Quest Magazine

The Outside Lands: Astrology and Taboo

By John P. O'Grady

Originally printed in the JULY-AUGUST 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: O'Grady, John P. "The Outside Lands: Astrology and Taboo." Quest  96.4 (JULY-AUGUST 2008):143-147.

Theosophical Society - John P. O'Grady is a teacher ar Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana and the author of Grave Goods: Essays of a Peculiar Nature.

WHERE ON THE MAP of our contemporary cultural landscape would the practice of astrology be located? Certainly nowhere near the center, amid the skyscrapers of commerce and the ivory towers of academe. Nor will it appear among the trim houses and shopping malls of suburbia. Look instead toward the fringes, in the same far-flung and forgotten spaces occupied by city dumps, auto junkyards, and hazardous waste depositories. Yet even these extravagant reaches are not the proper place of astrology. The investigating eye must travel further still, over the edge and into the air. What we seek is not on this map. Astrology is elsewhere. 
 
In the workaday world, the shopworn dictum of general semantics still applies: "The map is not the territory." But when it comes to the "Outside Lands" of the human mind—which is where astrology abides—the map is the territory, and then some. These districts are more commonly known as the imagination, or to use Henry Corbin's precise term, the "epiphanic place of the images." Astrology, like all forms of creative activity—poetry, painting, music, just to name a few—is a method for reasonable minds to extend a grasp beyond reason. Reason, that frontier William Blake called "the bound or outward circumference of Energy" in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Astrology takes place in an intellectual terrain vague, where common sense—for good reason, I suppose—sets up its "No Trespassing" signs and chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Every edge is perilous, not to mention, ambiguous. Step over this threshold and roads disappear, trails go unmaintained. Treacherous flora and fauna abound. Who knows what to expect? If you get into trouble out here, no rescue party will show up. It is no place for the unwary.
 
For the most part, the intelligentsia regards those who practice astrology as inhabiting a kind of mental Superfund site. The academic pundits would have you believe some of the most toxic varieties of thinking occur here, requiring concerted effort on the part of society to clean up. According to one prominent twentieth-century intellectual, Theodor Adorno, astrology is a "metaphysic of dunces." The Sorbonne's granting of a Ph.D. in 2001 for a thesis on the subject of astrology was met with a fury of academic criticism. Lamented Emily Eakin, a French sociologist: "I personally consider this defense a blow to our discipline and an insult to those who do their work properly." One of the more renowned contemporary skeptics is British professor, Richard Dawkins, who becomes discomposed at the very mention of astrology, calling it an "aesthetic affront." With menace reminiscent of Socrates' nastier interlocutors, he wonders why "are professional astrologers not jailed for fraud?" Passion such as this, even when expressed in the coolest of scientific tones, suggests that the practice of astrology must be in high violation of some taboo.
 
For a long time, I worked as a tenured professor of literature. Then one day I decided to leave the academy for more creative endeavors, including the practice of astrology. Once my colleagues figured out I was serious, they were aghast. You would have thought I had just announced plans to become an asbestos salesman or a purveyor of pornography. I had broken the academic commandment "Thou shalt not become a soothsayer." I tried explaining that astrology is not fortune-telling, but rather more like the study of poetry: both are concerned with cultivating a more attentive style of reading. Alas, this line of reasoning failed. Poetry is just about as worrisome to English professors as astrology, yet because poetry has long been part of the official curriculum, they are habituated to its threat, much like those who dwell in earthquake country. Even so, I have observed that most literature professors still get nervous whenever poetry's name is mentioned. As far as they are concerned, the Pierian Spring is just another contaminated water supply.
 
As both anthropology and psychology make clear, a taboo is a stern prohibition against certain persons, places, things, or even ideas that seem imbued with dangerous power. When confronted with something taboo, our response is often deeply conflicted. On the one hand, we may have the sense of being in the presence of the sacred, as if standing before the very engines of the universe and let out with, "Oh, wow!" On the other hand, we might also be overwhelmed with holy dread, a feeling that things here are dangerous, out of control, or unclean which elicits an "Oh, no!" That which is taboo would kill you to look at, for—as both Bible and Emily Dickinson make clear—"none see God and live." At the very least, according to the joyless Freud, violating a taboo renders the violator contagious and irredeemably defiled. In short, taboo is the shadow of order, the prison wall holding back all hell.
 
Some years ago, the esteemed Mary Douglas pointed out that taboos in a given society have to do with preserving symbolic boundaries. Think of the "great walls" in China, Britain, or Berlin that were built to keep out invading hordes. Or consider the "lesser walls" that today surround our zoos, prisons, military installations, and gated communities. When it comes to the line between certainty and confusion, order and chaos, good fences—we hope—make good neighbors. Such fences, however, require vigilant maintenance on the part of society, because, as Robert Frost phrases it, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." A carpenter of my acquaintance likes to say, "Show me the walls you erect and I will tell you who you are." He could be a psychotherapist, or a cultural commentator on television.
 
The walls that house our most firmly held beliefs have no windows. Undistracted by bright light streaming in from the outside, we can kick back in the soft couch of habit and gaze upon our high-definition monitors. Inside our mortgaged House of Belief, each of us feels relaxed and secure. Here is our intellectual comfort zone, our hearth and home, and we furnish it according to our taste, whether it be the Shaker décor of scientific Positivism or the velvety tones of the New Age movement. If we make our way outside, or worse, are cast forth from the House of Belief, we find ourselves bushwhacking in the wild wooly-wags of doubt. Back in 1877, a rogue philosopher by the name of C. S. Peirce published an essay in which he characterizes doubt as "an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else." Peirce calls it doubt, but this bewildering condition sounds much like Corbin's epiphanic place. We can call it the imagination, but I prefer the "Outside Lands."
 
If your house is located in a neighborhood anywhere near the Outside Lands, you must get used to the visitors from afar who show up at the door, speaking in strange tongues. "We know how to say many false things" declare the Muses in Hesiod's Theogony, "as if they were true, but we know—when we wish—to utter true things." The astrologer—like the poet, the saint, and, we must admit, the lunatic—welcomes these shady characters into the living room, because they come bearing what Plato calls "charms for the soul." But one person's charm is another's dangerous substance, which is why society makes every effort to regulate this traffic in imaginal lures by keeping a close eye on those who have known contacts in the underworld. The saint is stoned, drowned, or burned at the stake. The lunatic is medicated, institutionalized, and stripped of even a nominal connection to the nurturing moon by being reclassified as mentally ill. The poet, too, is institutionalized, albeit more kindly treated when granted a "residency" and tenure in the local university, not to mention a steady paycheck and a benefits package.
 
When it comes to the threat posed by the astrologer, things are somewhat trickier. As the embarrassing Sorbonne incident makes clear, academia remains ill-disposed toward the study and practice of astrology. In 1991, Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences was founded near Seattle. When the school received preliminary endorsement from the State of Washington's Higher Education Coordinating Board, the chancellor of Boston University, John Silber, lashed out with an op-ed piece in the Boston Herald, declaring: "The promoters of Kepler College have honored Kepler not for his strength but for his weakness, as if a society advocating drunkenness named a school for Ernest Hemingway." Outside the academy, the practice of astrology does not fare much better. If social prestige is any measure, the astrologer enjoys about as much of it as a black market trafficker in plutonium. Thomas Merton once observed that the artist in our society has "inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist and bonze." He should have added "outlaw."
 
Whoever would practice astrology must be a mutineer. Genius demands this of any artist. The word genius, in fact, may bring us closer to understanding the fulminations of astrology's antagonists. "Genius" is the Latin translation of the Greek daimon, root of our word "demon." (Recall Carl Sagan's last book, The Demon-Haunted World.) As we use the term today, genius is far removed from its original sense. In former times, you spoke of having a genius as you would of having a friend; nowadays you are a genius, and perhaps all the lonelier for it. In the fourth century BCE, Democritus claimed that the "soul is the dwelling-place of the genius." Maybe that was the case, but today we seem to have evicted our genius, our guardian angel, and sent it packing back to the Outside Lands whence it came. Each of us then occupies his or her own McMansion of an ego, but dwells there all alone. Not to worry, for it is crammed to the ceiling with possessions with more just a mouse-click away.
 
Once upon a time, human beings understood that happiness was an acquisition obtainable only through proper relationship with the non-human realm which used to be known as the daimonic, now called the divine. Because one's genius was regarded as a personal attendant throughout the course of life, the Romans thought it worthy of veneration. You were expected to offer yearly sacrifices to your genius. One's birth was a particular object of this guardian spirit's care and attention, thus the marriage bed was known as the genial bed. And those who enjoyed a fortunate existence were said to have a genial life. Apparent in these etymological musings is a congenial insight: when it comes to figuring things out, we are never far from spiritual aid. There is a vast unseen community out there just waiting for our renewed attention, but start chatting them up and you risk running afoul of the authorities—sooner breach the fence surrounding a nuclear generating station so you can get inside and play around with the dials. Mary Douglas puts her finger on it when she says that the "same forces that threaten to destroy good order represent the powers inhering in the cosmos" (161). Those who control power within the social structure are usually loath to share any of it.
 
Thus, it is chancy to play with Promethean fire. Genius, no matter what the form, is rightly approached with caution if not outright trepidation, since it draws power from dark outlets. While society may not nab you for the transgression, what awaits on the other side very well might. Keep this in mind when Hesiod's double-talking Muses come knocking or the charming politician asks for your vote. The nature of this unfathomable energy cannot be explained in the sanctioned terms of rational materialism, the vocabulary of those who speak from endowed chairs in the university. Yet this power is available to any who seek it, as Emerson reminds us, "by unlocking, at all risks, one's human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through." Be warned: even a degree from an astrological college is not enough to save you from drowning in these waters.
 
In early Greece, Simonides of Ceos was a man of genius, a prolific writer of verse, and said to be the first poet ever to take money for his work. Apparently his talent was such that he could induce people into believing that things unreal were real. Only the Thessalians were immune to his verbal conjurings. When asked why this was the case, Simonides' [paraphrased] reply was, "Oh them, they're just too ignorant to be deceived by me." By that he meant they were utterly lacking in imagination. Dull witted people, says Giordano Bruno, "are not soothed by eloquent speech, nor are they won over by beauty, music, painting or by any of the other attractions of nature" (146). Nor do they appreciate astrology.
 
Nevertheless, the practice of astrology is to be counted among the dwindling options in our society for getting behind the deadening slogans and billboards of everyday life. Grand gifts of healing, prophecy, and leadership only come to those who can get out of their right minds from time to time. The authorities may not like it, but those authorities are not so much "out there" as they are "in here," dressed up in the guises of our own fears, diminished expectations, and seductive sound bites designed to keep us in our place. "The war that matters," writes Diane di Prima, "is the war against the imagination/all others are subsumed in it." Astrology is not a science but an art, an art of surmising. To surmise is to imagine without certain knowledge, to follow the spirit without getting snared in the letter. It is a game of hit-or-miss, hide-and-seek, played in the buzzing thickets of the Outside Lands. "You're really getting at the nerve ends," said Robert Smithson when asked to explain what an artist does, "it is completely unknown territory you're getting into. And that's what's exciting, the whole element of exploration, expedition." Or you could say—with due apologies to Kenneth Burke—that the practice of astrology is part of our "equipment for living," a disaster kit for when the walls of habit come tumbling down.
 
A curious bit of lore is to be gathered in a certain precinct adjacent to the Outside Lands. It concerns the allurements of mind that each of us is subject to, whether scientist or astrologer, philosopher or debauchee. We are told that when we try to seismically retrofit our House of Belief, it is as if we were binding ourselves with chains. As long as our House of Belief stands, we do not feel these chains as chains, mistaking them as we do for fine threads of silk and strands of cashmere. We love them because they give us pleasure. But when the "Big One" finally hits and the walls of our House of Belief come tumbling down to the ground, the chains suddenly feel hard, and instead of providing pleasure they are now the source of great suffering. At last, we recognize the bonds for what they are.
 
When that time comes—and it is coming—we will require a new map, something along the lines of a treasure map. Choose carefully, because as Ptolemy warned long ago, "no one presents it rightly unless an artist." This new map may come in the form of a poem, perhaps written on the back of a cocktail napkin or spray-painted on the side of a building. Maybe it will arrive as a song coming over the radio or through a painting hanging on the wall. It might even show up in the much-reviled figure of a horoscope. Who knows? Nobody can say what your new map will look like, but be assured that, sooner or later, it will lead toward the darkling wealth of the Outside Lands

 

References

 

Adorno, Theodor. "Theses Against Occultism." 1947. The Stars Down to Earth, and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. Ed. Stephen Crook. London: Routledge, 1994.
Bruno, Giordano. "A General Account of Bonding." Cause, Principle and Unity and Essays on Magic. Eds. Richard E. Blackwell and Robert de Lucca. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Corbin, Henri. "Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal." http://www.hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm
Dawkins, Richard. "The Real Romance in the Stars." The Independent on Sunday, December 31, 1995.
di Prima, Diane. "Rant" Pieces of a Song. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Publishers, 1990.
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
Eakin, Emily. "Star Wars: Is Astrology Sociology?" New York Times, June 2, 2001.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The Poet." Essays and Lectures: Nature: Addresses and Lectures/Essays: First and Second Series, ed. Joel Porte. NY: Library of America, 1983.
Merton, Thomas. Raids on the Unspeakable. NY: New Directions Publishing Corp, 1996.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. "The Fixation of Belief." Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877), 1–15.
Silber, John. "Silliness Under Seattle Stars." Boston Herald, May 16, 2001.

 

John P. O'Grady has been studying and practicing astrology for more than twenty-five years. A college professor on extended sabbatical, he now lives in San Francisco. He can be contacted at johnpogrady@comcast.net and his web site is http://johnpogrady.com/index.html .

The Future of Esoteric Christianity

By Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the JULY-AUGUST 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "The Future of Esoteric Christianity." Quest  96.4 (JULY-AUGUST 2008):131-134.

Theosophical Society - Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and a frequent lecturer for the Theosophical Society

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE REALM OF THE esoteric and why is it so difficult to approach? The word esoteric is a curious one. It comes from Greek roots meaning "further in," and its ancestor, the adjective esoterikos, was first used in antiquity to refer to the writings of philosophers that were meant for their students rather than for the public at large. Practically all the surviving works of Aristotle are "esoteric" in this sense, consisting chiefly of his lecture notes that were edited by his students after his death. Exoteric, by contrast, means "further out"—that which was publicly available.
 
For the mystery religions of classical antiquity, the exoteric aspect was the myth itself—in the case of the mysteries of Eleusis, for example, of Demeter rescuing Persephone from Hades. This myth was publicly known, but its inner meaning was revealed only to initiates. As a result, today this esoteric meaning is a matter of speculation: devotees of these cults were sworn to secrecy, and generally speaking, they kept their oaths. (One possible exception is the tragedian Aeschylus, who was once prosecuted for revealing too much of the mysteries in his plays.) Nevertheless, it's easy to see how the mysteries of Eleusis resemble the death and resurrection myths that are so prominent in ancient Mediterranean religion. They also bear a strong similarity to esoteric teachings that we know today, in which the lower self must symbolically die in order for the higher self to be born.
 
Even this extremely brief sketch reveals a crucial difference between the two levels. The exoteric level was a story given out to everyone; most people believed it naïvely. But when someone suspected that there was more to this myth than met the eye, he or she was taken aside and initiated into its real meaning. It very likely had to do with the fact that human life does not end with death, as we gather from Cicero, the Roman statesman and philosopher, who wrote in De Legibus: "These mysteries have brought us out of a rustic and crude existence to a genuinely human life. The rites are called 'initiations,' and indeed they have initiated us into the true principles of life, giving us reason not only to live happily but to die with better hope" (2.36).
 
When proto-catholic Christianity, one of many strains of Christianity that existed in the first two centuries and ancestor of the present-day Catholic and Orthodox churches came onto the scene, it spread rapidly. After allying with the secular power of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, it eventually edged out and suppressed its competitors, in part, because its model, that of the mystery religions, was already familiar. Its only real difference—and its major selling point—was its claim that the death and resurrection of Jesus was not a myth but an actual event that had taken place in the recent past.
 
What, then, were the esoteric teachings of ancient Christianity? If you were to ask most conventional theologians today, they would answer that what was the esoteric meaning in antiquity, is for us today, the exoteric meaning: that Christ came down from heaven, died for our sins, was raised from the dead, and so on. However, the problem with this answer is that these teachings were never esoteric; they were common knowledge even in antiquity. Annie Besant quotes third-century Father Origen who addresses this issue in Contra Celsum, a refutation of Celsus, a pagan critic of Christianity:

 

Moreover, since he [Celsus] frequently calls the Christian doctrine a secret system [of belief], we must confute him on this point also, since almost the entire world is better acquainted with what Christians preach than with the favorite opinions of philosophers. For who is ignorant of the statement that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that He was crucified, and that His resurrection is an article of faith among many, and that a general judgment is announced to come, in which the wicked are to be punished according to their deserts, and the righteous to be truly rewarded? And yet the Mystery of the resurrection, not being understood, is made a subject of ridicule among unbelievers. In these circumstances, to speak of the Christian doctrine as a secret system, is altogether absurd. But that there should be certain doctrines, which are [revealed] after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone. (44)

 

Origen is saying that the claim that Christ rose from the dead is not the esoteric meaning—not "the Mystery of the resurrection." What is it, then? To explore this question fully is beyond the scope of this article. I have discussed it in my book Inner Christianity, and in Theosophical literature, Annie Besant's Esoteric Christianity gives the best account. But in short, we can say there is a correlation of the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ with the "death" of the lower self (the day-to-day persona with which we usually identify) which is reborn as the true Self, sometimes called the spirit or the "true I." As such, the resurrection of Christ becomes not merely a matter of blind belief or historical research but one of profound inner transformation.
 
This fact indicates why esotericism is so difficult to approach. An overwhelming majority of people are not particularly interested in it and instead want comparatively little from spirituality: some sense of community, a guideline for ethics, and hope for the afterlife. Esotericism provides none of these things in a ready-made fashion. The esoteric path, especially at first, is likely to create a sense of differentiation between the initiate and the world at large. If it imparts a sense of ethics higher than the common variety, it also reveals that much of what usually passes for morality is merely custom and convention. And if it provides hope, or even knowledge, of an afterlife, it raises profound questions about the nature of the Self that survives the body's demise.
 
The religious authorities are also frequently ambivalent, if not hostile, to esoteric awakening. An individual with his or her own direct contact with spiritual realities is less likely to need the priests. Furthermore, a religion is directed by genuine initiates for only a comparatively short time. As a religion grows in secular power, it attracts those who are interested in power, and these individuals are generally those who are least aware or capable of spiritual development. In Christianity, we can see this trend as early as the first and second centuries AD—the time of the arising of the proto-catholic church.
 
As a result of this process, the religion that was originally meant to serve as an outer court to esoteric truths became the chief impediment to it. Christ spoke of this danger when he said: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer yet them that are entering to go in" (Matt. 23:13). Ironically, the authorities who invoke the name of Jesus most often are the ones who most often violate this precept.
 
All this leads to the question of the proper relationship between esotericism and exotericism in Christianity today. Some insist that there can be no esotericism without exotericism. The best-known advocates of this view are the Traditionalist school, exemplified by the twentieth-century Swiss philosopher Frithjof Schuon. In Transcendent Unity of Religions, Schuon argued that esotericism and exotericism were inextricably linked and that one could not exist without the other. Schuon also had an apparently limitless faith in the capacity of the great world religions for self-renewal:

 

Nothing is more misleading than to pretend, as is so glibly done in our day, that the religions have compromised themselves hopelessly in the course of the centuries or that they are now played out. If one knows what a religion really consists of, one also knows that the religions cannot compromise themselves and they are independent of human doings. . . . The fact that a man may exploit a religion in order to bolster up national or private interests in no wise affects religion as such . . . as for an exhausting of the religions, one might speak of this if all men had by now become saints or Buddhas. In that case only could it be admitted that the religions were exhausted, at least as regards their forms.

 

I am not so sure. To accept Schuon's claim, one would have to believe that today's world religions express the truths of spiritual realities as well as they can be expressed on planet Earth. I can see very little evidence to support such a view. Instead, the history of religion shows a progression or evolution in expressing the spiritual impulses of humanity. For example, until about 2000 years ago, animal sacrifice was a universal part of religious observance. Today it is despised as the relic of an earlier and more barbarous era.
Animal sacrifice fell into obsolescence, in fact, with the coming of the great world religions, all of which were founded between 700 BC and 700 AD. Even the faiths that existed before this point—such as Judaism and Hinduism—were transformed into radically new versions that earlier practitioners might or might not even have recognized. The Vedic horse sacrifice and the immolation of lambs and bullocks at the Temple in Jerusalem were replaced by deeper, more sophisticated approaches to the divine.
 
Thus, it would seem, the world religions express a particular phase of human development. Astrologers call this epoch the Age of Pisces, and it may be no coincidence that they also associate Pisces with religion. Today, there is a widespread belief that we are entering or have entered the Age of Aquarius (as there is no consensus about exactly when one Age ends and the other begins). As the Age of Pisces passes, will the age of religion pass as well?
 
There is no reason to believe that the world religions as they are today represent the supreme or ultimate form of this exoteric faith, and there is much to suggest that they do not. In the coming centuries it seems likely that these religions will be transformed, yet again, into versions of themselves that will be practically unrecognizable to the present era.
 
Where, then, does this leave Christianity? Which of its teachings express eternal truths, and which merely reflect the limited perspective of the Age of Pisces? Again, this is an enormous question, but we can at least glimpse an answer in some of the facts we have examined in this essay. In the Age of Aries (the predecessor to the Age of Pisces), God was supplicated through the blood sacrifice of animals, as we see in the Old Testament. The Age of Pisces replaced this on an exoteric level with the doctrine of the vicarious atonement, whereby Christ came down from heaven and suffered and died to serve as a perfect expiation for the sins of Adam and his offspring. Although we can see it as an advancement on literal blood sacrifice, today this view itself is no longer satisfactory. Why, after all, should God, having become irked at the human race because someone ate a piece of fruit six thousand years ago, feel the need to send a part of himself down to earth and have it tortured to death as a way of making it up to himself? Put this way, it sounds ridiculous, but this is nothing more than a capsule description of the doctrine of the vicarious atonement. The human race is ready for something different, something, we may hope, that is more advanced and more profound.
 
An esoteric perspective offers such an advancement. The death of Christ to appease a peevish and self-important deity may no longer inspire us in a literal sense, but if we see it as a type of the sacrifice of the lower self to the higher dimensions within ourselves, it again becomes mysterious and sublime. Even so, I would not want to suggest that this perspective is itself absolute. Besant made this point obliquely in titling her book, which in full is called Esoteric Christianity, or the Lesser Mysteries. The "lesser mysteries" are those relating to individual human evolution; even these are merely a prelude to the "greater mysteries" of the cosmic sacrifice.
 
All this said, where can this perspective fit into Christianity as we know it today? All but the comparatively liberal denominations would have an extraordinary amount of difficulty accepting this perspective theologically, and the liberal denominations may not care: more and more they appear to be preoccupied with social rather than spiritual matters. Not long ago I found myself in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a spare half-hour and decided to go into the Episcopal church downtown to meditate. Unfortunately, I had chosen the time when the vestry board was meeting, and they were having a very loud and vexed discussion about their church's position on gay clergy. I soon decided to meditate in the comfort and privacy of my car, instead. "That pretty much sums up the Episcopal church today," I thought as I walked out. "You can't meditate because they're making too much noise arguing about gay rights." These social issues are of pressing interest to many, no doubt, but they come close to displacing spiritual life as the central concern of American religion today.
 
One way around these difficulties might be the forming of a church or denomination that is specifically orientated toward the esoteric perspective. The Liberal Catholic Church, founded by Theosophists in 1916, is perhaps the most visible attempt in this direction; there is also the Christian Community, founded by followers of Rudolf Steiner in 1922. Some independent con-gregations also foster an esoteric orientation. Current examples include Stephan Hoeller's Ecclesia Gnostica in Hollywood; the Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum in Palo Alto, California; and Spirit United Church in Minneapolis. Nevertheless, denominationalism in itself has a propensity to be divisive, and one can easily ask whether what Christianity today needs is yet another denomination.
 
I may not be the best person to deal with this question, as my own approach over the years has been highly eclectic and personalized, and I have preferred working in small, informal groups rather than through a church as such. Although this approach has, I believe, served me well, others may not find it suitable; and in any case the spiritual curriculum is highly individualized, as A Course in Miracles, that great monument of contemporary esoteric Christianity, reminds us. But this feature may itself be a characteristic of the coming age. My good friend Alice O. Howell, author of The Dove in the Stone and The Heavens Declare, occasionally shares her memories of her studies with M., an enigmatic Rosicrucian master in New York in the 1940s and '50s. The spirituality of the future, M. said, would be focused in small groups. "The problem is," he added with a chuckle, "you'll never know how many of you there are."
 
M.'s point hits home on a number of different levels. In today's world, we live under what the French esotericist Rene Guenon called "the reign of quantity," where the value of everything is calculated by the ever-present consideration of how much and how many. Can the esotericism of the future appeal to the broad mass of humanity? Maybe, maybe not. But esotericism is principally about quality, not quantity, and the small groups of which M. spoke have always been the real catalysts for spiritual transformation. Christ alluded to this truth in his parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened" (Matt. 13:33). So it is likely to be both today and in the future.
 
In any event, these issues are real and pressing, as our civilization seems to be wrestling with the role Christianity and religion as a whole are to play in the collective life of humanity. At this point, it is probably more important to ask questions and follow the threads of various possibilities rather than setting out party platforms or fashioning flags for people to follow.

 

References

 

Besant, Annie. Esoteric Christianity. Reprint. Wheaton, IL: Quest, 2006.
Guenon, Rene. The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. Translated by Lord Northbourne. Reprint. Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1994.
Schuon, Frithjof. "No Activity without Truth," Studies in Comparative Religion 3, no. 4 (1969). (wwwstudiesincomparativereligion.com)
———. The Transcendent Unity of Religions. Wheaton, IL: Quest, 1984.
Sedgwick, Mark. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Smoley, Richard. Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2002.

 

Richard Smoley is the author of Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition and Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism. His other works include Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (written with Jay Kinney) and The Essential Nostradamus. His latest book is Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity. He is editor of Quest Books. Visit his blog at

Speculating About Angels

By John De Hoff

Originally printed in the March - April 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: De Hoff, John. "Speculating About Angels." Quest  93.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2005):54

Nearly sixty years ago, the spring of 1945, I was on my way to Paris for a three day leave. About seven o'clock in the morning, eight or ten of us from the 123rd Evacuation Hospital were riding in the back of a deuce and a half, the Army's two-and-a-half-ton truck. One can't easily sleep in transportation like that, especially on the way to Paris for the first time, but we were also not in any serious conversation. All was quiet. Suddenly, with no warning, I heard a voice in the center of my head, a man's voice I'd never heard before. The words were: You are going back to Baltimore. That was all. No introduction, no explication, no conclusion—just that voice and message.

Since then, I've heard of this sort of experience happening to two or maybe three other people. Without warning, and in the same fashion, they described almost identically, "a voice in the center of my head that said . . ."

I have never been satisfied with my attempts to identify, place or understand this voice or its simple message, any more than did the others I spoke with, until I read an article that stressed the importance of angels as messengers. It still left me with more questions than answers: Where do the angels get the messages they carry? Where do they come from? How do they know to whom they should deliver the message? Who sends those messages?

Speaking or writing about angels is fraught with difficulties. Their life form or existence must be as different as the cultural differences that exist in our three-dimensional physical world. And as humans it is as difficult for us to consciously know or comprehend the fourth or fifth dimensions as it would be for two-dimensional people, if they existed, to understand us. But it seems reasonable to consider that our world has other existences, even beings, and in more than three dimensions. The so called spirit world is another dimension, and there may well be even more "beings," who are different expressions of God's incredible Self, working in any of several other dimensions. (Sure, that's guesswork, but what the heck.)

Angels may be among other life forms than the physical in which we are currently embedded. Angels must be purposed differently, perhaps (or probably) existing in dimensions less familiar than our customary three. In another, but similar fashion, we humans share this earth with many different forms of life—animal, vegetable, mineral—each with its multiple "divisions." Perhaps unfortunately, artists have portrayed angels to fit religious concepts, not to replicate their own actual visions of angels, as would a portraitist who faces a living model. Artists give angels human form, even show them with six extremities, possibly to express differences more perceived than observed by either the artist or the ecclesiastic contracting for and consulting on the painting.

Encounters with angels occur under various circumstances. One person reports meeting an angel others may hear an angel's voice, and a third interprets the meeting as hearing a choir of angels. Any human witness may more aptly be said to have sensed the angelic meeting, just as one senses a ball game from a box seat or the bleachers. We say that we saw it or we were there and heard the crowd roar, but it was through our senses that we received the visual or auditory vibrations, and through our nervous system (and brain) that we interpreted or saw or heard. Can it be that we sense the presence and the messages of angels in some fashion other than through our physical senses, our eyes and ears? If so, we might easily misinterpret these contacts as having occurred via the customary ocular or auditory channels, and report that we saw or heard them.

One can guess that angels, therefore, are like the Western Union workers who used to deliver telegrams to businesses, all quite impersonally. They wore olive drab uniforms emblazoned with Western Union, usually rode bicycles from the telegraph office, and were impressive for the nature of their work rather than for their own identity.

Yet angels are so different, their messages so important, that artists set them up as creatures far different, a little holier than us humans. Perhaps they are not so special (just as Western Union boys were simply people dressed in Western Union uniforms), but their messages are more or less special.

Were we to be consciously aware of living with, say, an angelic kingdom, would we then have to consider the existence of bad angels, those more nearly demonic? If angels are correctly conceptualized primarily as messengers, how can we become better or more nearly accurate receivers of their news, their messages? Is this even necessary? Are angels more important than we are in God's work? Given a relationship between us and other beings, how can we in our human dimension relate more effectively to those angels of another dimensional class, if and when communication is warranted? Now I can better understand that what I received on that spring morning in France was probably a message, an angelic one at that.

I had been toying with the idea of moving away from Baltimore after the war was over to practice medicine in Oregon or Washington. Actually, and not in any manner planned at the time of my wartime trip to Paris, I moved to New York City for a residency in psychiatry at the New York Hospital. I soon realized, however, that it was not right for me and moved back to Baltimore.

John DeHoff, a retired physician, is a long-time member of the Theosophical Society. He lives in Maryland.

Summer 2016

VOLUME 104, NUMBER 3

CONTENTS

A Visit to John of God
Nelda Samarel

Clairvoyance and Healing: An Interview with Robyn Finseth
Richard Smoley

Compassion in Action: Dora Kunz's Approach to Healing
Kirsten van Gelder and Frank Chesley

The Oneida Fire Ceremony: A Native Amerian Healing Ritual
Russell FourEagles

Return to the Light
Arlene Gay Levine

Kabbalistic Methods of  Treatment
Albert Amao, Ph.D.

From the Editor's Desk
Richard Smoley

Viewpoint: The Scale of Our Vision
Tim Boyd

President's Diary

A Visit to John of God

Printed in the Summer 2016  issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Samarel, Nelda, "A Visit to John of God" Quest 104.3 (Summer 2016): pg. 101-105

By Nelda Samarel

Theosophical Society - Nelda Samarel, longtime student of the Ageless Wisdom, has been director of the Krotona School of Theosophy and a director of the Theosophical Society in America.In 2011 I was scheduled to teach the winter school at the center for the Theosophical Society in Brazil, one hour from Brasília. It seemed an opportune time to visit Abadiânia, the home of the world-renowned healer, John of God. After all, I was “in the neighborhood” and, since I have been practicing and teaching the energetic healing modality known as Therapeutic Touch for over thirty-five years, my interest as a healer was keen.

According to Google Maps, the trip from the Theosophical center to Abadiânia should be two hours and thirty-two minutes. However, we took a “short cut,” and the resultant four-hour ride took us through the bucolic Brazilian countryside.

Arriving in Abadiânia, my home for the next week, I was struck by the poverty of the rural town. As I learned the following day, most of Abadiânia is structured around and economically dependent on the Casa de Dom Inácio de Loyola, or “the Casa,” as the location of John of God’s clinics is known. Scattered throughout the small town are pousadas, inns where visitors to the Casa are housed; restaurants; Internet cafes; and shops selling essentials for travelers.

The pousada in which I stayed is owned by and designed for Americans, containing extra comforts not always available at other pousadas. This includes items such as window screens, Internet, familiar food, and an English-speaking staff. Although I tend to be an adventurous traveler, it seemed prudent to provide a high level of comfort for myself in the event that I would undergo a healing. The pousada provided three simple but delicious meals daily, a private room complete with hammock and writing desk, and beautiful grounds. Most importantly, the other guests, about twenty in total, all spoke English. We became like a family, sharing our experiences and taking care of each other.

Normally first-time visitors come with a guide who organizes transportation from the U.S., arranges for lodging, assists with formulating and translating requests for healing; accompanies you to the Casa, guides you through the phases of the process, and generally cares for you during your entire stay. Being comfortable traveling alone, and having read a fair amount about John of God and the healing process, I had opted for minimal guide services.

Who Is John of God?

João Teixeira de Faria, internationally known as John of God, born in Brazil in 1942, is a medium and a healer. He maintains, “I do not cure anybody. God heals, and in his infinite goodness permits the Entities to heal . . . I am merely an instrument in God’s divine hands.” It is estimated that, directly or indirectly, he has treated up to 15 million people during the past forty years. John of God, referred to as “the medium,” has no medical training, but permits past doctors’ and spiritual teachers’ spirits, referred to as “the Entities,” to use his body and consciousness to diagnose and treat individuals. When he is healing, he is referred to as “the Entity.”

It is said that thirty-three entities work with John of God. Some of these include medical doctors: Oswaldo Cruz (1872–1917), Augusto de Almeida (1871–1941), Bezerra de Menezes (1831–1900); and José Valdivino; saints: Francis Xavier, Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, and Ignatius Loyola; archangels: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel; and great souls: Jesus Christ, Morya, St. Germain, and Koot Hoomi.

From my own experience, I cannot attest to the fact that any of these Entities were present through John of God, the medium. But I can attest that, although I saw him, the physical man, on three successive days, and came within two or three feet of him each day, it was as if I was with three different people. It seemed that I was with the same person (or Entity?) the first two days, but on the third day he was entirely different. His eyes were the eyes of a different being, and his entire countenance was that of someone else.

João left school after the second grade. He had his first healing experience when he was sixteen and began performing healings in Abadiânia in 1978 at age thirty-six. Soon after, he founded the Casa there. In 1981 he was tried for practicing medicine without a license, but an outpouring of public support resulted in an acquittal. One year later there was an attempt on his life.

The medium is at the Casa every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and has healing sessions mornings and afternoons on each day, beginning at 8 a.m. and not leaving until all healings are completed. Every week, approximately 1500–2000 people visit for healing. He sees each one on all three days. Thus he may have up to 6000 sessions each week. There is no charge for healing, but donations are welcome.

Healing Practices at the Casa

The Casa is a complex of single-story structures, all painted white with blue trim. Both the interiors and exteriors are spartan and clean, providing only the bare necessities. The main building includes an assembly room where all enter and wait for the healing sessions. The room is open to the air and has a small stage at the front. Other rooms in this building include a room for surgeries, a recovery room, a room for discarded wheelchairs and crutches, and two “current rooms,” obtaining their names from the palpable healing energy, or current, generated by John of God along with hundreds of meditators. There also are buildings containing a kitchen and dining facilities, offices, restrooms, a pharmacy, and a store. Outdoors are sitting areas and gardens and a large parking area for buses, cars, and taxis.

Before arriving at the Casa, I was instructed to write three very brief requests for healing. These requests would later be translated into Portuguese, the only language the medium speaks. It is not every day that one has the opportunity to make healing requests of a medium in Abadiânia, so I obsessed over what to ask and changed the requests numerous times. I finally settled on three requests, two of a spiritual nature and one for physical healing of my spine. My rationale was that, given this unique opportunity, spiritual requests were of much greater importance as, unlike physical healing, they may be carried to future incarnations.

Outside the assembly room are a window and counter, behind which are two volunteers, translating and helping people to shorten requests. I had used an online translator program for my requests, so I asked one of the Casa translators to check them for me and make any necessary corrections.

By 7:45 a.m., everyone requesting healing is seated or standing in the assembly room waiting for the morning session. On the days when there are healing sessions, everyone entering the Casa is required to wear white, as it is believed that white helps maintain a higher vibrational frequency. In the assembly room were several hundred persons sitting on benches and on the floor, and standing far back into the courtyard. Many more were to arrive. Because I was aware of the crowds, I arrived at 7:15 and was seated in the first row of benches, directly in front of the stage. A few more formalities, and then all were requested to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the only religious rite at the Casa.

When it was announced that people who were to see the Entity for the first time were to form a line, I took my place in the long line, holding the paper with my three healing requests. The line moved slowly through the next room, the first current room, where approximately 100 people seated on wooden benches were meditating. We silently and slowly continued through this room and entered the second, larger, current room, also filled with people meditating, until we reached the front, where the Entity was seated on a small platform. Throughout this room were several extremely large crystals, some of them at least four feet in height.

As I approached the Entity, with three or four people ahead of me in line, an assistant approached me and took my requests. This assistant, like all who work at the Casa, was a volunteer. He walked with me until I was in front of the Entity and gave my requests to him. The Entity looked at me, looked at my requests, and said something to the assistant, which was translated to me as “Take the medicine.” The Entity then scribbled something illegible on a fresh scrap of paper and handed it to me. This was my “prescription” for the herbs I was to take. The entire process was less than fifteen seconds, and the assistant ushered me to the next room. I must say that I was terribly disappointed. I’m not certain what I expected, but this certainly was a letdown.

I proceeded to the Casa pharmacy to have my prescription filled. There I received a jar of herbs made, I believe, from dried flowers, that I was to take as directed for forty-two days. I later learned that all the bottles contained exactly the same herbs, but the Entity psychically impressed something on the prescription paper and the “pharmacist” filling the prescription, also a medium, transferred that impression into the bottle she handed to me. To my Western way of thinking, this all seemed far-fetched.

Following healings, everyone is instructed to go to the large kitchen and outdoor dining area, where each person who receives healing is given a bowl of homemade soup infused with healing vibrations. The soup is prepared in huge pots, more like cauldrons, by volunteers. As I stood in line waiting to receive my soup, I looked around and saw an amazing variety of others who were receiving healing. There were people like me who had the luxury of traveling thousands of miles out of curiosity, others who traveled in the hopes of curing serious illness, and people from all over Brazil who traveled great distances by bus to see the Entity. These travelers actually slept on their buses during the days of travel and while staying at the Casa. There were people in wheelchairs, on crutches, deformed children, and babies being carried. It seemed that I was surrounded by pain and suffering. I thought that if only a fraction of these people were helped, then all the effort was worthwhile.

As mentioned before, there is a room at the Casa that is filled with crutches and wheelchairs. I was told that these were left by people who came and experienced complete healings so that these items no longer were needed. I was told stories of others who experienced full healing from serious and life-threatening illnesses.

My own experience was not so dramatic. Within a few days my spiritual questions were very clearly answered in my meditations, and several weeks after I returned home, my unrelenting and long-standing back pain suddenly disappeared. Alas, the pain relief was short-lived: I needed to have back surgery several months later. I wonder, however, if I had returned to the Casa, would I have been completely healed? Or was the pain temporarily relieved in order to permit me to emotionally prepare for the surgery that I required?

Surgeries

For many who visit, the Entity prescribes his own form of surgery, which may be either visible or invisible. Those receiving invisible surgery are called to sit together in a room with eyes closed for about ten minutes. The Entity then says something and tells them that they are healed and need to proceed, with caution, back to their pousadas by taxi and lie in bed for twenty-four hours, during which time their meals are brought to their rooms. People having invisible surgery with whom I have spoken said they felt as if they actually had surgery, with all the associated discomforts, and slept for most of the next twenty-four hours, after which they felt fine.

Some volunteered for visible surgery, which is performed publicly in the assembly room in front of patients who are waiting to be seen. The second day, as I was waiting to see the Entity, he came out into the hall with six assistants and three patients. All stood on the small stage in front. At that point I was seated on the edge of the stage, approximately four feet from where the Entity stood.

The first patient, a man, was instructed to stand facing the group. He opened his shirt so that his chest was exposed. The Entity waved his hand across the man’s forehead, then chose a knife from a tray held by one of the assistants and made a vertical incision about four inches in length into the man’s chest. The man was standing, eyes closed, smiling, and did not even wince as the incision was made. There were a only few drops of blood, which was amazing considering the depth of the incision. The Entity then made another incision parallel to the first but somewhat shorter. While this was happening, I saw the outline of a red equilateral triangle on the man’s chest, in a position so that the incisions were in the exact center. (The equilateral triangle is a symbol that is present throughout the Casa, with the three sides representing faith, hope, and love.)

The Entity placed his fingers inside both incisions, not wearing any gloves, moving his fingers. He then withdrew his fingers and took surgical sutures from a tray held by another assistant. He deftly and quickly sutured both incisions, obviously having much experience. Having worked as a nurse in emergency rooms in several hospitals, I never have seen more expert suturing.

That evening, when discussing this with others in my pousada who had also been sitting in the front of the room, I learned that no one else had seen a triangle. Much later on, when with one of the local young men who was driving me to the airport in Brasília, he explained that most people don’t see what I had seen, and that the triangle guided the location of the incisions. I have found no explanation for this.

The “Current,” or Energy

It is entirely possible that the healing at the Casa occurs because of the powerful energy there. Being a Theosophist and a long-time practitioner and teacher of Therapeutic Touch gives me some familiarity with energy and healing. According to Theosophical teachings, human beings are energy fields. It is the pattern and rhythm of that energy, its vibration, that determines our relative health or illness. Energy healing is strengthened when done in the midst of strong and vibrant energy fields.

It is said that part of Brazil has a geological foundation of crystal rock, a foundation that carries a high energy. This was quite apparent when I was at the Theosophical center outside Brasília, with its crystal foundation and abundant waterfalls. At the center, I taught Therapeutic Touch in the mornings and saw patients in the afternoons. Unexplained healings occurred during those afternoon sessions, healings that I could neither explain nor replicate. One such event was the case of a man with a large tumor which had been present for several months on his arm. He had seen a physician and had an MRI scheduled for the following week. He requested me to treat him with Therapeutic Touch. As I was doing Therapeutic Touch, I felt that my hands were being guided.

The next morning at breakfast he approached me and showed me his arm. The tumor was gone. There were other instances, but that is the most dramatic example, and I am certain that it was influenced by the energy present.

In addition to the energy of the crystal foundation in Abadiânia, there are several hundred people meditating in the rooms through which the patients to be healed pass as they approach the Entity. At the Casa, this is referred to as “sitting in current.”

Each who comes to be healed is expected to take their turn sitting in current, usually once every day. This involves arriving at the Casa before the start of the healing session, entering the current room between the hall and the large room where the Entity is seated, taking a seat on one of the wooden benches, keeping the eyes closed at all times, and meditating silently until all who have come to see the Entity have passed through the room and have been seen. The process takes between two and a half to four hours, depending on the number of people to be healed.

Also, in the large room where the Entity is seated, more people, both patients and mediums working with the Entity, are meditating while the line passes through. The large crystals mentioned earlier are placed throughout this room, further strengthening the energy.

The resultant power of all the beneficent energy created reminds me of the healing sessions at Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center and Indralaya with the gifted Theosophical healer and clairvoyant Dora Kunz. Dora gathered large groups of nurses around her at her healing workshops for almost thirty years. All present, approximately seventy-five to ninety nurses and patients, meditated together before Dora’s healing sessions, producing a similar effect.

Additional Theosophical Parallels

According to John of God, illness may be explained karmically. It may be the result of karma for actions in a previous lifetime or earlier in this lifetime. Sometimes a life of illness may be chosen by the soul prior to reentering the physical world in order to more quickly work out previous karma, thereby achieving a more rapid spiritual progression. This is consistent with Theosophical teachings about karma and reincarnation.

Consistently with Theosophical teachings, John maintains that the body is healed from within. Theosophical doctrine also teaches that all manifests from within outwards.

John of God has said that, to be a medium “requires loving God above all else, and your fellow human beings as yourself.” He works long days and takes no remuneration. Clearly he is altruistic at heart. H.P. Blavatsky has told us, “True Theosophy is altruism, and we cannot repeat it too often.” Her teachers, the Mahatmas, emphasized having the welfare of humanity at heart. In this respect, we may say that John of God is a true Theosophist.

What Really Is Happening in Abadiânia?

Much has been written in the news media about what is going on in Abadiânia. Several have attacked John of God as a charlatan, denying the possibility of what they are calling “faith healing.” Those who pride themselves on having scientific minds say there is no proof that any healing has occurred. Experiment is the gold standard of scientific research and requires observation and measurement. The physicist Max Planck said, “Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal.” According to the paradigm of experimental science, if it cannot be measured, it is not real.

I, too, pride myself on having a scientific mind. For decades I was a nursing researcher conducting federally funded studies. However, more and more we are understanding that not all phenomena are observable or measurable. Yet those phenomena are no less real. In fact Shankaracharya, the renowned exponent of Advaita Vedanta, maintained that if something can be measured, it cannot be real, implying that the real is beyond measure.

In 2012 Oprah Winfrey journeyed to the Casa and was taken with the veracity of what was happening, saying she had a “most powerful experience.” Researchers from Harvard visited and came to the conclusion that “something” was happening, although it could not be explained.

The fact is that there has been no research examining the efficacy of what is happening at the Casa. We have only the anecdotes of tens of thousands of people, many who have experienced healing and many who have not.

I have no explanations, nor do I have any certainties about what I experienced and witnessed in Abadiânia, but I do know that something is going on, something is happening, unexplainable as it may be.

Nelda Samarel, Ed.D., R.N., a longtime student of the Ageless Wisdom, has been director of the Krotona School of Theosophy and a director of the Theosophical Society in America. She serves on the executive board of the Inter-American Theosophical Federation. A retired professor of nursing and a researcher, Dr. Samarel has numerous publications and presents internationally.

  1. Clairvoyance and Healing
  2. Compassion in Action
  3. The Oneida Fire Ceremony
  4. Return to the Light

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