GLASS BEAD GAME--Cosmic Play In a Symbolic Universe

glassbeadgame.com

THE GLASS BEAD GAME

Neural Network of the Cosmic Mind...

WHAT IS THE GLASS BEAD GAME?

Herman Hesse's Nobel Prize Winning
Novel,
The Glass Bead Game
lays the foundations for an
Artistic/Conceptual Game, which
integrates all fields of Human and Cosmic
Magister Ludi Eberhard Knowledge through forms of Organic
Wortmann Universal Symbolism, expressed by its
The First Horoscope, 1956 players with the Dynamic Fluidity of
Music. The Glass Bead Game is, in Reality,
an Age Old metaphor for what has been
called, the "Divine Lila" (Play or Game of
To Contact Us or Receive Life). This metaphor has been expressed
Updates on the Glass by every great Wisdom Tradition known to
Bead Game click here man, and its players, the Magister Ludi
Glass Bead Game (Masters of the Game), use as their
Contact & Mailing List instruments Ancient and Modern modes
of Symbolic Wisdom traditionally
presented through Sacred Art, Philosophy,
Magick and Cosmology. For a more
detailed elaboration of our vision of the
GBG, see:
THE GLASS BEAD GAME

SACRED SCIENCE INSTITUTE

The Glass Bead Game Project is sponsored by the
Sacred Science Institute, a Research Institute
dedicated to the preservation and application of
Sacred Knowledge, Metaphysics, and MysticoMagical
Cosmology in the modern world. The SSI has collected

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a library of over 10,000 volumes of the greatest
literature from the Wisdom Traditions of the past and
makes research reprints of the most unobtainable
material available to scientists, philosophers and
scholars. Our Institute and Archive were created to
provide the background for a Glass Bead Game as
envisioned by Hermann Hesse, whose ideas and
principles were directly taken from these Ancient
Wisdom Traditions.

Our examination of the various current attempts to

create Glass Bead Games on the Internet has revealed
that the general GBG community (several well
informed scholars excluded) is relatively unaware of
the essential connections between the GBG and the
Esoteric Tradition. Hesse himself gives many of these
references in his masterpiece, but they have been
surprisingly undeveloped, much of which is due to the
obscurity of the individuals and schools to which he
refers. We have collected all of the works referred to
by Hesse, and everything of related content, and, in
time, intend to release these through our Archive.
Many of these works are in German, Latin and other
languages further limiting their accessibility to the
general reader, so we have developed several
translation projects to made these fundamental
materials accessible to a larger public. We feel that
without a solid grounding in these fundamentals, any
attempt at a GBG will be trivial and superfluous,
negating the intent of Hesse's Universal Vision. See
below for details on these programs.
Pre-Aryan
The following links lead to various departments of the Jainism
Sacred Science Institute Form &
pertaining to the Glass Bead Game. We have included Dimensions of
several of quotations from the GBG illustrating the Cosmic Primal
purpose of these fields of learning for aspiring Bead Man.
Game players. Gujarat, India,
1700s

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SEEKER'S SANCTUM
This is the core database of research materials and source texts on the
foundations of the GBG, ranging from Ancient Civilizations to Modern
Science and covering all of the scientific, metaphysical, symbolic and
practical applications which will ever be needed for development of true
Glass Bead Game, as well as writings and systems from the GBG
traditions of the past. The most essential keys, codes, symbols, theories,
formulae, axioms, diagrams, and reference materials from the Esoteric &
Scientific Traditions of the world may be found here. In time, we will
transfer the most essential and desired materials to electronic medium
for posting on this website, however, until then we are forced to share
the incurred expenses of collecting and reproducing these materials
with the few individuals who value them.

"Thus one of the principles of the Creed, a passage from the Bible, a phrase
from one of the Church Fathers, or from the Latin text of the Mass could be
expressed and taken into the Game just as easily and aptly as an axiom of
geometry or a melody of Mozart. We would scarcely be exaggerating if we
ventured to say that for the small circle of genuine Glass Bead Game players
the Game was virtually equivalent to worship..." Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

EXPEDIENT LEARNING PORTAL

It is evident that anyone aspiring to the status of Magister Ludi, or even
desiring to participate in the Glass Bead Game must possess and
extensive amount of knowledge in a vast number of fields. Members of
Hesse's Castalian society underwent a lifetime of education and training
before even attempting to understand let alone to contribute to a GBG.
As difficult as it may seem to ever absorb the reams of information
necessary to participate in this endeavor, there are techniques used in
the past which make this process considerably easier. Ancient and
Renaissance GBG Masters used various devices such as Mnemonic
(Memory) systems, rapid mathematical calculation systems, rapid
language and art learning systems, speed reading techniques, and
powerful transformational devices to attain these ends. We have
collected many such systems for the edification and application of those
interested in the GBG.

"...he spent year after year sitting in lecture halls and libraries, studying
Froberger and Alessandro Scarlatti, fugues and sonata form, reviewing
mathematics, learning Chinese, working through a system of tonal
figuration and Feustelian theory of the correspondence between the scale of
colors and the musical keys." Hesse,The Glass Bead Game
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SANCTUM SANCTORUM
Hesse makes clear time and again that there is much more to the GBG
than a mere intellectual manipulation of concepts, rather, that the
essence of the Game is a Transcendent Universal process leading to an
experience in consciousness of the Unity of the Cosmos. Forms of
meditation and mysticism were essential to the experience of the great
Magister Ludi, and provided the inner essence of any profound Game.
We have begun collecting and elaborating some of the most powerful
systems of meditation, Magick and Mysticism for the application of
those who aspire to more than intellectual manipulations of concepts.
These systems lead to an Experience of the Transcendent

Adualisic Mysticism/The Instant Zen School

"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game,
everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not
hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the
mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major
to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or
artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative
mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the
alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang,
holiness is forever being created." Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

Cyber-Mystery School/Hermetic Magick

"After each symbol conjured up by the director of a Game, each player was required to
perform silent, formal meditation on the content, origin, and meaning of this symbol, to call
to mind intensively and organically its full purport. The members of the Order and of the
Game associations brought the technique and practice of contemplation with them from their
elite schools, where the art of contemplation and meditation was nurtured with the greatest
care." Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

LIVING LIBRARY RESEARCH ARCHIVE & DISCUSSION FORUM

We will soon complete our interactive forum which will be used both as a research
medium and archive for the development of a Glass Bead Game. This Forum will include
the following elements:
Glass Bead Game Diagram Library containing samples of Glass Beads
from numerous traditions.
Glass Bead Game & Cosmological Hyperlinks for exploration of the Game and
Cosmological research.
Extensive Archives With Translations of Bead Game Source Texts referred to by Hesse in
the GBG.
Discussion Forums where people may interactively discuss ideas and post their research
and insights..

SEARCHABLE RESEARCH DATABASE & ARCHIVE:

The entire Living Library Discussion Forum will be searchable by topic for references to
GBG and related materials. Currently our Living Library Search Engine will search the
contents of over 250 key texts in every GBG related field by concept, idea, author, and
title helping researchers to locate and identify necessary source materials.

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"The game as I conceive it," THE GLASS BEAD GAME MANUSCRIPTS
Knecht once wrote, "leaves (the OF
player) with the feeling that he MAGISTER LUDI JOHN RICHTER
has extracted from the universe To Whom This Website is Gratefully
of accident and confusion a Dedicated
totally symmetrical and
harmonious cosmos, and This Glass Bead Game website was
absorbed it into himself." Hermann inspired by the vision and insight of Dr.
Hesse, The Glass Bead Game John Richter, philosopher, astronomer,
mathematician, occultist and
metaphysician, whose 35 years of
research into every field of knowledge
were ideally integrated by the conceptual
framework presented by Hesse's Glass
Bead Game. Upon his discovery of the
GBG, Richter began a 15 year exploration
of the symbolic language and conceptual
framework upon which a GBG could
actually be created.

Upon his death in 1998, Richter's vast

library and personal manuscripts were
deposited in the care of the Sacred
Science Institute. We possess over 20,000
pages of Richter's hand written
manuscripts analyzing, dissecting, and
distilling every branch of science,
philosophy and metaphysics into their
fundamental elements to be represented
by means of an organic universal
symbolism ideally suited for the GBG.

We intend to transcribe and post these

manuscripts on this website to aid in the
development of a GBG. We are willing to
provide copies of sections of these
writings to individuals who are interested
in the development of the Game in
exchange for their help in either
transcribing or scanning this material into

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 a format which may easily be posted on
this website. Interested parties please
contact us for further details.

Magister Ludi Eberhard Wortmann

The Birth Of The Soul, 1956

THE LAW OF THE COSMOS

THE DIVINE HARMONY ACCORDING TO PLATO'S REPUBLIC - TIMEAUS
THE PLATONIC RIDDLE OF NUMBERS SOLVED AGAIN AND DESCRIBED
BY MAGISTER LUDI EBERHARD WORTMANN

CLICK HERE FOR THE WORTMANN GLASS BEAD DIAGRAM GALLERY

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 Eberhard Wortmann is the only know modern Magister Ludi to have
corresponded with Hermann Hesse, who in appreciation of his brilliant
work called him a "Glass Bead Game Player:"

"Here it should be mentioned that the Platonic riddle of numbers are

actually a question of logical games of thought, "Glass Bead Games", as
Hermann Hesse, the great writer and man, had named this kind of mental
business." (Eberhard Wortmann, The Law of the Kosmos, p.4)

"The Platonic Riddle of Numbers are Glass Bead Games. 'In the end it
depends on the choice of the historian how far back he wants to put the
beginning and prehistory of the Glass Bead Game. As an idea we find it
already performed in earlier ages, e.g. at Pythagoras. The same eternal Idea
was the basis of every movement of the mind towards the ideal goal of a
Universitas Litterarum, of every Platonic Academy, of any congregation of a
spiritual elite, every attempt to approximate the exact and the free sciences,
every attempt to reconcile science and art and the art of science and
religion.'" (Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, Quoted in The Law of the
Kosmos, p.4)

Eberhard Wortmann was born in Westfalen, Germany, in 1891. His

activities as a merchant led him to visit many different countries, to
learn their languages, and to devote himself to an investigation of their
Mysticism and historical mysteries. After the loss of his sons and property in
World War II, Wortmann became more and more absorbed in the mystical world of
numbers and geometrical diagrams. Two passions accompanied him the rest of his life,
his love for pictorial art - he produced innumerable water colour paintings - and
mathematical games with magic numbers.

Wortmann combined both magnificently in his works on the Platonic number puzzles. In
1955 and 1956 he published "Platons Göttliche Harrmonie" and "Ariston oder die
Platonishen Zahlenrätsel". In 1965 the Otto Reichl publishing house in Remagen
published " Das Gesetz des Kosmos - Die Platonischen Zahlenrätsel erneut gelöst und
dargestellt". He held lectures and conferences in different cities in Germany, leading in
1960, to a correspondence with Hermann Hesse who called Wortmann "a glass bead game
player". Wortmann died in Bad Godesberg in 1970. His work: "Der Heilige Krug - Roman
eines antiken Mysteriums" has remained unpublished.

Wortmann's works were published in very limited editions in Germany, and have
remained to this day almost unknown, though they represent some of the most profound
and advanced works on Esoteric Cosmology ever conceived. The color diagram above, and
on the top of this page are samples of the innumerable diagrams and paintings he
produced, deciphering, for the first time, the mathematical and geometrical codes hidden
within Plato's Republic & Timeaus and unveiling the Ancient Cosmological secrets of the
Law of the Kosmos. We include them, and very soon will be posting dozens of others as
superlative examples of the Glass Beads envisioned by Hermann Hesse.

The Sacred Science Institute is working in conjunction with Wortmann's family to produce
English translations of these Masterpieces, segments of which will be posted upon this
website as they progress. Wortmann's works contain hundreds of the most sophisticated
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diagrams on Sacred Geometry, Pythagorean and Platonic Number Theory, Harmonics and
Astronomy ever seen, as well as one of the most intricate elaborating of Universal Order
and Kosmic Law known to man. The vast and synthetic thinking process presented in
these works inspired a correspondence discussing the GBG between Hesse and
Wortmann, which we are attempting to obtain from the original (now defunct) publisher
of Hesse's letters (where they were sent for intended but unfulfilled publication), so that
they may be translated and posted on this website. Any help in contacting this publisher
or Hesse estate would be appreciated.

The intricacies of translating such advanced material are quite complex,

and we would welcome assistance by knowledgeable translators of
technical German, for both this and a number of further translation
projects. We have also considered releasing reprints of the original
German editions if there is sufficient interest, as the diagrams , even
without the ability to read German, are of great value and interest to
anyone concerned with these issues. We wish to express our thanks to
Rosmarie and Veronica Mueller-Wortmann, daughter & granddaughter
of the author, for access to these books & diagrams, and for their
dedication to seeing that Wortmann's important work is not lost to the
world.

HESSE QUOTES ON THE ORIGINS OF THE GLASS BEAD GAME

"Although we recognize the idea of the Game as eternally present, and

therefore existent in vague stirrings long before it became a reality, its
realization in the form we know it nevertheless has its specific history."

"How far back the historian wishes to place the origins and antecedents of the Glass Bead
Game is, ultimately, a matter of his personal choice. For like every great idea it has no real
beginning; rather, it has always been, at least the idea of it. We find it foreshadowed, as a dim
anticipation and hope, in a good many earlier ages. There are hints of it in Pythagoras, for
example, and then among Hellenistic Gnostic circles in the late period of classical civilization.
We find it equally among the ancient Chinese, then again at the several pinnacles of Arabic-
Moorish culture; and the path of its prehistory leads on through Scholasticism and Humanism
to the academies of mathematicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and on to
the Romantic philosophies and the runes of Novalis' hallucinatory visions."

"This same eternal idea, which for us has been embodied in the Glass Bead Game, has
underlain every movement of Mind toward the ideal goal of a Universitatis Litterarum, every
Platonic Academy, every league of an intellectual elite, every rapprochement between the
exact and the more liberal disciplines, every effort toward reconciliation between science and
art or science and religion."

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 SOURCES AND FOUNDATIONS
OF THE GLASS BEAD GAME

Many people, when approaching the GBG,

have no idea where to begin to understand
its essential principles, so we have listed a
number of famous GBG schools from the
past, and a number of the greatest historical
GBG thinkers, some of whom were known
and drawn from by Hesse for his work. The
diagram to the right, for instance, is a
cosmological diagram by Nicholas of Cusa,
referred to by Hesse in the GBG, and is an
SEARCH THE LIVING LIBRARY
excellent example of what he meant by a
Glass Bead. All of those individuals and
BY SUBJECT, AUTHOR OR TITLE
schools below produced similar or related If you experience any difficulties, try
diagrammatic & symbolic representations of searching from the Sacred Science
universals knowledge in their systems, and Institute website.
interrelationships may be found between
If you fail to locate references to
every one of them, since all are based on the subjects, thinkers or schools listed
same Cosmic Ordering Principles. below, feel free to Contact Us and we
will check our Archives.
Information on the Magister Ludi and GBG
schools listed below may be found by by
searching new & used bookstores and the
Internet, however much of this work is long
out of print or has never been available to
the general public. We have made many of
these resources available through our
reprint archive, which may be accessed using
the Search Engine to the right or through the
Sacred Science Institute. We have provided
some links to our listings of these resources,
and will, in time expand these links to
sources throughout the Internet. We will also
be elaborating on the short histories and
biographies presented below as part of the
Living Library Archive and Discussion Forum.

HISTORICAL MAGISTER LUDI GLASS BEAD GAME SCHOOLS

Leonardo Da Vinci Rishis of the Rg Ved

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Leonardo was a Magus and Grand Master of a
Secret Esoteric Society, and his art is filled with
codes and allusions to the Sacred Sciences, if
you know how to look.
Raymond Lully
This 13th century philosopher & mystic
developed a Cosmological Art using geometric
logical calculators to symbolically represent all
Universal Knowledge.
Giordano Bruno
This famous 17th century Mystical Cosmologist
& Hermeticist developed a systematic
philosophy of nature represented in geometric
images, signs & symbols.
Robert Fludd
Fludd was an exponent of Renaissance
Neoplatonism, and produced a cosmology
using Musical Harmonics as a model of
Universal Order.
Athanasius Kircher
A true Renaissance Man with one of the most
all-encompassing minds ever known,
producing scientific & encyclopedic works and
diagrams in every known field.
Dr. John Dee
Renowned Magus, & court astrologer to Queen
Elizabeth, Dee discovered the Monus
Hieroglyphica, a symbolic hieroglyph
expressing the unity underlying the Cosmos.
Joseph-Marie Hoene Wronski
Teacher of Balzac & Eliphas Levi, Wronksi
perceived a Universal vision integrating all
science & philosophy into a unified system. He
produced famous mathematical theorems, &
the Nazis stole his work during WW2 hoping to
produce advanced weapons from his illumined
insight.
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz
Master Alchemist, Egyptologist, Pythagorean,
& one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th
century, Schwaller completely deciphered and
unveiled the scientific Symbolique and
Cosmology of Ancient Egyptian.
W. D. Gann
Qabbalist, Astrologer, Natural Cosmologist,
Hermeticist, Gann integrated the esoteric &
scientific systems & found an unusual
application in financial markets forecasting
using sacred geometric & numerical
calculators.
The Seers of Ancient India concealed in
their Sacred Vedic Scriptures numerical,
geometric & astronomical codes
revealing the natural order of the
universe.
The Avatamsaka School of
Buddhism
Chinese Hua-Yen Buddhism is
considered to represent the pinacle of
Buddist thought and inspierd the Zen
School. They see the Cosmos as an
interdependant and interpenetraging
web of consciousness, the Jeweled Net.
Ancient Egyptian Priesthood
The most scientifically &
technologically advanced civilization on
Earth, the Ancient Egyptians possessed
an unfathomable insight into Universal
Cosmology coded in advanced
Hieroglyphic & Architectural
Symbolique.
Pythagorean Brotherhood
An Egyptian Temple Initiate,
Pythagoras presented the first Western
system of Cosmology, the Quadrivium:
Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, &
Astronomy, which has provided the
primary inspiration for all Western
Scientific & Esoteric traditions since his
time.
Platonic & NeoPlatonic Academies
The works of Plato are written in a
geometric cosmological code based
upon Egyptian & Pythagorean
Cosmologies, known only by the most
advanced Esoteric Schools, & provide a
wealth of universal insight if one has
their keys.
Jewish Qabbalists
The oldest Biblical writings possess
astrological codes interpreted through
arithmetical & geometric keys passed
down through the mystical tradition of
Qabbalah
Freemasons & Cathedral Builders
The Great Gothic Cathedrals are
Cosmologies in stone, designed
according to harmonic proportions
symbolizing the ordering system of the
Cosmos, & built by a secret order of
Freemasons tracing their origin back to
King Solomon.
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 Medieval Alchemists &
Hermeticists
The symbolic systems of mysticism and
cosmology encoded by these secret
orders into organic and pictorial forms
of symbolism represent the most
advanced science of spiritual & material
transmutation known to the world.

EMAIL:magisterludi@glassbeadgame.com

ALL Original CONTENTS Ó1999 SACRED SCIENCE INSTITUTE

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