Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2017 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim, "President’s Diary" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 34-35

After we returned from Adyar at the beginning of July, it was time for our semiannual board of directors meetings. All eight members of the board were present for the three-day meeting. As usual, the board had a chance to review reports from the various departments and meet with department heads. From time to time the suggestion arises that it might be more efficient to conduct these meetings by Skype or some other conferencing software. I have always resisted this idea. Almost 60 percent of our members are “members at large,” meaning that they are not affiliated with a group. For most, this condition is unavoidable, as so many people live at a distance from any TS group, but it does have some consequences. The study of Theosophy necessarily involves more than reading and thinking. At its core, it is about relationship. For the leaders of the TSA, the interaction with each other and immersion in the mission and functioning of the organization is vital.

	Stephan hoeller chats with Trân-Thi-Kim-Diêu of the French Section at the Summer National Convention in July 2016.

Immediately following on the board meeting was our 130th annual Summer National Convention, this year celebrating the 125th anniversary of HPB’s passing. The theme for the conference was “The Legacy of H.P. Blavatsky: Inspiration, Influence, Implications.” As has become the custom, our members filled every seat in the place. Our presenters were a stellar group of international speakers. After an absence of several years, we had invited Stephan Hoeller, author and Gnostic bishop, to address the conference. In addition to his two talks, he conducted a special ceremony of blessing at the shrine to Mother Mary on the Olcott grounds. In that ceremony, Stephan presented a figurine of the divine feminine to my wife, Lily, in recognition of her work in restoring the shrine.

Other speakers at the convention were author and lecturer Ed Abdill; Trân-Thi-Kim-Diêu, past president of the French TS; Doss McDavid, professor of medical physics; and Michael Gomes, Theosophical historian par excellence. Mitch Horowitz, vice-president and executive editor at Tarcher Perigee books, made his first appearance at one of our conventions and was truly impressive. Mitch is also the author of Occult America and One Simple Idea, two excellent books that give an historical perspective on esoteric and New Age movements in the U.S. He contributed an exciting, inspiring, and thought-provoking examination of HPB’s monumental contributions. We look forward to having him back again.

As is the norm, at this year’s SNC we also had an evening of music, but not just any music. Five years ago, when I first came into the role of TSA president, my first major activity was hosting the Dalai Lama’s TSA-sponsored visit to Chicago. At that time a number of people were reaching out to contact me about becoming involved in the occasion. One of them was a man named Michael Fitzpatrick. He had played cello for His Holiness to open his presentations at a number of venues worldwide. By the time Michael had gotten in touch with me, our event was already tightly scheduled. He flew in from Los Angeles anyway to support the Dalai Lama and our efforts in hosting him. He introduced himself to me at the event, and I invited him to come out to Olcott and play for our members. He accepted, and his performance was spellbinding.

This year, when I was thinking about whom to invite for our musical evening, I reached out to Michael. He is a world-class musician, and as might be expected, he is a very busy man. His schedule was booked. In talking with him, I told him that this would be my last convention as TSA president, that he had played me into office, and I wanted for him to play me out. He said he would try to arrange his schedule. Long story short, coming directly from a private engagement for Pope Francis, he arranged to perform at our convention and treated us to another magical evening.

Tim with the Chennai Trekkers Club, which has been cleaning up teh trash on the riverbanks of the TS's Adyar headquarters.

In mid-August Lily, my daughter, Angelique, and I left for Italy for a much-needed holiday. While in Rome we had an opportunity to spend an afternoon with Antonio Girardi, president of the TS Italy, and Patrizia Calvi, his right hand. They had taken the train down from Vicenza in the north so that we could have some time together. It was a very good meeting done in true “dolce vita” style.

After a truly relaxing several days in Italy, it was on to Naarden in the Netherlands for a weeklong series of meetings. Four events coincided with our visit: (1) a meeting of the council of the European Federation of Theosophical Societies, composed of the general secretaries (presidents) and presidential representatives of the various nations in Europe; (2) Europe Day, hosted by the International Theosophical Centre (ITC) in Naarden; (3) a meeting of the council of the ITC; and (4) a brainstorming and planning meeting with the European leaders. Obviously, it was a high-energy time.

One of my discoveries upon being elected as TS international president was that I was the head of the ITC in Naarden. Since that time I have been traveling to the center annually for a variety of meetings. The first year the Dutch section organized a “Dutch Day” with the president that drew about 100 members. The next year they resisted the urge to call it “Double Dutch Day,” which has negative connotations, going back to some differences with the British. Instead it was called “Another Dutch Day.” This year, with the presence of so many representatives from across Europe, they went for “Europe Day.” It was another well-attended event, with members coming from England, France, Italy, Belgium, Slovenia, Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

			Dr. A. Chandrashekar Poses with Tim Boyd at the Adyar Libary photo exibition.

When I returned from Europe, it was time for Olcott’s biggest single event of the year—TheosoFest. TheosoFest is our annual open house for the local community. We have been doing the event each year for the last eighteen years. Many families and individuals look forward to it. We invite vendors with a variety of products and services related to health of body, mind, and spirit—artists, massage therapists, spiritual movements, books, crystals, etc. During the course of the day we present more than forty Theosophical and related talks and meditation sessions. Last year, we finally broke the mythical attendance number of 2000. Because of our growing success, it was clear that this time around we would certainly exceed all previous numbers, and we did. Attendance was almost 3000; more members joined in a single day that ever before (forty, in addition to numerous membership renewals); bookstore sales hit an all-time record; we had 140 vendors (up from last year’s 100) and had to turn away another twenty; the talks had a higher attendance that ever before; and our staff and volunteers parked over 1300 cars (up from 1000). Next year we will have to decide just how big we want it to be—a nice position to be in.

Next up was a visit to our Besant Branch in Cleveland, Ohio. The Besant Branch is one of our most solid longtime groups in the Midwest. They are a wonderful example of the possibility for strong people with diverse opinions to work together for a common cause. I had not visited the group for about twenty years. Since my last visit, they have expanded their space to include the neighboring quarters in the mall location that they occupy. It is a lovely spot, with an ample library, meeting room, reading and meditation room, kitchen, and small bookstore. As guests, we were well-hosted for the three days that I presented programs.

Then it was time to head back to Adyar. When I arrived, the first order of business was an early morning get-together with the young crew from the Chennai Trekkers Club, who have been diligently working to clean up the accumulated trash along the riverbank from last year’s flooding. About sixty of them gathered at 6:30 a.m. for some snacks and tea, which we served at our Leadbeater Chambers kitchen. I had a chance to talk to the group.

Later in the week I inaugurated a photo exhibition at our Adyar Library and Research Centre. For the past twenty years, Dr. A. Chandrashekar has been coming to our campus almost daily, photographing the flora and fauna of the place. Over that time he has accumulated some incredible nature photos. One of our members arranged to frame 233 of them for the exhibition. They will be on display through the International Convention in January.

Next we traveled to the city of Alleppey in the state of Kerala for the Kerala Federation’s annual meeting, a one-hour flight south and west from Chennai. It was a good series of meetings in a city that has been described as the “Venice of the East” because of its many natural canals.

From Alleppey we drove to Kochi to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Shree Sankara Lodge. They had arranged a big event with an outdoor tent to accommodate around 100 people. The first night there was live music with a group of musicians trained by one of India’s great musical gurus. The next day was the formal celebration, with greetings, gifts, and speeches. All in all a joyous and productive trip.

Tim Boyd

Printed in the Winter 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim, "The Human Project" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 8-9

By Tim Boyd, President

At this point in my life I have done a significant amount of travel, yet there are still certain things that never cease to amaze me. Often I find myself waking early in the morning to go to the airport. Within a few hours I am getting off of a plane in a place whose flora and fauna, geography, climate, language, and customs have shifted dramatically from those of “home.” The outfits people wear, the ways they recognize and celebrate divinity, the foods they eat, even the way they eat their foods can seem so different. While visiting with my wife’s family in the multicultural and cosmopolitan city of Singapore, more than once I have had the experience of eating breakfast with my fingers, lunch with a spoon and fork, and dinner with chopsticks, depending on whether I found myself in an Indian, Eurasian, or Chinese community.

One side effect of travel is that you find yourself exposed to a host of differences, but also to similarities. Just scratch the surface, and shared, even universal, qualities appear. The costumes we wear are made of different materials and have different styles and colors, but we all wear clothing. The foods and the instruments we use to feed ourselves differ, but we all eat. The names, symbols, and imagery for the local concepts of divinity vary widely, but everywhere people attempt to reach out to something beyond their limited selves.

One of America’s dubious gifts to the world is the modern shopping mall. Beginning in the 1960s, this phenomenon swept across the U.S. and Europe and now has taken root in the rest of the world. It may be surprising to some, but originally the shopping mall was conceived as a community center where people would converge not only for shopping, but also for cultural activity and social interaction. In Chennai, India, where I spend a good deal of time these days, the phenomenon is relatively new. On those occasions when I have found myself at one of Chennai’s glittering new Western-style malls, I have been impressed, not with the products or shops, which closely mirror those of the rest of the world, but with the people and the vitality. Except for the oldest and the poorest, all types of people find their way there.

For someone like me, the vision of humanity on display is both fascinating and awe-inspiring. Thousands of people stream through the place on weekends and holidays. From one of the upper levels, looking down at the movement of people, their collective motion literally resembles a river—a flow of humanity. Although each person and family has their separate thoughts and particular destination, collectively all are moving as one body. Like a river, the human flow has its eddies where families break away from the motion and the children play their games or dance alone, oblivious to the surrounding crowd; or where young couples sit simply talking and enjoying a “private” moment together before rejoining the flow.

As much as we cling to the idea of ourselves as separate, self-determining individuals, when we actually look, it becomes apparent that we are subsumed in some larger life. What is so impressive is the solidarity of the human experience. However much we may cherish a sense of independence and individualism, our participation in a greater whole is undeniable and at times breaks through to our normal awareness.

Since its founding, the Theosophical Society has espoused a worldview that embraces the unity of the human family. Its First Object, “to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity,” has been emphasized again and again from the Society’s early days until now. Like anything that is profound, this unity of the human family, expressed as “universal brotherhood” in the language of the late 1800s, must be understood on many levels.

In our times it is easy to lose sight of how radical the idea of a universal brotherhood “without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color” was in 1875, when the Objects were first formulated. In the U.S., the Civil War had ended in 1865, so, just ten years prior to the TS’s founding, laws in the U.S. permitted slavery. At least in the southern part of the country, any person who could afford it could purchase another human being of African descent and own him or her as his personal property. In his inaugural address for the TS delivered on November 17, 1875 in Mott Memorial Hall in New York City, Henry Steel Olcott referred to this condition, saying that thirty years from that time, Americans would be “ashamed . . . of ever having owned a slave or countenanced human slavery.” It would take another forty-five years before it would be legal for women to vote in the U.S.

After the holocaust of World War II, and the genocidal struggles preceding it, the newly formed United Nations adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration expanded on the language of the TS’s First Object in stating that human rights were unaffected by “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

This level of understanding of the human fraternity has since been accepted and encoded in law worldwide. This rapid evolution in the collective worldview should be considered remarkable progress. Yet from the perspective of the First Object, it is superficial. The changes of the last century and a half relate merely to rights and legislation. The universal brotherhood of the First Object relates to being. In Buddhism, and in H.P. Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence, there is the concept of paramitas, or “perfections.” The last of these perfections is Wisdom—the direct perception of reality or truth. One component of this elevated state of seeing is the recognition of “dependent arising,” which is to say that there is nothing that exists that is not composed of countless other things and conditions. Everything arises (comes into being) dependent on other things.

One example that is sometimes given is a simple thing like a chair. The question is asked, “What is a chair?” Whether it is a three-legged stool, an elaborate throne, or some interpretive modern art rendition, we all can recognize a chair when we see one. But what makes it a chair? Is it the wood? The glue or nails used to construct it? Is it the rain and sunshine that made the wood grow? Is it the carpenter? The idea in his mind? Carried to its logical extreme, the existence of a chair, or anything else, ultimately depends on everything there is. At a fundamental level all things are interdependent. Buddhist monk and noted international teacher Thich Nhat Hanh coined the term interbeing to further stress this idea.

The Theosophical perspective on human interdependence adds some specificity to this idea. In The Secret Doctrine, HPB makes the point that our habit of regarding ourselves as independent units needs rethinking. HPB depicts the human condition from the point of view of consciousness—that humanity as a whole and its component units (us) are composed of gradations of intelligence. The human being “arises” dependent upon the interblending of three evolutionary streams (spiritual, intellectual, and physical) and upon the hierarchies of intelligent beings that guide and direct those streams. She writes, “Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis or ‘Logoi.’ Each is represented in the constitution of man . . . and it is the union of these three streams in him which makes him the complex being he now is” (The Secret Doctrine, 1.181).

From the perspective of the Ageless Wisdom, humanity, and we human beings, are more like a cooperative project than independent entities.

While this way of looking at ourselves may seem challenging, it is not as unfamiliar as we may think. At the most basic level, we are all aware that our physical bodies are composed of literally trillions of individual cells, each with its own needs, direction of growth, and expression of consciousness. Within the body, these individual cells join together to form the organs, the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, etc., each organ having its own needs, function, and consciousness that is significantly more expansive than are those of the participating cells. With the addition of the “soul,” or spiritual consciousness, this combination of diverse lives and functions becomes that greater life described as “me” or “I.”

The universal brotherhood at the heart of the Theosophical movement is rooted in oneness. There is no road to a genuine spirituality that does not lead us toward a deepening awareness of our shared experience. The Bible describes the human condition in this way: “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).That Divine Consciousness is everywhere present, expressing itself in us and as us. Our role is to know it, not as a mere idea or concept, but as the essential truth of our being. The motto of the Theosophical Society is “There is no religion higher than Truth”—and there is no truth higher than oneness.

Printed in the Winter 2017 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 2

It is a kind of disease to which editors are prone. Since I have been writing editorials for over thirty years now, I have had a high level of exposure.

One might call it The Great Problem of Our Time. Sooner or later, it would seem, every editor feels the need to weigh in on this Great Problem and sententiously proclaim what is to be done about it.

So I hope you will indulge me.

I am not thinking of any of the problems that may immediately come to mind: poverty, inequality, war, pollution, climate change. These are all real and urgent matters. But I am not singling out any one of them. Rather I would like to point to the mentality that prevents sensible responses to these problems.

The best approach to any problem is to face it soberly, sensibly, and realistically. It is neither to blind oneself to this problem nor to freeze in fright at the sight of it. In short (to invoke Aristotle’s concept of virtue) it is a mean—between denial on the one hand and panic on the other. (I am reminded of a quip someone once made about Britain’s Conservative Party: “The Conservative Party never panics except in a crisis.”)

This sober realism is precisely the mentality that is most needed in the world today, but it is the mentality that the cultural climate is least likely to foster. If any problem is brought to public attention, the impulse is to make it seem so urgent that unless we drop everything and run around frantically, all will be lost. Even and particularly with urgent questions (e.g., climate change), this is the worst possible attitude to take—almost.

Still worse is the opposite: a blank refusal to see that there is anything wrong at all. “This is the just the way things are”; “this sort of thing happens and has always happened”; “it’s all hype.” Unconsciously, the problem is perceived as being so great that you can’t do anything about it, so you might as well throw up your hands and walk away. Often there are powerful entities who find it in their interest to promote this mentality.

Thus the public mood constantly veers between panic and denial. Such swings occur even within the mind of an individual, and it is a rare person, I suspect, who does not face strong temptations to confront his or her own problems in the same way.

Under no circumstances would I say that this back-and-forth swing between panic and denial is anything new. History shows that it has existed for at least as long as history itself has existed. But current conditions exacerbate this tendency, leading to more panic and more denial.

Here I’m thinking of social media—Facebook and its many relatives. Social media reached a mass audience around six or eight years ago. They have not changed anything fundamentally, but they have accelerated forces that used to move much more slowly. Most importantly, they have made it much easier to respond to someone immediately, even if the two people are very remote and even if (as often happens) they don’t really know each other. Most people have Facebook friends that they have never met in person, and even if they don’t, it’s quite possible to get into an angry interchange with somebody else’s friend.

Until very recently there was a reasonably close correlation between physical proximity and speed of response. You certainly can respond in a hostile way to someone who’s in your presence, but this generates an energetic tension (as well as possible physical danger) that most people find unpleasant. The telephone creates somewhat more distance, but if you have an argument with someone on the phone, that tension will still arise. The written letter, sent by regular mail, has the slowest speed of response, and this has certain advantages. You can write a nasty letter to someone, but you may not get around to mailing it immediately, and you may decide to tear it up the next day. I believe Lincoln once advised someone never to post an angry letter on the day it was written, and that was good advice.

So there is much in the current communications climate that militates for impulsiveness, and little that promotes self-control. But it is precisely this self-control that is a prerequisite, not only for spiritual advancement, but for decent and civil relations in society. And it is this civility that has eroded so steeply over the past few years.

Many spiritual traditions speak about the need for impulse control. In the old esoteric Chrstian tradition, these impulses were called passions. They are not really what we think of as passion today. Rather they are rapid and more or less spontaneous reactions that arise naturally in everyone—not only lust and greed, but anger. The kind of anger that flashes across your mind when someone cuts you off in traffic is a good example.

It’s valuable to master these passions, not only for the sake of one’s fellow humans, but because they are composed of emotional energy—energy that is usually wasted, but if handled right, can go back into the organism for useful purposes.

Today’s communications give us that much more opportunity to practice this kind of self-control. Let’s hope they also give us that much more motivation.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the Winter 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levenda, Peter, "Twilight Language: An Appreciation" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 26-31

  Reflections on the mysterious punning language behind much of medieval art—and alchemy.

By Peter Levenda

The idea that words in foreign languages—especially ancient languages—contain great power is not new. One only has to examine the great magicians’ spell books—the grimoires—of the Renaissance era and earlier to see that Hebrew and Greek were used extensively in magical diagrams and spells composed by persons who did not have much understanding of the languages themselves. What we know as “abracadabra” or voces magicae were often nothing more than real words in foreign languages that were garbled, misspelled, and mispronounced. Popular grimoires such as the Keys of Solomon and some of the texts that can be found in truncated form in such classic works as Francis Barrett’s The Magus (1801) contain inscriptions in pidgin Hebrew and Greek alongside invocations in Latin. Often Hebrew characters themselves are poorly copied from other sources by persons with no knowledge at all of that language, so that the result is often an indecipherable scribble.

Of all the texts that comprise the Western esoteric “canon,” however, the ones most inaccessible to modern readers are those of alchemy. The alchemical authors did not need to resort to voces magicae in order to encode their work: they wrote in the vernacular. Yet the language of alchemical texts is deliberately obscure, meant to be understood only by those who presumably already know their secrets. They are texts that, at first glance, seem to be intended to deceive and confuse. Like the patter of such comedians as the American “Professor” Irwin Corey and the Mexican actor Cantinflas, they use recognizable words with appropriate syntax and grammar, but the result is meaningless speech that only sounds real but which, upon closer inspection, seems devoid of any real content.

At least that is how alchemical texts are often regarded. Commentators such as the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung have compared alchemical language to the language of dreams and have insisted that they represent unconscious psychological processes. In a sense, that position relieves alchemical authors of the responsibility of being precise or clear in their writings. It also reduces the expectation that a nonpsychologist would be able to interpret an alchemical text. Viewing alchemical works as dream journals (to put perhaps too fine a point on it) requires us to see alchemists as a kind of secret society of people suffering from some form of mental instability who are exchanging reports of their dreams and then arguing with each other about them! While this may seem like an unkind interpretation of Jung’s work, it’s reasonable when one realizes that his informants when it came to dream interpretation were his psychotherapeutic patients.

Other observers have suggested that alchemical texts are written in a coded language that enjoys an ancient pedigree—an argument that insists on a logical context for alchemical texts rather than a purely psychological one. Robert Graves has written about a Druidic “language of the trees” that he believed to be the true language of poetry and myth, a thesis he expanded to book-length form in The White Goddess. The twentieth-century alchemist Fulcanelli has described coded instructions that are embedded in the design and ornamentation of the Gothic cathedrals in his enormously influential books The Mystery of the Cathedrals and The Dwellings of the Philosophers. More recently, in The Secrets of Nostradamus, David Ovason has examined the “green language”: the code in which the quatrains of Nostradamus are written (texts often as obscure as any alchemical treatise). In Hamlet’s Mill, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend have gone to great lengths to suggest that the myths of Europe, Africa, and Asia are coded texts describing ancient astronomical events.

In the fourth century CE Leyden Papyrus—a Greek occult text with alchemical elements—we read of something called the “language of the birds”:

I invoke You in the names which You have in the language of the birds, in that of the hieroglyphics, in that of the Jews, in that of the Egyptians . . . in the hieratic language.

It is this ancient source that provided the inspiration for Fulcanelli’s use of the same term to refer to the “hieratic language” of the Gothic cathedrals. The classical literature of Greece and Rome refers to persons who had the ability to speak with birds and animals, an idea that presupposes a form of consciousness among the beasts that is capable of being understood by humans. It is a kind of metalanguage that does not depend on a vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, as do human languages, but which can transmit information through other means.

The citation above associates the language of the birds with hieroglyphics, Hebrew, and Egyptian: in other words, with written texts that were deemed mysterious or resistant to interpretation. Alchemical texts are written in the vernacular, however. They are written in Arabic, Latin, Greek, and eventually in modern European languages such as German and English. The type of allusive language that Fulcanelli invokes as examples of the “language of the birds” is in the vernacular as well. It employs puns as a kind of Kabbalah that relies more on the sound of words than on their dictionary meanings.

Fulcanelli’s most famous and often-repeated example is that of ars gothique as the homonymous argotique: in English, “Gothic art” as “argot”: slang or cant. To him, words that sound alike mean the same thing and can be used to explain and expand the meanings of each other.

Fulcanelli said that this secret alchemical language permeated medieval symbology and iconography. One comparatively simple example is the Crusaders’ motto Dieu le veut, “God wills it.” To Fulcanelli, this has a hidden meaning, whose pronunciation is virtually the same —Dieu le feu, “God the fire”—which, he says, “explains and justifies the badge adopted by the crusader knights and its color: a red cross borne on the right shoulder” (Fulcanelli, Dwellings, 201n.; emphasis Fulcanelli’s).

Although French is peculiarly well-suited to puns of this kind, they extend beyond the bounds of the French language. Another example cited by Fulcanelli is the name of the famous fifteenth-century alchemist Nicolas Flamel, whose “very name speaks like a pseudonym chosen on purpose.” Flamel evokes flamme, “flame,” the alchemical fire, whereas Nicolas harks back to the Greek níkÄ“, “victory,” plus lâos, “stone,” alluding to Flamel’s alchemical success as “conqueror of the stone” (Fulcanelli, Dwellings, 265).

Fulcanelli values the type of slang known as cant, which was used as coded language by marginalized or specialist populations. It was a debased form of the vernacular which was employed by criminal gangs, for instance, as a kind of in-group jargon. The term cant—which derives from the Latin root cantus, “song”—is used to describe language that is insincere or hypocritical: in other words, deceitful communications. The example of the singsong pleas of beggars is the usual example of this usage.

Fulcanelli’s work is replete with examples of this type of communication. Moreover, he points out that this argot is used in a visual sense as well. In other words, the artistic details of the Gothic cathedrals—statues, ornaments, orientations—are a kind of slang in stone. To Fulcanelli, there is no way to extricate the visual aspect of the cathedral from the purely auditory quality of the spoken words used to describe it, and this multivalent approach is the key to understanding alchemy and its peculiar terminology. What one sees in the stonework of the cathedrals, and other medieval buildings, are clues that are decipherable only to those who speak its associated language, a language, that, moreover, requires a grounding in the classical literature of mythology, religion, and popular folklore. This connection between symbols and texts is as modern as anything by Eco or Derrida.

To take another example, there is a carving on a fifteenth-century building in the French city of Thiers. It is known as the Man of the Woods. Here is Fulcanelli’s description (in part): “This simple man with abundant, disheveled hair, and unkempt beard, this man of nature whose traditional knowledge lead [sic] him to despise the vain frivolity of the poor insane people who think they are wise, stands above the mound of stones which he tramples underfoot. He is the Enlightened one for he has received the light spiritual enlightenment” (Fulcanelli, Dwellings, 251; emphasis Fulcanelli’s).

Nevertheless, the idea that important information needs to be encoded in some form, and made inaccessible to the general population, is problematic. It is a challenge to the general notion of communication as the transfer of information. The coded works of the alchemists seem to argue for a system of communication that is the transfer of deception: a system that undermines the social contract implicit in the idea of communication.

Had the alchemical texts been written in a real code—a substitution cipher, for example, in which one letter equals another, or letters are represented by numbers—then the authors’ intention would have been more obvious. The problem with alchemical texts is that the code is not obvious from the start. The authors of these texts seem to be saying something, and using language “in the clear” to do so, and that is where the real deception lies. One reads along waiting for the text to become clear—waiting for the key to the code, so to speak—and finishes by realizing that there is no key, and that the text remains as inaccessible at the end as it was at the beginning. It seems like a trick, an elitist sort of ludibrium at the expense of the unsuspecting reader. It is a work of deception, certainly, but, paradoxically, is not a lie.

Recent approaches to the problem of language and its sudden development among primates suggest that the initial function of language was to deceive. The lie, according to these studies, is at the heart of language. Language is a symbolic system that uses symbols to represent things that may or may not exist in “reality.” Language is a medium that is based on fiction: the mere fact of tenses—past, present, and future, not to mention all the variations of these basic three, for instance, the subjunctive mood or the future perfect tense—suggests an imaginal realm of possibility rather than a report on tangible events occurring at this precise moment: “He will have bought that car by then” as opposed to “I am hungry” or “there is danger.”

Other aspects of language are also enablers of deception. Metaphors, for instance, are themselves false statements which are intended to be taken as false even though they are used to describe real events or conditions. Their utility as a form of communication is based on the general acknowledgement by the audience—the consensus—that the metaphor is not true in any kind of real sense, but is only an imaginary statement that nevertheless points towards the truth. Metaphor, as the carrier of a kind of mini-myth, serves as shorthand for the truth.

Indeed, the philosopher Sallustius (also of the fourth century CE, the same period as the Leyden Papyrus) wrote, “One may call the world a myth,” a sentiment that has gained popularity recently in the relatively new field of consciousness studies. From this perspective, the world we experience with our physical senses is a fabrication, a construct, that is not representative of reality but only of a model of reality. This idea is at the heart of alchemy, and of the twilight language employed by alchemists to reinforce that idea using the best tool at their disposal.

In an article published in this magazine a few years ago, Cherry Gilchrist addressed the idea of esoteric orders and secrecy. She pointed out that one of the usual reasons given for secrecy in occult lore was the desire to protect sacred and powerful knowledge from the profane in order to protect the world from amateur magicians. Another reason given was the necessity of maintaining a degree of security as a safeguard for the practitioners themselves, for their “psychological well-being” and to provide an environment conducive to the operations of the work (Gilchrist, 93). The article revolved around the idea of esoteric orders and secret societies and the social organization of occult practices and initiatory bodies—in other words, around ritual and ceremonial secrecy. Indeed, in England and Ireland, a jargon called Shelta was discovered among a class of Irish “gypsies” called Tinkers. It has been linked (see Sinclair) to the original stonemasons as a secret language that apprentices had to learn before they could progress to the third degree of their craft: a craft that eventually developed into today’s most famous secret society, Freemasonry.

The idea that language itself evolved out of ritual is a relatively modern one, but one that has attracted some academic attention (see Knight, 68–91). Music, dance, and mime were employed to communicate ideas: that is, something intangible but nevertheless important to the group. These cumbersome and time-consuming methods were gradually replaced or enhanced by language, which sought to do the same thing.

In fact language was used to reinforce an insider/outsider dichotomy in which “we” know what our language/words/symbols mean but “they” don’t. In some cases, this was made necessary by political or cultural considerations. Ritual practices that society would consider blasphemous, obscene, or even criminal would have to be concealed, not only during the operations themselves, but also in any discussion of them. So strategies such as cant or argotique or even Shelta were employed as a spoken code. In India, where Tantra was considered an antinomian and transgressive practice, the same need for a coded language obtained.

But there is no alchemical secret society. Alchemists in the West were not initiated, did not belong to groups that met underground, and did not derive their training in a structured way from other alchemists. So the usual reasons given for ritual secrecy do not apply in this case. Alchemists, in fact, learned their art from texts, and in this way they were peculiarly modern.

With alchemy, we have a rich literature that is full of both language and art. These media are equally obscure, with alchemical art often being described as “surreal,” and indeed the Surrealist movement of the twentieth century embraced alchemy as a kind of proto-Surrealism. But alchemical literature and art seem to insist on using communication to create distance between the author and the reader, an approach that seems counterintuitive. Why did it become necessary or desirable to employ language to render communication less rather than more effective?

The answer to this question is to be found in the very nature of language itself and in particular a subset known as “twilight language.”

Twilight language is the medium in which the texts of Indian alchemy and Tantra are written. It is a language that exists in the realm between what is “real” and what is “imaginary.” In my book The Tantric Alchemist I have shown how the twilight language of India can be used to great effect when applied to European alchemical texts, but for now we will focus on the nature of that language itself.

The term “twilight language” comes from the Sanskrit sandhyā-bhāṣā, which some scholars also have translated as “intentional language.” This is an interesting idea in light of the above, for it implies a language that defeats the purpose of language: a text that is composed of metaphors, obfuscation, and misdirection but which paradoxically is intended to reveal a hidden truth.

Speakers of a common language collaborate in the multitude of deceptions that are present in their speech. We use language to disguise our feelings, to conceal our true natures, to present ourselves in the best possible light. We deceive—ourselves and others—to such an extent that when giving evidence in a court of law we are required to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—as if only the penalty of perjury would inspire in us a desire, finally, to be truthful about anything. (Interestingly, the word sacrament comes to us from the Latin root sacramentum, meaning “oath,” a word that also came to mean “mystery.” Fulcanelli would approve.)

When this is the case, how does one present knowledge in such a way that there can be no mistaking either the intent of the author or the truth of the subject? If one writes a text the way most authors write texts, it can be assumed that there will be something left out, something embellished, something extraneous to the matter at hand. We expect this, without even being conscious that we do. We write the way we speak, and we read the way we write. Most of the time that speech is unintentional: it comes naturally, fluidly, but full of the possibility of error, exaggeration, metaphors that can be misunderstood, and even deceptions of which the author herself or himself may not be aware. If, however, we write with intention—with knowing how each word will be recognized, understood, and interpreted—then writing transcends the normal function of language. It becomes a kind of mathematics or scientific notation, in which emotion and psyche play no role. It strives to tell the truth.

In order to do that effectively, new terms and concepts need to be introduced that will strain the normal function of language. Just as hallucinogenic drugs strain the senses and reorganize their operation, the hallucinatory texts of the alchemists force the reader to find new meanings and significance for everyday words. To make matters worse, alchemical texts often contradict each other, which only adds to the general confusion and the exasperation with which many observers treat the entire field. Yet, while one alchemical text may contradict another, each text itself is internally consistent.

Alchemical works are replete with terms such as “our mercury” and “our gold,” which are ways of signaling that the elements we know by these names are not the ones intended by the authors. This forces the reader to abandon any notion that it is possible to derive chemical compounds through a simple reading of the text. The search for a formula to turn lead into gold seems doomed to failure from the very start when terms are not defined or identified. Add to that the confusion created when impossible concepts are introduced, such as the Green Lion or Red Dragon, and you are reduced to considering the entire subject one of fancy and imagination that has no relevance to the “real,” or at least to the physical, world.

The twilight language of Indian and Chinese alchemy, however, does provide us with a key to understanding the arcane scriptures of the European alchemists for the simple reason that they employ precisely the same terminology. You will find references to dragons, mercury, gold, and all the instrumentation of the alchemical laboratory familiar to readers of Western alchemical works, such as the writings of the seventeenth-century Welsh alchemist Thomas Vaughan; the Turba philosophorum (“The Crowd of Philosophers”); the Rosarium philosophorum (“The Rose Garden of the Philosophers”); or the works of Michael Maier. The value of the twilight language rests in the discovery that the Tantrikas and the Chinese alchemists were referring not only to chemical—that is, to laboratory—processes but were insisting on biological analogues. The alembic, retort, and other lab equipment found in the secret rooms of the European “puffers” are all present in the human body as depicted in the charts and diagrams of Indian and Chinese alchemy. In fact, one will come across constant references to “semen,” “seed,” and “menstruum” as well as other biological (and especially sexual) terms in European alchemical literature, particularly in the works of Thomas Vaughan.

Is that, then, the key to understanding alchemy? Well, almost. Are references to semen and the menstruum meant to be taken literally after all? Well, yes and no. Twilight language is meant to be both literal and figurative. Biological references are only part of the puzzle; otherwise twilight language would not be necessary.

What the alchemical texts conceal, and what twilight language reveals, is a “science” and an “art”—we really do not have a word in the English language that encompasses both—that is a study of reality itself. This is not the materialist reality of the scientist alone, and it is not the reality of the artistic or religious spirit alone. Twilight language is a kind of notation that describes both physical reality and the consciousness that perceives it. To try to derive single definitions for the terms one finds in Fulcanelli or in any of the other alchemical authors is to miss the point entirely. Each term in the twilight language is multivalent as well as multivocal. Twilight language describes a process, and it is that process that is identical for everything in creation, since everything in creation proceeded from the same First Cause.

Alchemical authors constantly refer to creation, and it is important to pay attention. Alchemists attempt to reimagine, revisit, and recreate the moment of the Big Bang (or however one wants to characterize that initial impetus that gave rise to everything we know). To the alchemist, creation is ongoing. It has not stopped. The alchemists know that the universe is constantly expanding and that we are part of that expansion. Alchemists attempt to mimic that process, and it is a process that includes not only chemical transformations in the laboratory but psychobiological transformations that mirror the chemical versions.

Twilight language describes this process in a way that is applicable to all fields of human endeavor. “Our mercury” is everywhere, as is “our gold.” While it seems almost insipid—a kind of New Age “we are all one” sentiment—the alchemist means it literally, and demonstrably. It is a way of telling the absolute truth, using the same language that we employ to lie and to deceive, and turning it on its head with all its metaphors and tenses and literary allusions by making it purely intentional and deliberate. It is the paradox of twilight language that makes it so compelling, and in that tension between the word and what it represents—between the symbol and the thing symbolized—is found the truth.

Sources

De Santillana, Giorgio, and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth. Boston: David R. Godine, 1969.

Fulcanelli. The Dwellings of the Philosophers. Translated by Brigitte Donvez and Lionel Perrin. Boulder, Colo.: Archive Press, 1999.

——. The Mystery of the Cathedrals. Translated by Mary Sworder. Las Vegas: Brotherhood of Light, 1990.

Gilchrist, Cherry. “The Open Secret of the Esoteric Orders.” Quest, summer 2013, 90–93, 120.

Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1948.

Jung, C.G. Alchemical Studies. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton/Bollingen, 1983.

Knight, Chris. “Ritual/Speech Coevolution: A Solution to the Problem of Deception.” In James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and Chris Knight, eds. Approaches to the Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 68–91.

Levenda, Peter. The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition. Lake Worth. Fla.: Ibis, 2015.

Ovason, David. The Secrets of Nostradamus. London: Random House, 1997.

Sinclair, A.T. “The Secret Language of Masons and Tinkers,” The Journal of American Folklore, 22:86, Oct.–Dec. 1909, 353–364.

Peter Levenda is an author specializing in esoterica and historical investigation. His esoteric works include such titles as The Dark Lord; The Tantric Temples; and Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation.