Quest Magazine

The Tragic Consciousness in Literature and Tradition

Printed in the Fall 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Johnson, Zane, "The Tragic Consciousness in Literature and Tradition" Quest 108:4, pg 26-30

By Zane Johnson

Theosophical Society - Zane Johnson is a poet, translator, and student of the mysteries. Recent work has appeared in Asymptote, No Man’s Land, Anatolios Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. He currently studies literature, translation, and the environmental humanities at the University of Munich. Many seekers today set out on their paths to find something that society is not giving them. In the face of ecological destruction, unflinching individualism, and a general sense of separation and desperation, people are looking for something not quite so tragic as what is currently on the table. Religion and its close cousin, literature, are the great resources in the human search for dignity and meaning. Myth, poetry, and drama can be powerful pathfinders out of this seemingly modern malaise, because they tell us that this search for something more is not ours alone but is woven into the fabric of human existence.

In his article “The Comic Mode,” literary critic Joseph W. Meeker defines the primary value of tragic drama as “avoiding or transcending the necessary in order to accomplish the impossible.” In distinction to comedy, which, like ecology, is a system “designed to accommodate necessity and encourage acceptance of it” (Meeker, 163), tragedy presents a version of reality based on power, struggle, pain, ambition, and commitment to an impossible ideal that leads the tragic hero to his (and it is usually his) ultimate end in death. One thinks of Shakespeare’s Brutus or Macbeth, feeling put upon by the cosmos or history to prove that “men at sometime were masters of their fates” (Julius Caesar, 1.2.139). Tragedies like Hamlet begin with the rupture of communal and familial bonds and proceed to the all-too-familiar end. Nature is cruel, as in King Lear, and serves only as an organic parallel to his court’s possession by dark psychological forces that seek to punish him. It is a staggered path into dissolution, from whence we only see a few hints of renewal at the end.

Comedies, on the other hand, usually follow a dialectical pattern, which sees a cast of characters move from an initial stage of uneasy stability to disorder as unruly passions are sorted out, and finally to renewal and restoration of order. In Shakespeare, this renewal often occurs in a “green world”—one thinks of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the chaos of human affections that is eventually tamed within an enchanted forest. Such a mode of literature extols the biological and communal over the ideal and individual and tends to highly value the bonds of human relationship and community. In As You Like It, this comfort in community extends, surely enough, to the natural world, where one “finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything” (2.1.16–17).

Everybody gets what they want in the end, and some primordial inkling that life is in fact good is fulfilled.

What does the foregoing have to do with those inner traditions, those ancient springs of wisdom to which people are turning for an alternative to tragic reality? My suspicion is, sadly, that the language of some these traditions, particularly the Western mystery traditions (with which I am the most familiar), often reproduce a tragic vision of reality, or what I call “tragic consciousness.” Wisdom is not immune from accreting elements from the surrounding culture.


	The ghost of Caesar taunts Brutus about his imminent defeat. (Engraving by Edward Scriven, from a painting by Richard Westall based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, act 4, scene 3, London, 1802. Wikipedia.)

Part of the dilemma could be the enduring legacy of the nineteenth-century occult revival, which came upon the heels of the Romantic movement. In his article in The Church Times, which details the astonishing involvement of Anglo-Catholic clergy in Theosophy and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Richard Yoder argues that both at the exoteric and esoteric levels, religious life was engaged in “a defense of the supernatural in the face of modern materialism.” This was, of course, an extension of Romantic values: a defense of the imagination against reason, nature against the despoliations of industrial capitalism, the individual against oblivion. Romantic closet dramas reveled in tragic consciousness, and it comes as no surprise that writers such as P.B. Shelley and Lord Byron constituted a “satanic school” of literature of their own to their contemporary critics. Prometheus Unbound and Cain characteristically reevaluate traditional satanic antiheroes as misunderstood revolutionaries, contained by powers of social and religious tyranny.

Of course, some of these values are fraught with a volatile self-against-the-world dualism. It is now a commonplace to suggest the direct influence of Romantic values—left unchecked and unbalanced—on twentieth-century fascist ideology. Many an occult personality of this same period also had fascist leanings. One need not scour too long the works of Aleister Crowley before coming up against repulsive statements about women, Jews, and the wretched of the earth, coupled with visions of a genetically engineered superrace that manipulates the ignorant masses towards the achievement of their True Wills. In a comment on chapter 3 of his channeled text Liber AL vel Legis, for example, he asks, “Should we not rather breed humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we do with other cattle?”

Statements in Crowley’s Liber AL, particularly in the third chapter, are also remarkably similar to sentiments expressed in Shakespearean tragedy (Crowley is notorious for literary appropriation in his inspired works). Compare Liber AL’s “Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them!” (Crowley, 314) to Julius Caesar’s “Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!” (3.2.200).

Occult fascism may be the outer extreme of the tragic mode, and we may affirm with Traditionalist esotericists like René Guénon that such occult currents represent a counterinitiation. But even within the Traditionalist framework, tragic consciousness predominates. In Defending Ancient Springs, Kathleen Raine, poet and founder of London’s Temenos Academy, states plainly that “genius is not democratic” (46).

Tragic consciousness affects those of us engaged in plumbing the depths of the traditions we’ve inherited in a more routine way. The hangover from the nineteenth-century occult revival and its historical and philosophical baggage affects how we conceive the spiritual life at a fundamental level.

Our language often seems to present the initiate as special in some way and can foster a sense that we have raised ourselves up from the ranks of the unenlightened masses. I believe this is mostly an error in language, but it can become potent as our unenlightened ego seeks a foothold. (The contemporary British Kabbalist Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi indicates that the initial zealotry and self-aggrandizement that can develop when one begins on a spiritual path can be corrected through a rule of silence: Halevi, 274.)

The esoteric is not for everyone, nor is everyone seeking it. And that’s fine. In her classic Esoteric Christianity, Annie Besant describes secret Christian teaching as just that—something secret, not intended for everyone. She further suggests that it is only for those that can rise above the general intellectual torpor of their contemporaries and be admitted into the temple. One might be forgiven for feeling unnecessarily excluded. Even worse, it could inflame the pride of the curious and encourage a sense of superiority.

Besant describes the qualities that the candidate for the mysteries must develop to be admitted: first discrimination, then disgust, then on to other, less threatening-sounding virtues, such as control of thoughts and endurance. Disgust is the one I want to focus on now. To be fair, she describes it not as disgust with creation or with human beings per se, but rather with “the unreal and the fleeting” (Besant, 174). Yet this can be a major stumbling block to anyone seeking the way and, in my opinion, should eventually be transcended.

When I first began a meditation practice early on in my spiritual inquiry, I was working at a kitchen. I remember discovering at the end of the night shift a maggot that had made a home for itself underneath the soda fountain, feeding on the syrup that fell beneath the grate. And I remember thinking: that’s it. That’s what we are, always too content to suck our sugar cubes in blissful ignorance. I felt disgust.

Of course, I was all too eager to point my finger at those around me and not at myself. But I did experience a sudden, profound aversion to reckless, aimless pleasure-seeking at the expense of the planet and other human beings. Admittedly, it did have an unwelcome effect on my relationships. As Jesus reminds us, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). This idea had outlived its usefulness to me as an impetus to deeper inquiry into Reality, and I struggled to let go of it.

When describing the higher meanings of atonement and sacrifice in the Christian mysteries, Besant affirms the basic truth that walking the spiritual path is fundamentally not for ourselves, but for the world (a “comic” as much as a cosmic truth). For the real, suffering, flesh-and-blood people and other sentient beings in our lives. This is “the life of love,” which is always other-oriented, and which is summed up beautifully as the Fruit of the Holy Spirit of St. Paul (Besant, 187).

There is an allure to taking too seriously the thought that we have some knowledge that the world does not and which makes us important. It is bewitching in a way, a thought that enchants us when the weird sisters of our imagination talk us into accepting a kind of spiritual viciousness towards others through which our imagined kingship should be gained. And the usual results follow.

Oftentimes the impulse to “conversion,” to begin our own spiritual inquiries, comes at the behest of a voice within us that tells us that things are not as they seem. There is more to this life of grasping after recognition and ephemeral pleasures, this life of sorrow and loss, than we have been led to believe. And this should be a cause for joy! Yet often it only seems to reaffirm the attitudes that we sought to escape in the beginning: that this world and creation are fallen, that pleasure is bad, that there is something wrong with our lives because they never seem to measure up to the impossible tragic ideals that we have somehow absorbed along the way. People and nature become merely instrumental to us as we retreat into our own spiritual ambition.

This is not to say that we should start from scratch and invent other lateral paths of spiritual seeking (though this too has its place). Nor does it mean that we can’t benefit from looking to other paths whose teleology is more horizontal and inclusive. There are a number of means to experience more comic consciousness in our spiritual lives.

The wisdom of the Kabbalah tells us that the Pillar of Severity is just as important to the divine plan for creation as is the Pillar of Mercy. There is a place for the tragic mode in our seeking too, and it can often be a great impetus to us early in our paths. In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths certainly express tragic consciousness but are mediated by other compassionate teachings like those of the Brahmaviharas.

In my academic work, which helped inspire this reflection, I have lately focused on the intersections between literature, ecology, and religion in the English Renaissance. I have been delighted to encounter Renaissance Hermetic texts anew and read reflections on them from literary writers of the time that seem to affirm the intuitions found in comic literature.

“Sure! there’s a tie of bodies,” as poet Henry Vaughan put it: a pulsing vitality that binds all sentient and nonsentient beings and valorizes life, matter, and embodiment (Di Cesare, 152). The world is infused with the anima mundi, and as the great martyr for wisdom Giordano Bruno put it, “that one and same thing . . . fills everything, illuminates the universe, and directs Nature to produce her various species suitably” (in Borlik, 57). This is surely esotericism in the comic mode.

The esoteric tradition of Renaissance Hermeticism and alchemy appears to express a comic rather than tragic consciousness, intuiting in nature and human life a vital force that sanctifies embodiment and materiality. Emphasis is on unity rather than division. Reaching its peak in the early days of the Reformation, when communal, sacramental rites were discontinued overnight, Renaissance esotericism also helped ameliorate the rift between humans and between humanity and nature.

In a time when forces of disintegration and isolation in the social and natural spheres are rapidly gaining speed, the older tradition can again come to our aid. As pointed out in their manifesto Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology, Peter Lamborn Wilson and his colleagues claim that there is an opportunity in these sacred sciences for ecological renewal, to help us “explore the riches contained in the magical confluence of our present time and consciousness with the divine gifts now available to all through Nature” (Wilson, Kindle position 134).

The other way that I have been able to integrate the comic mode in my own spiritual life has been to reembrace exoteric religion as a supplement to esoteric study. This will certainly not be a popular position, and indeed it took a lot of time for me to come to it, but I must admit, along with the Traditionalists, that the exoteric is inseparable from the esoteric. They inform and balance one another. Certain esoteric concepts or symbols within the Western traditions are incomprehensible without a thorough familiarity with Judeo-Christian scripture and tradition.

This is also a lesson we can take from the Renaissance esoteric stream of tradition, from whose fonts the conventionally religious—even the Puritanical—freely drew. Think of Anglican priests John Donne or George Herbert. In his poem “Man” Herbert presents a worldview grounded in relationship, analogy, and entanglement, in which

Man is all symmetrie,
Full of proportions, one limbe to another,
And all to all the world besides.

This vision of humanity in the cosmos is a supremely beneficent one, one of belonging, in which “all things unto our flesh are kinde” (Hutchinson, 90).

I think this general optimism about life is common to more conventional forms of religion but is harder to come by in esoteric circles. Anglo-Catholic spirituality has been very important for me lately in living the values of community, companionship, and service that isolated study and practice could not. And yet the meat of the tradition is still to be discovered in private contemplation. It is not either/or—a choice made by all tragic heroes—but both/and. Believe the good news!

In this time in history, when we are becoming increasingly aware of our need for new structures, new ways of expressing communal bonds, and new ways of thinking about inherited tradition, it can be helpful to look back to the vast stretch of human history in which people relied on one another and on their natural environment for spiritual and physical nourishment.

To return to Meeker’s piece quoted at the beginning of this article, he makes the interesting observation that “whole cultures have lived and died without producing tragedy or the philosophical views that tragedy depends on” (Meeker, 157). Perhaps it is time to reevaluate why tragic consciousness has taken such preponderance in Western initiatory streams and whether the time might be ripe to smooth down our edges as seekers and, along with Prospero at The Tempest’s end, commit our all-powerful wands to the sea and walk free from our self-imposed isolation from deeper springs of tradition, history, and community.

Sources

Besant, Annie. Esoteric Christianity. New York: Bodley Head, 1902.

Borlik, Todd Andrew, ed. Literature and Nature in the English Renaissance: An Ecocritical Anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Crowley, Aleister. Liber AL vel Legis, 1904. OTO Library (website), accessed June 29, 2020: https://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0220.html.

Crowley, Aleister. The New and Old Commentaries to Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law, 1920. Hermetic Library (website), accessed June 30, 2020: https://hermetic.com/legis/new-comment/index.

Di Cesare, Mario A., ed. George Herbert and the Seventeenth Century Religious Poets: Authoritative Texts and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.

Halevi, Z’ev ben Shimon. Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1974.

Hutchinson, F.E., ed. The Works of George Herbert. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.

Meeker, Joseph A. “The Comic Mode.” In The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1996: 155–69.

Raine, Kathleen. Defending Ancient Springs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Wilson, Peter Lamborn, et al. Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfarne, 2007.

Wells, Stanley et al., ed. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Comedies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Citations from Shakespeare refer to this volume and the one below.

———. The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Tragedies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Yoder, Richard. “On the Wings of the Dawn: The Lure of the Occult.” Church Times, Dec. 14, 2018: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/14-december/features/features/on-the-wings-of-the-dawn-the-lure-of-the-occult.

Zane Johnson is a poet, translator, and student of the mysteries. Recent work has appeared in Asymptote, No Man’s Land, Anatolios Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. He currently studies literature, translation, and the environmental humanities at the University of Munich.

Ancient Wisdom for a New Age: Theosophical Translations of Hindu Scriptures

Printed in the Fall 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Gomes, Michael , "Ancient Wisdom for a New Age: Theosophical Translations of Hindu Scriptures" Quest 108:4, pg 19-23

By Michael Gomes

Theosophical Society - Michael Gomes is director of the Emily Sellon Memorial Library in New York. He has authored eight books and numerous articles and monographs on H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophy, and the Theosophical Society, and he is working on his ninth. At its inception in 1875, the object of the Theosophical Society was “to collect and diffuse a knowledge of the laws which govern the universe.” It was not an attempt to replicate what was already being done but to investigate areas left unexplored at the time. When the headquarters of the Society was established in India in the 1880s, the Objects began to look more as they do today. Only the Second Object was markedly different from how it now stands: “To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literature, religions and sciences and vindicate its importance.” It remained that way during H.P. Blavatsky’s lifetime, only changing in 1896 to its current injunction to encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science.

In her Key to Theosophy, Blavatsky cites the work of the library at the TS headquarters in Adyar, India, and at local branches to collect works on ancient philosophies, traditions, and legends. She also specifies the need to make available translations, original works, extracts, and commentaries based on this material in order to help realize the Second Object.

Theosophists set to work to fulfill this promise and have produced a number of original translations of Hindu scriptures. Two texts received the most attention: the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.

The Bhagavad Gita forms part of the great Indian epic the Mahabharata. Its setting is a battlefield, as two great clans prepare for war. In its totality, the Mahabharata is the story of families torn apart, a kingdom lost at a throw of the dice, brave heroes, and a return to righteousness. The Gita appears in the sixth book, in the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna, who is about to take up arms against his cousins, and his charioteer, Krishna. Extracted from the larger narrative, the text has been taken as a summation of Hindu philosophy and has gone on to become a global resource for spirituality.

The Gita was one of the first Hindu scriptures translated into English: one edition appeared in 1785. The text was familiar to the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, who commented on it. It was also known to the New England Transcendentalists: Henry David Thoreau mentions it in Walden, published in 1854. In the 1880s, Edwin Arnold produced a popular verse rendering entitled The Song Celestial.

Translations by Theosophists offered another perspective and introduced the text to a wider audience. The key had been supplied by the distinguished Indian member T. Subba Row (1856–90). In a series of lectures delivered at the annual Madras Convention of the Society in 1885 and 1886 he suggested that Arjuna represented the individual soul, “the real monad in man,” while Krishna represents the Logos, “the spirit that comes to save man.” Using this allegorical approach, Subba Row depicted the Gita as a work of practical guidance, indicating “that the human monad must fight its own battle, assisted once he begins to thread the true path by his Logos” (Subba Row, 2:391). These lectures were printed in The Theosophist and issued in book form in 1888 as Discourses on the Bhagavad Gita.


	From left: T. Subba Row; an early disciple, known variously as Babaji, M. Krishnamachari, S. Krishnamachari, S. Krishnaswami Iyengar or Aiyangar, and Darbhagiri Nath; and HPB.

By this time Theosophists had their own translation of the Gita, by a young Bengali named Mohini Chatterji. Chatterji, who was, like HPB, a pupil of the Mahatmas, had been brought to Europe in 1884 by her. He traveled to America, where he produced his translation in 1887. It included a lengthy commentary, often assisted by numerous references to the New Testament. Chatterji said that the text illustrated the idea that “human nature is one, God is but one, and the path to salvation though many in appearance, is really but one” (Chatterji, 276).

William Q. Judge’s rendition of the Gita, published in 1890, utilized previous translations. It was an inexpensive pocket-sized book, which could be carried everywhere. Judge observed that the Gita depicted “the struggle which is inevitable as soon as any one unit in the human family resolves to allow his higher nature to govern his life” (Judge, ix).

Judge’s rendition was followed by Annie Besant’s in 1895. For Besant, the keynote of the Gita was moderation and the “harmonising of all the constituents of man, till they vibrate in perfect attunement with the One, the Supreme Self” (Besant, viii). Another version was issued by Besant and the Hindu scholar Bhagavan Das, with the Sanskrit text, a free English rendering, and a word-for-word translation, which appeared in 1905 and revised in 1926.

The translations of Judge and Besant remain in print, but other attempts by Theosophists did not receive as wide a circulation. Charles Johnston, who had served in the British Civil Service in India and had studied Sanskrit, published his translation in New York in 1908, and F. T. Brooks, best remembered as the tutor of the future statesman Jawaharlal Nehru, published his in India in 1909. Alfred E.S. Smythe, general secretary of the TS in Canada and a veteran newspaper editor, issued a “conflation” in 1937 based on previous English editions. Ernest Wood, who had worked at the Theosophical headquarters in India, published his translation in 1954.

Text encouraged context, and a wealth of commentaries by Theosophists elucidated the message of the Bhagavad Gita. Mention has already been made of the influence of T. Subba Row. In 1893 the Kumbakonam Branch in South India issued Thoughts on the Bhagavad Gita by “A Brahmin F.T.S.” (Fellow of the Theosophical Society) based on a series of lectures before the group. The author’s interpretation was based on the Puranas, the great repositories of Hindu lore, and The Secret Doctrine. “H.P.B. talked the same thing as our ancient Brahminical philosophers in a different language and from a different platform” (Brahmin F.T.S., 78). Three volumes of Studies in the Bhagavad Gita, by another Indian member, “The Dreamer,” bearing the subtitles of The Yoga of Discrimination (1902), The Yoga of Action and Occultism (1903), and The Path of Initiation (1904), appeared under the imprint of the Theosophical House in London. These followed the approach of Subba Row, with Hindu and Theosophical concepts illuminating the text.

Bhavani Shankar (1859–1936), a disciple of Blavatsky, lectured on the Bhagavad Gita throughout India after her death. A biographical note in one of the volumes of his talks says that “he was initiated into some of the hidden laws and secret practices of Raja-Yoga by the famous mystic, Subba Row” (Basu, ix). Shankar saw a deep longing for and devotion to Wisdom as a prerequisite for understanding the subject. Judge and Besant also wrote their own commentaries on the book. Even Rudolf Steiner lectured on it.

Theosophical renderings of the Gita are instructive in the level of interpretation that they offer. At one point, overwhelmed by what Krishna reveals to him, Arjuna seeks to understand his divine nature. Krishna responds (11.32): “I am Time, destroyer of the worlds grown ripe for death,” in Smythe’s edition. Judge gives, “I am Time matured, come hither for the destruction of these creatures,” while Besant has, “Time am I, laying desolate the world, made manifest on earth to slay mankind.” Compare a newer translation by Ravi Ravindra, published in 2017: “I am Time, the Destroyer of worlds, come forth here with the will to annihilate the nations.”

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra

The only other Hindu scripture to receive as many Theosophical translations as the Bhagavad Gita was the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. If the Gita offered a moral compass in times of stress, the Yoga Sutra gave practical instruction in mind control. Theosophists were among the first to bring the idea of yoga to the West.

The date of the text and its author are still debated. The general consensus for the text is between 450 and 350 BCE, but Blavatsky pushes the date for Patanjali even further back. The Theosophical Glossary gives it as “nearer to 700 than 600 B.C.” (Blavatsky, Glossary, 251).

W.Q. Judge’s 1889 version, The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, was based on an earlier version printed in India. Like his edition of the Gita, it was issued as a pocket-sized book. Judge’s simple language offered clear instruction on the training of the mind, and its influence on the burgeoning New Thought and Mental Science movements in America should be noted.

Manilal Dvivedi’s translation, published in India a year later, aimed to be a more accurate portrayal of the text, and it was kept in print by the Theosophical Society till the 1940s. Dvivedi (1858–98), a noted Gujarati author and advocate for education and social reform, also found time to produce a number of erudite translations of Sanskrit texts.

Charles Johnston’s 1912 rendition was more free-flowing. As indicated by the subtitle, The Book of the Spiritual Man, Johnston saw the text as a call to spiritual aspiration. I.K. Taimni’s 1961 The Science of Yoga offered a translation and commentary “in the light of modern thought.”

Two Theosophically related attempts are Mabel Collins’ Transparent Jewel (1912), which was an extended rumination on the subject using Dvivedi’s translation, and Alice Bailey’s 1927 The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect, which described itself as a “paraphrase” of Patanjali, and looks at the book as a manual of esoteric training as interpreted through Bailey’s system of seven rays and esoteric astrology.

Yogi Ramacharaka (a pen name of the American metaphysical writer William Walker Atkinson, 1862–1932) blurred the lines between Theosophy, Yoga, and New Thought in his series of instructional books from Chicago’s Yogi Publishing Company at the beginning of the twentieth century.

To compare Theosophical versions of the Yoga Sutra: Judge gives for sloka (verse) 2.1, which distills the methodology that applies to the practitioner: “The practice of Concentration [Judge’s rendering of yoga] is, Mortification, Mutterings, and Resignation to the Supreme Soul.” Dvivedi has, “Mortification, study and resignation to Isvara [the personal God], constitute practicing Yoga.” Johnston’s version reads, “The practices which make for union with the Soul are: fervent aspiration, spiritual reading, and complete obedience to the Master.” A more recent example (though not by a Theosophist), Barbara Stoler Miller’s 1996 Yoga: Discipline of Freedom, which is now regarded as a classic, reads: “The active performance of yoga involves ascetic practice, study of sacred lore, and dedication to the Lord of Yoga.” (The terms “mortification” and “ascetic practice” are a translation of the Sanskrit tapas, a word whose Vedic origins indicate heat. It has been suggested that ardor or fervor might be truer to its meaning. “Those who practice tapas could be described as ‘ardent,’” writes Roberto Calasso, 99.)

By the 1930s, Theosophical efforts on the study of yoga were eclipsed by the arrival of a succession of yogis and swamis from India. The efforts of, first, Swami Vivekananda and then of Paramahansa Yogananda, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and others led to the emergence of homegrown adherents. The 1959 Yoga for Americans by Indra Devi (Eugenia Peterson) presented the subject as compatible with the lifestyle of the period, and Theos Bernard’s 1944 Hatha Yoga advocated for the postures as part of a fitness regime. They prepared the way for the next wave of instructors from India, such as B.K.S. Iyengar, whose 1965 Light on Yoga included over 600 photographs illustrating the asanas.

It was now possible to speak of yogas in the plural, and Ernest Wood codified seven variants: the Raja Yoga of Patanjali, the Karma and Buddhi Yogas of Sri Krishna, the Jnana Yoga of Sri Sankaracharya, Hatha Yoga, Laya (Kundalini) Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Mantra Yoga (Wood, 12).

No other Sanskrit texts were as popular among Theosophists as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra. The Vivekachudamani (“The Crest Jewel of Wisdom”), once attributed to the Indian sage Shankaracharya, is still in print in Mohini Chatterji’s translation from the 1880s. Charles Johnston also produced a version, and Ernest Wood was working on one when he died (published posthumously as The Pinnacle of Indian Thought by Quest Books in 1967). Johnston also did a free rendering of the Upanishads, as did G.R.S. Mead in 1896. I.K. Taimni translated the Siva Sutras (1976), the Bhakti Sutra (1975), and the Pratyabhijnahrdayam as The Secret of Self-Realization (1974), all issued by the Theosophical Publishing House in Adyar, India. Radha Burnier and Richard Brooks also produced a Sanskrit/English version of the Pratyabhijnahrdayam.

For the early Theosophists, translations of Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra offered access to the Ancient Wisdom discussed by Blavatsky and others. It also presented a validation for Theosophical concepts, many of which were found in these texts. But as the late TS president N. Sri Ram has noted, this Ancient Wisdom does not base its claim on mere antiquity. “The word ‘ancient’ applied to it conveys the significance of a wisdom accumulated through the ages, tested and proved by time” (Sri Ram, 186).

The ideas in texts like the Gita found resonance in Theosophical writings. Members would have related injunctions given in the Gita to that in works like Light on the Path (1885), a guide to the spiritual life that urges the pupil to “stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not the warrior” (2.1). Theosophical interpretations, which were not moored in sectarian differences, would add their own nuances.

Mme. Blavatsky had differentiated the aspects of yoga early on. Commenting on an article on the subject that she published in The Theosophist in 1882, she utilized the terms raja and hatha yoga to distinguish her work from more mundane forms. She told her students, “He who has studied both systems, the Hatha and Raja-yogas, finds an enormous difference between the two: one is purely psycho-physiological, the other purely psycho-spiritual” (Blavatsky, Esoteric Instructions, 135). Elizabeth de Michelis, in A History of Modern Yoga, and others have pointed out that when Hindu teachers such as Vivekananda came west, they adapted their message to the already existing terminology of Theosophy.

The effects of Theosophical interest in Hindu scriptures would not remain limited to the Theosophical Society. In his Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi relates how while he was a young law student in England, he was approached by two Theosophists who were studying the Gita. They wanted him to read the original with them. He confessed that he had never read the book either in the original Sanskrit or his native Gujarati. When he studied the book with them, it revealed its worth to him, and it became an “infallible guide of conduct” and “dictionary of daily reference” (Gandhi, 323). Its principles of nonattachment and equanimity can be seen in his ideas about satyagraha, which he used to gain Indian independence, and which influenced others, including Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement.

The diffusion of the Gita into contemporary society can be seen in the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist known as “the father of the atomic bomb.” He relates that when he witnessed the first atomic blast, Krishna’s words from the Gita came to mind, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” This ancient Hindu scripture had found new context and had truly entered a new age. Through their translations and commentaries, Theosophists had contributed to its becoming a part of the public discourse.

Sources

Basham, A.L. The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism. Boston: Beacon, 1989. Basham suggests we view the Gita as “a compilation by more than one hand, with at least two main authors whose doctrines are very different” (95).

Basu, Upandranath. Foreword to Pandit Bhavani Shankar, Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita. Uttarpara, India: Uttarpara Theosophical Lodge, 1923. Bhavani Shankar’s lectures have been collected and republished as The Doctrine of the Bhagavad Gita. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Concord Grove Press, 1984.

Besant, Annie. The Bhagavad Gita, or the Lord’s Song. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1896.

Blavatsky, H.P. Esoteric Instructions. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 2015.

———. The Theosophical Glossary. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1891.

“A Brahmin F.T.S.” Thoughts on the Bhagavad Gita. Kumbakonam, India: Kumbakonam Branch of the Theosophical Society, 1893.

Calasso, Roberto. Ardor. Translated by Richard Dixon. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2014.

Chatterji, Mohini M. The Bhagavad Gita, or The Lord’s Lay. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887.

Gandhi, Mohandas. Gandhi’s Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1948.

Judge, W.Q. The Bhagavad Gita: The Book of Devotion. New York: The Path, 1890.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert. “Oppenheimer Bhagavad-Gita Quote,” YouTube, accessed June 29, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqZqfTOxFhY.

Sharpe, Eric J. The Universal Gita: Western Images of the Bhagavad Gita. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1985.

Sri Ram, N. A Theosophist Looks at the World. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1950.

Steiner, Rudolf. The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1968. Based on talks given in May and June 1913.

Subba Row, T. T. Subba Row: Collected Writings. 2 vols. San Diego: Point Loma Publishing, 2001.

Wood, Ernest. Seven Schools of Yoga. Wheaton: Quest Books, 1976. This is a reprint of his The Occult Training of the Hindus, published in India in 1931.

Michael Gomes is director of the Emily Sellon Memorial Library in New York. He has authored eight books and numerous articles and monographs on H.P. Blavatsky, Theosophy, and the Theosophical Society, and he is working on his ninth.

Original Vision: On the Choice of a New Life

Printed in the Fall 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Macrae, Janet, "Original Vision: On the Choice of a New Life" Quest 108:4, pg 15-18

By Janet Macrae

Theosophical Society - Janet Macrae is a coeditor of Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale (University of Pennsylvania Press) and the author of Nursing as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemporary Application of Florence Nightingale’s Views (Springer). Her article “Florence Nightingale’s Scientific Spirituality” appeared in Quest, winter 2020. Many years ago, in a seminar at the New York Theosophical Society, a woman told about a spontaneous memory from the time before she was born. “I saw a vision of what I had to accomplish and what the difficulties would be. I remember saying, ‘Yes, I agree to this.’”

What prompted her to share this experience was the seminar topic: “Plato’s Myths and Metaphors,” given by Dr. Renee Weber. In the myth of Er, at the end of The Republic, Plato explained how a new life is a product of both chance and self-determination. In this story, Er, a soldier who had returned from the realm of the dead, reported that every individual in the group he observed was required to draw a lot. Then, one by one, each chose a life from among many lying on the ground. There were many more choices than individuals present, so that even the last one could probably have found a satisfactory life.

From Plato’s perspective, a satisfactory life is one that will make the soul more just. As the choice is critical for the soul’s development, it must not be made in an impulsive manner. It is essential to have a knowledge of one’s character and how it could be influenced by various experiences. An individual should know

what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined; he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and which is the worse. (Plato, 300)

After choosing their lives, the group of souls walked in a scorching heat through the plain of Forgetfulness. Arriving at the river Lethe (“Oblivion”), they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity of the water. “And each one as he drank forgot all things” (Plato, 302). But those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary.

Some striking similarities to Plato’s account can be found in the work of Dr. Michael Newton, a psychotherapist and master hypnotist who has devoted his career to the study of the period between death and rebirth. Newton’s hypnotized subjects remember seeing samples of lives in a location resembling a multidimensional movie theater. These viewings only occur, however, after much consultation with guides and members of peer groups, during which they analyze the successes and mistakes of the past as well as their desires for the future. The critical issue is the growth of the soul: what things need to be learned and what kind of life will provide the best opportunities to learn them. When asked under hypnosis about his reaction to the movie experience, one individual replied:

Oh, it’s stimulating—that’s for sure—but we can’t frolic around, because there are serious decisions to be made for the next life. I’ll have to accept the consequences for any mistakes in my choices . . . if I am not able to handle a life well. (Newton, 212)

Each life thus has a blueprint or overall plan, and we are ultimately evaluated on the degree to which we fulfill it. Fortunately, the hypnotized subjects remember various “coaching sessions.” Certain thoughts are impressed on their minds as clues to help them complete their next incarnations successfully. At this point the remembrance of former lives is not encouraged, for the new incarnation must be approached freely, as much as possible, as a fresh start. Far more important is the memory of the original vision, the spiritual blueprint for the coming life.

The work of the “sleeping prophet” Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) is also consistent with the story of Er, for he believed that each incarnation is consciously chosen for a particular purpose. Cayce is best known for his medical readings. Putting himself in a deep hypnotic trance, he was able to accurately diagnose and prescribe natural remedies for the illnesses of people whom he had never met. All he needed to know was the individual’s name. Less well known are Cayce’s life readings, in which he elaborated upon the individual’s inner conflicts, many of which had their origins in previous lifetimes.

In Many Mansions, a detailed study of Cayce’s life readings, Dr. Gina Cerminara clarified the difference between the original plan of the soul, or the superconscious life goal, and the consciously planned goals of the personal self.

The superconscious life goal, or spiritual intent, is the basic purpose for which the soul has taken incarnation. It is the central and unifying principle of a life, and thus it never changes. The original plan of the soul can include learning spiritual lessons, strengthening finer qualities such as wisdom and compassion, and neutralizing undesirable characteristics carried over from former lives.

The consciously formed life goals of a personality can include pursuing a higher education, developing talents and skills, raising a family, having a successful career, and being respected in one’s community. These, of course, can change as life progresses. Cerminara wrote that if the personality can become aware of the purpose for which it took incarnation and can consciously make its life goals identical to or in harmony with these superconscious goals, then progress can be made more quickly and with less struggle.

It is therefore up to the personal self to try to remember the vision of the inner spirit. But Plato wrote that unless we are saved by wisdom we will drink too much from the river of Lethe. Being saved by wisdom involves being attuned to the intuition, the source of our most profound dreams. Intuition speaks through synchronistic events, through subtle hunches and feelings of recognition, through spontaneous symbolic images that arise sometimes in meditation and contemplative prayer, or through our daydreams in moments of stillness. As Virginia Woolf observed: “It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top” (Woolf, 31–32).

The life of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) is an interesting example of one in which the personal goals were brought into alignment with the spiritual vision—but not without conflict. Nightingale is best known as the “Lady with the Lamp,” the superintendent of nurses for the British army during the Crimean War (1855–56). She was a brilliant administrator and a pioneer in using statistics to implement public health reforms. Born into a life of wealth and privilege, Nightingale received a classical education from her father, making her one of the most highly educated women of her day.

As an adolescent, she experienced a sudden inner “knowing” that God had called her to a life of service. It was a brief shift of consciousness to a higher level, in which she apprehended her deep inner purpose. During this experience she was given no details; the specific mission would be her personal choice.

Although only the soul and its advisors can know the actual spiritual plan for its incarnation, we can uncover clues in Nightingale’s writings and in various biographies. Her original vision might well have included:

Using her great intelligence and administrative abilities for the betterment of humanity rather than for personal gain.
Learning patience and tolerance towards individuals who did not share her progressive vision, particularly those who tried to obstruct her reform efforts.
Learning to work at a task for its own sake rather than for recognition or specific results. In her copy of The Song Celestial, Edwin Arnold’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Nightingale marked the following passage:

            Abstaining from rewardment in the work,
            While yet one doeth it full faithfully,
            Saying “’Tis right to do!”—that is true act
            and abstinence! (quoted in Cook 2:242)

Since childhood, Nightingale was drawn to nursing and public health and was determined to make these interests the focus of her life. She was well aware of the difficulties. As a woman she could not hold public office to influence health policies; moreover, nursing in the public hospitals of the time was considered a disreputable occupation. But she moved forward to actualize her personal goals. These included:

Improving her mind through a study of comparative religion, philosophy, and statistical science. Two of her main interests were Plato’s dialogues and the writings of the medieval mystics. Thus she was familiar with the myth of Er.
Becoming a nurse; helping to establish nursing as a respected occupation; developing nursing principles.
Working to improve government policies regarding public health, especially hospital design and sanitation, through her personal contacts and influence.

Nightingale’s personal goals did not include engaging in the lifestyle of a typical upper-class Victorian woman, for she felt that only through working in nursing and public health could she actualize her spiritual vision. Unfortunately, this created a serious conflict with her mother and older sister, whose plans for her were quite different: a good marriage, an elegant home, a family, relationships in high society. Although history tells us that Nightingale was true to her vision, her peace of mind was disturbed by feelings of guilt for disappointing those she loved.

In the myth of Er, Plato explained that conflict is not necessarily detrimental, because it can strengthen the soul. He described an individual who had lived in a peaceful, well-ordered state; his virtue, however, was only a matter of conformity, and he had not internalized any strong values. Left to himself, he made an impulsive choice for a new life. Er reported that those who had been “schooled by trial” and who had developed a sound philosophy were the most careful in choosing their lives. Perhaps Florence Nightingale chose to be a woman in Victorian times to strengthen her character and her inner resolve.

Dr. Victor Frankl, who developed logotherapy (meaning-centered psychotherapy), wrote that “everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated” (Frankl, 113). Struggle and conflict are not unhealthy and may even be necessary for the fulfillment of one’s purpose. What is unhealthy is an existential vacuum or lack of meaning, characterized by an inner emptiness and boredom. Indeed, Nightingale might very well have suffered from this if her personal plan had deviated from her spiritual vision.

Aligning or synchronizing one’s personal plan with the spiritual vision allows one to tap into spiritual resources, such as moral strength, resilience, wisdom, and courage. Frankl, for example, felt that knowing his life’s purpose, which was to develop his method of logotherapy and write his book about it, gave him the strength to survive three years in Nazi concentration camps. Knowing her life’s purpose gave Nightingale the strength to devote her life to the public good in spite of a debilitating chronic brucellosis infection.

The reports of modern individuals who, like Er, traveled to the realms of the dead and returned, often emphasize a sense of purpose. For example, one individual told near-death expert Raymond Moody:

I say God surely was good to me, because I was dead, and he let the doctors bring me back, for a purpose. The purpose was to help my wife, I think, because she had a drinking problem, and I know that she just couldn’t have made it without me. She is better now, though, and I really think it had a lot to do with what I went through. (Moody, 73)

Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Valarino, in Lessons from the Light, write that a sense of purpose is either clarified during the near-death experience or the individuals express a deep desire to discover their mission and actualize it. Fortunately, most people do not have to go through the trauma of a near-death experience to remember the deeper purpose of their lives. According to these researchers, there is accumulating evidence, based on informal questionnaires and interviews, that studying the reports of the near-death experiencers can have a profound effect on an individual’s attitudes and behavior. The following statement came from a Swiss woman with a university degree who read Moody’s Life after Life:

I don’t want to sound pompous, but it was a revelation to me. Not Moody’s comments or analysis, but the testimonies of the experiencers. I read, cried a lot and knew it was true! I was profoundly touched at a level other than the intellectual, rational one. The experiencers’ words went straight to my heart, my soul, the essence of my being—whatever you want to call it. I immediately knew it was true . . . I had the impression that this was a truth I had always known but had simply forgotten. (Ring and Valarino, 211)

As a renewed sense of purpose is characteristic of the near-death experiencers, perhaps a study of their reports could help us remember the original visions for our own lives. This could also be true with respect to a study of the memories of Newton’s hypnotized subjects. Part of the power of these testimonies is that they come from modern individuals with whom we can identify. May we all benefit from the profound inner experiences they have so generously shared.

Sources

Cerminara, Gina. Many Mansions. New York: William Sloane, 1950.

Cook, Sir Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1913.

Dossey, Barbara. Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Springhouse, Pa.: Springhouse, 2000.

Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon, 1959.

Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Clydesdale, 2018 [1892].

Moody, Raymond. Life after Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2001 [1975].

Newton, Michael. Journey of Souls. Woodbury, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1994.

Ring, Kenneth, and Evelyn Valarino. Lessons from the Light. Needham, Mass.: Moment Point Press, 1998.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1929.

Janet Macrae is a coeditor of Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale (University of Pennsylvania Press) and the author of Nursing as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemporary Application of Florence Nightingale’s Views(Springer). Her article “Florence Nightingale’s Scientific Spirituality” appeared in Quest, winter 2020.

Channeling the Waters of Wisdom: Ancient Lineage and the Transmission of Knowledge

Printed in the Fall 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Gilchrist, Cherry, "Channeling the Waters of Wisdom: Ancient Lineage and the Transmission of Knowledge" Quest 108:4, pg 10-14

By Cherry Gilchrist

Over the last few years, along with a small group of colleagues, I’ve been looking into the history of our esoteric lineage. Since the 1970s and ’80s, we’ve been members of what is said to be a very old line of transmission: a particular tradition of wisdom which could broadly be described as Kabbalistic. We know certain facts about how it’s been passed down within the last seventy years, and we have records and reminiscences of those who were involved in the decades before we ourselves came along, from the 1950s onwards. But tracing the trail before that is difficult.

I’ve long been interested in lineage, and while my teacher was still alive, I pestered him for information. He occasionally threw a clue or two in my direction. “Sometimes,” he told me, “the tradition is only passed on to two or three people in a generation. Then sometimes there’s a more widespread need for it.” Our time, he implied, was one when the work of the tradition needs to go out further into the world at large. He himself was taught Tree of Life Kabbalah by, of all people, a farmer in Yorkshire while he, my teacher, was still a young man serving in the British Royal Air Force. On his release from the RAF in his late twenties, he helped to set up groups in London whose recruits first gathered in the coffee bars of London’s Soho district in the late 1950s. In terms of our research, so far, so good: we have chronicled this starting point, and from the research gathered, a website is now set up to detail how the trail led from there into a branching network of groups and teachers whose output is also found in books, films and follow-on organizations. They include the Toledano School of Kabbalah, headed by Warren Kenton (Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi); the Alef Trust, which teaches courses on consciousness and transpersonal and spiritual psychology; and the Praxis Research Institute, which explores the roots of esoteric Christianity. (See the Soho Cabbalists website for more information).

But how do we take this back further? How is such a lineage passed on? What impulse gave rise to it, since it is said to date back 6,000 years? These are big questions, and there are no exact answers. My intention here is to introduce some ways of considering these links. Often the questions are more important than the answers. We can keep asking questions, and even if the answers aren’t exactly as expected, they can help to illuminate the path. The motto of the first Soho group was: “There’s always further to go.”

Here’s a question to begin with: what is wisdom itself?

Wisdom from on high,
who orders all things mightily,
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.

This is a verse from an ancient Christian antiphon, which is sung in the season of Advent. Wisdom, it says, can show us a path of knowledge. To look at this in a slightly different way, it’s often an individual experience of wisdom which leads us into a particular spiritual path. Perhaps we unexpectedly receive some wise counsel, or experience a moment of grace, or have a significant encounter. Whatever it is points the way to something greater, as if it has come to us from the working of wisdom itself in the universe.

Wisdom can thus trigger an initiation, an entry point into a particular lineage. But it is not itself a lineage; it isn’t bounded in this way. It’s easier to use a model to explain how I perceive this, so my reference here is the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It doesn’t matter if you are not familiar with this, as I’m just going to describe the first three principles of creation, the forces that enter the created universe and shape it in primordial terms. The Tree itself consists of ten such sefirot or “spheres,” as they are known. In these terms, the first sefirah is Keter (“Crown”), the divine presence entering and “crowning” our universe, as its name signifies. Then Wisdom, Hokhmah, comes forth from that, as the first active manifestation in this universe. It is an outpouring, which is bountiful and unceasing, but which has no defined form. This flow is then tempered, shaped, and nurtured by Binah (“Understanding”), also sometimes known as the Great Mother.

When these first three principles—divinity, wisdom, and understanding—are established in their prime configuration as a triad, then Knowledge comes into existence, at the point of Da’at. This is not a sefirah in its own right, but a kind of gateway or abyss, which lies between the supernal world above and our familiar human world below. Seeing how these three forces combine to give rise to knowledge is useful here in helping us see how a spiritual path is shaped.

To begin with, though, I would like to explore the nature of wisdom from our very imperfect human standpoint. There are different ways to define wisdom, but as it is boundless in itself, there is no final way of pinning it down. This is because each expression of wisdom is a unique, creative response to a situation. A drop of wisdom can transform a particular situation at that particular moment in time, whereas another such moment requires a different drop of that holy essence. If you think of someone who you consider to be wise, how does their wisdom express itself? Probably never the same way twice, and sometimes in a completely unexpected way, but one which seems perfect for the situation. Wisdom is not a predictable stock response, and definitely not a checklist of dos and don’ts. A wise person answers in different ways at different times. And let us not confine wisdom to “teachers.” Everyone has moments of uttering words of wisdom, sometimes not knowing exactly where they come from.

My own image of wisdom, in visual terms, is as a kind of pearly, luminescent outpouring. It can be channeled like water, but it cannot be shaped like clay. I would guess that many of us have some kind of similarly instinctive response to the word, even though our images of it may be different, because we have an innate human capacity to recognise wisdom, whether or not we choose to ignore or deny it. (And that does happen.) We may also experience a sense of “rightness” when we come across true wisdom, even if it flies in the face of conventional dictates or what we personally would wish for. Wisdom in action has a power which can move us to tears, or bring a sense of calm that stills all previous turbulence. This inborn ability to know wisdom can also help us recognize a true spiritual path, which is not always an easy task, especially if we encounter a hidden or esoteric tradition that has been rejected by established religion. But we can consult this inner barometer of wisdom to help decide whether it’s a path that can be trusted.

As I write this, I find myself floating on what seems an endless sea of possibilities. I could discuss wisdom in this way or that, explore a range of ideas, track down innumerable sources, and possibly drown in the attempt! So like Binah in those first Kabbalistic principles, I have set limits here so as to keep to the theme of transmission of lineage.

Moving on, therefore, I am going to offer three stories which have emerged within the lineage that I have worked and studied in, and which may help to explain the relationship between spiritual work and the channeling of wisdom into a tradition. Where historical fact fails us, symbols and legends may illuminate its development.

The Ruined City

This image came into my mind spontaneously some years ago:

There’s a ruined city standing on a riverbank. It’s empty: no one’s there, and all around it the land is bare, like a sandy desert. The walls are half broken, and there are no roofs on the buildings. But the river is still flowing past between its banks. The river is full, and there’s a strong current, even though the land around is empty and barren.

My teacher nodded as I described it to him later. “Yes,” he said, “that’s how our line of work goes.”

From this and later conversations, I came to understand that we can’t afford to become too attached to the forms of a tradition. The lineage has carved out a channel so that wisdom can flow through it like a river. The cities built on its banks are the carefully constructed schools of teaching, drawing on its water to fertilize these ideas. But such cities and teaching systems are inhabited only for a while; sooner or later, they decline or are destroyed by others, leaving the river to flow on. Perhaps in time, a new city may be constructed further down its bank.

Why should this be? Why do teaching systems eventually fail? One of the main reasons is that every such school of spirituality (I use the term broadly) eventually becomes a prison. It has locked its adherents into its edifice, and even if it’s more of a palace than a prison, it is a place of captivity. This often occurs when everything has been fully formulated, a point at which the metaphorical architecture of the school has been perfected. At that time it also begins to become obsolete. The best such teaching schools meet the needs of the time, but as those needs are fulfilled and the world moves on, the schools themselves no longer serve the same purpose. “This is inevitable, so every prison must contain within it the seeds of breaking out,” the same teacher told me.

Here, then, is a symbol for the way a spiritual lineage works: there is initial inspiration from wisdom itself, and the person who recognizes this wisdom may channel it so that it flows like a river. Others are drawn to the river and build their edifices on its banks. But in time new constructions will be needed.

Between the decline of one school and the flourishing of the next, however, that river still exists. Further down its course, its wisdom may be recognized by individuals who then start a new initiative to gather others together. Or it may exist in what can be called the “inner planes”—a dimension which cannot easily be traced in history or pinned down chronologically but can sometimes manifest itself directly in the soul of a seeker.

The King on the Mountain

Behind the image of the river and the ruined city, there still lies the question of what gives rise to a particular lineage. Here is a story which indicates how this impulse can come about. It’s a story known as the legend of the King on the Mountain, and it is told in the lineage to which I belong:

There was once a king who wondered what to leave his people. He wanted to leave them something worthwhile, which would endure. He went up the mountain to ponder how best to do that.

“I can construct a beautiful city, or fill a library full of books. That will give them something which endures beyond a lifetime.” But that would not do. He shook his head. “All those things will pass away.”

He reflected further, gazing at the view below of his kingdom spreading out before him. “I could teach them how to improve our agriculture, read the stars more precisely, and develop better weapons for battle. This way the knowledge of how to improve things will be passed down through the generations. Then they can have strength in adversity, and understand how to rebuild when the city crumbles.” The king sighed. “But no. Even that knowledge would become outdated. It would not last.”

Then he found what he had been searching for. “I will leave them the way to knowledge.”

That way to knowledge has come down from that day to this.

And so, according to this story, the king received the wisdom which enabled him to initiate a path of knowledge. To do this, however, he had to strip away all expectations of permanence and grandeur, and of guaranteed outcomes.

This story can be both fascinating and frustrating; in the early days, when I first heard it, it seemed to sweep aside all the new certainties which studying Kabbalah had given me. Learning that we are only a part of the stream of transmission can be hard. But, likewise, a story which is uncomfortable in some ways can also be the grit in the oyster shell. We all tend to hang on to our own version of the truth, which can be very hard-won by our own efforts, so to consider that even this might be transitory is a difficult call. Whether or not this legend has any historical truth to it, it can certainly teach us something about the setting up of a lineage, not just for our lifetimes, but as it can perhaps be perpetuated in different forms over the centuries.

The Eagle and the King

We may never know the full history of a lineage, especially one that is esoteric or has been largely concealed. Such traditions may have been forced underground because of persecution from political or religious systems of the day. From another perspective, some were considered to be appropriate only for true seekers who made the effort to discover them. Trying to pin down the evidence conclusively can therefore be a hopeless aim. But looking into its history can still be fruitful, following up allusions and associations which shed light on its possible transmission.

Pursuing this interest, I followed up on a few leads. I mentioned at the beginning that my teacher would sometimes drop us a few clues about its history; although he himself never claimed to be in full possession of the facts, he had learnt certain things from his own teacher, and discovered others both from his studies and his explorations of the inner worlds. All the clues that I did follow, however unlikely they might seem to start with, turned out to have some foundation. One was a suggestion that our lineage arose about 6,000 years ago in the mountains of Central Asia, at a place not far from what is now Shymkent in Kazakhstan. This in itself is an intriguing proposition, which I have looked into a little in historical terms, but it is beyond the scope of what I can write about in any significant detail in this article. (I hasten to say that this is not one of those stories of hidden Masters in mountain caves who might still be discovered today. It is a historical suggestion, which ties in with the arising of a new phase of ancient civilization, and of the spreading out of peoples over the next few millennia.)

In fact, trade routes running between East and West have played a major part in the transmission of religion, art and culture in general. Such routes developed at least 10,000 years ago. The best-known is the Silk Road, which dates primarily from the first century BC. Actually, the name Silk Road is something of a misnomer, as it was a network of trade routes stretching from East to West, and including branches which ran into India and towards present-day Russia. On all of these routes, travelers and merchants would have swapped stories, passed on ideas, and explained the meaning of their religion.

This potential origin sets the scene for another hint I was given: this lineage may also be connected with the early myths of an eagle-king. Sumerian and Babylonian myths include several involving an eagle who carries a king up into the heavens. The most prominent of these is the tale of King Etana, who heals and befriends a wounded eagle, and then ascends to the heavens on the eagle’s back. The myth also contains the notion of a sacred Tree as a poplar tree in which the eagle builds its nest. It dates from around 2300 BC, and offers a close correspondence with the Kabbalistic ascent of the Tree of Life, which can lead to reunion with the divine world. This strengthens the possible link between myths of the eagle-king and early Kabbalah; there is good evidence that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life did not originate in Judaism, but probably migrated to it from earlier sources in Babylonian culture. (See Parpola. There are also many extant Assyrian and Babylonian carvings and engravings of a stylized Tree of Life glyph, which in some cases looks remarkably like the Extended Tree used today by contemporary Kabbalists.)

The connection between Kabbalah and an eagle-king, or king-eagle, is borne out in at least two other notable stories from later periods. “The Hymn of Robe of Glory” (also known as “The Hymn of the Pearl”) is a Gnostic text from the first or second century CE, which is found in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. It is a story of exactly this kind, of a return to a heavenly home. The hero is a young man who has been sent to earth to gather a pearl of great price by his royal parents, but he has forgotten that he is a king’s son, that he has a mission to fulfil, and that there is a robe of glory waiting for him back in his true home. As he is now “asleep” in this world, he must be awoken to his real nature. His parents, the king and queen, send an eagle to deliver the message:

It flew in the likeness of an eagle,
The king of all birds;
It flew and alighted beside me,
And became all speech.
At its voice and the sound of its rustling,
I started and arose from my sleep.
I took it up and kissed it,
And loosed its seal (?), (and) read;
And according to what was traced on my heart
Were the words of my letter written.
I remembered that I was a son of kings,
And my free soul longed for its natural state. (Mead, 410; parenthetical comments Mead’s)

I have always found this text moving and very pertinent to the Kabbalistic tradition, with its sense of awakening, recognition, and homecoming.

A later myth known from the medieval period ties the eagle, the king, and the Kabbalah even more closely together. This is recorded in the compilation of Judaic Kabbalistic texts known as The Zohar, and reveals a tradition in which King Solomon—who is of course strongly associated with wisdom—rides on an eagle to ascend to the higher worlds:

[Solomon] ascended unto the roof of his palace, seated himself upon the eagle’s back, and so departed, attended both by fire and cloud. The eagle ascended into the heavens, and wherever he passed the earth below was darkened. The wiser sort in that part of the earth from whence the light was thus suddenly removed would know the cause and would say, “Assuredly that was King Solomon passing by!” (Zohar, 3:334–36)

This was a favorite occupation of Solomon’s, and his goal when he reached the heavens was to discover further secrets: “Solomon, by means of a ring on which God’s name was engraved, would compel the two angels to reveal every mystery he desired to know.” (See Hirsh et al.)

Investigating the legends of lineage brings about not only a sense of connection with the path as it has been traveled over the millennia, but also fresh inspiration for our own journey. It’s well-known that Renaissance art and Baroque music, for instance, were very much inspired by a return to the recently rediscovered Greek philosophical texts. Sometimes digging deeper into the past releases a fresh flow of the water of wisdom.

The act of connecting to lineage may also trigger synchronicities, where inner and outer worlds, past and present, seem to overlap and messages or confirmations are received. A small example of this happened as I was writing this section. I went out for my daily walk, which runs along the tidal river estuary out of our town and around the marshlands at its juncture with another, smaller river. On the pathway, I spotted a barred brown and buff feather, which looks like an eagle’s feather. It isn’t that as such, because we don’t have eagles here in southwestern England. It’s probably from a buzzard, which as a large bird of prey is the closest thing to an eagle in these parts. But I see it as a mysterious and fitting response from the life of the wisdom tradition which I’m exploring. I have brought it back home with me, and it lies on my desk as I write this.

Sources

Hirsh, Emil, et al. “Solomon.” The Jewish Encyclopedia (website), 1906: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13842-solomon.

Mark, Joshua J. “The Myth of Etana,” Ancient History Encyclopedia (website), March 2, 2011: https://www.ancient.eu/article/224/the-myth-of-etana/.

Mead, G.R.S. Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: A Contribution to the Study of the Origins of Christianity. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1960 [1900].

Parpola, Simon. “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy.” In Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52, no. 3 (July 1993): 161–208.

The Soho Cabbalists (website): https://www.soho-tree.com.

The Zohar. Translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon. 5 vols. New York: Soncino Press, 1933.

Cherry Gilchrist
Cherry Gilchrist has written a number of books on spiritual and cultural traditions, drawing both from personal experience and extensive research. Recent titles include The Circle of Nine, on feminine archetypes; Tarot Triumphs, an in-depth study of traditional Tarot symbolism; and Russian Magic, on Russian mythology. A newly revised edition of Kabbalah: The Tree of Life Oracle has been launched this year, drawing on a Kabbalistic divination system which she inherited. Cherry lives in Devon, U.K. Her author’s website is at www.cherrygilchrist.co.uk, and her compendium of articles and blogs at www.cherrycache.org.