Quest Magazine

By Christopher Bamford

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bamford, Christopher. "Green Hermeticism." Quest  97. 2 (Spring 2009): 54-59, 63.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg once remarked that science happens when scientists talk. Perhaps the same is true of esotericists, as we may learn from the genesis of an embryonic but potentially far-reaching movement called Green Hermeticism. As one of the guiding spirits, Peter Lamborn Wilson, author of Sacred Drift and Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, tells it:

In September 2003, a small conference on "Sacred Theory of Earth" was held in New Paltz, New York, where the idea of Green Hermeticism arose out of discussions among hermeticists, poets, Christians, Buddhists, neo-pagans, Sufis, and assorted heretics. At this meeting, the obscure and little-read text Novices of Sais by the German Romantic poet Novalis was presented as a virtual manifesto of Green Hermeticism, which might be defined as a spagyric approach to the environmental sciences (and their "crisis"), and empirical and magical.

Green Hermeticism, Wilson continues, has "a specifically green form of spirituality" that provides a much-needed sacred theory of Earth, the body, and Nature. At once shamanic, monotheistic, and angelological—and proposing "an empiricism of the Imagination," "a proper form of paganism," and an alternative to modern science—Green Hermeticism is astonishingly and paradoxically both primordial and postmodern.

Green Hermeticism, of course, is still a work in progress, but at least the work has begun. Pir Zia Inayat Khan of the Sufi Order International, who was a participant at the original conference, was so struck by the far-reaching implications of Green Hermeticism for the renewal of sacred science that he convened a series of weekend seminars dedicated to the subject at the Sufi Order's Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, New York. And so the idea of Green Hermeticism was born as the present incarnation of a cosmological revelation that can be traced back to earliest times.

Called alchemy or Hermeticism (after the Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth), this doctrine pervades all historical cultures from Tantric India and Taoist China in the East to the Abrahamic West. Because it always adapts its practice to its context, its origins are lost in prehistory. Like nature itself, it is a golden thread connecting all times and places. Nevertheless, in the present great revival of esoteric teachings and practices, the question of such a sacred science has been left aside. Dazzled by modern science, we have studied and practiced the "inner" teachings of the saints and sages of past ages assiduously, but we have passed over their science of nature. Green Hermeticism proposes that it is time to explore the relevance not only of the masters' "inner" science, but also of their science of nature. Because it is truly holistic, this science transcends and erases all separations such as inner and outer, spirit and matter, divine and human, earthly and heavenly.

As for its primordial origins, tradition holds that earlier human beings were less solid, the world less dense, and the Original Light still permeated all. Cognition was integral, intuitive, and imaginal. Heaven and earth, living and dead, angels and elemental spirits, were one world. Human beings lived as earthborn heavenly beings, woven into the symphonic light-filled music of creation. The stars and the heavens themselves, experienced as living beings, enclosed the earth as a fruit encloses as seed, caring for it like a mother. The cosmos was a single organism. There was no distance, only spiritual relationship. Human beings acted as friends of heaven, commissioned to nurture heavenly seeds planted on earth. The human task was circulation. Rising, humanity spiritualized matter; descending, it materialized spirit.

Gradually, however, it became evident that humanity would fall out of unity. To ensure the transmission of the salvific wisdom entrusted to the earth, the ancient mysteries arose. First, perhaps, were the mysteries of the stars, whose love guided the cosmos and laid down the patterns of wisdom on earth. Connected to these were the many-faced mysteries of the Great Goddess, the mother of the gods and all living things, mistress of animals and plants, queen of flowers. She was the Virgin, black and beautiful, the universal wisdom substance. Her mysteries were celebrated among rocks in caves, and in dark, damp places in the folds of the earth. Her symbols were birds, the waters, the Tree of Life, the labyrinth, the serpent. Hers were the mysteries of light and darkness, life, death, procreation, rebirth, transformation, generation and regeneration, continuity and transience. More concretely, hers were the agricultural mysteries of the seed, of fertility, germination, and growth, and of nourishment, fermentation, cooking, and healing.

Related mysteries emerged from the transmutation of substances: mining, metallurgy, and pottery. These mysteries concerned the sciences and arts having to do with fire and the transformation of the earth. Thus humans came to know that just as plants, animals, and humans were planted and grew on the earth's surface, minerals and metals were likewise cosmic seeds planted in the earth. Left alone, any such seed would, over eons, become "gold"—that is, it would return to the Original Light. From at least the sixth millennium BC, certain reddish, bluish, greenish, or grayish stones were smelted until they oozed a substance which, formed into objects, could be polished so as to mirror this light. Small copper axes and items of jewelry, mirroring and emitting this light, began to be produced. Something new was emerging: a new culture and consciousness in which human beings sought a collaborative relationship with the gods. Instead of merely following nature's rhythms, the new agriculturalists and metal workers aspired to bring to fruition what nature had begun.

From this knowledge the great civilizations of ancient China, India, Persia, Egypt, and Greece arose. Then, at the shift of the world ages characterized as the Axial Age (between 800 and 200 BCE), the direct connections to the ancient world were severed. Consciousness was evolving, but the wisdom was not lost. Transmission was maintained, not only orally and mind-to-mind, but above all in texts that ensured the further evolution of mystery wisdom: for instance, the Corpus Hermeticum, a sort of Platonized summation of Egyptian philosophy, and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the holy scripture of alchemy. In this way, Greco-Roman alchemy and Hermeticism—at once gnosis, craft, philosophy, art, and religion—were born as the metamorphosis of the primordial sacred science of the ancient mysteries. The earliest practicing alchemists whose names we know—Ostanes, Pseudo-Democritus, Zosimos, Maria the Jewess, Kleopatra—all date from this period (300 BCE-300 CE).

But the period of the political foundation of Christianity was not favorable, at least initially, for Hermetic thought and cosmological research. Faced with political repression and persecution, alchemical thinking moved eastward through Syria into Persia. The transfer was providential: it meant that the fruit of the primordial sciences transmitted by Hellenism lay ready and waiting for Islam. Following Mohammed's revelation, in a massive act of translation, the patrimony of the ancients was saved. The result was that, within 150 years of its founding, Islamic alchemy reached its height with Jabir and his school, whose immense oeuvre includes more than 3000 treatises. The Hermetic sciences, such as Pythagorean number theory, geometry, music, and astronomy, also flourished, especially among Ishmaili groups such as the Ikwan al-Safa, the Brethren of Purity.

Little by little, through Muslim Andalusia and Sicily and, later, through Venice by way of Byzantium, Hermetic alchemy began to return to the West, though the first work, A Testament of Alchemy by Morienus, did not arrive until 1144. Other translations followed. Franciscans took care of the transmission. Soon original works began to be written, and alchemy and Hermetic Platonism began a process of transformation. Cathedral schools like the school of Chartres began to lay a philosophical foundation, while figures like Artephius, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lull, Roger Bacon, and Arnold of Villanova, grasping the depth and range of the Hermetic worldview, began to universalize it into a complete spiritual (and physical) path. Alchemy became the de facto sacred science of the West, preparing the ground for the explosive influence of Marsilio Ficino's translations of original Hermetic, Neo-Platonic, and other esoteric texts. Beginning in 1463 with the Corpus Hermeticum, these translations launched the creation of a new magical and cosmological Christianity.

It remained only for great Renaissance masters from Paracelsus, Basil Valentine, Bernard Trevisanus, Limojin de Saint-Didier, and others up to Jacob Bohme, Jan Baptista van Helmont, and the seventeenth-century Rosicrucians to complete the project.

Thus, at the time of the birth of modern science, another participatory, gentle, compassionate science was available—a new alternative culture, not of matter and mechanism but of consciousness, life, light, and love. Although apparently defeated by the rise of modern science, the alternative view traveled underground through esoteric groups such as the Freemasons to surface in Romanticism and then, in a sense, to return full-blown in modern times through such figures as H.P. Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, C.G. Jung, G.I. Gurdjieff, as well as the French stream of alchemists and Hermeticists like Fulcanelli, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Eugene Canseliet, Henri Coton-Alvart, and the contemporary alchemical school known as the Philosophers of Nature. (Kevin Townley, one of the founders of this school, has been a participant at Green Hermeticism conferences.) In this sense, Green Hermeticism is a living tradition. But what is it?

Like all spiritual traditions, Hermeticism is complex and not to be systemized. Nevertheless, to gain some idea of its relevance to our present evolutionary moment (that is, why it is "green"), it may be examined under at least four different aspects: as a science of nature and the cosmos; as a craft or practice dedicated to the transformation of matter; as an art of healing, whose goal is a universal medicine able to heal humanity, nature, and the cosmos; and finally as a civilizational paradigm.

Pherecydes of Syros, a teacher of Pythagoras, taught that "Zeus, when about to create, changed himself into love; for in composing the order of the world out of the contraries he brought it to concord and friendship, and in all things he set the seed of identity and the unity which pervades everything." The Corpus Hermeticum similarly reveals that the cosmos "is one mass of life, and there is not anything in the cosmos that is not alive." Pherecydes' love is Hermetic life, and life is relationship: harmony, identity, and unity. The cosmos is thus a living being pulsing with life, but it is not itself the source of life. As the Corpus Hermeticum tells us, the source is "immortal life," which produces all things through the movement of the cosmos: "Like a good husbandman, it gives them renewal by sowing seed. There is nothing in which the cosmos does not generate life; and it is both the place in which life is contained and the maker of life."

The cosmos—nature—is thus both alive and a unity. Its science, Hermeticism or alchemy, is a science of seeds—a kind of spiritual agriculture. As the Egyptian goddess Isis famously advises Horus: "Go, then, my child, to a certain laborer and ask him what he has sown and what he has harvested, and you will learn from him that the one who sows wheat also harvests wheat, and the one who sows barley also harvests barley. . . . Learn to comprehend the whole fabrication and generation of things and know that it is the condition of man to sow a man, of a lion to sow a lion, of a dog to sow a dog. . . . See, there is the whole of the mystery."

For the ancients, life (which we have already identified with love, harmony, and relationship) was also, and perhaps primarily, Light and inseparable from matter. According to this teaching, Light exists in two states: Original Light and optical light. Original Light is the Light of the fiat lux that instantly fills the Abyss. Spontaneously created by God, Original Light is free, direct, unmediated, and omnipresent; it is not generated by the transformation of something else. By contrast, optical light is secondary; it always comes from something else. We know it as a form of energy: mechanical, chemical, electric, or radiant. These four forms of what we might call "Second Light" are always dependent on some kind of matter, which they always seek to escape. In fact, they seek to return to the Original Light and would do so if some new "matter" did not interpose itself, refracting, reflecting, or absorbing it, trapping it again as electrical, chemical, or mechanical energy. To restore this Original Light to its rightful place, then, the alchemist seeks to recover what we might call "original matter"—the original receptacle, Plato's chora, the feminine divine "waters" of wisdom over which the spirit hovered in the first verses of Genesis—and to make the two one.

From this point of view, the task of the Hermeticist is to redeem and unite the original ground and the Original Light—to make them one, not two: a unity.

A famous image from a Hermetic text known as The Goldmaking of Kleopatra expresses the idea to perfection. The ouroboros serpent with its tail in its mouth encloses the motto Hen to pan, "One the All." The cosmos is closed: one only, non-exteriorized, and recursive. Everything is connected to everything else. The Hermetic universe, the Hermetic work, and the human subject are one and the same. "Everything is the product of one universal creative effort," writes Paracelsus, while the Hermetic text known as the Asclepius teaches, "The human being is all things; the human being is everywhere." To know this is to be able to become all things. As Hermes/Tat says in this text: "Now that I see in mind, I see myself to be the All. I am in Heaven and on Earth, in Water and in Air; I am in beasts and plants; I am a babe in the womb, and one that is not yet conceived, and one that has been born; I am present everywhere" (Corpus Hermeticum, 13).

One must become what one would know: such is this science. Only like may know like. Becoming like God, one comes to know like God: and the same is true of rock, plant, or ecosystem. As all things are in God, so they must also be in the human being. But where is that? Things are not in God visibly, but invisibly, beyond space and time. To know them, we must therefore withdraw from psychological space and time, sensory matter and motion, personal desire and memory.

To realize this vision requires a transformation of the way we know and perceive. What is required is a schooling of the senses—a cleansing of the doors of perception so that our senses may become active organs of true vision. Achieving this, one comes to see with the heart. Paracelsus terms this faculty "true Imagination," the star in the human being. "True Imagination," writes Maurice Aniane, "actually 'sees' the 'subtle' processes of nature and their angelic prototypes. It is the capacity to reproduce in oneself the cosmogenic unfolding, the permanent creation of the world in the sense in which all creation, finally, is only a Divine Imagination."

To understand this, one must go beyond the idea of a single, unique act of creation and assume a state of continuous creation, metaphysical in nature, outside ordinary space and time. According to this view, creation is continuously in process, and consciousness may always know its states by virtue of the principle whereby "the One is the All."

Hermetically, then, to know a god—and all things are gods—is to penetrate to a specific creative phase or relationship. The world is not temporal, as our psychological consciousness presents it to us. It occurs in wholes, which our senses conceal. But there are gaps or openings in perception which meditation can reveal. Through these, the "gods," who are themselves both causes and effects, may be known. The process is "vertical," for in the realm of phenomena—the horizontal plane—there are only sequences of events without cause.

Simply put, Hermeticism is the sacred science of realizing and enhancing the subtle states of both the human being and the universe, which correspond to each other. Realization is thus achieved along the axis of nondual light that unites the universe and connects the human being and nature with the source of all.

Though there sometimes seem to be two Hermetic paths—one mystical and inner, and the other practical, empirical, and external—the two are really one. Uniting inner and outer, the alchemist becomes a universal priest celebrating a kind of universal Eucharistic transubstantiation whose species are not just bread and wine, but nature in its entirety. To achieve this transubstantiation, the alchemist, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, "follows nature in her mode of operation." The rest is a gift of God: grace.

Phenomenologically, the Hermeticist starts with the unity of existence: the unity of matter and consciousness and the unity of all phenomena of consciousness—consciousness always being identifying consciousness. "If you would know the rose, become the rose. Become the rock. Become the plant. Become the metal," as Schwaller de Lubicz tells us in Nature Word. Everything in nature—bird, tree, or flower, just as forest, meadow, or geological formation—is a question containing its own answer, meaning, and explanation. All phenomena—light, color, sound—and all natural processes—germination, growth, digestion, and fermentation—contain the power to evoke in the prepared observer the true response that is their meaning. Here is the foundation of a true science of phenomena, dispensing with all instrumentation and relying on consciousness alone. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe puts it: "The best of all would be to realize that every fact is already theory. The blue of the sky shows us the principles of color. We need not look for anything behind phenomena: they themselves are the teaching." By this means, Hermetic science is thus able to understand such phenomena as life, light, space, time, matter—which modern science cannot fathom—because it is able to experience phenomena as such, as God knows them.

Thus, in this view, the universe, nature, every phenomenon is a concrete presence of the powers that govern it, and the Hermetic art is the raising of phenomena into their living angelic archetypes—and not an inner act, but it in reality. The alchemist sees with the eyes of the spirit and confirms his theory through higher perception or Imagination. Such is true Imagination: it "sees," that is, confirms, verifies, and collaborates in the subtle processes of nature, which are the continuous creation of the world: the Divine Imagination.

Hermetic science is thus a discipline of mind and body. It strives for a qualitative, unifying exaltation of the relation of the knower to the known in the phenomenon through the act of knowing. Rather than the objectification and control of the known by the knower, it seeks unification and identity—transformation of the knower through the known as perceived and experienced. Each phenomenon is thus unique, single, and personal: an act of grace manifesting in the confluence of the right gesture at the right moment.

For Hermetic science, then, the whole universe is sacramental, embodying and proclaiming the process of the revelation of unity. This unitary vision, acknowledged by all the traditional men and women of "knowledge," is founded not upon a sensory material unity of nature, but on a spiritual unity.

Here the twentieth-century French alchemist Henri Coton-Alvart gives us a few precious clues. First, there is the mystery that the world is: the mystery of being. Second, there is the mystery of movement, metamorphosis, or manifestation, not only "outwardly" in space and time (which movement creates), but also "inwardly," so that everything is born, grows, and dies, i.e., evolves and transforms. For the Hermeticist, movement arises as being encounters resistance, nonbeing. Between the two—between one and two—consciousness arises: relationship. Third, there is the mystery of intelligence. Movement is not disordered or chaotic. It is ordered. Everything—whether a falling body, the courses of the stars, or the growth of a plant—moves, transforms, according to a pattern of metamorphosis. This is the pattern that connects: the thinking that is nature or the cosmos, which our ordinary consciousness granulates into bits and pieces in time and space. This third mystery is the mediator, the human function: gnosis, which is life and light.

Working with these principles—which are the principles of creation as they are of the human being—the alchemist practices a spiritual discipline that allows him to participate in the world process. To do so is the Great Work. It is called the Great Work because it works to bring creation to its natural perfection, just as a gardener does in the garden or as a doctor does with the body. In other words, this is a very practical wisdom. It heals.

As doctor, the alchemist works to heal creation because, from the alchemical perspective, nature is "sick." It contains in it a principle hostile to it. This principle, the cause of the "fall," is still active, causing the dramatic mixture of life and death, wisdom and folly, renewal and decay that we see wherever we turn. One can neither deny the sickness that has penetrated creation nor the marvelous solicitude that preserves it. All the natural kingdoms are sick; yet they perpetually renew themselves. Everywhere poison and remedy are in conflict—in our time, more so than ever.

The guiding principle of alchemy is the efficacious, curative, and omnipotent intervention of Unity—that is, spirit—to overcome the pathology of the world, its death principle.

To do so, the alchemist works with the perpetual movement of the transformation of the Original Light of the world, which makes the seed germinate, grow, transmute food, and make new seeds. He works with the agent of metamorphosis, which is the dance of spirit and substance, to enhance Life. Above all, the alchemist seeks in all things the healing ferment, the internal spiritualizing agent that underlines all transitory, discontinuous phenomena, the source of the metamorphosis of the four elements. This ferment is a "fifth element." It is the quintessence in all things. Universally present, it would act unhindered according to its place or milieu—following the inspiration of the spirit, which guides it—were it not for the "hostile" principle. The Hermetic alchemist, God's right hand, seeks to overcome this pathology so as to allow spirit to flow without restriction in all living things—minerals, plants, animals, and humans. Thereby it reinstates our dying earth into the living cosmos.

Much of Hermetic alchemy can sound arcane. The masters have their own language, which they use in a different way than we are used to. Our language, based as it is on a dualistic worldview, is denotative. Words have fixed meanings and appear to point to things. Hermetic-alchemical language is connotative, contextual. It is its own reality. You have to understand the context to understand the meaning of individual words—whose meaning can vary considerably according to context. Double and triple meanings abound. The texts are full of wordplay and puns. Often the very obscurity can tempt us to give up. Yet we need this tradition. Our earth and our humanity need it. For it teaches us the way to fulfill our human, earthly task as mediators, pontiffs, between heaven and earth. It is the path of ultimate service: to aid the divine powers in the task of true world evolution.

On this basis, Green Hermeticism seeks to found a new, truly spiritual ecology: a new Hermetic culture, in which the earth will once again become the temple of the cosmos, with every human being a healing priest or priestess. In practice, this means a renewed understanding of the earth as a cosmic being that awaits human collaboration to awaken to its true destiny. There is much that already can be done, beyond the understanding that the earth and humanity as a whole and in detail constitute a single spiritual-physical organism with the cosmos. Biodynamic agriculture, spagyric and alchemical tinctures and preparations, phyto- and astro-regeneration, conscious collaboration with elementals, earth, mineral, plant, animal and angelic beings—all provide ways of beginning.

At the same time, such an ecology is not only a science and a spiritual path but also an art. Not only is everyone called to be a priest, everyone is called to be an artist. We need new public art forms—Hermetic gardens and parks, earth sculptures, and sacred poems inscribed as living beings in the landscape. All of these will begin to renew the Renaissance dream, as the seventeenth-century Italian magus Tommaso Campanella put it, so that "the earth will become a sun."

Christopher Bamford is editor-in-chief of Steiner Books and Lindisfarne Books and senior editor of Parabola. His works include The Voice of the Eagle: The Heart of Celtic Christianity (Lindisfarne) and An Endless Trace: The Passionate Pursuit of Wisdom in the West (Codhill Press). With Peter Lamborn Wilson and Kevin Townley, he is also coauthor of Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology (Lindisfarne), which contains an extensive and useful bibliography for those wishing to research Green Hermeticism for themselves.

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Viewpoint: Sensitive Dependence." Quest 97. 2 (Spring 2009): 46.

Although Einstein is famous for his opinion that "God does not play dice," subsequent scientists have successfully delved into the amazingly unpredictable world of subatomic theory. Light behaves as waves or particles, depending on how the observer measures it; particles appear and disappear seemingly at random, with only a probability of being present at a particular place and time; and chaos theory recognizes the panorama of ever-unfolding patterns produced by irresolvable nonlinear equations.

In this world of the infinite, where it seems that nothing can be nailed down as absolute, we encounter an amazingly important principle: sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. This means that an infinitesimal difference somewhere earlier in an equation will make a major change in the outcome. Rather than "garbage in, garbage out," it is more that one tiny bit of garbage in can result in a mountain of garbage out. One minute modification to ocean temperatures can cause the difference between a destructive storm and a cooling breeze halfway around the world.

Most people who are on the Internet have received the e-mail about plastic bag pollution that has been circulating during the last year. Pictures that graphically illustrate the horrific impact of the mounting accumulation of plastic bags accompany the text cataloging the environmental damage and unnecessary suffering caused to wildlife through this human excess. As the light of awareness dawns on this problem, people all around our nation are beginning to be more careful about the use and disposal of this nonbiodegradable material. In recognition of our power to ameliorate the difficulty, the Theosophical Order of Service has begun promoting reusable shopping bags to replace the offensive plastic. Just as each one of us has contributed to this problem, one bag at a time, so does the solution lie within our power, one bag at a time.

Life is a whole of which each of us is a small but essential part. Up to a certain point, life unfolds without any help from us, but we are the outer edge of life's manifestation, the edge of creativity and dynamic change. The culmination or end point toward which all life moves requires us to cooperate with the high beings that spring forth from within manifestation itself. The parent universe requires the cooperative maturity of its progeny in order to reach its full potential, proving the axiom that creation unfolds from within outward. As the universe progresses in its evolution, its own products are destined in time to develop to the level of becoming cocreators. Creation unfolds according to the spiritual impulse inherent in its own nature—implanted as a spark of the divine omnipresent first principle. Thus the ingenuity and self-responsibility of humankind, for whatever unfathomable reason, are part and parcel of the divine plan and are necessary for it to flower in fullness.

H. P. Blavatsky spoke about our personal responsibility for the well-being and development of this creation. Everything we touch is affected by us, by the quality of our actions, thoughts, and emotions. In volume 12 of the Collected Works, she says:

The earnest Occultist and Theosophist...sees and recognizes psychic and spiritual mysteries and profound secrets of nature in every flying particle of dust, as much as in the giant manifestations of human nature (p. 115).

She also writes:

Indeed, every organ in our body has its own memory. For if it is endowed with a consciousness "of its own kind," every cell must of necessity have also a memory of its own kind, as likewise its own psychic and noëtic action. Responding to the touch of both a physical and a metaphysical Force, the impulse given by the psychic (or psycho-molecular) Force will act from without within; while that of the noëtic (shall we call it Spiritual-dynamical?) Force works from within without (p. 368).

In other words, the deepest mysteries of the life force reside within every particle of dust, each particle being influenced by psychic force just as human nature is influenced by the energies it encounters. Every molecule, every cell, has its own consciousness which responds to "spiritual-dynamical" energy. We transmit this energy in our every thought and action, so that every cell or particle we touch is impacted by our vibrations. Our inbreathing and outbreathing draw matter inward, with the potential of transforming, upgrading, and scattering it to repopulate the earth with a finer grade of material. In this way, we are at the frontiers of evolution.

In seeing this process, we begin to realize the profound importance not only of our responsible actions in relation to the physical world, but also of the purity and kindness of our thoughts in relation to the evolutionary progress of manifestation as a whole. If this understanding could truly penetrate our consciousness, we would all put aside the pettiness that arises in our self-seeking human machinations and open our hearts to the whole of humanity. This cannot be accomplished in the abstract, but by dissolving one selfish thought at a time in our true work toward unity and brotherhood with all.

As parts of our nation, we can raise our voices in support of diplomacy, sustainability, and responsible peace, which are so essential for our survival. In our homes we can monitor our thoughts and responses to make them more harmonious and loving, which is so essential for the nurture of our spirits. And in the Theosophical Society we can put aside divisions to focus on building a spiritual unity, which is so absolutely essential for the Society's effectiveness and indeed for its continued existence. Each letting go of old agendas, each reaching out in brotherhood, each stretching beyond self for the greater good—every one of these selfless expressions is a small initial circumstance that can manifest in hugely impactful ways—perhaps far beyond our little imaginings. We are the element for transformation, one thought or action at a time. We have to become the change that we long for—the change that cannot occur unless we do our part—now.

Originally printed in the September-October 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: O'Grady, John P. "The Dark Side of Succession." Quest  88.5 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2000): pg 178-183.

By John P. O'Grady

In New England the forest first came back in the old burial grounds, places barely remembered and hardly noticed anymore, where shade was expected and even welcomed. As trees crowded in among the graves, the letters inscribed on the markers simply let go from the cold stones, fluttered down to the ground like leaves, and in this way word followed voice back into the quiet earth.

In forestry school, where they otherwise teach you a variety of nasty tricks to pull on the natural world, they redeem themselves, somewhat, by providing you with a wondrous piece of lore. Called the Story of Succession, it's one of the few things from my forestry education that stayed with me over the years. I learned it in a course called Forest Ecology, which is really just an unacknowledged kind of metaphysics for resource managers. As I was taught it, this story comes right out of the nineteenth-century book of ideas about the balance of nature. And it goes like this.

When the first European explorers showed up in New England in the sixteenth century, everything looked like a Thomas Cole painting. When the English settlers arrived at Plymouth and Boston, they looked out upon this new world and all they could see was dark and intemperate forest, teeming with all manner of savagery. The Puritans referred to their new neighborhood as a "howling wilderness," an attitude that was passed down through the generations. You can still see it in Cotton Mather, who was writing in the early eighteenth century. "Beware the Evening Wolves," he says, "the rabid and howling Wolves of the Wilderness, which would wreak Havock among you, and not leave the Bones till morning." I heard something rather like this from my forestry professors when they talked about those people who would save the trees during the last quarter of the twentieth century.

If in addition to textbooks on silviculture and economics, my fellow forestry students and I had been exposed to Butler's Lives of the Saints, our education might have had the necessary depth required to understand the Story of Succession. For instance, I think it no coincidence that the name "Boston" is actually a contraction for "Botulf's Stone," which is back in Lincolnshire, England. Ironically, it's a better rock upon which to found a myth than the one in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Botulf was a popular saint in medieval times. His calling was to hike around in the still standing forests of his day, and chase out all the "develen and gostes" that made their homes there. When these poor wood sprites realized they couldn't scare away the earnest saint, they asked him why, since they had already been expelled from everywhere else, they could not simply remain in this quiet corner of the world, where they bothered no one. In response, the saint made the sign of the cross, and the poor "develen and gostes" were thereby forced to flee. They must have gone to North America.

Thus when it comes to Cotton Mather, you could say he was the Stephen King of his day. Long before the horror novel was invented, Mather was providing his eager readers with spine-chilling accounts of witchcraft and other forms of demonism going on in their woods. With gusto he warned them about "Droves of Devils" that cavorted in the yet unmanaged forests of New England, ready to pounce upon all but the most vigilant of Christian soldiers. The good people of New England took heed, and hacked away at their forests until, by 1800, the wolves had been exterminated and most of the landscape had been rendered into pasture.

This latest expulsion of "develen and gostes" was the first triumph of land resource management in North America. As if to commemorate this early victory over the dark forces of the natural world, the federal agency in whose care the citizens of the United States today place their forests is organized along military lines: it follows a strict chain of command, requires all who belong to it wear a uniform, maintains cadres of "rangers," and calls itself the Forest Service. They've even recruited a bear to their ranks, and they make him wear a hat.

Ah, but such victories are short-lived. Blame it on economics, blame it on improved technology, or blame it on other wars in other places, but by the 1830s people were abandoning New England in throngs. Better land--and lots of it--awaited them in the west, so they surged forth into the setting sun. In their wake, the forest sidled back into New England and another remarkable transformation ensued: the forest returned. The region today lies more thoroughly under shade than at any time since Cotton Mather. The wolves took a little longer to return, but they're back now too. Perhaps you've not heard about this. That's okay. It's just a sign of how smart the wolves have become. I think it safe to assume the "develen and gostes" are here too.

A more concise version of the Story of Succession comes from my old college notes. It takes the form of a definition, the sort we were required to memorize and repeat back on countless exams: "Succession is the progressive development of vegetation toward its highest ecological expression, the climax." As suggested by the final word in this somewhat prudish, technical description, out there under cover of the wild lurks a poem. Or at the very least a boundless passion. To forestry professors and their well-heeled students, this is worrisome.

Yet even foresters have their renegades, the most famous of whom is Aldo Leopold (1887-1948). He went to forestry school at Yale, where he listened to an early version of the same Story of Succession I was told at the University of Maine seventy years later. If only the professors knew the corrupting influence this tale has had on certain students, I'm sure they would drop it from the curriculum.

In the case of Aldo Leopold, the story became the basis for his revolutionary Land Ethic, which he lays out in a book entitled A Sand County Almanac. "In short," he writes, "plant succession steered the course of history." Leopold doesn't have much to say about the "climax" stage of succession, but he does go on at length about fertility ("the ability of soil to receive, store, and release energy") and health ("the capacity of the land for self-renewal"). He summed up this Land Ethic in what might be called the Golden Rule of environmentalism: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

One quickly discerns that all this talk about nature is in fact an allegory for how one might live the good life, in the old Platonic sense of doing the right thing. This is Leopold's ecological Republic. Like all utopian visions, it presents an Eden or Arcadia or someplace where natural harmony prevails, much as high barometric pressure does over the West Coast in summer. Thus in terms of Utopia's weather, every day is a good day. A Sand County Almanac was the best book I read in forestry school, but I had to discover it outside of my classes.

Of course, right from the start, the Story of Succession (not to mention any ethic derived from it) has had its critics. Among certain scientists, the Story of Succession was always already a diminished thing because, well, it's a story. Worse, it's less than a story—it's a fable. They say that those who place their faith in such narrative are willfully blind to natural phenomena, choosing not to see things as they truly are but rather as they wish to see them.

Even though the Story of Succession has been roundly rejected by these people, no one has put forth a more compelling account of the mysterious workings of the universe. Some folks just don't like stories of any kind, but they enjoy obliterating a utopia when they spot one. To all who would seek a pristine state of nature, they say: "Don't use science to prove your myth!"

I must admit, there is some substance in what they say. As the ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan puts it: "We are often left hearing the truism, 'Before the White Man came, North America was essentially a wilderness where the few Indian inhabitants lived in constant harmony with nature'—even though four to twelve million people speaking two hundred languages variously burned, pruned, hunted, hacked, cleared, irrigated, and planted in an astonishing diversity of habitats for centuries."

In early New England this is confirmed by Thomas Morton. He complains in 1637 that what few big trees are to be found there are located around the swamps, where the extensive broadcast fires set by the Indians each spring could not reach to do them harm. As for the rest of the region, the fires kept the woods fairly open and the trees reduced in size. Thus the forest never achieved the "climax" you hear about in the Story of Succession. "For the savages," says Morton, "by this custom of their firing the country, have spoiled all the rest, and it has continued from the beginning."

Environmental historians are fond of saying that, if ever there had been "virgin forest stable at climax" in New England, it disappeared long before the first history was ever written. Such visions of an untouched wilderness, they say, exist chiefly in the tales of other times. Thus the Story of Succession, with its ardent talk of fertility and health, with its timeworn plot that leads inevitably toward some "highest expression" of being, is consigned by more sophisticated minds to the hinterlands of myth. Yet I, for one, take comfort in knowing that there are some places not even historians can enter.

Myth is undervalued in a scientific education. To explain what I mean, I'll turn once more to my old college notes. In a Wildlife Management class, we were informed about the "Edge Effect." My notes define it as "the interactions that take place in the transitional zone where one cover type ends and another begins." In other words, the Edge Effect is what goes on along the boundaries between different ecological communities or realms. The plants that grow where forest meets grassland, for instance, produce the perfect combination of habitat and food supply to encourage an abundance of wildlife. That's why the New England Indians were setting all those fires—the flames generated the subsequent growth of plants that lure elk, deer, turkeys, and numerous other animals. New England, under Indian management, was one vast game farm throughout.

Myth is a kind of Edge Effect. It occurs between the human community and what is not human. In one sense, the word "myth" simply means a "telling of events," but this telling creates the proper conditions for commerce between realms. Myth is a boundary situation, placing us at the very brink of being human. It's like standing on the edge of an open grave. Look around the next time you attend a funeral. Amid all the flowers and tears, you'll see people casting furtive glances into that dark opening in the earth. Be assured, they are looking well past the bottom of the hole, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ferocious emptiness. Nowhere in my notes can I find a definition for this term.

Understanding of these darker matters must be sought in places that offer the proper cover. One such place is Henry Thoreau's journal, especially in the last years of his not long life. Unfolding in those pages is the earliest version of the Story of Succession. So far as anybody knows, it was Thoreau who, in the 1850s, coined the term "forest succession." But you'll look long and hard through the scientific literature before you find any mention of his name. Certainly it was never spoken in any forestry class I took.

A critical commonplace has it that Thoreau's journal in the last decade of his life became less "literary" and more "scientific." So far as it goes, this is an adequate description. But as a diligent reader bushwacks through the abundance of obsessive and repetitive observations that Thoreau makes about the changes going on in the eastern Massachusetts landscape--long passages that even the most generous of readers describe as little more than unusually well written field notes—the ferocious emptiness will occasionally be seen bolting from cover. "I confess," he writes about a year and a half before his death, "that I love to be convinced of this inextinguishable vitality in Nature. I would rather that my body should be buried in a soil thus wide-awake than a mere inert and dead earth."

Another place the ferocious emptiness gives a snarl is in a story that comes from eighth-century China. The famous painter Wu Tao-tzu had just finished work on his masterpiece, a grand landscape done on a wall of the palace. It took more than a decade to complete. The only thing more far-reaching and impressive than his painting was the solitude in which the great artist pursued his work during all those years.

He kept the painting under a huge drape until it was finished. When the Emperor arrived for the unveiling, Wu Tao-tzu gave the signal and the covering dropped away to reveal an immense and awesome scene rendered in exquisite detail: there were wild mountains, pristine lakes surrounded with venerable trees, and clouds boiling off cold ridges into limitless expanses of sky. If you looked closely, you could even see numerous people at work and play throughout the spectacular landscape. The Emperor stared astonished at this fabulous country.

"Look!" the artist exclaimed pointing, "there's a cave in the side of that mountain. Inside is a dragon. Let's go pay a visit!" He clapped his hands and a gate suddenly flew open on the side of a mountain, revealing the entrance to the cave. Wu Tao-tzu stepped into the painting, turned around, and said to the Emperor: "Come on, it's even better inside. I can't put into words how lovely it is, I can only show you. Follow me!"

With that, he entered the cave. But before the Emperor could gather his wits and follow, the painting and the ten thousand things it contained—including the artist and the yet unseen dragon in the cave—began to fade away. In no time, everything had vanished. The Emperor was left staring at a blank wall.

The ferocious emptiness is something like that, but not so far away. You encounter it when you go back to a favorite spot of wilderness, some woodland haunt where you enjoyed a family picnic or spent your honeymoon camping--let's say it's in Idaho—only to find that the place has been "harvested" (my old college notes define this as "the removal of a crop or stand of financially or physically mature trees"). Or you return to the house you grew up in and discover the woods where you used to play are gone and in its place are a shopping center and a lot of houses that all look alike. In this case, it's your childhood that's been harvested. Suddenly you begin to get the picture: sooner or later everything—including you—will meet the same fate. Now that's the ferocious emptiness.

You'll even encounter it on the tops of mountains. An acquaintance of mine recently told me about a climb he made up Borah Peak. At 12,655 feet, it's the highest mountain in Idaho. Technically, not a very difficult ascent, but according to one guidebook at least three people have died on it. Two were swept away by an avalanche, and the other lost control of his glissade and went soaring off a cliff edge, never to be seen again.

My acquaintance and his brother climbed this mountain in late summer, when the weather was clear and the snow for the most part gone. They had a safe trip, save for one unsettling moment, but it had nothing to do with physical danger.

After making the arduous hike that climbs 5200 vertical feet in just three and a half miles, the two young men made it to the top. Out here in the west, most of the high peaks have some kind of register on their summits, places where successful climbers can sign in. It's a record of achievement, as good as pinning your name to a cloud.

My acquaintance located the heavy aluminum box stashed between some boulders. He opened it to take out the notebook that holds the names, but was surprised to find the box filled with dirt. "It was the weirdest dirt I've ever seen on a mountain," he told me. "I wondered how it could have gotten into the box. I figured it must be the wind.

"So I reach in there and feel around till I come up with the notebook and pull it out. It's filthy, covered with all this gray dust, and so are my hands and clothes at this point. It's even getting in my mouth. There's no water up there so I have to live with it for a while. Anyways, I shake the book off and hand it to my brother. He opens it to the page with the last entry on it so we can sign in. He starts reading for a moment and then screams, 'Oh, hell!' and throws the notebook down on the ground. 'Oh hell!' he keeps screaming, 'Oh hell!'

" 'Kerry, man,' I say to him 'what's wrong? What's the matter?' And he looks over to me and says, 'That's not dirt. The last entry in the notebook says it's some guy who died a couple weeks ago and they cremated him. That's his ashes! His son must have come up here and put them into the register. What the hell was he thinking? Oh hell, and you've got him all over you!' "

I like then to picture these two young men, bounding their way down the mountain, one of them screaming "Oh hell!" and the other spitting as the dust unfurls behind him like a banner, until far below, among the sheltering trees, they find a clear stream where they might wash away this memento mori obtained at higher elevation, and thereby purge their memory of this man they never knew, and forget their sudden encounter with the ferocious emptiness.

Perhaps by now you see where this—and the Story of Succession—has been leading.

Among the pantheon of ancient Greek deities, the only one who had no altar dedicated to him was Hades, lord of the underworld. That's because he is everywhere and requires no special place or temple to make his appearance. Your mortal body is altar enough. He just shows up, unbidden. In many ways, he is the most generous of all the gods, bestowing his blessings wherever he roams, and that's why he acquired the nickname Pluto, which means "wealth" or "riches." Everybody loves him. Or should. In fact the running joke in ancient times was that whoever pays him a visit is so overwhelmed with his beneficence, they just can't bear to leave. If this wasn't so, far more people would return from his kingdom than has been the case.

"Nature loves to hide," says Heraclitus, who wrote a whole book on the subject and then hid it away in a temple. What fragments we have from this fugitive text suggest that Nature is yet another nickname for the lord of the underworld. Wisdom too may be found in the treasure house of the charitable Hades, which is why philosophy can be defined as "the practice of death."

And so we come full circle to the Story of Succession, the dark side of which is death. As in forests, so in the seral stages of life. Even speech itself has its Story of Succession, as pointed out by Augustine, in an Aldo Leopold kind of way: "Not everything grows old, but everything dies. . . . That is the way our speech is constructed by sounds which are significant. What we say would not be complete if one word did not cease to exist when it has sounded its appointed part, so that it can be succeeded by another." Meaning itself, we must conclude, is yet another of those gifts that come up from below.

Today when you ask college students what their goals in life are, they commonly respond, "Success!" The transient ground upon which they chase their dreams constantly gives way to yet further ground, similar in kind. "Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed," is Emily Dickinson's version of this same story.

The dark side of succession, the ferocious emptiness, reveals itself in the clear air of a high granite peak, in the ultra-violet fragrance of a flower that grows only there. Or it stands forth in the green shimmer of a mountain meadow, in the icy flicker and blinding flash of a waterfall in winter, or in the quiet amazement of fields and forests all across New England as the moonlight pours down upon sleepers in warm beds. Or it's there in the autumn, when the leaves let go one more time in the roaring cascade of years.

You see it too along the thousands of "Golden Miles" all across America, leading back to that very first dream of success, where everything becomes transparent as hunger pains in the very belly of being.

John P. O'Grady teaches literature and environmental writing at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His latest book, Grave Goods, is forthcoming in 2001 from the University of Utah Press.