Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World
THE ARYAN MYTH
To even suggest a division between Western and non-Western civilizations is chauvinistic. Essentially, the notion of a continuous stream of history, extending from Greece, through Rome, to Europe, is a contrivance that resulted from specific trends in scholarship, that sought to isolate Greece, among the ancient civilizations, as the ancestor of modern Europe. Effectively, it was Europe’s military successes against the Ottoman Turks, and the beginnings of colonialist expansion, that gave rise to a new nationalistic spirit during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and which led to a need to create a specifically European version of history.
Essentially, European scholars sought to abandon the foreign versions of history they had acquired, and, especially, the Jewish account of the Bible, and to instead create a European version of the past, by incorporating Greece and Rome into their history, by inventing for them a common ancestor, now known as the Aryan race. These developments were outlined in Leon Poliakov’s The Aryan Myth. What is not commonly recognized, however, is that the theory of the Aryan race was influenced by occultism.
As Europeans began to discover India, and as a result of the enssuing popularity of the "wisdom" of its preists, the Brahmins, European scholars and philosophers turned to it as the possible fount of all occult knowledge. Voltaire, the renowned Enlightenment philosopher, strove to demonstrate that Adam had taken over everything, even his name from India. He maintained: "…I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.…" The famous German philosopher Kant placed the origin of mankind in Tibet, because "this is the highest country. No doubt it was inhabited before any other and could even have been the site of all creation and all science. The culture of the Indians, as is known is almost certainly came from Tibet, just as all our arts like agriculture, numbers, the game of chess, etc., seem to have come from India."
Interest in India encouraged further linguistic research. In 1783 the English William Jones recognized certain similarities between the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit and Greek, Latin, Celtic and German. Later, Franz Bopp showed that Avestan, Armenian, and the Slavic languages were also related. These hypotheses were somewhat disputed, but eventually approved by most orientalists. For convenience, these languages were referred to as Indo-German, or Indo-European. Though initially asserted as merely a linguistic relationship, it was eventually theorized that, if there had once existed an "original" Indo-European language, there must also have been an "original" Indo-European race, later termed Aryans.
What is less known, however, is that the formulation of the Aryan myth was influenced by ideas circulating in the occult. The European esoteric tradition drew heavily from the Kabbalah, a branch of Jewish mysticism, that has its origin in Babylon in the sixth century BC. The occult achieved a high degree of popularity duing the Enlightenment, though, due to growing anti-Semitic tendencies, European occultists refused to acknowledge the Kabbalah’s Jewish origin. Ultimately, borrowing from Kabbalistic legends, European scholars put forth the theory that the Aryans were descendants of Cain, taught Kabbalah by the Sons of God of Genesis. Elaborating upon the myth first mentioned by Plato, the Aryans were believed to have inhabited the island of Atlantis. When that continent was submerged in a universal cataclysm, a number of Aryans escaped, and after landing in the mountains of Asia, conquered most of the known world, imparting to the conquered peoples their knowledge of the Ancient Wisdom.
In 1779, Jean Bailly, famous astronomer and prominent occultist, concluded that Atlantis was Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean, which in ancient times had a warm climate, but its subsequent cooling made the Atlanteans migrate south to Mongolia. Eighteenth century German scholar, Friedrish Schlegel, supposed that a new people had formed itself in northern India, swarmed towards the West motivated "by some impulse higher than the spur of necessity," and, wishing to trace their origin back to Cain, theorizes, "must not this unknown anxiety of which I speak have pursued fugitive man, as is told of the first murderer whom the Lord marked with a bloody sign, and have flung him to the ends of the earth?"
One of the most influential promoters of the Aryan myth was Jacob Grimm, famous compiler of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a collection of folk-tales, such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, which he thought represented the occult lore of the Aryan people. Grimm claimed that:
All the people of Europe and, to begin with, those which were originally related and which gained supremacy at the cost of many wanderings and dangers, emigrated from Asia in the remote past. They were propelled from East to West by an irresistible instinct (unhemmbarer Trieb), the real cause of which is unknown to us. The vocation and courage of those peoples, which were originally related and destined to rise to such heights, is shown by the fact that European history was almost entirely made by them.
These ideas were carried to the rest of Europe, where finally, in England, Max Muller, one of the nineteenth century's most influential scholars, stated:
"The Aryan nations, who pursued a northwesterly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of northwestern Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals; and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization, commerce and religion."
These theories continue to be maintained by modern historians, where not only are "Indo-Europeans" still believed to be the ancestors of modern Europeans, but of Indian civilization as well. However, as David Frawley has pointed out in Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India, not a single item of evidence is available. The only shred of proof provided is an ambiguous reference in the Hindu Vedas, to a battle between the forces of “light” and the forces of “darkness.” Nevertheless, according to the Columbia History of the World: "it is probable that as the Aryan invaders battled their way down from the northwest through the Ganges Valley, they conquered and enslaved local peoples most of whom were darker and smaller than their Aryan foes. The most archaic word for slave is dasa (dark), and the classical word for caste if varna (color). The principle became the basis for a further development."
Further assumed is that, as a consequence of their invasion of India, the most ancient scriptures of the Hindus and the Buddhists, were not indigenous developments, but originally derived from a more ancient culture introduced by the Aryan invaders. Also in the Columbia History of the World: "the Aryans ("noble ones") were part of a larger Indo-European migration which left a common cultural heritage from Greece through Iran into India. The religious and social institutions of these invaders are reflected in the oldest stratum of the Veda (sacred "knowledge"), the most revered sector of traditional Hindu religious literature."
ANCIENT GREECE
While Enlightenment scholars had initially turned to India, it was not until the nineteenth century, when the German Romantics, due to the perceived affinity between the Greek and German languages, came increasingly to regard Greece as the lost Golden Age they had been longing for. Ultimately, European scholars, employed the myth of Aryan origin, among the great ancient civilizations, designated Greece as the "cradle" of Western civilization, creating a specifically European account of history.
However, Greece was fundamentally a Middle Eastern civilization. Though the foreign origin of Greek civilization was widely recognized in ancient times, due to the nationalistic tendencies in European scholarship over the last few hundred years, the evidence was buried in favour of the Aryan version of history. Fortunately, over the last half century, a number of studies have begun to again elucidate the extent of Greece's debt to foreign civilizations.
Although Martin Bernal falters in over-emphasizing a cultural connection between Greece and Africa, Black Athena: Volume I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785 - 1985 is a great introduction to the distortion of history, and the suppression of evidence in favour of the Aryan model. Bernal also indicated that, according to their own mythological accounts, the Greeks were descended in large part from Danaus and Cadmus, two legendary personages recognized as Phoenicians, that is, from the people of Palestine, that resulted from the extensive intermarriage between Canaanites and Hebrews, and who had established colonies throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived around 250 BC, recounted that according to the Egyptian records, the Jews of the Exodus were known as Hyksos, and as Bernal noted, ever since late antiquity, writers have seen links between them and the Greek legends of the arrival of Cadmus and Danaus. To Heccataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the fourth century BC, the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyksos, the Israelite Exodus, and Danaus’ landing in Arcadia, were three parallel versions of the same story. Referring to the Egyptians he says:
The natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven from the country and the most outstanding and active among them branded together and, as some say, were cast ashore in Greece and certain other regions; their teachers were notable men, among them being Danaus and Cadmus. But the greater number were driven into what is now called Judea, which is not far from Egypt and at that time was utterly uninhabited. The colony was headed by a man called Moses.
The Danaans were the ancestors of the Dorians, said to have invaded Greece, also called the Invasion of the Heraklids, tracing their descent to Hercules, a Phoenician god, derived from Baal. Scholars recognize that the invasion of the Dorians may be connected with the controversial Sea Peoples who assaulted most of Palestine, Asia Minor and Greece in the twelfth century BC. Although their exact identity is unknown, they may represent the broader conquests of the Jews against the Canaanites following their exodus from Egypt. A number of sites counted among the conquests of the Sea Peoples, are identical with those known to have been accomplished by the Israelites, like Dor, on the coast of Palestine and Aphek.
However, Greek myths were not compiled until the eighth century BC when Phoenician influence became prevalent in Greece and need not necessarily account for contact with Near Eastern peoples in Mycenaean times. Recently however, important work by scholars such as Walter Burkert’s The Orientalizing Revolution and M.L. West’s The East Face of Helicon, have now begun to explore the extensive influence of Phoenician civilization on ancient Greece. Not only were its most popular gods, Aphrodite, Apollo and Hercules borrowed from these Easterners, but the Greek Alphabet, which most European languages are now based upon, was taken from them as well. The case for the foreign origin of Greek culture is such that, a little over fifty years ago, a German scholar had said:
"...in view of this state of affairs it could not be called out of the way to ask what there was in Archaic Greece that did not come from the orient."
Foreign influence on ancient Greece can be divided into two periods. The first begins in the eighth century BC, with the expansion of the Assyrian empire, that sent peoples seeking refuge in the West. The second coincides with the expansion of the Persian empire. In the sixth century BC, Asia Minor, now modern-day Turkey, came under Persian occupation, including the coastal region of the west, called Ionia, the birthplace of Greek philosophy (See map). It was here, as Franz Cumont and Joseph Bidez have pointed out, a work unfortunately not available in English, The Hellenized Magi, where the Greeks came into contact with the Magussaeans.
In Early Greek philosophy and the Orient, M. L. West has suggested that the introduction of Persian and Babylonian beliefs into Greece was attributable to Magi fleeing west from Cyrus’ annexation of Media. In Alien Wisdom, Arnoldo Momigliano affirms:
Those who have maintained that Pherecydes of Syros, Anaximander, Heraclitus and even Empedocles derived some of their doctrines from Persia have not always been aware that the political situation was favourable to such contacts. But this cannot be said of Professor M. L. West, the latest supporter of the Iranian origins of Greek philosophy. He certainly knows that if there was a time in which the Magi could export their theories to a Greek world ready to listen, it was the second half of the sixth century BC. It is undeniably tempting to explain certain features of early Greek philosophy by Iranian influences. The sudden elevation of Time to a primeval god in Pherecydes, the identification of Fire with Justice in Heraclitus, Anaximander’s astronomy placing the stars nearer to the Earth than the moon, these and other ideas immediately call to mind theories which we have been taught to consider Zoroastrian, or at any rate Persian, or at least Oriental.
Heraclitus, Greek philosopher of the sixth century BC, equated the rites of Dionysus with those of the Magi. Mystery rites were dedicated in honour of Dionysus, beginning in the sixth century BC, a dying god, who, like his Middle Eastern counterparts was associated with the bull, and like the Golden Calf, were celebrated by drunken and orgiastic rites. The Maenads, the god’s female worshippers, with the sounds of crashing cymbals, would work themselves into a drunken frenzy and tear to pieces a live bull and devour its flesh. Though we have no evidence of such rites, it would appear they would have been practiced by the heretical Magussaeans who assimilated the Persian Mithras with the Babylonian Bel.
The Dionysian mysteries became the basis of the cult of the Orphics, named after their legendary founder, Orpheus. Essentially, Pythagoras was a reformer of the religion of Orpheus, as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. According to F. M. Cornford, in From Religion to Philosophy, "whether or not we accept the hypothesis of direct influence from Persia on the Ionian Greeks in the sixth century, any student of Orphic and Pythagorean thought cannot fail to see that the similarities between it and Persian religion are so close as to warrant our regarding them as expressions of the same view of life, and using the one system to interpret the other."
However, as Momigliano insisted, in Alien Wisdom, "it was Plato who made Persian wisdom thoroughly fashionable, though the exact place of Plato in the story is ambiguous and paradoxical." In the dialogues of Plato, regarded by later thinkers of antiquity as the godfather of mystical philosophy, there is evident concern with Magian teachings. He was accused by Colotes, a philosopher of the third century BC, of having plagiarized the works of Zoroaster in his writing of the famous myth of Er at the end of the Republic. To Plato, as outlined in the Timaeus, an exposition of Magian cosmology, the purpose of life was the study of the stars, by which man could discover number, the basis of all truth.
THE HELLENISTIC AGE
Following the conquests of Alexander, during the era known as the Hellenistic age, from 300 BC to 300 AD, Greek philosophies and Greek sciences became universal throughout the Middle East. However, many of its teachers were not themselves Greek, and much of the philosophy and science was not Greek in origin or inspiration. Greeks also found their way to Babylon to study directly from Chaldeans like Kidenas and Soudines. Greek interest in Oriental teachings during the Alexandrian period resulted in the production of a curious set of pseudoepigraphical works, written in Greek, and based on Magussaean teachings, but attributed variously to Zoroaster, Osthanes and Hystaspes, which as Momigliano describes, in Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization, these "new-fangled speculations gained prestige from the Academic and Peripatetic admiration for the wisdom of Zoroaster and, no doubt, mixed Platonic ideas with those alleged to be Oriental."
Though Rome dominated politically, it was Alexandria in Egypt that was the greatest city of the Hellenistic Age. Due to the numerous cultures that congregated in the city, whether Egyptian, Greek, Persian, Indian or Jewish, new esoteric creeds were formulated based on older traditions, a trend, referred to by scholars as syncretism. However, upon closer examination it becomes apparent that, though they appear outwardly eclectic, the underlying theology of these schools was essentially the same. The soul was thought to have originated among the stars, but in its descent into an earthly body, acquired the qualities of the seven planets. To remove these qualities, the mystic must re-ascend through the planets, under the conduct of a guide, a role usually assigned to a Sun-god. However, the planets are guarded by fierce opponents, and the mystic must learn the appropriate names of these guardians, in order to pass from sphere to sphere, culminating in a vision of the true god. These were all ideas that could be attributed to either the Chaldeans or the Magi, or more specifcially, the Magussaeans.
These teachings formed the foundation of all the great schools of Hellenistic mysticism, including hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, the early Jewish Kabbalah, and most importantly, the Ancient Mysteries. Numerous cults pervaded the Roman empire, dedicated to the fertility gods of ancient times, such as Dionysus, the Magna Mater, Isis, and so on, but particularly, among those attributed to the Magi, named the Mysteries of Mithras, were the most popular among the Roman soldiers. Franz Cumont, who founded the study of Mithraism at the end of the nineteenth century, believed the cult to have migrated from Persia by way of Asia Minor. Today, most scholars deny Cumont’s theory, seeing no relation between Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. According to Noel Swerdlow, however, "if one gives up Cumont’s Iranian interpretation – on which I have no opinion, except that Cumont seems to me, as Vermaseren does also, more astute than his critics." Indeed, Cumont did not theorize that Mithraism developed from orthodox Zoroastrianism, but from the heretical Magussaeans.
In Babylon, the Magi had already confounded Mithras with the dying god Bel, also identified with Orion. Michael Speidel, one of the early scholar to have explored the astrological significance of the cult, had suggested that Mithras was Orion, although, he failed to mention that Orion was also identified with Gilgamesh. The central motif of Mithraism is Mithras astride a bull thrusting a dagger into its nape, and according to Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero and his friend Enkidu slaughter the Bull of Heaven:
Enkidu chased him and …the Bull of Heaven He seized him by the thick hairy tip of his tail… He thrust his sword between the nape of his neck And the horns of his head. When they had killed the bull, they tore out his heart, And placed it before Shamash the Sun They stepped back and fell down before Shamash in homage.
Fundamentally, the mysticism of Mithraism was similar to that practiced in what has come to be regarded as the beginnings of the Kabbalah, a form of mysticism which seeks a vision of God on his Chariot, or Merkabah, as described in Ezekial. These practices were first found among the famous Jewish sect of Palestine, known as the Essenes, with whom the Fifteenth Appolonian Legion of the Roman army may have come into contact during their invasion of Palestine, from 67 to 70 AD. This legion accompanied Titus to Alexandria, where they were reinforced by recruits from Asia Minor. It seems to have been a curious mix of these several elements, after they were transported to Germany, that erected the first temple dedicated to Mithras on the banks of the Danube. Thus, the ascent through the seven palaces, or planets, of Merkabah mysticism may have been introduced to the primitive mystery rites the Magussaeans, forming the Roman Mysteries of Mithras, spread far and wide by the Roman soldiers, and through Mithraism, to the other schools of Hellenistic mysticism, like Hermeticism and Neoplatonism.
Until recently, there had been much controversy as to whether the Christian heresy of Gnosticism was Persian or Greek in origin or both. Accoridng to Moshe Idel, in Kabbalah, more recently, scholars have begun to accept that Gnosticism developed through the introduction Merkabah mysticism into Christianity by Jewish heretics. Mithraism had also been thoroughly immersed in the Roman Empire before its acceptance of Christianity, with which it shared several similarities. Though the development of the orthodox creed was largely formulated to counter the growing influence of the Gnostic heresy, the Christian fathers were themselves committed to interpreting Christianity in terms of Platonic philosophy. Thus, Jesus was equated with an ancient philosophical term, the Logos, meaning "Word", and with the son of god, thereby becoming the dying god of the mysteries, whose death and resurrection was celebrated every Easter.
MITHRAISM AND ALCHEMY
The alchemical process, according to Zosimus of Panopolis, the foremost of the Hellenistic alchemists, and who lived at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century AD, "is the Mithraic Mystery, the incommunicable Mystery." However, alchemical teachings could have no known association with Persian Zoroastrianism. Therefore, what does this quote tell us about the nature of Mithraism, and its connection to alchemy?
Although it contradicts the opinions of modern scholarship, Mithraism in Roman times was a cult regarded as preserving the wisdom of the "Magi", having been founded originally by Zoroaster, as early as before the Trojan War. This opinion was to some extent promoted by Franz Cumont, who basically single-handedly founded the study of Mithraism, though today scholars of the subject have essentially rejected his thesis. As scholars maintain, there is very little evidence to maintain that Mithraism derived from Persian Zoroastrianism, but this was not the basis of Cumont's theory.
Rather, Cumont had maintained that the early strata of the cult's doctrines may have been formulated by a group of "heretical" Magi, which he refers to as Magussaeans, who inhabited Asia Minor, and which were by them imparted to the Greeks. In this cult of theirs we find teachings strikingly different from mainstream Zoroastrianism. Rather, these reflected a combination of Zurvanite Zoroastrianism and "Chaldean" or Babylonian astrology and magic. It was this creed, when brought to the Greeks of Asia Minor, with the advancing Persian armies in the sixth century BC, that contributed to the emergence of Greek "philosophy" and the Orphic cult of Dionysus. In the Hellenistic Age, it was the continuing presence of numerous Magian influences at the city of Alexandria in Egypt, with the inclusion of Greek philosophy, that contributed to the outgrowth of Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism.
Although these Magi were regarded as the great founders of the art, the adepts of alchemy in Hellenistic times preferred to follow Hermes, thought to have been a great ancient Egyptian sage. Zoroaster, explained Zosimus, agreed with Hermes that men could raise themselves above Fate, but he took the way of magic, while Hermes, on the other hand, took the way of philosophy. Essentially, as Jack Lindsay described, in The Origins of Alchemy In Graeco-Roman Egypt:
"It would seem then in the third and second centuries BC at Alexandria there went on a considerable fusion of Greek and Iranian thought. This fusion was expressed by bringing together the two great figures of Zoroaster the Persian and Hermes-Thoth the Egyptian in a large new corpus of magical recipes and ideas, above all in an endless series of pantheist correspondences between men, animals, plants, stones, stars and planets."
In this period, numerous works were compiled and erroneously credited to Zoroaster, as well as to his most famous pupil Osthanes, the "Prince of the Magi", and his purported patron, Hystaspes. The reputed founder of early alchemy was thought to have been Osthanes, to whom several works on the nature of plants and minerals and their astrological properties were ascribed. Osthanes was said to have accompanied Xerxes on his campaign against Greece as his chief magus, and Pliny the Elder, believed, that he was the person most responsible for the introduction of magic into Greece. Osthanes, mentioned Pliny, was the first person to write a book on magic "and nurtured the seeds, as it were, of this monstrous art, spreading the disease to all corners of the world on his way. However, some very thorough researchers place another Zoroaster, who came from Proconnesus, somewhat before Osthanes' time. One thing is certain. Osthanes was chiefly responsible for stirring up among the Greeks not merely an appetite but a mad obsession for this art." (Pliny, Natural History, XXX: 8)
It is said that after the Persian emperor's defeat at Salamis, Osthanes remained behind in Greece to become the teacher of the philosopher Democritus, an Ionian philosopher, born in 460 BC. The reputed author of seventy-two works, Democritus had apparently also visited Babylon to study the science of the "Chaldeans", of which he is to have written on the subject. He summed up the results of his investigations in a Chaldean Treatise, another tractate was entitled On the Sacred Writings of Those in Babylon, and as a result of his visit to Persia, he wrote Mageia.
One of the first alchemical works written was by a certain Bolos of Mendes, in the second century BC, but falsely attributed to Democritus. One of the texts accredited to him, the Leyden Papyrus, consists mostly of recipes, but in one passage, Democritus describes an incident of divine revelation from his former master Osthanes, in which he acquired his alchemical knowledge.
It was long thought that it had been among the Magi that the various metals were connected with their astrological properties, but it was Zosimus who connected their cult with alchemy itself. To Zosimus, the mystic's aim was to free the soul from the evil confines of matter and return it to God. To obtain the perfection of gold, he had only to free the essence of the noble metal from the base materials that imprisoned it. The goal of the alchemist, he explained, was the pursuit of a "stone which isn't a stone, this precious thing which has no value, this polymorphous thing, which has no form, this unknown thing which is known to all."
In Hermeticism, as described in the Poimandres, typical to Hellenistic mysticism, the soul must ascend through the seven planets, and into the eighth sphere, where it may unite with God. According to the Poimandres, man must first undergo a spiritual death and resurrection, followed by an ascent through the spheres of the seven planets, leaving behind him in each of them part of his being, the part which the original man had received from the stars. Finally, he will be reduced to just himself, and can enter the eighth sphere, to join the powers assembled there, with whom he comes before the Father and enters God.
Thus, we are able to discern the meaning of the explanation of the theology of Mithraism, as it was provided by Celsus, Roman writer of the second century AD:
"These truths are obscurely represented by the teaching of the Persians and by the mystery of Mithras which is of Persian origin. For in the latter there is a symbol of the two orbits in heaven, the one being that of the fixed stars and the other that assigned to the planets, and of the soul's passage through these. The symbol is this. There is a ladder with the seven gates and at its top an eighth gate. The first of the gates is of lead, the second of tin, the third of bronze, the fourth of iron, the fifth of an alloy, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. They associate the first with Kronos (Saturn), taking lead to refer to the slowness of the star; the second with Aphrodite (Venus), comparing her with the brightness and softness of tin; the third Zeus (Jupiter), as the gate that has a bronze base which is firm; the fourth with Hermes (Mercury), for both iron and Hermes are reliable for all works and make money and are hard-working; the fifth with Ares (Mars), the gate which as a result of the mixture is uneven and varied in quality; the sixth with the Moon as the silver gate; and the seventh with the Sun as the golden gate, these metals resembling their color." Origen. Against Celsus, (Contra Celsum), 6.22)
Therefore, essentially, the alchemists employed the language of chemical procedures as allegory. Transmuting lead into gold implied the purification of the soul. This process was represented by the transmutation of lead, the bases form, and the subsequent removal of its impurities until gold was achieved, also represented astrologically as ascending through the six planets, culminating in a vision of the Sun, symbolized by gold.