The Ancient Roots of Western Religion
The Esoteric Tradition - Part II
At this point in my musing, I hit a bit of a wall. I
had thought that I could tie together some of the threads of the western
esoteric tradition but I found - in hindsight quite unsurprisingly - that I was
severely lacking in several areas of understanding. I therefore left it sitting
here, unfinished and unattended while I took a prolonged break. In the meantime, I
have done some reading and some thinking and, although I am no model of
certitude, I now have a better background to write about what I wanted to write
about in the first place.
Incidentally, one of the books I read during this period was Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy from the Gospels to the "Da Vinci Code"
by
Richard Smoley.
That would be on my must-read list for anyone interested in
this subject.
... Continued ...
So to recap: we have established - in the story of Abraham - a common biblical
source for the three dominant western religions: Islam, Judaism and
Christianity. Historically there are ancient traces back to the Egyptians and
perhaps beyond. Perhaps to a common source which would include the Hindus and
Buddhists. We can even speculate about a yet to be discovered pre-existing
civilisation which somehow passed on its wisdom to our own fledgling
civilisation in the form of creation myths.
In highly symbolic code and language, this ancient wisdom has occasionally
surfaced into the mainstream but has generally been hidden (hence the term:
occult) from both the masses and the orthodox hierarchy. It is the stuff of the
Mystery Schools of Egypt, Greece and Rome; the guarded secret of the Jews from
Solomon to the Essenes and beyond. It harks back to times long before the
materialism so prevalent today; times when the intellectual elite would consider
that there could be no higher human enterprise than to study and attain
enlightenment. Not the scientific enlightenment that began in 17th century
Europe but another kind of knowledge altogether: one that could not be found by
the empirical practice of looking outwards towards the world of physical things.
This was knowledge that was more than knowledge, it was knowing, or "Gnosis". It
was attained by looking inward, thus it was "Esoteric". The etymology of these
two words makes it clear (according to Merriam-Webster Online):
Gnosis:
Greek gnōsis, literally, knowledge, from gignōskein
Esoteric:
Late Latin esotericus, from Greek esōterikos, from esōterō, comparative of eisō,
esō within, from eis into; akin to Greek en in
This inward-looking meditation, aided by techniques (or drugs) intended to
foster altered states of consciousness, could produce a clarity of insight not
normally available to the day-to-day, exoteric world-view. The result, for the
initiate, was to see that God, the universe, everything and everyone including
himself are an undivided whole. Thus, the goal of esoteric schools, cults or
fraternities was to lead the initiate to reunification with the One. To escape
from the base physicality of earthly existence and to experience spiritual
oneness while still living a life on this earthly plane.
So we can already see from this that the esoteric movement was both idealist and
dualist. In other words, they believed in the mind-before-matter paradigm of
idealist philosophy but also believed that the material world had somehow been
separated (or fallen) from the spiritual dimension. Which, of course, takes us
back to the Genesis account of the Creation and "The Fall". When these biblical
accounts are viewed through the eyes of the Gnostic, we see that they are
clearly not to be taken literally at all. Again, we see the multi-level
story-telling technique of the old scribes: one simple tale for the masses
concealing another for the adepts (and perhaps yet another for the advanced
masters?). The symbolism is rife and must have kept Dr. Jung busy for many a
dark, winter's evening.
Gnosis does not necessarily define what a Gnostic is, however. Gnosis is an
enlightened state of mind. Gnostics have built a particular philosophy around
the idea of Gnosis. For the most part, we think of the Gnostics as a break-away
Christian sect but gnostic ideas have surfaced in other religions and
philosophies - most notably in the pre-Christian philosophy of
Plato and his followers. Within the Christian faith the Gnostic thinkers
were - to say the least - unwelcome at first and were later branded as heretics.
I have mentioned, for example, the Gnostic interpretation of the bible and
Genesis in particular. While the orthodox might read the creation story as the
literal truth, the Gnostics saw the whole story as a symbolic representation. If
my understanding of Gnostic ideology is correct, then the pure and innocent
state of being - represented by Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden - is
spiritual. The Fall is the descent of humanity from the (spiritual) State of
Grace to the material world that we now inhabit. Generally, this world is
thought of as one of darkness - even evil - while the spiritual realm is one of
light. This is the dualism I spoke of earlier and it includes the belief in a
war in heaven between the forces of light and darkness.
In the orthodox religions it is all very simple: there is one God and that God
created everything and rules his creation with the help of his angels. The devil
is a "fallen" angel and he represents the dark side; the evil one who tempts us
away from the path of obedience to the one true God. This God being the Old
Testament Yahweh or Jehovah.
The Gnostic view is somewhat different and certainly more complex. For a start,
the creator of the earth may well be known as Yahweh but Yahweh is not the One
True God. There is a One True God, often referred to simply as "The One". The
One is unknowable: uncreated and omnipresent: the source of all. Out of the
source came "emanations", also known as aeons, some of which might be thought of
as lesser gods. And it was one of these lesser gods that (who?) was the creator
of our world: the
Demiurge.
The term Demiurge originates with Plato but his concept differed quite markedly
from the later Christian Gnostics. While Plato also saw the Demiurge as a lesser
god, he envisioned a benign, well meaning creator. The Gnostics, on the other
hand, had no such sympathetic view of the originator of the material world. To
them, the Demiurge was either incompetent or decidedly evil. Once again there is
that dualism: the light of The One and the dark of the Demiurge. Good vs Evil.
It really is as old as time itself and it forms, in one way or another, the
basis of the Western Religious tradition, if not all religions.