Remembering an American Sage: An Admirer and Associate Reminisces about Manly Palmer Hall

Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Hoeller, Stephan A. "Remembering an American Sage: An Admirer and Associate Reminisces about Manly Palmer Hall" Quest 110:3, pg 32-34

By Stephan A. Hoeller

The year was 1953. A recent arrival from war-torn Europe, I found myself transplanted to Southern California, where I was eager to make contact with a remarkable man who might have justly been regarded as the most notable expert on the esoteric tradition on the American continent, if not in the world.

Manly Palmer HallEarly in his life, he became known as the author of the folio-sized, beautifully bound, and illustrated volume entitled The Secret Teachings of All Ages (with a host of highly impressive subtitles). At the library and vault of the headquarters of the institution he founded, Los Angeles’ Philosophical Research Society, he held such treasures as first editions of H.P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, replete with her handwritten notes, as well as alchemical and Rosicrucian codices, and a triangular cipher manuscript attributed to the Count of St. Germain. Having been introduced to these literary marvels by his kindly helper Mr. Gilbert Olson, I was eagerly looking forward to seeing the great man in person.

Some weeks later, I had the good fortune to attend one of Manly P. Hall’s weekday lectures in the smaller intimate lecture hall of the Society. I was filled with unprecedented amazement. This man was possibly the greatest orator of the twentieth century, and by that time had already delivered over 7,500 lectures and authored over 150 books and booklets. Yet he was available to us twice a week with his fabulous discourses, all perfectly structured and faultlessly delivered. From his youth until his passing, people wondered whether his phenomenal memory or his alleged occult powers were responsible for his oratory. (He always denied that he possessed paranormal faculties.)

From these early times on, I attended as many of his lectures as my schedule permitted. With the coming of the sixties, his audiences swelled to ever larger crowds. The sage met the burgeoning interest of the mostly youthful crowd with a t mixed reaction. On some occasions, he recalled that great cultural and even spiritual changes have at times come about as the result of the gatherings of young people. (He was fond of mentioning that the Meiji Restoration in Japanese history was virtually born in the teahouses of Tokyo and Kyoto.) At the same time, he viewed the undisciplined ways of the hippie subculture with disfavor. The occult interests of the sixties generation did not please him much. He considered ceremonial magic and witchcraft as unnecessary byways of the occult. Even more, he showed hostility toward visualizing and “manifesting” for material benefits. He considered using the occult and paranormal for material and selfish ends as bordering on black magic. Occultism without benevolent compassion appeared to him like sacrilege.

What then was Mr. Hall’s philosophy of life, or mystical orientation, that he communicated in his literary works and spoken words? To attempt an explanation, it might be best to refer once more to his magnum opus, the encyclopedic work devoted mainly to the Western esoteric tradition. Its subtitle reads: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy. From these titles, we may deduce that he was aware of a tradition originally descending from the Mysteries of both early and late antiquity, namely Egypt, classical Greece, and Greco-Egyptian Alexandria.

Mr. Hall noted that his interpretation was of the “Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of all ages.” His recognition of a secret tradition proceeding from these sources indicates some orientation that was not common in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, except for the monumental contribution of H.P. Blavatsky and her followers.

Mr. Hall was reverential and enthusiastic about the person and writings of Blavatsky. (He even sculpted a fine bronze bust of Mme. Blavatsky, and he owned an almost life-sized copy of a painting of her by Heinrich Schmiechen, the original reposing in Adyar.) HPB, Mr. Hall believed, was the latest true representative of this tradition, which she enriched with elements of Buddhist and Hindu provenance. He recognized Blavatsky as the latest link in a mysterious chain of messenger-sages come to reenunciate the ageless message of authentic gnosis. In his work The Phoenix, he wrote, “Take away the contribution of H.P. Blavatsky and all modern occultism falls like a house of cards.” His most important contact with her tradition was the German-American Theosophist Max Heindel, author of The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and other works, who, while identifying himself as a Rosicrucian, was teaching doctrines largely traceable to HPB.

Few know that Mr. Hall had served a sort of apprenticeship with Max Heindel early in the 1900s. In fact, he considered himself a “Rosicrucian Christian” and on other occasions described “the genuine Rosicrucian movement as an utterly reliable esoteric form of Christianity.” Mr. Hall also respected Annie Besant and called her “an esoterically inspired great social reformer and humanitarian.” One unconfirmed rumor declared that in the 1920s, Mr. Hall had an interview with Besant, offering his services if she thought he could function in the Theosophical Society. Dr. Besant reputedly advised him to continue his work on his own. Certainly he gave much evidence throughout his life of his sympathy for Theosophy and the Theosophical Society.

In his lectures and private conversations, Manly P. Hall frequently indicated that a certain convergence occurred on American soil, and that the two conjoining parties were a European transmission of ancient esoterica, originating in such sources as Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and Gnosticism, and on the other hand, a certain psychic substratum of Native American provenance. In an essay published in 1964 entitled “Ancient America,” Mr. Hall indicated parallels and trajectories joining the spirit in these two esoteric streams. One of these, he felt, could be found in Native American tribal fraternities, the other in Hermetic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic secret societies from across the Atlantic. Far-fetched as such connections seem, their veracity is certainly worth considering. I am reminded of a motto presented to me as a dedication to some of Mr. Hall’s essays by their editor, the esoteric historian Mitch Horowitz: “Nothing is stranger than truth.” The quest for ecstasy, trance, dream, and vision, all of which periodically emerge in American culture, presented important contributions to occult America as well as to the general culture.

It may be useful at this point to take stock of Mr. Hall’s connection with some esoteric disciplines and teachings. By now, it may be apparent that he was truly a universal man and that his interest in various fields of esoterica was for the most part of an impartial nature. But it would be inaccurate to leave out of our considerations his great love for alchemy. In the vault of the Philosophical Research Society reposed numerous alchemical manuscripts that he had collected over several decades. It was considered one of the best collections of its kind on the American continent. Even C.G. Jung availed himself of Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection when writing his work Psychology and Alchemy.

The prize possession in Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection was a massive and colorful document called the Ripley Scroll, an actual parchment scroll of considerable magnitude, depicting in vivid colors and beautiful design the entire process of alchemical transformation. We were given to understand that only a small number of copies of this scroll were in existence. When requested to do so, Mr. Hall’s longtime librarian, Pearl Thomas, would bring out the Ripley Scroll from the vault and unroll it across several combined library tables, and we could view the entire transformation process to our delight.

Mr. Hall’s alchemical collection contained a considerable number of impressive codices in addition to the Ripley Scroll. Upon his demise, in tandem with one of my fellow lecturers, the late Roger Weir, we persuaded the heirs to sell the entire alchemical collection to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where now, after much restorative work, it is sometimes exhibited under the name of the Manly Hall Collection.

Though born in Canada (March 19, 1901), Mr. Hall spent most of his long life in the U.S. and in fact in Southern California. While in his twenties and thirties, he lectured all over the country in prestigious places, beginning with Carnegie Hall. Early in his life he was treated to a worldwide tour, which took him to much of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. From his journey he wrote spirited accounts, often not without sharp criticism of the conditions he encountered on his journeys.

While still young, he became ill with an affliction of his thyroid (possibly cancer) in the course of which the ill organ was surgically removed. Chemical thyroid supplements being unavailable in those times, he was set up for a lifelong problem with obesity, the reason for which was not generally known. Nevertheless, having been raised by his grandmother, who was a physician of an alternative medical discipline, he enjoyed fairly robust health until the end of his life, and kept the Grim Reaper at bay for eighty-nine years until his death in 1990.

Like many outstanding intellectuals of his time, including Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, Mr. Hall once wrote for the movie studios, where he acquired a colorful coterie of acquaintances. One of his close friends was Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame, whose last marriage Mr. Hall solemnized in a ministerial capacity. Mr. Hall’s first wife, who suffered an early death, was a movie actress (his second wife, Marie Baur, was a student of esoteric matters). At the time I took up my residence in Hollywood, there were still numerous people at the movie studios who knew Manly Hall as “that tall interesting gentleman.”

The “Sage of Los Angeles” was a kindly and considerate gentleman, not only of the old school, but of the perennial school of civility. As it becomes increasingly evident, he was in friendly contact with numerous prominent figures in public life, the arts, and professions. I personally witnessed at least one visit of then Governor Ronald Reagan to Mr. Hall’s office, while his frequent telephone conversations with Elvis Presley were known to some of us. If walls could speak, the tales told by the neo-Aztec architecture of the Philosophical Research Society could disclose memories of visitors and admirers of great stature who walked there ever since its founding in 1934.

It is a teaching well known in some theologies (notably the Jewish) that the dead live on in the memories of those who knew them in life. As times pass and the admiring crowds vanish, it may be of importance for the few who were still present when the sage was with us to invoke their memories of this truly remarkable man. Those who remember will not let go of the image of the noble figure who was so often seen by us in his office or library and lecture room surrounded by splendid objects from many cultures, emanating an aura of gentlemanly refinement combined with subtle humor, seated in a huge chair, delivering long discourses of inspiring and informative content. When closing my eyes, I can still perceive the Barrymore-like profile and can hear the melodious voice conveying idealism, insight, and wonder. The memories of the sage have their own liberating power. In an age where fear, sorrow, and confusion are omnipresent, such thoughts are a great blessing indeed. Perhaps this small account of reminiscences may lighten the weight of time and place us on the eternal ways, where we might meet the unforgettable sage.


Stephan A. Hoeller was born and raised in Hungary and was educated for the monastic priesthood in his earlier years. A member of the Theosophical Society since 1952, he has lectured in the U.S. as well as in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. He served as a professor of religion at the College of Oriental Studies for a number of years and is the author of four books published by Quest Books: The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot; Jung and the Lost Gospels: Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library; The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead; and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing. He has been associated with the Besant Lodge of the TSA in Hollywood for many years and has been a bishop of the Gnostic Church (Ecclesia Gnostica) since 1967. He became the principal lecturer of the Philosophical Research Society (in addition to Mr. Hall) in 1970, and remained in that capacity for some years after Mr. Hall’s death.


Elusive Beauty

Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levine, Arlene Gay "Elusive Beauty" Quest 110:3, pg 30-31

 

By Arlene Gay Levine

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Arlene LevineWhether in Deuteronomy, when Moses rebuked the rebellious Israelites, or multiple times throughout the Gospels, “ears to hear” refers to the capability to respond in one’s heart to the words of the Lord, or, more precisely, to be spiritually awake. What does this have to do with beauty? Everything.

In my article “The Alchemy of Adaptation,” published in the spring 2018 issue of Quest, I wrote: “Many artists speak of allowing ‘the brush to paint,’ ‘the fingers to play the notes,’ or ‘the words to arrive.’ Is this magic? I believe so. What they are really referring to is a skill they have developed, through conscious receptivity, to become clear vehicles for Universal Will. Over time, maybe countless lives, we can gradually learn to let the ‘little me’ step out of the way ‘for the performance of the miracles of the One Thing,’ as the Hermetic text the Emerald Tablet of Hermes puts it.”

Painters, musicians, authors, and poets who learn to open their senses and hearts can channel beauty directly from the Source that created them and all existence. It raises their work to a higher plane, above the prerequisites of skill and craft. As each of us is a hub of expression for the Source, this potential lies latent in everyone.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, an English poet and Jesuit priest in the Victorian era, wrote, “I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.” Somehow, while observing these tiny flowers, he was able to transcend the simple vision of a small part of nature and see the magnificence of the creator abiding there.

Do you think Hopkins could have possessed this vision if he was seeing through the eyes of his everyday self, the one who worries, frets, and out of fear lives in either the past or the future? What is required is to be totally present in the moment, allowing the veil of all that is unreal to drop from our thoughts. It is like the state one endeavors to reach in meditation. The subtle difference here is permitting ourselves to flow utterly into unison with, and be fully accessible to, a deeper knowing for the purpose of cocreating.

Have you ever been entranced by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of the natural world, slipped into the notes of a sonata, become the intricate twists and turns of a tango, channeled a Petrarchan sonnet? Any of these moments, and innumerable others, offer the opportunity to be possessed by love.

There is almost a quality of total self-effacement, not in a negative sense, but as a means to humility. In so doing, the individual becomes an empty vessel filled by a Mind which is capable of guiding you beyond what is possible on your own. Unwillingness to be in tune and instructed in this manner prevents us from conveying true beauty. So if, for example, you are writing and catch yourself thinking about what to write next, put down your pen! Breathe, let go, and simply listen.

For me, the natural world was the first ingress to finding the beauty of which I speak. A sigh of wind through trees, the chanting of the birds, a chorus of crickets, the soft caress of a light rain on my skin, the aroma of a rose—rapt attention to all these sensations and more was my magic carpet to arrive at the door of the Divine.

One day, by chance, I happened to spy two sparrow hawks circling so high it hurt to look. In my lap was a poetry book, where words struggled to be what I’d just seen: the cobalt sky a canvas for flight, the hawks inscribing eternity upon the vanishing October light.

A pungent Indian summer breeze prompted whispers from remaining leaves. I eavesdropped, blinked my eyes; only one bird remained. That feathered missile launched into air so rare, I could no longer see him there, but wished I could go too.

The weight of book, paper, and pen drew me back to earth again, but to this day, part of me ascends. 

startrails          

Star Trails*

Some grip their lanterns through
a great darkness, hearts so tightly
woven in the ways of this world,
mere shadows of who they might be

while others, often ignored or even
deemed mad, channel true power,
minds illuminated by all that is holy
despite the heaviness hunkering
down around us . . .

Picture Vincent viewing
the countryside of St. Rémy
from an open window before
dawn at St. Paul asylum

Imagine the genius of his sight
akin to the light from a cameranot yet invented for another
century or so, capturing

with transcendent vision
                   star trails scoring
                                   the night

                                                sky

 

* A star trail is a long exposure photograph that shows the movement of stars in the night sky. The stars appear to move in the sky but it is actually the rotation of the earth that causes the perceived movement. This phenomenon could be used to build a better conceptual model of the Earth’s place in the solar system, galaxy, or Universe. Wikipedia

Mystic, poet, author, and educator, Arlene Gay Levine’s prose and poetry have found a home in The New York Times, an off-Broadway show, anthologies, journals, radio programs, and online. Recently her poem “The Climb” won second place in The New York Encounter 2020 Poetry Contest, judged by Dana Gioia. Her poem “Creation” was published in For Every Little Thing (Eerdmans, 2021). Learn more about her at www.arlenegaylevine.com.


Beauty and the Joshua Trees

Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Braun, Stephen "Beauty and the Joshua Trees" Quest 110:3, pg 23-29

By Stephen Braun

Stephen BraunA very specific quest for beauty started in the Mojave Desert, in the part of that desert where the Joshua trees grow. It started ten years ago, when I first experienced them. I have always loved trees, but those captured my heart and attention like no others.

They sit apart, dotting the sunburnt horizon as far as the eye can see. They are prickly and tawdry-looking; they live without much water and grow with a form that is ideal for discouraging predators and pretty much all else in the world. These rare trees exhibit no traces of animated life, showing what appear to be constant signs of distress, with limbs torn asunder here and there. There is constant heat and little wind in the desert, so they remain still; one will never see a Joshua swaying and dancing in the wind. Their prickly exterior ensures there will be fewer animals or birds to be found among their branches than on other trees.

Some find Joshua trees to be exceptionally beautiful; others, who notice the spiny, wayward, and prickly features, find them odd-looking. But are we seeing them as fully as we can?

Seemingly alone and separate from one another, they each offer a unique and individual voice as one moves among them. There is a sense they have something more to share with us than meets the eye, that they want to be heard. Perhaps they can offer something from their world to ours, something revealing, and exceptionally beautiful, about their inner nature. 

The Mojave Desert is a bit out of the way for a New Yorker who doesn’t drive, but I managed to get there several times over the years to commune with those trees. On each occasion, I attempted to hear what they might have to say or share. I started to consider how, as a photographer, I might be able to capture that with a camera. I wondered how I could portray their inner voice and beauty in a way we might be able to understand as busy humanity, blessed with our human set of senses and abilities, which are much different from those of the Joshua trees. In the words of Susan Sontag, author of On Photography, one of the most seminal books about photography as an art form, “Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.” This essay is about how I did just that, with inspiration from the Joshua trees.

Joshua trees
Joshua trees, Joshua Tree National Park

Photography may seem like the epitome of Plato’s cave. Light from the external world enters a lens and is affixed on a plate; the image from said plate is then rendered onto a medium elsewhere, at which point we have what may be considered a photograph. This aspect of photography used to limit how its potential was regarded and the extent to which photographs were counted as a true art form.

As tools have progressed, those opinions have started to change, and photography has begun to earn the reputation it deserves in the canon of fine arts. However, one thing has not changed since the first click of the shutter of a camera obscura until today: photographers have always been concerned with finding the beautiful in unexpected places, or amplifying beauty in places where it is expected.

study of rose of sharon flowers       hiram pulk
Figure 1. This work, a study of rose of Sharon flowers by Adolhe Braun (c. 1854), is an albumen silver print from a glass negative. Some might say that flowers as an object are undoubtably beautiful, and therfore this image is. Others migt look at the unusualcomposition of this image and disagree.   Figure 2 Hiram Pulk, nine tearsold, cuts some fish at a canning company. "I ain't very fast, only about five boxes a day. They pay abot 5(cents) a box." Eastport, Maine. National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Offhan, if we described an image of a young boy with soiled clothing and dead fish next to his bare feet, a dock slightly out of focus, with skewed angles, adn gray skies, one might not imagine it as beautiful. And yet when looking at the image, taken by Lewi Hine to document child labor, many might yet see beauty. What, then, makes this image beautiful?

Of course, cameras also serve utilitarian purposes, such as for documentary or archival photography. But this essay will focus strictly on the camera as a tool for unlocking and identifying more beauty from and in our world.

Like many other artists, photographers have attempted to define beauty as subjectively or objectively based, and they have run into the classic problems and tug of war between the two, as in this example (figures 1 and 2).

The above examples represent conundrums for defining beauty in a photograph, since not everyone would agree on whether each image may be described as beautiful. This has led some to state that beauty is intersubjective, in the sense that it is dependent on a group of judges. But this leads us to even more problems: there’s simply too much beauty in this world and too many judges to see us through to a concrete definition.

     Fontainebleau Forest
 

Figure 3: This photograph of the Fontainebleau Forest in France, by Eugene Cuvelier, dates from the early 1860's. Many would agree that this magical photograph of a magical forest effectively captures sublime beauty. The image might arguably pass muster with both the objectively an subjectively defined concepts of beauty, leaving us with yet another conundrum, because both defintions aply.

Finally, we have a third example to consider:(figuare 3)

Initially, photographers had only a limited ability to capture a point of view different from what we are capable of seeing as humans. From the early camera obscuras of the beginning of the nineteenth century until the early twentieth century, photography was very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get, provided subjects could sit still for half an hour or a fifty-pound camera could be lugged to a site. In its earliest days, photographers strove for what-you-see-is-what-you-get, given the difficulties of lighting conditions, early stages of camera equipment, and atmospheric proclivities.

As cameras became more portable and procedures for capturing photos became more process-oriented, photography proceeded to document wonders, civilizations, and beauty throughout the world. Photographs of pyramids, Amazon rain forests, Chinese temples, and the Eiffel Tower spurred interest and excitement to capture more and more beauty.

This early expansion established photography as a medium that was able to capture the world in ways that were considered both factual and fascinating. This new ability to affix light to a silver-coated plate, then use light again to fasten an image from that plate onto a photographic canvas, unlocked new potential to account for detail in the world and humanity. “The photographer,” Paul Rosenfeld wrote of Alfred Stieglitz, “has cast the artist’s net wider into the material world than any man before him or alongside him” (Sontag, 24).

After photography became more established as a medium, some photographers sought to break away from the what-you-see-is-what-you-get relationship between normal human perception and what is being photographed. Early historical breaks from our typical anthropomorphic viewpoint began to move photography into its own unique direction as an art form. This expansion beyond what we typically would notice with our own eyes started in the early twentieth century, with pioneers such as Paul Strand and Edward Weston, who attempted to portray patterns and beauty in unexpected places. With their work and that of other pioneers, photography started to move forward as an art form on its own terms.

Abstraction  
Figure 4. Paul Strand, Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Connecticut (1916), gelatin silver print, from the porfolio On My Doorstep, A Porfolio of Eleven Photographs, 1914-73.  

In 1915 Paul Strand, who studied under acclaimed photographer Alfred Stieglitz, took a photograph which he titled “Abstract Patterns Made by Bowls,” one of the earliest known attempts at such a perceptual shift. Strand later turned to close-ups of machine forms, nature, and nudes, pulling the curtain and revealing previously unrecognized beauty in both natural and man-made forms. In addition to honing in on macro shots of everyday objects, Strand also played with perspective. His From the Viaduct, New York (1916), showed a new kind of artistic perspective that could be unleashed by the optics and field sensitivities of cameras.

Strand’s work is one of photography’s earliest and best-known breaks from showing the world strictly from our existing perspective. Work like his enabled photography to reveal novel structures, patterns, and beauty in everyday settings and objects. The photographic floodgates were now open, and many photographers have followed suit to this day. (figure 4)

Subsequent advances in camera technology eventually went in numerous other directions, bringing us images of earth from orbit or from vast depths under the sea. We became able to recognize and account for breathtaking beauty in our world that was inconceivable a few generations ago.

Photography now has become known for exploring symmetry, structure, and harmony in the nooks and crannies of our material universe. Susan Sontag writes, “One finds that there is beauty or at least interest in everything, seen with an acute enough eye” (Sontag, 138). Indeed, that is the lifelong quest for many photographers: to unlock beauty and share it with the wider world.

Photography was not generally considered a fine art until the 1970s, when On Photography made probably the most valid and convincing case for it. In that seminal essay, Sontag addressed many aspects of beauty in terms of the photographic medium. When discussing how photography compares to painting, she said, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses” (Sontag, 71). That prevalent view of photography has been a mixed blessing for the craft, inasmuch as it has led many to discount it as an art form. Yet when a photograph approaches the sublime, we are acutely aware of its potential for transcendence. This too has also made it difficult to pin down succinct definitions of beauty in photographs.

As camera, optical, editing, and storage technologies developed, we have been able to see more beauty in the material world than ever before. Breathtaking images of cellular biological structures are now possible, as are images of the far reaches of outer space, revealed by our cameras: (figures 5 and 6). 

space fig 5

Figure 5. (ABOVE) Cameras in space have revealed breathtaking cos,ic beauty and universal essence. Image courtesy of NASA.

Figuar 6. (RIGHT) Our space cameras also have revealed harmnic patterns and laws underlying our universe. Image courtesy of NASA.

      space fig 6 
     

 How might we apply twenty-first-century photographic tools to Joshua trees? One suspects that those trees can sing louder for us, no matter what kind of subjectively or objectively based photograph we take.

We can pursue this quest further by considering the problem from a Theosophical point of view, using ancient wisdom. 

 Theosophical Concepts of Beauty

Perhaps we are limiting ourselves with the subjective-objective paradigm to which we default as photographers. What if we were to think less about taking a photograph “of” something and more about “constructing” a photograph using the ancient wisdom? A photograph records the relationship one object has with another: a photographer-object taking a photograph of another object. So then, what if we consider a photograph as a connection between objects, or what if we use photographic tools to explore the inner relationships of an object on its own?

            Let’s look for some of the answers by going back to the Stanzas of Dzyan:

This was the Army of the Voice—the Divine Septenary. The sparks of the seven are subject to, and the servants of, the first second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and the seventh of the seven . . . These (“sparks”) are called spheres, triangles, cubes, lines, and modellers. (Secret Doctrine, 1:93)

Philosophers through the ages have attempted to express the above wisdom by portraying it in different ways through the concepts of form, number, geometry, harmony, and symmetry; the unifying essence of which points to a divine and loving intelligence embedded in manifested creation, which they called beauty.

The Pythagoreans were able to express the fundamental principles of the universe through numbers and form. Plato in the Symposium and Plotinus in the Enneads define beauty itself in the realm of the ideal Forms, and the beauty of particular objects in their participation in the Forms.

The eighteenth-century Irish philosopher Francis Hutcheson states, “What we call Beautiful in Objects, to speak in the Mathematical Style, seems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity and Variety; so that where the Uniformity of Bodys is equal, the Beauty is as the Variety; and where the Variety is equal, the Beauty is as the Uniformity.”

    dance of shiva
    Figure 7. The Dance of Shiva: six photographs overlaid using seal of Solomon geometries, number sequences, and Tarot symbolis,.

The Roman architect Vitruvius writes, “Symmetry also is the appropriate harmony arising out of the details of the work itself . . . As in the human body, from cubit, foot, palm, inch and other small parts come the symmetric quality of eurhythmy.”

Thomas Aquinas’s second requirement for beauty is “due proportion or consonance.”

The question becomes: how do we apply these ideas of beauty to a photograph? It may be to our benefit to consider a third aspect of beauty—one that considers it in a transitive sense, as informed by patterns within and among conscious objects. If we start to consider beauty this way, and identify harmonics and patterns transitively, what might happen? How might we unlock those patterns in a tree?

We are at an exciting moment for applying the use of ancient wisdom to images. Photography, at its core, is about mathematics and light. As beginners, we were taught the “rule of thirds” as a means of structuring the composition of a photograph. (The term refers to a type of composition in which an image is divided evenly into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and the subject of the image is placed at the intersection of those dividing lines, or along one of the lines.)

When we take a photograph, we are implicitly managing a complex series of mathematical considerations, sequences, and decisions that determine the various settings of a camera and how the resulting image is affixed to a final medium. We have light meter settings, lens refractions, color settings, flashlight strength and duration, shutter speeds, f-stops, distance from the subject, depth of field, and other mathematical considerations that are required every time we take a photograph, even with a mobile phone. Many of us may be unaware how many of these considerations are automated when we use contemporary cameras.

 

Maple Grove Naperville Illinois 2021       Forest bathing
Figure 8. Maple grove, Naperville, Illinois. Thirteen photographs, full circumference, with Tarot and  sared number sequences to inform setings.   Figure 9. Forest bathing, Fairbanks, Alaska. Thirteen photographs, full circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform, settings.

Birch grove

Figure 10. (ABOVE) Birch grove, Fairbanks, Alaska. Eleven photographs, half circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform settings.

Figure 11. (RIGHT) Spruce mandala, Fairbanks, Alaska. Five photographs, half circumference, with Tarot and sacred number sequences to inform settings. Note the mandala pattern, which appeared when I applied the final esoteric adjustment.

  Spruce mandala fairbanks alaska
     

 

Photographers make explicit choices about those elements to move their concept and image forward. We now have the ability to take things a step further by incorporating esoteric teachings and paradigms into the mathematics of photography. We have more potential than ever to explore universal harmonies with our cameras. Most image editing software easily allows millions of combinations of the mathematical elements of a photograph, down to the pixel level. Optical lenses are more advanced than ever. We have almost limitless potential to apply esoteric tools in new ways.

The key is to find ways of incorporating esoteric principles into our use of cameras and other imaging tools, in the ways our cameras interface with the external world, and in the settings of the photography tools themselves. The esoteric possibilities are practically endless.

Now let us return to those odd-looking trees in the Mojave Desert to test the transitive aspects of beauty in photographs. I returned to them last April, on my first photographic journey out of New York City since the start of Covid-related lockdowns. This time my journey was different: I was now accompanied by teachings from the ancient wisdom in addition to my trusty camera. I wandered the desert on foot, considering different trees to work on; when a hawk landed in one of the trees near me, I knew it should be the one for attempting a new approach to beauty in a photograph, using ancient teachings.

To start with, I selected six stones from the desert floor and laid the first one to the north of the tree. I then marked out a six-pointed star (sometimes called the Seal of Solomon), with the first stone set at the top of this esoteric symbol, followed by placement of the other stones at angles where I could attempt to capture the tree’s living harmony. I took a series of photos of the tree from each stone, using esoteric concepts to inform intentional camera movements and the angles of my shots. My goal was to capture more of how the tree itself experiences and lives in this world, differently than we do, but in its own beautiful way.

Once home, I completed the last phase of this process by combining the photographs I had taken into one. I sequenced the photographs and applied adjustments to them using esoteric tools such as numerology, harmonic ratios, and Tarot symbolism. The result from this first attempt was encouraging:

Encouraged by this result and subsequent attempts, I started to apply techniques rooted in the ancient wisdom to trees across the United States in a new project called American Tree Portraits, which so far has included trees from fifteen states. The results have been startling, and a nascent body of work has started to emerge.

And now let us return to the Joshua trees and the inspiration of the Mojave Desert. They have shown us new ways to find beauty by applying esoteric tools within camera settings and the imaging process., We may now bring more voices and beauty to life as the trees sing and dance for us, enriching our loving world even more. We may also look at our modern cameras as ubiquitous beauty machines, which allow us to explore, capture, and share more beauty than ever, pulling the veil off the harmony and intelligence in our divinely manifested world.



Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. Meta-Astronomy. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Concord Grove Press, 1982.

————. The Secret Doctrine. Two volumes. Wheaton: Quest, 1993.

Fistioc, M.C. The Beautiful Shape of the Good: Platonic and Pythagorean Themes in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. Reviewed by S. Naragon. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2002.

Hegel, G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975.

Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Two Treatises. In K. Haakonssen, ed. The Collected Works and Correspondence of Francis Hutcheson. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004 [1726].

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Translated by J.H. Bernard. New York: Macmillan, 1951.

Konstan, David. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982.

Rosenheim, J.L. Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2020.

Sartwell, Crispin. “Beauty.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017.

Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Translated by R. Snell. Minneola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.

Troward, Thomas. The Hidden Power and Other Papers upon Mental Science. New York: Robert H. McBride & Co., 1925.


Stephen Braun
is a writer and photographer based in New York City and a Life Member of the Theosophical Society. He is active with the National, New York City, and Washington, D.C., lodges. More tree images created using esoteric tools may be found at www.stephenbraun.photos.


The Art of Architecture

Printed in the  Summer 2022 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bragdon, Claude "The Art of Architecture" Quest 110:3, pg 14-21

By Claude Bragdon

Claude BragdonOne of the advantages of a thorough assimilation of what may be called the theosophic idea is that it can be applied with advantage to every department of knowledge and of human activity: like the key to a cryptogram, it renders clear and simple that which before seemed intricate and obscure. Let us apply this key to the subject of art, and to the art of architecture in particular, and see if by so doing we may not learn more of art than we knew before, and more of theosophy too.

The theosophic idea is that everything is an expression of the Self—or whatever other name one may choose to give to that immanent unknown reality which forever hides behind all phenomenal life—but because, immersed as we are in materiality, our chief avenue of knowledge is sense perception, a more exact expression of the theosophic idea would be: everything is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Art, accordingly, is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Now though the Self is one, sense is not one, but manifold: and therefore there are arts, each addressed to some particular faculty or group of faculties, and each expressing some particular quality or group of qualities of the Self. The white light of Truth is thus broken up into a rainbow-tinted spectrum of Beauty, in which the various arts are colors, each distinct, yet merging one into another—poetry into music; painting into decoration; decoration becoming sculpture; sculpture, architecture; and so on.

     p Theosophical Society arch
  Claude Bragdon's blueprint design for the entrance arch to the Theosophical Society's Olcott headquarters, dedicated in 1940. Image by courtesy ofJanet Kerschner, TSA archives.

In such a spectrum of the arts, each one occupies a definite place, and all together form a series of which music and architecture are the two extremes. That such is their relative position may be demonstrated in various ways. The theosophic explanation involving the familiar idea of the “pairs of opposites” would be something as follows. According to the Hindu-Aryan theory, Brahma, that the world might be born, fell asunder into man and wife, became, in other words, name and form.*

The two universal aspects of name and form are what philosophers call the two “modes of consciousness,” one of time, and the other of space. These are the two gates through which ideas enter phenomenal life; the two boxes, as it were, that contain all the toys with which we play.

Everything, were we only keen enough to perceive it, bears the mark of one or the other of them, and may be classified accordingly. In such a classification music is seen to be allied to time, and architecture to space, because music is successive in its mode of manifestation, and in time alone everything would occur successively, one thing following another; while architecture, on the other hand, impresses itself upon the beholder all at once, and in space alone all things would exist simultaneously.

Music, which is in time alone, without any relation to space, and architecture, which is in space alone, without any relation to time, are thus seen to stand at opposite ends of the art spectrum, and to be, in a sense, the only “pure” arts, because in all the others the elements of both time and space enter in varying proportion, either actually or by implication. Poetry and the drama are allied to music inasmuch as the ideas and images of which they are made up are presented successively, yet these images are for the most part forms of space. Sculpture on the other hand is clearly allied to architecture, and so to space, but the element of action, suspended though it be, affiliates it with the opposite, or time pole. Painting occupies a middle position, since in it space, instead of being actual, has become ideal—three dimensions being expressed through the mediumship of two—and time enters into it more largely than into sculpture by reason of the greater ease with which complicated action can be indicated: a picture being nearly always time arrested in midcourse as it were—a moment transfixed.

In order to form a just conception of the relation between music and architecture, it is necessary that the two should be conceived of not as standing at opposite ends of a series represented by a straight line, but rather in juxtaposition, as in the ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth, the head in this case corresponding to music, and the tail to architecture; in other words, though in one sense they are the most widely separated of the arts, in another they are the most closely related.

Music being purely in time and architecture being purely in space, each is, in a manner and to a degree not possible with any of the other arts, convertible into the other, by reason of the correspondence subsisting between intervals of time and intervals of space. A perception of this may have inspired the famous saying that architecture is frozen music, a poetical statement of a philosophical truth, since that which in music is expressed by means of harmonious intervals of time and pitch, successively, after the manner of time, may be translated into corresponding intervals of architectural void and solid height and width. 

In another sense music and architecture are allied. They alone of all the arts are purely creative, since in them is presented, not a likeness of some known idea, but a thing-in-itself brought to a distinct and complete expression of its nature. Neither a musical  composition nor a work of architecture depends for its effectiveness upon resemblances to natural sounds in the one case, or to natural forms in the other. Of none of the other arts is this to such a degree true: they are not so much creative as re-creative, for in them all the artist takes his subject ready made from nature and presents it anew according to the dictates of his genius. 

The characteristic differences between music and architecture are the same as those which subsist between time and space. Now time and space are such abstract ideas that they can be dealt with best through their corresponding correlatives in the natural world, for it is a fundamental theosophic tenet that nature everywhere abounds in such correspondences; that nature, in its myriad forms, is indeed the concrete presentment of abstract unities. The energy which everywhere animates form is a type of time within space; the mind working in and through the body is another expression of the same thing.

Correspondingly, music is dynamic, subjective, mental, of one dimension; while architecture is static, objective, physical, of three dimensions; sustaining the same relation to music and the other arts as does the human body to the various organs, which compose, and consciousnesses, which animate it (it being the reservatory of these organs and the vehicle of these consciousnesses); and a work of architecture in like manner may and sometimes does include all of the other arts within itself. Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like the very spirit of life tingling through the body’s fibers.

Such being the relation between them, the difference in the nature of the ideas bodied forth in music and in architecture becomes apparent.

Music is interior, abstract, subjective, speaking directly to the soul in a simple and universal language whose meaning is made personal and particular in the breast of each listener: “Music alone of all the arts,” says Balzac, “has power to make us live within ourselves.” 

A work of architecture is the exact opposite of this: existing principally and primarily for the uses of the body, it is, like the body, a concrete organism, attaining to esthetic expression only in the reconciliation and fulfilment of many conflicting practical requirements. Music is pure beauty, the voice of the unfettered and perpetually vanishing soul of things; architecture is that soul imprisoned in a form, become subject to the law of causality, beaten upon by the elements, at war with gravity, the slave of man. One is the Ariel of the arts; the other, Caliban.

Coming now to the consideration of architecture in its historical rather than its philosophical aspect, it will be shown how certain theosophical concepts are applicable here. Of these none is more familiar and none more fundamental than the idea of reincarnation. By reincarnation more than mere physical rebirth is meant, for physical rebirth is but a single manifestation of that universal law of alternation of state, of animation of vehicles, and progression through related planes, in accordance with which all things move, and as it were make music—each cycle complete, yet part of a larger cycle, the incarnate monad passing through correlated changes, carrying along and bringing into manifestation in each successive arc of the spiral the experience accumulated in all preceding states, and at the same time unfolding that power of the Self peculiar to the plane in which it is momentarily manifesting.

This law finds exemplification in the history of architecture in the orderly flow of the building impulse from one nation and one country to a different nation and a different country: its new vehicle of manifestation; also in the continuity and increasing complexity of the development of that impulse in manifestation; each “incarnation” summarizing all those which have gone before, and adding some new factor peculiar to itself alone; each being a growth, a life, with periods corresponding to childhood, youth, maturity, and decadence; each also typifying in its entirety some single one of these life-periods, and revealing some special aspect or power of the Self.

For the sake of clearness and brevity, the consideration of only one of several architectural evolutions will be attempted: that which, arising in the north of Africa, spread to southern Europe, thence to the northwest of Europe and to England—the architecture, in short, of the so-called civilized world.

This architecture, anterior to the Christian era, may be broadly divided into three great periods, during which it was successively practiced by three peoples: the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.

Then intervened the Dark Ages, and a new art arose, the Gothic, which was a flowering out in stone of the spirit of Christianity. This was in turn succeeded by the Renaissance, the impulse of which remains today unexhausted. In each of these architectures the peculiar genius of a people and of a period attained to a beautiful, complete, and coherent utterance, and notwithstanding the considerable intervals of time which sometimes separated them, they succeeded one another logically and inevitably, and each was related to the one which preceded and the one which followed it in a particular and intimate manner.

The power and wisdom of ancient Egypt was vested in its priesthood, which was composed of individuals exceptionally qualified by birth and training for their high office, tried by the severest ordeals, and bound by the most solemn oaths. The priests were honored and privileged above all other men, and spent their lives dwelling apart from the multitude in vast and magnificent temples, dedicating themselves to the study and practice of religion, philosophy, science, and art—subjects then intimately related, not widely separated, as they are now. These men were the architects of ancient Egypt: theirs the minds which directed the hands that built those time-defying monuments.

The rites that the priests practiced centered about what are known as the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. These consisted of representations, by means of symbol and allegory, under conditions and amid surroundings the most awe-inspiring, of those great truths concerning man’s nature, origin, and destiny of which the priests—in reality a brotherhood of initiates and their pupils—were the custodians. These ceremonies were made the occasion for the initiation of neophytes into the order, and the advancement of the already initiated into its successive degrees. For the practice of such rites, and others designed to impress not the elect but the multitude, the great temples of Egypt were constructed. Everything about them was calculated to induce a deep seriousness of mind, and to inspire feelings of awe, dread, and even terror, so as to test the candidate’s fortitude of soul to the utmost.

Avenue of rthe Sphinxes     
FIGURE 1. Avenue of the Sphinxes, connecting the temples of Karnak and Luor, Egypt. Completed 380-62 BC.  

The avenue of approach to an Egyptian temple was flanked on both sides, sometimes for a mile or more, with great stone sphinxes—that emblem of man’s dual nature, the god emerging from the beast (figure 1). The entrance was through a single high doorway between two towering pylons, presenting a vast surface sculptured and painted over with many strange and enigmatic figures, and flanked by aspiring obelisks and seated colossi with faces austere and calm. The large court thus entered was surrounded by high walls and colonnades, but was open to the sky. Opposite the first doorway was another, admitting to a somewhat smaller enclosure, a forest of enormous carved and painted columns supporting a roof through the apertures of which sunshine gleamed or dim light filtered down. Beyond this in turn were other courts and apartments culminating in some inmost sacred sanctuary.

Not alone in their temples, but in their tombs and pyramids and all the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians, there is the same insistence upon the sublimity, mystery, and awfulness of life, which they seem to have felt so profoundly. But more than this, the conscious thought of the masters who conceived them, the buildings of Egypt give utterance also to the toil and suffering of the thousands of slaves and captives which hewed the stones out of the heart of the rock, dragged them long distances, and placed them one upon another, so that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law.

In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope.

Egypt is humanity newborn, bound still with an umbilical cord to nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those gigantic colossi flanking the entrance to some rock-cut temple, which though entire, are yet part of the living cliff out of which they were fashioned.

In the architecture of Greece the note of dread and mystery yields to one of pure joyousness and freedom. The terrors of childhood have been outgrown, and man revels in the indulgence of his unjaded appetites and in the exercise of his awakened reasoning faculties. In Greek art is preserved that evanescent beauty of youth which, coming but once and continuing but for a short interval in every human life, is yet that for which all antecedent states seem a preparation, and of which all subsequent ones are in some sort an effect. Greece typifies adolescence, the love age, and so throughout the centuries humanity has turned to the contemplation of her, just as a man all his life long secretly cherishes the memory of his first love.

An impassioned sense of beauty and an enlightened reason characterize the productions of Greek architecture during its best period. The perfection then attained was possible only in a nation whereof the citizens were themselves critics and amateurs of art, one wherein the artist was honored and his work appreciated in all its beauty and subtlety. The Greek architect was less bound by tradition and precedent than was the Egyptian, and he worked unhampered by any restrictions save such as, like the laws of harmony in music, helped rather than hindered his genius to express itself—restrictions founded on sound reason, the value of which had been proved by experience.

Temple of Hephaestus   Temple of Hephaestus   Monument of Lysicrates 
Figure 2. The Doric order. The Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.   Figure 3. The Ionic order. The erechtheio temple, Acropolis.   Figure 4.The monument of Lysicrates, Athens, 334-35 B.C.

The Doric order (figure 2) was employed for all large temples, since it possessed in fullest measure the qualities of simplicity and dignity, the attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order (figure 3), the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman, it was more supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these, infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was used sometimes for small monuments and temples, such as the Tower of the Winds and the monument of Lysicrates at Athens (figure 4).

Because the Greek architect was at liberty to improve upon the work of his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other, and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation to its position and function, but in regard to its intrinsic beauty as well, so that the merest fragment, detached from the building of which it formed a part, is found worthy of being treasured in our museums for its own sake.

Just as every detail of a Greek temple was adjusted to its position and expressed its office, so the building itself was made to fit its site and to show forth its purpose, forming with the surrounding buildings a unit of a larger whole. The Athenian Acropolis (figure 5) is an illustration of this: it is an irregular fortified hill, bearing diverse monuments in various styles, at unequal levels and at different angles with one another, yet the whole arrangement seems as organic and inevitable as the disposition of the features of a face.

Acropolis
Figure 5. The Acropolis at Athens.

The Acropolis is an example of the ideal architectural republic wherein each individual contributes to the welfare of all, and at the same time enjoys the utmost personal liberty.

Very different is the spirit bodied forth in the architecture of imperial Rome. The iron hand of its sovereignty, encased within the silken glove of its luxury, finds its prototype in buildings which were stupendous, crude, brute masses of brick and concrete, hidden within a covering of rich marbles and mosaics, wrought in beautiful but often meaningless forms by clever degenerate Greeks. The genius of Rome finds its most characteristic expression, not in temples to the high gods, but rather in those vast and complicated structures—basilicas, amphitheaters, baths—built for the amusement and purely temporal needs of the people.

If Egypt typifies the childhood of the race and Greece its beautiful youth, republican Rome represents its strong manhood—a soldier filled with the lust of war and the love of glory—and imperial Rome its degeneracy: that soldier become conqueror, decked out in plundered finery and sunk in sensuality, tolerant of all who minister to his pleasures but terrible to all who interfere with them.

The fall of Rome marked the end of the ancient pagan world. Above its ruin, Christian civilization in the course of time arose. Gothic architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man’s spiritual nature, awakening in a body worn and weakened by debaucheries, longs ardently and tries vainly to escape. Of some such mood a Gothic cathedral is the expression: its vaulting, marvelously supported upon slender shafts by reason of a nicely adjusted equilibrium of forces; its restless, upward-reaching pinnacles and spires; its ornament, intricate and enigmatic—all these suggest the overstrained organism of an ascetic; while its vast shadowy interior, lit by marvelously traceried and jeweled windows, which hold the eyes in a hypnotic thrall, is like his soul: filled with world sadness, dead to the bright brief joys of sense, seeing only heavenly visions, knowing none but mystic raptures (figure 6).

chartres cathedral
Figure 6. Interior, Chartres  Cathedal, France, built mainly between AD 1194 and 1220

Thus it is that the history of architecture illustrates and enforces the theosophical teaching that everything of man’s creating is made in his own image. Architecture mirrors the life of the individual and of the race, which is the life of the individual written large in time and space. The terrors of childhood; the keen interests and appetites of youth; the strong stern joy of conflict which comes with manhood; the lust, the greed, the cruelty of a materialized old age—all these serve but as a preparation for the life of the spirit, in which the man becomes again as a little child, going over the whole round, but on a higher arc of the spiral.

The final or fourth state being only in some sort a repetition of the first, it would be reasonable to look for a certain correspondence between Egyptian and Gothic architecture, and such a correspondence there is, though it is more easily divined than demonstrated. In both, there is the same deeply religious spirit; both convey, in some obscure yet potent manner, a sense of the soul being near the surface of life. There is the same love of mystery and of symbolism; and in both may be observed the tendency to create strange composite figures to typify transcendental ideas, the sphinx seeming a blood brother to the gargoyle. The conditions under which each architecture flourished were not dissimilar, for each was formulated and controlled by small well-organized bodies of sincerely religious and highly enlightened men—the priesthood in the one case, the masonic guilds in the other—working together toward the consummation of great undertakings amid a populace for the most part oblivious of the profound and subtle meanings of which their work was full. In medieval Europe, as in ancient Egypt, fragments of the Ancient Wisdom—transmitted in the symbols and secrets of the cathedral builders—determined much of Gothic architecture.

The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive classical antiquity. Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a classical style, sculptors modeling pagan deities, and architects building according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods, succeeded in producing works like, yet different from, the originals they followed—different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the ancients, they embodied a new ideal.

In all the productions of the early Renaissance, “that first transcendent springtide of the modern world,” there is the evanescent grace and beauty of youth which was seen to have pervaded Greek art, but it is a grace and beauty of a different sort. The Greek artist sought to attain to a certain abstract perfection of type; to build a temple which should combine all the excellencies of every similar temple; to carve a figure, impersonal in the highest sense, which should embody every beauty.

The artist of the Renaissance, on the other hand, delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul—a sense of which was Christianity’s gift to Christendom—he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it, he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The history of Renaissance architecture, as John Addington Symonds has pointed out, is the history of a few eminent individuals, each one molding and modifying the style in a manner peculiar to himself alone. In the hands of Brunelleschi, it was stern and powerful; Bramante made it chaste, elegant, and graceful; Palladio made it formal, cold, symmetrical; while with Sansovino and Sammichele it became sumptuous and bombastic.

As the Renaissance ripened to decay, its architecture assumed more and more the characteristics which distinguished that of Rome during the decadence. In both there is the same lack of simplicity and sincerity, the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by surface decoration.

The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still in the future. It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods, and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world, without violating ancient verities.

In studying these crucial periods in the history of European architecture, it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal descendant from a Roman basilica.

The Egyptians in their constructions did little more than to place enormous stones on end, and pile one huge block upon another. They used many columns placed close together: the spaces which they spanned were inconsiderable. The upright or supporting member may be said to have been in Egyptian architecture the predominant one. A vertical line therefore may be taken as the simplest and most abstract symbol of Egyptian architecture.

It remained for the Greeks fully to develop the lintel. In their architecture the vertical member, or column, existed solely for the sake of the horizontal member, or lintel; it rarely stood alone, as in the case of an Egyptian obelisk. The columns of the Greek temples were reduced to those proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples.

It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line. The Romans, while retaining the column and lintel of the Greeks, deprived them of their structural significance and subordinated them to the semicircular arch and the semicylindrical and hemispherical vault, the truly characteristic and determining forms of Roman architecture.

Our symbol grows therefore by the addition of the arc of a circle. In Gothic architecture, column, lintel, arch, and vault are all retained in changed form, but that which more than anything else differentiates Gothic architecture from any style which preceded it is the introduction of the principle of an equilibrium of forces, of a state of balance rather than a state of rest, arrived at by the opposition of one thrust with another contrary to it. This fact can be indicated graphically by two opposing inclined lines, and these united to the preceding symbol yield an accurate abstract of the elements of Gothic architecture.

All this is but an unusual application of a familiar theosophic teaching, namely, that it is the method of nature on every plane and in every department not to omit anything that has gone before, but to store it up and carry it along and bring it into manifestation later.

Nature everywhere proceeds like the jingle of “The House That Jack Built”: she repeats each time all she has learned, and adds another line for subsequent repetition.


*The quaint Oriental imagery here employed should not blind the reader to the precise scientific accuracy of the idea of which this imagery is the vehicle. Schopenhauer says: “Polarity, or the sundering of a force into two quantitively different and opposed activities striving after re-union . . . is a fundamental type of almost all the phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal to man himself.” 

 

Claude Bragdon (1866‒1946) was an American architect, writer, and stage designer. He was heavily influenced by Theosophy. This excerpt is taken from his book The Beautiful Necessity (1922).


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