and
knowledge. The mind is not a blank slate but an organ that
interprets and, in the case of humans, understands data
from the senses.
Nature Everything that exists in space and time.
Neo-Platonism The philosophical school of thought founded by Plotinus
around 250 CE that synthesized Platonism, Stoicism and
Pythagoreanism and influenced Christian theology.
Nominalism An approach that suggests that common properties or
abstract entities exist because true statements may be
made about them. Universal (abstract) qualities do not
311


exist independently of the things of which they can be
predicated and exist only in the mind of an observer. It
denies realism.
Noumena Things in themselves that cannot be experienced or not
known from the senses. For example, a concept is a
noumenon.
Ontology The study of the nature of existence and reality.
Occasionalism The doctrine that God alone is the true cause of all events.
For example, the collision of two billiard balls is an
occasion when Gods causal power is exercised.
Pantheism The theory that God and Nature are identical.
Paradigm A theoretical framework in a field of science that defines a
programme of research.
Phenomena Things that are apparent to the senses. For example, a
body is a phenomenon.
Phenomenalism The doctrine that bodies or physical objects are simply the
contents of perceptions and have no existence outside of
human minds. Human knowledge is confined to
appearances or phenomena. There is no external world
existing independently of observers perceptions. Objective
reality is consists of what observers have agreed upon as
existing according to their perceptions. It denies realism
and is allied to empiricism. John Stuart Mill developed an
assertion by David Hume that there are two types of
phenomena, direct perceptions and ideas in 1865.
Phenomenology The study of experience.
Philosophy The study of the nature of the world in general and of
fundamental problems. A philosophy provides an outlook,
viewpoint or interpretation on the world.
Physics The study of nature.
Platonism The philosophy of Plato and his school (founded c. 385
BCE). Plato argued that true knowledge is achieved
through reasoning and the study of ideas.
Positivism The opinion that metaphysics is invalid and that empiricism
should be the basis of knowledge. It is allied to
phenomenalism
Predicate That which is ascribed to the subject of a proposition. For
example, Julius Caesar was killed by Brutus and Cassius
ascribes the predicate killed by Brutus and Cassius' to the
subject of the sentence, Caesar.
312


Prime matter Matter prior to or without form. Matter exists only as formed
matter; for example, matter takes the form of earth, air,
water or fire.
Probabilistic
explanation
Explanation in terms of probability. A stochastic or random
process involves indeterminacy and must be described in
probability distributions. It is the opposite of a deterministic
process.
Psychology The study of the mind or soul.
Pythagoreanism The philosophy of Pythagoras of Samos and his school
(founded c. 530 BCE). Pythagoras maintained that
mathematics is the model for science and that abstract
reasoning is superior to sensory experience, an idea also
central to Platonism.
Rationalism The doctrine that the human mind is capable of knowing
substantive truths about the world by reason alone or
independently of experience. Rationalists contend that
analytic truths exist (in human minds, the Mind of God, or
by the laws of nature) and may be discovered by scientific
inquiry. It denies empiricism. Rationalism is associated with
the writings of Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza in the
seventeenth century.
Realism The doctrine that things exist independently of any
observers perception or mind. For example, numbers may
exist independently of mathematicians discoveries. A
realist contends that the truth is out there.
Relativism An approach to setting standards that relates these to their
context. For example, in education, an examiner may
award the distinction of excellence to those students who
answer nine out of ten questions correctly (an absolute
standard) or to the top ten per cent of those sitting the
exam (a relative standard). Critics of relativism contend
that the approach confuses rules with norms; thus, for
instance, a relativist accepts that the killing of another
person is not murder if public opinion or tradition condones
it (as in honour killings, when a family member is killed by
her or his relatives for bringing dishonour to the familys
name).
Scepticism The theory that holds that the possibilities of knowledge are
limited. Some things cannot be known at all.
Secularism The principle and practice of separating the affairs of state,
or government, from those of a religious institution. Matters
of the world (saeculum in Latin) or of the people (las in
313


Greek, from which the French lacit derives) should be
free of religious involvement and the state should not
promote any religion through its activities. Religion is
considered to be a private matter.
Soul An immortal and immaterial substance with faculties for
thought, feeling and will power. A soul has the capability to
perceive and remember, so it is similar to a mind. A soul is
a set of qualities that comprise the essential information
about a living being.
Stoicism The philosophy of Zeno of Citium and his school (founded
after 311 BCE). Zenos main idea was that since
humankind is powerless to alter natural laws we must
accept the evils of this world to live in harmony with nature.
Substance A thing that exists and has properties that may be
observed. All phenomena are substances or modes/
properties of substances.
Substantial form The substantial form is the source of all changes in a thing
which arise from its nature. Causality derives from the
substantial form.
Synthetic truth Non-analytic statements that are consistent but whose
predicates are not contained in their meaning. For
example, this square is large. Synthetic truths are
contrasted to analytic truths.
Teleology The study of purpose or final causes.
Teleological
explanation
Explanation in terms of goals.
Theism The doctrine that God exists.
Theology The study of matters of divinity or of Gods power.
Theory A theory is an explanation that can be verified or disproved
(falsified). An explanation consists of a coherent collection
of testable conjectures (hypotheses).
Transcendental
idealism
The theory that we know only appearances which depend
on the constitution of the human mind, and we do not know
things as they are in themselves. It was developed by
Immanuel Kant in the 1770s.
Tropes Instances of properties that are unique to individuals and
things. For example, while redness is a property common
to many fire-engines, the trope or redness-instance is
peculiar to a particular fire-engine.

314


Truth A statement that corresponds with the facts. A statement
that is coherent with objective reality may be plausible but
not necessarily true.
Understanding The interpretation of empirical data from the senses in
terms of pure, or essential, concepts/ categories/ abstract
entities, such as substance, mode and causality. Through
understanding scientists and philosophers transcend
experience and go beyond the world of appearance
(phenomena) to model the world abstractly (noumena).
Understanding renders the world intelligible.
Utilitarianism The theory that the right action is the one that produces the
greatest overall happiness. Decisions may be assessed
according to their utility, or their efficiency, in generating
happiness or pleasure and in minimizing any pain or harm
that might be caused. Promoted by Jeremy Bentham in
1789.
Verification The establishment of a belief or proposition as true.

315


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331


Index
Aaron (c.1496-1410 BCE) 171, 230, 231
Abbsid dynasty 276-278, 290
Ablard, Pierre (1079-1142) 301
Abraham (c.1873-1815 BCE) 117, 121, 176,
245, 283, 290, 291, 297
Abraxas 229
Ab Maar (Albusar) of Balkh (787-886) 13-
14
Achaenenid dynasty 8, 10
Actus et potentia 23
Adam 13, 45, 49-50, 53, 55-58, 60, 62-65, 73,
86, 116, 135, 162, 176, 237-238, 245, 260
Adorno, Theodor (1903-1969) 166
on 231-233, 238,
Ahriman 14, 61, 73, 89, 233, 234, 236, 241-
242, 296, 299
Ahura Mazda 10, 37, 61, 73, 73, 109, 205,
234, 286, 299
Alchemy iii, vii, 19, 39, 123, 126, 130, 138-
139, 141-145, 278
Alcibiades (c.450-404 BCE) 3
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) 3, 11, 78,
81, 92, 207, 271, 276
Alexandria 4, 99, 169, 233, 246, 277
Al-Brn (973-1048) 9, 288
Al-Frbi (c.872-950) 280
Al-Kind (c.801-866) 14, 100, 278-279, 280
Analogical reasoning, iii-iv, 67-69, 154, 175,
191, 196, 215-226, 229, 302
Anaxagoras (c.500-428 BCE) 8, 41, 206
Anaximander (c,610-546 BCE) 8, 206, 217,
279
Anderson, Perry 275, 289
Andreae, Johan Valentine (1586-1654) 125-
126, 129
Andreev, Daniel (1906-1957) 267
Angels 49-53, 73, 109, 145, 147, 238, 242,
295, 304
Anthropic principle 177-179
Anti-Christ, The 77-82, 301, 302
Apelles of Kos (fl.330 BCE) 3
Apocalypse of Paul, The 97-98
Apocalypse of Peter, The 70
Apocryphon of John 235-236, 238-239, 245
Apollo 15, 29, 108, 287-288
Aquinas, Thomas (c.1225-1274) 51, 279-280,
281
Archons 240, 250-251
Arianism 298, 301
Aristarchus of Samos (c.310-230 BCE) 39,
156
Aristotle (384-323 BCE) 3, 4, 21-25, 112,
117, 121, 141, 168, 181, 184, 189-190, 206,
213, 225-226, 272, 277, 278, 279, 280
Armageddon, Battle of (c.802 BCE) 62, 81
Armilus see Anti-Christ
Armstrong, Karen 6, 107, 152, 228
Astrology iii, 3, 5, 13, 14, 39, 60, 71, 151, 155,
216, 239, 247, 278, 281
Athens 3, 8, 11, 30, 41, 91, 129, 180, 215,
271, 300, 302
Atomists, The 8, 34, 69, 105, 134, 144, 179,
189-190, 193, 195
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) 146, 262, 272,
Authades 241-242
332


Avicenna (c.980-1037) 277, 280
Averros (Ibn Rushd) (1126-1198) 3, 42, 159,
277, 279, 280
Avesta, The 9, 72-73
Axial Age 6-8, 107-108, 163, 205-214
Babylon 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 16, 32, 33, 37, 50,
60, 73, 74-76, 78, 122, 155, 171, 207, 228,
233, 236, 271
Baghdad vi, 276, 277-278
Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) 126, 130
Badiou, Alain 166
Baigent, Michael vii, 246, 256
Basilides (fl.120) 245-246 256
Bauer, Bruno (1809-1882) 4
Bavaria 124
Beast. The 83, 85
Bekker, Balthasar (1634-1698) 138
Benedict XVI, Pope v, 286, 293, 298, 302
Benjamin, Walter (1892-1940) 64
Bergson, Henri (1859-1941) 234, 259
Berlin 129, 182
Bernard de Clairvaux (1090-1153) 254, 301
Bertram, Jerome 224, 255
Bible, The 31, 169, 176, 200, 295
Blake, William (1757-1827) viii, 62
Blount, Charles (1654-1693) 145
Boethius (c.480-525) 3, 279
Bogomils 255, 300, 303
Borges, Jos Luis (1899-1986) 228
Born, Max (1882-1970) 182
Botton, Alain de 261
Boyce, Mary (1920-2006) 205
Boyle, Robert (1627-1691) 122, 128-129, 136,
138, 142, 145, 172
Braudel, Fernard (1902-1985) 265, 267, 288
Bronze Age 199
Brown, Dan vii, 256
Bucharest i
Buddha, The (c.563-483 BCE) 205, 206, 209,
233, 272, 300
Bulgakov, Mikhail (1891-1940) 162
Buonarroti, Filippo (1761-1837) 174
Byblos 33, 211
Byzantine Empire 171, 275-277, 283, 286,
287, 289, 300, 301
Cabalists, The 123, 129, 132, 144, 239
Calasanz, Jos de (1557-1648) 126
Cambridge 123, 137, 176
Campanella, Tommaso (1568-1639) 125-
126, 132
Cartesian paradigm iii-v, 122, 140-149, 154,
156, 174, 196-198, 212-213
Caste 269-270, 271, 288
Cathars 254, 303
Catholic Church, The i-iii, 126, 156, 164, 168-
171, 207, 261, 286
Chaldean Oracles, The 10, 67, 89
Chaos 30-31, 37, 41-42, 139, 145, 176, 179-
181, 189-191, 195
Charlemagne 135, 279
Childe, Vere Gordon (1892-1957) 265, 267
333


China 107, 205-206, 208-209, 212, 258, 265,
267, 268, 270
Chomsky, Noam 193
Christendom 280, 284, 303
Christianity, Early 4, 79, 86, 93, 97, 118, 154,
155, 158, 168-171, 228, 243, 261, 274, 282,
283, 291
Christie-Murray, David 258-259
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BCE) 15, 45,
96, 179-181
Citizenship 270
Civilization v, 152, 220, 265-282
Civilization, Hellenistic 154, 166, 170, 271-
273, 275, 281, 292
Civilization, Western 140, 156, 160, 170, 173-
175, 198, 265-282, 292
Clark, Sir Kenneth 266
Clement of Alexandria (c.150-215) 14, 73,
108, 241, 256, 272
Communists 4, 123, 174, 175
Confessio Fratermitatis, The 124
Comte, Auguste (1798-1857) 213
Conflagration, The 72-74, 76, 83, 91
Confucius 205, 206, 209, 268
Constantine, Emperor (306-337) 82, 118, 274,
287. 288
Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473-1543) 121-122,
280
Coptic church 108, 110, 256, 257, 290
Crdoba 276, 277-278, 280
Cornforth, Maurice (1909-1980) 193, 229
Cosmogenesis 185-186, 189-191
Cosmos 29-31, 33-42, 139, 145, 146, 154,
159, 180, 186, 189-196, 225-226, 302
Counter-Reformation 126, 133, 149, 261
Creation, The vii, 32-43, 46, 217, 225-226,
228
Croce, Benedetto (1866-1952) 160
Crowley, Aleister (1875-1947) 118-119
Crusades 286-287, 301, 302
Culture wars i-ii, 1
Cynics, The 92
Dajjal, The see Anti-Christ
Damascus 82, 123
Daniel (c.621-559 BCE) 7-8, 51, 206, 207
Daniel, Book of 73, 78, 89
Davies, Paul 177-179, 186, 191, 217
Darwin, Charles (1809-1882) 45-46, 176-177
Dawkins, Richard v, 2, 48, 187, 216, 221
Dead Sea Scrolls, The 7, 58, 67, 171, 235
Debray, Rgis 210-211, 284
Dee, John (1527-1608) 64-65, 77-83, 122
Deist compromise iv, 145-150, 171-175, 190,
213
Demiurge 33, 36-37, 43, 72, 184, 217, 225-
226
Democracy 270-271
Demons 48, 52-55, 97, 199, 238, 285, 299
Descartes, Ren (1596-1650) 43, 122, 128,
131-134, 138, 140-148, 171, 173, 197, 213,
232
Democritus of Abdera (c.460-370) 3, 8, 179,
186, 188, 206
Devil, The see Satan
334


Driesch, Hans (1867-1941) 24
Droysen, Gustav (1808-1884) 271-272
Dualism 230, 271, 299-300
Dunbar, Robin 194
Ecphantos the Pythagorean (4
th
Century BCE)
156
Ecpyrosis see Conflagration
Eden 56, 127, 176, 230, 238, 260
Egypt 5, 8, 11-16, 25, 36, 60, 96-97, 108,
124, 155, 174, 210, 228, 252, 258, 271, 273,
288, 290
Eidolon 112-114, 166-167
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) v, 177, 178, 181,
182-183, 188-189, 192, 195, 198
Elements, The Four 17-19, 111
Elijah (c. 900-847 BCE) 206, 208
Emanations 18-29, 31, 147, 157, 231, 242
Empedocles of Acragas (c.490-430 BCE) 8,
19, 71, 206, 215
Energy 20, 26-29
Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895) 4
Enlightenment, The iv-v, viii, 157, 172-174,
212, 219, 261
Enoch 13, 59-60, 121
Enoch, Book of 53, 58-61, 89, 233
Entelechy 25, 27-28, 196
Entropy 20, 21, 26-29, 45-46, 51, 178, 181,
231
Epicurus (341-270 BCE) 3, 179, 206
Episcopalian Church, The ii
Epstein, Isidore (1894-1962) 90
Essenes, The 77-80, 235, 244
Eve 45, 49-50, 55-58, 62-63, 86, 116, 135,
161-162, 238
Evil 53-55, 63
Evolution viii, 1, 24, 42, 45-46, 108, 148, 152,
176, 178, 184-188, 190, 215, 227, 233, 296
Ezekiel (c.622-570 BCE) 8, 90
Ezra 7, 38, 206, 207, 285
Fama Fraternitatis, The 121, 124
Fairies 46-47, 48
Faith iv, 218-219,
Fall, The 45-65, 161-162, 237
Faulhaber, Johann (1580-1635) 132
Faust, Johann (c.1480-1540) 143
Ferguson, Niall 265
Feyerabend, Paul (1924-1994) 221
Ficino, Marsilio (1433-1499) 129, 131
Final Judgement, The 106, 116, 118, 251,
268, 285, 295
Flamel, Nicolas (c.1330-1418) 143
Flood, The 13-14, 72, 116, 123, 230
Florence 121, 129
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bouyer de (1657-1757)
145
Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226) 188
Frankfort, Henri (1897-1954) 69
Freke, Timothy 1, 95, 108-109, 111-118
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) 113
Fludd, Robert (1574-1637) 122, 126, 149
Gabriel, Archangel 51, 104, 242
Gaia hypothesis 216-217
335


Galileo, (1564-1642) 121-122, 125, 126, 131,
133, 136, 141, 171, 188, 213, 280, 292
Gama, Vasco da (d. 1524) 273
Gandy, Peter 1, 95, 108-109, 111-118
Gnti, Tibor 24
Gathas 9, 10, 109, 200, 286, 299
Gaymart 14, 61, 73,
Gellner, Ernest (1925-1995) 210-211
Genesis, Book of 32-37, 46, 56-57, 58-60, 62,
64, 67, 69, 161-162, 185, 192, 194, 227, 230
George, Saint (c. 275-311) 82
Ghost (film) 199
Ghosts 95, 138
Gnosis 12, 109, 117, 260
Gnostics, The 109-119, 162, 166-167, 227-
263, 300
God iii, 8, 21, 30-31, 35, 36-38, 43, 45, 46, 51-
53, 56-57, 61-63, 65, 109, 117, 134, 145, 156-
159, 163, 166, 171-172, 183, 184, 188, 189,
194, 218, 224, 228, 230-237, 250, 251, 258-
259, 280, 285, 292, 296
God, Kingdom or Rule of 84, 86-93, 99, 109,
171, 175, 252, 254, 291-293
God, Mind of 15, 35, 41, 65, 109, 124, 147,
156-159, 163, 194, 232,
Gould, Stephen Jay (1941-2002) 152, 175,
221
Great Year, The 70-74, 89-91
Greece vi, 8, 107, 156, 205, 211, 217, 252,
270, 271-273, 276-279, 281,
Green, Roger Lancelyn (1918-1987) 67
Groenewegen-Frankfort, Henriette (1896-
1982) 69
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)
212
Grotius, Hugo (1583-1645) 139
Gumilev, Lev (1912-1992) 267
Hades 102, 167, 251
Hadith, The 82
Hall, Manley (1901-1990) 12, 215
Hall, Rupert (1920-2009) 138
Hawking, Stephen v, 158, 177, 181, 189, 194
Heaven 95, 105, 151, 163, 181, 199
Hegel, G W F (1770-1831) 148, 158, 209, 283
Hlose (1101-1164) 301
Helmont, Jan Baptist van (1579-1644) 122,
142
Hell 49, 55, 83, 95, 97, 106, 167, 181, 199,
292, 304
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.535-475) vi, 3, 71-
72, 93, 184, 206, 234, 259
Herakleides of Pontus (c.390-310 BCE) 39
Hermes Trismegistus 5, 13-15, 127
Heresy 154, 211, 227, 263, 297, 298, 300
Hermetic paradigm iii-v, 5, 39-40, 121-122,
131, 133, 137, 138, 148-149, 154-156, 198,
213, 240, 262, 272, 274, 282
Herodotus (c.484-425 BCE) 39, 90, 273
Hesiod (c. 800 BCE) vi, 41-42, 73, 206, 211,
215
Higgs, Peter 219
Hilkiah (fl. 630 BCE) 7, 206
Hipparchus of Nicaea (c.190-126 BCE) 122,
155
Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) 2
Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679) 139
Hobsbawm, Eric (1917-2012) 214, 269
336


Holy Immortals 9-10, 37, 233
Homer (c. 850 BCE) 206, 211
Homo sapiens 63-64, 69, 162, 187
Hooke, Robert (1635-1703) 48, 122, 136
Horkheimer, Max (1895-1973) 166
Humanity 62-64, 69, 118, 162, 193-194, 198,
219, 228
Hume, David (1711-1776) 222, 229,
Huntington, Samuel P (1927-2008) 265-266,
268
Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963) 160
Hyle 19, 38, 110-112, 166, 260,
Hypatia of Alexandria (c.360-415) 3
Hyppolytus of Rome (d. 236) 71, 244, 259
Iamblichus of Chalcis (c.245-345) 8, 11, 17,
133
Iblis see Satan
Ibn Khaldn (1332-1406) 276-277, 289, 290,
297
Idealism 157, 167-168
Identity ii, 166
Ignatieff, Michael iv
Illuminati, The 127, 174, 302
India 107, 205-207, 208, 211, 258, 267, 277,
287
Information 23, 24-25, 28, 29, 185
Intelligence 20, 26, 178, 187, 196-197
Intelligent Design v, 153, 156, 179, 189-193
Invisible College, The 128-129
Irenaeus (c.130-202) 117, 241, 244, 272
Isaiah (c. 740-700 BCE) 74, 90, 206, 208
Isaiah, Book of 62-63, 74-76, 109, 207, 261,
279, 296-297
Isidore of Seville (c.560-636) 279
Isis 11, 163, 242, 252, 274
Islam 124, 154, 158, 162, 170, 171, 231, 273,
278, 281-282, 283, 284, 287, 291, 296, 301,
304
Islam, House of 280, 284, 291-293
Isocrates (436-338 BCE) 12, 166
Israel 7, 32, 38, 59, 74, 76, 81-82, 88, 107,
168, 205, 230-231, 290, 297, 299
Jacobs, Louis (1920-2006) 199-200
Jacobus de Voragine (c.1230-1298) 82, 256
James the Just (d. 62 or 69) 246, 296
Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969) 6, 193, 205, 208-
210, 212, 219, 225
Jeremiah (fl. 600 BCE) 90, 208, 247
Jerusalem 7, 32, 37-38, 51, 82-83, 230, 252,
254, 257, 279, 286, 287, 296, 299
Jesuits, The 127-128, 132, 133, 174
Jesus of Nazareth (c.4 BCE-36 CE) viii, 53,
82, 86-93, 99, 110-111, 117, 118, 151, 167,
168-169, 238, 241-242, 244, 248, 249, 250,
253, 255-257, 285, 295, 299
Jihad 286-288, 291-292
Joachim of Fiore (c1135-1202) 64, 126
John the Baptist (d. 28) 111
John of Damascus (died c.749) 297-298
John, The Evangelist (c.15-100) 245, 252,
255
John, Gospel according to 79, 92, 105, 250,
255, 257-258, 293
Jonas, Hans (1903-1993) 108, 116-117, 154,
167, 240, 242
337


Judaism 4, 7, 38, 76, 89, 154, 162, 169, 207,
228, 233, 248, 252, 258, 262, 283, 287, 291,
296, 299, 304
Jung, Carl (1875-1961) 113
Justin (d.165) 272
Justinian the Great, Emperor (527-565) 299-
300
Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804) iv, 148, 157,
172-173, 191, 212
Kaser, Matthew 15
Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630) 1, 13, 65, 122,
126, 131, 132, 133, 149, 176, 180-181, 188,
213
Keynes, J M (1883-1946) 137
Kingdom of God, see God, Kingdom or Rule of
Koestler, Arthur (1905-1983) vii, 6, 134, 141,
149, 209, 213, 266
Koakowski, Leszek (1927-2009) 5, 55, 84,
99, 108, 162, 170, 175
Koran, The viii, 14, 32-33, 43, 57, 81, 107,
109, 124, 154, 159, 168, 200, 244, 256, 278,
280, 285, 292, 293, 298, 299,301, 304
Kuhn, Thomas (1922-1996) 4
Kuzneski, Chris 256
Kypris 42, 61
Lane Fox, Robin 169
Laozi206, 209
Lasaulx, Ernst von (1805-1861) 205
Last Days, The 70-90, 302-303
Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent de (1743-1794)
145
Leibniz, G W (1646-1714) 25, 122, 128, 130,
135, 138-139, 172, 213
Leclerc, Georges-Louis de Buffon (1709-
1788) 176
Leigh, Richard vii, 256
Leucippus (fl. 440) 8, 190
Lvi, liphas (1810-1875) 19
Lvi-Strauss, Claude (1908-2009) 5-6, 68-69,
211
Lewis, Bernard 292
Lewis, C S (1898-1963) 67, 161
Liar, The see Anti-Christ
Liberals 174
Lincoln, Henry vii, 256
Locke, John (1632-1704) 133, 139
Logos 71-73, 93, 125, 152, 155, 167, 186,
190-192, 225, 258, 259, 292
London 138
Lorentz, Hendrik (1853-1928) 182
Lovecraft, H P (1890-1937) 181
Lovelock, James 216
Loyola, Ignatius de (1491-1556) 127,
Lucifer see Satan
Lucretius (c.99-55 BCE) 215
Luke of Antioch, The Evangelist (died c.84)
257, 299
Luke, Gospel according to 87, 171, 255, 299
Lull, Ramon (c.1232-1315) 132, 133, 137, 281
Lyell, Charles (1797-1875) 176
Macrocosm 5
MacCulloch, Diarmaid 281, 287
Macquarrie, John (1919-2007) 224
Mead G R S (1863-1933) 227, 233,
Magi, The 10, 11, 30, 32, 233, 239, 257, 285
338


Mar, Michael (1566-1622) 122, 130, 132,
137, 143
Mlik Ibn Anas (c.711-795) 280, 289
Mani (216-276) 233, 243, 246,
Manichaeism 233, 239, 244, 299-301, 302,
303
Manutius, Aldus (1449-1515) 129
Mao Zedong (1893-1976) 269
Marcion of Sinope (c.85-160) 243, 246
Maria the Jewess (1
st
Century BCE) 19
Mark, Gospel according to 254, 257, 261
Marx, Karl (1818-1883) 4, 209, 229
Mary, Gospel according to 88, 100, 108, 256-
257
Mary Magdelene (1
st
Century CE) 100, 108
246, 255-256
Mary, The Virgin 51, 171, 237, 249, 252, 285
Mass 26, 28
Mstelin, Michael (1550-1631) 125-126
Matthew, The Evangelist (1
st
Century CE)
245, 246, 257
Matthew, Gospel according to 80, 88, 99, 109,
111, 171, 245, 257, 299
Matter 19-28, 141-145,
Mead G R S (1863-1933) 227, 233
Mecca 77, 284, 287, 297
Melchite 171, 290, 302
Melchizedek (fl. 1833 BCE) 117
Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648) 131, 133
Metaphysics 177, 220-222
Microcosm 5
Michael, Archangel 80, 104, 242
Milton, John (1608-1674) 48, 130, 133, 207
Mind, The 20-21, 23, 95, 109, 115
Mithraism 243, 244, 287
Modernity 149, 231
Mohammed (c.570-632) 51, 61, 81, 205, 248,
249, 278, 284-285, 286, 287-289, 293, 296,
297, 298, 301
Monod, Jacques (1910-1976) v, 153, 186-188,
198
Monophysites 290
Montanus of Phrygia (fl. 156) 253-254
More, Thomas (1478-1535) 130
Moses (c.1480-1408 BCE) vii, 7, 73, 121, 168,
170, 205, 215, 230, 237, 245, 249, 283, 295
Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) 279, 281,
295-296
Mller, Max (1823-1900) 207
Muses, The 16-17, 114-115, 159
Mystery religion 109-112, 118, 154-155, 163,
165, 243
Myth, Ancient 42, 102-103, 161
Myth, Biblical iv-v, 32-36, 45-64, 97-98, 153,
161-163, 192, 302
Myth, Greek 42, 49, 50, 61, 73, 161
Myth, Zoroastrian 14, 37, 61, 72-73, 81-83,
233-234
Mythos 152, 159, 192, 222, 225-226
Myths 5-6, 48-49, 67-69, 199, 215, 227, 302
Nag Hammadi library 237, 238, 247, 256,
Nataf, Andr 229, 263
Nature, Book of 64, 124-127, 137, 139, 149,
151, 174, 188
Nazis, The ii, 182, 209
339


Nestorian church 290, 297, 298, 299
Newton, Isaac (1642-1727) 122, 123, 128,
134-138, 141, 145, 171-172, 181, 183, 188,
213, 220
Neo-Platonism 73, 118, 123, 157, 272, 302
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900) 29
Noah 13, 58, 59-60, 73, 127, 137, 230
Noumenon 191
Nous 20, 41, 105
Odysseus 103
Ogg, David (1887-1965) 172
Oppenheimer, Stephen 57
Origen (c.184-253) 236, 262, 272
Orpheus (8
th
Century BCE) 16
Ouroboros 229
Oxford 128, 136, 224, 279
Paedophilia ii, 126
Pandora 15, 49
Paracelsus, Philip Theophrastus van
Hohenheim (1493-1541) 125, 133, 141-144
Paradigm 4, 149, 213-214
Paradise 45, 53, 55, 73, 81, 87, 296
Paris 127, 132-133, 143, 279, 280
Parmenides of Elea (5
th
Century BCE) 3, 39
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) 136
Paul of Tarsus (c.5-67) 86, 91, 92, 97, 108,
117, 168, 231, 243, 246, 249-252, 271, 291,
295-296
Pauwels, Louis (1920-1997) 196-198
Penrose, Roger 228
Persia 5, 7-11, 17, 32, 37, 72, 73, 76, 82,
107, 155, 171, 205, 212, 239, 252, 257, 271,
273, 274, 277, 288, 296, 300
Peter, aka Simon, The Apostle (d.67) 51, 168,
245, 252, 291
Peter the Venerable (c.1092-1156) 301
Pharisees, The 80
Philip, The Apostle (died c.80) 235-236, 252,
260
Philip, Gospel according to 109, 111, 236,
258, 260
Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE-51 CE) 21, 35,
67, 72, 79, 272
Philo of Byblos (c.42-120) 33
Philolaus of Croton (c.470-385 BCE) 155-156
Phoenicians, The 33, 58, 270, 271, 273
Piarist Order 126
Pico, Giovanni della Mirandola (1463-1494)
129, 131, 133
Pistis Sophia 235-236, 241-242, 255
Planck, Max (1858-1947) 182
Plato (c.429-347 BCE) vii, 3, 20, 22-23, 30,
72, 96-97, 102-106, 116-117, 121, 148, 160,
165, 167-168, 179, 181, 184, 205, 215-216,
225-226, 228, 231, 234, 251, 259, 278, 281
Platonism 4, 71, 91, 155, 163, 167, 179, 195,
210, 212-213, 227, 231, 300
Pleroma, The 110, 163-165, 231, 236, 241
Plethon, Gemistus (c. 1355-1452) vi-viii
Pliny the Elder (23-79) 8, 11, 79, 83
Pliny the Younger (c.63-112) 245
Plotinus (205-270) 21, 112, 119, 133, 157,
273, 278
Plutarch (46-120) vii, 233-234
340


Pneuma 20-23, 24, 111, 116-117, 166, 240,
260
Poincar, Henri (1854-1912) 182
Popper, Karl (1902-1994) 222
Porphyry of Tyre (c.234-305) 16, 17, 19, 133,
205
Posidonius of Apameia (c.135-50 BCE) 155
Prague 132, 143
Pratchett, Terry 151
Psellos, Michael (c.1017-1078) 279, 300
Psyche 22-23, 95-120, 166, 199, 240, 260
Ptolemy, Claudius (c.90-168) 3, 122, 280
Pufendorf, Samuel (1632-1694) 139
Purgatory 106
Puritans, The 128, 130, 176
Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-497 BCE) vi, 8,
11-17, 30, 32, 39, 43, 48, 65, 89, 115, 117-
118, 121, 122, 133, 145, 147, 155, 159, 163,
165, 174, 181, 182, 191, 195, 205, 206, 207,
209, 213, 218, 220, 226, 251, 259
Quantum mechanics 182-183, 191, 194
Quine, Van (1908-2000) 222
Rabelais, Franois (c.1494-1553) 118
Raphael, Archangel 81, 90, 104
Raphael da Urbino (1483-1520) 3, 212
Ratio see logos
Recursion 193-194
Reformation, The 149, 173, 286
Reich, Wilhelm (1897-1957) 113
Religion 151-161, 208, 211-212, 218, 225,
267-268, 270, 284, 293
Renaissance, The iii, vi, 123, 131, 212
Resurrection of the Dead 8, 37, 74, 76, 80,
86, 89, 90, 159, 168, 260, 295, 304
Reuchlin, Johann (1455-1522) 129
Revelation, Book of 69, 83-85, 135, 254
Rice, Anne i-ii
Riemann, Bernhard (1826-1866) 195
Rodinson, Maxim 287, 288
Rohl, David 7, 13, 59-60, 230
Roman Empire 73, 77-78, 80, 92, 118, 171,
209, 212, 252-253, 258, 259, 268, 269, 273-
275, 284, 289, 302
Roman law 294
Rome 3, 125, 129, 246, 252, 271,
Rosencreutz, Christian 123
Rosicrucians, The 121-149, 151, 174, 188-
189, 197,
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552-1612)
132, 143
Russell, Bertrand vii,
Sacks, Dr Jonathan 294
Sadducees, The 78-80
Said, Edward (1935-2003) 281-282, 301
Salvation religions 5, 151, 160, 166, 171, 175,
218, 268, 274, 283-304
Samaritans, The 38, 245
Sand, Shlomo 8, 169, 252, 267
Sartre, Jean-Paul v, 54-55, 63, 112-113, 229
Sassanid 212, 274, 289, 300
Satan 49-51, 53-58, 81, 85, 104, 138, 161-
162, 164-165, 236-237, 241, 256, 260, 296
Scholastics, The 26, 281
Scythianus of Alexandria (fl.50) 233, 245
341


Sedley, David 160, 179, 184
Sendivogius, Michael (c.1556-1636) 143
Seneca the Younger (c.4 BCE-65 CE) 91
Service, Elman (1915-1996) 269, 270
Seth 13, 53, 116-117, 245, 246
Sethians, The 116-118, 236-238, 244-247,
251
Shah tradition 290, 303
Simon Magus (fl. 40) 236, 243, 244, 245
Simplicius of Cilicia (c.490-550) 302
Soashyant, The 74, 81-82, 89
Socrates (c.470-399 BCE) 30, 102-103, 106,
116, 133, 179, 181, 226, 231, 259
Solomon, King of Israel (971-931 BCE) 7, 121,
171, 238
Son of Man, The 81, 87-89, 285
Sophia 21, 99, 119, 231, 233, 236-238, 248,
250-251
Sophists 262, 272, 274, 280-281
Soul, The 9, 22-24, 147, 163, 165, 167, 185,
199, 304
Spagyric mechanics 141, 144
Sperber, Julius (c.1540-1616) 127
Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677) 138, 188, 212
Spirit, The 20, 22-24, 185
Stoicism 4, 26, 35, 72, 91-93, 117, 135, 155,
184, 190, 195, 206, 251, 262
Stoyanov, Yuri 6, 117
Strabo (c.64 BCE-24 CE) 96
Straight Path, The 77, 99, 109, 116, 119, 163,
169, 227, 249, 261, 296
Stuart, Elizabeth, The Winter Queen (1596-
1662) 128, 132
Sfism 303
Sunn tradition 290, 303
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (c.56-117) 275
Tebbit, Norman 271
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955) v,
178, 182, 183-188, 197, 259
Tertullian of Carthage (c.160-220) 253, 262,
272
Thales of Miletus (c.624-546 BCE) 8, 11, 24,
206, 215
Theurgy 39, 239
Thirty Years War (1618-1648) 123, 124,128,
129, 131, 134
Thomas, The Apostle (died c.70) 252, 255
Thomas, Gospel according to 88, 108, 257
Thiede, Carsten Peter (1952-2004) 255
Timaeus of Locri 20, 226, 231
Timaeus-Critias 20, 37, 73, 96, 160, 184, 226,
231
Todorov, Tzvetan viii, 172, 219
Tolkien, J R R (1892-1973) 67, 161, 164-165,
191
Torah, The 7, 79, 108, 117, 161, 169, 206,
230-231, 233, 245, 295, 300, 304
Toynbee, Arnold (1889-1975) 91, 267, 291,
296
Transmutation 19, 141-145
Trojan Wars vii
Tbingen 126
Ussher, James (1581-1656) 176
Utnapishtim, see also Noah 13-14,
342


Valentinus (d.161) 242, 244, 245-246, 256,
Valmiki (c.500 BCE) 206, 207, 211
Vatican, The 3, 132
Values ii, 188
Vermes, Geza (1924-2013) 78-79, 89, 92, 258
Vices 53, 100, 104, 163
Vidal, Gore (1925-2012) 6
Virtues 67, 104, 119, 157, 167, 171, 180
Vyasa (c.500 BCE) 206, 207, 211
Warsi, Sayeeda ii
Waters, John 224
Watchers, The 33, 51, 58-62
Weber, Max (1864-1920) 151
Webster, John (1610-1682) 138
Weigel, Erhard (1625-1699) 138
Weishaupt, Adam (1748-1830) 174
Wengrow, David 266
West, The iv, vi, 170, 173-174, 208, 219, 265
Williams, Raymond (1921-1988) 160
Williams, Rowan 166, 220
Willis, Thomas (1621-1675) 139
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951) 179
Wittelsbach dynasty 124, 132, 183
Whiston, William (1667-1752) 123
Wilson, Colin (1931-2013) 6, 125, 142, 154,
249
Wisdom of Solomon 21, 24, 34, 36, 53, 99,
231
Xenophanes (c.570-430 BCE) 215
Xenophon of Athens (c.430-354 BCE) 3
X Files, The i
Yaldabaoth 235-238, 241-242, 256
Yates, Francis (1899-1991) 123, 128, 130-
131, 132
Yazd I, Caliph (680-683) 297
Zadok the Just (fl. 970 BCE) 7
Zadok, Sons of 7, 38, 80
Zaehner R C (1913-1974) 239
Zarathushtra, Spitama, see Zoroaster
Zeno of Citium (c.334-262 BCE) 26, 91-93,
206
Zeno of Elea (c.450 BCE) 195, 206
Zion 76, 253
Ziusudra of Uruk, see also Noah 13
Zodiac, The 42
Zoroaster (c.628-551 BCE) vi-vii, 3, 7, 9-11,
37, 43, 86, 89, 127, 133, 155, 205, 206, 207,
213, 248, 286, 296, 299, 301
Zoroastrianism 37, 72-74, 76, 109, 207, 210,
228, 231, 233, 237, 239, 262, 272, 273, 274-
275, 284, 285, 289-290, 296, 299-300, 304
Zosimos of Panoplis (fl. 300) 19
Zwicker, Daniel (1612-1678) 137



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