Quest Magazine

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.

Printed in the Winter 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Leitch, Aaron, "The Tongue of Angels" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 20-25

An Introduction to the “Enochian” Language of Dr. John Dee

By Aaron Leitch

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels . . .
                                                          —1 Corinthians 13:1

The late 1500s was a tumultuous time for England. Previous to this era, the nation had been an irrelevant hick town on the edge of Europe. The true cultural centers of the Western world were found in places like Germany, Italy, and Spain. However, things were about to change drastically, as the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the advent of the Elizabethan era of England—and the world would never be the same.

Queen Elizabeth’s coronation took place in November 1558, and she immediately set about establishing the Church of England, scoring a massive victory for the growing Protestant movement and ultimately diluting Catholic political power in Europe. Most often, her father —King Henry VIII—is credited with the creation of the Anglican church, and he certainly was the one who broke with the pope in 1534 and founded the English Protestant movement. But King Henry’s church was essentially no different than Catholicism; it differed only in refusing to recognize the authority of the pope. It would be Queen Elizabeth who established the Anglican church that we know today. Her actions, understandably, created something of a civil war in England, mainly a political war between the newer Protestants against the entrenched Catholics—and it was far from bloodless. People were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered when they were suspected of being “rebels” against whichever side was in power at a given time.

Meanwhile, England was growing and beginning to move toward its imperial destiny. It was organizing its navy, establishing new trade routes and diplomatic relations with foreign nations (such as Russia), and preparing to make legal claims to large portions of the New World. More and more, England took advantage of new technological advances from Europe (such as navigation equipment) to establish itself as a force in global politics. The queen’s spymaster established the most elaborate network of “intelligencers” the world had ever seen, and for the first time in its history someone suggested that England should concern itself with establishing its own empire.

The man who made that suggestion—recording the term British Empire for the first time in history—was Dr. John Dee. He was Elizabeth’s court philosopher as well as her longtime personal friend and one of her primary advisers. Dee was at the very heart of the Elizabethan era and the changes it initiated: he brought the new navigation tech home from his studies abroad, causing Sir Walter Raleigh to consult with him before embarking for the New World. Dee taught the queen’s spymaster how to use elaborate encryption techniques, and lobbied for England to take political and military action against its largest rival: Spain. Dee was a true Renaissance man—educated in mathematics, astronomy, new technology, medicine, scientific experimentation, and—most important for our current study—magick and mysticism. (Magick is a spelling favored by many occultists today to distinguish occult magic from ordinary stage magic.)

As stated in his journals, it was his desire to extend his education beyond the realm of human knowledge—most of which he had already mastered. Therefore, like the prophets of biblical times, Dee sought direct communication with God and his angels. To this end, Dee employed the talents of the medium Sir Edward Kelley. They used the technique of scrying (sometimes spelled skrying) to contact these entities. Scrying is a technique by which one sees images of alternative realities by gazing into a suitable medium. Dee and Kelley used a fairly standard crystal ball for this purpose. Their scrying records may even be the origin of the popular Western image of the old wizard gazing into a crystal ball.

Together, the men performed evocations of angelic intelligences such as Annael (archangel of Venus), Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. Under the tutelage of these familiar archangels, the men were introduced to a host of previously unknown angels, along with a detailed system of magick and invocations written in the celestial tongue itself.

Today, the language Dee and Kelley received from their scrying sessions is often referred to by the misnomer “Enochian.” This comes from the fact the system of angel magick recorded in Dee’s journals was said (by the angels) to have originated with the Biblical prophet Enoch. Enoch (Genesis 5:18–24) was the seventh generation down the line from Adam, and he was said to have been taken bodily into heaven to explore the realm of the angels. A tradition also arose in which Enoch was said to have recorded a small portion (a mere 366 books) of the wisdom found in the heavenly Book of Life (mentioned throughout Revelation, especially chapter 5). This Holy Book contained every pronouncement made in the Court of God, from the commands used in the Creation all the way to the words that will bring about the End Times.

According to legend, Enoch’s books had been lost in the biblical deluge, and the angels Dee and Kelley contacted claimed they were reseeding that lost wisdom into humanity through the two Englishmen. Thus Dee’s system of angel magick is termed “Enochian,” and the divine language he recorded has taken the same moniker. However, in Dee’s journals, the angels (and Dee himself) referred to it by various names, such as the “Angelical tongue,” the “Adamical language,” and even the “first language of God-Christ.”

These latter two terms are somewhat strange, but they are vastly important if we want to understand what exactly Dee believed he was recording. His interest in the language of the angels was not his own personal curiosity; he was, in fact, only one in a long line of scholars who believed in the existence of—and made some attempt to discover—the primordial tongue of the human race.

Searching for the Primordial Language

From the very advent of the spoken word, language has been considered something sacred and magical. To be able to share ideas between people was a powerful innovation, as was the ability to name and train work animals, such as hunting and herding dogs. To know the true name of a person also granted some power over them: as our legal systems became more sophisticated, the true name of a person (especially in the form of a signature) became a very powerful political tool—and it remains such to this day.

Right from the start, language was associated with the spiritual realm. Some of our earliest words, and the hieroglyphs that represented them in writing, were received by shamans communing with their patron gods in ecstatic trance. And of course many of these words were applied as names for the spiritual forces of nature. As with the work animals mentioned previously, knowing the true name of any given spirit—along with the words of command to which it would respond—was to have control over it. To this day, both the name and signature of a spirit is considered a necessity if the spirit is to be addressed or exorcised.

By the time we reach the historical era, we find that spoken language has already ceased to be a state-of-the-art technology, and has instead become a form of “wisdom from the past.” As both speech and writing became more common in the secular world, priests began to look toward languages of the past for sacred and magical considerations. For example, the priests of Babylon used Sumerian—the language of their predecessors—as their sacred tongue. Likewise, the priests of any Egyptian dynasty were most interested in the hieroglyphics used by previous dynasties, which were of course engraved upon many ancient temples and monuments throughout the land. This practice continued well into the Christian era, when dead languages such as Latin, Greek, and biblical Hebrew became the paramount sacred languages of the West. The fact that these languages were “dead”—meaning they were no longer in use among common people and therefore no longer subject to change—made them perfect to set aside and use only for holy rites.

As priests and mystics began to look into the past for sacred language, they eventually developed the belief that all languages must trace their roots to some original prototype. If the language of your predecessors was more sacred and powerful than your own, then surely the language of their predecessors must be more holy still. Go back far enough, and one should theoretically reach the First Language in its pure form—exactly as the gods had handed it to the first humans. This is the language that would have been used to hold familiar conversation with the gods and angels, and it would have likewise been used to give all things in the world their first—that is, true—names.

(At this point I must mention a modern science fiction novel that happens to illustrate these ideas: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. In the story, the primordial tongue is presented as the original programming language of the human brain—and knowing the language allowed people to issue irresistible commands directly into others’ minds, or even erase them completely.)

We can see echoes of this tradition throughout biblical literature, especially in the book of Genesis and certain apocryphal texts. The saga of human language begins in Genesis with God himself using some kind of language to “speak” the universe into existence. Then, a few days later, Adam is given the task of applying names to all things in the world. Because the Bible does not mention Adam creating or learning a new language, and because he obviously holds familiar conversation with God, angels, and even the animals of the garden, it is generally assumed he was speaking the same language that God spoke in the first chapter of Genesis.

In fact, the Bible makes no mention of humans creating their own language until many generations later, at the incident at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). There we find the biblical explanation for all of the various languages that spread across the face of the earth: the rulers of Babel (Babylon) began construction of a massive tower that would have reached the palaces of heaven. In order to put a stop to this hubris, God confused the builders’ tongues—making it impossible for them to communicate with one another, and bringing an end to the construction project. Eventually these people went their separate ways and founded their own nations, thus giving rise to the differing cultures of the world.

This mythos—whether or not we take it as literal history—raises all sorts of intriguing questions. What was the pre-Babel tongue like? Was it the same as the language Adam spoke in Eden? Most importantly, are there ways to rediscover the original Adamic tongue, and what would it mean for humanity if we could? Could it be used to program minds, as we see in science fiction like Snow Crash? Would it allow us to speak directly to God and his angels—thereby granting incredible magical power to the person who could speak it?

For nearly all of recorded history, mystics have sought to reestablish access to Enoch’s lost wisdom and the Celestial Book from whence it was derived. Other cultures have had their own myths and names for this same concept. The Egyptians called it the Book of Thoth, and recorded their own sagas about human attempts to possess it. Early Hebrew legends speak of the Sepher Raziel (“Book of the Secrets of God”), which was given to Adam in Eden, although he lost it at the Fall. However, once we reach Renaissance England, we find that it is the legend of Enoch that has captured the attention of most Jewish and Christian mystics. They wished to astrally visit the heavens—like Enoch, Ezekiel, or St. John—and catch a glimpse of the Celestial Book of Life and the primordial tongue Adam had used to name and speak with all things.

For a very long time, biblical Hebrew was considered an example of the Adamic language. The Old Testament was written in it, and therefore all of the words and prophecies that came to mankind through the ancient prophets and forefathers were in Hebrew. Surely, then, this was the same language used by God and the angels in the formation and direction of the universe. (This tradition is reflected in the proto-Kabbalistic text Sepher Yetzirah, “Book of Formation.”) However, non-Jewish Western mystics suspected that what we call biblical Hebrew was not the Hebrew Adam would have known. The story of the Tower of Babel did not say the original language survived the incident. Besides, they knew that languages tend to change drastically over time. While they accepted Hebrew as a sacred language, they tended to believe it could only be an imperfect reflection of the original celestial tongue.

Diagram 1. Agrippa's Magical Alphabets

During the Renaissance, a line of famous occultists and cryptographers began to experiment with the rediscovery of Adam’s language. In the early 1500s, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, in which he devoted many chapters to methods of encrypting and decrypting names of God and angels. Among this material, he also recorded three of the earliest Renaissance examples of divine writing: Celestial, Malachim (Angelic), and Passing the River (see diagram 1).

These are not languages, but alphabets given for encoding divine names upon talismans. Because Hebrew was considered a descendant of the true Adamic language, it is no surprise to see Hebrew reflected in these magickal alphabets. All three share similarities to Hebrew in letter shape and direction of writing (right to left). They differ from Hebrew in that they are very thin scripts: most of the letters are formed by small circles connected by thin lines. The letters of the Celestial alphabet, we are told, were formed by drawing out certain star patterns and connecting the lines (just as we do with constellations). Thus, what we see in the Celestial alphabet is an attempt to create a language of the heavens, a reflection of what Adam may have learned in Eden. The two following alphabets, Malachim and Passing the River, appear to be later adaptations of this same alphabet. (Malachim, especially, seems to be a corrupted “version” of Celestial, with several of the letters switched around. I recommend sticking with Celestial.)

In the mid-1500s, we find an obscure alchemical text called the Voarchadumia by Pantheus, containing one of the first examples of a celestial script that is not merely a variant form of Hebrew (though the letters certainly show signs of Hebrew, as well as Greek, influence). This appears to be the next step in the search for the Divine Language. After illustrating the Hebrew alphabet and a magickal alphabet that appears to be a mixture of Agrippa’s three scripts, the book goes on to give an “Alphabet of Enoch.” This alphabet uses thick line strokes, is written from left to right, and corresponds to our twenty-six familiar Latin letters. No mythological context is given for this alphabet; however, we can assume they are supposed to represent the language Enoch saw in the Celestial Tablets. 

Diagram 2. Voarchadumia Enochian Script

What stands out most about the Voarchadumia’s Enochian alphabet is its similarities to the Angelical alphabet later recorded by Dee. He owned a copy of Voarchadumia and had annotated it heavily, showing a keen interest in the magickal alphabets it reveals. There is a definite similarity between the style of Dee’s Angelical letters and the Enochian script of Voarchadumia. While none of Dee’s letters actually appear in the earlier text, it would be remiss not to list this book as one of many inspirations behind Dee’s material.

Dee recorded a new alphabet as revealed by the angels, advancing another step beyond Pantheus’s attempt. Instead of merely leaving us a mystical alphabet, he also transcribed an entire book and several lengthy invocations written in a never before seen (and still largely undecipherable) language. For the first time, the Adamic tongue was presented as a proper language in and of itself, rather than a mere substitution-cipher alphabet plagiarized from Hebrew. The book given to Dee was nothing less than the Book of Life, the Celestial Tablets that had once been transcribed by Enoch. The Angels called it the Book of the Speech from God (in Angelical: Loagaeth), and told Dee they were reintroducing this holy text into humanity to rectify and reconcile all earthly religions.

Since the publication of Dee’s journals, his Angelical language has become foundational to much of Western occultism. Though it has never supplanted Hebrew as a sacred language, it has certainly taken its place alongside it. It was adopted by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late 1800s, and has been disseminated from there throughout the Western esoteric world.

The Angelical Tongue of Dee and Kelley

				Diagram 3. Sample of text from Liber Loagaeth, transliterated into English letters. According to Dee’s angels, these lines are a “preface to the creation of angels” during the initial formulation of the universe.

The saga of the Angelic language recorded in Dee’s diaries begins on March 26, 1583, when Liber Loagaeth (containing the words of the Creation) is revealed to Kelley. He described the book as “all full of squares”—each page was later revealed to contain a 49 x 49 grid—and written in a completely alien tongue. We have only small samples of the language: including Liber Loagaeth, the famed “Forty-Eight Angelic Keys” (invocations for summoning the angels), and several tablets and seals containing divine and angelic names.

The Enochian language possesses its own grammar and syntax (not derived from Hebrew), as well as a unique alphabet of twenty-one characters. The latter was first shown to Kelley on May 6, 1583 in a simple script form. Then, later, its proper, “talismanic” form was revealed. The exact shapes of these letters are important, as are the exact shapes of Hebrew letters when used to write holy scripture or inscribe talismans:

The Archangel Gabriel says the following on April 21, 1583:

Whereby even as the mind of man is moved at an ordered speech, and is easily persuaded in things that are true, so are the creatures of God stirred up in themselves, when they hear the words wherewithal they were nursed and brought forth: For nothing moveth, that is not persuaded: neither can any thing be persuaded that is unknown. The Creatures of God understand you not, you are not of their Cities: you are become enemies, because you are separated from him that Governeth the City by ignorance.

Gabriel goes on to describe how Adam lost the sacred language when he fell from grace, and thus constructed a new tongue based on his imperfect memory of the language of Eden. This new language—a pale reflection of the original—is described by Gabriel as what we would call biblical Hebrew. That language was the panglobal human tongue until the Tower of Babel—after which, Gabriel says, biblical Hebrew was similarly lost and replaced with what we know as modern Hebrew. But the original language of God-Christ (the Creator; see John 1), the tongue of the angels and of Eden, could be used to perform miracles.

Diagram 4. The Andelical Alphabet

Gabriel also explains that Angelical is a magical language of power rather than an earthly spoken tongue. Unfortunately, outside of instructions for using the Forty-Eight Keys and Liber Loagaeth to summon the angels, very little is said about how to use the language and its alphabet for other magical purposes. We are, however, given a rather large (but too often overlooked) clue when Gabriel insists that Angelical “is preferred before that which you call Hebrew.” Dee didn’t speak Hebrew on a day-to-day basis—he used it strictly as a sacred and magical language. Thus it is very likely Gabriel was telling Dee to use Angelical in the same way he would otherwise use Hebrew: for practical magick.

Dee was familiar with several techniques used with Hebrew letters or the Hebrew-derived magical alphabets. Most of these can be found in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, which Dee owned and studied very carefully. Elements of that work can be found throughout his Enochian system of magick. The book is even mentioned once in Dee’s diaries, in connection with the reception of a system for remote viewing of foreign nations. Therefore when we are faced with such an enigma as the Angelical alphabet (and how to use it), it makes sense to return to this source material, to see what Agrippa had to say concerning sacred alphabets and characters.

The relevant sections of Agrippa’s work are contained in book 3, and begin with chapter 23, entitled, appropriately enough, “Of the Tongue of the Angels, and of Their Speaking amongst Themselves, and with Us.” Over the next few chapters, we are taught various methods of discovering and formulating names for angels and spirits set over anything in existence. They include everything from obtaining the names in a codelike fashion from sacred scripture to creating new names through various Kabbalistic cipher tables. He tells us in chapter 24:

But the masters of the Hebrews think that the names of angels were imposed upon them by Adam, according to that which is written, the Lord brought all things which he had made unto Adam, that he should name them, and as he called anything, so the name of it was. Hence, the Hebrew mecubals [Kabbalists] think, together with magicians, that it is in the power of man to impose names upon spirits, but of such a man only who is dignified, and elevated to his virtue by some divine gift, or sacred authority . . . which names then no otherwise than oblations, and sacrifices offered to the gods, obtain efficacy and virtue to draw any spiritual substance from above or beneath, for to make any desired effect. (emphasis in the original)

Of course, Agrippa uses Hebrew throughout the text to illustrate the various methods of name generation. However, he also states the following in chapter 27:

Because the letters of every tongue . . . have in their number, order, and figure a celestial and divine original, I shall easily grant this calculation concerning the names of spirits to be made not only by Hebrew letters, but also by Chaldean, and Arabic, Egyptian, Greek, Latin, and any other, the tables being rightly made after the imitation of the precedents.

And that brings us full circle—right back to the concept of the primordial language. That is what Agrippa is referring to when he suggests that every language has a “celestial and divine original.” Because of this original celestial tongue, any of the post-Babel languages will bear some distant connection to it. He therefore insists that characters from any known sacred language can be used in place of Hebrew for his magical and talismanic techniques.

	Diagram 5. John Dee’s Angelical talisman (front side), created for his neighbor Isabel Lister, who was suffering from severe depression and tendencies toward self-harm.

Dee simply took this to the logical conclusion: use the characters of that celestial original instead. And, sure enough, we get to see Dee doing exactly that in a later book of his journals, where he cryptically describes the creation of an Angelical talisman for a neighbor in need of emotional healing:

Conclusion

The Angelical (often called “Enochian”) language clearly did not arise in a cultural vacuum. It was, in fact, the culmination of a generations-long search for the primordial language spoken by Adam in Paradise. There is little academic doubt that such a language never existed in the physical realm; the different languages of the world evolved on their own, without need of a Babel to explain their existence. There was never a universal human language. However, I firmly believe that human beings really did receive the first words from their gods, that speech and, later, writing were originally a closely guarded magical technology, and that sacred languages do contain real inherent power to this very day.

Every culture has its sacred tongue(s), and I believe Dee wanted to discover a sacred language that belonged purely to Christianity, rather than adopting those of other cultures such as Hebrew and Greek. To this end, he utilized magical techniques to summon the angels and simply ask them directly. They responded. Whether you believe this to be literally true or metaphorical is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Dee got a rather large response—more than any known mystic before him—and the West was given an elaborate sacred tongue that has gone on to have a massive impact on our mysticism and occultism.

I believe that Angelical is the true sacred language of the West. Yet it has only been within the last few decades that we have come to understand it (to some extent) in the context in which Dee originally intended. Much of what we have remains untranslated (including the vast bulk of Loagaeth itself). That means there is much work left to be done, and we haven’t even begun to see the impact this language will have on the Western Mystery Tradition for generations to come.

Zorge (“In Friendship”)

August 2016

Aaron Leitch is a senior member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the academic Societas Magica. A scholar, practitioner, and teacher of Western Hermeticism, the Solomonic grimoire tradition, and Enochian magick, he has authored such books as Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, The Angelical Language: Volumes 1 and 2, and The Essential Enochian Grimoire.

Printed in the Winter 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "How Soon Is Now?" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 16-19 

An Interview with Daniel Pinchbeck

The noted Gen X author and thinker discusses collective awakening, regenerative ecology, and the Burning Man festival.

By Richard Smoley

If I were to think of a central theme in the work of Daniel Pinchbeck, I would say that it is the meme of social transformation and collective awakening. (A meme, in case you’re not familiar with the word, is the intellectual equivalent of a gene—it is an idea that perpetuates itself. The concept of God is a meme; so is the knowledge of how to build a canoe.)

Pinchbeck is the author of several books, including Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway, 2002); 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006); and Notes from the Edge Times (Tarcher/Penguin, 2010). His new book, How Soon Is Now?, will be released in February 2017. It features a preface from rock star Sting and an introduction from actor and comedian Russell Brand. Pinchbeck is also one of the founders of the websites Evolverhealth.com and Reality Sandwich. His own website is pinchbeck.io.

In his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Pinchbeck did not so much insist that a great upheaval would take place in the year 2012, but rather suggested that the year could serve as a meme that would inspire collective awakening. Similarly, in How Soon Is Now?, he contends that the present environmental crisis can and must serve as the catalyst for an initiation of the human race into higher levels of being—and into new, regenerative modes of living and working.

Pinchbeck has also written about Burning Man, a mass gathering that takes place in the Black Rock desert in Nevada in early September of each year. (Figures for the 2015 event indicate that over 67,000 people came.) Participants create Black Rock City, described on the Burning Man website as “a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” As its name indicates, the festival ends with the burning of a giant effigy (sixty-nine feet high in 2015) of a man. The event originated with the original burning of an effigy on a San Francisco beach in 1986 by artists Larry Harvey and Jerry James. The founders may have intended to create a kind of equivalent of the ancient mystery rites. Writing pseudonymously in Gnosis magazine in 1995, Harvey said, “Organizers of this modern mystery disclaim any conscious intention to reproduce the past,” but added that “the parallels are striking” between the ancient mysteries and Burning Man.

This interview was conducted by e-mail in the spring of 2016.

Richard Smoley: To start with, why don’t you talk a bit about your background—where you came from and where you see yourself today.

Daniel Pinchbeck: I was born in New York City. My parents were both artists. My father was an abstract painter and sculptor who came from England in the early 1960s to be part of the New York School, the Abstract Expressionists, but missed them by a few years. My mother is a writer and book editor. Her memoir, Minor Characters, focused on her childhood and her experiences as a young woman with the Beat Generation. She dated Jack Kerouac for a while, in 1957, and was with him when On the Road came out and he became a culture hero. This also hastened his self-destruction, as fame fueled his alcoholism.

I went to college for a few years—at Wesleyan University in Connecticut—before dropping out and working in magazines. I was an editor and freelancer writing on art and culture. I published my first book, Breaking Open the Head, on psychedelic shamanism, in 2002. My second book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, came out in 2006. I was featured in the documentary 2012: Time for Change, released in 2010. We looked at the prophecies of cultures like the Maya, but also looked at potential solutions to our social and ecological crises, such as permaculture, bioremediation, and alternatives to the monetary system. I also started the company Evolver.net with friends.

Today I am finishing my third book, How Soon Is Now?, which will come out in February. The book looks at the ecological crisis as a rite of passage or collective initiation for humanity. I then consider how we would have to change our technical infrastructure, social and economic system, and our media and culture, if we want to avert megacatastrophe, as much as possible. I propose this megacrisis could be a great opportunity for a collective awakening and unification of humanity. It could lead us to explore and channel our psychic abilities as well as our material and technical skills.

Smoley: More and more over time, people seem to be defining themselves generationally. There are the Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials, and so on. Some of these categories are due to media glibness, but it’s also true that many people genuinely see themselves this way. How do you think this applies to spirituality?

Pinchbeck: I don’t know, to be honest. Generations are very large generalizations! I suppose that different generations have psychological traits based on social conditions. I am Gen X, and we were kind of smooshed between the expansive Baby Boomers and the digital age. For the most part, we didn’t have access to resources. When I was young, there was no tech world, where a twenty-five-year-old could become a billionaire through a startup. Now the Millennials are inheriting the resources of the Boomers. The Millennials seem curious and open-minded, but also I think lurking in their psychology is a sense of the ecological crisis as a vast thing. This means that you may as well live for today, as tomorrow is very uncertain. Obviously social media is also having a huge impact, shattering attention spans but creating “group minds.”

There may be larger astrological impacts. Richard Tarnas develops this perspective in his book Cosmos and Psyche. It may be that long transits influence generations in various ways. The influence of Leo on the Baby Boomers, for instance, may have inflated their inherent narcissism, and made it difficult for them to see beyond their own narrow self-interest.

Smoley: What changes have you seen in your own spirituality as you’ve matured through the years?

Pinchbeck: I don’t like the term spirituality, as I find, when we use it, it tends to perpetuate a Western bias—a duality between spirit and matter, or spirit and nature. I like the terms occult or esoteric more. My esoteric or mystical worldview was developed in great depth in my second book, 2012, where I sought to make a synthesis of quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, the indigenous worldview, and modern occultists such as Rudolf Steiner and Carl Jung. Nothing much has changed since then.

A recent experience of the psychedelic 5-meo-DMT, produced by the bufo toad, seemed to substantiate the Buddhist conception of nirvana or the Void—a state of infinite bliss with no subject-object distinction, no time and space, and also no ego. No you. This seems to be the ultimate state of reality. We may ultimately understand it as the tenth dimension of vibratory superstrings that underlie any potential orchestration of time and space.

I found this experience, at first, very threatening to my sense of my identity and ego. While writing my 2012 book, I also had visionary experiences suggesting that free will, as we ordinarily understand it, is an illusion and that the universe is ultimately an expression of a unified consciousness that is, as the Hindus believe, playing with its infinite creative capacities. I think it takes work, from a Western worldview, to fully surrender to such a perspective and find the freedom within it. As Vedanta reminds us, ultimately we are that free-willing consciousness, or that “Poetic Genius,” in William Blake’s terms, which is exploring and creating through the medium of time and space and finitude.

Smoley: In a recent article, you called for regeneration as opposed to the current call for sustainability. Could you talk about this and what you mean by it?

Pinchbeck: I think we have to give up the illusion that we can “sustain” our current way of life or this political-economic system. Also, I think sustainability in general is the wrong goal to put forth. Nature does more than sustain itself—it thrives and flourishes. I love William McDonough’s ideas in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, also the work of Janine Benyus on biomimicry, and, of course, Buckminster Fuller’s ideas on design science. They all suggest that humanity could reinvent itself through a design revolution so that all of our industrial production supports the flourishing of natural systems.

This idea of moving toward a regenerative system opens up new space in our minds for envisioning how we can transform our present world. It also helps inspire us to engage in that process. What would a regenerative economic system look like? How would we incentivize activity that improves the health of the biosphere and penalize activity that further damages our ecosystems? Would we need to go beyond a debt-based currency altogether? How do we create social and political structures that are modeled on natural systems? I believe this approach will soon become the new paradigm.

Smoley: I gather that you were recently involved with an art installation in Times Square. Could you tell us a little about this?

Pinchbeck: My voice was recorded for Jungle-ized, an audio project that mapped the Amazonian jungle onto Times Square. Essentially, you wear headphones, walk around, and hear different bird and animal sounds, tribal chants, the rushing of the river, and so on—and also my voice, as well as that of the anthropologist Jeremy Narby. The piece was a beautiful intervention.

Smoley: A few years ago, your writing focused a lot on the year 2012. How did the coming of this year fulfill your expectations, or disappoint them? Or both?

Pinchbeck: My book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, on the prophecies of cultures like the Maya and Hopi, came out in 2006. In that book, I never argued that we would see a massive psychic awakening or destruction at the end of the Mayan Long Count (December 21, 2012). What I realized was that this was all up to us. The end of the Long Count was an invitation for us to undergo a conscious awakening as a species, to realize that postmodern civilization had become disconnected from natural time and from some crucial aspects of indigenous culture, such as their spiritual connection to the earth.

In my film 2012: Time for Change I tried to present tools we could use to change ourselves as well as the direction of our society. I became interested in our potential to use social networks and other virtual tools to build a network of communities around the world actively exploring alternatives. This is what I tried to do with Evolver.net and the Evolver Network.

I did become very disappointed and sad after 2012, because I felt that people had not understood what I was expressing over and over as clearly as I could. I felt the media willfully distorted my views whenever possible, calling me a doomsday thinker, which was the opposite of what I expressed in my writing and my film. The wild expectations that some people had about that time were thwarted, and some of them reacted by throwing the baby out with the bathwater. On the other hand, many people did have profound experiences around that date, and I believe we are seeing an ongoing opening of consciousness that may soon reach a tipping point.

I still believe in the truth of the prophecies in that I think it is totally clear and obvious that we are in a time of intense transformation. Either we will undergo a rapid evolution as a species and figure out how to cooperate as one global community, or we will see a massive decline in population or potential extinction, as we tear apart the web of life. We are currently eliminating 100–150 species a day—about 10 percent of the earth’s remaining biodiversity— every ten to fifteen years. Oceans are 30 percent more acidic than they were forty years ago, leading to a projected breakdown of the coral reefs by 2050 or so. As climate change accelerates, we confront the potential for a massive eruption of methane from under the Arctic that could trigger a temperature rise of four or five degrees Celsius within a few decades.

The thesis of How Soon Is Now?, my new book, is that the ecological megacrisis is an unconsciously self-created rite of passage or initiation for us as a species. We will be forced to integrate aspects of our technoculture with aspects of indigenous design, creating a new creative synthesis, in order to prevent the worst consequences of ecological collapse. The sooner we realize this is happening, the faster we can start working together. I believe this threshold is what we have been warned about, and prepared for, by the prophecies around the world. It is an archetypal process happening within and through the collective psyche.

Smoley: There are a lot of tasks facing us today that seem very urgent. Could you give a little advice about how someone can find his or her right work in these times?

Pinchbeck: I discuss this at length in my new book. I think we need a comprehensive understanding and a strategic model for what is happening and what could happen—that is what the book presents. We can then seek to use our own skills and resources for the greater goal. For instance, someone with a great knowledge of corporate structures or financial capital could use those skills to create new companies based on ecological and ethical principles. Someone else may want to help build a model of a cooperative, alternative farming community. Yet another person may feel called to make art that puts forth a new mythology of planetary awakening and rebirth. But as I said, the first thing is that we must realize what is in fact possible for humanity and then find the will and courage to work for that outcome. Then we can find our own position in the overarching structure, if we want.

Smoley: Recently you wrote a piece saying why you were no longer going to the Burning Man gathering. Could you explain what this event is for people who may not know, and could you say why you became disillusioned with it?

Pinchbeck: I said I was taking a break from Burning Man. I do intend to go back. I went fifteen years in a row, and I think it became very familiar to me. I almost became a bit jaded about it. Burning Man is an art festival that models a neofuturistic anarchist utopia. They have a set of ten principles that include radical inclusion, self-expression, gifting (no commerce), leaving no trace, and so on. These principles really resculpt the way people interact and create a beautiful space for creativity and human freedom. When I first went in 2000, the festival attracted 25,000 people. Now it is 80,000 and still growing. It has also become a magnet for the world’s wealthy jet set.

Burning Man faces the same problem as many things that become supersuccessful: it is in danger of turning into a Disneyland version of itself. Part of the point is that the festival is a kind of initiation. People have to build their own structures and learn how to survive in a very harsh desert environment. However, people are now overcoming this problem, solving it with a credit card. They fly in on private planes, and all of their costumes, drugs, and art cars are ready for them. They get to have the experience but miss the meaning of it.

I feel there are two major ideological strains running through Burning Man: hedonistic libertarianism and mystical anarchism. Because of its rapid success, the hedonistic libertarian strain is now dominant. I personally identify with the mystical anarchist side, and hope to see a resurgence of it.

Deep down, I agree with the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who noted, “For those without hope, hope was given to us.” For that crucial subset of human society which has attained freedom and wealth, the great opportunity is to use our intelligence empathically, to create a world that works for all, even if that means we must sacrifice some of our own excesses for a time.

Printed in the Winter 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Gilchrist, Cherry, "Meeting the Shaman in Siberia" Quest 105.1 (Winter 2017): pg. 10-15

By Cherry Gilchrist 

The first beats of the shaman’s drum were resounding, starting slowly but quickly mounting in intensity. Then there was the sudden sound roar of a helicopter overhead, completely obliterating the sound I was listening to. I clicked on the pause button, and peered out of the window. A large army helicopter was circling right above me, barely skimming the rooftops of my city home. Its presence felt incongruous, and menacing. But was it? Had I perhaps inadvertently invoked a shamanic presence as I played the recording of the ritual in my study? After all, it is said that shamans can fly.

This particular recording was of a ritual that took place twelve years earlier, in 2004, in the far-off province of Tuva, Siberia. It was a consultation I had there with Herel, a local shaman. In fact, this was the first time I had ever played back the recording. I couldn’t bring myself to do so earlier—it might have seemed artificial and diluted the experience while the power of that occasion still burned bright in my mind. But now the time was right, and I was ready to listen and reflect. When the helicopter finally departed, as quickly as it had come, I immersed myself again in the drum beats and chanting. I sensed that I was sliding into a different world, eerie and disorientating in one way, but a place where reflection and calmness were also possible. However, the visceral sound of the helicopter remained imprinted on my senses, a reminder that this meeting with the shaman had been a powerful experience, and one that, perhaps, was not quite over yet.

My own spiritual path has led me deep into the heart of the Western Hermetic tradition—in particular Tree of Life Kabbalah, alchemy, Tarot, and astrology. At the time of my trip to Siberia, I was certainly interested in shamanism, but in a cautious, anthropologically orientated way. I was wary of the contemporary enthusiasm for taking up shamanism. This provoked questions for me: is it possible to practice it in a modern Western context? Does it require its own traditional culture, for authenticity and indeed safety? Many serious studies emphasize how much sacrifice is required from true shamans. Physical ordeals, renunciation of normal life, and exhausting, risky encounters with the spirits are part of the job description, in the efforts to help and heal others.

In a traditional context too, the shamanic path is not one that you can choose on a whim. Usually the shaman shows signs of his or her potential destiny from childhood. Having a parent or relative may predispose one to be a shaman, but this is not guaranteed. Herel told me that although both he and his wife were shamans, only one out of their five children was possibly a shaman in the making. The signs were there at her birth, as the weather changed dramatically, from thunder and lightning to sunshine and then snow. The heavens were pointing a finger to her ability, which was now manifesting in later childhood through significant dreams and encounters with spirits.

I came to Siberia seeking answers to my questions about shamanism: can it be practiced, or truly experienced, by anyone not of that traditional culture? I had no doubts about its power, only whether it could survive in a modern world without losing its identity as a genuine spiritual practice. By 2004 I had visited Russia nearly sixty times. I ran a Russian arts and crafts business; I had studied Russian traditional folk culture, learnt the language, and mixed freely with people in cities and countryside. But I was keen to find an even older culture, to witness practices which go back thousands of years, and which may be the source from which much Russian folk tradition itself has evolved. Siberia has a living, truly ancient culture; the majority of its people are ethnically different from Russians, and its primary religions are shamanism and Buddhism.

I travelled with my writer friend Lyn, visiting the fabled lands of Tuva and Khakassia, along with the Sayani mountains. Our trip was an organized journey of exploration with a small group of Russian travelers. We went in the warm summer months, when the forests were in full leaf and mountain pastures were studded with alpine flowers. We traversed landscapes that had remained largely untouched since the Bronze Age, including sweeping grasslands studded with standing stones and stone circles, like an airbrushed version of the Wiltshire plains in England. In Khakassia, we saw Bronze Age carvings and pictograms on rocks still relevant to the customs of local people today—of the magic elk, for instance, who they say leads souls to the underworld. Shrines set up to spirits of the land were abundant, and ancient ceremonies of purification and healing were still carried out at important ritual points in the landscape. This was the landscape of shamanism in southern Siberia, which, as far its people are concerned, is still a spiritual, magical terrain.

When we arrived in Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva, we were put up at a nearby yurt camp and then taken into the town itself. Here there is a monument that, allegedly, marks the center of Asia. It is also home to the shamans’ “clinic.” This is where approved and regulated shamans are allowed to practice. It might sound contrary to the spirit of shamanism, with its allegiance to nature, to fires and skies and a freedom of movement. However, Tuvan shamanism is in recovery after brutal suppression by the Soviet regime: many shamans throughout the whole of Siberia were murdered or dispossessed. In that era, some were even thrown out of airplanes with the cruel taunt: “You shamans say you can fly! Let’s see you do it, then.” The tradition was severely depleted, but it was not lost, and it is making a strong comeback. To a certain extent, though, it still has to work in cooperation with the authorities, hence the clinic setup. And these shamans certainly practice outdoors as well. They have special gatherings at sacred mountain sites, and as we shall see, our shaman Herel came to our yurt camp with his wife the following evening to perform a ceremony of blessing.

The Consultation

From listening to the recording, from my notes written at the time, and from the vivid recollections that I still carry, I now offer an account of the session with Herel, the Tuvan shaman.

So now our group sits in Herel’s consulting room, which is filled with feathers, ribbons, ropes, bones, plaques, a reindeer head, a horn, and bells. They hang from his walls, a chaotic clutter of ritual paraphernalia, rather in the way that strips of cloth or leather hang from the traditional shamanic costume itself. He shows us some of the tools of his trade, and how they work. His is a hard calling, he admits. His own speciality is purification and divination, whereas his wife specializes in healing women’s ailments.

At the end of the talk, he asks if anyone would like to have a personal session with him. I alone say yes. I’ll pay the price he asks—higher for visitors than for locals, I’m sure, but he has to make a living, and I don’t begrudge it. Later Ira, our young guide, tells me that from all the groups she has brought to this place, I am the only person who has ever opted for a private consultation. This surprises me. She adds that Herel is the very best of the shamans she has encountered, and a man of compassion; some seem aggressive, and the quality, she implies, is variable.

Lyn and Ira stay. Ira needs to translate for me. I speak good Russian, but Herel’s accent is thick and guttural, as it is probably his second language. Lyn makes a recording, her earlier BBC training coming in handy.

Herel dons an eagle headdress and tells me to sit on a bearskin in the center of the room. “Raise your hands,” he says, as he passes burning juniper around my body. “While appealing to the spirits, I’ll ask them to take your worries and bad feelings out of you, and I’ll ask them to make your future road happy.” He tells me to shut my eyes, and bids me not to be afraid. Let the tears come, he says. Tears often fall during an encounter with the spirits. And indeed they do. I am moved, and emotionally exposed during this session, though I am neither afraid nor unhappy. Herel dances around me, drumming and chanting, creating a kind of beehive of sound and movement around me. I feel that I am in a magical chamber, in a different dimension of space and reality.

The ritual is constantly changing. I have the impression that his chants and cries are a dialogue with the spirits, as they shift in tone and intensity. Phases of the session peak, and then fall away into silence. A new one is heralded by the blow of a conch shell, or jangling of bells. Suddenly, he thumps my shoulder with a bear paw—it’s a shock. Later, he pulls back my T-shirt and spits down the back of my neck. Curiously, I don’t mind this a bit. He even uses a whip on me several times, but it is never painful. I note later that this is “stimulating and pleasant,” rather like using a switch of birch leaves to beat your body in a Russian bath. At the end of each section, he blows away the psychic “debris” and sends it out of the door. I am in a different time zone, and have no sense of how long the treatment lasts, although Lyn tells me later that it is about fifteen minutes.

He mentioned at the start of the session that I have an obstruction in my left shoulder. “You are worrying about something. I’ll take it out of you.” Curiously, at this point I have had several years of problems with my right shoulder, and already recognize that it is probably stress-related. I can see now that if one side of the body is numb with some emotional weight or obstruction, then the other side may take the strain and display the symptoms. After the session, Herel says that he has succeeded in asking the spirits to relieve me of this. Next year, he tells me, will be more normal, and I will start to be happy again, after going through a little more personal suffering first.

We conclude with three pieces of advice. He tells me that I may come again next year, if I wish. But if I don’t, I can connect to him at a distance; he is able to sense people he has treated, and can help if needs be. He gives me a “spirit bag,” a little bundle of cloth tied up with cord, and tells me that I should feed it three times a week with oil or melted butter. It is my talisman, to connect me to the power of the session, and I should take it with me if I am traveling or away on business. He also advises me to contact the spirits of place where I live—the spirits of the hills, trees, and streams. After this session, he says, I will be able to do this. That’s if I have such spirits in my homeland. I will relate a little later how I took this advice. 

The next day, Herel and his wife arrive at our yurt camp to conduct a ceremony to promote the well-being of everyone there. They come as the light begins to fade, preparing the space carefully, setting the fire and arranging little balls of dough to mark out the territory for the ritual. Once the fire is blazing, they don full costume and invite everyone to sit in a large circle. I am still bathed in my impressions from the day before, and the difference between the two occasions strikes me strongly. This one is open to all comers; it has resonance and power but not, to my mind, the concentrated force that I experienced in my session. Herel and his wife are dealing with a big mix of people, from earnest Japanese tourists to young Australian surfers, since the camp is used by various travelers passing through the area. Some of them have never even heard of shamanism and are nervous, or giggle loudly, at this unfamiliar ritual.

At one point, Herel passes around the backs of everyone in the circle, giving some of them a thump with his bear paw, though never as hard as he clouted me the day before. I wonder if they realize that they are actually being offered a precious nugget of healing, or blessing, or insight. I have a video of this ceremony, and even viewing it cold, a long time later, it is compelling, and there is an unearthly quality to the chanting and singing of the shaman pair. I do not know exactly what the sounds mean, though it certainly sounds at times as though they are in conversation with spirits.

One study of shamanism mentions that Tuvan shamans simulate bird and animal calls to express particular emotions: that of a raven to curse an enemy, a cow to call up rain, a wolf or eagle to frighten people, a magpie to uncover a lie, a bull to demonstrate power, and a bear to convey rapture. The horse has special properties in many branches of Siberian shamanism: it is a creature that can fly the shaman to the spirit world. The bear, hare, and eagle are also particularly important in Tuvan shamanism.

I suspect that the eagle is Herel’s own spirit guide, although—understandably—he refuses to tell us what kind of creature it is. During my individual session with him, I “saw” an eagle.

My notes say: “Just the head, neck, and shoulders were visible. It was quite clear and communicating with me—intelligent.”

When the ceremony ends, the mood is peaceful. The daylight has not quite gone, and unexpectedly the sky brightens. I look up to see a cloud in the shape of an eagle just overhead. Am I imagining it? No, it is there when I look on the video later. Curiously enough, this video will give me a lot of trouble; I discover that the original minitapes are jammed, and only after various professional companies refuse to try and repair them do I find one local man who is prepared to have a go. Luckily, he succeeds in transferring the whole recording to DVD. As I said at the beginning, strange things do happen when shamanic forces are in action.

On a lighter note, after the evening’s ceremony is over, I pick up some of the balls of dough used by the shamans, and take them back as souvenirs to the yurt that Lyn and I are sharing. I hang them in a cloth bag from the end of my bed, for want of anywhere better to put them. That night I sleep peacefully. Lyn, however, is awake for hours, disturbed by the sound of a mouse that has detected the presence of tasty tidbits and is trying all kinds of ways to reach the prize. Scuttlings, rustlings, and chewings ruin her night’s sleep. The next morning, when we relate this lightheartedly to one of our Russian fellow travelers, he takes it very seriously. “No, that was not a mouse!” he pronounces solemnly. “That was a rival shaman come to steal the power of our shaman.” A little far-fetched, perhaps? But then if I am claiming that an army helicopter might be a shaman in disguise, perhaps my ideas are no stranger than his.

The Aftermath

How did I respond to the instructions that Herel gave me? And did my perspective on shamanism change after this visit?

In the months following our trip, I thought about the session a great deal. I took good care of the spirit bundle, and hung it in a prominent place in my home, where it seemed to act as a focus for various difficult aspects of my past, helping to dispel them. This had the effect of lightening the load, as Herel predicted. It may also have triggered a cleansing and regeneration of connections to my ancestral heritage as well. Back in 2000, a difficult time for me after the breakup of my marriage, I had a disturbing, spontaneous impression of a dark procession of shadowy, malevolent figures, a troupe of people passing through me. My sense was that they came from the far past, before my own lifetime, and that I had some personal connection to them. Then, in 2004, a week or two after the shaman’s session, I wrote in my diary: “Woke up 5 a.m. after seven hours solid sleep, with an impression of my relatives and ancestors at my right shoulder, flowing out of it in a wavy shape like a kind of stream. A warm and light quality to it. Does the shamanism put you in touch with your ancestors?”

Now I would say that it can indeed help to do that. For me, I think this second waking vision was linked to Herel’s purifying of my past—oddly enough, the first “dark” vision had also occurred while I was visiting Russia. It seemed to be the trigger for an intense phase of family history research, which included not only getting to know some of the characters from my family tree, but also putting me in touch with living descendants, cousins whose existence I was unaware of. From that time on, my family has been reconfigured in a profound sense, and perhaps this was activated by the treatment I received from Herel. Shamans are closely linked to the world of the ancestors, something that we take little note of in the West as a general rule, but which can be of great significance in our lives. My own book Growing Your Family Tree makes this point.

But to return to the spirit bag itself, I soon found that pouring melted butter into pieces of cloth has a very smelly outcome, so I abandoned this practice after six months or so. I relegated the spirit bundle to a special drawer as a treasured memento rather than an active force. I did not want to be dependent on talismans, but I valued what this had brought me. The same went for contact with Herel. The contact I had has continued to serve me, and remains vivid; I am grateful for it, but have a path to travel which does not include making an inner bond with a distant master.

The spirits of place were both more promising and more of a challenge. I was living then in Bath, in England, and every morning for several months, I walked the local hills and fields on the edge of the town. It seemed hard to arouse these spirits, perhaps because the landscape itself felt tired. I had not been aware of this before, but it would not be surprising, since Bath has been tramped over by many peoples, and its resources have been pressed into service for pleasure, healing, and greedy enterprise. But the exercise has left me more aware of the energies and spirits of landscape ever since.

The landscape we visited, in which Siberian shamanism is embedded, also played a strong part in renewing my own sense of nature and its powers. Like many of us, I suspect, I was deeply immersed in nature as a child, but found that this receded as I entered adolescence. I even remember realizing that this was happening, and feeling sad that I would soon no longer have that same passionate connection to the natural world. In our culture, unlike that of Tuva and Khakassia, we have few official signposts to help us keep this into adult life. But wherever we went in that region, there were shrines to the spirits—gaunt branches held upright by clusters of stones, and adorned with rags and ribbons. Here people leave offerings and make prayers and wishes. This experience helped me, I believe, to strip back some of the adult veneer, and reinforce my earlier, instinctive connection with landscape.

As is often the way, my initial questions about shamanism gave way to a different perspective on it. My trip to Siberia, rather than achieving solid answers, showed me that shamanism is a living tradition that cannot be completely pinned down. It is in essence a shape-shifter, and will ebb and flow, finding different forms in different cultures. This does not mean that every manifestation of it is equally fruitful. Some attempts to practice it in a Western context may turn out to be misguided, and traditional shamans “performing” for visitors may degrade their power. But experimenting is part of the risk that we collectively take to keep shamanism alive. It is something that we have vital need of in our modern world, and can perhaps help with crises of faith as well as with our planetary ecological problems. Shamanism embodies an awareness that life is interconnected, and that we are a part of this too; it shows us how we can work dynamically within this relationship. It acknowledges the role of spirituality, and does not replace or undermine any particular belief in one ultimate God or Spirit.

Shamanism, which may be the world’s oldest and most widespread religion, is now meeting the bigger world again, and in many places on earth, people are eager to learn what shamanism has to offer. I have come to realize that such a development is more important than an anxiety about inappropriate use of shamanism in other cultures, or the blurring of boundaries and nomenclature in academic studies. As Tim Hodgkinson, anthropologist and musician, says in his excellent paper Transcultural Collisions: Music and Shamanism, shamanism is itself improvisatory. It deals with the circumstances as they are; it responds to very particular configurations of place and time. And each of us may discover something different within its practice. Meeting the shaman gave me not just insight into the tradition itself, but a very specific outcome: it invigorated three of my major passions: the power of music and sound, the power of nature, and the world of ancestry.

Sources

Dioszegi, V., and M. Hoppal, eds. Shamanism in Siberia. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1978.

Gilchrist, Cherry. Russian Magic: Living Folk Traditions in an Enchanted Landscape. Wheaton: Quest, 2009.

Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices: The Shaman as Seer, Poet, and Healer. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.

Hodgkinson, Tim. Transcultural Collisions: Music and Shamanism in Siberia. Paper given at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 2007; https://www.academia.edu/3356244/Transcultural_Collisions; accessed Sept. 30, 2016.

Stutley, Margaret. Shamanism: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2003.

Vitebsky, Piers. The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul. London: Duncan Baird, 1995.

The Elements of Shamanism

By Cherry Gilchrist

Our concept of shamanism has shifted over the last half century. Some decades back, anthropologists held that only Siberian traditions were worthy to be called shamanic; now the definition has broadened considerably, and it is recognized that there are historic shamanic practices across the globe. Shamanism may in fact be the earliest known religion of humankind. It has certain common characteristics in different areas, although individual detail and emphases vary across the range of different peoples. Even within Siberia, for instance, distinctive shamanic practices are found among the individual peoples of the land, such as the Buriat, Evenk, and Tungu cultures. But it is also possible to identify certain common features among different branches of shamanism. Here are some of the most prominent.

Shamanism is intimately connected with landscape. The landscape itself is considered sacred, and specific geographical features may be seen as opening points into another world of spirits. A particular mountain, cave, or spring, for instance, might be understood as the local entrance to the spirit realm, not so much as a literal fact as a door that one can pass through when in an altered state of consciousness or trance. It is usually the shaman who enacts these possibilities of moving between worlds, and he or she does so on behalf of the community, or of a particular individual who is seeking help.

The cosmos in traditional shamanic cultures is usually seen as tripartite, with divisions representing the Underworld, the world of Earth, and the world of Sky or Heaven. Human beings too are considered to have three different levels: of body, soul, and spirit.

The shaman, as the person who moves between these realms, is in communion with the realms of nature, spirits, and the ancestors. (The actual hierarchical structure of these may be complex, and varies between different shamanic belief systems.) He or she is likely to go into a trance state, and will sometimes climb a ladder or tree representing the connection between heaven and earth. Often a bird or animal acts as a spirit guide to conduct the shaman to the otherworld. Eagle, bear, and horse are prime candidates for this. Dialogue is possible with spirits and ancestors, and the shaman may be able to divine or prophesy from such conversations. The shaman may also beseech the spirits to intercede in human life, to heal, to purify, or to avert or lighten troubles. Drumming, chanting, and dancing are usually part of the ritual, along with various kinds of distinctive sounds made by bells, pieces of metal, or a conch shell. The drum itself is sacred, and may be inscribed with symbolic glyphs and drawings.

The rites of shamanism require that a sacred space be set up, whether in a so-called clinic or at a chosen natural place, in the forest or mountains, for instance. Bounded areas are thus set up as ritual spaces, and elements of earth, water, fire, and air are usually prominent in ritual. For example, picking out details from the two rituals that I participated in, the dough balls represented earth, the spittle was water, the fire manifested in the bonfire, and the air was the swishing of feathers and the blowing away of debris.

Shamans are usually highly valued as part of the community, but they may also be atypical in some way, for instance bisexual. Shamanism is a calling rather than a choice of occupation, one which the budding shaman may resist only to find that he or she falls ill until the call is heeded.

There may be a particular pantheon of gods or hierarchy of spirits associated with a specific branch of shamanism. However, shamanic practice allows for a strong element of individual interpretation and improvisation within these frameworks. As shamanism involves a living dialogue with forces that rule and influence our lives, so spontaneous responses, sensitive to the nature of each session, are needed. The shaman must have quick wits and a readiness to embrace the unexpected.

Cherry Gilchrist is the author of a number of books on spiritual and cultural traditions, such as Tarot Triumphs: Using the Tarot Triumphs for Divination and Inspiration; Russian Magic; Alchemy: The Great Work; and (with Gila Zur) The Tree of Life Oracle. She has studied Kabbalah and astrology, and was a founding member of Saros, the Foundation for the Perpetuation of Knowledge. Cherry lives Devon, U.K., and teaches part-time for the University of Exeter. Her website is www.cherrygilchrist.co.uk