Restoring Paradise

RESTORING
Paradise
Western Esotericism, Literature,
Art, and Consciousness
Arthur Versluis
Restoring
Paradise
SUNY series in
Western Esoteric Traditions
David Appelbaum, editor

Restoring
P a r a d i s e
Western Esotericism, Literature,
Art, and Consciousness
Arthur Versluis
S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y o f N e w Yo r k P re s s
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, ALBANY
© 2004 Arthur Versluis
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Versluis, Authur, 1959–

Restoring paradise : western esotericism, literature, art, and consciousness / Arthur Versluis.
p. cm.—(SUNY series in Western esoteric traditions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6139-4 (alk. paper)
1. Occultism—History. 2. Occultism in literature. 3. Occultism in art. I. Title. II. Series.
BF1411.V47 2004
135—dc22
2004045292
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of
poet and scholar
Kathleen Raine
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Initiatory Transmission and

the Imagination 1
What is Esoteric?
Initiatory Transmission and Western Esotericism
The Esoteric Imagination
1 Origins 17
Alchemy of the Word
The Field of the Imagination
The Red Thread of Gnosis
Conclusions
2 Historical Currents 35
Divine Service: Chivalry and the Troubadours
Books within Books: Jewish Kabbalism
The Transfiguration of Earth: Alchemical Literature
The Divine Science: Theosophic, Pansophic,
Rosicrucian, and Masonic Literature
viii CONTENTS
3 Modern Implications 87
Prospero’s Wand: Modern Esoteric Literature
The Western Esoteric Traditions and Consciousness
Literature, Art, and Consciousness
Notes 159
Index 169
P re f a c e
Restoring Paradise began as an introduction to the literary and religious history

of Western esotericism and was meant for a general audience, but as the book
took shape, so did an unexpected thesis about initiation, literature, art, and con-
sciousness itself. Soon it became clear that Restoring Paradise was to be a gen-
uinely interdisciplinary argument whose subjects range across Western
religious and literary history, all the way from the early Christian era to twenti-
eth-century poets and artists. At the suggestion of an early reader, I also in-
cluded references to Japanese Zen Buddhism and to the great Japanese
philosopher Keiji Nishitani, but the work’s focus remains Western. In writing
this book, I drew on a variety of both primary and secondary sources, but in
keeping with my original impetus, wrote for a general audience across a range
of fields rather than for specialists in one or more of the many periods, tradi-
tions, figures, and locales that play a role in supporting and amplifying the
larger argument. At the very least, I hope that Restoring Paradise will serve to
introduce many readers to the richness of our common inheritance, found
where literature and religion meet in the works of such extraordinary figures as
Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, O. V. Milosz, H. D., and Cecil Collins. This is
the first extensive discussion of these authors together, and I hope that it will
open the way to a new appreciation for each of them in this larger context.
Hence, I include a short annotated bibliography to suggest further study for
those interested in the fields that I here introduce in the course of making my
case about literature and art as means of esoteric transmission in the West.
ix
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgments to Brian Keeble, the estate of Cecil Collins and the
Tate Gallery for citations and images, including the adapted cover illustration,
“The Music of Dawn” from The Vision of the Fool and Other Works, (Ipswich:
Golgonooza, 1994) and Meditations, Poems, Pages from a Sketchbook (Ipswich:
Golgonooza, 1997); to Christopher Bamford and Lindisfarne Press for the cita-
tions from The Noble Traveller: The Life and Writings of O. V. de L. Milosz,
(West Stockbridge: Lindisfarne, 1985); and to Studies in Spirituality, to The
Journal of Consciousness Studies, and to the editors of Gnostica 3, Mélanges of-
ferts à Antoine Faivre (Louven: Peeters, 2001), in which earlier versions of parts
of this book first appeared. My thanks to New Directions Publishing for per-
mission to quote from the works of the poet H.D., in particular “Tribute to the
Angels” (excerpts) by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), from Trilogy, © 1945 by Oxford
University Press; copyright renewed 1973 by Norman Holmes Pearson, and
“The Walls Do Not Fall” (excerpts) by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), from Trilogy,
© 1944 by Oxford University Press; copyright renewed 1972 by Norman
Holmes Pearson. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corpora-
tion. Many thanks also to the various readers and editors of this book during the
course of its production, each of whom helped to make it a better work.
xi
I n t ro d u c t i o n :
I n i t i a t o r y Tr a n s m i s s i o n
and the Imagination
We find ourselves today at the edge of new vistas in scholarship, and one of the
most promising of these is what we may broadly term esoteric literature and art.
A wide range of new approaches to and reënvisionments of Western history, re-
ligious, artistic, and otherwise, are now appearing, and these in turn may offer
us new ways to understand both our past and our present in surprising ways. Yet
for this to take place, we must begin to go beyond historical research in order to
understand not only who or what esoteric works, figures, or groups have been
overlooked or marginalized, but also, and perhaps even more critically, how es-
otericism is transmitted in the West. This is a vast and almost totally unexplored
field, and one that has ramifications in many directions, not least of all for the
understanding of art and literature.
In this book, we will focus on a single theme: that of how spiritual initiation
takes place in Western esoteric religious, literary, and artistic traditions from
antiquity to the present. As Steven Katz pointed out in Mysticism and Language
(1992), the study of mysticism, even apophatic mysticism, requires that one
consider the role that language plays in generating, provoking, or conveying
spiritual experiences.1 Here, I extend this question beyond mysticism to include
the full range of what are now termed “Western esoteric traditions,” of which
(in my definition) the mysticisms of an Eckhart or a Böhme, of The Cloud of
Unknowing and of eighteenth-century alchemical treatises form various sets
and subsets.2
In a model that I outline in two articles on method in the study of esoteri-
cism, I argue that esotericism has as its central characteristic gnosis, meaning
experiential insight into the nature of the divine as manifested in the individual
and in the cosmos.3 Gnosis may be divided into two broad categories: cosmo-
logical, and metaphysical or transcendent. These are not, however, mutually
1
2 R E S T O R I N G PA R A D I S E
exclusive but rather are complementary and overlapping. Cosmological gnosis

is insight into the nature of the cosmos; examples of it include alchemy, astrol-
ogy, magic, even if these also include metaphysical gnosis. Metaphysical gno-
sis in its pure form is apophatic or via negativa mysticism like that of Meister
Eckhart or Marguerite Porete; it can be described also as the transcendence of
subject-object or self-other divisions.
To consider the pivotal role that language and image play in the transmission
of esoteric spiritual traditions is not, however, to therefore reductionistically argue
that these traditions represent nothing but linguistic constructions. Not at all.
Rather, it is to consider the complex ways that language and image have worked
and continue to work in both Western and Eastern traditions in order to generate,
provoke, or convey spiritual awakening. Here, we will focus primarily on West-
ern esoteric traditions such as alchemy, Christian theosophy, or Hermeticism, but
with occasional reference to what I see as in many respects an analogous Asian
tradition—that of the Zen Buddhist koan. Like the koan, the Western gnostic trea-
tise uses words to provide an entry into dimensions of consciousness that tran-
scend words. But because so little has been written on how Western esoteric
traditions are transmitted, on how initiation can take place in the absence of a
direct historical lineage in the West, this must be our primary focus.
The term Western esoteric traditions is broad, of course, but necessarily so:
it defines a vast range of traditions, including alchemy, astrology, Christian
gnosis, Freemasonry, Jewish Kabbalah, magic, mysticism, Rosicrucianism,
theosophy, and related currents of hidden knowledge in the European inheri-
tance. Yet these traditions, however disparate, do have certain characteristics in
common, perhaps the most important of which is an emphasis on attaining spir-
itual knowledge, or gnosis. In essence, that is what this book is about, for al-
though we will outline Western esotericism’s main currents here, and although
we will present a new way of understanding the phenomenon of Western eso-
tericism in a contemporary light, above all this is a book about knowing, and
about how we come to know, and what ‘knowing’ by way of literature and lan-
guage actually means.
Although it seems that ours is a time when everything from the past is bound
to come to light, this has not been true until recently for the Western esoteric
traditions.4 The bias against esotericism derived in large part from the hege-
mony of rationalism and materialism, for in order to create the modern world
of machinery and science, it was necessary for many people to abandon what-
ever did not fit a positivist paradigm. Undoubtedly, there has been much selec-
tive editing of our collective human inheritance, but perhaps most edited of all
were European currents of thought. In particular, Western esoteric traditions
have been denigrated or dismissed for centuries, left out of literary, philosoph-
ical, religious, and social histories, or mentioned only to be dismissed as merely
outmoded relics. But the time for such biases is past.
INTRODUCTION 3
Why? For the first time in several hundred years, many people have realized
that despite all the material comforts made possible by our machinery, their
inner lives have become progressively more barren. Thus many have begun to
cast about for ways to enrich their inner or spiritual lives, and so a welter of new
religious movements and groups has emerged. In many respects, our time re-
sembles the early Christian era, when a panoply of religions, sects, and cults ex-
isted side by side, proliferating wildly. To navigate one’s way through these
movements, and to understand their patterns and meaning, it is more than use-
ful to recognize whence they have emerged, what their predecessors are.5
But there are other reasons why an examination of the Western esoteric tra-
ditions might be especially apropos today. Chief among them is the growing
conviction that positivism is bankrupt. This is without doubt the reason that
there are so many new religious movements—combined with a widespread dis-
trust and even ridicule of Christianity, which increasingly in the West seems to
intellectuals to be moribund except as a social phenomenon. Thus, when we
look at Western societies, we find on the social front, and particularly in the
radical ecology movement, an awareness that modern machinery for all its
power impoverishes both outer and inner nature. At the same time on the reli-
gious front, we find a definite prejudice in post-Christian societies against
Christianity in general, which is often seen either as outdated, or as oppressive
and as having spawned the destructiveness of modernity, while at the same time
we find reactionary fundamentalist Christian sectarianism that often only fuels
others’ disdain for Christianity.
Given the present openness of many people to criticism of modernity, and to
alternative forms of spirituality, we readily can see why the time is ripe for a
reëvaluation of the Western esoteric traditions in light of our contemporary sit-
uation. By looking more closely at the origin, nature, and continuity of the
Western esoteric traditions, therefore, we will not only be uncovering little-
known aspects of bygone days, but in fact be discovering fundamental keys to
understanding both the European esoteric inheritance, and ways beyond the im-
passe at which we find ourselves today. Western esotericism is, of course, a vast
field, and there are many treasures to be found there.
Yet beyond the pleasure of discovery we will find something else: for the
more we study the field of Western esotericism, the more we come to see cer-
tain underlying patterns. And underlying these is, in my view, a single primary
and overarching metaphor that we will be able to trace throughout the Western
traditions in all their variety, a metaphor that illuminates not only all the vari-
ous disciplines and traditions, but even sheds light on the very nature of being
human. For as we will see, the Western esoteric traditions, despite their often al-
most bewildering variety, are fundamentally about reading: about reading na-
ture, about reading the stars, about reading as discovering esoteric knowledge
of ourselves and of the cosmos.
This theme of reading, in other words, is much deeper than it might at first
appear, and will require much elaboration. But we can at least begin by consid-
ering how reading is largely regarded today as nothing more than the accumu-
lation of information through decoding writing—indeed, we have developed
machines that ‘read,’ itself a metaphor for our time. By contrast, reading in the
Western esoteric traditions has to do not merely with accumulating data, but
with consciousness itself. Reading here is defined in the broadest possible way,
as penetrating into the hidden mysteries of all that we see. What is more, read-
ing in this context extends beyond ratiocinative knowledge limited to a split be-
tween the reading subject and the ‘object’ to be studied: instead, reading here
guides one toward gnosis, or spiritual knowledge.
The word gnosis, Greek in origin, refers to spiritual knowledge, but not nec-
essarily knowledge in the sense in which we use the term today. ‘Knowledge’
in contemporary usage is essentially ‘data,’ that is, the accumulation of facts
based in an apparently insurmountable division between self and other: ‘I’ ac-
cumulate facts about what is ‘not-I.’ Unexamined here, however, is the nature
of the ‘I’ and the ‘not-I’ in question. For the Western esoteric traditions ap-
proach such questions from a totally different view: for them, the ‘I’ is recog-
nized to be not stable but fluid, and thus there are no permanent divisions
between ‘I’ and the cosmos. The ‘I’ need not remain at the mercy of its own
selfishness, but can be transmuted, progressively realizing its fundamental
identity with plants and animals, minerals and stars, and ultimately with the di-
vine. Thus we can see that spiritual knowledge is of a different order than con-
temporary secular or scientific knowledge, for it is grounded not in separation
but in union.
The mystery of reading is, of course, also about union. When we read a
novel, we enter into another’s world; we feel as someone else feels, imagina-
tively enter into different lives. Likewise, when we read the works of an Emer-
son, we are not merely passive observers of a great aphorist, but in some sense
leap the gap between ourselves and the author so as to actively participate in the
writing. And when we read a great poem, we do not remain just a cataloguer of
this or that remarkable confluence of words, but experience the marvel of liv-
ing metaphor and rhythm for ourselves. In every experience of literature, there
is also a union: we as readers are participating in the mind of the writer through
the miraculous medium of the written word. If there are great writers, so too
there are great readers, and each requires the other.
The view of reading and literature that I have just articulated is far from the
more widespread contemporary assertion that writing and reading are merely
about the exchange of information through signs, yet this view of union is one
that most and perhaps all literary readers and authors will intuitively recognize;
it is at the heart of the Western literary continuum. Why do we travel with
Dante’s pilgrim through hell, purgatory, and heaven; why do we travel with
INTRODUCTION 5
Piers Ploughman among riddles and toward the apocalypse; what is the attrac-
tion of Melville’s Ishmael? These works, like so many others, are full of mys-
terious symbols and intricate encoded wordplays; and when we read them, we
travel ever more deeply into the worldview of the authors, perhaps even experi-
encing hierophanxic moments of insight during which we suddenly see our-
selves and the world around us in a new light.
We make connections; we understand. I am not arguing that such insights
are identical to what one might experience when working in one of the Western
esoteric traditions; but I am arguing that Western literature owes a very great
deal indeed to the Western esoteric traditions, and during the course of this
book we will begin to unveil just how significant is this indebtedness. This ex-
perience of union between author and reader I have alluded to is a literary and
secularized form of what we find in Western esotericism. What is more, we will
see that literature (in the broadest sense of this word) is fundamentally about
consciousness, that at their heart the Western esoteric traditions are about read-
ing the world’s and our own secrets, not about accumulating more information,
but about qualitatively different ways of understanding who we are, where we
are from, and where we are going.
When I refer to literature “in the broadest sense of this word,” I am extend-
ing the word beyond its usual implication: the canonical (or noncanonical) se-
ries of more or less conventional authors from Homer to Dante and Chaucer to
Milton. Here “literature” refers also to alchemical treatises and to visionary
narrations, to intensely complex theosophic works such as those of Jacob
Böhme, in short to the full range of esoteric literature. Using the word literature
in this way in no way implies that these works are ‘only’ literary—that is to say,
that their authors did not take them seriously as alchemical or spiritual treatises.
Rather, it is to suggest that these works exist on a spectrum that also includes
poetry, fiction, drama, and essays, and that all of what we today call literature
owes a very great deal to what I will call here the “mysteries of the word.”
Although we will begin to unravel the intricacies of these mysteries of the
word later, it will be useful to comment now on what is implied by this term.
It is often commonly supposed that the written word is inherently inferior to
the spoken or oral tradition, a supposition with a long history that goes back at
least to Plato in his Phaedrus. But when we begin looking at the Western eso-
teric traditions, we find that the written word is often seen not only as a means
of transmitting spiritual understanding, but even as a vehicle for attaining spir-
itual understanding. This is not to say that the written word is privileged over
the oral tradition, but neither is it to say that the written word is disparaged. As
we look closer at the specific currents of Western esotericism, we will unveil
various facets of what I believe are approaches to spirituality via literature that
inform all of them. The mysteries of the word represented in these various es-
oteric traditions are historical predecessors to and influences on what we now
call “literature” or “literary tradition,” and acknowledging them will require us

to change the way we see literature as a whole.
Thus this is in many respects a revolutionary book, for in it we are seeking
to unveil new and ancient ways of understanding not only the primal act of
reading, but also the even more primal act of knowing. Those studying the hu-
manities, and particularly literature, have often turned more and more to quasi-
scientific approaches, as if catalogic, quantitative, or reductive explanations or
investigations would somehow, finally, validate literature or the humanities in
the face of scientism’s obvious and total victory. But now that we can see writ-
ten in the ruined face of the looted earth around us the failure and bankruptcy
of a mechanistic and exploitive worldview, we also have an opportunity to in-
vestigate the humanities with new eyes, no longer quite so dismissive of per-
spectives, most notably Western esoteric traditions, that have not fit into a
worldview emphasizing a self-aggrandizing self pitted against other—to em-
phasize instead a wholly different approach to knowledge, one based not on
division but on union.
Contemporary society is based on what we may call objectification, mean-
ing that our investigations into and control of our world derives from our re-
garding all that surrounds us as objects to be manipulated, from which we
believe that we are separate. Such objectification allows us to exploit and con-
sume everything; indeed, so pervasive is this objectification that it is extremely
difficult to extricate oneself from this paradigm even if one wants to do so. For
objectification has permeated all of modern society; it suffuses our language,
the way we see the world, everything. It is the very basis of industrialization to
objectify every aspect of life, including people, who are reduced to machinelike
functionaries; nature is reduced to “natural resources”; and everything becomes
a matter of techné, or manipulation, people most of all.
By contrast, Western esotericism in all its manifold forms has at its center
the search not for manipulation or control deriving from objectification, but for
connection and union. In this respect, we may well say that Western esotericism
represents the reverse or inverse of modernity, in that to follow such a path
means that one has to leave behind modern objectifying preconceptions of how
one is separate from nature and the divine, moving instead toward ever deeper
understanding of how one is indivisible from these. If the trajectory of modern
society is toward a virtual reality for each individual, living divorced from hu-
manity, nature, and the divine, the trajectory of the Western esoteric traditions
is precisely the opposite: toward ever more profound knowledge of our unity
with these realms.
Certainly Western esoteric traditions were prevalent at the beginning of the
modern era: contemporaneous with the emergence of modern rationalist sci-
ence were completely different kinds of sciences, grounded in spirituality. And
if at the beginning of the modern era there was a choice between these two
INTRODUCTION 7
ways, so too that choice still exists today. Indeed, as we rediscover the Western
esoteric traditions, particularly in light of their counterparts in the Asian eso-
teric traditions, it may well be that out of this juncture will come a kind of cul-
tural renaissance. But it is not particularly fruitful to speculate about social
transformation in this field, for Western esotericism entails individual awaken-
ing, perhaps symbolized best by the figure of someone reading an esoteric
work from long ago. The reader, alone with an author, alone communing with
the alone through the medium of words—this is the figure that will govern our
journey through Western esotericism, literature, and consciousness.
W H AT I S E S O T E R I C ?
The word esoteric is used today in a variety of ways, and so to maintain clarity,
we need to survey some of its meanings as well as to define it for our own pur-
poses here. In Western Europe, esoteric popularly has become almost synony-
mous with New Age, fundamentally a marketing category for merchandise. One
finds under the rubric esoterik books on topics like pendulum dowsing, crys-
tals, and so forth. And in North America as well, one finds esoteric sometimes
referring to an eclectic or syncretic collection of merchandise drawn from a
wide range of cultures, and even from purportedly extraterrestrial origins. But
the fact remains that there are also figures, works, and groups in Western Eu-
ropean and North American history, particularly from the Renaissance and
early modern periods, that are intellectually influential and that are only now
becoming more widely studied in universities. And indeed, the academic study
of esotericism is a developing field that may be succinctly and without deroga-
tion termed “esoteric studies.”
In an effort to define the academic study of esoteric figures or groups and
to separate it from popular definitions, in the latter quarter of the twentieth
century, French scholar Antoine Faivre emphasized the word esotericism—as
opposed to esoterism—and developed a set of largely cosmological character-
istics that he saw as characterizing most Western esoteric individuals and
groups from the Renaissance into the early twentieth century.6 Subsequently,
however, Dutch scholar Wouter Hanegraaff demonstrated that late twentieth-
century New Age movements and individuals (at least the somewhat less in-
tellectually frothy) were frequently indebted to earlier currents of Western
esotericism, thus opening the field up to scholarship on contemporary as well
as much earlier historical figures.
But the question remains: how does one define esoteric in a satisfactory way?
If one employs the largely cosmological characteristics proposed by Faivre, one
de facto excludes many authors or groups whose works might be categorized
under the heading mysticism or gnostic—except if they display an interest in,
say, symbolic correspondences or “living nature.” It seems odd to exclude from

one’s definition of esotericism authors such as Meister Eckhart or, to choose a
twentieth-century example, Bernadette Roberts, when their work is clearly eso-
teric in the classic sense of being intended for a limited, elite audience “with ears
to hear.” While one may indeed find ways to fit such via negativa gnostics into
a schema of cosmological characteristics, it seems to me necessary to propose
an elegant and simple definition of esoteric that will be useful for studying not
only eighteenth-century Masonry or Rosicrucianism, but also the kinds of syn-
cretic esotericism that one finds in the twenty-first century.
Here, I use the word esoteric in a religious context to refer to individuals or
groups whose works are self-understood as bearing hidden inner religious, cos-
mological, or metaphysical truths for a select audience. Such a definition can
include alchemical, magical, Masonic, or gnostic groups or individuals, but in
any case there is a separation between esoteric (from the Greek eso-, meaning
“within” or “inner”) knowledge for a select audience and exoteric knowledge
for the general populace. This definition includes the social-anthropologic
sense of initiation as admission into a secret society, but extends it to include
the full range of cultural works like those of literature and art, which may very
well convey secrets hidden from the casual observer. It also includes the range
of New Age or syncretic movements that emerged in the late twentieth century
and that also claim access to hidden secrets of the cosmos. At the same time,
this definition excludes the loose sense of esoteric as referring to the arcana of,
say, computer functions or plumbing; it refers explicitly to knowledge of reli-
gious or cosmological mysteries.
I N I T I AT O R Y T R A N S M I S S I O N
AND WESTERN ESOTERICISM
In order to delve into the field of Western esotericism in relation to language

and consciousness, we also will need to consider the nature of ‘initiation.’ This
word carries a range of meanings, so we must begin by considering it. Literally,
of course, the word means “beginning,” and this significance continues
throughout its other meanings as well. The ‘initiate’ is one who has entered into
a tradition or group. But beyond this, the word initiation takes on a variety of
implications. In anthropology, the word generally is used for adolescents who
undergo a tribal ritual and thereby enter into the community of adults. This is
the sense in which the word is used by, for instance, Jean La Fontaine in Initia-
tion, where he writes that the subject of his book is “rituals of initiation in the
common sense of the term; that is, rituals of admission into secret societies . . .
as well as those [rituals] which mark the passage between childhood and matu-
rity.”7 But he hastens to add that initiation cannot be defined simply as ritual
INTRODUCTION 9
admissions to groups, secret or not, because there are other elements generally
involved. Among these are acquisition of powers through secret or special
knowledge, and the crossing of a ritual boundary into special status defined by
that knowledge. La Fontaine offers as examples of initiation several tribal
groups and Freemasonry, and offers a largely sociological analysis of them.
Yet there are other elements of initiation not dealt with in La Fontaine’s an-
thopological perspective that we must also consider. Mircea Eliade, in “Sym-
bolism of the Initiatory Death,” draws our attention to initiation as a religious
phenomenon, arguing that initiation entails a liquidation of one’s past and his-
torical identity, and a reëntry into “an immaculate, open existence, untainted by
Time.”8 Initiation, from a religious perspective, is a rebirth, a transition to a new
or renewed mode of existence, a regeneration. This regeneration may take the
form of transitional suffering in actuality, or it may entail symbolic suffering or
entry into darkness and symbolic death, but in either case the initiate goes
through a probationary period and then is born again into timelessness or im-
mortality. This religious dimension of initiation is less commonly dealt with in
contemporary social anthropology, but it is in fact closely tied with another
aspect, that of lineage.
Indeed, when we look at some religious traditions, we find that there is
clearly an initiatory transmission of lineage carefully maintained. Examples of
this can be found in Sufism, for instance, where the shaikh or master is the
pupil of an earlier shaikh, whose line can thus be traced back historically to its
founder as well as to the revelation of Muhammed. A similar concept of lineage
can be found in Zen Buddhism, where in order to become a master or teacher,
one must undergo considerable training, eventually receiving inka, or official
recognition and entry into the historical lineage that goes back not only to the
founder of that Zen lineage but to Shakyamuni Buddha himself. The concept
here is that the historical lineage serves to convey the original and timeless spir-
itual insight of its originator; so the archaic symbolism of initiatory death and
rebirth to which Eliade referred is transposed into the context of spiritual train-
ing, the verification and acknowledgement of the master, and entry into the
company of the masters, at least for a few. Lineage, in other words, is histori-
cal transmission that can be traced from master to disciple who becomes mas-
ter, who in turn has disciples, who in turn . . .
Yet when we turn to Western European esoteric traditions, we find compar-
atively little of this pattern of historical transmission. The notable exception is
Jewish Kabbalah, where there are in fact historical lineages of Kabbalistic mas-
ters; but when we turn to Christianity, or even to what may loosely be classified
under Hermeticism (including alchemical and magical currents), we find
somewhat less emphasis on such historical lines of transmission. And in fact
the history of European Christianity reveals an unusual kind of bifurcation: on
the one hand, we find a recurring tendency toward scriptural literalism and an
emphasis on the importance of belief in doctrine that could be characterized as

exoteric; while on the other hand, we find the recurrence of more esoteric ten-
dencies, largely if by no means exclusively in heterodox movements or indi-
viduals. But the hostility of the more exoteric Christians toward those inclined
to esoteric Christianity of various kinds (not to mention recurrent persecutions)
has meant that the historical circumstances in Christianity mostly disallowed
the kind of direct master-pupil-master-pupil historical esoteric transmission
that we see in, for example, Zen Buddhism.
In my book on Christian theosophy in the tradition of Jacob Böhme, Wis-
dom’s Children (1999), I proposed what I call “ahistorical continuity” to de-
scribe the kind of continuity one finds between, for instance, Valentinean
Gnosticism in antiquity and the theosophy of Jacob Böhme in the seventeenth
or eighteenth centuries without any historical lineage connecting them. Like
Ioan Culianu, I propose that there are certain esoteric characteristics implicit in
a religious tradition, and that although they may be latent for some centuries,
someone like Böhme rediscovers or reawakens them in light of his own creative
spirit. Examples of these characteristics include an emphasis on Wisdom or
Sophia as the divine feminine; the hebdomad as a cosmological principle; the
demiurge or spiritus mundi as an opposition to spiritual awakening, and oth-
ers. Thus there are numerous clear parallels between Valentinean Gnosticism
and Böhmean theosophy, but Böhme did not derive his thought from the for-
mer; he is, rather, an example of an ahistorical continuity.9
But the concept of ahistorical continuity is descriptive, not explanatory, and
the question still arises of how initiatory traditions are transmitted in the West
in the absence of continuous historic lineages and in an often hostile, persecu-
tory ambience when it is not, as in the case of Böhme, a matter of a spiritual
genius creating or recreating an entire gnostic tradition. Where does an isolated
alchemist learn to become a master alchemist? The answer, in brief, is through
encoded or symbolic literature and art. In essence, that is what this book is
about; it is an in-depth examination of how initiation can take place through the
written word or image. For although there are certainly some initiatory lineages
in the conventional sense, these are more exceptions than commonplace, and
the written word or image is in fact the primary means of initiatory transmis-
sion in the West. This is so even when there is an alchemical master-pupil rela-
tionship, for the alchemical secrets are still conveyed via enigmatic literature
and image and the master aids in unveiling them.
There is, of course, a clear Asian analogy for this transmission that takes
place in part through the written word or through images: the koan tradition in
Soto and Rinzai Zen Buddhism. The koan tradition, its history and applica-
tions, is considerably more than we can deal with here, but it is worth our
while nonetheless to at least develop it as a reference point. As is well known,
the koan is usually defined in the West as a clever paradox designed to be in-
INTRODUCTION 11
soluble by the rational mind and to propel the practitioner toward kensho (in-
sight) or satori (awakening). The pupil is confronted with a koan by the mas-
ter, eventually solves it with a spiritual realization, and then moves to another
koan in a more or less standardized series. The depiction of the koan tradition
as irrational has long been criticized, however; in his Shobogenzo, Dogen
(1200–1253) heaped scorn on the idea of koan as irrational, and recent schol-
arship confirms that the koan traditions in Zen Buddhism are far more sophis-
ticated than popular depictions of them might have it.
In a provocative article entitled “Koan and Kensho in the Rinzai Zen Cur-
riculum,” Victor Sogen Hori argues that it is mistaken to hold that koans are a
means for ascending out of thought and language into a state of pure con-
sciousness. This is fundamentally a Rousseauian notion of the individual as
originally pure but polluted by society and language, joined to a view of Zen
Buddhism as a way of escaping the pollution of society and language back to
an original pureness beyond language. Hori insists instead on what he terms a
“realizational” model of understanding Zen koans. From this viewpoint,
kensho is not a state of noncognitive consciousness awaiting the monk on

the other side of the limits of rationality. In the context of the Rinzai koan
curriculum, kensho is the realization of nonduality within ordinary con-
ventional experience. If kensho is to be described as a breakthrough, then
it is a breakthrough not out of, but into conventional consciousness . . . If
kensho is the realization of nonduality, then it itself cannot be separate
and distinct from ordinary dualistic experience.10
Hori goes on to make the following final point. At one time, we may have
thought that freedom lay in ascent beyond gravity, but once we escaped the
earth’s gravitational field, we discovered that we float helpless and uncon-
trolled without gravity. Freedom in fact lies in gravity, not beyond it. Hori
concludes: “Just as there is no free flying above the reach of gravity, there is
no Zen enlightenment beyond thought and language in a realm of pure con-
sciousness. Instead of blaming thought and language for defiling a primordial
consciousness, one should recognize that only in thought and language can
enlightenment be realized.”11
This is, I believe, a profoundly important point not only insofar as Zen Bud-
dhist koan study is concerned, but also as regards Western esoteric traditions.
Esoteric literature and art—of which koans are in fact an example—may be
seen as both pointing toward and as an expression of cosmological or meta-
physical gnosis. Esoteric knowledge is expressed through literature and art,
through language and image, but this is by no means to say that therefore there
is no such thing as nonconceptual or transcendent knowledge unmediated by
language or image. It has become more or less commonplace for specialists in
‘mysticism’ to attempt to legislate mystical or gnostic knowledge out of exis-

tence by claiming that the gnostic is merely entering or deploying another form
of conceptual language, the implication being that there is no such thing as
gnosis. But that is not at all what I am arguing here—far from it.
Rather, I am arguing that in Western esoteric traditions, literature and art
play a very special kind of initiatory role. This role may be seen in some re-
spects as analogous to that of the Zen Buddhist koan. Like the koan, an al-
chemical treatise stands as an enigmatic representation of a transmutative
process, and the work of the practitioner is to enter into and realize for him-
self the truths that it contains. The koan derives its name from a judicial term,
and in fact represents a test for the neophyte: one has to realize the nondual
truth that it represents and have this confirmed by a master’s judgment. The
same is true of the alchemical or gnostic treatise: the neophyte must work
with and through it, frustrating though this may be, until he has penetrated to
its authentic meaning.
What makes Western esotericism different above all, I believe, is the perva-
sive lack of initiatory lineages and thus of the immediate reproof or approval of
a living teacher. In the absence of a well-recognized line of historical masters,
the weight of initiatory transmission is transposed to literary and artistic works,
and thus also to the individual. This is not to say that the West had or, for that
matter, has no one capable of discerning a right understanding from a wrong
one, nor to say that there are no examples of initiatory lineages at all like those
of Zen Buddhism. Rather, I am arguing that in the West, esoteric literature and
art can function rather like the koan in Zen Buddhism, as means of initiation,
and that this is in fact the primary means of initiatory transmission in the
West—through word and image.
T H E E S O T E R I C I M A G I N AT I O N
The word imagination of course derives from image, but what is the nature of
the images perceived by the imaginative faculty? Are images merely phantasms
of one’s own mind, or are they manifestations of some other reality beyond one-
self? Or, as I will propose here, is there a third interpretation that lies some-
where between these two? Such questions are important because the
imaginative faculty is so vital to creating and to understanding literary and
artistic works, particularly those that clearly are esoteric in nature.
If we believe that the imagination is more or less exclusively individualistic,
as in individual daydreams, then we cannot really speak of literature or the arts
as being the vehicle of an initiatory or transmutative process. But in fact we
know from our own experience as readers that literature is a means by which
we participate in an intermediate world or mesocosm created by an author. By
INTRODUCTION 13
its very nature, literature demands an audience who participates in creating the
characters, the images, the action by the act of reading or viewing. Imaginative
participation is fundamental to art, literary or otherwise.
Esoteric works draw upon this fundamental participation or sharing between
the creator and the audience in order to entice, guide, or provoke the reader to-
ward a gnostic shift in consciousness, toward perceiving the world in a funda-
mentally new way. This process takes place through the imaginative faculty,
using the term in a broad sense to mean the reader’s or audience’s openness to
the esoteric work. Imagination, in other words, refers to the sympathetic ca-
pacity of the reader or audience to participate in a work and to be transmuted by
it, an initiatory process that takes place through words and image, or through
what we may also call the induced vision of art.
Obviously, not all literature or art is esoteric or initiatory, even though all
calls for imaginative participation on the part of the reader or audience. What
differentiates the esoteric work from others is the evident intent of the author
that the work is esoteric and initiatory. For example, it is clear from its begin-
ning that John Pordage’s “Letter on the Philosophic Stone” (ca. 1675) is in-
tended for a reader who has passed a certain milestone in alchemical practice
and now seeks further guidance; it is not for a general readership, but intended
as a guide for the individual practitioner, and employs parabolic language and
images to that end.
A literary or artistic work is esoteric not only when it conveys certain hidden
meanings to an audience, but also and even more because it entails a mutual in-
tent on the part of the creator and the work’s audience. Pordage’s letter is not ac-
cidentally or unconsciously esoteric—it is quite deliberately so. We might even
go so far as to suggest that an expressed or implied intent on the part of an es-
oteric work’s creator is a defining characteristic of such works: it forms a kind
of ritual initiatory boundary. This work is circumscribed; it is for the few; and
those who enter into it do so in order to undergo the process that it embodies.
This is the spirit in which an esoteric work is created and read or experienced.
Although we could describe an esoteric work as a journey or the account of
a journey, this would be in fact metaphoric for a process of transmutation. The
reader or audience does not travel outwardly but inwardly, and hence the
metaphoric journey might better be termed a “sojourn,” an entry into and resi-
dence in a visionary realm hidden from ratiocinative knowledge. One has to
enter into and dwell in the imaginative realm the creator generates (or reveals)
through the work, and doing so is an initiatory process through which the
reader or audience develops cosmological or metaphysical insights.12
As a result, one cannot read esoteric works in the same way that one reads or
perceives exoteric art without doing them an injustice. For instance, if one were
to attempt to read John Pordage’s treatise Sophia as symptomatic of delusions
on his part, this very perspective would make it impossible from the outset to
enter into the work and imaginatively undergo the process of awakening to the
hidden realm that he is describing. This is a pervasive problem today because
literary theoretical conventions tend to be hostile toward the very imaginative
sympathy without which the reader is divorced from the work and cannot enter
it but can only analyze it from without.
We can thus posit three kinds of readers of esoteric works:
1. Closed readers—those who come to a work with predetermined theses that

disallow their imaginative entry;
2. Sympathetic readers, who enter into a work imaginatively; and
3. Initiates, who see the work as mirroring a process that they seek to undergo
in themselves.
I am arguing here that readers must belong to at least the second of these two
categories in order to genuinely begin to study and understand esoteric works.
This does not mean that one jettisons reason and becomes a ‘true believer,’ only
that one has to make the effort to understand an esoteric work as much as pos-
sible sympathetically from an imaginative entry into its realm. When Jacob
Böhme wrote that his writings were not for those hostile to them (who would
be better off not looking at them at all) he meant that the works are indeed eso-
teric, and nothing less; to understand them, one must enter into them openly
and on their own terms, not one’s own.
This leads us inevitably to the question with which we began, of whether that
which is imagined or revealed in an esoteric work possesses any existence of its
own. From a contemporary rationalist perspective one might answer “no,” but
this would be a purely exoteric answer that objectified the esoteric work of lit-
erature or art, thus sealing it off from oneself as merely an object to be manipu-
lated by the intellect and revealing oneself as a closed reader. Yet if we answer
“yes,” we may well then be positing the realm of the imagination itself as some-
thing objectified that exists outside oneself, and this too presents problems, anal-
ogous to that of the Zen student who seeks an objectified, graspable solution to
a koan. But there is a third perspective, which is what I am proposing here.
For one does not have to conceive of imagination as a purely individual gen-
erative capacity; imagination could also be seen as a faculty of perception and
transmutation. When one reads an esoteric work like John Pordage’s treatise on
Sophia, one is in fact entering imaginatively into the process Pordage is de-
scribing, a process explicitly closed to the exoteric reader. Pordage writes that
in the Sophianic process of imaginative vision, Sophia (divine Wisdom) herself
tells him (the gnostic) that “I am come to make in you yourself this new invis-
ible creation, inwardly in you and not constructed outside you.” The gnostic, in
other words, has awakened in him by divine Wisdom the creative power that
brings external existence into being, but here a new magical earth is brought
INTRODUCTION 15
into being in him out of the Ungrund.13 This new paradisal earth is in the gnos-
tic; it is generated through the creative power of Sophia and perceived through
the gnostic imagination.
In other words, what the gnostic imagination perceives is what the creative
power of Wisdom within it creates. The paradisal earth that Sophia creates is
not external to the gnostic, but neither is it wholly internal as a creation of the
gnostic. This intermediate or mesocosmic state is precisely what allows
Pordage’s treatise to be initiatory for the reader: his work is a guide to his own
gnostic experience, but it opens the same possibility up to the reader because
the paradisal or magical earth can also be created in the reader who undergoes
the same process of awakening. It is not so much a matter of visualization by an
individual, but rather a matter of perceiving (being open to) an inner creative
process. This process belongs neither solely to the individual gnostic nor solely
to an outside power, but resides in a continuum between the two.
This continuum is what makes possible not only Pordage’s gnostic experi-
ence of inner creation and a visionary paradisal earth, but also the co-experi-
ence of the reader who participates in this process by reading the treatise. What
is more, one can extend this analogically to all creative efforts, inasmuch as the
author or artist is allowing an imaginative process to take place within, exteri-
orizing it through a work of art in which others can participate, and in that work
projecting a mesocosmic creative realm in which we can recognize aspects of
ourselves anew. The realm of the imagination, then, is by its very nature one of
co-creation, taking place in a continuum in which divine power works and in
which the reader or audience can participate vicariously at least.
Thus imagination belongs neither to oneself nor to divine power alone, since
in either case there would be no co-creator or perceiver. Imagination takes place
in a continuum of co-creation belonging to the gnostic who perceives, to the di-
vine power within that creates, and to the audience or initiate who vicariously
participates in or witnesses the work and so has awakened the possibilities that
the work represents. At work is a spontaneous inner generation of images for
the gnostic, but these images exist in a mesocosmic realm between the gnostic
and the divine; they represent divine manifestation in the gnostic faculty of
imagination so that the gnostic can perceive and be guided toward what they
represent and, if those images and that gnostic process are then also manifested
in a work of art, then that work also belongs to this continuum and guides oth-
ers into the same process of imaginative awakening. This, in sum, is an initia-
tory process manifested through literature and art.
1 Origins
ALCHEMY OF THE WORD
To understand the origins of Western esotericism in all its various guises, we

must begin in antiquity, specifically at the beginning of Christianity. Although
many aspects of what actually happened during this time may always be
shrouded or lost, still we can trace through this era the origin of the primary el-
ements or currents in Western esotericism. Here, we are not so concerned with
surveying the entirety of this period—a monumental task best left to others—
but with the defining themes that will emerge again and again in later times.
And to find these themes, we will look at representative or synecdochic writ-
ings, beginning with the ambience for and emergence of the Christian Bible
and affiliated works.
When we look at the emergence of Christianity from the welter of religious
traditions at the time, one characteristic appears prevalent above all others: the
emphasis upon the written word. From relatively early on, Christianity was cen-
tered around written accounts that took two primary forms. One is of course
what we find in the canonical versions of the Bible, central to which are the
gospel accounts of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. This, bolstered to some
extent by apocrypha, remains central to what may be called conventional or ex-
oteric Christianity—that is, Christianity based on faith or belief in a historical
Christ, of whose life we know through the historical documentation of the
gospels. The other kind of writing, however, is profoundly different, and of this
there are only two examples in the canonical Bible: some elements of the Book
of John, and, needless to say, the Book of Revelation.
Here we have the fundamental division that has lasted throughout the subse-
quent history of Western esotericism: on the one hand, what we may call a
17
historicist emphasis, and on the other, an ahistorical, revelatory emphasis. When

we consider the emergence of historicist Christianity in light of world religious
traditions, we can see how anomalous it is, for on a worldwide scale ahistorical
religious traditions predominate. Consider, for instance, the development of
Buddhism, which resembles Gnosticism far more than historicist Christianity:
here, as throughout world religious traditions, individual spiritual revelation is
incalculably more important than simple belief in a historical series of events.
The Johannine elements in Christianity owe a great deal to the various move-
ments collectively known as Gnosticism in antiquity, and represent a central ref-
erence point for the subsequent reemergence of esotericism time and again.
This division between exoteric and esoteric can, of course, be characterized
according to people’s approach to language. Historicist Christianity has always
taken a literal interpretation of the Bible, and insisted on an objectified histor-
ical Christ in whom one must have faith in order to be saved. Such an approach
to language is particularly common in modern times, where the idea that lan-
guage might convey multiple layers of meaning has been almost completely jet-
tisoned in favor of objectified technical language, be it scientific, legal, or
technological. The gnostics, on the other hand, by and large eschewed literalist
views of language in favor of more complicated, multilayered approaches.
Whereas the historicist Christians established a fixed canon of Biblical books
that ended with the Revelation to John, gnostic Christians continued to gener-
ate revelatory scriptural works because in their view, the Word was not literal
but spiritual, and hence revelation could take place today just as in antiquity.
What mattered to them was inward or esoteric understanding, not only outward
fidelity to fixed written words from the past.
Perhaps most interesting about this dichotomy is how it centers around ap-
proaches to written language, in this respect being peculiar to Christianity. By
contrast, the mystery religions of the time forbade writing about the mysteries:
indeed, the very word mystery has the root meaning “silence.” And written ac-
counts of the mystery traditions are very rare, so rare—in fact, that one can eas-
ily list them, the most moving and extensive undoubtedly being that in
Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. Plato alluded to this question in Phaedrus, ex-
pressing a view characteristic of the mysteries more generally when he had
Socrates say that writing is problematic at best because the written word cannot
explain itself and is easily subject to misinterpretation. In Christianity, both es-
oteric and exoteric tendencies center on how to interpret written language:
should it be multilayered or monotonous; should it be ahistorical, symbolic,
and mythic, or historical, literal, and anti-mythic? This was the battle, and
indeed, many modern people unwittingly inherit these tendencies still.
Of course, to make this dichotomy so clear-cut is to distort what was and re-
mains a spectrum. Some of the Church Fathers were in fact clearly esotericists
and gnostics—the most prominent being Origen and Clement of Alexandria,
ORIGINS 19
who insisted that there was an orthodox gnosis and that it is the “crown of
faith.” There have been many gnostics since who have also insisted that they re-
main orthodox, however much their literalist opponents think differently. Like-
wise, there were some gnostics who were not far from historicist Christianity,
and whose primary emphasis was on morality, asceticism, and spiritual illumi-
nation. Who was rejected as heretical, and who else was accepted as orthodox,
often seems more like an accident of history than an inevitability.
But there remains a spectrum in antiquity nonetheless, and it is the esoteric
side of it that interests us here, for in it we find the predecessors of all the later
Western esoteric traditions. It is particularly useful to consider Gnostic spiritual
traditions in light of what we have said regarding language. For instance, some
Gnostic groups laid great emphasis on the inner meanings of language, and
were reputed to use certain letters as intonations similar to mantras in Hin-
duism and Buddhism. Their repetition and intonation of certain letter combina-
tions were ridiculed by literally minded Christians, but make a great deal more
sense when one considers that language in this context is not merely a matter of
transferring data, but of communication, and communion, that is, of com-
muning with the power that the letters correspond to. And we in fact find such
strings of apparently nonsensical letters, chiefly vowels, in some of the Gnostic
treatises of the Nag Hammadi library.
This use of language is fundamentally different from what we ordinarily ex-
pect: whereas usual comunication is horizontal, here it is vertical, a means not
for one equal to convey information to another, but for a person to experience
an organizing principle of creation itself. We may recall the first line of the
Book of John: “In the beginning was the Word,” or “In the beginning was the
Logos.” “Logos” here refers to that which precedes and transcends manifesta-
tion, the seeds of all things, corresponding in some respects to the Platonic ar-
chetypes. These vibratory seeds human beings may contact or activate through
spiritual practice and in this way be in touch with the powers that inform cre-
ation itself; but such an approach is not for everyone. In general, it is reserved
for those who are capable of it, who are worthy of it, and who will not use its
power for selfish purposes.
We find a similar approach to language visible in Jewish esotericism in the
doctrine of the Shemhamphorash, or sacred Names of God: by vibrating the
names of God in the permutations of the sacred letters and by knowing their
proper, true pronunciation, one is in touch with inconceivable power. Such doc-
trines of the hidden names of God, in turn allied with similar numerical-
alphabetical mysticism involving the angels, are prevalent in Jewish esotericism
during precisely the same time that Christian Gnosticism was flourishing, and in
fact close scrutiny of this time suggests that Jewish and Christian esotericisms
are so intermingled as to be virtually inseparable. Scholem remarks that Merk-
abah mysticism of the third and fourth centuries drew upon Greek language, just
as Greek Christian mysticism drew upon Hebrew or Aramaic terms.1 And indeed
there is an ancient tradition that the Torah contains so much power in its letters
that it could destroy the world, so the letters were altered; but if the letters were
properly restored, inconceivable power would be set loose.
All of this is to suggest that there was in antiquity in Jewish and Christian
esoteric circles a very widespread gnosis of language which was grounded in
writing, and to which we may refer as a gnosis of the word, which undoubtedly
drew upon and incorporated elements of the Greek mystery traditions even as
they differed from the Greeks in their emphasis upon writing down the myster-
ies and then writing down commentaries upon the previous writings. This gno-
sis of the word represents a ‘fixing’ of the mysteries, as does the creation of
images, and its aim is twofold at least: microcosmically, its purpose is to restore
the individual to a paradisal or transcendent state; and macrocosmically, it is to
restore the cosmos itself to its paradisal condition. The letters, as principles of
creation itself, are a means to creation’s redemption; and in this regard man
may be said to complete the work of God by being co-creator or co-redemptor.
Letters and numbers, then, are means in this process of individual and cos-
mic redemption—and so too are images. Both Jewish and Christian gnostic es-
oteric groups tended to think and express themselves mythologically, through
images, and so we find numerous images from antiquity like lion-headed ser-
pents, basilisks, and so forth. Such images are often found on amulets or talis-
mans and are generally regarded as being ‘magical’ elements in Gnosticism.
But given the gnosis of the word that we have been discussing, we can see how
these images fit rather well into the tradition: they represent again a means of
invoking and ‘fixing’ the underlying powers or principles of creation itself;
such images represent divine aspects, and in fact are by no means absent from
the larger Christian tradition. We may remember the four animals that symbol-
ize the four Gospels, and so forth, all of which is entirely accepted within the
orthodox tradition; and we may recall that Dionysius the Areopagite devoted
some effort to discussing how the divine may best be symbolized by unex-
pected and even grotesque images that keep us from mistaking a beautiful
image for the thing itself.2
Both the gnosis of the word and the gnosis of the image are extensions of
the monotheism of the book, and contain within them the seeds of the peren-
nial struggle in all three forms of monotheism between those who take the
word literally and those who advocate gnosis. Both word and image reveal and
‘fix’ the divine, thereby making this conflict inevitable. But monotheism is a
rubric under which all manner of possibilities exist; and even if monotheism
often turns toward a fundamentalist literalism, one finds that from the very
beginning of our era the very same elements conduce also to a wide spectrum
of gnoses and hence to angelic polytheism and to nontheistic gnosis in which
the very concept of God is transcended, paradoxically conveyed often through
ORIGINS 21
the permutations of word, letter, number, and image—the very means by

which concepts are fixed to begin with!
There are two more primary currents that fed into the Western esoteric tra-
ditions: Platonism and Hermetism. We have already alluded to Plato’s ex-
pressed distrust of writing, particularly in the conveying of spiritual truth, and
to his indebtedness to the mystery traditions. In at least some respects, Plato’s
writing represents a setting down or fixing, in symbols and myths, of the mys-
teries tradition, and this is especially evident in Phaedrus and Timaeus, but also
in the Republic in his Myth of Er the Pamphylian, who died and came back to
life in order to tell people what happens after death. The relation of such a tale
to the mysteries, which were also about death and resurrection, is self-evident;
but it also represents Plato’s own version of the mysteries. One has the complex
body of multiple traditions known as the mysteries, and one has an individual
author drawing upon this in creative ways.
We find a very similar approach to spiritual tradition in the body of writings
known as the Corpus Hermeticum, which date to roughly the same time that
Gnosticism was flourishing, in the first centuries of this era. The Hermetica
themselves refer to Egyptian tradition, and probably bear a relation to it similar
to that between Plato and the mysteries. There is no one author of the Hermet-
ica; they represent a collection of treatises that bear in common a set of themes
and teachings sharing many similarities with gnosticism. But the Hermetica are
not Christian or Jewish, nor for that matter are they exclusively Platonic, but
share elements in common with all three, while belonging to none (though they
remain closest to Platonism). And they represent the writing down of an oral
tradition, presented in the form of dialogues.
The most famous of the Hermetic dialogues is the Poimandres, which be-
gins with the narrator falling into “a sleep,” but not like an ordinary sleep, for
the bodily senses fall away and he encounters a vast and magnificent being
that proceeds to unveil to him the mysteries of existence. “I know what you
wish,” the being, Poimandres, tells him, “for I am with you everywhere.” From
the very beginning, Hermetism is about direct individual spiritual revelations.
These revelations at points have much in common with Christianity, as when
the narrator sees a boundless and joyous light, out of which emerges a “holy
Word,” the “voice of the Light.” And the revelations have much in common
with Gnosticism, as when the path of one who died is traced through the
spheres of the planets until the “eighth,” when he reaches rest and joy (I.25).
This corresponds closely with some Gnostic and Mandean texts which em-
phasize reaching the “eighth sphere,” or ogdoad—going beyond the cosmos
into transcendence.
What marks the Hermetica most clearly despite the treatises’ diversity is
their intimacy: the revelations are always one to one. As Hermes himself says
in one of the dialogues, “there is communion between soul and soul.” (X.22b)
There is an initiator or revealer, and there is a witness to the revelation. Such a

relationship goes beyond simply that of participants in a dialogue like Plato’s;
here the dialogues often take place in an interworld of revelation, and are be-
tween one who embodies knowledge and one who seeks to embody it. It is true
that the language is sometimes Platonic, but this revelatory quality differs
markedly from what we see in Plato and bears far more in common with what
we find in some Gnostic treatises of revelation.
It is, then, no accident that so many of the Western esoteric traditions link
themselves to the Hermetica. For from what we have said, it is clear that the
Hermetic treatises occupy a peculiar place, not quite belonging to the sphere of
religion, yet not strictly philosophical either. Occupying an intermediate space
between religion and philosophy, and depicting direct spiritual illumination of
the initiate, Hermetism reveals the ground occupied by Western esoteric tradi-
tions throughout the past several thousand years, precariously balanced on the
periphery of religious traditions, willing to draw upon one or sometimes any
of them, but insisting above all on one’s own direct spiritual understanding or
gnosis. Like Hermes himself, Hermetism refuses to be pinned down or defini-
tively discussed; always there is a fluid, mercurial quality to it, as there was to
many of the movements of antiquity.
Indeed, the more one studies the emergence of esotericism in the early cen-
turies of this era, the more one recognizes the fluidity of the various traditions’
boundaries. There are five primary currents in antiquity that feed into what we
may call the Western esoteric traditions: Jewish esotericism, Christian esoteri-
cism, the mystery traditions, Platonism, and Hermetism. But these currents
themselves are not discrete from one another; they certainly intermingled, and
together provided a common ambience out of which emerged a panoply of
sects, traditions, and writings that reveal a great many similarities. The most
important of these is the insistence upon gnosis, or direct knowledge of the di-
vine, and it is this that represents the red thread that will guide us through the
labyrinths of the centuries.
T H E F I E L D O F T H E I M A G I N AT I O N
It is commonplace today to think of the imagination as a means of escapism—

the word is roughly equivalent to daydreaming or to fantasy, and is generally
associated with the more or less random play of images. However, when we
survey the Western esoteric traditions, what we find is something quite differ-
ent, which Henry Corbin called the “active imagination.” “Active imagination”
refers to the meeting of an individual and transcendent beings on an interme-
diate field that belongs completely neither to the transcendent nor to the mun-
dane world. But such a term suggests that imagination is otherwise passive, and
ORIGINS 23
I do not believe this to be true. Rather, I believe that literature, mythology, and
visionary experience all emerge on a spectrum in the field of imagination.
But in order to understand the nature of this field of imagination, we will
begin by looking at visionary experiences during the first few centuries of the
present era, beginning with the Revelation to John. It is true that the Book of
Revelation recounts a visionary experience of John while he was exiled on the
island of Patmos, off the Greek coast. However, the Revelation definitely has a
literary form as well. It begins with some introductory remarks and salutations
to the seven churches, and introduces the experience with virtually no biogra-
phy whatever, only John’s remark that he heard a great voice, turned, and the
auditory part of the vision began. Thereafter came a series of specific messages
to the individual churches, and only then, in the fourth chapter, came the fol-
lowing: “After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the
first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me . . . And
immediately I was in the spirit, and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one
sat on the throne.” These remarks begin the actual visionary sequence.
The visionary sequence in the Book of Revelation is, of course, quite well
known, and there is relatively little point here in elaborating its intricate numeri-
cal and visual symbolism, but it is worthwhile to remark on several aspects of it
in relation to Western esotericism more generally. Above all, there is the fact that
it is a direct individual revelation: John sees and hears Christ himself; he sees the
twenty-four elders, and numerous striking images including the beasts with eyes
before and behind them; and he interacts with them. His is not a passive vision
in which events only happen before him: in the fifth chapter, when he weeps, an
elder tells him to weep not; and in the tenth chapter, he is told to eat, and does eat,
a little book sweet as honey. Then, when he eats the book, an angel gives him a
rod by which he is to measure the temple of God and those that worship therein,
after which come the most prophetic and well known parts of the revelation.
The revelation of John takes place in an interworld, a mesocosm, or field of
the imagination, where John meets, questions, and is questioned by the angels or
divine powers, and where the earthly past, present, and future are visible, but take
place in their own time. At one point, John remarks that there was silence in
heaven for about half an hour (8:1), apparently visionary time. There are, in other
words, different kinds of time simultaneously here: there is the duration of the vi-
sion, and there is historical time spread out and glimpsed in symbols. Yet inter-
estingly, there is no conclusion to the visionary sequence: we are never told that
John returned to ordinary consciousness. Although the vision has a beginning, in
this respect it does not appear to have an end: it is as though, once introduced to
this sequence, John does not entirely return from it except to say “I, John, saw and
heard these things;” the book concludes with the admonitions of Christ himself.
In addition to its being a direct spiritual experience, several other elements of
the Book of Revelation have remained particularly important in subsequent
Western esotericism. One, of course, is the prophetic element: more than one
group has identified itself with the “woman in the wilderness” in the twelfth
chapter; and more than one group has seen itself as living during the end times.
Another such element is the number and letter symbolism, which has inspired
countless commentaries or explanations. Christ’s repeated assertion that “I am the
Alpha and the Omega,” as well as the repetition of geometric and numerical sym-
bolism such as the sevens, twelves, and one hundred forty-fours, all remind us of
the prior traditions, found in Judaism, Christian Gnosticism, and Hermetism, of
letters and numbers revealing the secret powers of the divine. Taken together,
these elements lend themselves very much to an esoteric interpretation: the sym-
bols and numbers represent a secret knowledge known by the few symbolically
designated as the “woman in the wilderness,” during these the end times.
But for our purposes, the most symbolically resonant image of all is that of
the book. In the tenth chapter, we will recall, John is given a little book to eat,
which he does, and finds it bitter in his belly, but sweet as honey on his lips.
John eats the little book: it becomes part of him, symbolizing his union with the
esoteric center of spiritual life. The entire revelation is an unveiling of gnosis, a
gnostic encounter with elders, angels, and Christ whose symbolic heart is the
written word, and by eating the book, John is united with its knowledge. This
image is amplified by the presence of book imagery throughout the entire
work, especially in the Book of Life wherein is written the names of those who
belong to the Lamb (13.9). Additionally, there are “other books,” which are
opened during the Last Judgment in order to see the lives of those being judged
(20.12). And then there is, of course, the very book that we are reading, the
Book of Revelation of St. John himself—for he is told to write by a voice from
heaven (14.13), and we are given warnings at his account’s end that no one
should add to or subtract from what is written in his book (22:18).
By reading the Book of Revelation that John subsequently writes after eat-
ing the little book, we are eating his little book—we belong to a direct lineage
or current, and are in a sense initiates. The Revelation of John has an oneiric
quality; it is like a collective dream in which we participate simply by reading.
And it has immense power for this reason: by entering into its world of refer-
ences, the way we see the cosmos itself changes. Every aspect of life is altered,
becoming symbolically charged. After the various accounts of Christ’s life and
death in the Gospels, we suddenly are given in the Revelation this overwhelm-
ing and astonishing visionary sequence that brings us completely outside the
sphere of mundane human life, revealing the hidden forces beyond history and
what happens to all humanity.
The Revelation, in other words, possesses a special luminosity of symbolism
that we may call “hieroeidetic,” symbolism charged with initiatory knowledge.
The word eidetikos in Greek refers to a particular kind of knowledge associated
with shape or form, and although the word eidolon early in the modern era
ORIGINS 25
came to mean “phantom” or “apparition” without substance, in fact the word

eidetic also often refers to a particularly luminous and vivid imagery found
among young children and in dreams. The Book of Revelation is filled with hi-
eretic, profoundly symbolic numbers, words, and images revealing the hidden
nature and destiny of humanity, hidden knowledge that comes mediated in the
field of the imagination through forms.
Hieroeidetic knowledge is not in itself gnosis—that is, it is not the spiritual
revelation of union or unity. Rather, hieroeidetic knowledge is prior to and
preparatory for gnosis; hieroeidetic knowledge exists in the field of knower and
known, where an encounter may take place, and so it is charged with cosmo-
logical revelations, for it exists at the meeting point of the transcendent and the
immanent. But such knowledge remains partly in the realm of division or ob-
jectification: there is a revelatory encounter between John and all the angelic
figures of the vision, and they remain separate even while meeting in this
charged field of imagery. This meeting of above and below is also symbolized
in the heavenly city of Jerusalem, where we see the order of the transcendent
manifesting itself in vivid, splendid earthly form: but again, it is an image, seen
by a seer. Hieroeidetic knowledge is the visionary revelation of the unifying
principles and powers informing the entire cosmic realm, and as such takes
place in the field of imagination midway between the mundane and the tran-
scendent: there is a seer, and what is seen, a hearer, and what is heard.
When we look at the various currents of the Western esoteric traditions, we
find that they correspond in striking ways to what we have seen delineated here
in the Book of Revelation. Whether one looks at the alchemical tradition and its
symbolism; at the mystical tradition; at the Kabbalistic tradition, with its em-
phasis on writing and encoded language; or at the theosophic current that in
turn manifests in Rosicrucianism; in all of these we find parallels to the Reve-
lation. This is not to say that the Western esoteric traditions all find their origin
in Revelation, but rather that the Book of Revelation is paradigmatic. The Rev-
elation is unquestionably esoteric in its plethora of symbolism, but also esoteric
in the fact that it takes place in this visionary field, and is so thoroughly literary
or bibliocentric in its essential symbols.
Of course, the Revelation does not stand alone, but among numerous other
revelations from the same era, including the two books of Enoch, the Apoca-
lypses of Baruch and Ezra, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Apocalypses of
Peter and of Paul, and of James and of Adam, all of which belong to the apoc-
rypha, and some of which are found in the Nag Hammadi library of Gnostic
writings. Yet because it became canonical, and because of its mysterious and
powerful imagery, the Book of Revelation has had a far greater impact than
all of these other visionary works combined. At the same time, the fact that
there were so many apocalyptic revelations during the beginning of the Chris-
tian era underscores the recognition that such revelations are inherent in
Christianity itself, for although the Revelation is the most well known, it is
certainly not the only one.
And so we are drawn inexorably back to the nature of the book itself and the
act of reading. There are numerous ways one can approach a work as extrava-
gant in symbolism, as wild as the book of Revelation, ranging from external to
internal, or from exoteric to esoteric. The most external or exoteric is to regard
it as an object of study, without relevance to oneself; a more intermediate or
mesoteric approach is to see it as prophetic and revealing truths about our own
world and lives; and an esoteric approach is to see it as paradigmatic and in-
spiring of one’s own revelation, to make it one’s own. In other words, reading
about another’s vision may inspire one to experience a vision of one’s own; the
act of reading gives birth to the act of writing.
Esoteric bears the meaning of ‘inward,’ of participation, and reading is
uniquely suited to create inward participation because in reading our habitual
boundaries between self and other can disappear. We can identify with fictional
or poetic characters; we can enter into a new world of symbols and meaning.
Esoteric literature, or put better, the literature of the Western esoteric traditions,
is a particularly intense form of this inner participation or identification and
union. But all literature takes place in the charged field of the imagination: it
is simply a matter of how charged, how hieroeidetic a work is. For just as one
may consider a work as charged as the book of Revelation from outside, objec-
tifying it, or one may enter into it—just as there is a range of approaches to
such a work—so too there is a range of such works. Some literature is not so
charged or hieroeidetic, and exists more for entertainment.
What is it that makes a work hieroeidetically charged? Proximity to the in-
visible, to the transcendent. There is an element of danger inherent in such
proximity—those who come too close to the gods or angels may go mad or
blind. The analogy of electricity, of being charged, has a certain value here: a
symbol or image, a constellation of letters and numbers, possesses a psychic or
symbolic charge that allures us; we are drawn toward it, fascinated by its mys-
terious beauty. And though we risk being burned, we return again and again
over the centuries because we recognize in this mystery something more alive,
more electric, more vital than the mundane world of consumerism and the
humdrum tedium of life without the invisible. We return to the field of the
imagination because this is where we come to know what it means to be alive.
THE RED THREAD OF GNOSIS
A myth conveys, often in a simple story, far more than may at first appear. So it
is with the story of Theseus, who found himself in the Minotaur’s labyrinth,
and who was able to escape only through the help of King Minos’s own daugh-
ORIGINS 27
ter, Ariadne, and a thread that led him out. The symbolism here is profound, and
certainly reflects the ancient Mithraic mystery symbolism of the bull, the
labyrinth of the world, and escape-rebirth. But perhaps we may adapt this sym-
bolism to our own purposes, for when we consider the subject of gnosis, we too
find ourselves in a labyrinth, and require some thread to guide us out. This
thread is the topic of gnosis itself, for by exploring it, we will be far better pre-
pared to understand the often bewildering variety of Western esoteric traditions.
The word gnosis, because it is singular, implies that there is but one kind of
gnosis, or spiritual knowledge. However, when we consider the range of reli-
gious literature, even that labeled “gnostic,” we seem to find a bewildering
spectrum of gnoses. We might divide this spectrum into cosmological gnosis
(insight into the hidden patterns in the cosmos), eschatological gnosis (insight
into what transcends history and the cosmos), and metaphysical gnosis (insight
into the divine), even though all of these may be seen as aspects of a single gno-
sis. And concerning metaphysical gnosis, or direct insight into the nature of the
divine itself, we find two primary approaches that we may call visionary and
unitive gnosis, corresponding to the via positiva and the via negativa discussed
by Dionysius the Areopagite. The via positiva, or visionary approach, goes
through images and the field of the imagination; the via negativa, or unitive
approach, is the falling away of all images.
It has become more or less commonplace, following Dionysius himself, to
see the via negativa as superior to the via positiva. Dionysius writes that sacred
revelation often proceeds through sacred images in which like represents like,
while also using forms that are dissimilar, and even entirely inadequate and
ridiculous (Cel. Hier. 140c). But he goes on to remark that a second way, of
going beyond images entirely in the via negativa, is “more appropriate, for as
the secret and sacred tradition has instructed, God is in no way like the things
that have being, and we have no knowledge at all of his incomprehensible and
ineffable transcendence” (Cel. Hier. 141a). What Dionysius observes here is
extremely important, in particular his insistence on a secret and sacred tradition
that the Divine completely transcends the realm of being.
Dionysius’s observation—that God in no way resembles the things that
have being—combats a tendency that, as we have already noted, is common
to the traditions of the Book: taking writing literally. Literalism corresponds
to what in Judaism was called “idolatry”: it reduces the Divine to human con-
cepts that can be manipulated. This tendency may also be called “objectifica-
tion,” and is a common function of language more generally. For language by
its nature can separate us from what we are discussing: we objectify the Di-
vine just as we objectify all that surrounds us, including nature and other peo-
ple. But this process of objectification inherently separates us from what we
see in this way: the very word God becomes a barrier to experiencing what
that word means.
In other words, gnostic knowledge is fundamentally different from ratioci-

native knowledge, and the language to express gnosis must reflect this differ-
ence. Ratiocinative (from ratio, measure between things) knowledge belongs to
the realm of division into subject and object: ‘I’ discuss ‘that.’ Such is the basis
for modern science, and ratiocinative knowledge can be widely disseminated as
information or data. By contrast, gnosis belongs to a secret or intimate tradition
and cannot be widely disseminated as information because it does not belong to
the realm of information and division at all, but instead to what transcends divi-
sion. The scientific or ratiocinative path moves toward ever greater data about
what is external; the gnostic path moves toward ever greater intimacy with what
transcends both internal and external. Gnosis, then, is not at all a matter of ‘I’
discussing ‘that,’ but of going beyond the very division between ‘I’ and ‘that.’
The question, of course, is how one moves toward gnostic knowledge, and
the answers to this question in the West comprise the Western esoteric tradi-
tions. The essential division offered by Dionysius the Areopagite between the
via positiva and the via negativa helps us begin to discuss these answers in a
schematic way, not because these two ways are at all opposed to each other, but
because they illuminate each other. Indeed, they correspond rather closely to
what we see in the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana tradition, where visualization
and a plethora of imagery express their own transcendence. The Prajna-
paramita Sutra, with its verses on sheer transcendence of all that is sensory,
does not invalidate but expresses the ultimate meaning of the countless Bud-
dhist images often in the very hall where it is chanted. Likewise, in the Western
esoteric traditions, one finds a vast range of imagery and means, but these are
generally seen within the traditions as an expression of what transcends them.
The problem here, and in language itself, is that it is all too easy to regard
words or images as if they were the thing itself, to ‘fix’ or ‘congeal’ the incon-
ceivable. This is a particularly likely problem when there is no widespread em-
phasis on the transcendent, as there is within Buddhism, or any continuous
lineage of masters or teachers who could guide seekers or initiates. The West-
ern esoteric traditions have largely remained catch-as-catch-can, defined per-
haps best by the precarious relationship between an author and a reader through
the medium of the book. And the Gnostic Basilides evidently recognized this,
for in one of the only fragments attributed to him, he writes of the ineffable
transcendent nothing, and notes that “what is called by a name is not absolutely
ineffable, but it is not, for the truly ineffable is not ineffable, but ‘above every
name which is named’ [Eph. 1.21] . . . Names are inadequate . . . Instead, by un-
derstanding without speech one must receive the properties of the things
named” (Hipp. Ref. VII.viii). Actual direct experience of the transcendent is far
more important than simply knowing the words.
Basilides held that he belonged to a secret lineage that ran from Jesus to
Matthias to himself, and primary in their revelation was nothingness, or
ORIGINS 29
absolute transcendence. According to his rather bitter opponent Hippolytus,

Basilides wrote that before the cosmos, “nothing” existed, “not matter, nor sub-
stance, nor the insubstantial, nor an absolute, nor a composite, not conceivable,
or inconceivable, not sensible, not devoid of sense, not man, angel, or a god,
nothing that has a name or is cognized by intellect” (Ref. VII.ix). Basilides’s
emphasis—throughout what little we still have, quoted by Hippolytus from
Basilides’s treatises—was consistently on sheer transcendence beyond the
medium of human language, and corresponds to the via negativa of Dionysius
the Areopagite. Indeed, given the series of negations here that very much re-
semble those of the Prajnaparamita Sutra in Buddhism, it is not surprising that
Basilides is reputed to have been influenced by Buddhism.
However, Basilides is not alone in his emphasis on the inconceivability of
gnosis, its sheer transcendence of all ratiocination. So too Epiphanes wrote of
the Gnostics that “The earliest originating principle was inconceivable, ineffa-
ble, and unnameable” (Ref. VI.xxxiv); and Marcus, during a Gnostic Eucharist,
reportedly offered a chalice to a woman during the consecration, then received
it back from her and said, ‘Grant that the inconceivable and ineffable Grace
which existed prior to the universe, may fill thine inner man, and make abound
in thee the gnosis of this grace, as she disseminates the seed of the mustard-tree
upon good soil’ ” (Ref. VI.xxxv). A similar emphasis is to be found in Diony-
sius the Areopagite, in his treatise on the Divine Names, for instance, when he
remarks that God is beyond all names and creatures, “transcendently and su-
pernaturally, far above creatures, above their being and above their nature”
(956B). He continues that “no unity or trinity, no number or oneness, no fruit-
fulness, indeed nothing that is or is known can proclaim that hiddenness . . . of
the transcendent Godhead which transcends every being. There is no name for
it and no expression” (981a).
Paradoxically, by maintaining an emphasis on the ineffability of the divine,
the Gnostics also maintained a via positiva of esoteric words, letters, numbers,
and images. But this linguistic mysticism existed within the context of the ab-
solute transcendence that it in fact manifests. In other words, letters, numbers,
and images emerge out of the unbegotten, and represent the hidden patterns and
harmonies of the cosmos that, by ‘following back,’ inevitably in turn lead one
to the ineffable. It is well known that there are Hebrew systems of transforming
letters into their numerical meanings, but what is perhaps less remarked upon
is that there was an esoteric Greek tradition of such transformations too, prob-
ably carried over from Pythagorean and Neoplatonic sources. Thus we find the
Gnostic Marcus maintained that the number of Jesus is 888, that the number of
the dove is 801, and that the body of truth is composed of letters, the head by
Alpha and Omega, the neck by Beta and Psi, and so forth.
Sacred numbers, letters, and images reveal the esoteric forming powers of
the cosmos. Each letter, according to this tradition, is produced by a particular
sound that in turn manifests others, so that ultimately the “enormous sea” pro-
duced by a single letter is in fact infinite. This linguistic mysticism was repre-
sented in Gnostic practice by a secret initiation that consisted in the whispering
of holy words of power into the ear of one who had been tested, or who was
faithful and near death (Ref. VI.xxxvi). This name was composed of four sylla-
bles, the first of which had four letters, and the entire name had thirty letters.
One who pronounced the name was in fact pronouncing the powers that had
brought the cosmos itself into being, for each letter was also an angel and a
forming power.
All of this suggests that there was in Christian Gnosticism, just as there was
in Jewish Merkabah mysticism and in the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition, a de-
veloped metalanguage that both reflects and leads toward its own transcen-
dence. Such a metalanguage is implicit both in the human being and in the
cosmos as a whole, so to penetrate into the deepest mysteries of human lan-
guage is to penetrate into the metalanguage that gives birth to the cosmos itself.
From these observations we can begin to see something of the hidden signifi-
cances of the mysticism of the word and the book. For to read the metalanguage
of the cosmos is truly to read the Book of Life—a figure for the hidden ener-
gies or powers that inform life both in the cosmos and in ourselves. Indeed, to
become privy to these mysteries is to penetrate beyond ordinary humanity and
to become divinized oneself.
Here we begin to see how the via negativa and the via positiva represent, not
opposite or even complementary ways, but different aspects of the same way, the
path from ordinary rational consciousness divided into subject and object, toward
transcendent degrees of consciousness of ever greater communion between sub-
ject and object. The gnostic visionary path is not separate from the way of nega-
tion—rather, sacred images, words, and numbers emerge in, embody, and reveal
transcendence. As we ‘read’ these images, we participate in what they represent;
we become intimate with them; apparent boundaries between subject and object
dissolve; and we enter into a realm where negation and affirmation are both rec-
ognized to be at once valid and invalid ways of expressing what transcends them
both. This is the realm sometimes glimpsed in literature, in dreams, and in reli-
gious experiences; it is the realm of living ideas or energies.
Throughout early Christian gnostic writings, we find plays on naming and
namelessness, always emerging out of this relationship between the expressed
and the inexpressible, between this world and the invisible realm of energies.
For instance, in the Gospel of Philip, we read that “whereas in this world the
union is one of husband with wife,” “in the aeon the form of the union is dif-
ferent, although we refer to them by the same names.”3 In other words, there is
earthly marriage, and there is another kind of marriage that takes place in the
invisible, or aeon, which is of a totally different order, and its light “never sets.”
One must “receive the light” in the “bridal chamber” before death, or one will
ORIGINS 31
not receive it after death—and one who receives that light is perfected and can-
not be detained, but is free in life and in death. These figures or images of mar-
riage and light are ways of expressing the inexpressible gnosis.
This inexpressible gnosis is the “marriage” or union of subject and object.
The Gospel of Philip goes on: “And again when he leaves the world he has al-
ready received the truth in the images. The world has become the aeon, for the
aeon is fullness for him. This is the way it is: it is revealed to him alone, not hid-
den in the darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfect day and a holy light.”4
In other words, when one dies, one has already experienced the mysteries for
oneself by ‘reading’ and receiving the truth in the images—not only the images
of sacred words or symbols, but also the actual energies that these images em-
body or represent. Thus “the world has become the aeon”—in other words, the
invisible and the visible are no longer divided for the initiate. The cosmos is no
longer opaque, a collection of objects from which one remains separate, but
rather, one can ‘read’ the invisible in the visible, can see the energies ordinarily
veiled from humanity by its fallen, divided consciousness; for such a one the
world is transparent. The nameless and the named are not divided.
CONCLUSIONS
Although the Western esoteric traditions unquestionably have their origins in the
early centuries of the present era, I do not mean to suggest that there is a direct
current of influence running from relatively obscure works like the Gospel of
Philip or the lost writings of Basilides into medieval and modern times. Rather,
even though such writings somehow may have made their way into this or that
monastic library, my argument here is not about lines of influence so much as
about modalities, characteristic ways of understanding, gnostic paradigms, what
I call the red thread of gnosis that leads us out of the labyrinth. What are the
characteristics of this red thread as we trace it through history?
Naturally, the first of these is its inexpressibility: it remains always tran-
scendent, elusive, the unnameable. This is as true for the canonically accepted
authors such as Clement of Alexandria or Dionysius the Areopagite as it is for
Valentinus or Basilides. But the inexpressible is so only by contrast with the ex-
pressible; unnameability emerges always out of the presence of names. The way
of negation is not the opposite of affirmation, but its inseparable companion.
And here we see emerging the second characteristic: the mystery of names. For
whether the gnostics belong to the Jewish Merkabah or the Christian Gnostic,
and perhaps to a lesser extent to the Hermetic or the Neoplatonic tradition, one
finds a gnosis of the divine names. Here naming refers, not to arbitrary desig-
nations, but to inherent characteristics of what is named, to actual energies that
the name itself embodies, evokes, indeed, is.
From the gnosis of naming emerges a range of related mysteries, including

the gnoses of numbers and letters, a third characteristic. According to rational
consciousness, numbers designate quantities that one can manipulate, on which
conventional mathematics is founded. But this view of numbers corresponds to
seeing reading as the accumulation of data: it remains objectified, separated
from the subject who sees. By contrast, a gnostic view of numbers and letters
sees them not as merely signifying something external, but as qualities preg-
nant with meaning. What is more, numbers and letters can open up into aspects
of consciousness itself, so that to work with them is to enter into the existential
quality that is their real nature or kernel, of which the quantitative designation
is a husk.
Such a gnosis of numbers is visible during the medieval period, where we
find definite traces of Latin number and letter transposition corresponding to
what in Hebrew is termed gematria. These number-letter transpositions yield
many hidden significances, and are visible in major European literary works,
including Piers Ploughman, to which I have already devoted some study.5 A
similarly gnostic view of numbers appears again in the work of Louis-Claude
de Saint Martin (1743–1803), a theosopher in the line of Jacob Böhme, who
wrote his friend Baron Kirchberger that “Numbers are no algebra, my dear
brother, but men have sometimes lowered them to it. They are only the sensi-
ble expression, whether visible or intellectual, of the different properties of be-
ings, which all proceed from the one only essence . . . Regeneration alone
shows us the ground, and therein we obtain the pure key, without masters;
everyone, however, in his own degree.”6 There is in Saint-Martin’s work a pe-
culiar kind of mystical mathematics from which it is evident that here is indeed
an order of knowledge entirely different from the merely quantitative.
A fourth characteristic is imagery. Gnostic works reveal a wide array of im-
ages and myths, albeit few more wild than those of the Book of Revelation.
Such images may be seen in terms of degrees of union. On the lowest level, the
images remain outside one and are taken literally as referring to history. More
intimately, the images may be seen as reflecting inner aspects of the cosmos;
here they no longer are taken as having entirely historical dimensions, but in-
stead express aspects of the invisible origin of the cosmos and of ourselves.
Even more intimately yet, the images may be seen as corresponding to some-
thing in our own inward nature, as a panoply on an inner stage where we see
acted out the soul’s dramas, which emerge out of the inexpressible into the
realms of conscious perception. Here, of course, imagination proceeds neither
wholly from ourselves, nor wholly from without, but lives in an intermediate
realm necessary for the birth of unitive consciousness.
Out of the gnoses of numbers, letters, and images emerges the fifth charac-
teristic, which is the mystery of words and of the book. Here we have the com-
bination of all the elements we have discussed so far, woven together into a
ORIGINS 33
tapestry meant not only to point toward the gnostic experience, but also to con-
vey it. To read such a work properly is to ingest it, to become it, as John ingests
the little book in Revelation. Its mysteries of names, numbers, letters, words,
and images, taken together, are meant to permeate and transmute one’s con-
sciousness so that the invisible is no longer divided from the visible, so that one
no longer exists only in a rational separate consciousness in an objectified
world, but instead participates in the energies and powers that give rise to and
inform the cosmos, and indeed even begins to approach the highest mystery,
that of the inexpressible from which all of these gnoses derive and to which
they inevitably lead.
Thus we can see the outlines of the mysteries of the word and the book that
in turn give rise to the Western esoteric traditions. We can see that despite the
bewildering variety of traditions that existed in the first centuries of this era,
these gnostic characteristics remain visible, in one form or another, in the com-
plex admixtures of Jewish, Christian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other cur-
rents that mingled to create the works we have been considering. And when we
look for these fundamental characteristics, we find that divisions between
heretical and orthodox, Jewish and Christian and Greek, often do not hold at
all. The esotericist or gnostic in antiquity, just as in the subsequent Western es-
oteric traditions, remains a heterodox figure drawing upon whatever myths,
words, images, and traditions best express his understanding. By following the
courses of Western esotericism, we will seek to trace the essential characteris-
tics of each current and see whether or not at heart Western esotericism as a
whole exists on the border between religious and literary experience, whether,
from antiquity to the present, it remains a tradition of the mysteries of the book.
2 H i s t o r i c a l C u r re n t s
DIVINE SERVICE:
C H I VA L R Y A N D T H E T R O U B A D O U R S
It is, of course, a leap to go from the first centuries of the Christian era to the
Middle Ages, but we must do so in order to trace the Western esoteric tradi-
tions. It is true that there were important intervening figures like John Scotus
Eriugena, but here we are sketching the broad outlines of historical currents
drawing on individual works, so much must be left to catalogue elsewhere.
When we consider the emergence of Western esoteric traditions in the modern
era, we cannot help but recognize there the influence of chivalry, and so must
inquire whether the chivalric current had esoteric dimensions like those that we
glimpsed in antiquity in Gnostic and other movements. Here I am not arguing
that the chivalric or troubadour movements were gnostic, only investigating
whether there are elements corresponding to the mysticism of the word that we
saw in antiquity.
That there were profound correspondences between the chivalric and the
troubadour movements in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of Europe is in-
contestable, for both are known to us through literature that reveals fundamen-
tally similar attitudes. The chivalric ideals were conveyed through stories, and
the troubadours’ tradition was conveyed through poetry or song. Both the
chivalric and the troubadour traditions were centered on service or duty, and en-
tailed a moral code much higher than that of the rest of society. The knight in
swearing fealty to his lord is engaged in a social relationship that can also have
spiritual implications: to act properly as a knight is also to fulfill one’s higher
responsibility as a warrior for the divine. The troubadour, in giving honor to his
beloved, sees her (or him, if the poet is a woman) as the divine incarnate.
35
Thus there is implicitly a dual quality to much of the writing associated with
each of these traditions. When a story is about a knight’s remaining true to his
word, it is implicitly also about his relationship to the divine; likewise, a trou-
badour’s poem also can be read on at least two levels, as referring to an actual
beloved woman and to the divine. When the troubadour or the knight pledges
troth to a woman, in the background is also his relationship to the invisible, and
thus there inherently are hidden dimensions to such poems or stories. And so
the chivalric and the troubadour traditions are fertile ground for esotericism,
that is to say, for hidden meanings not accessible to outsiders.
But was there any explicitly esoteric content in these traditions? In other
words, we have already seen the explicitly esoteric nature of Gnosticism and
other movements of the first few centuries C.E. Can we find anything approxi-
mating this earlier explicitly gnostic esotericism in the chivalric tales or the songs
of the troubadours? The answer, I think, is no. Both of these movements are fun-
damentally social in nature, particularly the chivalric tradition. There is esoteri-
cism visible on occasion in the stories written by individual authors or in
particular cycles, as for instance in the Grail cycles or in Parzival; there is eso-
tericism visible in the songs of the troubadours. But when we look at these move-
ments as a whole, they do not reflect what we see in those Merkabah or Gnostic
or Hermetic traditions explicitly devoted to knowledge of the transcendent.
Instead, the esotericism that we find in the chivalric or troubadour tradition
is allusive and elusive, even surreptitious, relying on implication and multiva-
lent symbols, never explicitly discussing, for example, the soul’s liberation as
one finds in Gnostic treatises. Undoubtedly much of this allusiveness had to do
with the strictures imposed by the Roman Catholic church. One does find an
outright gnostic esotericism in the writings and sermons of Meister Eckhart and
Johannes Tauler, but these were not part of either the chivalric or troubadour
lines, and indeed even they ran afoul of church censors alert for any signs of
Gnosticism’s recurrence.
Of course, the troubadour movement was close to esotericism proper, in that
it remained an individual and somewhat anarchic tradition that one joined by
self-election, and that may have also in some quarters engendered initiatory
groups. One such group was the fedeli d’amore, or love’s faithful, who con-
veyed their mysteries through poetic references and imagery. But to this day the
precise nature of this or similar societies remains largely closed to us; we can
see in the poetry of the time that there was a mysterious amorous language that
referred both to carnal and divine love at once, but one doubts very much that
this reflects a widespread or organized esoteric tradition. Much more likely
that here, as in so much of Western esotericism to follow, individuals sought
and found as much as they could of such traditions on their own, perhaps occa-
sionally forming themselves into larger groups only again to dissolve under
pressure from the church or from other social circumstances.
HISTORICAL CURRENTS 37
Nonetheless, we do find traces in chivalric literature of some of the same

themes that we saw in antiquity, most notably in the esoteric significances of
writing and speaking. For instance, in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival,
Parzival learns about the tradition of the Gral or grail from Trevrizent, a hermit,
but there is another source, a Provençal poet named Master Kyot, teacher of Es-
chenbach, who discovered the primary version of the Grail cycle in Toledo
written in “heathenish script” (presumably Arabic). Kyot had to learn the char-
acters’ ABC beforehand “without the art of necromancy,” and we are told that
his being a Christian allowed him to enter into the true nature of the Grail. He
found that a man named Flegetanis, a descendent of Solomon himself and an
astrologer, had written of the hidden secrets in the constellations, whence had
come the Grail. “A troop had left it on earth and then rose high above the stars,
[as] if their innocence drew them back again. Afterwards a Christian progeny
bred to a pure life had the duty of keeping it,” we are told that Flegetanis wrote.
Thus the disclosing of the Grail mystery came about through the mysteri-
ous decoding of an unfamiliar language; it was through books that Kyot traced
his path to Parzival himself. But there is an even greater mystery about the
Grail, and this is the mystery of names, for shortly Parzival and we are told
about the magical Stone called the “Lapsit exillis,” on the top of which an in-
scription announces the name and lineage of one called to the service of the
Grail. Whether the name is of a boy or a girl, there is no need to erase it, for
the name disappears, and shortly the child is fetched from whatever country.
He or she is forever after immune from the shame of sin, and has a rich reward
in heaven. Naturally, this reminds us rather strongly of the magical powers of
naming in the Book of Revelation, and in Jewish and Gnostic esotericism
more generally.
And beyond the mystery of naming lies the mystery of the Stone itself,
which has a peculiar mythohistory that Eschenbach briefly relates here. For, we
are told, when Lucifer and the Trinity began to war with each other, those who
did not take sides, worthy, noble angels, had to descend to Earth to that Stone
which is forever incorruptible. Trevrizent tells Parzival that he does not know
whether those “neutral angels” were forgiven or damned in the end, but God
may have taken them back. In any event, the stone has since been in the care of
those whom God appoints, and to whom God sends his angel. Here the Stone is
certainly associated with esoteric mysteries, for not only is it given a Judeo-
Christian mythohistory, it is associated with angels whose place corresponds
closely with that of Hermes and Hermetism, that is, both pagan and Christian,
occupying a middle ground between these.
Hearing this, Parzival exclaims that if chivalric deeds with shield and lance
can win fame for one’s earthly self and paradise for the soul, then the chivalric
life is his one desire, upon which Trevrizent tells the story of King Anfortas and
his wound. This story is of Anfortas’s pride and his wounding and lying sick,
and of how the servants of the Grail fell on their knees before the Grail, where
suddenly they saw it written that a knight would come, and if he asked a Ques-
tion, then their sorrows would end, but if he were forewarned of the Question
it would turn harmful. He was to ask, of course, why the king suffered—but
Parzival himself had not done this and thus had already failed.1
There are throughout this tale astrological references with esoteric implica-
tions. For instance, we are told explicitly that Anfortas’s suffering, and that of
all the Grail servers, intensifies with the “advent of the high planets,” chiefly
Saturn, but also with the changing of the moon, the two nodes of which are
called the “dragon’s head” and the “dragon’s tail.” This conclusively links the
planets to consciousness, in particular, Saturn to suffering. And near the end of
Eschenbach’s story of Parzival, the knight is told by Feirifiz, the spotted knight,
of his good fortune and that he shall ask the Question. Feirifiz outlines why
Parzival shall do so by reference to the “seven stars” or planets, then naming
them one by one in Arabic.2 The presence in this tale of astrological and other
references to Judaism and Islam as well as to Asia (in the figure of Prester
John) reminds us once again that the Grail tradition, like so many of the West-
ern esoteric currents, exists both within and without specific religious tradi-
tions; the Grail tradition is both independent and syncretic, just as is Western
esotericism more generally.
There remains one more aspect of the Grail tradition that we need to dis-
cuss further, and that is the exalted position of women. Throughout the tale,
whether it be Trevrizent or Eschenbach himself who advises, we are told to
honor women. The Grail, we will recall, was cared for by twenty-five women
who by serving it are exalted; and at the end of the tale, we are told again to
honor and never denigrate women. And at the book’s conclusion, we are left
with a curious twist on the mystery of naming, for a knight comes to live with
a princess on the condition that she never ask his name. When inevitably she
does so, he is forced to leave—a repetition yet again of the constant theme
throughout Parzival, that of speaking when one ought to (asking the Question,
for instance) and of not speaking when one oughtn’t. This theme clearly holds
for both men and women, and there is in this even a complementary relation-
ship: a kingdom can be saved by asking the right question, and lost by asking
the wrong one!
Parzival is, of course, entertaining, but certainly it is safe to say that it also
contains esoteric references central to the tale. Yet this implicit esotericism, al-
though intrinsic to the tale inasmuch as it concerns the mysteries of the holy
Grail and of the inscriptions upon it, never becomes explicit: the tale and the es-
otericism of the Grail that is its center never stray into otherworldly descrip-
tions of journeys through the cosmos, or still less into discussions of spiritual
illumination. Rather, Parzival, like chivalric literature more generally, remains
this-worldly in emphasis, and indeed it may be that the fusion of this-worldli-
ness and otherworldliness in the service of one’s chivalric duties and of the
Grail is the key to chivalric literature more generally.
For one certainly finds the same theme illustrated in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight. Once again, in Gawain as in Parzival, the explicit story is clearly
one of virtue upheld; Gawain is the story of a virtuous knight on his travels.
But there is an implicit esotericism that emerges in the work’s center, in the
image of the pentangle, Gawain’s symbol. This famous passage, like several
others in the poem, is marked with a tiny colored initial, part of a scribal code
of letters that mark critical junctures in the work. And we should remember that
Gawain is alliterative poetry, part of a tradition that, as I have elsewhere shown,
is not simply the repetition of letters and numbers for the way they sound, but
a way of conveying secret or esoteric meanings within a poem outwardly de-
voted to the telling of a story.3 Thus the passage on the pentangle is nested
within a larger context of number and letter symbolism carried on by way of the
poem’s repetition of key letters and numbers.
This esoteric symbolism emerges especially in the author’s discussion of
the pentangle, where we are told that this sign comes from Solomon himself,
and is associated not only with the five wits or five senses, but with the five
fingers, with the five wounds of Christ, the five joys of the Virgin Mary with
her Child, and, of course, the five virtues, these being liberality, loving kind-
ness, continence, courtesy, and piety. All of these five categories add up to
twenty-five, the number of maidens serving the Grail, and are called together
the “endless knot” by the Gawain-poet, marking why Gawain is a fine man.
When Gawain, instead of trusting only in this “endless knot” of the pentan-
gle, trusts instead in the knotted “braided belt” given him by Morgan le Fay,
he ultimately feels shamed; the first is the true knot, and the second that of
bewitchment and bewilderment.
Yet in the story’s conclusion, when Gawain to his shame tells the story of
how he was fooled into wearing that braided belt, Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table find the story not only funny but so instructive that they all decide
to wear a green girdle like Gawain’s. Thus the poem ends with the well known
motto “Hony soyt qui mal pence,” meaning that good comes forth out of evil.
And at this point we might remark on two aspects of this transformation. First,
the poem, like Grail tales more generally, reveals a fall and a redemption: the
characters go through suffering into a renewed union on a higher level. At the
end of Gawain, we see Arthur and the entire court laughing and enjoying
Gawain’s tale, and even wearing a sign of it themselves—a green one. And this
green marks my second point of observation.
For the color green has a special symbolism that recurs throughout medieval
literature and is especially prominent in Gawain. The Green Knight is a myste-
rious supernatural figure who puts Gawain to the test; and behind him is the
figure of Morgan le Fay, whose enchantments together with the Green Knight
symbolize the bewitchments of the world, and the death that inheres in and un-
derlies them. Thus we have a dual symbolism of women—that is, the licit and
noble relationship symbolized by Guinevere, and the illicit, adulterous rela-
tionship offered by Morgan le Fay. This same duality inheres in the color green,
which on the one hand is associated with jealousy, yet on the other is associated
with the beauty of Venus. Or again, green is the color of nature, which can seem
so merciless and in which death is inevitable; yet it is also the symbol of new
life, growth, and renewal. Gawain, to be renewed, first must be humbled by the
Green Knight and symbolically die with a snick of his neck.
The symbolism of green here corresponds to that of a more esoteric group
around Rulman Merswin (1302–1387), a group called “the Friends of God”
who established a community called “L’Ile Verte,” or “the Green Isle.” The
Friends of God were, like the chivalric orders, not monastic or priestly, yet at
the same time, although a lay group, they set themselves apart from the rest of
society by their spiritual vocation. One finds at the center of the Friends of God
mysterious communications from a “Gottesfreund vom oberland,” under whose
spiritual guidance the circle proceeded. The Green Isle represents an interme-
diate realm of spiritual passage, and in fact the gnostic symbolism of green is
quite widespread, being found in Islam associated with Khidr, the hidden di-
vine messenger, and continuing into at least the twentieth century in the novel
The Green Face of Gustav Meyrink. We might remark here that the Gottes-
freunde had a Meisterbuch with a gnostic alphabet representing the twenty-
three aspects of the spiritual path.
But one does not find this kind of overt esotericism among the troubadours
and trouvères. Here even the kind of esotericism we find in the chivalric tales
is muted and filtered into literary forms, become beautiful and haunting lyrics.
One does find esoteric themes, as when the poet Bernart de Ventadorn
(1150–1180) writes “Parlar degram ab cubertz entresans / e, pus nons val
arditz, valgues nos gens! [Let us talk in secret signs, / And since talking di-
rectly can’t help us, perhaps cunning can.”] Or again, there are the lines of the
young Raimbaut d’Orange (c. 1150–1173) playing on namelessness and nam-
ing, occasioned by his observation that he cannot find a name for his verses.4
But this secret language is that of lovers, and although one can read such
poems on multiple levels, there is little hint in any of this of open or even
covert discussions of gnosis. Both chivalric and troubadour literary traditions
are allusive enough to accomodate esoteric interpretations, but they are almost
never explicitly esoteric.
Among the most explicitly esoteric of medieval poems more generally is La
Vita Nuova by Dante, which begins by discussing the “book of memory,” and
then the lines written down in his little book that he entitles “The New Life.” La
Vita Nuova is full of esoteric implications from its very beginning. Recalling
the emphasis that Eschenbach laid on the astrological timing surrounding the
Grail, we cannot help but note the complex numerical and astrological symbol-
ism with which Dante begins his poem: “Nine times since my birth had the
heaven of light returned to the same point in its revolution when first I laid eyes
on that glorious Lady, she called Beatrice by those who nonetheless fully do not
know her name.” The number nine recurs in various ways throughout the poem,
as does the play that we see here on naming.
But there is more that ties this work to the esoteric lines we are tracing
through history. La Vita Nuova, like the great Divine Comedy, is a visionary
poem; Beatrice herself appears to Dante in a crimson dress as if she were an ap-
parition, and exactly nine years later, in the ninth hour of the day, Dante sees
Beatrice again, this time wearing a white dress. So too does Love appear to him
in terrible aspect during the beginning of the night’s nine last hours, ruling over
him by virtue of a strong imagination. The strong imagination to which Dante
refers is not just daydreaming, but the faculty of imaginal perception, and is in
the tradition of the Book of Revelation, albeit more literary.
There is, of course, an intervening figure in the tradition, that being
Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius, who lived during the fifth
century, was imprisoned and preparing to die when he wrote his Consolation as
a summary of his understanding. In De consolatione, Boethius meets while in
prison the divine figure of Philosophia, who wishes to restore him to spiritual
health by awakening his celestial memory and recalling him to his proper state
of mind. Boethius goes on a journey of celestial memory that takes him to his
true origin beyond the sphere of the stars. And of course, all of this corresponds
closely to what we see in Dante’s Vita Nuova, where Dante is upbraided by the
divine figure of Beatrice, calls upon the “book of memory,” and at the poem’s
end sends a sigh upward beyond the farthest sphere, where a “new perception”
shows it a Lady of light.
Dante ends this strange work, full of images, poems, and his commentary,
with a final vision about which he will not now write. This is, of course, an al-
lusion to the coming extraordinary visionary journey of the Divine Comedy,
but it is also bringing Vita Nuova to the closure of silence. The poetic work
emerges out of a pregnant silence in order to unfold Dante’s vision of celestial
memory with glittering poetic images of his divine Beatrice, thrice-blessed
Lady, and it turns back to that silence again at the end. Within the work’s vi-
sionary interworld we enter into an archetypal realm of celestial numbers re-
verberating in time, and of beautiful images shimmering in space; and here, as
in the Divine Comedy, we end by passing beyond space, time, and words and
ideas into the empyrean.
Thus Dante’s greatest works, Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy, though
certainly showing the influence of the troubadour tradition, go far beyond it to
include all manner of esoteric implications, and to fuse the tradition’s literary,
philosophical, and religious inheritance into visionary narratives that in fact
depict unfolding gnostic revelation. But this corresponds to what we have seen
of the Western esoteric traditions from their beginnings in antiquity—they rep-
resent unique fusions of previous currents that, in a new ambience produce
new revelations that often seem to appear ex nihilo, but in fact represent con-
tinuations not of specific lineages so much as currents or approaches to tran-
scendence. The two medieval currents we have been discussing here—the
chivalric and the troubadour traditions—meet in two final figures whose work
we must consider here—Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400) and Ramon Lull
(1232–1316).
Chaucer, known as a primary literary figure in English history, also incor-
porated esoteric elements into his poetry and prose. This is not to say that
Chaucer was an esotericist in the sense of a Kabbalist or a Gnostic, but rather
to recognize that esoteric elements flow in the mainstream of Western literature
itself. Like Dante, Chaucer drew on Boethius in his own work, yet he went fur-
ther, for Chaucer also translated Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy from
Latin to English. One finds traces of this influence in a number of Chaucer’s
poems, including Troilus and Cressida as well as The Knight’s Tale. Here, how-
ever, we will concentrate on The Knight’s Tale because it illustrates some of our
primary esoteric themes.
In the third part of The Knight’s Tale, Chaucer elaborates on the “noble the-
atre” of Theseus. This “theatre” was circular and a mile in circumference,
marked east and west by gates of marble, and built by masters of “geometrie or
ars-metrike,” and by “kervere of ymages.” The eastern gate was dedicated to
Venus, with an oratory, a nude Venus depicted with a golden garland and a
“cokkow sittynge on hir hand,” with “festes, instrumentz, caroles, daunces”
around her. The western gate dedicated to Mars displayed a forest full of
“knotty, knarry, bareyne trees olde,” with a temple of Mars “wrought al of
burned steel,” “gastly for to see.” In that “portreiture,” it was “depeynted in the
sterres above / Who shal be slayn or elles deed for lov.” Thus this tale, which
tells the story of how the knight Palamon and the lady Emelye were ultimately
wedded, is also a tale full of mythological and astrological references to the
planets. These references form a memory theater of images that govern the lists
or battles taking place within their purview. The celestial images rule over the
terrestrial actions within the circle of life, the theater of art.
We see in Chaucer’s tale, here, and occasionally elsewhere in his work, what
we might call literary reflections or manifestations of esoteric traditions. Cer-
tainly there are no explicit and even relatively few implicit esoteric allusions;
Chaucer was not that kind of poet. Earthy, interested in depicting his sometimes
bawdy characters and tales, Chaucer was not an esotericist. But all the same, we
find here too signs of the themes that have occupied our chivalric and trouba-
dour poets, above all, the themes of divine images that recall celestial memory,
and of divine service, especially of the knight for his lady. And these are evoked
through literature; literature is not only entertainment, for it includes other

dimensions and reminds us of the celestial meanings behind human action.
But what in Chaucer are only allusions, in the voluminous works of Ramon
Lull become explicit. For although Lull, like Chaucer, was prolific, unlike him
Lull was primarily concerned with elaborating his astonishing system of uni-
versals known as the “Lullian Art.” The Art represents, not just a set of corre-
spondences, but a complete way of knowledge that penetrates through all
aspects of life. Not surprisingly, given its astonishing scope, the Lullian Art was
immensely influential during the medieval and early modern era, but with the
advent of rationalism, it was eclipsed and almost completely vanished until it
was rediscovered in the late twentieth century, chiefly through the heroic schol-
arly work of Frances Yates.
We are concluding this discussion with Lull because his work encapsulates
virtually everything that we have so far considered, bringing together the
chivalric, troubadour, and esoteric streams into a remarkable fusion. In fact,
until he was thirty, Lull was himself something of a troubadour; among his vast
number of works are The Book of Chivalry, (a kind of chivalric code), The Book
of the Lover and the Beloved, (part of his romance Blanquerna), and of course
his most well-known and influential works, The Book of Contemplation, Ars
brevis, and Ars generalis ultima. The Book of Chivalry corresponds to what we
saw already in the Grail and other chivalric literature, consisting chiefly in re-
counting the moral code of the knight. The Book of the Lover and the Beloved
is much more complicated, and unquestionably entails explicitly esoteric di-
mensions. It represents the ninety-ninth chapter of Lull’s romance Blanquerna,
which tells the story of a man who rises to the position of pope, only to leave
and become a hermit contemplative. In the ninety-ninth chapter, we are given
the meditations of the hermit, one for each of the 365 days of the year, on the
love of the soul for God couched in the terms of lovers.
At this juncture, the careful reader might notice some resonances with eso-
teric Islam, and this is no accident. Lull, a tireless proselytizer for Christianity in
Islamic countries, was also a syncretist who learned and taught Arabic and drew
on his knowledge of esoteric Islam in his writings. Evidence of this is visible in
his choice of ninety-nine for this chapter on contemplation, which alludes to the
ninety-nine names of God in Islam; and indeed, on the first page of the Book of
the Lover and the Beloved—these terms representing a favorite motif of Sufi
poetry throughout the centuries—we find a direct reference to Sufism itself. It
is self-evident from Lull’s own introduction that he is drawing on esoteric Islam
in order to create a kind of Christian Sufism. Characteristic of his meditations is
this: “The Beloved tested his lover in order to see if his love for him was perfect.
He asked how the Beloved’s presence differs from his absence. The lover an-
swered, ‘As knowledge and remembrance differ from ignorance and oblivion’”
(7). These terms, “knowledge” and “remembrance,” are familiar to students of
Sufism, but are also familiar to us from our examination of the Western esoteric
traditions more generally, as well as from the Grail tradition in particular. Spiri-
tual knowledge is also celestial memory or remembrance.
But there is one theme above all others which we have been tracing that
emerges clearly here, and that is the book. For in a delightful appendix con-
sisting of questions posed to the Lover, we find the following: “They asked the
Lover, ‘What is the world?’ He answered, ‘It is a book for those who can read
in which is revealed my Beloved.’ They asked him, ‘Is your Beloved in the
world then?’ He answered, ‘Yes, just as the writer is in his book.’ ‘And in what
does this book consist?’ ‘In my Beloved, since my Beloved contains all, and
therefore the world is in my Beloved, rather than my Beloved in the world.’”5
The world is a book for those who can read: this is a constant refrain within
the Western esoteric traditions from antiquity to the present. The cosmos rep-
resents the divine writing, and so the relationship between humanity and the
divine is that of a reader and a writer. Of course, as the readers of Lull’s book,
we are also participating in this relationship, meant to reflect that of humanity
to the divine.
However, there is a profanation of this true reading and writing, which
emerges from “a lust for knowledge and presumption.” In this falsified knowl-
edge, some “insult the Name of God with curses and incantations, invoking evil
spirits as good angels, investing them with the names of God and of good an-
gels, and profaning holy things with figures, and images, and by writings. And
through presumption, all errors are implanted in the world.” But the Lover cor-
rects this through the remembrance of truth, by seeing the Sign of God in the
east, west, north and south, engraved in precious jewels and worn on him in
order to always remind him. Here we find a clear condemnation, not of figures,
images, and writings in themselves, but of those done with the wrong attitude,
that is, out of arrogance or presumption.
Such a proviso is particularly appropriate for Lull’s own work, since there is
absolutely no doubt that Lull himself extensively used figures, images, and
writings, most of all in the exposition of his art. Further, Lull himself was cer-
tainly accused of an inordinate and presumptuous lust for knowledge in the
pursuit and teaching of this art, which he claimed to be a universal system of
knowledge that allows one to see into the universal nature of all things and of
the Divine. This extraordinary art, whose influence extended across Europe,
was a means of investigating and coming to understand the true nature of
things, and is founded on a special kind of alphabet. Originally, Lull used more
letters, but for purposes of clarity, he condensed his art into nine letters, each of
which has multiple meanings and is used to create figures and reveal the prin-
ciples within all that we see.
By means of these letters, Lull created a kind of Christian Kabbalism. His
brief alphabet extends from B to K (excluding J) and includes a range of mean-
ings. For instance, B signifies, according to Lull in his Ars Brevis, “goodness,
difference, whether?, God, justice, and avarice.” C signifies “greatness, con-
cordance, what?, angel, prudence, and gluttony.”6 Thus each letter contains
within it a constellation of meanings that, depending upon how the letters are
combined, can produce an almost infinite series of correlations. Lull himself
combined them using circles, triangles, tables, trees, and numerous other
arrangements, probably the most revealing of which for our purposes is the so-
called “A” figure from the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem, or that from
the Ars brevis.
The “A” figure is so designated because it contains in its center a letter A,
which is the unspoken origin of and connection between all the other letters
arranged in a circle around it. When we consider the prominence of the letter
A in numerous esoteric traditions ranging all the way from Buddhist tantrism to
Gnosticism to Böhmean Christian theosophy, it becomes difficult to believe
that the placement of the A here could fail to have esoteric origins and meaning.
Around the A in these figures is a geometric series of lines linking many of the
letters in intricate correlations, and in the outer circle are the primary qualities
asociated with each of the letters, for example, B—Bonitas, E—Potestas, I—
Veritas, and so forth. In the full art, found in the Ars compendiosa, for instance,
the number of letters and qualities makes their range enormous; and even the
Ars brevis represents a daunting set of combinations.
The Lullian art, to which we can here offer only the briefest of introductions,
has vast implications, and can be applied not only to philosphy and theology,
but to the physical world and indeed to virtually every aspect of life. For this
reason, it was naturally applied to astrology and to alchemy, and although Lull
himself explictly denied the transmutation of metals, a host of Lullian-based al-
chemical treatises emerged in the wake of his works. And although Lull’s
thought has been explored relatively recently as a system of logic, it includes
and transcends logic, for in essence the Lullian art most resembles Kabbalism,
not least in its use of the combinations of letters, which are seen in both tradi-
tions as transcendent principles the combination of which can ultimately bring
us to and reveal the inner nature of the divine.
Hence in many respects, Lull represents the juncture of almost all the cur-
rents we have thus far discussed. Of course his work is unique, emerging as it
did largely in a Spanish ambience perfectly suited to the meeting not only of the
primary currents of medieval Christian esotericism—including the chivalric
and troubadour—but also of Islamic and Jewish esotericism. At the same time,
it also represents a synthesis of the primary currents we have been discussing,
above all the view of literature as a vehicle for the transmutation of conscious-
ness. The Lullian art is a means of working with letters and words as a way of
entering into transcendent consciousness of the inner metaphysical principles
informing and transcending the human and natural realms.
We also see this perspective visible in a muted way in chivalric and trouba-
dour literature, whose influence also extends well beyond their disappearance
as living social movements. In these traditions, poetry and stories go beyond
entertainment, for here literature possesses powerful cultural and spiritual di-
mensions. And as literature, the chivalric, troubadour, and Lullian traditions
lived on far past their apparent demises: all of them fed into the emergence of
the Western esoteric traditions that began to flower in the seventeenth century.
Chivalry influenced future esotericism by providing a code of conduct that as it
became individualized or fed into smaller initiatory groups took on esoteric
force even as it lost power as a system of social organization.
Thus the transposed spiritual chivalry, the spiritual love poetry of the trou-
badours, and the alphabetical mysticism of Lull and others later appear in
Christian theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. How do these various
currents reëmerge later in history? Chiefly through the influence of the books,
the words, that the medieval authors created in order to convey their visions.
But there is another element as well that we must recognize: all of these authors
in turn manifest unique combinations of tendencies or currents that preëxist
and transcend them, so that even if there were no direct influence of troubadour
poetry on the spiritual love poems of a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Ger-
man, French, or English gnostic, still there is an affiliation because all exist
within the larger, intricately woven, cross-fertilizing currents of Western eso-
tericism. Before we turn to the emergence of Western esoteric traditions at the
cusp of the modern era, however, we must first look at another primary current
whose influence can hardly be underestimated: Kabbalism.
BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS:

JEWISH KABBALISM
Around the same time that chivalric and troubadour literature was being writ-
ten, there was an efflorescence of another kind of literature entirely, whose ori-
gins are still shrouded in mystery. It is, of course, commonplace to regard each
of the primary currents of Western esotericism as having emerged ex nihilo and
completely separate from its predecessors, but this is virtually never the case.
Rather, with the emergence in the twelfth century in Europe of Jewish Kab-
balah (a Hebrew word meaning “tradition”), it is as it was in the first centuries
of this era—Jewish, Christian, and other forms of esotericism are often closely
linked and influence one another. Jewish Kabbalah did not appear in a vacuum,
but out of a particular literary and religious ambience and with definite prede-
cessors. And in Kabbalah we see not only some potential connections to ear-
lier Gnostic traditions, but what is more, profoundly important and influential
instances of the mysteries of the word as means of spiritual awakening.
We first encounter Kabbalistic literature in the Sefer ha-Bahir, a work that

Gershom Scholem insists “cannot be explained on the basis of the tradition of
philosophic thought in Judaism or as a product of its decline. It [the Bahir] has
its roots in an entirely different world.”7 What is this “entirely different world”?
Certainly the Bahir emerged in the ambience of twelfth-century French Ju-
daism, with at least some connections to the contemporaneous Cathar or Albi-
gensian Christian heretical movement, which in turn has been linked to the
troubadours. It derived from the long line of previous Jewish mysticism, in par-
ticular the Merkabah mysticism that dates back to at least the second century
C.E. And it emerged during a period of established Jewish speculative mysticism
in the Provençal region. But the Bahir, and Kabbalism more generally, also may
have roots elsewhere.
Although there has been some controversy over his conclusions, Scholem’s
assessment is that the Bahir, and thus Kabbalism, has origins in a Jewish gnos-
ticism of a much earlier date. Scholem holds that there arrived in Provençe
some time in the middle of the twelfth century a collection of older gnostic
writings, which in turn were edited and developed by a group of Kabbalists.
“The affinity with the language, terminology, and symbolism of Gnosticism
suggests an Oriental origin for the most important among the ancient texts and
sources of the Bahir, many of which had at least passed through certain circles
of the German Hasidim,” Scholem concludes.8
But for our purposes, regardless of whether there was a direct historical link
between the emergence of Kabbalism in Provençe, Castile, and elsewhere in Eu-
rope, and Gnosticism of any sort in antiquity, it is entirely enough to note the
profound resemblances between these movements, and to recognize that Kab-
balism explicitly continues our primary themes within the Western esoteric tra-
ditions. There can be no doubt that the Kabbalistic works emerging during and
after the twelfth century are esoteric, not only in that they reflect and point to-
ward a hidden wisdom tradition, but also in that they consciously sought to keep
this tradition hidden from the general public even while composing copious
works that derive from the long tradition of interconnections between literature
and religion. For instance, Rabbi Isaac the Blind wrote a well-known letter to
Nahmanides bemoaning the common contemporary tendency to write publicly
about the Kabbalah; and Nahmanides’ disciples intensified their protection of
the secret Kabbalistic teachings, disclosing them only in parabolic language.9
Yet at the same time, the mere fact of composing Kabbalistic literature or
commentaries represents a disclosure of what is secret, the crux of the paradox
inherent in the mysteries of the word. And in fact, the Kabbalistic works of this
period are deeply concerned with exactly these mysteries of word, number, and
cosmogony. The book Bahir, for instance, discusses at length the origin and
meaning of the sephirot, or ten dimensions of the cosmos, which are also dis-
cussed in the Sefer Yezirah or Book of Creation, dating to the Talmudic period.
The sephirot mysteries in Bahir are intimately related to the mystical meanings
of numbers and letters. In section 124, for example, the ten fingers of human
hands are said to correspond to the ten sephirot and to the commandments,
which comprise a total of 613 letters, including all twenty-two letters of the al-
phabet except tet, said to symbolize the abdomen.10 Thus we can see how here
mystical numbers and letters reflect the hidden divine principles of the cosmos,
informing the cultural, spiritual, and natural realms at once, including the
human body.
We also see these alphanumeric mysteries in the Zohar, often said to be the
culmination of the early Kabbalistic period. Although the origins of the Zohar
are somewhat controversial, this controversy itself reveals much about the na-
ture of Kabbalism. There are several major schools of thought on the origin of
this vast and complicated work: some hold that Moses de Leon really did copy
the Zohar from an earlier version by Shimon bar Yohai; but another view, sup-
ported by some contemporary testimony, is that Moses de Leon composed the
Zohar himself by way of “conjuration of the Writing Name,” (that is, writing
the Names of God) and through this power, caught up in the spirit, he wrote the
entire work without any precedent.11 Of course, there is a third possibility—that
Moses de Leon composed through spiritual imagination, and that in this sense
he really was copying from the transcendent source of the Kabbalistic tradition.
But in any event, it is not at all out of character for the Zohar to have connec-
tions to the mysteries of the “Writing Name.”
Indeed, the Zohar is replete with alphanumeric mysticism. For example, in
one section we read of an “alphabetic hymn which contains the mystery of the
twenty-two sacred celestial letters which are decorated with a crown made of
the Patriarchs and the holy heavenly Chariot. Opposite them are the twenty-two
little letters of the lower world.”12 And we are treated to a fascinating explana-
tion of why the verse-divisions, the tonal accents, and so forth are absent from
the Scroll of Law: these signs were hidden in the “interior of the Divine
Throne,” and are the means by which “the Written Law fertilized the Oral Law,
as a female is fertilized from the male.”13 We might note that here the “Written
Law” is seen as male, the “Oral Law” as female or receiver. It is absolutely
clear from this and many other sections of the Zohar that Kabbalistic gnosis is
intimately bound up with the mysteries of the word, and that it regards the writ-
ten word as being at the center of those mysteries.
But there is another work that helps shed light on what the nature of these al-
phanumeric mysteries might be. One of the most influential Kabbalistic books
of this period is the Fountain of Wisdom (Ma‘yan ha-Hokhmah), which six-
teenth-century Kabbalist Moses Cordovero regarded as being among a handful
of the most important works, and which was central in the founding of Hasidism
as well. The Fountain of Wisdom consists in a discussion of tikkun, a word that
usually means “restoration” in Hebrew, but here takes on the meaning of “com-
bination, utterance, sum and computation of the explication of the Ineffable

Name [of God]—unique in the branches of the root of vocalization that is mag-
nified in the thirteen types of transformation.”14 In other words, in this context,
tikkun is a kind of linguistic mysticism that through its praxis brings one into the
“immeasurable light” “in the superabundance of the secret darkness.”15
Central to this linguistic mysticism is the letter A, or aleph. In reading the in-
tricate discussion of this letter’s transformations, one comes to understand not
only why the thirty or more versions of the Fountain are generally regarded as
‘corrupt,’ but even more why this work was traditionally explicated word by
word from teacher to pupil. Its linguistic mysticism undoubtedly requires an
oral commentary: here the written word remains opaque without vocal explica-
tion. For instance, in the text the ’aleph is said to be “divided into five heads,”
for when you open your mouth to say “ah,” two vocalizations result: “â” and
“ā,” from which four emerge—and between these four emerges a fifth, an
“ether,” which may or may not itself be an “a.”16 These five alefim are calcu-
lated by doubling as ten, corresponding to yod, the tenth letter, and yod in turn
becomes twenty, forty, eighty, and 160.
Through this kind of multiplication, one also arrives at the seventy-two
Names of God, the essence of everything, yet when these Names are removed,
there remains still the ’alef “pivotal amongst them.”17 By investigation, one
comes to understand how “all wisdom and understanding, all comprehension
and thought, inquiry . . . speech, whispering, voice, action . . . all are found in
this Name.” Thus we can see how by way of ascent through the Names one ar-
rives at the hidden true nature of existence—and within this is the mystery of the
a, the “unique master” that “radiates in the green flames.” The ’alef is the mys-
tery of the ether and the root-principle of all being; out of it emerges the Names,
and out of them all the “lanes” and “paths” and the countless lights of life.
Here, in the Fountain of Wisdom, we have gone behind the alphanumeric
mysticism into the visionary understanding that precedes and informs it. This
visionary understanding leads backward through the process of creation to its
source. For prior to the Names and even prior to the Ether and root-principle
of all being is the “Primal Darkness,” about which no one, not even Moses, is
allowed to ask questions. Investigating this holiest of mysteries is prohibited
even for a Moses, “so as not to distort the knowledge of the image of the Holy
One.”18 This, we are told, is the secret meaning of the verse from Exodus 33:23:
“You will see My Back, but My Face will not be seen.” The “Back” here is the
mysteries of creation; the “Face” is the Primal Darkness “that is the focal point
of My existence.”
One can easily see, from reading this extraordinary work, why it is no doubt
so profoundly difficult to translate it: it is an inordinately difficult work that re-
quires oral exegesis because it clearly emerges from direct spiritual experience.
Here we see the mysteries of the word laid bare, so to say, made transparent so
that through them in the eye of imagination we can see the hidden principles
and working of the cosmos itself, not from this side, that of hardened or con-
gealed materiality, but from the other, where all that is seen in the eye of imag-
ination is light and color and energy welling forth from the indefinable Primal
Darkness. What is seen in the eye of imagination is expressed through al-
phanumeric riddles such as references to “four letters that constitute a fire that
consumes fire.”19
But underlying the entire work is the gnosis of how light emerges from dark-
ness, and how the Voice emerges from light through speech and breath. Here
“Voice” refers not to ordinary human speech, but to the inner experience of
how existence emerges from the Primal Ether, of which emergence ordinary
human speech is but a reflection. We are viewing a pure mysticism of the word,
which is to say also a knowledge of how the mind is prior to the emergence of
language and thought, and how words emerge from primordial consciousness
into being. Thus there is a double quality to this mystery: it applies to the emer-
gence of consciousness both within us and in the cosmos.
Medieval Kabbalism, then, is not only cosmological, but also metaphysical.
Its cosmological dimensions we have glimpsed in the intricate doctrines of the
ten Sephirot and in the profound complexities of its alphanumeric gnosis; its
metaphysical dimensions are to be found especially in its use of the term ’en
sof. ’En sof literally means “infinity,” but in early Kabbalism also is connected
to “that which thought cannot attain,” or absolute transcendence out of which
everything, including thought, emerges. It may be that there is some historical
link with Neoplatonism here, since this absolute transcendence resembles the
Greek akatalepton as well as the later incomprehensibilis of John Scotus Eri-
gena.20 For that matter, one also finds correspondences between the mysticism
of ’en sof and the teachings of Meister Eckhart.
But none of these correspondences necessarily indicate historical influence.
It is obvious from Kabbalistic works themselves that they do not derive from
scholastic but from direct knowledge, and this is corroborated by the very lin-
guistic mysticism that they express. Although it is possible that medieval Kab-
balism owes more than a little to the Gnosticism of antiquity, it is also entirely
possible that in the works of the Gnostics and Neoplatonists, as well as in Eri-
gena and in Eckhart, we have spontaneous investigations into some of the same
mysteries that the Kabbalists investigated. All of these exist, broadly speaking,
within the general currents of Western esoteric traditions, and so it is natural
that common elements reemerge again and again historically, sometimes with
the influence of particular earlier esoteric authors, sometimes without.
Just as in antiquity the Gnostics often laid emphasis on the mysteries of lan-
guage and consciousness, so too the medieval Kabbalists emphasized this same
linkage. Indeed, as Scholem remarks, for the Kabbalists “the world of language
is therefore actually the ‘spiritual world.’ Only that which lives in any particu-
lar thing as language is its essential life.”21 In fact, for the Kabbalists letters
have a plastic quality: in forming words, they are forming also the actual divine
nature of things, so that to enter into the mysteries of words is to penetrate be-
yond language as we ordinarily conceive it into the hidden nature of God him-
self. Here again we have come upon the dual nature of language: there is
exoteric language, which is veiling and limited; and there is esoteric language,
which is unveiling and virtually unlimited in its ramifications.
Particularly in the case of Kabbalistic word and letter combination can we
say that esoteric uses of language are virtually unlimited in effect, for Kabbal-
ism has since at least the time of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms (c. 1165–1230) and
Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (c. 1240–1292) employed techniques of lin-
guistic recombination that in turn, if practiced over a period of time, result in
ecstasy and visionary illumination. In the case of R. Eleazar and Abraham Ab-
ulafia, the technique entails combining the Tetragrammaton with the letters of
the alphabet in order to bring one to a transcendent state of divine knowledge
or gnosis. According to Abulafia, this technique, which requires isolation, pro-
longed practice, and special breathing techniques, “draws down the supernal
force in order to unite it with you.”22 Thus esoteric language is not only a guide
toward gnosis, it is here the actual means to gnosis.
Central to Kabbalism is esoteric language. Isaac of Acre, for instance, dis-
tinguished between the mere acquisition of knowledge through ordinary
learning and the direct gnosis by the intellect.23 And his predecessor Isaac the
Blind used the analogy of a great tree, in which inward and subtle essences of
wisdom (hokhmah) exist and move through the tree like sap. We partake of
this wisdom, or sap, by “sucking,” which is a fundamentally different kind of
knowledge from that gained by ordinary reading; it is a participatory gnosis
in which we directly experience the essence-language of creation itself, mov-
ing in and through all that is. Here again we have reading and writing that go
far beyond what we ordinarily regard them as—here esotericism and litera-
ture are totally fused.
Such analogies and definitions as that of the tree, or “sucking,” or for that
matter of celestial reading and writing, do indeed correspond to those of the an-
cient Gnostics; and like the ancient Gnostics, the Kabbalists too produced a
wild profusion of works expressing variants of a complex and profound cos-
mology, as well as a metaphysics of absolute transcendence. In Kabbalism, as
in ancient Gnosticism, we find the figure of Sophia, or Wisdom, to be promi-
nent, and indeed even find the teaching in Kabbalah of the higher and lower
Shekhinah, which parallels the teachings of some Gnostic sects regarding a
higher and lower Sophia. There are numerous parallels, but this does not mean
that there was direct influence.
In any event, this profusion of Kabbalistic works and teachings in turn was
to have an immense influence on the subsequent history of Western esoteric
traditions, and unlike the relationship of Kabbalism to Gnosticism, the rela-

tionship of Kabbalism and Christian Cabala is relatively well documented.24
Here it is possible only to allude to the ways Kabbalism flowed into Chris-
tianity, especially beginning in the fifteenth century. It is generally held that
the first major influx of Kabbalism into Christianity occurred with Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), who in his On the Dignity of Man pro-
poses the harmony of Christianity and Kabbalah, holding that in fact Kab-
balah is evidence for Christianity because in it we find discussions of the
Trinity, of the Word, and much else that corresponds to the works of Diony-
sius the Areopagite.
For our purposes it is noteworthy that Pico insisted on the initiatory nature
of original Christianity championed by Origen and Dionysius the Areopagite:
that Christ gave secret teachings to some of the disciples, teachings that subse-
quently were continued. Pico holds, in his oration, that Kabbalah corresponds
to these teachings in its initiatory lineage and in its doctrines: “to make public
the occult mysteries, the secrets of the supreme Godhead . . . what else were
this than to give a holy thing to dogs and to cast pearls before swine?”25 Thus
Kabbalah, according to Pico, furnishes a way to recover the original true nature
of Christianity. This true nature includes the doctrines of the ’en sof, as well as
that of the emanated Sephirot and, above all, the Names of God by which God
created the cosmos.26 There is in Kabbalah, as in Plato, a divine mathematics
that is not like the jottings of traders.27
And so Pico brings Jewish Kabbalah into the broad stream of Western learn-
ing that includes all the classics and has come to be known as the prisca the-
ologia, confirming precisely those elements that we have come to see
characterize the Western esoteric currents as the initiatory sciences of reading
and writing. It is true that Pico only refers to Kabbalah and does not offer de-
tailed exegeses or doctrinal expositions, but what he chooses to touch upon—
“divine mathematics,” initiatory lineages, secret knowledge not divulged to the
hoi polloi, the transcendent Godhead, the hidden Names of God, and reading
and writing as the transmission of esoteric knowledge, when accompanied by
oral transmission—all correspond exactly to the threads we have been tracing
throughout Western history.
Naturally, Pico was far from alone in the endeavor to bring Kabbalah into
Christianity—or, put from the viewpoint of the Christian Cabalists themselves,
to show how Christianity is illuminated by Kabbalism. Another important fig-
ure is Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), author of De verbo mirifico (1494), and
of the more well-known De arte cabalistica (1517). The first book, whose title
alone brings it into our purview, is arranged as a dialogue between a pagan
philosopher, a Jewish mystic, and a Christian; the pagan is concerned with cos-
mology, the Jew with Kabbalah and the divine Names, and the Christian with
absolute transcendence. Both books are intensely concerned with the nature of
language, with its divine origin, and with how it illuminates the path toward the
deification of man.
Reuchlin in turn drew upon Pico and influenced Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
von Nettesheim (1486–1535), whose work De occulta philosophia (1533) is
among the most influential works on magical esotericism in European history.
Agrippa’s book is chiefly concerned with magic, but it focuses on magic in a
larger context that further develops the new tradition of Christian Cabala.
Rather like Reuchlin, Agrippa begins by discussing cosmology and the nature
of the world; turns then to numbers and letters and their celestial significances
(with references to the Sephirot); and in the third book discusses the Names of
God and the relation of the magus to God. Agrippa’s concern with the practice
of magic inaugurates a subsequent long tradition of Christian magical esoteri-
cism drawing upon Jewish Kabbalah.
But Kabbalah’s influence on Christendom was not limited to magical eso-
tericism alone; indeed, it would seem that during this time Kabbalah’s influence
extended from the royal courts to the Vatican. One finds in France Jean
Thenaud (?–1542) writing an extensive manuscript entitled Traité de la Cabale
chrétien for Francis I in about 1521; one finds in Italy Paul Rici, author of De
coelesti agricultura (1541), as well as Cardinal Egidio (Gilles) da Viterbo
(1465–1532), an important figure in the Vatican, whose unpublished work
Scecina (1530) was finally made available in 1959. And, of course, there is
Gillaume Postel (1510–1581), among whose papers we find references to and
translations of many Hebrew works including the Bahir and the Zohar. Postel
is well known for his devotion to a woman named Mother Johanna, whom he
regarded as the Virgin incarnate.
We could continue to trace the byzantine influences of Kabbalism in the his-
tory of Western esotericism here, and if so, we would have to make mention of
figures like John Dee (1527–1608) and Robert Fludd (1574–1637), both major
Renaissance authors whose works drew on Kabbalistic themes to create new
Western esoteric syntheses, as well as examine the possible course of Kabbalah
into the works of arguably the most influential esotericist of the past five cen-
turies, Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). Böhme’s works may reveal the traces of
Kabbalism, but if so, here too Kabbalah is transformed in new and specifically
Christian ways. Yet there is not room here for such an extensive study, and since
we will shortly look at Böhmean theosophy in much more detail, it is perhaps
more useful to consider what we have learned.
Without question, Kabbalah had widely penetrated Christianity in Western
Europe by the seventeenth century, but oftentimes its influence was under-
ground and not at all easily traced. What is more, just as Kabbalah itself re-
sembles earlier Gnostic traditions in antiquity, so too within Christianity one
finds more modern movements or views that may or may not be historically
affiliated with Kabbalism. For instance, Thenaud in his sixteenth-century
treatise on Cabala alluded to a Kabbalistic doctrine of universal restoration,

that is, that ultimately all beings will be saved. In the eighteenth century, we
find the English theosopher Jane Leade holding the same doctrine. But is
there any historical influence of Kabbalism on Leade? Or did she indepen-
dently rediscover the same esoteric doctrines in vision, which is, after all,
precisely what she said had happened? It would seem that in this case as gen-
erally, it may be better to look at ‘vertical’ or categorical similarities, rather
than only trying to trace ‘horizontal’ historical influence.
And when we look at Kabbalism, we can see why it had such profound lit-
erary and religious influences. For Kabbalah, perhaps more than any other
Western tradition, represents the confluence of literature and religion in eso-
tericism. If great literature like Dante’s attracts us because of its grandeur, in-
tricacy, and beauty, it also fascinates us with its riddles and mysteries. But
Kabbalistic literature opens up almost endlessly; even where it is roughly or
awkwardly written, its grandeur lies in the daring of its visionary heights, in its
willingness to go through the letters and words into the consciousness that they
represent. Here the written word becomes not opaque but transparent, not a bar-
rier to but a vehicle for transcendence.
This transcendence lends itself to syncretism. Symbolic of Western syncre-
sis is La Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain, an ornate mosque in whose center is a
Christian cathedral. One finds those who insist that the heart of Islamic Sufism
is Christian, or vice versa; that the heart of Christianity is Jewish Kabbalism, or
vice versa; and so it goes right into the heart of the Middle Ages and Renais-
sance. Western esoteric traditions are perpetually changing and self-renewing,
almost always willing to draw from another religion if it illuminates one’s own.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the history of Kabbalah, where one finds
literature and religion fused, and the boundaries between Judaism and Chris-
tianity far less distinct than usual.
In the twentieth century, with the prevalence of materialism and scientism,
literature increasingly lost even the inkling of bearing within it other dimen-
sions, much less the possibility of transcendence. Indeed, many novelists and
poets explicitly denounce even the idea of spirituality, and instead creep over
the surfaces of things like painstaking caterpillars. To such approaches, Kab-
balah represents a polar opposite—for it, surface is nothing and depth is
everything. Here, literature represents portals into the transcendent, each let-
ter and number potentially bearing infinite depths. Such an approach to liter-
ature, however unfamiliar to us today, ramified throughout religious and
literary history, but it is also important because it offers us a completely dif-
ferent way of understanding the very nature of writing, and perhaps even of
the origin and nature of consciousness. But before discussing these implica-
tions, we shall turn to another primary current of the Western esoteric tradi-
tions: alchemy.
T H E T R A N S F I G U R AT I O N O F E A R T H :
A L C H E M I C A L L I T E R AT U R E
Undoubtedly among the most enigmatic traditions of the human inheritance,

Western alchemy remains largely uncharted by modern scholarship, for only a
few intrepid souls have ventured into this territory. To the first-time observer,
alchemical writings seem totally impenetrable, and even with extended study
often yield no certain interpretation. Full of exotic images and peculiar lan-
guage, European alchemical works resemble bizarre collections of riddles
wrapped in enigmas, and so it is little wonder that many historians of science
have denigrated European alchemy as merely a strange predecessor to modern
chemistry, sort of a mistaken byway people once took before they saw the light
of materialism and rationalism. However, when we look more closely at spe-
cific works in the alchemical traditions, we find that they reveal striking new
applications and manifestations of Western esotericism, and a current repre-
senting a particular path between religion and literature.
When we look at European alchemical works, with their plethora of brilliant
and resonant images, with their astonishing repertoire of exotic terminology,
we cannot help but notice religious references, especially to the need for hu-
mility and for reliance on divine grace. Of course, as we saw earlier, Hermetism
itself occupies a syncretic place in the midst of numerous traditions, not en-
tirely ‘pagan,’ yet not entirely Christian. So too, alchemy, as the “art of Her-
mes,” draws on the particular religious ambience within which it finds itself,
but represents nonetheless a separate path of its own. Indeed, the term alchemy
itself emerges out of the Arabic word al-kimiya, which in turn reflects Greco-
Egyptian origins whose precise outlines likely never will be thoroughly trace-
able. Thus Western alchemy has a peculiar place, peripheral since it is not
wholly Christian, yet in that its adherents claim to realize the gnosis at the heart
of Christianity, hence on the one hand religious, on the other transmitted by
way of literature.
And in fact Western alchemical works are highly literary, operating by
metaphor and allusion and parabolic expression. Because the Western al-
chemists’ place vis-à-vis Christianity was seldom entirely clear, because the
opposition of exotericism to esotericism in Western Europe was often so vio-
lent, and also because alchemy is the transmission of mysteries that must be
directly experienced, alchemists took to arcane ways of expressing themselves.
One might compare these means of arcane expression to the Zen Buddhist
koan tradition, itself also highly literary: the koan, like the alchemical expres-
sion or riddle, by virtue of its initial incomprehensibility, forces one to wrestle
with it alone, to work it through, to come to terms with it not just by rational
explication, but through meditative concentration and inspiration. Yet both the
koan and the alchemical work emerge within stylized and traditional contexts,
with constant reference to the accumulated prior works in relation to which

any given work is seen.
Thus it is conventional for the author of an alchemical work to list prede-
cessors to whom he is indebted. Such a list undoubtedly would include Hermes
Trismegistus, and might include also such figures as Zosimos of Panopolis of
the third century C.E., Synesius, Olympiodoros, and Morienus of the seventh
century C.E., as well as Islamic figures such as Jabir ibn Hayyan of the eighth
century (later latinized as Geber), or al-Rhazi (ca. 825–932 C.E.—latinized as
Rhazes). All of these authors did write on alchemy, and reveal the gnostic cen-
ter of the tradition, so that their lineage from the alchemical perspective forms
an Aurea catena or “golden chain” from antiquity to the present. Yet this golden
chain of tradition is not necessarily a directly historical line of initiatory de-
scent—it is a chain of self-affiliation or identification. One places oneself in
the line of what is, at heart, a tradition transmitted through literature.
For how else might a medieval or Renaissance figure come to know Geber
or Rhazes? Cultural context has been largely lost, as has historical placement.
What matters is that the works under the name Geber speak to the later al-
chemist, who draws upon them in order to undertake the alchemical work him-
self and subsequently to write his own alchemical treatise. And so Geber joins
the line of figures in what is indisputably a literary transmission, even if the al-
chemical labors to which these writers refer are certainly not literary but take
place in a laboratory. After all, alchemical literature, for all its symbolic com-
plexity and mysterious allusiveness, refers by its own testimony to the trans-
mutation and redemption of the physical world: its work takes place on Earth.
Indeed, we may well say that alchemy consists in the transmutations of the
earth or, put another way, in the revelation of paradise. The alchemist’s work
consists in the awakening of dormant qualities in the natural world, be they in
the mineral, the vegetable, or the animal kingdom. This process of awakening
entails a kind of double working, that is, the embodying of spirit, and the spir-
itualizing of the body, and takes place by way of fire. Fire burns up impurities
and allows the transmutation of a fallen metal, plant, or animal into its paradisal
original true nature. Thus alchemy itself consists in processes that are at once
spiritual and physical; it is by no means just a kind of metallurgy or chemistry,
even if its work resembles these in some respects. For alchemy extends into
many realms, partaking at once in the realms too of religion and literature, even
if it does not entirely belong to these, either.
Thus, although we could here offer a historical survey of alchemy, it is cer-
tain that such a historical recitation would do little to unveil our primary theme:
how religion and literature coincide at the juncture of consciousness in the
Western esoteric traditions. To list such names as Arnald of Villanova, author of
the Rosarium philosophorum (attr. thirteenth century), Roger Bacon, Ramon
Lull, Nicholas Flamel (fourteenth century), George Ripley (fifteenth century),
Michael Maier (early seventeenth century), Basilius Valentinus and Eirenaeus

Philalethes (seventeenth century), only goes to show the historical line that we
are tracing, useful in demonstrating some kind of continuity, but without value
in revealing the actual nature of the alchemical tradition itself.
In order to understand the alchemical current of the Western esoteric tradi-
tions, it is necessary to look more closely at exemplary works. Here, of course,
we find such a plethora of both collections of images and written works that it
is more than difficult to choose. But in a work titled “The Golden Tripod”
(1618), consisting in three alchemical treatises arranged and edited by none
other than the alchemist, physician, composer, and author Michael Maier, we
find a confluence of major alchemical authors and works that will provide a
useful introduction to the tradition. For “The Golden Tripod” includes treatises
by the Benedictine monk Basilius Valentinus, Thomas Norton, and an abbot of
Westminster named Cremer.
We might begin by remarking on the fact that two of the three authors Maier
included were Benedictines. One finds in the literature numerous references to
monks as alchemists, and historically it makes sense that the monasteries were
places where writings from antiquity on could be stored, and where some might
find the time to pursue the alchemical work. Maier, in his preface, places these
works in the context of a seventeenth-century struggle between the followers of
“Dogmatic” or “Hermetic medicine,” that is, between those who insist on a
purely physical medicine consisting in the treatment of symptoms, and a med-
icine that includes other dimensions and is centered in the alchemical or
spagyric arts of transmutation. His title, “The Golden Tripod,” derives from the
words of the Delphic priestess: “The feud between the Meropes and the Ionians
will not cease until the Golden Tripod, which Vulcan cast into the sea, is
brought into the house of the man who knows the things that are, were, and are
to come.” In other words, the conflict between merely physical medicine and
Hermetic medicine can be resolved through the study of alchemy. But we
should recognize the elegant and highly literary nature of Maier’s expression.
Indeed, Maier deliberately brackets his alchemical texts with literary epi-
grams, preceding Valentinus’s treatise on the “great stone” with the words
“Pactolus contains not such great treasures; nor does gold-bearing Hebrus roll
down such precious things in its golden sand, as Valentine scatters abroad in
this one book . . . For he bore away the golden fruit from the Hesperian gar-
den and blessed with them fair Germany’s fields. He bore away the golden
fleece from Colchis, and gave it to us by mighty toil.”28 And Maier concludes
with this admonition: “Let this suffice thee; seek not many utensils for thy
labor. If thou knowest the substance and the method, it is enough, and thou
knowest all.”29 Thus the alchemical work exists within a classical literary con-
text; bracketed by mythological references, the treatise joins what we may call
a mythological field.
Yet the treatise itself, despite its elliptical means of expression, is at once lit-
erary and practical. On the title page of this little collection we see an al-
chemist’s laboratory, with a furnace and various kinds of glass and tools, and it
is clear from what Valentinus himself writes that he devoted himself intensely
to “the study of the powers and virtues which God has laid into metals and min-
erals: and the more I searched the more I found.”30 Eventually he found a min-
eral substance that “exhibited many colors, and proved of the greatest efficacy.”
With its spiritual essence, he cured a sick fellow monk completely, as a result
of which ultimately the great secret of alchemy was revealed to him, and this
secret the entire subsequent treatise is meant to reveal.
The practical instructions of the treatise are interwoven with literary passages,
as when we are told to “take a quantity of the best and finest gold, and separate it
into its component parts” “prior to what it was before it became gold.” For these
apparently practical instructions become a tale about the planets as characters in
a little drama, with Mars imprisoning Mercury under the control of Vulcan, and
the other planets holding a colloquy to decide what to do. Saturn wants to kill
Mercury, and this Mars has done, while the Moon, “a beautiful lady in a long sil-
ver robe,” pleads the case of her husband, the Sun. Shortly thereafter, learned men
of the country gather to decide the meaning of this enigma, and a venerable man
with white hair and a flowing purple robe tells them “cause that which is above to
be below; that which is visible, to be invisible; and that which is palpable, to
become impalpable . . . Here you see the perfection of our Art.”31
This combination of practical instructions and more figurative, literary pas-
sages also includes a series of images called the “twelve keys.” The first of the
twelve keys shows a couple, a king and a queen, the king bearing a staff, the
queen a three-flowered plant, while to the king’s right we see a leaping wolf,
and to the queen’s left, a half-naked man with a scythe, over a fire. The com-
mentary here tells us that “whoever drinks of this golden fountain, experiences
a renovation of his whole nature, a vanishing of all unhealthy matter.”32 The
fourth of the twelve keys shows a skeleton atop a casket or box, on the far left
side a single candle, in the background a dead tree stump, and the text tells us
how at the end of the world, all shall be judged by fire and reduced to ashes,
after which there will be formed a new heaven and a new earth.33 The eighth of
the twelve keys shows a man rising from the grave, while around him are vari-
ous figures, including two archers shooting at targets, as well as an angel blow-
ing a horn, and a man sowing seeds. The commentary here discusses
putrefaction and resurrection. The twelfth key shows a man with a lion in a lab-
oratory, before him a burning barrel, and the commentary tells us of the uses of
the stone, and how one who possesses it “shall possess all in all, performing all
things whatsoever possible under the sun.”34
The second of Maier’s treatises is Thomas Norton’s “Ordinal of Alchemy,”
which is of quite a different nature from Valentinus’s, being bereft of images
and much more inclined to tell stories. After admonitions about how we must
avoid deceit and self-delusion, Norton tells the story of how he himself was
robbed of all he had, and then of how a certain Thomas Dalton, who possessed
a larger quantity of the Red Powder than any Englishman, was betrayed to King
Edward by an assistant named Delvis who had been sworn to silence. Even
though Dalton had discarded the Red Powder because it had become a source
of grief and anxiety, he was thrown into a dungeon by one of the king’s retinue,
a man named Herbert, and tortured for four years. Eventually sentenced to
death and brought before the executioner, Dalton said he was happy to die, and
so was let go. Such, we are told, are the sufferings of those who aspire to a
knowledge of the Art. Only after such warning tales are we told in more
specifics of the nature of the Art, and that all Norton’s instructions are useless
except to the wise in light of direct experience.
The briefest and most specific of the three treatises is that entitled the “Trea-
tise of Cremer,” Benedictine abbot of Westminster. Here we have a “full and ac-
curate account of Alchemy without using any obscure technical terms.”35 And
indeed, Cremer in this, his last testament, tells us to “take three ounces of tar-
tar of good claret, strong and pure,” and add to it five ounces of petroleum, two
of living sulphur, two of orange arsenic, three of rabusenum, and two of willow
charcoal. All are to be mixed in the “bath of Neptune,” in a well-stoppered glass
jar, and prepared in about four days. Thus we can see that Cremer’s instructions
are in fact quite specific and truly are largely devoid of the literary passages
found in the previous two tracts. His testament is to be copied every sixty years,
so as not to lose legibility over time, and the secret is not to be given out to any-
one except the Abbot and Prior of the monastery, and “whoever does not ob-
serve this my mandate, let his name be blotted out from the Book of Life.”36
Here we return to the themes of the Book of Revelation—and despite the
more or less prosaic terms of this testament, this treatise of Cremer is clearly
regarded by him as a revelation of a great and powerful mystery that must not
be revealed to the vulgar. There is a long tradition of monasteries as sanctuar-
ies for secret knowledge, and Cremer’s testament does corroborate it. To pub-
lish widely his alchemical testament would be to divulge what should remain
the secret of those presumably capable of bearing its power, and given Cremer’s
explicit instructions, as opposed to literary and figurative allusions, we can un-
derstand why he should impose such conditions. In recent times, of course,
such instructions also are protected by the fact that society as a whole cares
nothing for alchemy or the worldview from which it emerges. But also he is in-
voking the very language of the Book of Revelation, itself an esoteric text made
exoteric, and protected by precisely the same invocation of the Book of Life.
This invocation of the Book of Life naturally suggests one of our primary
themes in the study of Western esotericism: reading. Here reading can take
place on multiple levels at once—there is the prosaic reading of instructions, of
course, but then there is also another kind of reading that we see in the collec-
tions of images, epigrams, poems, literary allusions, allegories, and figurative
expressions that so characterize alchemical literature. Confronted with such a
colloquy, what is an aspiring alchemist to do but contemplate such a work, to
carry it within, to enter into it until its images and approach permeate one’s
consciousness and become second nature? Such a “second nature,” consisting
in the imaginative landscape, allows one to see the actual landscape or “first
nature” in a different way, not merely from the outside and as other, but in-
wardly and as mysteriously connected to oneself by way of imagination. One
learns to read the inner significance of the book of nature. And of course,
beyond the book of nature is the Book of Life.
We may ‘read,’ then, not only by looking at words on a page, but also
through the power of the imagination, which Paracelsus in De virtute imagina-
tiva called a “sun in the soul of man.” Just as the sun draws forth the visible and
growing forms of plants, so too there is an inner world where the imagination
may draw forth hidden things from ‘seed’ into flower. The cosmos is created
through the divine imagination, and so it is only natural that humanity also par-
ticipates in this power. Imagination governs the development of things, for the
image of what a flower or plant is exists germinally in the seed, and the plant
grows into its image as best conditions will allow. But here ‘imagination’ does
not belong to any individual—rather, the individual human being may partici-
pate in the divine imagination that brings forth nature itself.
According to Paracelsus, everything that exists in the physical cosmos has
what he calls evestra, ethereal counterparts. Through these evestra, one may
know the inner nature of anything, just as we might look at an image reflected
in a mirror or water. There are incalculable numbers of evestra, which exist in
subtle matters of their own kind—for instance, air, water, fire, or earth—and
which may know nothing of the human world even though they exist in the
same cosmos, for they occupy different dimensions within it. Of course, not all
evestra are benefic, so one must be cautious in entering into these other di-
mensions by way of imagination—one is reminded of the proverbial visitor to
the faeries who never returned. But in any event, Paracelsus tells us, these sub-
tle realms and beings may be encountered in the realm of the imagination.
Clearly the imagination plays a role in the processes of alchemy, where we
see literature conveying the transmutation of consciousness that manifests in
the natural world as well. Here the individual mind is not separated from min-
eral, vegetable, and animal realms, but is joined with them in the imagination,
which perceives and participates in these other subtler dimensions of existence.
Spagyric medicine, one branch of alchemy, consists in the awakening of subtler
dimensions of a given plant, its subtle essence, which in turn may awaken the
corresponding quality in the human being and thereby effect healing. To say,
then, that alchemy takes place in the imagination is not to say that it is imagi-
nary, but that in this particular worldview, it is entirely real, indeed, more real
than what we see in the physical.
At this juncture we should recognize that alchemical literature can be in-
terpreted along a spectrum ranging from a focus on its spiritual meaning to a
focus on its physical interpretation. Many alchemical works are more suscep-
tible to one interpretation than another—hence some, like Cremer’s testament,
emphasize their recipe quality, while others, like Valentinus’s, may be inter-
preted in both ways at once. But during the late seventeenth and the eighteenth
centuries, these two poles became further separated; one finds a new kind of
alchemical literature whose primary implications are almost exclusively spir-
itual. Of course, even here physical significances of alchemy are implied, but
the new ambience is not so much Hermetic with a tinge of Christianity as it is
totally Christian.
One of the better examples of this particular emphasis in alchemical litera-
ture is to be found in a now relatively little-known anonymous work dated 1686
and titled Amor Proximi, geflossen aus dem Oel der göttlichen Barmherzigkeit,
geschärft mit dem Wein der Weisheit, bekräftiget mit dem Salz der göttlich und
natürlichen Wahrheit (Amor Proximi, flowing out of the Oil of Divine Compas-
sion, sharpened with the Wine of Wisdom, empowered with the Salt of divine
and natural Truth). The terms used in its title—oil, wine, and salt—are not un-
common in physical alchemy, but here are clearly spiritualized, and this is char-
acteristic of the work as whole. It is as though here alchemy, confronted by the
emerging materialist science of chemistry, moves away from physical alchemy
into the realm of spiritual references alone.
The prefatory remarks to the work refer to the “heavenly Wisdom” who re-
veals the “two lights of nature and of grace.” The true medicine of the body is
the pure light of nature; the true medicine of the soul is the pure light of grace.
But rather than proceeding toward specific instructions, Amor proximi proceeds
instead to refer in passing to the knowledge of the “heathens,” and to a host of
Biblical references, including Romans 1, Genesis 1:27, II Chronicles 13:5, and
so forth. There is no doubt that the work is engaged in justifying a true “theol-
ogy, philosophy, and medicine together” that leads us through Wisdom to God,
just as the true maguss leads us to Christ.37 And thus “the true medicine is thus
the heart of Wisdom: out of this heart (or eternal spiritual salt) emerges life, as
a spirit, fire, light air, and mist, which mist transforms itself into a water of life
in the new birth; this Mist-Spirit-Water is Salt or Earth . . . This is the true
Ground of Nature . . . the true medicine and theology.”38
It is revealing that the light of nature is said to lead to the “whole Machina
mundi” (II.74), a distinctly modern image of the cosmos and a term that is in
fact repeated in the work. The term Machina mundi is particularly interesting
here because it is so far from describing the worldview of Amor Proximi as to
be its polar opposite. The mechanistic worldview is all surface, a matter of
measurement and quantity leading to technology; but here, as a kind of coun-

terpoint, is a perspective that is all depth, and based in the books of Teutonici
philosophi Jacob Böhme (II.77). Whoever wishes to understand practically this
depth-perception must first have a fundamental knowledge of it, we are told,
and so the author leads us through a discussion of the metacosmic nature and
history of humanity.
Here we find no interest in historical explanations; here instead we are being
introduced to the hidden nature, the depths, of existence. Thus, for instance, the
author writes “That the earth is dark, but the Sun light, that is the mystery
wherein all lies, and is the ground of the revelation of the eternal Godhead”
(II.80). The Sophists want to seek the prima materia among the elements, but
they don’t really understand the spiritual nature of these elements, nor whence
they emerge (II.83). Yet those who don’t seek God’s knowledge in nature also
remain blind, for here the “illuminated brotherhood” finds written the “holy
Scripture” (II.83). And what we are seeking is “a single subject in Nature, the
great Universal-Stone wherein the fall and restoration of mankind is clearly to
be seen with the eyes” (II.93).
Certainly we do not find in this treatise the kind of alchemical work that we
saw in the previous works; here the terminology of alchemy is spiritualized in
order to discuss the awakening and rebirth of the individual. Fire, Salt, Water,
Oil, these terms have an alchemical provenance, and indeed have spiritual
meanings as well within alchemical work, but here they are transposed to reveal
a particular metacosmic vision. There is a process of spiritual alchemy alluded
to in Amor Proximi, which concerns the transmutation of the planetary qualities
in an individual, and which leads to the individual being a “true Theologus, in
whom the Magia is a holy Light or Spirit; a true Astrologus, in whom the Ca-
bala with all its sciences as a holy Fire and Blood is; and a true Medicus, in
whom the philosophy as a holy Salt, Oil, or Water is. And so we find the three
One, and one three . . . in harmony” (II.105).
Of course it is possible to see the spiritualized alchemy of Amor Proximi as the
abandonment of more physical alchemy, or perhaps as its translation into Chris-
tian allegory. But we could also see this spiritual alchemy as the counterbalanc-
ing restoration of alchemy’s gnostic, inward dimension; for it is conceivable that
physical alchemy could degenerate into nothing more than chemistry. In fact,
such a degeneration is exactly what we find happening during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, and it is not surprising that during the rise of secular sci-
ence we find alchemical treatises that emphasize the inward, spiritual dimensions
of the work. However, traditional alchemy consists in both inner and outer work
at once, and when either one is absent, what is left soon ceases to be alchemy and
may be absorbed into the dominant religion or may become chemistry.
Yet alchemy, like Hermeticism, easily translates into a dominant religion,
and hence we find a Christian alchemy, just as we find for instance Islamic
alchemy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Western alchemical

current flows into Böhmean Christian theosophy, which produces mystico-
alchemical works such as Amor Proximi, as well as Theo-Philosophia Theo-
retico-practica by Samuel Richter (1711), Opus Mago-cabbalisticum et
theosophicum by Georg von Welling (1735), and John Pordage’s Epistle on the
Philosophic Stone (ca. 1675). Pordage’s work, a letter to a lady who had dis-
covered the prima materia and had asked him for further guidance, is among
the clearest works on spiritual alchemy that we have encountered, detailing an
alchemical process of awakening and transmutation that could be read simul-
taneously as physical and as spiritual alchemy, but whose spiritual implications
are always foremost, and whose ending is almost identical to the conclusion of
Amor Proximi.39
There are also the many references to alchemy that we find in Johann Georg
Gichtel’s Theosophia Practica (letters from 1668–1710). Here practical
alchemy is taken for granted as a real possibility, albeit scorned when the art is
claimed by frauds and puffers, whom Gichtel claimed to be able to spot imme-
diately. The implication, of course, is that Gichtel himself possessed the keys to
the full range of alchemy, from spiritual to physical. Indeed, Gichtel was re-
puted at the time to have been a practicing alchemist since his light was often
on long into the night, and he and his spiritual circle, the Engelsbrüder or An-
gelic Brethren, subsisted without any visible means of monetary support. But
such rumors aside, we find numerous direct references to alchemy in Gichtel’s
own letters, and in the end must conclude that in this theosophic worldview,
practical alchemy is seen as a subset of spiritual alchemy, which in turn is
incorporated into the full breadth of theosophic discipline.
But to see the way alchemy was incorporated into theosophy, it may be use-
ful to concentrate on another work, the Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosoph-
icum (1735) of Georg von Welling, for here we again see the confluence of our
principal themes in Western esotericism. The Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum is un-
questionably a synthesis of many currents already touched upon, including
“Chymie” or alchemy, Kabbalah, astrology, Christian theosophy, and gnostic
metaphysics. What makes this work most remarkable is the unity of this synthe-
sis: it is clear that von Welling had in mind an all-encompassing worldview
emerging from a deep union of these traditions, not merely a pastiche. Hence the
fundamental organization of the Opus is alchemical, beginning with the organi-
zation of the first section, on salt, of the second, on sulfur, and of the third, on
mercury. Within each of these broad sections are individual chapters whose con-
tent begins with chemical or alchemical topics and moves through these to theo-
sophic or gnostic themes such as “The urangelical world,” the “fall of Lucifer”
and the “eternal peace and gentle still joy of the eternal divine kingdom.”40
There can be little doubt that von Welling was drawing on a wealth of spe-
cific knowledge of alchemical, astrological, and Kabbalistic themes. This is not
to say that all of his sources were entirely accurate—for instance, some of his
Hebrew seems rather distorted—but he had in mind producing a vast com-
pendium of esoteric knowledge unified within a theosophic understanding, and
in this regard he succeeded. For instance, he begins each of his large sections
with specific discussions of alchemical salt, sulfur, or mercury, and into these
he weaves discussions using planetary and alchemical symbols, Christian scrip-
ture, and Kabbalistic references in a theosophic framework.
Typical of von Welling’s syncresis is an illustration showing at the top the
Ungrund, a term of Jacob Böhme’s for the abyss prior to creation, next to which
is the Kabbalistic term ’en sof, meaning the transcendent Godhead. Beside
these is a heptangle around which are arrayed the seven planetary symbols, and
beneath which is a series of concentric circles labeled “Seraphim,” “Cheru-
bim,” “Thronen,” and so forth, the basic Dionysian angelical hierarchy. Arrayed
next to these names are their Hebrew equivalents. Here, in other words, we see
compressed into a single illustration a whole array of esoteric influences to
form a seamless synthesis whose surrounding perspective (visible in the use of
Böhme’s term Ungrund to frame the entire illustration) is theosophic, but might
well also be called pansophic.
At the same time, one should not think that because von Welling aimed at
such breadth as a pansophic esotericism requires, he elided many details. His
discussions of alchemy and astrology are very detailed and full of specific ta-
bles, diagrams, and analyses clearly meant to produce not only a theoretical
synthesis but a useful compendium of source material. Thus he writes regard-
ing the nature and use of earthly mercury that the “I (Mercury) out of L (the
Sun) is of a wholly different nature than that out of . . . x (the Moon) and out
of P (Saturn).” Further, to properly prepare mercury, one needs to “reduce it
in an alcohol, then in a Liquorem . . . prepare it in a series of alchemical oper-
ations in a pair of vials, and calcify it by hand.”41 Von Welling’s astrological in-
structions are equally detailed, with a plethora of astrological symbols, tables,
charts, diagrams, and instructions.
But it is with alchemy that von Welling’s work both begins and ends. Indeed,
he appends to his five-hundred-page Opus several alchemical treatises in their
entirety, including D. Hensing’s “Discurs von dem Stein der Weisen [Discourse
on the Stone of the Wise]” (1722), “Alchimische Fragen, von dem Universali
und den Particularibus [Alchemical Questions on the Universali and the Par-
ticularibus]” (1726), and “Manna Coeleste, das himmlische Manna genannt.
Die Bereitung des Steins [Celestial Manna: the Heavenly Manna Named. The
Preparation of the Stone]” as well as “Non plus ultra Veritatis: das ist, Eine Un-
tersuchung der Hermetischen Wissenschaft [Nothing More True: That is: An
Investigation into Hermetic Science]” by Francisco Sebastiano Fulvo
Melvolodemet, of Pisa. The collection concludes with a translation into Ger-
man of English alchemist George Ripley’s song of the newborn alchemical
king. All of this underscores how alchemy and Hermeticism pervaded the pan-
sophic esotericism that came to dominate the early modern period, and that we
will shortly examine further.
Here it is perhaps most useful to step back and consider how alchemy,
broadly seen, fits into our general discussion of Western esotericism and liter-
ature. If Kabbalah entails a literary mysticism in which letters and numbers re-
veal secret spiritual depths, and in which writing can form a pathway to the
divine, alchemy extends this literary mysticism into the entire cosmos itself, so
that everything—mineral, vegetable, animal, water, air, fire, the stars and plan-
ets—is revealed as a cosmic language and as a spiritual means of transmuta-
tion. Alchemy, and the Hermeticism with which it is allied are religious
chameleons, capable of taking on whatever coloration fits with their surround-
ings; and this almost infinite adaptability undoubtedly derives from the univer-
salism of their central perspective, which consists in the transmutation and
restoration of all things.
While it is true that alchemical aims may at first seem circumscribed to the
revelation of the philosopher’s stone, for example, when we look more closely
at alchemical literature itself, we find that such aims are in fact vast indeed,
consisting not only in the perfection of elixirs or medicines drawn from herbs
and metals, but even more in the perfection of humanity. Such perfecting takes
place in the alchemist’s laboratory, of course, but only with the guidance of the
alchemical handbooks, recipes, or grammars. In some respects, alchemy is like
learning to use a language, requiring long familiarity with special symbols, let-
ters, and images, as well as with what these represent, including not only chem-
icals and equipment, but subtle and spiritual qualities as well. One must learn
both to ‘read,’ in the broadest possible sense, and to ‘write.’
There is, we can easily see, a natural homology between alchemy and art.42
Both entail emulating or paralleling the creativity of life itself; both seek to per-
fect this creativity. It is no coincidence that the alchemical work is also called
the “great Art,” for it consists not only in the creation of a particular form, like
a painting, but in a transmutation both of the focus of the work and of the artist.
In this sense, the alchemical work transcends that of the artist, for its focus is
not only in the mesocosm of the work, but also in the microcosm of the artist.
To effect the alchemical work requires that the artist enter into more transcen-
dent states of consciousness—the work is in this respect a mirror of changes
within the alchemist. Here, of course, alchemy goes well beyond contemporary
conceptions of art, for its claims are to a lasting awakening and transmutation
of the alchemist. Thus we may well say that, however far-reaching, contempo-
rary art and literature remain quite limited in scope by comparison to alchemy
as spiritual illumination.
Alchemy, as we have come to see it since the seventeenth century, is a rela-
tively modern phenomenon, particularly in the profusion of brilliant images
and the complex kinds of linguistic riddles visible in alchemical works. How-
ever, the approaches to transcendence and the depictions of these approaches
within alchemical literature nonetheless reflect quite clearly what we have al-
ready seen to be the dominant paradigm of western esotericism in antiquity. For
there is here an operative mysticism of the word—the written word and image
become a medium to express transcendence, and also a successor’s primary
guide to achieving transcendence. Just as in Christian mysticism one finds that
lines of influence are chiefly and perhaps sometimes exclusively literary—
inspiration leaps from Dionysius to John Scotus Erigena to Eckhart and Tauler,
who then are listed by later mystics—so too in alchemy earlier alchemists are
invoked by the later ones in a litany of literary transmission.
Here in alchemy, as in Christian mysticism and in Jewish Kabbalism, litera-
ture takes on a greater significance than simply alluding to an oral tradition
where the real mysteries are conveyed. Oral commentary by a master is impor-
tant, no doubt of that. But in alchemical works, the mysteries are conveyed pri-
marily through literary riddles and parabolic expressions. I would use the word
decoding, except that an alchemical work is not simply decoded as if, in the
manner of a mathematical equation, were one to decipher what x and y mean,
one would have the solution. The ‘solution,’ in the case of alchemy, extends into
a range of realms at once, and cannot be understood without reference to our
inner human landscape of consciousness. This is by no means to suggest, like
Jung, that alchemy is chiefly psychological. Rather, alchemy is understood
through living symbols that allow us to understand nature, humanity, and the
divine in ever more profound ways.
Indeed, alchemy consists in coming to understand the nature of conscious-
ness and the consciousness of nature. Contemporary views of literature, like
those of science, largely have been based in a fundamental division between the
writer and the reader, between the observer and that which is observed, between
subject and object. It is true that more recently theorists, both of physics and of
literary criticism, have begun to argue the insufficiency and even the falsehood
of such easy divisions. But virtually no one has looked at alchemy as a field
where all such apparent divisions are overcome. For not only is the division be-
tween self and other or between subject and object gradually revealed to be
false in alchemy, so too is the apparent (but strictly modern) division between
the sciences and the humanities. For in alchemy literature is a means of trans-
mitting precise knowledge of nature, humanity, and the divine, albeit knowl-
edge that is not quantitative but qualitative, and that presupposes and requires
humility before power greater than oneself. In alchemy, literature, religion, and
science are one.
This unity is founded in the fundamental union of humanity, nature, and the
divine that it is alchemy’s goal to restore. In Christian terms, this is expressed
in terms of the Fall and expulsion from Eden; and the restoration of the right
human relationship to nature and to the divine corresponds to a restoration of

paradise, precisely what we find at the end of numerous alchemical treatises.
Such a restoration takes us beyond the separated consciousnesses in which we
now find ourselves, divided against the world, against ourselves, and against
the divine, and brings us gradually by way of a spiritual process that includes
physical and transphysical work, toward the revelation of the fundamental con-
sciousness informing all that lives. Literature forms a means toward this grad-
ual process because it is in literature that we can come to identify with and
understand in more profound ways all that surrounds us. Literature here is a
means toward awakening greater consciousness, the essential purpose of the
resonant alchemical symbolism.
As we have seen, Western esotericism is not easily fixed or quantified but
changes according to its historical context, even if its fundamental outlines or
concerns remain the same. So it is with alchemy. We have already seen how
alchemy emerged during the early modern period, when its literature and im-
agery attained its most brilliant formation. But alchemy did not disappear
thereafter; it has not only continued to exist to the present day, but also fed into
other major currents of Western esotericism. In the study of Western esoteri-
cism, one must keep in mind its essential fluidity: alchemy during the early
modern period did not exist alone, but in relation to a host of other currents, in
particular Christian theosophy, pansophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry.
And it is to these that we will now turn our attention.
THE DIVINE SCIENCE:

T H E O S O P H I C , PA N S O P H I C , R O S I C R U C I A N ,
A N D M A S O N I C L I T E R AT U R E
Although Western esoteric traditions may be studied in isolation, it is perhaps

more useful to keep in mind their social and historical contexts. The major cur-
rents of modern Western esotericism developed in the context of burgeoning
knowledge about the past. Whereas in the medieval period and earlier, written
works were comparatively difficult to obtain, in the modern era, with the in-
vention of the printing press and with concomitant investigation into the nu-
merous esoteric currents of antiquity, esotericism necessarily became even
more eclectic in scope. Indeed, esoteric universalism became more and more
commonplace. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it became pos-
sible to conceive of a universal approach to knowledge that included the whole
of the human inheritance. This universalism is the dream that was to haunt vir-
tually the entirety of modern Western esotericism.
We should also keep in mind the growing split, especially during the eigh-
teenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, between the sciences and the
humanities. The Copernican revolution, the discovery of more complex tech-

nology, the emergence of biology, chemistry, archaeology, and geology, and the
historical and comparative investigations into Christian origins, all acted to sep-
arate religious faith from scientific investigation and from literature and the
arts. Whereas in medieval Europe and England, all human knowledge was con-
ceived of as unified—like a wheel whose spokes are the various disciplines and
arts, and whose center is spiritual knowledge—with the advent of the Protestant
era, this sense of unity dissolved, at least in the secular world.
But Western esotericism, much more indebted to the medieval era than is
usually supposed, continued and developed this belief in a unified approach to
knowledge. It is true that, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, we find
a historical movement toward more and more specialized and fragmented
knowledge, with each of the disciplines ever more separated from the others,
and the sciences and humanities in turn ever more separated from religion.
However, in Western esotericism we find, particularly during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, quite the opposite movement. For the Western eso-
teric traditions that emerged during this period, as we have already glimpsed in
the case of alchemy, aimed for a universal approach to knowledge that, rather
than seeking to separate, say, physical chemistry from metaphysics, instead
seeks ever more firmly to conjoin them.
Indeed, the historical movement of Western esotericism during the modern
period is to unify the entire range of human knowledge, including, in the sci-
ences, the fields of alchemy, medicine and astrology; in the arts, illustration and
literature; and in religion, comparative and syncretic, nonsectarian and ecu-
menical approaches to spirituality. Thus during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries we find numerous major esoteric figures who engaged in scientific
investigations, explored theology and metaphysics, wrote literary works, prac-
ticed medicine and astrology, and in general correspond to the description of
“Renaissance man.” One thinks of figures as diverse as Robert Fludd, John
Pordage, and Franz von Baader, to name only a few of the most luminary. But
here we do not have space for a complete survey of all such figures, nor is that
our aim. Rather, our approach being thematic, we will instead look closely at
some seminal authors in the modern esoteric traditions and by so doing, trace
the broader lineaments of recent Western esotericism.
Any study of modern Western esoteric traditions must consider the work of
Jacob Böhme (1575–1624), the “illuminated shoemaker” of Görlitz, a city on
the eastern side of Germany, near Poland. Böhme lived during a time of social
unrest, in a border area where he came in contact with a range of esoteric tra-
ditions, including Kabbalism and Hermeticism. But his inspiration came
chiefly from within, and drawing from his visionary experiences, he wrote nu-
merous works beginning with Die Morgenröte, or Aurora, and including a vast
commentary on Genesis called Mysterium Magnum, as well as De Signatura
Rerum (The Signature of All Things), Christosophia, and numerous letters and
shorter works.
Even these titles reveal the connections between Böhme and the earlier tra-
ditions we have discussed: Mysterium Magnum, with its elaborate exegesis of
Genesis, is certainly indebted to the Kabbalistic tradition; The Signature of All
Things is an extended discussion of, among many topics, the Hermetic doctrine
of signatures developed by Paracelsus; and Christosophia, often translated as
The Way to Christ, entails a chivalric ethic of fidelity to the feminine figure of
Wisdom, the Virgin Sophia. What is more, there unquestionably are profound
parallels between Böhme’s writings and ancient Gnosticism, parallels that be-
came even clearer in later theosophic figures like the English Philadelphians.43
Thus we can see how Böhmean theosophy reveals the syncretism so character-
istic of modern esotericism more generally; here numerous traditions meet and
are fused into a profound new union that was to have enormous influence on
the subsequent history of Western esotericism.
Böhme’s work, according to his own testimony, derived chiefly from his own
personal experience, but there is evidence that he had extensive contacts with
Hermetic and Kabbalistic circles of his day, including lengthy discussions with
Abraham von Frankenberg, himself an author on Kabbalistic subjects. That
Böhme’s writing emerged from his own visionary perceptions and inspiration
is unquestionable, for he wrote with authority and certainty about a vast range
of cosmological and metaphysical principles. What is more, he developed a
particular language, drawing upon Hermetic, alchemical, and Kabbalistic
sources, to express this inspiration, a special terminology with both Latinate
and Germanic roots. But Böhme drew from prior traditions as well, and his
work may be described as unique or as a brilliant synthesis, for both are true.
Although Böhme’s terminology and mode of expression are often difficult,
the basic elements of his thought are not. It is true that Böhme presents a com-
plex cosmology, with his exposition of the Ungrund, or abyss, that precedes ex-
istence and that corresponds in Kabbalism to the ’en sof, and in Christian
mysticism to Eckhart’s Godhead; with his exposition of the seven source-spir-
its; and with his unfamiliar terms like limbus, lubet, and schrack, describing
hidden principles or aspects of the creative process. Yet Böhme has been popu-
lar for centuries—from Germany to Russia and America—among those drawn
to direct spiritual experience, and this popularity derives from the fact that
while his doctrines are almost inexhaustible, the fundamental nature of
Böhme’s teaching is clear and simple.
Here I will compress a great deal in the hope of sketching the outlines of
Böhme’s thought. Böhme held that before the cosmos came into being, there
was the Ungrund, or transcendent abyssal origin. From this emerged two
realms, the dark-world of wrath and the paradisal light-world, and after a se-
ries of primal catastrophes, a “third principle,” physical nature. Human beings
can participate in all three of these principles; some people belong to the wrath-
world of fury and destructiveness, some to the paradisal light-world, but mostly
we find ourselves mediating among all of these. Our purpose as human beings,
simply put, is to transmute the wrath-quality in ourselves into paradisal light
and love. This process of transmutation, a kind of spiritual alchemy, is true re-
ligion; without it, religion is merely outward “Babel,” the appearance without
the reality.
Böhme’s approach to language is of particular interest to us, for, quite in line
with the numerous currents of the Western esoteric traditions that preceded
him, Böhme created a complex linguistic mysticism. In Aurora, Böhme’s first
book, he introduced this mysticism of the word, writing that “The whole power
of the Father speaks, out of all the qualities, the Word, i.e., the Son of God. The
same word, or the same sound, spoken by the Father, issues out of the Salniter,
or the powers of the Father, and out of the Father’s Mercurius, or sound . . . for
the outspoken Word remains as a glory or majestic command before the king,
but the sound, issuing through the word, executes the command of the Father
which he has spoken through the word, and in this is the birth of the Holy Trin-
ity. The same takes place in an angel or in a man” (vi.2). Böhme’s language
here is resonant with alchemical and Jewish allusions, but these allusions ap-
pear in a clearly Christian context, and although they refer to the Word in the
Trinity, they also refer to the word in humanity.
Böhme extends this linguistic mysticism to every living thing. In his giant
commentary on Genesis, Mysterium Magnum, he writes that “every creature
has its own center for its outspeaking, or the sound of the formed word within
itself, both eternal and temporal beings: the unreasoning ones as well as man;
for the first Ens has been spoken out of the sound of God, by Wisdom, out of
her center into the fire and light, and has been formed into the fiat, and entered
into compaction. The Ens is out of the eternal, but the compaction is out of the
temporal, and therefore in everything there is something eternal hidden in
time” (xxii.2). Here Böhme elaborates on the metaphysics of what he also dis-
cusses in De Signatura Rerum, the esoteric view older than Pythagoras that
everything in creation emerges out of its resonating linguistic, sonic, energetic
origin as an emanation or manifestation of an archetype.
What is more, there is a teleological significance to this doctrine. For if all
beings preëxist their material manifestation in the archetypal realm of the word,
after manifestation each manifested thing will return to its transcendent origin,
that belonging to love returning to love and that belonging to wrath returning to
wrath. Böhme writes: “In that quality in which each word in the human voice
in the act of outspeaking forms and manifests itself, either in the love of God,
as in the Holy Ens, or in the wrath of God; in the same quality will it be taken
up again therein after it has been spoken out. The false word becomes infected
by the devil, and sealed up for its [future] detriment, and is received within the
Mysterium of the wrath, in the quality of the dark-world. Each thing returns
with its Ens to where it has originated” (xxii.6). This is not predestination,
exactly, but rather the sifting of the chaff from the wheat at time’s end.
We can see here how language is intimately tied up with the metaphysics of
love and wrath. In the fallen world, wrathfulness is the principle of separation
and objectification as well as of anger, and so the language of extreme ratioci-
nation also belongs to the wrath. Reason has its place, but when it becomes sep-
arated from love, it becomes objectifying and destructive and a functionary of
wrath, while language divorced from its transcendent origin becomes Babel or
babble. Yet all of this refers to the fallen world, the sphere of discord, chaos,
confusion. The means of order’s restoration is the Word, the restoration of light
and love in one’s life. But such a restoration takes place through a process of
awakening or illumination that is a process of transmuting wrath into love,
darkness into light. This process is also that of restoring language from its
fallen state (as a means of objectification) into its primordial state of union.
This process is the awakening of the true Word in us. Böhme writes that “our
whole religion consists in learning how to go out of dissension and vanity and
to reënter the one Tree, whence we have come in Adam, and which is Christ in
us” (Regener, viii.2). Thus, “he who fully enters into this state of divine rest in
Christ arrives through Him at the perception of divinity. He then sees God
in himself and everywhere; he speaks with God and God speaks with him, and
he understands what is the Word, Essence, and Will of God. Such a one, and no
other, is capable of teaching the Word of God himself: for God is one with him,
and he wills nothing but what God wills through him” (Mysterium Magnum,
xlii.63). The Word of God here has special and profound meaning; it refers to
the essence of deity, the transcendent origin of existence. And by realizing this
Word, one restores all subordinate language as well as nature itself (whose crea-
tures each also incarnate divine signatures or words) to their primordial unitive
or paradisal state.
From all of this we can see that the fundamental impetus of Böhme’s work is
integrative, not on a cultural so much as on an individual, primal level. Böhme
calls the individual toward reintegration or union, and it is the individual nature
of this call that has subsequently attracted so many people, in such diverse so-
cial situations, toward theosophy. But at the same time, we can easily see how
this same integrative impulse aimed at individual transformation could as well
be applied on a wider cultural scale, as for instance as the foundation of an ef-
fort to reunify the sciences and the humanities with religion. And in fact, such
an effort is precisely what we find happening over the century following
Böhme’s life, in the movement called Rosicrucianism.
It may be, as some scholars have speculated, that Böhme was himself fa-
miliar with the same movement which, ten years before Böhme’s death,
began to emerge under the name Rosicrucian, with the publication of the
Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and the Confessio Fraternitatis (1615). But in any
event, Böhme’s writing and thought both paralleled and influenced that of the
Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, which first came to general public attention
with the publication of the Fama Fraternitatis. And of course this brief work,
like its complement the Confessio, caused a great stir in Europe, for it cap-
tured the imagination of the age with its tale of Christian Rosencreutz and his
mysterious journeys through exotic lands and secret knowledge, as well as
with its assertion of a secret order as keeper of profound and powerful knowl-
edge and means.
Not coincidentally, both the Fama and the Confessio reveal the fundamental
themes we have seen woven through the Western esoteric traditions. Certainly
we can agree with Frances Yates’s assessment that Rosicrucian may more
wisely be seen historically as describing a particular kind of approach to arcane
knowledge than as a specific organized order, even if at times such orders did
exist.44 For when we look at the actual wording of the Fama and the Confessio,
we find ample confirmation of all the primary elements of Western esotericism
thus far traced. The Rosicrucians’ goal, according to the Fama, was to follow
Christ by renewing all arts to perfection, “so that finally man might thereby un-
derstand his own nobility and worth, and why he is called Microcosmos, and
how far his knowledge extendeth into Nature.”45 This universal renewal and ex-
tension of knowledge is, generally speaking, the gnostic goal of Kabbalism,
Hermeticism, and later, of Christian theosophy as well.
But there are many other elements here that correspond exactly to our pri-
mary themes. The Fama begins by telling the story of C. R., who travels among
the Arabians and the Jews on a quest to Jerusalem, and who goes as well to
Egypt—precisely where European esotericism has always located its sources of
arcane knowledge, in the Orient, and among Sufis and Kabbalists. This journey
may also be seen as a kind of visionary recital, a visionary trip to the Orient of
the spirit, but at the same time it links the Rosicrucian movement from the very
beginning with the most gnostic aspects of Islam and Judaism, underscoring
immediately the movement’s eclecticism, if not universalism. C. R., like us,
travels to the Fez and to the Damascus of the mind. To see the journey as a
visionary recital also helps elucidate its most salient feature: the book.
For from the very beginning of the Fama, the book is a central image and
source of wisdom. Indeed, we are told at the outset that were the learned wise,
they could collect Librum Naturae, “or a perfect method of all arts.” These
“Books of Nature,” however, are to be collected by the wise, whereas there is
another more mysterious book that is the source of wisdom, and this is the
“book M.” C. R. translates the “book M.” into good Latin from Arabic, and
later we are told that Paracelsus had also “diligently read over the book M:
whereby his sharp ingenium was exalted.”46 When C. R. returns eventually to
Germany, he begins a secret fraternity with only four members including him-
self, and all are sworn to write down all that they learn, so that no one might
later be deceived. “After this manner,” the Fama continues, “began the Frater-
nity of the Rose Cross; first, by four persons only, and by them was made the
magical language and writing, with a large dictionary . . . they also made the
first part of the book M.”47 These early members of the Rose Cross order then
collected of their own writings “a book of all that which man can desire, wish,
or hope for.”
There is more. For when Christian Rosencreutz died, a century old, he was
placed in his tomb with a parchment book, called I. And there is in the tomb’s
description a great deal of arcane geometry and architecture, as well as a host
of mysterious letters and Latin inscriptions. The description is often hard to fol-
low, as when we are told that every “side or wall is parted into ten figures, every
one with their several figures and sentences, as they are truly shown and set
forth Concentratum here in our book.”48 But the import is clear: the tomb’s ar-
chitecture itself, full of geometric symbolism, forms “sentences” and a kind of
book of the hidden principles of nature and of the microcosm. Interestingly, the
Fama concludes by asserting that “our building (although one hundred thou-
sand people had very near seen and beheld the same) shall for ever remain un-
touched, undestroyed, and hidden to the wicked world.”49 How could this
mysterious building be invisible and untouched unless the building, like the
book, belongs to the mind and imagination, not the body? And does not the
“one hundred thousand” resonate with the Book of Revelation, itself a work
with intricate geometric symbolism, and with mention of one hundred forty-
four thousand saved from the wicked world at time’s end?
These themes, of eclecticism or universalism, of the uniting of all arts and
sciences, and of reading the mysterious book of books, recur as well in the Con-
fessio. The Confessio begins by telling us that its authors cannot be suspected
of any heresy, and pay no mind to the Pope or Muhammed, but follow only
Christ. Yet once again, we find references to far-flung places and hidden wis-
dom, and we find this definition of the Rosicrucian philosophy: “No other Phi-
losophy have we, than that which is the head and sum, the foundations and
contents of all faculties, sciences, and arts, the which (if we well behold our
age) containeth much of Theology and medicine . . . whereof all learned who
make themselves known to us, and come into our brotherhood, shall find more
wonderful secrets by us than heretofore they did attain unto . . . or are able to
believe or utter.”50 Thus the essence of Rosicrucianism is the universal philos-
ophy informing all arts and sciences; it is to read the universal book.
Certainly reading and writing are central to the Rosicrucian mysteries.
Among other questions, the Confessio asks: “Were it not a precious thing, that
you could so read in one only book, and withal by reading understand and re-
member, all that which in all other books (which heretofore have been, are
now, and shall be) hath been, is, and shall be learned and found out of them?”51
Likewise, we are told that to some it is permitted that they see and use “those
great letters and characters which the Lord God hath written and imprinted in
heaven and earth’s edifice.”52 “These characters and letters, as God hath here
and there incorporated them in the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, so hath he im-
printed them most apparently into the wonderful creation of heaven and earth,
yea, into all beasts . . . From which characters or letters we have borrowed our
magic writing, and have found out, and made, a new language for ourselves,
in the which withall is expressed and declared the nature of all things.”53
The implication throughout the Fama and the Confessio is that there is
dawning a miranda sexta aetatis, or sixth age, an era that recalls the earlier hi-
erohistorical mysticism of Joachim of Fiore and his complex theory of a com-
ing “age of the Holy Spirit.” The authors of the Fama and the Confessio
certainly believed in the hierohistorical significance of certain dates and astro-
logical conjunctions connected, for instance, with the date 1604, and held that
there was emerging a new revelation, a new era for mankind. These aspects of
Rosicrucianism, including the hierohistorical view of dates and the expectation
of an impending apocalypse or unveiling, correspond closely to what we also
find in Christian theosophy at roughly the same time.54 It is no coincidence that
Böhme titled his first book Aurora, for instance. But this new revelation must
be approached with humility, and grave warnings are given to those who
approach its mysteries selfishly.
All of this, of course, reminds us rather strikingly of the Book of Revelation,
with all of its emphasis on hierogeometry, metahistorical events at the end of
time, and above all, the universal revelation of Christ to humanity. One can hardly
miss the Biblical resonances of these final words of the Confessio: “Although we
might enrich the whole world, and endue them with learning . . . yet shall we
never be manifested . . . unto any man without the special pleasure of God; yea, it
shall be so far from him who thinks to get the benefit and be partaker of our
riches and knowledge, without and against the will of God, that he shall sooner
lose his life in seeking and searching for us than to find us and attain the wished
happiness of the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross.”55 The implication is that here, in
the Rosicrucian mysteries, is hidden the real essence of Christianity itself, and
that one must approach it with humility or find nothing, or worse than nothing.
Clearly for our purposes the most relevant aspect of these most seminal
Rosicrucian documents is their embrace of linguistic mysticism. Throughout
they emphasize reading the divine books of humanity and nature, and writing
in a “magic language.” Such an idea of a magic language has, of course, a very
long history in the West, stretching back at least to the Gnostics, and quite prob-
ably to Egypt. It certainly emerges in the Middle Ages in the works of Agrippa
and Trithemius, who as we have seen drew upon Kabbalistic sources. Agrippa
and Trithemius are well known for their primary and influential works on
magic, in which we find the sources of many subsequent works illustrated by
sigils and magic squares, stellar and numerical patterns connected to specific
angels, demons, or intelligences. By using these stellar and numerical patterns
in ritual magic, one is calling upon the language of the stars in order to invoke
the powers or intelligences with which they are connected.
One also finds such a magical language in the work of Dr. John Dee
(1527–1604), who, in his controversial “conversations with spirits” along with
Edward Kelley, discovered the “Enochian language,” which has subsequently
played an extensive role in the history of magic in the West. The Enochian lan-
guage is a mysterious tongue that requires tables or “keys” for its deciphering,
and it too has been used in magical workings. Here, Dee’s Enochian language
is important because no less an authority than Frances Yates concluded that the
single most important figure in the appearance of early Rosicrucianism is in
fact John Dee.56 Is it only coincidence that the date given as the discovery of
C. R.’s tomb, 1604, is the date of Dee’s death? And is it only coincidence that
the Fama and Confessio make so much of a “magical language,” one of the
most famous instances of which Dee is responsible for?
We might also remark on the history of Rosicrucianism after the publication
of the Fama, the Confessio, and the outrageously baroque, brilliant, and play-
fully symbolic Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, a work so incredi-
bly full of dense oneiric symbolism that next to it other literary works generally
seem comparatively devoid of symbols. The emergence of these three works—
and their implication that there existed in Europe a secret high order of adepts
who possessed the keys to the hidden language of the cosmos—naturally
caused a sensation, and the subsequent furor manifested itself in a host of other
Rosicrucian works, as well as a developing mythology of Rosicrucianism.
Here, we have no reason to delve into the question of whether there existed any
such secret orders, or why, if there was such a fraternity as claimed in the Fama
and Confessio, it should be publicly proclaimed in this way.
But it is worthwhile to note that the Rosicrucian furor lasted only a few short
years, disappearing around 1620, as Frances Yates notes, precisely the time of
political upheaval in Germany and the advent of the Thirty Years’ War. By
1623, there was a great deal of anti-Rosicrucian sentiment, particularly in
France, even a kind of nascent Rosicrucian witch-hunt. And all of this was tied
in with the emerging rationalist and materialist paradigm of the so-called En-
lightenment—which was precisely opposed to the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
The Rosicrucian dream, which we see outlined in the Fama and Confessio, as
well as in subsequent literature, was of a non-sectarian, peaceful, universal cul-
ture dedicated to the investigation of the language of nature, written in the mi-
crocosm and in the macrocosm; it is a culture founded on Kabbalah and
alchemy, that is, on a pansophic mysticism.
Here we must introduce the word pansophy, or pansophia. One finds this
word appearing frequently in Hermetic publications immediately following
the Rosicrucian announcements, as in for instance Joseph Stellatus’s Pegasus

Firmamenti sive Introductio brevis in veterum sapientiam [Pegasus of the Fir-
mament, or a Brief Introduction to the Ancient Wisdom, Once Taught in the
Magia of the Egyptians and Persians and Now Rightly Called the Pansophia
of the Venerable Society of the Rosy Cross (n.p., 1618)]. The word Pansophia
here separates this new form of esotericism from Theosophia, which is specif-
ically Christian gnosis.
Pansophy, in contrast to theosophy, is universal, not specifically Christian,
in its aims and in the sources upon which it draws; it emphasizes magic,
alchemy, herbalism, healing, cabala, and inquiry into nature more generally,
and draws eclecticly on much earlier ‘pagan’ traditions like those attributed to
Egypt and Persia. In many respects, pansophy resembles the aims and works
of Giordano Bruno, that quixotic character still insufficiently studied, but like
Dee, central to the subsequent emergence of modern forms of esotericism.
Stellatus cites Hermes Trismegistus (of course!), Ruechlin, Paracelsus, and
Michael Maier, and thus places himself squarely in the mainstream of the pri-
mary Western esoteric currents. Pansophy as a movement corresponds exactly
to this kind of self-placement and synthesis: it is the emergence of a univer-
salist Western esotericism willing to draw on all previous esoteric movements,
Christian or not, magical, alchemical, cabalistic, and gnostic, in order to form
the basis for a new, universal culture like that imaged in Bacon’s New Atlantis
or other utopias of the time.
The word pansophy itself largely disappears from the European vocabulary
after the eighteenth century, but what the word signifies certainly does not dis-
appear. The emergence of a pansophic approach to esotericism seems very
much a counterbalance to the emergent extreme rationalism and materialism
that also gave birth to scientism, mechanism, and technologism. The latter are
all based in an objectivization of the cosmos or of humanity as objects of study,
hence on our separation from and manipulation of them. It is true that chem-
istry, for instance, derived from alchemy, but one might well see chemistry as
a dimunition of alchemy—for alchemy requires humility and selflessness,
whereas purely chemical experimentation requires nothing of oneself except to
be a firmly rationalist observer. The pansophic view, an esoteric universalism
that includes alchemy, certainly was temporarily vanquished by rationalist ma-
terialism, but the pansophic impulse nonetheless has continued to govern West-
ern esotericism up to the present day.
The pansophic current includes all the primary streams of esotericism, in-
cluding, of course, various forms of magic. The most obviously included is nat-
ural magic, or magia naturalis, but one also finds the emergence of various
other shades of magic, often with Kabbalistic influence. We might recall that,
although the Kabbalists we discussed earlier were almost exclusively interested
in what we may call high mysticism, there is a long tradition of Kabbalism as
the basis for magical practices including sorcery. And in fact most grimoires
have a Hebrew basis for the angelic and demonic names and characteristics that
they list for invocation or evocation. One also can see in such willingness to in-
corporate any form of knowledge whatever, including sorcery, the pansophic
impetus behind the legend of Johannes Faust, who refused to allow any bound-
aries to his search for knowledge.
The Faustian legend is so resonant still because it expresses something fun-
damental about the emerging modern period. Of course because of the ascent
of rationalist materialism and secularism, we tend to think of Faust, who makes
a pact with Mephistopheles in order to gain knowledge, as a somewhat me-
dieval figure. Yet the Faustian impulse to search out all knowledge and means
of knowledge, even if it is illicit, is peculiarly modern and in some respects
characteristically pansophic. Once Protestantism and secularism began to
emerge in Europe, one finds a range of possibilities opening up, and if at one
pole rationalist disbelief in the transcendent becomes acceptable, at the other
pole research into the previously forbidden also becomes more common. In
some respects, the pansophic impulse is fundamentally similar to the scientific:
it consists in investigation into the mysteries of the unknown and of nature.
One sees this desire to map the cosmos in the emergence, in later Rosicru-
cianism, of vast and intricate tables, diagrams, and illustrations revealing the
hidden nature of the universe. Among the first of these, predating the Rosicru-
cian furor but certainly influencing its later productions, was the Calendarium
Naturale Magicum Perpetuum Profundissimam Rerum Secretissimarum Con-
templationem [Perpetual Natural Magical Calendar] of Tycho Brahe, printed
by Theodore de Bry in 1582. Here we have a massive compendium of magical
knowledge, including the names and seals or sigils of angels in Hebrew and
Latin, magic squares, planetary correspondences, and much else. This compi-
lation is of special importance for us because it reveals the far-flung syncretic
origins of the pansophic impulse, which later emerged in almost endless detail
in the Geheime Figuren [Secret Figures] of the Rosicrucians.
The Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer, a series of extraordinarily complex
illustrations, was published at Altona in 1785–1788. It was probably preceded
by and certainly followed by other versions, including a French edition titled
F. de La Rose-Croix,57 and in all cases is replete with examples of the effort to
map universal knowledge not only physical but also metaphysical. There are
numerous such manuscripts with various versions of these ilustrations, chiefly
under the title Physica, Metaphysica, et Hyperphysica, D.O.M.A., almost all,
and perhaps all belonging to the late eighteenth century.58 Characteristic of
these esoteric illustrations is one entitled Figura Divina Theosoph. Cabball. nee
non Magia, Philosophia, atque Chymia [Divine Figure of Theosoph. Cabballa:
Not Only Magic and Philosophy, But Chemistry]. It is an astonishingly complex
illustration, with concentric circles marking divinity at the top, and a series of
triangles and concentric circles below, marking a host of alchemical stages and
enigmatic sayings as well as planetary and zodiacal symbols.59
There is a great deal of controversy over the precise relation of such a man-
uscript or illustration to Böhmean theosophy, for instance, or to Rosicrucian-
ism. Is there a direct indebtedness to Böhmean theosophy, for instance, to the
esoteric illustrations accompanying Johann Gichtel’s edition of Böhme’s col-
lected works? Is this a specifically Rosicrucian illustration at all? Such ques-
tions I leave for others to answer; here we have a different focus. For our focus
is upon what such an illustration signifies. Here, in visual form, is an effort to
render a mappa mundi, but a map of the hidden aspects of the world, of its hy-
perphysical dimensions. Just as the eighteenth century was an era of physical
cartography, so too it was an era of hyperphysical cartography, of efforts to sur-
vey the ethereal realms.
And thus when we look at an illustration from D.O.M.A. entitled “Un-
endliche Ewigkeit und Unerforschliche Primum Mobile” [“Infinite Eternity
and Unknowable Primum Mobile”], we find a more or less typical series of im-
ages: above is the Prima Materia, marked also Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as
well as Jehovah in Hebrew, surrounded by winged angelic forms. Below that is
an intermediate principial realm marked “Water,” “Heavenly Seed,” “Animal
Seed,” “Vegetable Seed,” and “Mineral Seed,” and so forth. This middle realm
is marked “Figura Cabbalistica,” and has on either side gnomic sayings, such as
“Ein Prophet gilt nichst in seinem Vaterlande [A prophet is not honored in his
native land.]” Below is an elemental sphere marked with the zodiacal signs, and
with the word Chaos. Here chaos does not mean total confusion so much as
‘potentiality’; the lower sphere represents the temporal realm, and Earth de-
picted as a ball exists between the elemental and intermediate realms, partak-
ing in both, that is, in time and in eternity.
Extremely intricate hyperphysical cartography like this seems to be chiefly
a creation of the early modern period; such spiritual mapmaking has its prede-
cessors in the medieval era, of course, in scholastic theology, but it appears the
early modern mania for physical cartography had its exact complement in the
occult sciences—indeed, it seems entirely symbolically appropriate that Dr.
John Dee, the greatest occultist of his day, also was relied upon as Queen Eliz-
abeth’s cartographer. The term occult sciences may raise an eyebrow, yet there
is ample reason to use such a term, not only because many of the early major
scientific figures were in fact also alchemists, but even more because there is
good reason to think of Western esoteric currents in general as being based in
verifiable experimentation, in investigation without regard for dogmatic reli-
gious barriers, and in the effort to create a comprehensive map of the cosmos.
Fundamentally the same characteristics mark the comprehensive esotericism
represented by the D.O.M.A. manuscript and the efforts at a comprehensive
cosmology found in modern science.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when esotericists could imagine a
unified cosmology that included religion, science, the arts, and literature in a
spiritually centered universe. This is the kind of comprehensive worldview vis-
ible in such illustrations as the ones we see emerging during the eighteenth cen-
tury, and it is also clearly visible in the major works of that era, stretching right
into the nineteenth century. We have already referred to Georg von Welling’s
Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum (1784), representing exactly such
a compendium of knowledge in largely written form (albeit including also il-
lustrations and tables). Another such figure, denigrated in his own day as some-
thing of a plagiarist, was John Heydon, author of such works as Theomagia, or
the Temple of Wisdom, (London: 1663–1664) and The Wise-mans Crown, or the
Glory of the Rosie-cross, (London: 1665). Heydon’s Theomagia in particular
attempts to be a kind of universal compendium of the occult sciences.
But such universalism is a constant theme from the seventeenth century on,
and is certainly not limited to works labeled Rosicrucian. One finds the same
effort at universality in theosophy, as for instance in the vast metaphysical car-
tography of John Pordage (1604–1681), who in his multivolume Göttliche und
Wahre Metaphysica (Frankfurt/Leipzig: 1715/1746) (probably written during
the 1670s, but published only in German), chronicled what one discovers in
visiting in vision the various discarnate realms of existence. One sees this also,
of course, in the numerous volumes of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772),
originally a scientist, but after his visionary entry into discarnate realms, a pro-
lific chronicler of the unseen. And one sees the same effort to bridge the realms
in the works of Franz von Baader (1765–1841), truly a Renaissance man, who
studied minerology, invented an industrial process, and became one of the most
impressive writers on religious and spiritual themes of the nineteenth century,
not a visionary, but a profound intellectual who consciously sought to bridge
the gap between the sciences and religion.
From the seventeenth until the twentieth centuries, in other words, Western
esotericism often aims at universal knowledge, at a truly comprehensive
metaphysics and cosmology. Such a universalist goal does not exclude the
human, and specifically, the social and political realm. And it is in the so-
ciopolitical realm that the Rosicrucian impulse had considerable impact, first
with the consistent emphasis of Rosicrucian works on the transformation of
society and the establishment of a utopia, and later in the development of
modern Freemasonry. For all of the Rosicrucian, theosophic, and pansophic
movements we have discussed in turn fed into Freemasonry, which, unlike
these other more individualistic movements, maintained a definite organiza-
tional hierarchy and structure.
Freemasonry, of course, began in the medieval period as one of many craft
guilds, each of which guarded its particular mysteries, those of masonry be-
longing to the arts of architecture and building, and associated with the vast
cathedrals of medieval Europe. Masonry, not surprisingly, flourished in the

vicinity of Jewish scholarship and Kabbalism, contact probably having its ori-
gins in the lengthy period of communication between Islamic, Jewish, and
Christian circles in Spain and Provençe. It is true that there were other such
guilds with their own rites and mysteries, but the Freemasons endured the
longest, primarily because of Kabbalistic influence that allowed Freemasonry
to transform itself completely from a society devoted to the arts of building, to
a speculative, semireligious occult fraternity.
Of course, the exact history of this transformation is sketchy at best, but it is
clear that like Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry became the nexus for many prior
esoteric traditions. Indeed, there seems little doubt that Rosicrucianism itself—
whose apocalyptic hopes for an immediate reform of humanity were dashed by
the reality of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany—in turn fed into the Masonic
stream. Certainly it is the case that Rosicrucianism as a movement dried up
fairly early, if as a fraternity it had ever really existed at all, but as an influence
Rosicrucianism remained powerful, and its universalist esotericism became im-
mensely influential in Masonic circles chiefly through the auspices of Robert
Fludd and Elias Ashmole.
Robert Fludd (1574–1637) was born into a Shropshire family, his father, Sir
Thomas Fludd, having received a knighthood for his military service, and hav-
ing left his military career to become a justice of the peace in Kent. Robert
Fludd went to St. John’s College in Oxford, traveled for a time as a tutor to aris-
tocratic families on the Continent, (where he probably began to learn Paracel-
sian medicine), and eventually returned to England to receive his doctorate in
medicine. Like Paracelsus himself, Fludd was somewhat contentious as a
young physician, and during this time began work on his major treatises, in-
cluding his encyclopedic Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minoris Meta-
physica, Physica Atque Technica Historia [History of the Macrocosm and
Microcosm] (Oppenheim: de Bry, 1617), intended as a vast compendium of
human knowledge including theosophy, the arts, and the sciences.
Fludd, to whom the term Renaissance man could certainly be applied,
clearly sought to incorporate the full range of human knowledge into his
theosophia perennis, and so it is not surprising to find his work filled with
countless references to figures and works as diverse as Boethius and the Cor-
pus Hermeticum, Plato and the Bible, Martianus Capella and, of course, the
Kabbalah. Fludd was among the first to develop a comprehensive esoteric
framework for seeing the world, and among his primary influences were Kab-
balism, on which he explicitly drew, and Rosicrucianism. Indeed, the same time
that saw Fludd’s publication of his History by de Bry saw his publication also
of two treatises in Latin defending the “Fraternity of the Rosy Cross,” pub-
lished in Leiden, in 1616 and 1617. Such publication was, of course, the con-
ventional way of advertising one’s desire to join the fraternity, and although
Fludd later claimed that he received no reply, he did say that the Rosicrucian
“Pansophia or universal knowledge in Nature” was very like his own view.60
Then again, it was also conventional to say that one had received no reply, since
the Rosicrucians were traditionally sworn to silence.
But in any event, it is clear that Fludd identified with the Rosicrucian views,
and through his acquaintance with Elias Ashmole, he may indeed have pro-
vided a bridge between the earlier Rosicrucian movement and the nascent Ma-
sonic one. By the early 1630s, it was clear to Fludd that identification with the
Rosicrucians subjected one to much public vitriol—Fludd had been the subject
of bitter attacks by a French monk, Marin Mersenne. Mersenne was a friend of
the young René Descartes, who had actually gone in search of the Rosicrucians
(to the dismay of Mersenne) and Mersenne’s massive attacks on Hermeticism
and Kabbalism as well as Rosicrucianism certainly influenced the emergence
of what has come to be known as Cartesian rationalism. Such attacks undoubt-
edly prompted Fludd to write in his Clavis Philosophae that the name Rosicru-
cian must today be replaced by simply “the Wise.”
Elias Ashmole, who was certainly acquainted with Fludd before Fludd’s
death in 1637, was a remarkable figure who stood at the center of esoteric cur-
rents in England. Ashmole, born to an aristocratic family, used his wealth and
influence primarily and one may even say, almost exclusively for esoteric
causes. Himself an alchemist, astrologer, and assiduous bibliophile, Ashmole
collected what undoubtedly was and remains one of the world’s greatest col-
lections of papers and books, in the Ashmolean library at Oxford. That Ash-
mole knew of Fludd and his Rosicrucianism is certain, for he himself noted that
“Robert Fludd in his apology for the Brethren of the Rosie Cross hath gone
very far herein.”61 But for our purposes, most significant is the fact that Ash-
mole was demonstrably a Mason, having been initiated into a Masonic lodge in
1646, for thus we can see direct evidence of the link between earlier Rosicru-
cianism and later Freemasonry.
Yet this relationship itself is only the tip of a far greater network of associa-
tions and friendships as well as influences. Frances Yates convincingly argues
that Dr. John Dee, and especially his treatise Monas Hieroglyphica, was very
influential in the founding of Rosicrucianism some years after Dee’s travels
through Germany and Eastern Europe. Dee’s son, Dr. Arthur Dee, was himself
an alchemist and esoteric scholar, who in turn was a friend of Sir Thomas
Browne, one of the major English literary figures of the seventeenth century.
And Dee and Browne in turn knew Ashmole, who was responsible in part for
the renaissance of Rosicrucianism within English Freemasonry, and who col-
lected much on and by John Dee—so that one might well say that the esoteric
movement here went from England to the Continent, and back to England, back
and forth in an intricate series of associations and publications that certainly
have not been exhaustively examined.
Ashmole, editor of the extensive Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum collec-

tion of alchemical works, was not simply an antiquarian, although certainly that
impulse was strong in him. He also was a practicing Hermetic esotericist,
whose mentor was William Backhouse of Swallowfield (1593–1662), himself
an alchemist and antiquarian as well as a botanist and student of architecture.62
Backhouse’s father, Samuel, had had connections with John Dee and Edward
Kelley, and William Backhouse adopted Ashmole as a “son,” attested in a note
by Ashmole dated 3 April 1651. This was a Hermetic spiritual adoption, said
to have its origins in the revelation of Hermes to his “spiritual son,” and trans-
mitted orally from master to one disciple since antiquity. Backhouse con-
tributed old alchemical manuscripts to Ashmole’s collection, introduced
Ashmole to Hermetic circles, and according to Ashmole’s note in 1653, when
Backhouse thought he was dying, conveyed to Ashmole “in Silables the true
matter of the Philosopher’s Stone,” “bequeathed to me as a legacy.”63
That this spoken revelation of the philosopher’s stone comes in “silables”
suggests strongly the nature of the Western esoteric linguistic mysticism we
have been tracing since antiquity. These “silables” may be seen as alchemical
hieroglyphs, or as Kabbalistic, but they are in any case gnostic, meaning that
they convey the true and secret name and character of the philosophic work. It
is significant that Ashmole, after recording this revelation, never referred to it
again, and wrote himself in Theatrum Chemicum that the spiritual son was
under an obligation never to reveal the mystery into which he was initiated, ex-
cept to his own spiritual son. All of this, of course, resonates closely with the
Rosicrucian ideal of silence and invisibility, which in turn harks back to the
“namelessness” and invisibility of the true Knights of the Round Table in
chivalric literature. The true name is hidden, and must remain so.
If this were the only instance of ‘magical language’ during this era of the
emergence of Freemasonry as a vehicle for esotericism, of course, one could ig-
nore it, but instead one finds that a linguistic mysticism was in fact at the heart
of a movement that fired the English Civil War. Hugh Trevor-Roper remarks that
Cromwell’s movement was impelled by “three philosophers . . . the real . . . and
only philosophers of the English Revolution,” Samuel Hartlib (1593–1670),
John Dury (1596–1680), and John Comenius (1592–1690).64 These three men,
who had left Germany for England after the failure of the Palatinate, were at the
center of a movement of educational and societal reform called the “invisible
college,” or what Comenius termed the Collegium Lucis, an esoteric network of
illuminated intelligentsia. All three of the men had been active in Rosicrucian
circles, and now in England all worked at the immediate transformation of soci-
ety into a peaceful, non-sectarian utopia where all the divisions of knowledge
could be studied together, using a symbolic metalanguage.
Comenius had developed a system of education based in analogical corre-
spondences, and Hartlib had worked to form such colleges both in Germany
and in England, but it is on some remarks by Dury that we should now focus.
For Dury listed under “Things to Be Observed” in his platform for social
transformation:
1. Some extraordinary meanes to perfeit the knowledge and unvail the mys-
teryes of the Propheticall scriptures.
2. Meanes to perfeit the knowledge of the Orientall tongues and to gaine
abilities fitt to deale with the Jewes, whose calling is supposed to be neere
at hand.
3. Arts and Sciences, Philosophicall, Chymical, and Mechanical; whereby not
only the Secrets of Disciplines are harmonically and compendiously deliv-
ered, but also the Secrets of Nature are thought to be unfolded . . .
4. A magical Language whereby secrets may be delivered and preserved to
such as are made acquainted with it traditionally.65
Dury’s remarks here are interesting not least because they reveal his attraction to
Jewish Kabbalism, which from a Christian viewpoint could well be defined as
“some extraordinary meanes to perfeit the knowledge and unvail the mysteryes”
of the Scriptures, and had often been seen as a means of connecting Christian-
ity with Judaism. Also important here is the third point, the conjoining of all the
disciplines in service of the “secrets of Nature,” certainly a pansophic goal.
But most important for us is the final point, the establishing of a “magical
language” for the conveying of secret knowledge. The aim of a magical lan-
guage is, needless to say, esoteric: to limit those who understand it, and also to
convey what cannot be conveyed in common language. However, there is an-
other aspect of such a magical language: its universality. Such a language, like
the symbolism of alchemy, would transcend any national or cultural linguistic
boundaries. Its pansophic universality has its parallel in the universalism of
Masonry, which quickly established lodges all across Europe and in America,
so that by the mid-eighteenth century much of the Western world was dotted
with Masonic groups.
Early in the eighteenth century, Masonry had a deist and rationalist quality
that aided in its spread, visible in James Anderson’s Constitutions of the
Freemasons (1723), which had a considerable influence in promoting Ma-
sonry’s nonsectarian tolerance. Freemasonry, according to the Constitutions,
means that “A Mason is oblig’d by his Tenure to obey the Moral Law . . .
whereby Masonry becomes the Center of Union and the Means of conciliating
true Friendship among Persons that must have else remain’d at a perpetual Dis-
tance.”66 But this rationalist tolerance marks exoteric Freemasonry, and as Ed-
mond Mazet remarks, there is little in the basic principles of Freemasonry to
suggest a specific Masonic esotericism.
Yet if early-eighteenth-century Freemasonry, especially in England, had an

exoteric, nonsectarian basis, it quickly began to develop an esoteric emphasis,
especially in France. This esotericism was kindled by Andrew Michael Ramsay
(1686–1743), a Scotsman who early in his life was a member of the Philadel-
phian Society of Jane Leade and Francis Lee, a theosophic circle in London.
From here he went on to stay with Pierre Poiret, a Böhmenist who then sent him
on to Archbishop Fénelon, after which he became secretary to Madame Guyon.
After her death, he became a tutor to various aristocratic families, while pub-
lishing numerous books. And during this time, Ramsay, who had been initiated
into Masonry years before, became prominent in French Masonry, and in 1737
gave an oration that had a profound effect. In it, he discussed the importance
of chivalry and the Templars, thus stimulating a host of higher degrees.
In this oration, Ramsay also called for a massive project of universal illu-
mination:
All the Grand Masters in Germany, England, Italy, and elsewhere exhort
all the learned men and all the artisans of the Fraternity to unite to furnish
materials for a Universal Dictionary of the liberal arts and useful sci-
ences, excepting only theology and politics.
The work has already been commenced in London, and by means of
the union of our Brothers it may be carried to a conclusion in a few
years . . . By this means the lights of all nations will be united in a single
work, which will be a universal library of all that is beautiful, great, lu-
minous, solid, and useful in all the sciences and in all the noble arts.67
There are echoes in this project of the Rosicrucian aims of a century before, but
here they take on a distinctly rationalist flavor, and indeed, it is not surprising
that this project, announced in Ramsay’s oration, has subsequently been cred-
ited with at least some of the inspiration for the later French philosophes and
their Encyclopédie.
Thus we find that Freemasonry has a peculiarly dual relation to esotericism
and modernity. On the one hand, Masonic values of rationalism, deism, and non-
sectarianism certainly helped develop the modern era, with its general tendency
to reject, suppress, or ignore esotericism. On the other hand, Masonry became a
vehicle for esotericism, developing complicated symbolism in its rituals, includ-
ing, for instance, the introduction of alchemical symbolism into the rites, and a
long tradition of eclectic esotericism among its members.68 Within Masonry it-
self, one finds a continuous struggle since at least the eighteenth century between
those such as Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730–1824), one of the founders of the
Rectified Scottish Rite and a powerful proponent of speculative or esoteric Ma-
sonry, and those who insist on a much more exoteric, fraternal Freemasonry, con-
sisting in three degrees of apprentice, fellow craftsman, and master mason.
Yet despite the insistence of some on a more exoteric Masonry, the tradition
has long been seen as maintaining occult knowledge, specifically, as maintain-
ing a special linguistic power that lies at the heart of building, that is, of human
and divine architecture both. As we have already seen, such an emphasis on the
powers of divine creation is characteristic of Kabbalism since the medieval pe-
riod, and so it is not surprising to discover that in 1676 we find Masonry asso-
ciated with the “Modern Green Ribbon’d Caball,” as well as references to those
who are said to have the “Mason’s word.” In other words, from very early on in
the development of modern Masonry, the tradition is linked to Masonic lin-
guistic mysticism. In the Graham manuscript of 1726, we find an exorcism rit-
ual to be used by Masons in the construction of a building, a ritual that relies
upon “foundation words.”69
These words take their derivation from the building of Solomon’s Temple,
when “the secrets of Freemasonry [were] ordered aright as is now and will be
to the end of the world for such as do rightly understand it—in three parts in
reference to the blessed Trinity who made all things, yet in thirteen branches
in reference to Christ and his twelve apostles, which is as follows: one word
for a divine, six for the clergy, and six for the fellow craft.”70 What are these
words divided evenly between the clergy and Freemasons? There is some evi-
dence of Kabbalistic influence in Freemasonry of the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries—for instance, in The Whole Institutions of Freema-
sons Opened (1725): “Yet for all this I want the primitive word, I answer it was
God in six Terminations, to wit I am,” which Edmond Mazet sees as “a clear
allusion to the six permutations of the trigrammaton YHW, by which, accord-
ing to the Sepher Yetsirah (1.8), God has sealed the six directions of space.”71
And there are some Hebrew words in early Masonic documents—not surpris-
ingly, since one finds Hebrew frequently in Rosicrucian illustrations and
works as well.
In other words, when we look closely at the emergence of Freemasonry, we
find that it definitely does draw upon earlier esoteric currents, and that as the
Masonic current continues through the eighteenth century, it continues to draw
upon these and other currents to become itself among the most eclectic of eso-
teric traditions, even if it is subject to periodic spasms of anti-esotericism.
Freemasonry, based as it is on the craft of building, has a natural connection to
Kabbalistic mysticism that also focuses on divine architecture; but it also later
drew explicitly and implicitly on the chivalric, theosophic, Rosicrucian, and al-
chemical currents of Western esotericism, especially with the founding of the
Orden des Guelden-und Rosen-Cruetzes, the Order of the Gold and Rosy-
Cross, a Masonic Rosicrucianism begun in 1757 in Germany that incorporated
Templar and alchemical symbolism too. Indeed, even to this day, the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite, the most popular form of contemporary Masonry,
preserves its eighteenth grade as that of the Chevalier Rose-Croix.
Like the Rosicrucianism that preceded it, speculative Masonry is a manifes-

tation of the more general modern dream of universalism, in this case a univer-
sal esotericism that unites all forms of knowledge, joining the humanities and
the sciences under the aegis of a broadly conceived spirituality. Here, of course,
we are disregarding the more or less social aspects of Freemasonry, as well as
its political dimensions that came to the fore with Adam Weishaupt and others
during the eighteenth century. The universalist esotericist dream is not the
provenance of Masonry as an organization, but of individuals and circles within
the larger stream of Masonic tradition. One might best say that Freemasonry
contains the possibility of a universalist esotericism, which has been sporadi-
cally realized by individuals.
When we consider the seminal modern Western esoteric currents together,
including alchemy, Kabbalah, magic, Masonry, pansophy, Rosicrucianism, and
Christian theosophy, we cannot help but recognize similarities among them all.
Above all, we see a central distinction between them all and what we can char-
acterize as the dominant modern materialist view. For whereas modern society
is founded on the objectifying separation of everything from the individual (al-
lowing the exploitation of the entire cosmos, including humanity), all of these
esoteric traditions are founded upon the overcoming of this objectification
through the recognition of how microcosm and macrocosm are mutually illu-
minating, of how humanity is meant to redeem the cosmos, not consume it. All
of these esoteric currents further presuppose that humans are capable of spiri-
tual regeneration and of attaining gnosis, or direct experiential knowledge of
the divine.
Finally, woven through all of these traditions is the theme of language, not
just as the means of communication among people, but as the actual medium
linking humanity, nature, and the divine. Here, in Western esotericism, language
is not just a means for objectification and separation, but actually the means for
overcoming that objectification. For according to Western esotericism generally,
divine language inheres in the whole of creation—each kind of creature bears
within it the divine stamp, its secret “silable,” or signature, and this the esoteri-
cist unveils through visionary perception. What is more, by coming to learn the
divine language of creation, the esotericist is actually redeeming or restoring the
cosmos to its transcendent or paradisal origin. Thus the esotericist plays a cen-
tral role in the drama of cosmic redemption itself. And this role is played out
through reading and writing, the theme of our next section.
Figure 1 Alchemical images from Michael
M a i e r, T r i p u s A u r e u s ( F r a n k f u r t : 1 6 1 8 ) .
Figure 2 Another alchemical image from
M i c h a e l M a i e r, T r i p u s A u r e u s ( 1 6 1 8 ) .
Figure 3 Theosophic image entitled “Seren-
ity” from Jacob Böhme, Theosophia Revelata,
oder: Alle Götliche Schriften Jacob Böhmens
(1730 ed.), edited by Johann Georg Gichtel.
Figure 4 Theosophic image entitled “Three
Principles” from Jacob Böhme, Theosophia
Revelata, oder: Alle Götliche Schriften Jacob
Böhmens (1730 ed.), edited by Johann Georg
Gichtel.
Figure 5 Theosophic image entitled
“Earthly and Heavenly Mysterium” from
Jacob Böhme, Theosophia Revelata, oder:
Alle Götliche Schriften Jacob Böhmens (1730
ed.), edited by Johann Georg Gichtel.
Figure 6 Pansophic image from Georg von
We l l i n g , O p u s M a g o - C a b b a l i s t i c u m e t T h e o -
sophicum (Frankfurt: 1784). Note that be-
yond the celestial hierarchy is the Ungrund,
which is here explicitly identified with the
Kabbalistic ’en soph.
sophicum, (Frankfurt: 1784). Note the three-
dimensional nature of the illustration, as
well as the prominence of the figure of the
eye.
sophicum (Frankfurt: 1784).
Figure 9 Cecil Collins, “The Music of
Dawn,” 1988. Note the contrast between the
g e o m e t r i c a l i m a g e s i n G e o rg v o n We l l i n g ’s
illustrations, and the evocative, other-
worldly nature of Collins’s work.
Figure 10 Cecil Collins, “Paradise,” 1976.
3 Modern Implications
P R O S P E R O ’ S WA N D :
M O D E R N E S O T E R I C L I T E R AT U R E
In the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest, something remarkable hap-

pens at the play’s end. The main character, the magician Prospero, has brought
the play’s action to an end, and the comedic drama is brought to its resolution,
so that we are left viewing the magician himself. Prospero then offers the
famous epilogue:
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,

And what strength I have’s my own,
Which is most faint. Now ‘tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not
Since I have my dukedom got,
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer
Which pierces so that it assaults
87
Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
Here Prospero, having relinquished his magical power, in effect gives his wand
to his audience. Suddenly, a magical transferral has taken place: we realize that
we are the magicians, that ours is the magical breath to fill the sails, ours the
prayers that can free Prospero just as he in turn held the spirit Ariel in enchant-
ment, and freed him. In this most magical of plays, we realize that we, as audi-
ence, are the magicians.
This transference of magical power from the playwright and actor, via the
main character, to the audience, reveals at a stroke the nature of magical eso-
teric literature. Conventionally, today, we may read in order to gather informa-
tion about a subject; we may read in order to be diverted or entertained; but
there is no transference of magical power. Reading, for most of us, is a prosaic
matter, often little more than the accumulation of data. But this is not the way
literature always has been seen. Prospero’s transfer of power from himself to his
audience is reminiscent of Celtic tradition, for instance, where the poet-singer
is, by virtue of his skill with words, also a magician. To incant is to enchant, to
sing or to say into being. To be a vehicle for the right words, traditionally, is to
touch the nature of being itself.
We have already seen this linguistic mysticism in Kabbalism, and seen it
implied in chivalric and troubadour literature as well as in theosophy, panso-
phy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. In all of these esoteric traditions, there
are numbers, letters, and words—often Hebrew, but certainly not always—that
in themselves are believed to powerful, to invoke the forces of creation itself.
It is true that the Western esoteric traditions are very diverse, but one can cer-
tainly trace throughout their history a thread that we might call the mysteries
of the word. Here, language is not a series of arbitrary signs used to designate
objects, but rather a linguistic manifestation of what informs and transcends
these objects.
Initially, I had intended to include here a study of the art of surrealist Max
Ernst, whose fascination with Hermetic and alchemical themes is well known
and documented conclusively by M. E. Warlick.1 Many of Ernst’s paintings re-
veal his use of alchemical imagery: his collage “The Laugh of the Cock”
(1934), for example, shows a tall, winged creature in an ornate room, standing
above a reclining woman, behind whom is what at first glance resembles an al-
chemical retort with a candle in it. But closer examination of this and Ernst’s
other works does not seem to reveal what we find in alchemical works them-
selves, or in works by twentieth-century authors that convey various forms of
initiatory transmission. That is, Ernst indeed draws on esoteric imagery, but the
imagery is individualized and rendered surreal; it is often inverted and does not
M O D E R N I M P L I C AT I O N S 89
seem to convey a particular kind of esoteric understanding, as can in fact be

said of the works of, for instance, the poet H. D. I cannot say with certainty
whether or how Ernst’s works convey a particular kind of initiatory transmis-
sion, and so I will not discuss them further here, but there certainly is an area
here worthy of further investigation, not only in the case of Ernst, but in that of
the entire surrealist movement.2
And even when we turn to literature of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, secular or not, we find that there are not too many authors who know
about or are even concerned with this understanding of language. It is true that
esoteric themes or topics emerge in all sorts of unexpected places in modern lit-
erature, sometimes explicitly, as with Yeats or H. D., for instance, sometimes
more implicitly, as with Emerson or Rilke.3 But it is relatively difficult to find
a poet whose primary concern is with these various Western esoteric traditions,
and who has incorporated the linguistic mysticism that emerges from them into
his own poetry of the first order.
Naturally, it would be possible to catalogue and survey how the Western es-
oteric traditions appear in relatively recent literary history, with sections on
each of the major currents, split further into sections on poetry and prose. How-
ever, I will leave such a project for another time, and perhaps for someone else
to do. It is certainly worth doing. Here, I will instead focus on several major
figures and trace the influences on their work, choosing a synecdochic study
that will in turn illuminate aspects of literature that are today all too often over-
looked. While a broad, horizontal survey is of value, of even greater value is a
vertical, deeper study of how Western esotericism intersects with literature and
consciousness in our own time. And so we will concentrate first on the work of
Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (1877–1939), turning then to H. D.
(1886–1961), third, to the magical fiction of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) and oth-
ers, and finally to the remarkable art and writing of Cecil Collins (1909–1989).
Canticle of Knowledge: O. V. Milosz and Spiritual Transmission

through Poetry
O. V. Milosz is without question among the most learned poets of modern

times. But his learning is of a particular kind, without question chiefly in the
sphere of Hermeticism. Milosz’s outward life can be outlined rather succinctly.
Born to a wealthy family in Lithuania who lived on an estate called Czereïa, his
mother Jewish, his parents somewhat cold and aloof, Milosz wandered the vast
forests nearby as a child, and at twelve he was sent to Paris for schooling. After
a good education, and entry, more or less, into the world of French intelli-
gentsia, Milosz traveled widely, during which time his family sold their estate.
He wrote poetry touching on the despair and hollowness of modernity, more
or less like that of the early T. S. Eliot, and became, so his nephew Czeslaw
Milosz later wrote, a Don Juanesque figure. Then, in 1914, he experienced a
spiritual illumination, and from this period on became a serious scholar of Her-
meticism, Kabbalah, theosophy, and Western esotericism in general. Finan-
cially ruined during this time by the collapse of Russia, Milosz also became
active as a diplomat for Lithuania, participating in the League of Nations and
serving until his retirement in 1938. It was during the first half of this service
that Milosz wrote his most Hermetic works, which are what concern us here.
Milosz’s predecessors in the Western literary tradition are indissolubly
linked with religion and philosophy, and invariably sought to conjoin not only
the sciences and literature and the arts, but all of these under the sign of a Her-
metic spirituality. One can, in fact, create a kind of lineage of such figures, be-
ginning of course with Paracelsus and Böhme, and including such authors as
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), William Blake (1757–1827), Louis-
Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe
(1749–1832). Diverse as this list is in certain respects, its members have in
common that most lived during the eighteenth century and that they sought, by
way of a renewed Hermetic spirituality, to bring about a cultural renaissance
that would join together the sundered limbs of human knowledge.
Among these figures, perhaps the most seminal is Swedenborg, who was
trained as a scientist but went on to write voluminous works surveying the na-
ture, as he saw it, of heaven, hell, and the dwelling places of spirits. These Swe-
denborg saw, in vision, and depicted as peculiarly concrete—the visionary
realms of the spirit for him are palpable and his work certainly a kind of hyper-
physical cartography. Swedenborg was, and perhaps remains, far more influen-
tial than is usually acknowledged in intellectual histories; he remains a primary
force behind the works of William Blake, also a tactile visionary, and, for that
matter, Goethe, who as we will recall in his latter years tried to reunite the by-
then separated fields of the humanities and the sciences with his works on
plants and color. In both Swedenborg and Goethe we see the emergence of what
we might call a nascent spiritual science.
But it is in Milosz that we see Swedenborg’s approach, his effort to chroni-
cle the visionary experience with a kind of new science of the spirit, come to
fruition in literary form. Swedenborg of course was himself preceded in this ef-
fort by John Pordage, whose massive works are themselves scientific in their
precise descriptions and careful elucidation of all the various “divine man-
sions.” However, neither Pordage nor Swedenborg was a poet, and both wrote
in dry, almost pedantic ways of their visionary experiences. Not so Milosz,
whose poems and prose are not only recountings of visionary experiences, but
are in fact also intended to invoke these experiences in the reader; Milosz’s po-
etry, though drawing on this tradition of scientific observation of visionary
experience, in a mysterious way also embodies and is the experience.
Here it may be useful to remark on the kind of new science we see emerging
in these writers, and especially in Milosz. Contemporary sciences are founded
in observation of the cosmos; the observer looks outward, and does not in gen-
eral investigate the nature of the observer’s own consciousness. But the poet,
and especially the figures we are discussing here, turn their attention inward
and become careful observers of the inner landscape. Cartographers of con-
sciousness, they are all intimately aware of the great schisms taking place in
modern humanity, the immense devastation of the self as it is torn asunder from
the divine, from the cosmos, and from its fellow humanity and seemingly set
adrift as an isolated being. This isolation Blake rails against in his epic poems,
insisting instead on the inner creative life of the artist; and like Blake, Milosz
experiences this inner devastation as well as the powerful creative life awak-
ened when one enters into the living realm of the spiritual imagination.
Milosz’s work is explicitly dedicated not only to entering into this realm of
the spiritual imagination, but indeed, to awakening it in his reader. Milosz
himself wrote in a brief and late treatise on poetry, summarizing in some re-
spects his life’s work, that he anticipated a new poetry, which “will contribute
in large measure to realizing an inner synthesis of the great discoveries in
physical chemistry, astronomy, and also prehistory and archaic history.”4 He
discerned “a new mysticism,” which, “setting out from proven scientific foun-
dations, seems bound, through a new metaphysics, to join up with ancient
teachings.”5 And he writes of the “sacred art of the Word,” which “springs
from the hidden depths of Universal Being,” telling us that “poetry, the pas-
sionate pursuit of the Real, seems called upon, as the organizer of archetypes,
to survive not only our industrial civilization but also Space-Time itself.”6
Thus he addresses his writings not to the present age but to the future reader
who will experience this new poetry and synthesis of all the disciplines, crown
of human knowledge.
At this juncture, it will no doubt be useful to look more closely at some of
Milosz’s work, and in particular, at his “Cantique de la Connaissance,” or
“Canticle of Knowledge,” from The Confession of Lemuel (1918). The “Can-
ticle” begins with the striking line: “L’enseignement de l’heure ensoleillée des
nuits du Divin. [The teaching of the sunlit hour of the divine nights.]” Thus the
canticle is devoted to teaching on the nature of spiritual illumination, which
Milosz experienced at eleven o’clock in the evening, on 14 December 1914.
The canticle continues: “A ceux, qui, ayant demandé, on reçu et savent déjà. /
A ceux que la prière a conduits à la méditation sur l’origin du langage. / Les
autres, les voleurs de douleur et de joie, de science et d’amour, n’entendront
rien à ces choses. [For those who, having asked, have received and already
know. / For those whom prayer has led to meditation on the origin of language.
/ Others, thieves of joy and pain, knowledge and love, will understand noth-
ing of these things.]”7
Milosz was unquestionably Christian in orientation, and when he dedicates

the canticle to those who have asked, have received, and already know, he is al-
luding to Christ’s saying that those who ask will receive. But characteristically,
this allusion is close to Kabbalism in that it offers a gnostic interpretation of
those verses, suggesting that the center of prayer is knowledge, “meditation on
the origin of language.” A linguistic gnosis is at the heart of the canticle; those
who are not affirmers, but negators, are merely thieves of love and knowledge.
In fact, Milosz once wrote in a letter that “there are only two kinds of men: the
negators who profess irreconcilable systems and the modest affirmers who,
from Pythagoras to Plato, through the initiates of Alexandria and Christian
mystics, to Claude de Saint-Martin and Swedenborg, etc.—all say the same
things to anyone who knows how to listen.”8 This gnostic canticle is, of course,
addressed to the latter, to the initiate.
Milosz continues his explanation of this linguistic gnosis in the “Canticle of
Knowledge,” writing that to understand the origin of language, “il est nécessaire
de connaître les objets désignés par certains mots essentiels / Tels que pain, sel,
sang, soleil, terre, eau, lumière, ténèbres, ainsi que par tous les noms de métaux
/ Car ces noms ne sont ni les frères, ni les fils, mais bien les père des objects sen-
sibles. [it is necessary to know the objects designated by certain essential words
/ Such as bread, salt, blood, sun, earth, water, light, darkness, as well as the
names of metals. / For these names are neither brothers, nor sons, but truly fa-
thers of sensible objects.]”9 In other words, the names “were hurled from the
motionless world of archetypes into the abyss of time’s turmoil.” Only “the spirit
of things has a name”; “their substance is nameless.” These names precede exis-
tence in the sensible world and time’s turmoil; the names of things emerge from
the realm of archetypes, corresponding to Plato’s realm of Forms or Ideas.
The power to name sensible objects comes from supersensible knowledge of
the archetypal realm to which our spirit belongs, and which is “situated in the
consciousness of the solar egg [situés dans la conscience de l’œuf solaire].” In-
deed, he continues, all that was in antiquity described in metaphors “exists in a
situated place.” We think that the sensible world is situated, but it is not so, not
like “Patmos,” “terre de la vision des archétypes [earth of the vision of arche-
types].” Only divine poets see the world of archetypes and describe it reverently
by means of the “termes précis et lumineux du langage de la connaissance [pre-
cise and luminous terms of the language of knowledge].” This earth of the vi-
sion of archetypes, this “situated place,” is not merely a sterile world of
symbols, but living, for “Tous les mots dont l’assemblage magique a formé ce
chant sont des noms de substances visibles [All the words whose magical as-
sembling has formed this song are names of visible substances.]”10 This
“arcana of language” is the “key to the world of light.”
It is clear by now that Milosz is not dabbling with words here, but utterly se-
rious—this is a poem about the mysteries at the heart both of language and of
existence. When he sings “the canticle of the sunlight hour of the nights of
God” and proclaims the wisdom of two worlds opened to his sight, he means
precisely what he says: “I have seen.” Simply that. Thus Milosz goes on to tell
us matter-of-factly that he who has seen stops thinking and feeling, and only
describes what he has seen. Here, Milosz tells us again, is the “key to the world
of light.” “De la magie des mots que j’assemble ici / L’or du mond sensible tire
sa secrète valeur [From the magic of the words I gather here / The sensible
world’s gold draws its secret value.]”11
There is in the “Canticle of Knowledge” a continuous thread of allusions to
gold and to the sun, as well as to the “solar egg” of the soul, and “knowledge’s
golden candlestick.” But the allusions are not necessarily to earthly gold nor to
the sun visible from the earth, for as he told us before, these ancient metaphors
refer to “substances,” to names that precede and transcend their earthly coun-
terparts, which only draw their value from their supersensible archetypes. And
so it is here. The man of light (“l’homme la lumière”) draws his knowledge from
this supersensible sun in the “motionless” realm of substances. Milosz speaks to
us directly: “Do you feel the most ancient of your memories awakening in you?
/ I reveal to you here the holy origins of your love of gold.” There is the earthly
gold, and the gold of celestial memory; he calls us to the celestial gold.
At such points, when Milosz addresses us directly, he implicates us in the
poem, calls us through its language into the truth that language manifests. For
“la vérité ne fait pas mentire le langage sacré: car elle est aussi le soleil visible
du monde substantiel. [truth does not make sacred language lie: . . . it is also the
visible sun of the substantial world].” This distinction between truth and lie, he
tells us, “is the key to the two worlds of darkness and light.” These two worlds
correspond to the two worlds of Böhme, of love and of wrath, or in Milosz’s
words, of blessing and of desolation. But beyond these two worlds is the “word
enveloped in sun, the word charged by the thunder of this dangerous time [la
parole enveloppée de soleil, le mot chargé de foudre de ce temps dangereux.]”12
This charged and sun-enveloped word reminds us of the account in Gene-
sis of creation, as well as the first chapter of John (In the beginning was the
Word), but also of the Corpus Hermeticum. Milosz exultantly writes, “I have
named you! [Je t’ai nommé!]”, which recalls the primal naming of all things
by the primal man, Adam, and then comes the following passage: “te voici
dans le rayon avant-coureur au sein du nuage figé, muet comme le plomb, /
Dans le bond et le vent de la masse de feu, / Dans l’apparition de l’esprit vir-
ginal de l’or / Dans l’apparition de l’ove à la sphère . . . [Here you are in the
first ray in the womb of the fixed cloud, mute as lead. / In the leap and wind of
the fiery mass, / In the appearance of the virginal spirit of gold, / In the pas-
sage from the egg to the sphere.]”13
As we might recall, the first section of “Poemandres” in the Corpus Her-
meticum is also a visionary creation-account, a revelation, that is, of the primal
powers at work in the constant manifestation of existence. Here too we find the
“leap and wind” of a fiery mass; here too we find a kind of “fixed cloud”; here
too we find the emergence of light and life in the opening of the “world of
light” for the visionary seer.14 I am not suggesting that Milosz is directly allud-
ing to the Corpus Hermeticum, even though I am certain that he was at least fa-
miliar with it; rather, Milosz’s visionary experience here is quite simply parallel
to and in the tradition of what we also see in “Poemandres” and, for that matter,
in the visionary writings of Böhme, to whom Milosz was definitely indebted.
The ascent to the “solar place” that Milosz describes here brings one to the
“omnipotence of affirmation,” to a “place” where “myriad spiritual bodies re-
veal themselves to virtuous senses,” yet also to a “place” of utter desolation.
Thus in the “Canticle of Knowledge,” just as in so much of Western esoteri-
cism, we find a spiritual corporeality, and a kind of corporeality of language.
Milosz tells us that he has “visited the two worlds,” for the key to the world of
light also opens the—“other region.” The “omnipotence of affirmation” is
counterbalanced, on this naked cold planet of iron and clay, by “omnipotent
negation” in “Ce lieu séparé, différent, hideux, cet immense cerveau délirant de
Lucifer [This separated place, different, hideous, this immense, delirious, Lu-
ciferic brain].”15 Here we find, not light and serenity of recognition, but “great
trials of negation,” an “eternity of horror,” and “marrow of iniquity,” those
“lands of nocturnal din.”
Yet there is a realm beyond these two worlds of affirmation and negation,
of light and darkness, and this is the “solar egg,” “immense, innocent,” self-
knowing. Thus the poet tells us not to weep for him, because whether he is
“dazzled by the solar egg,” or “hurled into the madness of the black eternity,”
“mois je suis toujours dans le même lieu, / étant dans le lieu même, le seul
situé. [I am always in the same place, / being in place itself, the only one situ-
ated.]”16 See, Milosz tells us, “the Father of Ancients, of those who speak pure
language, / played with me as a father with his child.” This playing “between
worst darkness and best light” emerges from beyond both darkness and light,
and is the province of those who speak pure language.
In the concluding lines of the canticle, Milosz muses on his early poetry,
when “like all nature poets I was sunk in profound ignorance [Comme tous les
poètes de la nature, j’étais plongé dans une profonde ignorance.]” Then one
day, he noticed that he had stopped before a mirror, and looked behind him,
where he saw “the source of lights and forms,” “the world of profound, wise,
chaste archetypes.” We might recall that the mirror, in theosophic tradition, is
the sign of Wisdom personified: Wisdom showed him the realm of Forms prior
to existence, and at this moment the “sterile woman” in him died. Thus, Milosz
writes, “I learned that in its depths man’s body encloses a remedy for all ills,
and that the knowledge of gold is also knowledge of light and blood. [C’est
ainsi que j’appris que le corps de l’homme renferme dans ses profondeurs un
remède à tous les maux et que la connaissance de l’or est aussi celle de la
lumière et du sang.]”17
The canticle concludes with the poet’s prayer that when he is finally
cleansed of both evil and good, and clothed with the sun, he will not lose the
memory of the suffering he has undergone. Thus the canticle, at its end, reaf-
firms the importance not only of the ascent to the knowledge of light, but the
descent into immense suffering and privation; it affirms the significance not
only of the virginal gold of the soul’s solar egg, but also of the inner desolation
that one can also experience on earth. In this acknowledgement of fundamental
duality in the cosmos, Milosz is very much akin to Böhme, who wrote too of
the division and conflict between love and wrath, between the lightworld and
the darkworld. And in his allusions to the visionary descent into darkness,
Milosz is close to Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, [1775–1802]), and his
Hymns to the Night.18
But Milosz has forged his own mode of expression, and is clearly express-
ing his own direct experience. This understanding he expressed often in a pe-
culiarly theatrical way, especially given Milosz’s own essentially solitary life.
Frequently his poetry has a dramatic or semidramatic quality, as though the var-
ious elements of his mind were projected outward into a kind of initiatic psy-
chodrama of the kind one also sees in ancient Hermetism or the Mysteries, as
well as in more modern movements like Freemasonry. In some poems he has a
choir or a chorus; in his 1922 poem entitled “The Adept’s Christmas Eve,”
Milosz has his character “The Adept” speaking with his inner spouse, Beatrix.
This poem, because of its fusion of literature and Hermeticism, is especially of
interest to us here.
“The Adept’s Christmas Eve” begins with the Adept’s ritual gesture: “sept
fois pour le passé, et pour nos trois jours à venir, trois vois—le signe, le signe!
[seven times for the past, and for our three days to come, again three times, let
us make the sign, the sign!]” This is the sign of the cross, and with it the initiate
asks for peace for Beatrix and for himself. “Master, you speak the truth,” replies
Beatrix. And then the adept makes a strange remark: “Les parents dorment là,
tendres métaux époux, dans cet œuf appuyé sur le feu nuptial. Qu’ils sont beaux,
innocents! [The parents sleep there, tender metal partners in marriage, in this
egg resting on the nuptial flame. How beautiful and innocent they are!]”19 This
reference, to “tender metal partners in marriage,” is unquestionably alchemical,
but refers to an inner alchemy. Beatrix is surprised: “So you can see them? How?
In this hermetic egg? With what eyes?” The adept replies: “Chère enfant, par la
grâce de la vue du milieu. Et puisque nous connaissons depuis sept ans, je te
touche le front. [Dear child, by the grace of inner vision, and since we have now
known one another seven years, I touch your brow.]” To this Beatrix replies:
“Farewell, space and time!” And the adept suggests they both to kneel in adora-
tion “devant le cher fourneau” [before this dear Furnace.]”
The language here is completely that of Hermeticism: indeed, the poem is

really an initiatic dialogue incorporating the language of alchemy. For not
only are there references to the “tender metal partners in marriage,” not only
references to the alchemical furnace, but also countless other allusions to a
kind of visionary inner alchemy. The adept watches, and what does he see?
“Purity rises to the surface, white and pale blue,” while the “oil of blind cor-
ruption, leaden and lachrymal,” sinks to the depths, and “Lumière de l’or,
charitée, tu te délivres. [Light of gold, charity, you liberate yourself.]”20 Be-
atrix warns the adept of the legions of destroyers massed to ruin his creation,
but the adept replies, “I see only one, dancing in a circle in the rigor of red,
yellow, and black.”
At the climax of this strange initiatic psychodrama, the adept speaks of
“seven deadly cries in the night, and all is finished”—yet this is also the mo-
ment of rebirth. Thus a new cry sounds seven times—Is it a name? asks the
adept. “I believe it is. The Master forgives me. He opens his eyes and is reborn,
I tell you, he comes back to life, is reborn!” Thus once again, the mystery of the
sacred name emerges as the crux of the spiritual rebirth. And in the conclusion
of the poem, the adept exults of “how all your [Beatrix’s] secret being breathes
within me, woman.” And he repeats how extraordinary are “your eyes, your
eyes!” The adept’s final line is: “Mes chaines de constellations sont rompues.
[My chains of constellations are broken.]” To which Beatrix replies: “C’est la
vie délivrée. [It is life liberated.]”21
It is, of course, impossible to miss the allusions here to Dante’s Divine Com-
edy. The woman in the poem, Beatrix, undoubtedly reflects Dante’s beloved,
Beatrice, partially because of her name’s meaning—thrice beatific—which in
turn recalls not only the Trinity, but also thrice-greatest Hermes. The adept’s
fascination with Beatrix’s eyes—“your eyes, your eyes!”—reminds us of
Dante’s fascination with Beatrice’s eyes, which became openings for him as he
ascended into paradise in the Divine Comedy. Yet Beatrix does not seem a
human spouse, but a player on the poet’s inner stage; her words are not ordinary
or even precisely human, any more than are those of the adept, partaking rather
of a heightened, sometimes almost disjointed quality like hieratic speech heard
in a dream, or like the language of a ritual enactment of the Greek mysteries.
Thus the allusions to Dante’s poetry are subordinate to the poem’s initiatory
psychodrama, and to its incantory language. It may well be that Dante’s great
poetry emerges through Milosz’s here primarily because it too is the unfolding
of an ascent of consciousness in an inner drama. “The Adept’s Christmas Eve”
draws on a range of allusions, including the way the Greco-Roman Mystery tra-
ditions fed into the Christian mysteries of symbolic death and rebirth; and the
longstanding alchemical traditions as well. Here we are looking at spiritual
alchemy, the alchemy of inward marriage and of the spiritual birth of the al-
chemical child, at once also alluding to the birth of Christ. The alchemical
work, in other words, eventuates in the birth of Christ in the alchemist or adept:
all these traditions are brought together in the service of what we may call an
Hermetic-alchemical initiatory psychodramatic poem.
Perhaps most interesting for us is the question of the poem’s reader. To
whom is Milosz writing in such a poem, and what effect does he anticipate the
poem will have? This is a much more far-reaching question than one might at
first imagine. In his exegetic notes to his own prose work Ars Magna (whose
title is drawn from the similarly named work by Ramon Lull), Milosz writes
that his work is a “testament,” a “faithful and pious narrative,” and that “In the
author’s mind, the meaning attributed to this word is that of a legacy to a pos-
terity as distant as possible from this fourth age whose death agony we are wit-
nessing. The poet of Ars Magna and the Arcana does not write for his
contemporaries.”22 To whom does this legacy belong, then?
Undoubtedly, to read such a poem as “Canticle of Knowledge” or “The
Adept’s Christmas Eve,” not to mention Ars Magna or The Arcana, by Milosz,
is also to participate in it, or rather, in what it reveals. Whereas much of what
we call modern poetry has only itself and the physical world for references,
Milosz’s poems presuppose a visionary experiential reality behind and above
them. The incantory, sometimes decidedly strange language of Milosz’s poetry
brings the reader into a similar state to that Milosz is describing; one senses
vast expanses around one, with the initiatory drama unfolding itself in an inner
theater whose audience is, after all, oneself. And there is in this unfolding
drama something profoundly impersonal, as unemotional as nature, as though
the poet does not exist as an ego.
To see how far Milosz’s work is from what we often call poetry, perhaps we
should examine one of his exegetic notes on a single line of his own “Poem of
the Arcana.” The line is the fourth verse, “Yet I shall humble in the dust before
you this brow which has received the crown.” Milosz’s commentary goes far, far
beyond what we might think such a line may mean. He writes in exegesis that
The revelation of a superior phenomenalism opens with a mystical con-

secration, archetype of the coronation of regents by divine right in the
material world. The various phases of this rite correspond to the principal
moments in the regeneration of a mineral. When the ascent through the
nebula is finished and the epopt [Gk.: initiate], perfectly awake, rests in a
horizontal position, at a small distance from the large cupric cloud which
conceals from him the upper luminous level, a light appears, not very
high in the vaporous mass behind the top of his skull, in such a way that
it seems to be seen through the parietal bone. At the same instant, the
large cloud vanishes, exposing the upper region which is suddenly
crossed, in an elliptical leap of extreme violence and with the noise of a
strong wind, by a metallic red-hot egg.
Turning into a golden globe, it descends slowly towards the top of the
skull, on which it alights like a crown; thereafter, moving up a little, it as-
sumes the appearance of a magnificent golden sun of oval shape, stands
still, becomes rounder, and plunges its omniscient stare for a long time
into the deepest thought of the new King.23
There is still more, but this lengthy excerpt is sufficient to show that even a sin-
gle rather mundane line in Milosz’s poetry has behind it far more experiential
referents than we might ever have expected. This account suggests that Milosz
is writing rather precisely, one may even say, scientifically, about an actual
experience of spiritual coronation.
Perhaps we can understand more clearly what Milosz means when he quotes
“the master Goethe” as saying that “Every passing thing is only a symbol,” and
adds that “Behind the symbol there is an immutable situated reality.” Milosz’s
“superior phenomenalism” is his term for direct spiritual experience, and for
him such experience is more real than our mundane lives precisely because it is
not constrained by duration or mensurability. Such experience is of the truly sit-
uated, meaning the archetypal realm, and in this there is a kind of reversal, for
what seems situated and real in this world is revealed in the other to be unreal.
Only what is behind or in the symbolic is ultimately real. And authentic litera-
ture, because it springs from this archetypal reality, is revelatory and prophetic
in its very nature.
There is in Milosz’s work a paradoxical insistence on humility, and a scorn
for our own era that bespeaks a kind of pride. He insists that in order to under-
stand, we must bow down, that, as he put it in his last poem of 1936, only he
who bows down will be bowed down to. Yet at the same time Milosz in his
prose and poetry addresses himself to a future reader some centuries hence,
“who will read these pages with a filial respect for their author, and with un-
speakable scorn for the epoch which saw their birth.”24 He writes sardonically
of the blindness and destructiveness of modern society with its industrial gi-
gantism, its brutal mass wars, its secular hedonism and materialism, and insists
that his true reader will recognize the worth of his writings only far in the fu-
ture. In all of this he assumes a prophetic voice, referring to the reader as “my
son,” thus bringing his reader into the dialogue much as one finds in the Cor-
pus Hermeticum and in other Hermetic dialogues or monologues since antiq-
uity. His is a peculiar combination of humility and pride intermingled; one
senses that his pride comes from a certainty of knowledge that is ignored and
despised by the human world, just as he ignores and despises that world.
It is perhaps useful, at this point, to remark on the question of Milosz’s an-
tecedents. Without question, he is among the most erudite of poets, yet his eru-
dition, though including many great poets, is focused particularly on the
syncretic Hermeticism that began to flower in the eighteenth century. Milosz
wrote in a letter that he would like to lecture on a subject he knew thoroughly:

“hermetic metaphysics and doctrines, from Egypt up to today, passing through
the Pre-Socratics, Plato, the School of Alexandria, the Neoplatonists of the
Middle Ages, Swedenborg, the mystical eighteenth century.”25 And he re-
marked elsewhere that he spent the best years of his life in solitude “getting
drunk on the Holy Scriptures and nourishing myself on them,” first with his
teacher of Hebrew, Eugène Ledrain, and then with his “spiritual guides:
Goethe, Swedenborg, Martinez de Pasqually, Claude de Saint Martin. These
writers—and also Jewish exegesis—exerted a decisive influence upon Blaise
Pascal, the disciple of the Kabbalist Raymond Martini. The Rosicrucian Poly-
bius the Cosmopolitan, alias René Descartes, sought in them peace of spirit,”
Milosz continued.26
If we see here the depth of Milosz’s focus on Hermeticism in history, we
cannot help but notice the parallel focus on Judaism and Kabbalah. Milosz not
only had studied and read Hebrew, but kept a Bible in Hebrew nearby as a con-
stant reading companion; he was well acquainted with Jewish Kabbalism, but
in the tradition of many Christian Cabalists, looked forward to the day that the
Jews would be converted to Christianity. We can see how deeply Milosz’s fas-
cination with Judaism penetrated his work by examining his final poem,
“Psaume de l’Étoile du Matin [Psalm of the Morning Star],” where he writes of
how “shade covers An-Dor and / Pau of the land of Esau covers Matred
Tolde Beith / Aram and all Spared of Judea.”27 “Psalm of the Morn-
ing Star” is so suffused in Hebrew and in Old Testament language as to be in-
separable from them.
The allusions to Milosz’s favorite doctrines and language are here hidden in
the allusions to Hebrew names and places, as when the poem refers to the “be-
trothed sister of the new canticle,” recalling to us Milosz’s earlier poems and to
his imagery of alchemical inner marriage and the revelation of divine Wisdom
as the feminine spouse. In the “Psalm” we read of another primary theme, that
of the word and the book:
un seul mot nouveau le même / cœur qu’au temps des pères bat
dans le bois la / pierre et l’eau rien de tou cela qui revient / n’est
nouveau toutes ces choses dormaient / dans les livres fermés les
livres sous mes / mains se sont ouverts. [a single new word the
same / heart as in the time of the fathers beats in wood / stone and
water of all that returns there is / nothing new all those things
were sleeping / in closed books the books have opened themselves /
beneath my hand.]28
The peculiar rhythm of the lines and line breaks makes this poem unusually dif-
ficult to follow, but it reveals at the heart of all things “a single new word,” and
a mysticism that has “all those things” “sleeping in closed books” that open
themselves under the poet’s hand. Thus we find in this final poem of Milosz the
linguistic and, if we may coin a word, libric mysticism that has haunted Western
esotericism from antiquity. Here, just as in the Book of Revelation and just as
in Kabbalism, the archetypes of the cosmos exist inside letters, words, and
books, inside the books of life and of knowledge; and the true poet, the vision-
ary poet, opens those books in order to reveal their inner mysteries—or rather,
the books open themselves to him. Nor is it coincidental that in 1933 Milosz
published his close study titled L’Apocalypse de Saint-Jean Déchiffrée [The
Apocalypse of Saint John Decoded] and, in 1938, La Clef de l’Apocalypse [The
Key to the Apocalypse]. Milosz held, as early as 1919, that the work of the com-
ing poet is to be a “crowning” of the New Testament as the latter was a crown-
ing of the Old: “It is not a book, it is not books that we are waiting for; we are
waiting for the continuation and fulfillment of the only Book.”29 Here we see
the nascent Christian millennialism that pervades so much of Milosz’s work as
he anticipated a future renaissance, and that he shared with much of the Chris-
tian theosophic tradition.
Hermeticism and Kabbalism, in short, are enormously important for under-
standing the complex work of Milosz and his mysticism of the word, but there
are still other currents of Western esotericism that emerge in the poet’s work,
drawn together with a universalism that both resembles and includes Freema-
sonry. In his “Poem of the Arcana,” in fact, Milosz tells of his visionary expe-
rience, says that “I am entering the twelfth year of supreme knowledge,” and
yet writes that he will humble his brow in the dust before “you, my son, Hiram,
King of the unified world, Architect of the effective Catholic Church of tomor-
row, the universal regent of faith, science, and art.”30 The name Hiram is found
in Masonic tradition, and Milosz explains his poem’s relationship to Freema-
sonry in his “Exegetic Notes,” which are far more extensive than anything T. S.
Eliot, for instance, wrote for his poetry.
Under the heading “Hiram, King of the Unified World,” Milosz writes that
The personage who concerns us here is not the symbolic hero of the Tem-
plars or of Scottish Freemasonry in England, Germany, and Savoy. The
“architect” of those brotherhoods was Biblical in name only. The legend
of his assassination by three rebellious companions and of the discovery
of his body by the nine Masters is only a figure for the death of Jacques
de Mola. . . . The allegory is clearly indicated by the password Nekom
(Vengeance) used by the Chapter of Clermont and the Scottish lodge of
the Berlin Union. If the author has considered it useful to follow Lessing,
Joseph de Maistre, R. Le Forestier, and several other historians of the
brotherhoods in their research on the origins of an institution which
claims to descend from the Essenes and from the Priests of the Holy
Sepulchre, it is above all as testimony of veneration for some of its mem-

bers, particularly for Kadosch Dante Alighieri of the Fede Santa, and to
the Rosicrucian Polybius the Cosmopolitan, alias René Descartes.31
It is clear from this note alone that Milosz was intimately familiar with the his-
tory of Masonry and Rosicrucianism, and further that although he is drawing
on Masonic lore, his reference to Hiram in the poem is of his own devising.
Milosz goes on to tell us that the “future architect mentioned by name in
the Arcana is the spiritual son of Hiram-Abi, the builder sent by Hiram of
Tyre to Solomon.” This Hiram will establish “his temporal dominion over a
world unified at first in spirit by the Holy Catholic Church, the depository of
the one divine and human truth confirmed by philosophy and science.”32
Here, even though Milosz implies that his Hiram is different from the Ma-
sonic one, he brings in the theme that, as we have seen, was so profoundly
characteristic of early Rosicrucianism and of Freemasonry as well: the union
of science and religion in a glorious unified future world. Indeed, many
themes in Milosz’s outer life—chiefly his work in the League of Nations—
reflect those of the Rosicrucians and early modern Masons, especially the
dream of a world utopia.
Hence Milosz continues his exegesis of his own poem with several pages on
the emergence of a unified world and a new world monarchy, as well as the
emergence of a “Cathedral of Peace.” He prophesies that “all laboratories of the
highest thought will come to group themselves in an immense circle around the
future Church of Our Lady, a Virgin-Mother of Knowledge.” And he imagines
too the “approaching moment, relatively not distant, when the organization of
Europe will be based upon the principles which guided the foundation of the
great American federation.”33 This last remark is especially interesting given
that not only were George Washington and Benjamin Franklin Masons, but so
too were fifty-three of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence.34 And Milosz goes on to ask, “Who remembers the enthusiasm and the
hopes of 1789?” Such a question takes on added resonance when one considers
the role that Freemasonry played in the French Revolution.
But Milosz’s grand dream goes beyond Masonry as well. He writes that
“Today, in the sacred poem of the Arcana, the times foreseen by Guillaume
Postel, the times of ‘perfection in the Restitution of Nature,’ announce their im-
pending appearance. Religion and science, like spirit and matter, like all the
continents and all the states of this world, aspire to holy unification.”35 All of
this resonates so strongly with the Western esoteric traditions we have been
tracing that it would take several pages just to explicate this single sentence in
Milosz’s “Exegetic Notes.” Here, it is perhaps enough to recall the prophetic
late-medieval character Postel, who announced a coming millennium, and in so
doing was drawing upon a tradition of “the Restitution of All Things” that runs
from antiquity through such figures as John Scotus Eriugena and Jane Leade to
modern authors including Vladimir Solovyov and Nicholas Berdyaev.36 Milosz
too saw himself as a prophet of a future era of universal peace and knowledge,
of political, religious, and scientific fusion, to which era belongs the spiritual
son whom he addresses throughout his gnostic poetry and prose.
Just as Milosz drew on the full breadth of the Masonic tradition in his poetry
and prose, so too he drew on Masonry in his private life. Several years after his
illuminatory experience in 1914, he drew together a small esoteric coterie that
included René Schwaller, whom he later adopted as his spiritual son and gave
his family crest name, de Lubicz. This small group they called Les Veilleurs
(The Watchers), and in 1919 they established an exoteric center called the Cen-
tre Apostolique, Hiérarchie-Liberté-Fraternité, while also publishing numerous
articles in several journals of the time. And in 1929 Milosz wrote a letter to a
friend in which he explained that Carlos Larronde, one of Milosz’s most de-
voted friends, was drawing together a new group of which Milosz was to be
spiritual director, a group that included “the proletarian Masons whose G[rand]
M[aster] is one of our friends.”37
This new esoteric group had some Masonic characteristics, among them its
ritual dress. Milosz wrote, in his letter to James Chauvet, “The hour of Apos-
tleship has sounded”—Milosz himself, of course, being the Christ-figure, the
other members being his apostles. “Dress for meeting: the robes will be of
black silk, with a white collar. The Master alone will wear a red cap. These are
the three colors of the great work (spiritual and physical). The fundamental
teaching will be that of the Arcana. I am the enemy of exteriorization, but our
modern attire is truly incompatible with all effort toward the Good, moral or so-
cial. Our group will have no more than twelve members.”38 Such a group, a
kind of Christian semi-Masonic esotericism, certainly has its historical prede-
cessors: one thinks, for instance, of the London Rosicrucians of the early nine-
teenth century associated with Francis Barrett, author of The Magus. Here too
was a group with Masonic overtones, but explicitly Christian. And there are
numerous other such examples.
For us, however, most important is that Milosz’s work extended into every
sphere of life, and that he deliberately, in his work as in his private life, sought
the widest possible range. In his work, as we have seen, Milosz explicitly fore-
cast the unification of politics, the sciences, and the arts via religion, the “sci-
ence of the divine.” And in his little esoteric group, he hoped to influence “all
sorts of domains in the evolution of our terrible and admirable epoch.”39 These
dreams of universality, and of forming a group of disciples that in turn would
help to transform the whole of human society, however outrageous they may
seem in their magnitude, not to say grandiosity, resemble nothing so much as
the inception of Rosicrucianism (whose advocates sought precisely the same
social transformation on a vast scale).
Milosz is, today, a relatively obscure figure, little studied in academe, but
as we can see from this discussion of his work and life, there is no other figure
who so completely reveals the confluence of all the primary currents of West-
ern esotericism in the modern era. There are, of course, others whose work cer-
tainly bears the imprint of esoteric influences, including such authors as
William Butler Yeats, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, the poet H. D., and Kath-
leen Raine, all of whom also were involved in esoteric circles. Indeed, the list
of names of modern authors and poets influenced by esoteric currents of
thought is nigh unto endless. However, Milosz is unique not only for the vast
range of his studies, but also for the universality of his aims. He sought nothing
less than to bring about the renewal of Christianity through its universalization,
and a new golden age, and in such aims is a classic exemplar of modern West-
ern esotericism.
In these efforts, Milosz certainly resembles the figure of Prospero in Shake-
speare’s The Tempest, for however assiduous Milosz was in working toward
universality in his writing and in his life, all of these efforts were ultimately
pointed, not toward the present, but toward the future, and specifically toward a
future reader whom he regards as his spiritual son. Like Prospero in his final
speech, Milosz in some respects cast aside his wand (any influence on his con-
temporary era) in order, through his writing, to reach an audience whom he
specifically invoked in his writing itself. There is in Milosz’s poetry and prose
a peculiar hieratic quality and a special relationship to his imagined reader that
will inform our final two chapters, in which we begin to explore the theoretical
dimensions and implications of Western esoteric literature in relation to con-
sciousness. Although we here will take our leave of them, we have by no means
finished with either of these inexhaustible figures: Prospero, and Milosz.
H. D. and the Initiatic Word
If Milosz is emblematic of an initiatic male poet in the twentieth century,

then without doubt the emblematic female poet has to be H. D. That H. D.—
born Hilda Doolittle [1886–1961]—was fascinated with esoterica is well
known. Indeed, a number of books have explored the wide range of esoteric
influences that appear in H. D.’s poetry, novels, and essays. Among the best
of these is Susan Friedman’s chapter entitled “Initiations” in her book Psy-
che Reborn (1981), which outlines the intertwining of H. D.’s biography and
her fascination with mysticism, the Tarot, numerology, astrology, magic,
psychic insights or visions, various heresies of antiquity including the
Ophites and other Gnostic groups, Rosicrucianism, and the Christian theos-
ophy of Zinzendorf and the Moravians.40 But we still await a comprehensive
study that incorporates the full range of H. D.’s life and interests. Here, we
will explore how her work explicitly and implicitly initiates the reader
through literature and art.
We should begin, however, by recognizing that H. D. belonged to what is
clearly an American feminine literary lineage that includes on the one hand
Emily Dickinson, and on the other Margaret Fuller, for H. D. very much re-
sembles both of them in certain respects. I have written in detail about both
Dickinson and Fuller in The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance
(2001), so it will be necessary here only to allude to the parallels. Margaret
Fuller, like H. D., was fascinated by numerology, astrology, and what we might
term esoteric correspondences or patterns in life. She created a hermetic em-
blem or herald for herself, and it was included as the frontispiece for her most
well-known book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Likewise, H. D. was fas-
cinated by esoteric correspondences in her life, was a reasonably accomplished
astrological interpreter, and soon (by 1911) came to see the emblem of the this-
tle and serpent as her own.
But when we begin to look at H. D.’s early, explicitly esoteric book, Notes on
Thought and Vision (1919), the parallels we see perhaps most clearly are not
so much with Fuller as with Dickinson. For it seems clear from her poetry, as
many critics have observed, that Dickinson underwent at least one extended
spiritual and psychological crisis. In Esoteric Origins, I argue that this crisis
can be interpreted as initiatory, as a wrenching spiritual awakening. And when
we turn from Dickinson to H. D., we see very much the same pattern of psy-
chological and spiritual crisis as awakening, save that in H. D.’s life it is re-
peated a number of times. In his introduction to H. D.’s Notes on Thought and
Vision, “The Thistle and the Serpent,” Albert Gelpi writes that H. D. underwent
“a severe psychic breakdown, and her extreme sensitivity had made her preter-
naturally susceptible to the intensities of experience that others might over-
look.” Vulnerable to periodic psychic breakdowns, “her unusual susceptibility
also made possible a breakthrough into heightened consciousness,” which she
calls in Notes her “jellyfish experience.”41
Although the major works by H. D. for our purposes are her later ones such
as her poems in Trilogy and Vale Ave as well as her novel The Gift, the much
earlier work Notes on Thought and Vision helps to make clear H. D.’s gnostic
perspective in relation to literature. Notes is a very unusual work; written in
July 1919 in the Scilly Islands, it argues for the characteristically Emersonian
idea of an ‘overmind’ as a model of higher consciousness. She begins Notes
with the cryptic proclamation: “Three states or manifestations of life: body,
mind, overmind.” The work is essentially an elaboration of this gnomic state-
ment. She writes:
If I could visualise or describe that overmind in my own case, I should

say this: it seems to me that a cap is over my head, a cap of consciousness
over my head, my forehead, affecting a little my eyes . . . That overmind

seems a cap, like water, transparent, fluid yet with definite body, con-
tained in a defininte space. It is like a closed sea-plant, jelly-fish, or
anemone. Into that over-mind, thoughts pass and are visible like fish
swimming under clear water . . . I first realized this state of conscious-
ness in my head. I visualise it just as well, now, centered in the love-re-
gion of the body or placed like a foetus in the body.42
H. D. wonders whether it is easier for a woman than a man to attain con-

sciousness of the overmind, since she experienced it along with the birth of her
child. Without doubt, H. D.’s work has feminist implications, but it would be a
mistake to see all of her writing only in this context. She does write about a
“vision of the womb,” but she writes about it that this is the vision of “dream
and of ordinary vision.” She does not valorize this vision against that of the in-
tellect; indeed, she insists that “There is no way of arriving at the overmind,
except through the intellect.” And she adds that “I believe there are some
artists coming in the next generation, some of whom will have the secret of
using their overminds.”43
H. D.’s expectation of a few in the coming generation with the secret of the
overmind reminds us of Milosz’s expectation of a coming initiate for whom his
work is intended. As we read on through Notes, we begin to suspect that this
odd book of fragments is itself a kind of initiatic book of clues for those very
coming artists of the overmind, those future initiates for whom this little book
is intended. She writes that to be a true artist, one must, as some of Plato’s dia-
logues suggest, engage in a union of love and intellect. She holds that “a lover
must choose one of the same type of mind as himself, a musician, a musician.”
The minds of the lovers unite, and when love-vision and intellectual vision co-
incide, almost like two lenses, they “bring the world of vision into conscious-
ness. The two work separately, perceive separately, yet make one picture.”44
This initiatic process is similar to that of the Eleusinian mysteries, H. D. con-
tinues: first is the life of the body and sexuality; second is the life of the intel-
lect; and third is the awakening into the overmind, which is possible for all,
even if most prefer to stay entombed in their comfortable closed houses.
Whatever else we may make of it, without question we can see here that al-
ready in 1919 H. D. had outlined a fundamentally gnostic worldview. She
places gnosis, or awakening into the overmind, as primary to the true artist; this
is the source of creativity just as it is the wellspring of spirituality. There are
even traces here of Gnosticism, as when she speculates on the meaning of the
pearl in her gnostic sketches, and perhaps when she concludes by conjoining
Christ and Dionysius in a poetic vision of their unity with the divine mother as
with all of nature, with the gulls and the sky and the earth. But Gnosticism is
here only as allusion; H. D. is a gnostic with a small g, a nonsectarian, syncretic
gnostic whose primary emphasis is nonsectarian spiritual awakening. In this

respect, she is very much in the American tradition inaugurated by Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
But it was during the German siege of London during the Second World War
that H. D. wrote the collection of three long poems later published as Trilogy.
These three poems were “The Walls Do Not Fall,” “Tribute to the Angels,” and
“The Flowering of the Rod.” In “The Walls Do Not Fall,” H. D. develops many
of the themes initially sketched in Notes on Thought and Vision. Here, for in-
stance, she extends the unity of Dionysius and Christ that ended the earlier
work, writing that “it appears obvious / that Amen is our Christos.”45 “Amen,”
here, is the Egyptian god Amen-Ra, and H. D.’s work is a complex tapestry of
just such word-play and religious concordances. Her themes are explicitly eso-
teric throughout these poems: she writes of her experience of “The Presence,”
and of her “companions / in this mystery,” who “know each other / by secret
symbols,” we “nameless initiates, / born of one mother, / companions / of the
flame.” She writes, too, of the “alchemist’s secret,” and of “the most profound
philosophy”; of the stars as “separate entities” “intimately concerned with us”
who can be “invoked / with accurate charm, spell, prayer” for healing, as these
entities are “healers, helpers / of the One, Amen, All-father.”46 It is obvious from
“The Walls Do Not Fall” that although H. D.’s outward circumstances were the
terrors of war, the poem is at heart profoundly esoteric in its unified vision
amid the shards of bomb-shattered modernity.
In Notes on Thought and Vision, H. D. distinguishes between the subcon-
scious mind and the overmind, even offering a diagrammatic illustration of the
two, the subconscious being below ordinary consciousness, the overmind being
above it. This is an important distinction because in “The Walls Do Not Fall,”
she extends it to discuss the emergence of surrealism with such figures as Max
Ernst and Andre Breton. As a number of scholars have demonstrated, surreal-
ism and symbolism (particularly the latter in Russia) were deeply indebted to
alchemy.47 In M. E. Warlick’s Max Ernst and Alchemy, we clearly see how ex-
tensive and lifelong Ernst’s fascination with alchemical imagery was.
But in “The Walls Do Not Fall,” H. D. criticizes the surrealist use of al-
chemical imagery as a means to the subconscious; this, she holds, is a false
path. She writes “dare, seek, seek further, dare more, / here is the alchemist’s
key, / it unlocks secret doors.” At first it would seem she is endorsing modern
uses of alchemy in this “age of the new dimension.” Yet when the “secret doors”
are “found . . . unlocked,” mind “floundered, was lost in sea-depth, / sub-
conscious ocean where Fish / move two-ways, devour.” And the section ends
with “illusion, reversion of old values, / oneness lost, madness.” In the next sec-
tion, she criticizes “a riot of unpruned imagination, / jottings of psychic nu-
merical equations,” “arrogance, over-confidence, pitiful reticence, boasting,
intrusion of strained / inappropriate allusion.”48 All of this suggests that there is
a wrong path, one that leads toward the subconscious and illusion—and this is
the path of the surrealists, with their overconfidence leading only to flounder-
ing in sea-depths of confused images and “incongruous monsters.”49
Thus, H. D. continues, “Let us substitute / enchantment for sentiment, / re-
dedicate our gifts / to spiritual realism”. She calls us to “prepare papyrus or
parchment,” invoke “Hermes-thrice-great,” “invoke the true-magic, / lead us
back to the one-truth.” Her invocation continues: “Let him (Wisdom, / in the
light of what went before, illuminate what came after, / re-vivify the eternal
verity.”50 Here H. D. explicitly invokes the Hermetism of antiquity, who as the
sacred scribe is invoked through the act of using “pen or brush,” through paint-
ing or writing. H. D.’s words here are an invocation and a kind of Hermetic ini-
tiation; she is calling herself to a sacred task, but also those who come after her.
The reader is called to sacred writing by way of H. D.’s invocation of Hermes,
itself conveyed through the act of sacred writing.
In a well-known passage, H. D. then writes:
We have had too much consecration,

too little affirmation,
too much, but this, this, this

has been proved heretical,
too little: I know, I feel

the meaning that words hide;
they are anagrams, cryptograms,

little boxes, conditioned
to hatch butterflies . . .51
Taken in context with the earlier invocation of Hermes-Thoth, this passage sug-
gests the complexity, the difficulty of conveying initiation through the written
word—it includes the implication that such efforts are bound to be deemed
‘heretical’ by some, and that one must know and feel by intuition the meaning
that words hide. The words themselves may resemble boxes, devoid of life, but
suddenly from them emerge living butterflies, symbols of Psyche reborn, of the
soul that passes through initiation and awakes.
The next work in H. D.’s trilogy is “Tribute to the Angels,” and it begins with
an invocation again of Hermes Trismegistus, “patron of alchemists,” whose
“province is thought, / inventive, artful and curious.” This poem exhorts the
poet to “plunder” the past, as Hermes is patron of poets and thieves. The poet is
called to “take what the old-church / found in Mithra’s tomb,” “candle and
script and bell,” what the “new-church spat upon / and broke and shattered.”
This, the shattered glass of the past, the poet must “melt down and integrate.”
One must “reinvoke, re-create” that which is now “scattered in the shards / men
tread upon”.52 These lines reveal many layers. One is the layer of the destruc-
tion in London during the bombing, the conditions under which, after all, H. D.
was writing these poems. Another is the layer of Hermetic invocation; and still
another is that of an older true unified religion rejected by a “new-church,” but
re-awakened, recreated by the poet, reinvoked in a new form.
We should not underestimate the magnitude of what H. D. is attempting in
her poetry here. She includes lines from the Revelation of John: “I, John, saw.
I testify.” I take these lines as placing the poet’s vision in the context of John’s
Revelation: John was a prophet and seer; so too can the poet be, and so too by
implication can we be. What does the poet see? The poem is far too vast to at-
tempt a complete exegesis here, but I believe the heart of the poem is to be
found in the following section:
Invisible, indivisible Spirit,

how is it you come so near,
how is it that we dare

approach the high-altar?
we crossed the charred portico,

passed through a frame—doorless—
entered a shrine; like a ghost,

we entered a house through a wall;
then still not knowing

whether (like the wall)
we were there or not-there,

we saw the tree flowering;
it was an ordinary tree,

in an old garden-square.53
This is an account of self-transcendence (not knowing whether we were there

or not-there), but also of a meeting with an invisible spirit, an angel manifest-
ing in the flowering tree, in the high-altar of a ruined building.
H. D.’s poetic narrative reminds us of Rilke’s accounts of meeting angels in
his Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies, but whereas Rilke could not write
during war, H. D. is in fact transmuting the war experience into one of divine
revelation, joining together the worst and the highest of which humanity is ca-
pable. In this context, the next section is very important. In it, H. D. writes that
This is no rune nor riddle,

it is happening everywhere;
what I mean is—it is so simple

yet no trick of the pen or brush
could capture that impression;

music could do nothing with it,
nothing whatever; what I mean is—

but you have seen for yourself
that burnt-out wood crumbling

you have seen for yourself.54
Here she is conveying in poetic form what cannot be captured but only con-
veyed, alluded to, transmitted as an “open secret” (to use Carlyle’s phrase
describing Emerson’s essay Nature). One cannot capture this esoteric illumina-
tion; one can only suggest it so that the reader can realize it too, and this sug-
gestiveness is how initiation through the word takes place.
In H. D.’s “Tribute to the Angels,” she also builds toward a specific spiritual
experience in which she saw “God in the other-half of the tree.” This experience
“was vision, / it was a sign, / it was the Angel which redeemed me, / it was the
Holy Ghost—.” This experience is what she calls the “flowering of the rood, /
. . . the flowering of the wood,” the name of the final poem in Trilogy. And this
experience is gnosis, but gnosis manifested through a web of interconnected
symbols, themselves conveyed to the reader through H. D.’s poetry. This expe-
rience, conveyed through the poetry, is a gnosis of the word.
But there is another recurrent theme in Trilogy that we also cannot ignore
and that is indivisible from this mysterious and profound experience of the di-
vine: the figure of Sophia, the divine feminine. H. D.’s poetry in general, and
Trilogy in particular, bind together Christian and pre-Christian religious tra-
ditions, seeing Christianity as being a continuation of earlier traditions. Hence
H. D. writes that the Cross and the Tau or “T-cross” merge with the caduceus,
symbol of Hermes, and even more overtly, that “Hermes Trismegistus / spears,
with Saint Michael, / the darkness of ignorance, / casts the Old Dragon / into
the abyss.”55 Hermes and the Archangel are thus merged in H. D.’s vision, just
as Christianity and the mystery religions of antiquity are joined indivisibly.
Sophia appears here in this larger context as a figure of the divine feminine
appearing through Mary and through the ancient goddesses, “Our Lady of the
Pomegranate,” at once both Christian and pre-Christian, at once the Magna
Mater and the Virgin of the Book of Revelation of John, She who has been
seen “the world over.”56
Sophia herself appears to H. D., to her astonishment, and H. D. speculates
that “she must have been pleased with us, / who did not forego our heritage”
[35]. Here it might be valuable to recall that H. D. was a baptized Moravian,
and that, as we will see in more detail shortly, she was deeply familiar with the
esoteric spirituality of the theosophic community of Count Zinzendorf in Penn-
sylvania. Sophianic spirituality was in H. D.’s own heritage, as we will see when
we turn to her novel The Gift. But the “we” who did not “forego our heritage”
also has a wider context, for H. D. then notes that she is referring to “the strag-
gling company of the brush and quill,” of artists and poets who “did not deny
their birthright” but remained faithful to the spiritual origin and vision that is
the fount of living art. And there is one more critical detail: when Sophia ap-
peared, under her “drift of veils,” “she carried a book.” This book is the trans-
mission of the spiritual experience through the book of poems, just as the Word
is transmitted through the Great Book, the Bible.
And She is “Holy Wisdom,” “Santa Sophia,” “the SS of the Sanctus Spiritus,”
as well as “the new Eve who comes” bringing “the Book of Life, obviously.” Yet
Sophia is also “the Vestal / from the days of Numa,” she of the Bona dea, and
“she carries a book but it is not / the tome of the ancient wisdom,” for hers are
the blank pages “of the unwritten volume of the new.” And She is also “Psyche,
the butterfly, / out of the cocoon.” H. D. is reluctant to label Sophia as a single
reified figure; she retains the web of interconnected meanings and symbolisms,
preserving the evocative power of poetry that resists the power of reason alone,
requiring instead imaginative participation on the part of the reader.
This imaginative participation is at the heart of H. D.’s Trilogy, right into the
final poem, entitled “The Flowering of the Rood.” Here the focus is not femi-
nine but masculine—the birth of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Wise Men
bearing gifts. Here the refrain is changed to the words of Jesus to the thieves
who were crucified with Him: “to-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” This
refrain, in the context of the three poems together, clearly alludes to the figure
of Hermes, the thief, who is also redeemed, brought into paradise with Christ.
Hermes is the patron of the artist, the writer, the scribe, and the thief, allied to
Mercury also; thus “The Flowering of the Rood” is also about the redemption
of art through religious experience. The artist who participates imaginatively
with Christ is redeemed; the artist is the thief who is redeemed on the very day
that Christ is crucified.
It would be a mistake to presume that because H. D. affirms the divine fem-
inine in her Trilogy poems, they are therefore a repudiation of Christianity in
favor of a neopagan goddess tradition. They are not. Rather, whether it is con-
venient for the reader’s ideology or not, the Trilogy culminates with “The Flow-
ering of the Rood,” with the experience of Christ, with the simultaneous sym-
bolism of his birth and death. H. D.’s poetry is far more complex than it is
frequently depicted as being, and the Trilogy exemplifies this complexity: it is
a profoundly evocative collection of poems at whose center is a complex of re-
ligious experiences that cannot be understood completely except by recogniz-
ing their multivalence, and that includes a unification of male and female
symbolism, as well as of Christian and pre-Christian religious symbolism. Her-
mes and Christ, Eve and Mary, the Vestal Virgin and “Our Lady of the Pome-
granate,” all are interwoven here.
In her poetry, as in the original, unabridged version of her novel The Gift,
H. D. sought to accomplish a feat similar to that sought by the other great mod-
ernist poets T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats: to create or reveal a mythological net of
symbols that reunites a shattered modern world and makes sense of life in the
midst of total chaos. It is no accident that both the Trilogy and The Gift have
woven into them the horror, fear, and confusion of the Second World War as ex-
perienced in the bombing of London. In the midst of the worst of which hu-
manity is capable, in the midst of the terror and chaos and destruction of war,
H. D. also reveals the overarching spiritual unity not only of mythology but, like
Eliot in his Four Quartets, of mysticism. To understand this mysticism more
fully, however, we must turn to The Gift.
The Gift. It is not surprising, I suppose, that until 1998, the only available ver-
sions of The Gift were more or less bowdlerized ones from which nearly a third
of the original text was missing. Such a massive lacuna is not surprising be-
cause it has at least some modest precedent in American letters. As I detail in
The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (2001), Margaret Fuller’s
most well-known work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published
posthumously under the direction of her brother without her original fron-
tispiece, an esoteric emblem that she designed herself. Her brother sought to
keep from the public eye his sister’s interest in esoteric or ‘occult’ areas of
thought. Likewise, when New Directions published their abridged version of
The Gift about a century later, the editors sought to remove many of the refer-
ences to the mysticism that is in fact at the center of the book. What is more,
they even changed significantly the emphasis of the entire novel from Mora-
vian spirituality to the gift of artistic creation.57 It was not until 1998 that Jane
Augustine’s edited original edition of this extraordinary novel was published,
complete with H. D.’s own notes. Only when we read the original version of the
novel can we recognize just how remarkable an achievement it is, and how at its
very heart is—the gnosis of the word.
H. D. wove into The Gift her own extensive research into her family’s history,
which was intertwined with the history of the Moravian Church in America in its
earliest years. Her grandfather’s name was Francis Wolle, and he was born in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; her grandmother’s father, “Old Father Weiss,” or
Jedediah Weiss, was a watchmaker and silversmith for more than forty years in
Bethlehem. He was a gifted musician who sang in the Moravian choir. In other
words, H. D. came by her fascination with the Moravians naturally; it was in fact
in her blood. But her interest in the Moravians took on a new intensity when she
realized more about the esotericism of the original Moravians and of the charis-
matic Count Zinzendorf.
We can see the extent and depth of H. D.’s research into this area when we
look at her own notes for the novel as well as the books from her own library,
especially those now housed at Yale University. Her notes for The Gift are re-
markably detailed, and weave together genealogical and historical materials, of-
fering the reader incontrovertible evidence not only that H. D. deliberately
incorporated much authentic historical background into the novel, but also that
the artistic and spiritual import of the novel is bolstered by being based on ac-
tual fact. Her notes are in fact an important aspect of the novel, itself, shaping
the way that she intended it to be read.
And her personal library gives ample proof that H. D. had done her research;
among its volumes are Andreas Frey’s A True and Authentic Account of Andrew
Frey; containing the Occasion of his coming among the Herrnhutters or Mora-
vians (London: J. Robinson, 1753); Joseph Edward Hutton’s A History of the
Moravian Church (London: Moravian Publication Office, 1909); George Lav-
ington’s The Moravians Compared and Detected (London: J. & P. Knapton,
1755); Georg Heinrich Loskiel’s History of the Mission of the United Brethren
Among the Indians in North America (London: Brethren’s Society, 1794); and
Henry Rimius’s A Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhuet-
ters, Commonly Called Moravians (London: A. Linde, 1753), as well as origi-
nal copies of Rimius’s other major works on the subject. In toto, with its
numerous original eighteenth-century publications, H. D.’s library demon-
strates the depth of her research.
H. D. was herself a baptized Moravian, but one should recognize that there
is a considerable difference between the Moravian Church of the twentieth cen-
tury and that of the Herrnhuters of Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760) who settled
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the middle of the eighteenth century. For
Zinzendorf and his group were far more esoteric in their interests than those
who were to follow them. Rimius’s works, cited by H. D. in her notes, make
clear this distinction. Rimius, Zinzendorf ’s most effective detractor, accused
the early Moravians of “gross and scandalous . . . Mysticism,” of the “Arcana,
or Secret Counsels of their Leaders,” as well as of “Secrets probably known by
the adepts alone.”58 About such accusations, H. D. wrote that they were pre-
cisely what she found attractive about the Unitas Fratrum: “Personally, I con-
sider these findings highly stimulating and exciting, though I must confess, in
my own day, there was no hint of this exoticism. We were a small community,
respected and highly respectable.”59
There can be no doubt that Zinzendorf himself and his early circle held
views that were seen as unacceptable by the German Protestant establishment
at Dresden. Zinzendorf espoused a doctrine of the Trinity that conjoined the
Holy Spirit with the divine feminine, referring to Father, Mother, and Son; he
also held that every woman represented an image of the Bride of Christ, con-
ventionally the church. The Moravian Church that he was instrumental in re-
vivifying in the mid-eighteenth century actually was linked more to Greek
Orthodoxy than to Rome, and had existed in Bohemia-Moravia for many hun-
dreds of years before what is now called the Reformation. The Moravian
Church, or Unitas Fratrum as resuscitated by Zinzendorf, saw itself as a branch
of the primordial and pure Christianity, and its doctrines as representing a pure,
nonhierarchic tradition of true Christianity. Its esotericism derived its power
from these beliefs.
But more important than Zinzendorf’s own esotericism is how it was incor-
porated by H. D. into The Gift. The Gift is an initiatory work in the classic an-
thropological sense: it is on one level a story of how a young girl, Hilda, is
initiated into the matrilinear gnosis of her family’s secret Moravian traditions.
It is written in a characteristically modernist fragmented style that reflects on
the one hand the fragmentation of modernity and on the other hand, through the
reader’s assembling of clues into a larger narrative, an overarching spiritual nar-
rative that redeems modernity from its chaos and fragmentation. This redemp-
tion from chaos that the reader undergoes by working through the novel is
parallel to the initiation of the child Hilda, who through the course of the novel
comes to realize the true nature of her gnostic Moravian forebears and their
unique relationships with American Indian spiritual elders. The novel, in short,
is a coming-of-age or initiation-into-the-mysteries-of-adulthood narrative.
But The Gift is also an initiatory work in the other sense of the term—it
opens up into an initiation into the spiritual mysteries of the Unitas Fratrum as
well, and in this sense the book is clearly meant by H. D. to initiate the reader.
But the reader is initiated into these mysteries vicariously; the reader is carried
along vicariously on the discoveries not only of young Hilda, whose voice in
the novel is clearly childish, but also of the older poet H. D., writing these re-
flections during the siege of London in the Second World War. For suddenly we
encounter the voice of the elder H. D., explaining the novel’s initiatory power
via the word and image within the novel itself in a kind of metanarrative. She
tells us that there is a “Gift waiting,” that “someone must inherit” access to a
hidden “continent” that includes links to people long dead. “There is no royal
road into this kingdom,” H. D. writes, “you just stumble on it; it is one of those
things that you really do find in your Grimm or your Anderson . . . it does
exist.” She goes on:
It is like matching beads. A bit of me can really “live something of a word

or phrase, cut on a wall at Karnak. But really “live” it, I mean. Then am I
for a moment . . . Egyptian . . . A word opens a door, these are the keys,
it is like that little flower that Mrs. Williams called a primula, that Ma-
malie called himmelschlüssel or keys-of-heaven.
That is how it is. A word opens a door . . .60
This concept of a word opening a door into the lives of one’s ancestors and
into spiritual mysteries is at the very center of The Gift; it is what the novel
does for H. D.
But there is more, considerably more of this theme to unpack. In chapter 5
of The Gift, we are given more explicit hints about the title of the chapter, “The
Secret.” The first is when Mamalie, Hilda’s grandmother, who is somewhat for-
getful near the end of her life, begins to speak of “the papers” that she was
afraid she had lost. “Christian had left the Secret with me. I was afraid the Se-
cret would be lost,” she told Hilda. Hilda knows that she is the last one in the
family to whom Mamalie could entrust her secrets, but Hilda (and along with
her, the reader) must unravel their mysteries through cryptic comments and
fragments let drop by her grandmother. Hilda is fascinated by Mamalie’s talk of
Wunden Eiland, a German name for an early Moravian island sanctuary (the
name meaning, Hilda surmises, Island of Wonders, later learning it means
Island of Wounds). And Hilda speculates:
I want her to go on talking because if she stops, the word stops. The word
is like a bee-hive, but there are no bees in it now. I am the last bee in the
bee-hive, this is the game I play. The other bees have gone, that is why it
is so quiet. Can one bee keep a bee-hive alive, I mean, can one person
who knows that Wunden Eiland is a bee-hive, keep Wunden Eiland for
the other bees, when they come back?61
The word is the means of preserving and of transmitting the honey of spiritual
knowledge, and even here in her narrative, Hilda is wondering if the word alone
can serve as a means of initiation so that the spiritual mysteries of her heritage
can be continued.
These spiritual mysteries are not, as some scholars seem to think, aspects of a
solely matriarchal tradition, even though the beehive is presided over by a Queen
bee (Sophia?). Rather, while it is the case that Mamalie is telling this complicated
history to her granddaughter Hilda, the story she tells is of a hidden gnostic tra-
dition stretching back to at least the time of the Knights Templar in the medieval
period. And in this story men play at least as significant a role as women; indeed,
in some aspects of the story, men play a greater role than women. Mamalie tells
Hilda that the Moravians were at heart a continuation of “the Hidden Church that
[reportedly] had been destroyed and obliterated by the Inquisition,” but that
“wasn’t really destroyed,” only driven “underground” to resurface with Count
Zinzendorf and his disciples.62 Like the Templars, the Moravians were accused of
scandalous behavior, but this was untrue, Mamalie continues.
The most important scene for this gnostic drama, though, is not Europe but
North America, where the Moravians came during the eighteenth century and
immediately formed a rapport with the American Indians, in particular the
Shawnee. This rapport is historically verifiable; it is not a confabulation of
H. D.’s.63 In The Gift, though, she draws upon historical fact in order to build a
larger mythos, chiefly through the narrative of elderly Mamalie. According to
Mamalie, Johann Christoph Pyrlaeus was a musician who collected “Indian
words and sayings and made a dictionary of them. He said it would be impos-
sible to follow the language without the music,” so he “made notes of tones and
rhythms of their voices.” Pyrlaeus passed on a scroll written “in curious char-
acters, Greek, Hebrew, and Indian dialects and writing and marginal notes of
music.” This scroll, kept in a birch-bark case, bore the names of Cammerhof,
Pyrlaeus, Zeisberger and Christian Seidel, the Christian initiates of the fateful
meeting at Wunden Eiland, along with a list of “medicine-men or priests of the
Indian tribes, done in their picture-writing.”64
The Indians and the Moravians indeed had an unusual relationship, not least
because the Moravians respected Indian spirituality. The Moravians and the In-
dians under the chief Paxnous met in order to let their guiding spirits determine
the fate of white-Indian relations. As Mamalie put it in her narrative to Hilda:
In fact, the answer given by the Spirits, was to decide the future of the
whole country . . . to give the answer that the warriors had debated at
their councils, as to what was to be the relationship in future between the
white-men and the Indians, altogether. Already tracts of land further
north were depleted of their wild animals.65
In this spiritual meeting of the medicine men and the Moravian initiates, they
conducted a syncretic ritual that joined the spiritual traditions of the two peoples,
so that “It was laughing, laughing all the time,” not just Minne-ha-ha, but all of
them, said Mamalie, “like scales running up and down,” “the laughter of leaves,
of wind, of snow swirling, it was the laughter of the water; indeed, it was the out-
pouring of the Mystic Chalice that Paxnous’ priest too, had a name for; it poured
from the sky or from the inner realm of the Spirit, this laughter that ran over us.”66
How did Mamalie know so intimately what it was like, this meeting of the
Moravians and Indians under the sign of the Great Spirit / Holy Spirit? She was
a musician, and a hundred years after this ritual meeting and descent of the
Holy Spirit took place, she decoded it from the cryptic musical notations and
multilingual script of the parchment kept in the birchbark case. She and her
young husband, Christian Seidel, decoded it and she played it, so that the two
of them shared in the original descent of the Holy Spirit just as Hilda was later
to share in it through communion with it via what she calls “the Gift.” Mamalie
and her young husband were taken away in rapture by this union with the orig-
inal ritual and spiritual illumination, so much so that she never played music
again, having “burnt it up.”67 Thus “the Gift” was transmitted from the original
Moravian participants in the ritual to Mamalie and her husband, who was to die
at twenty-five, and then, in an even more attenuated form, to young Hilda as
Mamalie became delirious on her deathbed.
The Gift, Mamalie, said in her fragmented narrative, could have “lifted the
dark wings of evil from the whole world,” but instead what we see is a tragic
history. In 1755, the Moravian colony of Gnadenhütten, composed of both local
Indians and Moravians working with them, was attacked by a band of Indians
loyal to the French, and both Moravians and Indians were slaughtered, those
hiding in the attic burned alive. And in a subsequent event, called “New
Gnadenhütten,” about 150 Indians working in a Moravian settlement were at-
tacked and about ninety slaughtered by ragtag American soldiers under the
command of one David Williamson. Among those killed were twenty-four
women and twenty-two children.68
The final section of The Gift at first seems anticlimactic. Instead of recount-
ing the transmission of Mamalie’s understanding to young Hilda, or a subsequent
realization of the original Moravian-Indian spiritual illumination, we return to the
fragmented narrative of the Second World War, where the falling arrows of the
original “French Indian” attack on Gnadenhütten metamorphose into the falling
bombs of the Germans attacking England. In her notes, H. D. even refers to the
American David Williamson, who was responsible for the attack on “New
Gnadenhütten,” as “Aryan.” Thus we can see the palimpsest form of the novel,
past and present superimposed upon one another and intermingling, a means of
underscoring that the immense promise of the Moravian-Indian spiritual brother-
hood and sisterhood, of universal peace and the descent of the Holy Spirit, stands
perpetually opposed to those whose aim is slaughter, domination, raining down
terror from the skies. So it would seem that The Gift is a tragic book.
And yet in the very final passages, all of these themes are brought together
into a unified whole. At the novel’s conclusion, we realize that the Moravian
sanctuary island, Wunden Eiland, or Wounded Island, is also the wounded is-
land of England as it is being bombed by the Germans, and Hilda tells us that
“We have been face to face with the final realities. We have been shaken out of
our ordinary dimension in time and we have crossed the chasm that divides
time from time-out-of-time or from what they call eternity.”69 The two worlds
have become one, so that even amid the terrible bombing of England, the
promise of Wunden Eiland and of the descent of the Holy Spirit is not lost but
realized again.
In England, Hilda hears the voice of Christian Renatus, one of the original
Moravian initiates, singing of the Wounds, she hears the “deep bee-like humming
of the choir of single brothers,” she realizes that “Our earth is a wounded island
as we swing round the sun,” and she has suddenly achieved the union again in the
twentieth century just as Mamalie had realized it in the nineteenth, and the origi-
nal initiates had realized it in the eighteenth.70 She hears the “great choir of the
strange voices that speak in a strange bird-like staccato rhythm,” but she knows
what they are saying even though they “are speaking Indian dialects.” There is a
great sound—the sound of the all-clear siren in London, and the sound of the
Moravian-Indian choirs of the past—and with this the novel concludes.
H. D. and Western Esotericism: Some Conclusions. Among major twentieth-

century authors, H. D.’s work stands with that of Yeats and of O.V. de Lubicz
Milosz as exemplary of the literary-mythological possibilities of Western eso-
tericism. In her profoundly ambitious works, both poetic and fictional, we find
a wide range of Western esoteric currents manifesting themselves, not merely
as decorations, but as integral to her work. Indeed, the more deeply one looks
into her works, the more certain one is that here is someone whose work cannot
be understood fully without reference to Western esotericism. But above all,
H. D.’s work exemplifies what I have termed “initiation through the word,” both
as a theme treated explicitly in her poetry and prose, and as the way in which
her work functions for the reader.
As we have seen, H. D.’s poetry and prose reflect a sense of the transparency
of time and place: from Notes on Thought and Vision onward, her work suggests
that past, present, and future continually intermingle, and that it is possible to re-
alize a timeless state she terms the “over-mind,” an echo of Emerson’s “Over-
soul,” in which the individual consciousness is exalted, and out of which all great
work is generated. Her later work in fact exemplifies exactly this idea, not least
because although outwardly its modernist fragmentation suggests confusion and
chaos, this fragmentation actually represents in artistic form a higher union of
past and present, as well as of timelessness and time. Out of the chaos and ran-
dom destruction of the bombing of England in her Trilogy and The Gift emerge
not only a palimpsest of Moravian past and H. D.’s English present, but also a
larger unity that even presents a way beyond chaos and evil into transcendence.
In this context, H. D.’s fascination with various figures and currents of West-
ern esotericism becomes more than a collection of interests; it becomes the
foundation for an entire worldview. Her interest in spiritualism, for instance,
does not exist separate from her poetic and fictional work but rather represents
an important aspect of it. In her poetry and fiction, past and present, the dead
and the living are not separate but part of an interwoven continuum. Likewise,
her abiding fascination with Moravian esotericism is not merely an aspect of
her genealogical interests, but rather is woven into her entire worldview; there,
she found an esoteric religious perspective that recognized the divine feminine
in the form of Sophia, and that also incorporated a sexual mysticism she found
deeply congenial.
H. D.’s esoteric worldview is complex and rather heterodox, to be sure, but
understanding it places her work in an entirely different light, illuminating
many aspects that otherwise could not be fully understood. At the center of her
esoteric worldview is the primacy of the word as means of initiatic transmis-
sion. Through the codex left by the original Moravian initiates, through her
grandmother’s reconstruction of it in The Gift, through her fiction and through
her poetry, H. D.’s work is fundamentally that of esoteric transmission through
ahistorical continuity, timelessness conveyed through time by way of word and
image. She had begun to outline this concept already in her early Notes on
Thought and Vision, but it was only in her later work that we see it, and its im-
plications, outlined in entirety.
We cannot conclude without reference to H. D.’s complex 1957 poem Vale
Ave, which makes it absolutely clear that in her later poetry she was even
more deeply immersed in Western esotericism. The poem begins with the fol-
lowing preface:
This sequence introduces Adam’s first wife, Lilith. Is she the Serpent
who tests the androgynat primordial? Serpent (saraph) it is said, has the
same root derivation as Seraph, so Lilith may be Serpent or Seraph, as
Adam, whom we invoke as Lucifer, the Light-bringer, in his pre-Eve
manifestation, may be Angel or Devil.
The Lucifer-Lilith, Adam-Eve formula may be applied to all men and
women, though here we follow the processus through the characters of
Elizabeth and Sir Walter [Raleigh], meeting and parting, Vale Ave,
through time—specifically, late Rome, dynastic Egypt, legendary
Provence, early seventeenth-century England, and contemporary Lon-
don. She is the niece of the Elizabethan poet and alchemist Sir Edward
Dyer. Sir Walter secretly and mysteriously becomes her lover during the
last months of his life in the Tower of London. After his death, Elizabeth
recalls him to her, through her uncle’s Art and through the alchemy of
memory. Sir Walter was himself an alchemist, as history tells us, and
Elizabeth identifies herself with him, although:
I hardly knew my Lord, true we had met

in sudden frenzy, parted in the dark,
and all the rest was mystery and a portent.
Mystery and a portent, yes, but at the same time, there is Resurrection
and the hope of Paradise.71
Obviously, this preface and the poem itself are filled with esoteric elements, but
for our purposes the most important is the foregrounded theme of male-female
spiritual alchemy that “may be applied to all men and women,” the alchemical
processus of transmutation that is brought about for Elizabeth “through her
uncle’s Art and through the alchemy of memory.”
Here again we find the same themes that recur throughout H. D.’s lifetime of
work, here again “the words laugh,” echoing the laughter in the culminating ini-
tiatory moment in The Gift; here again we find that “I transcribed the scroll”
. . . “the Mystery, the Writing, and the Scroll, / infinity portrayed in simple
things.”72 Here again the scroll becomes a “palimpsest,” and again through it
“I had the answer.” I cite from Vale Ave here because it makes clear that H. D.’s
recurrent theme of initiation through the word, of timelessness revealed in
time’s transparency, is not a youthful digression but central to her work even
late in her life. Her poetry and her prose, taken in toto, reveal a profoundly es-
oteric worldview that offers to its readers nothing less than an initiation into
and an “inauguration of a new age and a new mythology,” but a new mythology
that turns out to be the grand theme of Western esotericism and that is perhaps
as old as the mystery of the word itself.73
Magical Fiction
In a poem entitled “Dreams,” Kathleen Raine wrote of how the mysteries were
once upon the earth, the mysteries of the “tree and miraculous bird,” the myster-
ies of the holy well. But then “From grotto grove and shrine,” the holy presences
withdraw, the “springs gone under the hill.” Her poem ends with the stanza:
Inviolate in dream
The mysteries still are shown,
The dead are living still;
But bring them back none may
Who wakes into this day.74
In our day of ever more complex technology and ever more information, it may
seem as though nothing could be farther from us than a world in which magic
is possible. Yet in the twilit realm of fiction, as in poetry, magic and the ancient
mysteries still dwell. Here, I would like to explore not the art of magic, but
rather how magic dwells in the realm of relatively recent fiction, just as it
dwells in the realm of dreams.
Of course, ‘magical fiction’ in fact belongs to a larger category, that of ‘ini-
tiatory fiction’—novels and short stories whose evident purpose is to take the
reader along into new and perhaps unfamiliar kinds of consciousness. But my
aim here is to explore fiction that carries the reader into the working of ex-
pressly magical ritual and experience, fiction in which the ancient mysteries are
still alive and have not withdrawn their springs. This is actually a rather rare
kind of fiction, as one might imagine. But chief among such authors are with-
out doubt the Inklings (in particular, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles
Williams), as well as Dion Fortune (Violet Firth). Here, while I will draw on
some writings of Tolkien and Williams, I will concentrate on the works of
Lewis and Fortune in order to explore how their fiction becomes magical, and
perhaps becomes itself a magical act.75
In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” in a collection of essays presented to Charles
Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien begins by describing “fairy stories” as those stories
touched by “faëry,” which might best be translated as “magic.” But later in the
same essay, he backtracks and remarks that “Magic should be reserved for the
operations of the magician,” whereas the “elvish craft” might best be referred
to as “enchantment.” He continues:
Enchantment produces a Secondary World into which both designer and

spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are in-
side; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces,
or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not
matter by whom it is said to be practiced, fay or mortal, it remains distinct
from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in
this world, domination of things and wills.76
While the distinction Tolkien makes, here, seems reasonable enough in theory,
when we turn to actual works, things are not nearly so clear cut. Is there really
a difference in practice between enchantment and magic, between the produc-
tion of an artistic “Secondary World” and a work whose purpose is also “alter-
ation in the Primary World”? It would seem that in reality these two can coëxist
in a single work.
Let us take an example. In his extraordinary novel That Hideous Strength,
C. S. Lewis describes a magical invocation that marks the climax of the
book. His main character, John Ransom, invokes the Oyéresu, the “true
powers of Heaven,” the planetary spirits of Perelandra, or Venus, Viritrilbia,
or Mercury, and so forth. Ransom explains what is happening to the resur-
rected ancient magician Merlin, saying “I have become a bridge.” “Sir, what
will come of this?” asks Merlin, for “if they [the Oyéresu] put forth their
power, they will unmake all Middle Earth.” “Their naked power, yes,” replies
Ransom. “That is why they will work only through a man.” “Through a man
whose mind is opened to be so invaded,” says Ransom, “one who by his own
will once opened it.”77 In the subsequent chapter 15, “The Descent of the
Gods,” Ransom invokes these powers he calls the Oyéresu, and the descrip-
tion of this event is one of the most extraordinary evocations of magical

working in literature.
In this chapter, there are two scenes: a room where several ordinary people
sit, and the Blue Room, where Ransom (the Pendragon) and Merlin sit, calling
down the powers. In the beginning of the chapter, the narrator imagines what it
must be like to enter the house, were it possible. “I do not think he could have
reached the door unbidden,” the narrator tells us, for “the whole house would
have seemed to him to be tilting and plunging like a ship in a Bay of Biscay
gale.” “He would have known sensuously, until his outraged senses forsook
him, that the visitants in that room were in it not because they were at rest but
because they glanced and wheeled through the packed reality of Heaven . . . To
keep their beams upon this spot of the moving Earth’s hide.”78 This initial
scene-setting represents a kind of portal through which we as readers imagina-
tively enter into what is happening in the two rooms: it represents the beginning
of an initiation into this magical working.
The ordinary people in the kitchen experience first the coming of Mercury:
they become exceptionally talkative, full of wordplay and puns and metaphors.
We encounter how people ordinarily encounter Mercury; then we imaginatively
enter the Blue Room, where the invocation has its center, and there we see a
“rod of coloured light, whose colour no man can name or picture” darting be-
tween Ransom and Merlin. They experience “needle-pointed desires, brisk
merriments, lynx-eyed thoughts” “rolling to and fro like glittering drops.” Ran-
som “found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white-hot
furnace of essential speech.”79 After Mercury arrives Venus, sweet-scented and
full of desire, awakening dormant passion in the people in the kitchen; but it is
in the description of the Blue Room that Venus truly comes alive. Into the Blue
Room come summer breezes, “laden like heavy barges that glide nearly gun-
wale under . . . Laden with ponderous fragrance of night-scented flowers, sticky
gums . . . A soft tingling and shivering as of foam and breaking bubbles.” Mer-
lin and Ransom tremble, and then comes the goddess: “fiery, sharp, bright and
ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die, outspeeding light: it was Charity . . . Fallen
upon them direct from the Third Heaven, unmitigated. They were blinded,
scorched, deafened. They thought it would burn their bones. They could not
bear that it should continue. They could not bear that it should end.”80
It is not really possible, here, to do full justice to these descriptions of the
planetary powers’ arrival, so well-crafted and evocative are Lewis’s words. But
I would like to step back for a moment from the chapter’s narration and con-
sider again Tolkien’s proposed differentiation between enchantment and magic,
or between “sub-creation” of a “secondary world” and magical effects on the
“primary world” of this earth. In this chapter of Lewis’s novel, such a distinc-
tion does not hold up well at all. Clearly Lewis is describing a magical working:
the invocation of the planetary powers, in which none other than the ancient
magician Merlin participates. The invocation takes place, of course, in a “sec-

ondary world” of fiction, but Lewis’s novel is clearly about the “primary world”
in which we live; the magical working here is meant also to have effects in the
“primary world” of the reader. In other words, “The Descent of the Gods” is
about a celestial healing of a ruined world, but this healing is also one in which
the reader necessarily participates.
It is important that this magical working is not the end of the book, though
one could easily imagine it so. After the “descent of the gods” is achieved in the
fifteenth chapter, in the following chapter we see the destruction of the malevo-
lent Institute and its depraved characters, and all is brought to a conclusion in
“Venus at St. Anne’s,” the seventeenth chapter. Here the various good charac-
ters come together to discuss what happened, and the Director (Dr. Ransom) is
taken up to Perelandra bodily, rather like Elijah or King Arthur. But even this is
not the end: the end comes when the character Jane returns to her husband Mark.
Uncertain whether to enter the lodge where he is sleeping, she sees that clothes
are piled inside, and Mark’s shirt is hanging partway out of the window. “How
exactly like Mark!” Jane thinks. “Obviously it was high time she went in.”81 I
cite this prosaic finale precisely because it is so deliberately ordinary: it brings
us back completely from the magical atmosphere of the novel’s main body to
mundane life, to the familiar world in which a married couple need each other.
Lewis’s work is a masterpiece not only because of how it carries us into the
magical working in the “descent of the gods,” but also because of the delicate ten-
sion it maintains between ordinary life and magical events. Lewis brings us into
the realm of Ransom’s and Merlin’s magical rescue of England from the grip of
a malevolent force, but he always maintains a link with mundane life even at the
heart of the magical working itself (by way of the device of two rooms, one with
ordinary people, and one with Merlin and Ransom). In so doing, Lewis not only
achieves dramatic success, but also is able to take along even the skeptical reader.
One feels a satisfaction at the conclusion of That Hideous Strength that very few
novels are able to elicit; even though of course the reader has not physically par-
ticipated in the invocation of the Oyéresu, still it feels as though one imagina-
tively has; the novel has dimensions that most other fiction simply does not, and
by its end, the reader feels as though he has passed through those dimensions too.
This passage is what I mean by magical initiatory fiction.
One finds exactly the same sense of initiatory passage in the novels of
Charles Williams, whose work I would certainly be remiss if I did not mention
here. About Williams’s novels, Gareth Knight observes in The Magical World of
the Inklings:
those who read his fiction tend to be affected strongly in two ways. His
description of both good and evil is such that it can bring a real extension
of personal knowledge and experience of each to the reader. Therefore
some may feel depressed or repulsed by the down side of his books and
their evocation of the essence of evil. On the other hand, it is possible to
respond to the quality of good, and divine reality and angelic brightness
shines through the other side of his work. Thus a close reading of his nov-
els can have a purificatory, almost cathartic effect. In effect they are ini-
tiations. [Emphasis added.]82
Exactly the same thing may be said here about Lewis’s foray into what was
chiefly Williams’s domain, for both writers evoked magical workings or para-
normal events in ways that very few authors have. By doing so, both Williams
and Lewis were able to widen the metaphysical dimensions of fiction, to make
fiction something much more powerful than it ordinarily is, for in the act of
reading, one is also encountering new realms of existence.
But while Williams’s fiction certainly touches upon magical themes and fea-
tures magician characters both noble, such as the poet Peter Stanhope of Descent
into Hell, and decidedly corrupt ones, such as Simon Leclerc in All Hallows’
Eve, still Williams’s fiction is still by and large of a different kind from the
specifically magical fiction that we saw in Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, when
Ransom invokes the planetary powers. Williams’s characters offer insights into
what it is like to be dead, for instance; they reveal forms of necromancy; they un-
veil the power of archetypes and, in general, allow us to enter into worlds gener-
ated by questions like: what if the Holy Grail were discovered to be physically
real? Or: what if the Platonic archetypes began to “break through” into this
world? In brief: Williams’s fiction is often initiatory, but rarely if at all in exactly
the form I wish to consider here: initiation into magical ritual itself.
For that, we should turn to a second exemplar: the fiction of Dion Fortune.
Fortune rarely wrote about her fiction, but she did offer some preliminary re-
marks to her novel Moon Magic, and her observations are revealing. She writes
there that
Those who read this story for the sake of entertainment will, I am afraid,
not find it very entertaining. It was not written for its entertainment value.
I wrote it, in fact, to find out what it was about. I have put a great deal into
it, and there is a great deal more in it than I ever put in. One might even say
that the writing of it was a magical act. [Emphasis added.] If it be true
that what is created in the imagination lives in the inner world, then what
have I created in Lilith Le Fay? . . . Who and what is Lilith, and why did
she live on after the book about her was finished, and insist on appearing
again? Have I furnished myself with a dark familiar?83
Here Fortune gives voice to exactly the theme we are here investigating: how
the writing of a book can be a magical act, and how therefore the reader is in
some senses a participant in that magical act. She gave rise to the character
Lilith, and was startled to find that the character lived on in Fortune’s own
imagination after The Sea Priestess was finished.
That Fortune was herself a magician is not in question. There is little evi-
dence that Lewis was a practicing magus, but Fortune was, after all, the founder
of the British Society of the Inner Light, and author of numerous books on the
practice of magic and related subjects. Fortune’s wealth of direct personal expe-
rience in the practice of magic, not surprisingly, appears clearly in her novels,
often enough in the first person from the viewpoint of a female character. She
writes matter-of-factly about all manner of paranormal events, and this matter-
of-fact tone of voice has an effect similar to that of the ordinary characters in
Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, as if those characters were somehow joined with
Ransom’s voice. In some respects, Fortune’s novels are as much like primers on
magical practices as they are fiction, and in this the prosaic tone of the narrator’s
voice itself acts as a kind of counterweight to what the narrator is discussing.
Moon Magic is exemplary of this complementary relationship between the
extraordinary events the narrator relates and the matter-of-fact tone in which
such events are discussed. In the novel’s seventh chapter, the narrator begins
this way:
I will tell what I did, putting my cards on the table, for it shows how we
use the Door Without a Key to escape the Lord of This World, who is
Moloch, and take refuge in the Secret Kingdom, which is the dark side of
the Moon, the side She turns away from earth.
The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by
which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them,
and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a
psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the
street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter
to me what it is called, for it is effectual.
I made the astral projection by the usual method; that is to say, I pic-
tured myself as standing six feet in front of myself and then transferred
by consciousness to the simulacrum thus created by my imagination and
looked at the room through its eyes. Then I visualized the face of the man
with the greying red hair, and imagined myself speaking to him. The
magic worked. I had the sensation of the descent of a swift lift, which al-
ways characterizes the change of the level of consciousness; all aware-
ness of my physical surroundings faded, and I seemed to be in a strange
room; a shabby, untidy, badly lit and ill-tended room.84
Here we are observing a magical working of a very different kind from that
evoked by Lewis through his character Ransom. Fortune’s novel, like all of her
fiction, is concerned with practical magic and phenomena like astral projec-
tion; she is interested in “putting her cards on the table,” an expression charac-
teristic of the way she clearly lays out in her fiction to reflect the way her
magical practice is experienced. There is little art in the way she tells of the
magical working: if Lewis’s account is closer to poetry than to prose, Fortune’s
account here is closer to journalism.
Such an observation is not meant entirely as criticism, but also to point out
a means by which Fortune’s novels attract and hold a reader. Characteristic of
this strategy is one of Fortune’s earliest and best-known works, a collection of
stories entitled The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, based on the life of one Theodore
Moriarty. The Secrets of Dr. Taverner certainly falls under the category of ‘oc-
cult fiction,’ but it is in fact just as much in the genre of detective fiction, in par-
ticular that of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. As a character, Taverner is
patterned after Holmes, while the stories are written from the perspective of his
companion, Rhodes. Holmes, one will recall, was consummately the logician,
and something of the same flavor comes across in Taverner, with the addition
of Taverner’s great experience in magical or occult events.
Among the more interesting of these stories is “A Son of the Night,” which
is about an English nobleman whose family seeks to have him certified mad in
order to take over his estate, and who is in fact of supernatural lineage. Taverner
gets to the bottom of the case immediately, but perhaps most interestingly, at
the end of the story, Rhodes, (a kind of Watson to Taverner’s Holmes), who rep-
resents the voice of the ordinary observer, decides to heed the call of nature that
he feels, to “enter the Unseen,” to pass “an invisible barrier” of consciousness.
After his entry into the Unseen, “in all things there was a profound difference,”
Rhodes remarks at the story’s conclusion, “for to me they had suddenly become
alive. Not only were they alive, but I shared in their life, for I was one with
them . . . I was no longer alone; for, like Taverner, Marius, and many others, I
had passed over into the Unseen.”85 And so the book concludes. Thus Rhodes,
the ordinary observer of the magus Taverner, at the end of this collection him-
self becomes an initiate by entering into communion with the wild and sacred
heart of England: he too has “passed over into the Unseen.” The initiation we
see in “A Son of the Night” is a simple change of consciousness: it is an awak-
ening to the inner life of nature. Rhodes’s initiation into nature magic corre-
sponds in some respects to the natural magic of Merlin in Lewis’s That Hideous
Strength: it represents a kind of foundation for other sorts of magic.
But there are other sorts of magical initiations in Fortune’s fiction as well,
and here too there are correspondences with what we have seen in That
Hideous Strength. In Fortune’s novel The Winged Bull, an unsavory magician
named Hugo Astley—with some similarities to Aleister Crowley—and his pro-
tegé, a fellow named Fouldes, set loose a magical attack on the protagonists, a
bullish young man named Ted Murchison, a young woman named Ursula
Brangwyn, and her half-brother, an experienced magician. The three protago-

nists were just about to go to bed when Murchison cocked his head and stared
into space over Ursula’s head. Fortune continues:
Then Brangwyn also caught it, and felt the waves of evil influence come
rolling in, banked and double-banked.
He was experienced in dealing with such things, and the waves di-
vided and swept past him like the tide round a pier. But there was nothing
he could do for the other two . . . It was best to leave Murchison to his un-
aided wits. The girl he could do nothing for. She had passed out of his
reach on the tides of the force as if water had whirled her away.86
At first it appeared that Murchison and Ursula were to be lost in the force
of this magical attack, but then Murchison, a bear of a man, became fu-
rious and the force of his fury came back over the ‘telepathic wire’ to
Fouldes and Astley. ‘If Fouldes and Astley were en rapport at the other
end of the telepathic wire, they were getting it in the neck,’ Brangwyn
concluded. Then, suddenly, a change came over the atmosphere of the
room. The strange, evil power that had been pouring in as steadily as
waves beating into a bay, broke and starred like a smashed mirror, run-
ning in every direction like spilled quicksilver, and in another moment
the room was empty . . .
‘Well,’ said Brangwyn, breaking the embarrassing silence, ‘so that’s that.’
‘Yes,’ replied Murchison, dropping into a chair as if exhausted. ‘That
is very much that.’87
The writing here feels a bit more awkward than in some of Fortune’s other nov-
els, but one can certainly see some parallels between it and Lewis’s That
Hideous Strength.
In That Hideous Strength, there are also depraved black magicians, among
them men named Frost and Wither, who have developed a means for commu-
nication with what they call “Macrobes” (in fact another name for demons).
Frost and Wither are without mercy; they are without morality, and, like Astley
in The Winged Bull, represent evil on another scale entirely from that which one
usually sees depicted in modern fiction. These characters represent sheer
malevolence against humanity, pure selfishness, cold and merciless. Yet para-
doxically, such characters are necessary not only dramatically, but also logi-
cally, in order to generate the greater polarity necessary for what we might call
the metaphysical battles that take place in both books. Of the two books, of
course Lewis’s is far the greater both in literary skill and in significance, but
clearly in both depravity is necessary on one side in order that there can be
noble transcendence on the other.
This is not merely a cliché: in order for the magical drama to go forward,
there must be in these novels—as also in books of Charles Williams such as
War in Heaven—a metaphysical polarity between good and evil. This provides
the profound tension that drives these works and that creates the ‘space’ within
which the magical workings take place. There is, in this kind of fiction, a series
of magical initiations that begin with something like Rhodes’s entry into the
Unseen, at the end of The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, but that also go beyond see-
ing into nature, rising to insight into the metaphysical underpinnings of human
life. In all of the fiction we are considering here, there are two kinds of magic—
black and white—and the dramatic power of these novels emerges from the
reader’s initiation into the existence of both, which represent profoundly diver-
gent ways of relating to the cosmos.
When the reader enters into the magical fiction of Lewis, Williams, and For-
tune, he is in fact being initiated into the existence of forces invisible to the vast
majority of people, powers both good and evil. The phrase magical initiation
is perhaps most suitable here for the works of Fortune, whose novels without
any question reflect the fact that she was herself the founder of an initiatory
order, initially called the Christian Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society,
but later called the Community of the Inner Light, and finally the Society of the
Inner Light.85 In the works of Fortune we are unquestionably seeing the reflec-
tion of her own extensive experience in magical initiation. But Charles
Williams and even C. S. Lewis, while more circumspect about their own
knowledge and at least in Williams’s case, experience of magic, also reflect at
least some initiatory knowledge in their writings.89 While the works of these au-
thors are more artistic than Fortune’s, they also carry the reader along on an ini-
tiatory course.
In “Approaches to Western Esoteric Currents,” Antoine Faivre discusses the
nature of initiation, and in particular how the individual on an esoteric path fol-
lows a process of awakening. Faivre writes that
We follow this path by committing ourselves to it, either alone, helped

by appropriate texts, which hide the mysteries while revealing their
keys, or with the help of an initatory, who can be an isolated master or
a member of an initiatory school. The initiation serves to regenerate our
consciousness, thanks to a process that lets us reappropriate the know-
ing we have lost . . . thanks to which we refashion the experience of our
relationships to the sacred and the universe. Whether or not a disciple
has a master, he has to access a knowing—or a form of nonknowing—
transmittable by the word, and thanks to that, to advance in the knowl-
edge of the connections uniting the disciple to higher entities
(theosophy strictu sensu) and to cosmic forces, to living Nature (theos-
ophy lato sensu).90
I would suggest that the order of these final points be reversed, since in the fic-
tion we have been discussing, initiation into living Nature tends to precede ini-
tiation into the powers of higher entities. But this passage as a whole clearly can
be read as referring to initiation “transmittable by the word,” and thus to writ-
ten works like novels. In fact, as one reads a novel like Dion Fortune’s The Sea
Priestess, one is to some degree at least “refashion[ing] the experience of our
relationships to the sacred and the universe” just as the neophyte character Wil-
fred Maxwell is transmuted by his magical work with the character Vivien Le
Fay Morgan.91
Faivre goes on to remark that to succeed in this process of regeneration or
initiatic awakening, active imagination is essential. Indeed, he calls ‘active
imagination’ “the essential component of esotericism.”92 This special kind of
imagination allows one to “escape both from the sterility of a purely discursive
logic, and from the rule-free extravagances of fantasy or sentimentality,”
putting us in contact with the mundus imaginalis or imaginal world that “is the
space of intermediary beings, a mesocosm possessing its own geography, thor-
oughly real, perceptible to each of us as a function of our respective cultural im-
agery.”93 Faivre’s observations here are particularly important because they help
us to understand in a different light what Lewis, Williams, and Fortune were up
to in their fictional works. For magical fiction is in fact remarkably suited to,
if we may so put it, initiating readers into “the space of intermediary beings, a
mesocosm possessing its own geography.”
What conclusions can we draw, then, from this brief foray into the realm of
magical fiction? First, we may note that the distinctions drawn by Tolkien be-
tween a “secondary” world of artistic creation and the “primary” world of this
earth do not hold for magical fiction precisely because magical fiction repre-
sents a passage between the matter-of-fact world that we are familiar with, and
a realm in which one may encounter and work with nonphysical beings and
powers. Second, we have seen that central to this initiatory passage is a tension
between matter-of-fact or ‘ordinary’ characters and those experienced in mag-
ical work. Such a tension corresponds, in literary form, to the age-old rela-
tionship between the initiate and the initiator, even though the ultimate source
of the reader’s magical initiation in fiction is the author. Third, we have seen
that magical fiction in general represents to the reader a series of stages or
grades, moving from initiation into elemental or natural magic (represented by
Lewis’s character Merlin, for instance) to initiation into encounters with tran-
scendent beings the Oyéresu in Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, or such as Isis
in Fortune’s The Sea Priestess. Finally, we have seen that often central to this
magical initiation is a kind of magical battle between evil and good magicians,
which manifests a deeper conflict between destructive and constructive pow-
ers in the cosmos as a whole, ‘behind the scenes’ of the drama of ordinary
human life.
The authors we have considered here knew or knew of one another, and
were engaged at least to some degree in similar enterprises, which is why I have
chosen to study them together. Still, there remain fundamental differences.
While Fortune was certainly a practicing magician, her novels have a work-
manlike quality: they do depict magical rituals and do offer insights into the na-
ture of magic. But it is in the work of Lewis that we find an initiation into
magical working that rises to the multivalent level of full artistic creation. It is
in Lewis’s That Hideous Strength that the reader can perhaps most powerfully
encounter the transmuting power of artistic beauty expressing ritual magic that,
indirectly or directly, is linked to the world in which we live and that offers us
profound insights into the cosmos and into humanity. Thus, if I may be permit-
ted a single conclusion, it is this: there is undoubtedly art in magic, but the most
magical works of all may well be found in literary art.
Esoteric Transmission in the Art of Cecil Collins
Although this book is primarily about literary transmission, this is not the only
means of esoteric transmission in twentieth-century works. As we have already
seen, images played an important role not only in alchemical works and later in
Rosicrucianism, but also in Böhmean theosophy, where images accompany the
written word and yet represent a separate set of works on their own. Theosophic
illustrations in particular, such as those accompanying the original German and
English editions of Böhme’s complete works, represent a visual form separate
from and complementing the texts they accompany. Something of the same re-
lationship between word and image exists in the works of Cecil Collins
(1908–1989), an important and genuinely original British painter.
Collins is best known as an artist whose works manifest an ethereal, vi-
sionary style that may best be described as glimpses into another, transcendent
and perhaps, in the sense of Rilke, angelic realm. Collins’s paintings were ex-
hibited in a major retrospective in 1989, held in London’s Tate Gallery. This
was an exhibition that I was fortunate enough to attend, and I recall the other-
worldliness of the images, the sense that the artist belonged to the same tradi-
tion as A. E., and that like his contemporary poet, Collins revealed in his work
insights into the hidden, higher aspects of nature and humanity. One felt as
though one were in some sense being initiated into a way of seeing, not merely
viewing paintings but through them being shown new ways of understanding
humanity and the transcendent.
It was not until 1994 that Brian Keeble brought out an edited book of
Collins’s writings under the title The Vision of the Fool, but with the publication
of this book, one could understand much more clearly the nature of Collins’s
paintings. Collins was a gifted aphorist, and his writings reveal in detail his
worldview, even as they transmit that worldview to the reader. The aphorism is
in many respects the most poetic form of prose; the aphorism by its nature
stands on its own surrounded by the white space of the page, so that the reader
has a greater task than in prose works, for he must ‘leap the gaps,’ must make
intellectual connections individually.
By reading Collins’s aphorisms, one is placed in contact with another reality
through them, and this from a comparatively early period in his work. In
“Hymn of Life,” consisting in excerpts from Collins’s journals during the Sec-
ond World War, he writes:
O holy ones I long for you, I long for my race, I long for my kingdom; we
are all exiles. I know of your existence, I remember you, and my life with
you. But here I wander, and I know nothing. But you exist, and most holy
are you O beautiful servants. [14 January, 1945, Totnes, Devonshire]94
He writes beautifully also of his life in nature, of his solitary walks in the
countryside, of “The long eternal afternoons robed in blue, with the white
compassionate temples of the clouds floating in wise happiness and detached
love,” or again, of how “The tasting of these things in our days and nights is
the partaking of the sacrament of existence.” Ordinary life in the natural
world, for Collins, is imbued always with spiritual significance; and the task
of the artist is to remind us of this, to show us the hieroedietic beauty of life
through art.
If Collins loved solitude and nature on the one hand, on the other his works
are infused with profound criticisms of the “insect-life” of modern industrial
society. In Cambridge in 1945 he wrote acidly
What an age to live in! It bites into you with a formless denying of the
life in us. A frustration of all that which is growing, of all that which de-
sires to give, to come to fruition. Our time denies, denies all who have in-
ward fruit. Denies the artist, the contemplative, the human being. A
winter of the spirit is over all society. The coldness of the vanity of the in-
tellect on one side, and cheap vulgarity of attitude towards life on the
other side. It is this official denial of life that confronts us in everything.
But deep underneath flows the secret stream.95
In 1965, Collins gave a public lecture titled “The Artist in the New Age,” and in
it he wrote that
It is part of our democratic self-deception and sentimentality that we

vaguely assume we are without an elite, when in fact it is quite clear that
we are ruled today by the elite of scientific technocrats and politicians
who are quite clearly spiritually and culturally illiterate. They represent
a low level of awareness and consciousness; they have no philosophy of
life other than the exploitation of nature and of man, and the making of
money. This is the same thing actually.96
It is remarkable how timely Collins’s critique of industrial society has re-

mained, how apt his descriptions still are of the moribund vacuity characteriz-
ing so much of modern life.
Collins calls us out of this stupor of the insectoid hive-life in industrial soci-
ety through his art, and central to our awakening is a change in consciousness.
In his essay “Art and Modern Man,” Collins distinguishes between “how”
knowledge and “why” knowledge. “How” knowledge refers to mere process
and manipulation of apparently dead objects, whereas “‘why’ knowledge is
concerned with the significance of things, the meaning.” “How” knowledge is
merely instrumental, whereas
a great deal of ‘why’ knowledge is known only through nuance of con-

sciousness. Transformation of consciousness cannot be known or be
brought about by thinking, by description, by measurement or analysis. It
can only be known by inner nuance, rapport, and sensitivity to the vibra-
tions and rays of that livingness which is at the heart of things.
The higher worlds are inaccessible to the insensitive; they cannot be
reached by knowledge of them, but only by rapport with those worlds.
For like answers to like and creates actualization . . . the instrument of art
helps to sensitise the interior nature and to continually re-sensitise it
when it grows stale and dull in the world of mere existence—the world of
repetition.97
Works of art, in Collins’s view, awaken this inner rapport in us; they offer av-
enues into direct inner spiritual realization, another way of expressing what he
calls “why” knowledge.
The value of the artist is not to decorate, to make pretty that “empty and me-
chanical desert we call modern civilization,” but to offer what Collins calls
“rapport” with the transcendent, and thus ultimately nothing less than a trans-
formation of our consciousness. In “Art and Modern Man” he continues to dis-
cuss what art is capable of achieving:
Art is a realization of what is and not of what appears to be[;] art is

therefore an instrument of man’s inner nature and it enables him to man-
ifest in the phenomena of matter the nuance and living quality of his
inner life so that his environment is no longer neutral or alien: a rapport
is established.
As our consciousness becomes transformed we become more sensitive to

a wider range of nuance and vibration[;] we have a deeper rapport with
the earth, trees, rocks, the elements, the answer comes back to us from
within them. Art enables us to experience what the French poet René
Char calls ‘the friendship of created things.’ In other words, with the
transformation of consciousness our experience of matter undergoes a
change, it becomes qualitative, we have communion with it[;] it is conse-
crated and is now sacramental.98
The work of art, in Collins’s view, is thus more than a portal into the transcen-
dent; it is also a means by which human consciousness is awakened, widened,
and transmuted; it is a means of initiation and spiritual transmission.
Collins sees this artistic transmission as taking the place of older, canonical
religions and ritual. He writes in “The Artist in the New Age” that in the mod-
ern era, we have no canonic culture of our own, and what is more, that the
canonic cultures of the past are decaying and dying. Collins holds that “a new
period of art will come not through this decaying, religious, canonic language,
but through a lyrical contact with the archetypal world.” He continues:
We now have the possibility of this hidden unity of man’s inner world at
last permeating the sphere of the exterior world and transforming it. And
this brings us to the big problem Within this new open consciousness we
need to recover a sacramental sense. In the past, in the great canonic for-
mality of traditional civilizations there was of necessity a ‘closed’ con-
sciousness in order to focus upon the sacred . . . But we have to learn how
to concentrate on the sacramental without the use of this ‘closed’ formal-
ity. We must have sacrament everywhere: as Blake says, ‘Everything that
lives is holy,’ if only the doors of perception would be cleansed.99
This awakening of the sense of the sacramental is the task of art; in Collins’s
view, living art is initiation into the realization that all is holy and that our true
relationship to nature and to one another is sacramental.
Collins concludes his lecture by reaffirming the initiatory nature of art. We
live, he writes, in a “time of the apocalypse, and the word ‘apocalypse’ means
to unveil.” In his final remarks, he writes that
This is the time of unveiling, the unveiling of the atom, the opening of
man’s inner nature, his inner world. But there is something else that has
to be opened, and that is the eye of the heart. If the eye of the heart is
closed then the whole of the universe is dead, a mere turning of the wheel
of existence, of mere desires. Creative art has always been concerned to
touch and open the eye of the heart. We are all apt to fall asleep, spiritu-
ally, and the eye of the heart is opened by these two artists, the one with
the sword, not afraid to wound the heart, make it bleed, and the other with
the light. What we are asked to do in the new age is to understand what
the function of art is and to give our support and collaboration to the
artist, an active support, that we may share each other’s creative response
to life.100
The phrase “eye of the heart” is found in Christian theosophy; it refers to the
inner visionary spiritual capacity of the individual, and here it seems an appro-
priate way for Collins to conclude, reminding us of the innate spiritual aware-
ness that we can awaken if we wish to do so.
Collins’s paintings reflect an uncanny unity from the earliest to the last. In
all of them the human form and/or landscape is present but stylized. Human
forms are elongated and have a geometric quality that’s intensified in some,
such as “The Invocation” (1944), by patterns on the limbs and torso. “The In-
vocation” reveals a paradisal relationship between the invoking angelic human
figure, her head bent back and contemplative, her hand outstretched over the
land in benediction, and in this it captures (in 1944!) precisely the sacramental
relationship with nature that Collins discussed in his lectures so many years
later. Here, as in many of his visionary paintings, landscape is transformed as
well; in “The Invocation,” it is as though the black-and-white world of indus-
trial civilization is being transformed before our eyes into the paradisal realm
suggested by the awakening colors in its landscape.
Often, too, Collins’s paintings are ecstatic, like “Angels” (1948). Here the
landscape below seems to be swelling up and rising with energy like an ocean
swell, while above it sweep golden spirals and a red sun, to the left the sweep-
ing forms of two intertwined angels whose colors partake of the earth’s brown
and of white, their faces closed in rapt contemplation as they seem but a mo-
ment from ascending, around them a halo of golden-yellow light. Such paint-
ings are mysterious in their capacity to evoke in us a sense, a rapport with
something that we cannot quite articulate, but that is uplifting and paradisal, a
union of figure, landscape, and vibrant color.
In many of his later paintings, the figures’ eyes are opened, as if to reflect
Collins’s own opened sense of inner vision interconnected with the exterior
world, or to show to us how interwoven is our own consciousness with that
which he is revealing through the paintings. Many of these images have a
strange, dreamlike, hieratic quality, revealed as clearly as anywhere in “The
Music of Dawn” (1988). Here the entire image is awash in golden light, to the
left the orb of the sun, to the right a human figure with a sweeping robe that
looks as though it rises out of the earth exactly as does the hill behind it. The
figure looks out with a far-off gaze, its features smooth and surrounded by a
mane of hair, in its hand a staff topped by an orb. To gaze at this painting is to
sense anew Collins’s expectation of a new era, dawn of a more spiritual

humanity gazing on mysteries with serene contemplation.
I offer these paintings as indicative of Collins’s extraordinary ability to re-
veal through the image something that transcends image, to achieve precisely
what he wrote about so eloquently. In another book, Meditations, Poems, Pages
from a Sketchbook (1997), Collins also wrote about the critical importance of
awakening to an awareness of the archetypal, and it is the archetypal that we see
in the hieratic figures and landscapes of his paintings. Divine Reality, Collins
wrote in this book,
is so powerful that we cannot look on it and live—therefore we need a

buffer, a world between us and it, like an electrical transformer, to take
the impact and transform it to our dimension. This buffer world is called
the archetypal world, by which we make contact with reality through im-
ages . . . If this participation in reality through images is brought down
into our environment, so that God becomes a table, chair, or altar, we then
have ‘sacred space,’ sacred images, instruments for transmitting a reality
higher than ourselves.101
The living work of art is a reminder and a means of exactly this transmission,
in Collins’s view; they are nothing less than (to cite Collins on the nature of
symbols) “transmissions of the nature of reality.”
Cecil Collins represents the archetypal figure of the twentieth-century eso-
teric artist, not least because his work includes not only images, but also essays,
aphorisms, and poems that illuminate his paintings. In this respect, he is like
very few other painters; he offers through his paintings, his drawings, and his
written work the clear sense that his work represents portals into other dimen-
sions of consciousness beyond the merely quotidian. And it is also clear, from
his writing on a “new age” of the spirit, that like Milosz, he saw himself ad-
dressing a future audience that would be receptive to primordial ways of seeing
humanity and nature.
Indeed, implicit in the works of all three of our main authors and artists
here—Milosz, H. D., and Collins—is this sense of a future audience, of their
work as a transmission through a confused and destructive era into a paradisal
future, one that partakes as much of humanity’s Edenic past as of its potentially
paradisal future. In all of these works, we see intimations of a future paradisal
existence, of kinds of consciousness that transcend the subject-object divisions
characteristic of modernity. But Collins offers these through visual images,
even if in writing he offers the context for viewing and understanding those im-
ages. Here, as in the works of Milosz and H. D., and indeed, in the works of
Lewis and Williams as well, an esoteric transmission of new ways of seeing hu-
manity and the world is not merely decorative, but central. Lost paradise and
the restoration of paradise, these are the themes of these great artists, the hid-
den themes perhaps of our entire era, made visible in the mysterious archetypal
images of Collins.
THE WESTERN ESOTERIC TRADITIONS

AND CONSCIOUSNESS
When we consider Western esotericism in its full range, we can characterize

it as falling into two general categories that go back at least to Dionysius the
Areopagite: the via positiva, or way of affirmation, and the via negativa, or
way of negation. Strictly speaking, as Dionysius himself points out, these two
ways are in fact ultimately one in that they both lead to the same transcen-
dence, but nonetheless in practice these two ways do differ. And most of the
Western esoteric traditions correspond to the via positiva, the way of images
and forms and transformations, rather than to the ascent to absolute transcen-
dence of all forms that we find in, for instance, the work of Meister Eckhart or
of Johannes Tauler. Yet when we penetrate entirely through the via positiva,
particularly that of alphanumeric gnosis, what we find is in fact the via nega-
tiva, sheer transcendence of all subject-object divisions. And it is on this para-
dox that we must concentrate in addressing the relationships of Western
esotericism to consciousness.
It is, of course, somewhat too general to speak in the abstract about Western
esotericism as a whole; and it is undoubtedly better to consider individual tra-
ditions. But this we have already done in our historical overview of Western es-
oteric currents, and now it is time for us to consider the broader implications of
Western esoteric traditions in relation to consciousness. For in our overview of
Western esotericism, despite the dazzling wealth of diversity in its means of ex-
pression, there have emerged common characteristics on which we may be able
to shed some light by summarizing them and considering them as a whole.
First, we may say that Western esotericism is fundamentally literary in ex-
pression. But the term literary here refers to an interdisciplinary nexus, to the
conjunction of spirituality, science, and the arts in written form. Here ‘litera-
ture’ takes on new meanings, for in Western esotericism it is generally re-
garded as a vehicle, as a means of transmitting knowledge, and awakening
gnosis. This brings us to our second point: that in Western esotericism, liter-
ature (in which we include images and numbers) is generally conceived as a
means of transmuting consciousness. The words and images of Western eso-
teric traditions are by no means diversions, or mere entertainment, but rather,
although they may contain an element of play, are in fact essentially gnostic:
that is, they are charged with visionary or spiritual experiences, and are
meant to lead their reader toward those experiences. Thus our third point: that
in the Western esoteric traditions, gnostic experience is the crown and pur-
pose of human life.
All of these aspects of Western esoteric literature may seem foreign to con-
temporary eyes, schooled as we are in the division between subject and object.
In modern education, we are taught from childhood that ‘I’ am separate from
‘the other,’ and that knowledge consists in learning about the various divisions
or aspects of the ‘I’ and of ‘the other.’ Hence we find the basis of all the various
disciplines: biology, geology, chemistry, history, psychology, sociology, and so
on. All of these disciplines are expressions of the same general theory of ‘ob-
jective,’ quantifiable knowledge, and implicit in them all is that there is an ‘I’
that is separate from and learns about the cosmos, gathers means of technical
power over the cosmos, but never overcomes and rarely is even aware of this
great gulf between self and other.
Western esoteric traditions, on the other hand, are founded in a totally dif-
ferent way of seeing the individual in relation to the cosmos. This other view is
particularly acute in alchemy, where alchemical work consists in the transmu-
tation of both self and other at once. The alchemist works with natural sub-
stances—for example, plant extracts, or minerals—but that work is not merely
manipulating chemicals or substances. Rather, alchemical work is based on a
fundamental correspondence between self and other, between the human and
natural realms. Alchemical work consists in raising up or redeeming both hu-
manity and nature, in achieving what one might call as well a restoration of par-
adise or a golden age—as we have already seen, an explicit goal of such
modern poets as Milosz and H. D.
Within this fundamentally different way of understanding nature and hu-
manity is also a profoundly different way of understanding literature and art,
but to understand why this is so requires some further explanation. For the cor-
respondence between humanity and the cosmos can take place only by means
of a third: the divine. Here is the essential division between a modern, materi-
alist worldview and what we find in Western esotericism. In a modern world-
view, there is only the division between self and other, between humanity and
the cosmos, which often enough becomes humanity pitted against the cosmos.
But in Western esoteric traditions, one finds the ternary predominating:
humanity, the cosmos, and the divine.
Western esoteric traditions—and this is true of all of them—are founded on
the existence of this mysterious, hidden, ‘third element,’ the divine, that tran-
scends and links both humanity and the cosmos. And Western esoteric litera-
ture, be it Rosicrucian or alchemical, theosophic or Kabbalistic or magical,
works only by reference to this third element, the divine, whose fundamental
nature is to join together self and other. Under this broad rubric of ‘the divine,’
we can discern two general levels: there is the archetypal realm of Forms, Ideas,
or Symbols, and there is sheer transcendence, sometimes called by Böhme the
Ungrund, and by others the Nothing, meaning by that not absence, but no-
thing, the absolute unity of subject and object, perhaps denoted by some
ancient Gnostics under the term Pleroma, or Fullness.
These two aspects of the divine—but especially the lower, archetypal
realm—are critical to understanding Western esoteric literature. For the pur-
pose of such literature is, first, to awaken the reader’s consciousness of this ar-
chetypal realm. The author has presumably already journeyed to this realm, and
in returning has written or illustrated a work, which in turn is meant to guide or
awaken the reader to its archetypal or symbolic reality. Milosz calls this awak-
ening power “Memoria” and insists that it is the essence of our consciousness,
this latent memory of higher consciousness waiting to be awakened. This ar-
chetypal realm, the Platonic realm of Forms or Ideas, is the origin of both
nature and humanity—and of art.
For this sphere of archetypes is the infinite hieratic, symbolic realm of im-
ages contacted by the imagination from which in turn appears the panoply of
the arts. Thus the artist, in this worldview, is in fact prophetic, by definition a
‘seer,’ who partakes in a particular kind of hieroeidetic knowledge. The artist,
in order to create, must see into the archetypal realm that is above the limita-
tions of time and space; and so there is in all true art a timeless and universal
quality. Hence we may view the “Prophecies” of William Blake, the “Vision”
of William Butler Yeats, and the poetic prophecies of Oscar Milosz in perhaps
a different way, for all three of these poets, suffused by their deep study of
Western esoteric traditions, in turn created clearly prophetic works meant to
foretell a future that they also invoked.
There is in the universalist aims of these poets a definite indebtedness to the
inherent universalism of Western esoteric traditions. That is: whether we look
at Kabbalah, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, theosophy, or any of the other major es-
oteric currents, what we find in fact is not limited to the sphere of religion
alone, but instead ranges freely across all of what we today call separate disci-
plines or fields. In all of these traditions, we find a divine art and a divine sci-
ence, a divine mathematics, biology, cosmology, and literary expression. The
eighteenth-century alchemist is often at once a poet and a historian, a mythol-
ogist, a theologian, and a chemist, an artist, a biologist and geologist and a
priestly hierophant. One cannot separate any of these roles because they are all
intimately bound up with the enormous range covered by the rubric alchemist.
Underlying all of these Western esoteric traditions is also a universalism in
the myth of the fall and of restoration. This myth—although it appears in nu-
merous variants—is always tied to the Ur-Mensch, Adam, and his fall from par-
adise. In brief, what transpired before history goes something like this:
Primordial humanity, often seen as androgynous, was tempted to look outside
itself for knowledge, and in this externalization was the separation or fall from
paradise into the increasing objectivization of history. The aim of the esoteric
practitioner, whether a Kabbalist, an alchemist, a theosopher, or a pansoph, is

nothing less than the restoration of paradise, which is to say, the restoration of
unity between humanity and nature by way of the divine.
Such a myth of universal fall and restoration also implies that behind the
Babel of modern human languages lies a universal language that belongs to
paradisal humanity. The myth of a primordial humanity entails a primordial
language, the language of creation itself. In this perspective, the entire cosmos
represents a kind of celestial writing, and within every living thing is its tran-
scendent or archetypal signature or word. Primordial humanity knows this ce-
lestial language, but as humanity fell away from it in the long descent that is
human history, language too became externalized and ‘hardened’ outside us
into mutually incomprehensible ‘tongues,’ not the means of celestial union with
all that surrounds us, but instead a further means for our separation from and
objectification of the world.
We see this idea of a celestial or universal language appearing in various
forms throughout Western esotericism. Jewish Kabbalah of course maintains a
long tradition of Hebrew exegesis, and of intricate maneuvers with letters and
numbers in gematria, temurah, and notarikon, drawing a virtually infinite
range of connotations from a single verse, even from a single letter. Underlying
these alphanumeric permutations is the understanding that in fact one is work-
ing with the very language of creation, and this view is found throughout other
Western esoteric traditions, often with Hebrew as the celestial language of
choice. Hence, for instance, one finds Hebrew letters inscribed in alchemical,
theosophic, pansophic, magical, Rosicrucian, and Masonic illustrations, almost
always denoting divinity.
A typical manifestation of this tradition is found around the turn of the nine-
teenth century, in a group of London Rosicrucians associated with Francis Bar-
rett (1765–1825), author of The Magus. The complex web of influences and
friendships among such figures as Barrett and William Blake and various Kab-
balists both Jewish and Christian during this time may never be completely un-
raveled. But it is certain that Barrett proposed a “magical alphabet” closely
resembling the “Mason’s marks” or Masonic hieroglyphs. These in turn are re-
lated to Hebrew letters, and indeed as Yeats pointed out, William Blake in some
of his illustrations used “Hebrew characters on some of his designs, which
show that he had learned the unfamiliar way of writing then known to some oc-
cult students as the ‘Celestial Alphabet.’”102 Likewise, the poet Robert Southey
observed that London Swedenborgians prized a “Celestial Alphabet” “in which
every letter signifies a complete thing . . . and every flexure and curvature of
every letter, contains some secret of wisdom.”103
And we find this insistence on the importance of magical language in many
unexpected places—for instance, in the Russian symbolist poetry and prose
near the beginning of the twentieth century, where it arguably sparked the entire
symbolist movement and, consequently, influenced much of modern Russian

literature. This is in fact precisely the argument of several contemporary schol-
ars of Russian literature. In her article “The Magic of Words: Symbolism, Fu-
turism, Social Realism,” Irina Gutkin summarizes this argument as follows:
However diverse Russian modernists’ language theories and related vi-

sions of the future may have been, generally speaking . . . in their cos-
mogonic mythologies the genesis of a new world was conceived
principally as a glottogenetic process: the creation of new language ob-
tained the paramount role in the realization of a new ideal world of the
future. They shared a utopian dream of a new perfectly ‘transparent’ lan-
guage, in that their theories implied restoration of the world’s original
Edenic state, which they conceptualized as the time when human beings
spoke a language in which the signifier and the signified existed in com-
plete organic unity. Sacerdotal or magical language provided a model
for the new language each of these movements was striving to create, a
synthetic magical language of unprecedented epistemological power
whose ultimate function was to serve as a means of conjuring new life in
the future world.104
Obviously, we cannot here pursue further this fascinating theme of how mag-
ical views of language pervaded Russian and even early Soviet literature, but
certainly it is evident that this is an extension of a fundamental theme that
runs through the whole of Western esotericism as it emerges in literary and
artistic forms.
It is theoretically possible to trace these ideas of a celestial alphabet through-
out Western history, following the various currents through Kabbalism, theos-
ophy, magic, and Masonry, seeing where they emerge also into the world of
letters or poetry. Some of this work we have already done earlier in this discus-
sion, when surveying the various esoteric currents. But only to trace influences
assumes that everything in Western esotericism can be attributed to questions
of ‘influence,’ and this is not necessarily so. For it well may be that there is a
general paradigm recurring thoughout the various currents of Western esoteri-
cism, of which these various currents are particular manifestations filtered
through the conditions of an era and religious tradition.
This is not to say that there is a universal esotericism—for here we are not
venturing beyond fundamentally European traditions—but rather, it is to sug-
gest that there are governing images and currents of Western esotericism, and
that these are consistently linked with an alphanumeric mysticism of language,
and especially of written language and of the book. The book may be the cryp-
tic “Liber M” of the Rosicrucians; it may be the “Book of Nature,” or the
“Book of Revelation,” or the “Book of Life”; certainly it may be the Christian
Bible or the Jewish Talmud or the Islamic Koran; and it may also be the vision-
ary Mysterium Magnum of Jacob Böhme or an alchemical manuscript. But in
all cases the mode of transmission is in some sense a book.
It is true that many of the world’s religious traditions include sacred writ-
ings, but it is a peculiar fact that the three major monotheist traditions—
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—have a specific reverence for the sacred
book, and what is more, regard the book itself as a primary means of transmit-
ting the tradition. It is one thing for the Upanishads or the Sutras or the Tao te
ching to be written down as a means of preservation and continuity of the tra-
dition; but it is quite another for the writing itself to become so primary as the
sacred writings of the three monotheistic traditions. In Hinduism or Buddhism,
the traditions are largely continued by means of initiatory lineages of teachers,
gurus, or masters, who were in turn taught by a spiritual master, and so on back
into antiquity. Such initiatory continuity is found also in Islam with Sufism,
and in Judaism with Kabbalah.
But what about Western esotericism in the Christian world? Why are there
virtually no verifiable traditional initiatory lineages like those we find in other
traditions? There are of course exceptions—one thinks in particular of
Freemasonry and its claims to a continuous lineage going back at least to the
time of the Knights Templar, and indeed even farther back. However, even in
this case it is not a matter of an initiatory master-disciple tradition in quite the
same way as we see in Sufism, for instance, or in Buddhism. Indeed, it is
rather difficult to find any cases of such initiatory lineages even within the
broad sphere of Western esotericism, much less in Christianity specifically.
Certainly there were such nascent initiatory lineages early in the Christian era
among gnostic circles, but there is no evidence that any of these continued
even into the medieval period.
Thus we are left with the enigma of Western esotericism, where initiatory
lineages seem largely broken, interrupted, or nonexistent. Even in the case of
alchemy, where it is traditionally said that one must be initiated by an alchemist
in order to work the magistery, there are virtually no available records on any
such actual initiatory lines in Western European literature, other than occa-
sional fragmentary lists and the perfunctory listing of such figures as Plato,
Hermes, and Geber. But perhaps there is a solution to this general absence of
initiatory lineages.
Given our overview, it seems entirely possible that Christianity and Western
esoteric traditions more generally, rely upon the written word not only as a
focus for oral communication or transmission, but also as a primary means of
spiritual transmission. This would certainly explain why figures like Meister
Eckhart or Johannes Tauler did not found initiatory lineages of disciples, but
rather relied upon the written word, which indeed still finds them audiences
today. It certainly fits well with Kabbalistic mysticism, where the tradition
focuses a great deal not only on mystical exegesis, but also on writing as an ac-
tual means of spiritual illumination. One thinks here, of course, of Abraham
Abulafia, and his method of “writing the names” until one enters ecstasy. And
one recalls the Rosicrucians, who never revealed themselves publicly at all, but
who rather offered the world only written works, which in turn generated a host
of further written works—as if the written word itself were the primary means
of individual and social transformation.
Such a view of the written word is, naturally, rather far indeed from most
contemporary perspectives, for in all cases, it assumes that writing has a sacred
origin and purpose. In modern parlance, writing is essentially a ‘collection of
signs,’ a means of conveying ‘information,’ or ‘data’; it is a means of horizon-
tal communication between two discrete people. By contrast, to write in all of
these traditions means something quite different, for it above all has what we
may call a ‘vertical’ aspect. That is to say, whether it be in Kabbalah or alchemy
or theosophy, the divine is seen to inhere in language generally, and specifically
in revealed or illuminated writing, the writing of someone who has actually
realized the tradition’s aim of spiritual illumination.
We see exactly such a view in the figure of O. V. Milosz, who, whatever one
may think of his poetry, is unquestionably an exemplary figure not least because
he consciously represented in his work virtually the entire range of Western es-
oteric traditions, but also because he quite clearly saw himself as an illuminant
who by writing was also transmitting this illumination into the future, to some
future initiate in a far century. Milosz, in addressing this far-off “son,” had no
prospect of actually meeting or initiating him directly—his poetry and prose had
to serve that function. Somehow, Milosz’s future reader would have to become
Milosz’s initiated successor by way of Milosz’s writing alone. Thus we can con-
clude that the writing itself is meant to have an initiatory function.
Is it possible for writing alone to serve as means of initiation? Naturally, the
answer to this question depends upon what one means by initiation. If by this
word one is referring to some kind of ceremony or ritual involving a group of
people, and insists that the word can only mean direct contact between two liv-
ing people, then of course writing could not be initiatory in itself. But if the
word initiation is taken to refer to an awakening of higher degrees of con-
sciousness, then it is indeed possible for the written word to serve this function.
Indeed, when we look at the writing of Milosz, and in particular at its strange,
hieratic, dreamlike language and imagery, it seems obvious that the poetry is
intended not only to describe but also to evoke the kinds of consciousness it
represents. Such evocation is, I believe, initiatory.
Let us take another example. Christian theosophic literature, particularly the
works of Böhme, have been adorned with copious illustrations, often strikingly
beautiful. These illustrations, for example the famous ones accompanying
Gichtel’s well-known edition of Böhme’s works, are not simply decorations, but
reveal in condensed visual form essential aspects of the theosophic tradition. I

have discussed this theosophic iconography at length in my book Wisdom’s
Children, so there is no need here to repeat myself. But we can take a single
such illustration here and demonstrate how it can function in an initiatory way.
A good example of an initiatory illustration is one accompanying Thomas
Bromley’s book The Way to the Sabbath of Rest.105 This illustration shows the
theosophic three principles or three realms, the dark-world of hell, the light-
world of paradise, and the intermediate realm of nature between them. In the
midst of the dark-world we see a seed whose green stem grows upward through
the spatio-temporal cosmos, represented by a cross, and becomes a seedhead in
the light-world above, marked also “Sophia,” or Wisdom. Such an illustration
is not merely allegorical, meaning that some image in it ‘equals’ some moral
quality, for instance. Rather, the illustration is a condensed image of the theo-
sophic path, that is, of spiritual growth and illumination in the figure of a grow-
ing plant. It is at once a natural and a spiritual image, and conveys in a single
organic form the outlines of theosophic illumination.
Such an illustration, in other words, does have an initiatic function—that is,
it represents for the neophyte reader in simple, clearly understandable form the
nature of theosophy as a growth in consciousness from the constraints of dark-
ness and wrath or separation, through the turbulence of earthly life, into the
serenity and illumination of transcendence. What is more, by gazing at such an
image, one is in effect partaking in and absorbing what it represents. This visual
absorption is of a different kind from that of reading the accompanying text,
Bromley’s narrated overview of the theosophic spiritual journey; it is more
immediate and visceral.
In my view, the prevalence of accompanying illustrations in alchemical, theo-
sophic, pansophic, and Rosicrucian esoteric currents (to name only the most ob-
vious) is to emphasize and amplify the hieratic nature of these traditions. If a
book is to serve an initiatic function, it can better do so if it reveals its subject in
words and images both. In this way, the book becomes hieroglyphic—it is not
merely an abstract discussion about some topic, it actually reveals (hiera-) the
nature of its subject. Taken together, the words and images can evoke in the
reader the seeds of the experiences visible through the work, and over time those
seeds can take root, grow, and flower in the reader too. This metaphor—of sow-
ing, tending, reaping, and sowing again—is not merely a literary figure, but ex-
presses how a book can indeed serve as an initiatic medium irrespective of
whether there is any historical contact between author and reader.
Obviously, the Western esoteric traditions are often discontinuous histori-
cally. For instance, ancient Gnosticism as such ceased to exist by the early me-
dieval period, certainly by the seventh century—yet one finds striking parallels
in seventeenth-century Christian theosophy without any historical link.106 To
explain this phenomenon, I use the term ahistorical continuity, which refers to
the continuation of a specific esoteric paradigm precisely without any direct

historical lineage. Such a paradigm can be reawakened; it exists as a nascent
possibility within the tradition and even if it is eliminated by force or attrition
in one historical period, it can reëmerge in another. Thus, although there may be
an initiatory lineage in a given Western esoteric tradition, it is also possible for
an individual or group to rediscover or reawaken a particular archetypal para-
digm latent within a tradition without any direct contact with such a lineage.
If, as I am suggesting, the written word itself can have an initiatory function,
this function must be a change in consciousness. Here, the word initiation is
being used in several ways—as meaning a beginning on the spiritual path, and
as the entry of one’s consciousness into a larger current, forging a link to others
with similar esoteric aspirations. Naturally, I am not using the word initiation to
refer to rites, since we are essentially discussing the individual reader encoun-
tering a particular esoteric book. But for the reader who is in sympathy with a
particular esoteric perspective, it is possible for reading and rereading a given
work to effect lasting changes in that reader’s consciousness. Such a reader
joins with the author, who in turn is in touch with an archetypal or primary
stream within a given esoteric tradition, and so the reader too becomes a kind
of channel or conduit.
Let us take an example from the works of Jacob Böhme, without doubt one
of the most influential authors in the Western esoteric traditions. To read
Böhme’s works and attempt to categorize or analyze them logically is notori-
ously difficult, one might even say impossible. But perhaps those countless
people influenced by Böhme’s writing did or do not read it in the way that we
read, for example, the daily news, or a biology textbook. Perhaps, instead,
Böhme’s works require a kind of ‘steeping,’ a becoming familiar and even inti-
mate with his language and vision until his unusual terminology and ways of
expression become part of one’s inner landscape and view of the world. This is
not to say that Böhme’s works necessarily in themselves inspire visionary in-
sight, but they may well change a reader’s consciousness in profound ways and
even in some respects prepare one for such inward vision.
There can be no doubt that Böhme regarded his books as spiritually
charged. After all, Böhme himself frequently warned his readers not to read
his works unless they were attuned to them, and in fact many of his works fea-
ture dire warnings to those who approach Böhme’s writings in the wrong fash-
ion, as in this example from his book Christosophia (1624): “God-loving
reader, if you wish to use this little book aright, and are in earnest, you truly
will know its worth. But I must warn you that if you are not in earnest, leave
untouched the precious Names of God . . . so that they do not ignite the wrath
of God in your soul, for one is not to misuse God’s holy Names. This little
book belongs only to those who eagerly wish to repent, and who have a desire
to begin. They will experience both the words that are in it and the source that
gave rise to them.”107 Or again, in his “Warning to the Reader,” Böhme tells
us that if we are not in earnest on our way to the new birth, we should leave un-
said the words in the prayers he gives us, or they will be the “judgement of
God in you.” “Be rightly warned.”
If on the one hand, Böhme’s works require stern admonitions to those who
might not approach them properly, on the other hand his writing is addressed to
those who “have a desire to begin,” for they will experience not only the words
he has written, but, he tells us, the source from which they emerge. Here
Böhme is plainly saying that his writing is charged and has initiatory power—
one can move through his work toward the divine, not by merely mouthing the
words, but by internalizing and becoming what one reads. Hence Böhme in-
cludes in Christosophia prayers for one’s entire daily life—a prayer for when
one awakens on Monday morning, and for when one rises; a prayer for washing
and dressing; a prayer for one’s daily work; a prayer for noon; a prayer for the
evening; and a prayer before sleep; and so on for the entire week.108 Clearly this
work is initiatic in at least two ways: first, that it encourages one to begin the
spiritual path, and second, that it encourages a change in consciousness that
permeates one’s whole life.
Böhme is quite adamant in his insistence that the aspiring soul must follow
the difficult path of giving up selfishness and the arrogance of reasoning,
judgemental consciousness. In Christosophia he writes that “as soon as the soul
eats of self and lives in reason’s light, it walks in its own delusion. Then that
thing, which it sees as divine, is only the external constellation that intoxicates
it as soon as it grasps at it. Then it walks in error until it again gives itself com-
pletely into resignation.”109 The individual soul must ceaselessly sink down into
the divine Nothing, and become not its own possession, but the “instrument of
God.” It must remain “in resigned humility just as a fountain depends on its
source.”110 And only if it does this will the soul awaken into its divine inheri-
tance and true purpose, to become a channel for the divine current.
This passage is particularly useful for us because it neatly encapsulates the
shift in consciousness toward which Böhme is guiding his reader. When one is
caught in the self-other or subject-object division, one automatically is caught
in delusion, and whatever one perceives as divine is in fact tainted by this con-
stant separation, so that even what is apparently divine is in truth merely an-
other facet of the “outward constellation,” or objectified realm. So long as the
divine remains objectified outside oneself, it cannot become authentically a
part of one’s direct awareness, and in fact much of what we term divine is in
fact nothing more than a projection. Böhme insists that the reader must over-
come this self-other division, this objectifying delusion, and experience the
divine directly, so that consciousness shifts to awareness.
The word consciousness implies always a duality—one is con-scious, or has
knowledge-of. But the word awareness does not entail a subject-object duality,
not even in relation to the divine. There is simply awareness; the self in one
sense continues to exist, in that there remains an observer, but the observer in
another sense is no longer separate from the divine that is observed. There
emerges a spacious or open quality. This divine self-awareness Böhme some-
times alludes to as the divine eye turned inward, or the divine eye that sees it-
self. Here we are, of course, at the far limit of what we can express in language,
and it is at this point that paradox and enigmatic expression become necessary.
But we have reached the center of the theosophic tradition, and might from
this point recapitulate by way of a diagram a schematic overview of how lan-
guage may be understood in this context. Above, we have the point of origin, the
origin not only of language, but of the cosmos itself. This transcendent point
gives birth to duality, the yes and the no, the light and the dark, love and wrath,
and these in turn give birth to the qualities or archetypes inherent in the entire
cosmos. From these archetypes then emerge the natural and human realms,
where they are incarnated or manifested in the everchanging panoply of history.
Divine Unity—the No-thing

*
Duality: The Yes and the No, Love and Wrath
**
The Archetypal Realm of the Imagination: Divine Language
***
The Manifested or Elemental World
****
Language belongs above all to the archetypal realm, intermediate between

nature below and the divine above. Thus language belongs also to the interme-
diate human realm, for it is only humanity that can mediate between sky and
earth, between the divine and the natural. Language is the means by which this
process of mediation or reconciliation is effected: it is, in other words, divine in
its origin, as are nature and humanity. Indeed, as we have seen, in Western eso-
tericism generally, language is said to inhere in the entire cosmos. If humanity
and the cosmos itself are fallen, or divided from the divine, then language must
reflect this division; just as, conversely, a path beyond this separation and suf-
fering must go through language.
For language is in its innermost nature divine, and at its most sublime when
it expresses or manifests this transcendent divinity. In this sublime unity there
is no congealing into an objectified self-other division—through paradox and
enigma is expressed the sheer transcendence out of which emerges the dazzling
archetypal realm, where, although there are divisions between archetypes, there
is no sense of separation between self and other, or subject and object, or per-
ceiver and what is perceived. In other words, in the archetypal realm there is
still no possession or ownership, there are only the archetypal powers or forms
that the poet or visionary may experience directly in vision, or manifest more
indirectly in literature. These archetypal forces do not belong to the poet; they
may be glimpsed and even imperfectly expressed, but never owned.
Ownership belongs to the fallen realm of separation and objectification—I
own this as opposed to that—and therefore belongs also to fallen language, lan-
guage as merely a collection of signs functioning as more or less arbitrary des-
ignators. Nothing could be further from the various viewpoints of Western
esotericism than the fallen language of mere designation, yet this expresses a
very prevalent supposition underlying much contemporary literary theory,
which is rife with the language of objectification, or separation into self and
other. Undoubtedly, this objectification of literature and literary theory has
much to do with why such theoretic discussions are so often unreadable—from
a viewpoint within the ambit of Western esotericism, any objectifying perspec-
tive divorced from the divine origin and purpose of language automatically will
be barren or sterile.
Here we are beginning to discern how Western esotericism in all of its vari-
ous manifestations or guises is fundamentally different from modern views in
its approach to language. For Western esotericism, language is in its very nature
bound up with the divine; it is a vehicle not of separation but of union between
humanity, nature, and the divine. Language, in these esoteric traditions, is
transformed from objectifying to unifying, restoring to humanity its proper re-
lation to nature and to the divine. By contrast, in modern literary theory or the-
ories of language, the divine is perforce unmentionable; in vogue instead are
theories of causality that refer to a world devoid of the divine, of sign and ob-
ject and manipulation of one or the other. There is such a gulf between these
two views as to seem almost unbridgeable.
Is it possible to build a bridge between a modern, secular, and objectifying
worldview and the perspectives that characterize Western esotericism? Perhaps
not, for after all, the secular modern world emerged through the jettisoning,
suppression, or ignoring of most of these esoteric currents. From the eighteenth
through the twentieth centuries, esotericism remained mostly underground—
alchemy was denigrated as nothing more than a primitive precursor of chem-
istry, pansophy and theosophy were relegated to movements of merely
historical interest, and so forth. The massive machine of the modern techno-
logical, consumerist state was built from a materialist, secular, and objectified
worldview, and the participatory, transformative, and gnostic perspectives char-
acterizing Western esotericism seem far removed from and incompatible with
that machine.
But by the late twentieth century, alternatives to the technoconsumerist ma-
chine became more commonplace—ecosocial criticism began to emerge, in-
cluding harsh critiques of technology’s effects on the natural world. During this
time, too, one found a growing awareness of the limits that the natural world
imposes on consumerist expansion, even while the bulk of society industriously
tried to avoid recognizing those limits. One also found increasing interest in al-
ternative approaches to medicine and to spirituality, and widespread accultura-
tion of Asian religious and medicinal traditions. Buddhism, in particular, with
the intense focus of many of its practitioners on meditation practices, began to
have profound effect on many people in the formerly Judeo-Christian world, in-
spiring more than a few to also rediscover overlooked Jewish and Christian
mystical traditions.
Given these tendencies—on the one hand criticism of technoconsumerism,
and on the other the burgeoning interest in Asian meditation practices—it
would not be surprising if one also found the time ripe for a rediscovery of the
Western esoteric traditions, and for a reëvaluation of all the various disciplines
in that light. Western esotericism is inherently transdisciplinary by nature, in-
cluding elements of the sciences, psychology, religion, and the arts, to name
only a few. Joining all of these disparate disciplines is a focus on the transmu-
tation of consciousness, which has ramifications not only for the nature of
knowledge, scientific or otherwise, but also for society itself.
As we have seen throughout this study, the various currents of Western eso-
tericism with all their diversity share a common thread: the transmutation of
consciousness through hieroeidetic knowledge. Be it Kabbalism or alchemy,
troubadours and chivalry, the Lullian art, magic or theosophy, pansophy or eso-
teric Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry, one finds a consistently recurrent theme
of transmuting consciousness, which is to say, of awakening latent, profound
connections between humanity, nature, and the divine, and of restoring a par-
adisal union between them. It may well be that we have reached a time when the
ceaseless and ever more minute exploration of the cosmos may give way, at least
for some, to an exploration of the inner cosmos and of how we perceive the
world. If so, then the ways of exploration are already marked out for us, imaged
in alchemical manuscripts and in Kabbalistic treatises, in theosophic works, and
in the countless literary works that express the discoveries of those who have
gone before us. But to begin to explore this new, inner territory, we must begin
by coming to see literature and the meaning of the word in new ways.
To this we now turn.
L I T E R AT U R E , A R T, A N D C O N S C I O U S N E S S
It is evident, after all that we have surveyed, that inherent in the Western esoteric
traditions is what we have called a libric or alphanumeric gnosis. Here we are
discussing not merely the obvious fact that such traditions are represented in
written works, but rather the idea that these literary works themselves are
vehicles of spiritual praxis. Western esoteric traditions have in common a special

relationship with the written word that emerges from a very ancient and pro-
found paradigm we find exemplified in works from the Book of Revelation to
the alchemical Mutus Liber, from the Kabbalistic Sepher Yezirah or Bahir or
Zohar to the works of Jacob Böhme and the Rosicrucian manifestos. Here the
book is a means of spiritual transmutation, fundamental to the awakening of a
paradisal union between humanity, nature, and the divine. Indeed, here is what
we may call a spirituality of literature as much as a literature of spirituality.
Such an understanding of literature is very ancient indeed, visible in Greek
tradition in such figures as Pythagoras and Plato, and indeed, as we have seen,
found throughout Western history. In this view, the cosmos itself is a kind of
book—the structure of words, images, and music is the intricate geometry of
meaning that permeates creation. This intricate geometry of meaning can be
glimpsed in the forms of nature, but is seen even more clearly in the archetypal
realm of the imagination. The poet and the seer both engage in the ascent of
consciousness from multiplicity toward union, and in this ascent enter into the
imaginal realm of archetypes, of charged and living images once associated
with the gods, beyond history. The poet or prophet sees and enters into the
celestial realm, the ‘book of life’ out of which history itself emerges.
Naturally, this view of the poet invests in him far more authority and power
than do contemporary views, where poetry might be seen by some as offering
beauty or insight, but rarely any longer is recognized as having its origin in the
inner springs or fountains of life. In this esoteric view of literature, to write pre-
supposes already having seen. To use Plato’s metaphor, one must already have
left the imprisoning cave and seen the actual sun and the true landscape to
which we belong. Only then can one return and tell others where authentic life
lies, not the life of shadows, but of reality, full of imagination’s power and ex-
hiliration. And only then will one’s written work be of enduring value for oth-
ers, for in its structure will be the creative power of life itself.
It may be of use, at this juncture, to turn to a poet, A. E. (George William
Russell, 1867–1935), a friend of Yeats, in order to consider more carefully how
a poet may view what we are discussing here. In his book Song and Its Foun-
tains, A. E. wrote at length about how he came to write poetry, and how his po-
etry was inseparable from his visionary experiences. Remarking on how a
poem emerged unbidden one evening while he was sitting on some rocks, A. E.
tells us that its appearance was “as much a surprise to me as if a flower had sud-
denly glowed before me in the hollow of the air . . . The verses came to me al-
most as swift as thought.”111 Unconscious of creation, he simply began to
murmur line after line.
But A. E.’s subsequent meditation on how he created this poem is well worth
investigating. The poet’s psyche, he tells us, ascends to “that high state where,
as the seers tell us, the gold-gleaming genius makes beauty, joys, rejoicings,
dance, and song, and it changes the dry dust of logic into color and music and
a rapture of prophecy.” “Whatever went to making an intricate harmony of
color and sound,” he wrote, “—the imagination of the ending of the long tale of
time, of nature become so ethereal that it was the perfect mirror of deity, and
the withdrawal of the universe into the Pleroma—all that was wrought in some
secret laboratory within the psyche.”112 Yet “what comes back to us from that
high sphere loses beauty in its descent, as Ishtar in the Chaldean myth had
crown and scepter and the royalty of her robes taken from her when descending
from heaven to earth.”
Thus, perhaps surprisingly, the creation of poetry in A. E.’s view actually
emerges from a dimunition of spiritual vision, from a descent after an ascent.
A. E. analyzes the movement of consciousness, focusing on his experience
emerging from a deep sleep, when once he became conscious while “in some
profundity of being. There was neither sight nor sound, but all was a motion in
deep being.” Although he struggled to remain in this state, he found himself
“dragged down” toward waking consciousness, “and then what was originally
a motion in deep being broke into a dazzle of images which symbolized in
some deep way a motion of life in that profundity. And still being drawn down
there came a third state in which was originally deep own-being, and after that
images, was later translated into words.”113 This movement of consciousness
A. E. later discussed with W. B. Yeats, who said that he had experienced pre-
cisely the same descent into words.
Yet A. E. recognized his limits, that his experience belonged to the psyche or
soul, and not to the sublimity of the spirit. “I have,” he wrote, “never had the
high vision of those who have gone into the deeps of being and who have re-
turned rapture-blinded by the glory, and cried out in a divine intoxication to the
Light of Lights.”114 A far exile from that glory, A. E. still recognized “that
greater light shines behind and through the psyche. It is the light of spirit that
transcends the psyche as the psyche in its own world transcends the terrestrial
ego.”115 He understood something of the psyche, but of the universal spirit he
understood little, for its subtlety and universality make it ungraspable: “It can-
not be constrained. But there are enchanted hours when it seems to be nigh us,
nigher to us than the most exquisite sweetness in our transitory lives.”116
Still, the poet, even if unaware of precisely how or why, somehow comes in
touch with this sheer transcendence. A. E. writes that “all true poetry was con-
ceived on the Mount of Transfiguration, and there is revelation in it and the
mingling of heaven and earth. The Mount is a symbol for that peak of soul
when, gone inward into itself, it draws nigh to its own divine root, and mem-
ory and imagination are shot through and through with the radiance of another
nature.”117 For this reason, A. E. looks upon the poet as a prophet, and remarks
that “almost the only oracles which have been delivered to humanity for cen-
turies have come through the poets, though too often they have not kept faith
with the invisible . . . But at times they still receive the oracles, as did the sybils
of old, because in the practice of their art they preserve the ancient tradition of
inspiration and they wait for it with airy uplifted mind.”118 The poets and musi-
cians offer us “the sense of a glory transmitted from another nature, and as we
mingle our imagination with theirs we are exalted and have the heartache of in-
finite desire.”119 Through them the immortals utter their divine speech.
In this exaltation or transcendent creativity, the poet or seer enters into a
realm where conventional notions of self begin to vanish. A. E. tells the story of
how he once in his office went into a reverie and saw a host of images—a red-
haired watchful girl, a cobblestone street—and to his astonishment later dis-
covered that these images belonged to the actual world of his office companion.
And A. E. goes on to remark that he often thought the great literary masters like
Shakespeare or Balzac “endowed more generously with a rich humanity, may,
without knowing it, have made their hearts a place where the secrets of many
hearts could be told; and they wove into drama or fiction, thinking all the while
that it was imagination or art of their own, characters they had never met in life,
but which were real and which revealed more of themselves in that profundity
of being than if they had met and spoken day by day.”120 Thus “when we sink
within ourselves, when we seem most alone, in that solitude we may meet mul-
titude.” The psyche, when it becomes truly self-conscious, through love and
sympathy may come to know “that the whole of life can be reflected in the indi-
vidual, and our thoughts may become throngs of living souls.”121
These insights of A. E. into the nature of poetic vision or imagination,
though they do not take place in the explicit context of Western esotericism
properly speaking, still conform strikingly to the model we have begun to de-
velop as characteristic of the Western esoteric traditions. In essence, the view
of literary creation that A. E. expresses here is not far from what we see in the
work of an exemplary and influential esoteric figure like Jacob Böhme, for in
both cases one sees a visionary who penetrates deeper than ordinary people
into the mysteries inherent in creation, and imbued with this new visionary un-
derstanding, returns to the cave of constrained or dulled ordinary life to create
written works that are themselves also permeated with the seer’s visionary re-
alizations. These written works express and indeed embody some of the secret
structure inherent in the cosmos; they come “trailing clouds of glory.”
And there is more. Throughout our investigations, we have seen Western es-
oteric traditions as including the restoration of paradise, which could also be
expressed as the ending of objectification, or division into self and other. In
Christian theosophy, we find numerous accounts of the spiritual path as exactly
such a movement beyond ordinary distinctions of self and other. Thomas Brom-
ley, for instance, in his The Way to the Sabbath of Rest (1650), wrote of how
“they that are in this near Union, feel a mutual Indwelling in the pure Tincture
and Life of each other: and so, the further we come out of the animal Nature,
the more universal we are, and nearer both to Heaven, and to one another in the
Internal; and the further instrumentally to convey the pure Streams of the heav-
enly Life to each other, which no earthly Distance can hinder.”122 As the soul as-
cends toward paradise by way of spiritual praxis, it increasingly enters a
paradisal union with those on the same path, and its relationship to nature also
becomes paradisal or unified. One experiences great bliss, and the world is shot
through with light.
Of course, there are differences between what Bromley is describing—a
kind of mutual communion among those in a spiritual group, irrespective of
time or distance—and A. E.’s discussion of how the poet may unknowingly ab-
sorb or participate in other people’s lives or personalities, which later emerge in
poetry, fiction, or drama. In Bromley’s case, one is looking at people con-
sciously engaged in a spiritual path together; in A. E.’s case, he is discussing
how the poet may unwittingly enter into an archetypal realm of the imagination,
where, as if by happenstance, he may encounter unfamiliar figures, events,
symbols, and experiences, and later forge them into a written work of uncom-
mon power. In the first case, one finds spiritual seekers who actively pursue
inner vision; in the latter case, the poet is more like a receiver, passive.
But nonetheless, there are unquestionably parallels between these two ex-
amples, and between the models that they represent, on the one hand an exem-
plar of Western theosophic esotericism, on the other a visionary poet.
Underlying both of them is a clear movement beyond objectification, or beyond
a rigid self-other distinction. This movement goes through an archetypal realm
in which they experience figures vaster, more powerful, and stranger than any
experienced in ordinary life. In this realm, although there is still an observer
and what is observed, there also is participation in what is observed. One
becomes what one sees.
Such experiences are not very far at all in turn from our own ordinary read-
ing of, say, a novel. For who, absorbed completely in a book, does not partici-
pate in it along with the characters? Its characters enter into our consciousness,
become part of us and indivisible from our inner lives. And so it is possible for
us to speak of the great Gatsby, or of Captain Ahab, as if we knew them as
neighbors. Reading, like theater, takes place on a field midway between audi-
ence and author, and so requires our sympathetic participation. We are carried
along on the words of the author, but must enter into the work by an act of
imaginative participation. Likewise, the author also is not directly present; the
book or work has been separated from its writer, and taken on a kind of life of
its own, in between both author and reader.
Thus we can see that the experience of reading itself corresponds in some
respects to a visionary encounter like those described, for instance, by A. E. In
order for a book to ‘reach us’ it has to resonate within us, and we must, at least
temporarily, set aside a space within our consciousness where the characters or
insights it expresses can exist. The barriers between self and other become at
least a little permeable. And in fact Ralph Waldo Emerson, who himself was
certainly influenced by the Western esoteric traditions, emphasized exactly this
point about ideas—that they are not our individual property, but emerge in our
consciousness if we are open to them. The visionary encounter is similar in that
here too, the consciousness is not caught up in its humdrum of daily affairs, but
in a ‘space’ within itself leaves room for self and other to meet on the stage of
the imagination.
Of course, one could argue that what is ‘other’ in visionary experiences like
those alluded to by Bromley is in fact merely a psychological projection of the
ego, merely ‘imaginary’ in the dismissive sense of the word. But in fact Brom-
ley’s friend John Pordage, for example, took great pains to point out that the vi-
sionary realm he had experienced was not imaginary but real, existing in a
supraphysical dimension. And indeed, the history of Western esotericism is filled
with such insistence on the actual nature of what is being discussed—alchemy is
real, the visions of the theosophers are real, magic is real, Kabbalistic cosmol-
ogy is real, our authors tell us. Perhaps, rather than diminishing the visionary en-
counter to mere fantasy, we might reverse the terms, and suggest that literature
and art in their highest forms are an attenuated kind of visionary encounter.
Here we are beginning to develop a schema to see how poetry, fiction, es-
says, drama, and art can be understood in light of the Western esoteric tradi-
tions and their continuing themes of spiritual reading, writing, and books. This
schema is based on the idea of self-transcendence, precisely what is at work
also in the visionary encounter, in alchemical work, and in Kabbalistic practice.
For when a reader engages in a literary work, it is indeed analogous to what is
said to happen when someone engages completely in the practice of one of
these forms of esotericism—the ordinary world drops away or disappears, and
one enters into the new birth, where the cosmos can be ‘read’ in new ways.
Ordinary, habitual self is gone, and one has entered a new world.
The difference, of course, between studying a work of literature or of art on
the one hand and these forms of esotericism on the other is that the effects of
reading a work of literature are limited: one is imaginatively engaged, but even-
tually puts the book down, one turns away from the painting. By contrast, these
esoteric traditions in general aim for enduring changes in consciousness. We
see this in the Book of Revelation, where to have one’s name in the Book of
Life, or to have it stricken, symbolizes eternal conditions. We see this also in
the insistence of Böhme that one must read his work with an attitude of humil-
ity and reverence for the divine or suffer lasting consequences by stirring up
wrathfulness in one’s consciousness. And we see it in the assertion of the al-
chemists that alchemical work can bring one to the pinnacle of human possi-
bility, or make of one a laughingstock and utter failure. Literature is playing the
game with no stakes, whereas the esotericist is, presumably, playing for keeps.
Yet it may be that the two versions of the game remain essentially similar.
Certainly modern Western literature owes a great, largely hidden debt to the
Western esoteric traditions and to their common theme of the mysticism of the
word. The deeper we investigate into the origins of modern literature, the more
we uncover links between major literary figures and various currents of West-
ern esotericism. Works such as Marsha Keith Schuchard’s landmark disserta-
tion Freemasonry, Secret Societies, and the Continuity of Occult Traditions in
English Literature (1975) and Désirée Hirst’s Hidden Riches (1964) are impor-
tant initial forays into this field, but there is much more to be done. And it may
very well be that the origins of modern poetry, fiction, and other forms of lit-
erature are to be found in Western esotericism and its pervasive theme of read-
ing and writing the world.
But fundamental questions remain. If the movement of a given reader ide-
ally is toward self-transcendence, what is the motivation of the author? It was
J. R. R. Tolkien who suggested that a poet or author is a kind of “co-creator” re-
flecting, in the process of creating a fictional world, the divine creativity that
brought the cosmos into being. But regardless of whether one subscribes to a
theistic perspective or not, one can still find a correspondence between read-
ing and writing, for if the reader is ideally moving toward a momentary union
of subject and object, so too is the author. Milosz’s insistence that he wrote for
a single reader not yet born is perhaps an extreme example, but reveals an un-
derlying motivation of literary creation—that through this work one will con-
nect profoundly with the consciousness of another, that through this work one
attains a kind of immortality.
And here too is a profound parallel with Western esotericism. For literary
immortality is in some respects a ‘second birth’—the author may have long ago
died, but what came into existence through him, the literary work, lives on. If a
primary aim of the alchemist, the Kabbalist, the gnostic, is to attain paradisal
immortality, perhaps the literary impulse may be seen as a secular reflection of
this goal. Yet at the same time, the alchemist, the Kabbalist, and the gnostic
themselves live on for us their readers precisely the same way as does Shake-
speare or Dante or Emerson—through written works. And one joins the literary
community of the ages the way one joins the community of alchemists, gnos-
tics, or Kabbalists—by self-election. One reads and rereads one’s predecessors’
works until the authors become like old friends, their works like second nature.
Thus the essential trajectory of both author and reader or artist and audience
is toward communion and union. Through the medium of the written word or the
painting, the sympathetic reader and the author may meet, and may even connect
profoundly with each other. Such a trajectory is intensified in the case of eso-
tericism, where communion and union are an underlying expectation of both au-
thor and reader. Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Ramon Lull, Abraham
Abulafia, Jacob Böhme, Thomas Bromley, Jane Leade, John Pordage, Nicholas
Flamel—the list can be extended indefinitely, but in every case, the author is
reaching out, and explicitly seeking to guide the reader toward new and intensi-
fied kinds of consciousness. And the reader from his side is seeking to compre-
hend, to be guided by the author, to vicariously participate in the author’s
understanding, to in Emerson’s words, “add it to his own arsenal of power.”
It may well be, therefore, that Western esoteric and Western literary and
artistic traditions are far more mutually illuminating than we could have
guessed. They exist on a continuum that includes reading or viewing art for di-
version or pleasure, but that also includes those who insist on far higher stakes
and greater rewards, for whom literature and art are the expression and vehicle
of spiritual illumination and of the transfiguration of the world, a means for
nothing less than the restoration of paradise. Perhaps the symbolism of a novel
is an attenuated form of what we find made even more explicit in these esoteric
traditions, where everything in the cosmos is seen as bearing its divine signa-
ture. And perhaps all forms of Western literature, esoteric or not, emerge from
a pervasive human need to discern or restore the hidden unity of all things by
reading and writing the world anew.
To what degree are these themes universal for human existence? Here we
may step for the first time outside the sphere of Western esoteric and literary tra-
ditions, and place them in a world religious and philosophical context. There are
two philosophers whose work is of special value for us in considering the place
of the Western esoteric traditions in this larger context: Nicholas Berdyaev
(1874–1948) and Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990). These authors are important for
us because their religio-philosophical perspectives, taken together, help explain
what I am arguing about the various currents of Western esotericism.
One should not be too surprised at the introduction of Berdyaev’s work here,
for as I have discussed elsewhere, Berdyaev was himself definitely part of
Western esotericism, and publicly identified himself as a Christian theosopher
in the line of Dionysius the Areopagite and Jacob Böhme.123 But Berdyaev was
also a philosopher, and intimately familiar with the history of modern philoso-
phy; moreover, being Russian and deeply influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy
rather than Western European Christianity, his work formed a kind of bridge
between Eastern and Western Christianities and worldviews. Here we have nei-
ther space nor need to survey Berdyaev’s life and work, but instead will look at
his philosophical contributions, and how they correspond to what we have
learned about Western esotericism, literature, and consciousness.
In what could be considered the summation of his thought—the book The
Beginning and the End—Berdyaev discusses the immense significance of
Jacob Böhme’s concept of the Ungrund for religion and philosophy.124 The Un-
grund, Berdyaev tells us, precedes all being, and indeed even God himself. In
being, which belongs to history and to the constraints of time and space, there
is no true freedom—true freedom is to be found only in the Ungrund, in the
divine Nothingness prior to existence itself. This true freedom Berdyaev calls
meontic, in contradistinction to the deterministic and merely ontic realm where
there can be no real freedom. Meontic freedom has its origin in sheer transcen-
dence, and its expression in human creativity.
Berdyaev is a philosopher of creativity, and what he writes about creativity
is revealing when considered in light of the continuous renewal and creative
transformations of the Western esoteric traditions. Berdyaev writes that “the
creative imagination which demands what is new, issues from existential eter-
nity, to which our categories of thought are not applicable. To enter into union
with mystery is not only the frontier of knowledge. It is knowledge, a different
sort of knowledge.”125 This assertion of a different order of knowledge certainly
describes what we see in the Western esoteric traditions, as well as the close ties
between those traditions and the arts, particularly the arts of literature.
In both cases—in esotericism and in poetic, fictional, or essayistic cre-
ation—one is on the frontier, at the point where ontic dissolves into meontic, or
to put it another way, where one moves from the realm of social necessity or de-
terminism or law into the realm of mystery and freedom. As Berdyaev points
out, the artist, the poet (and the esotericist) all often find themselves marginal-
ized or shunned by their contemporary society because they represent the emer-
gence of newness, of creativity, of direct contact with the springs of inspiration
and human awakening. “Creative activity,” he writes, begins with dissatisfac-
tion with ordinary life; “it is an end of this world,” and “is the beginning of a
different world.” Here Berdyaev puts his finger on a fundamental link between
esotericism and the creator, the artist, or the poet: all are concerned with
beginning or entering a new world.
But Berdyaev does not follow his own premises to their logical conclusions.
He insists on the importance of an eternal personality, which extends the divi-
sion between subject and object beyond death, and runs counter to his own
recognition of the central importance of Jacob Böhme’s Ungrund in Western
philosophical-religious history. For if meontic freedom has its origin in the di-
vine Nichts of absolute transcendence, then how could the indefinite extension
of personality, and therefore of division, correlate to this? That Berdyaev is of
paramount importance in contemporary philosophy I have no doubt—but his
work in the end remains caught in the dilemmas that have proved so tragic for
Christianity as a whole, at the center of which is precisely this problem of
whether self-other ultimately dissolves into unity, or whether this division per-
sists into eternity so that the soul is always in some sense separate from God.
And at this point we turn to our second religious philosopher, Nishitani
Keiji. Coming from a Buddhist perspective, but deeply learned in Western and
especially German philosophical tradition up to Heidegger, Nishitani is cer-
tainly familiar with but not limited to the problems inherent in Christian theo-
logical paradigms. By drawing on the Buddhist tradition, and especially on the
Buddhist understanding of shunyata, or the emptiness of all things, Nishitani is

able to point toward the resolution or transcendence of the fundamental dilem-
mas that face us today. In Nishitani’s work, we see the emergence of a genuine
world-philosophical standpoint that allows us to understand more deeply the
significance of Western esoteric traditions.
Nishitani, of course, begins where we all are: with our ordinary, egoistic
mode of being. This mode of being is fundamentally self-centered: “our rea-
son grasps itself from the posture of reason; and our personality grasps itself
from within the personality itself . . . As rational or personal beings, we grasp
ourselves and thereby get caught by our own reason or personality. While this
is our own act, it is not something we are free to do as we please . . . The force
of destiny is at work here.”126 This self-centeredness is the ordinary human con-
dition, but in modern life we are faced also with nihility, that is, with an under-
lying breach among all things that fundamentally seems to separate them from
one another, and us from them. This intensifies our narcissism, for faced with
nihility, one retreats into self even further.
Yet there is another field that is not nihility, and has the effect not of separat-
ing, but of intimately uniting us with existence at its most essential. This is the
field of shunyata, or “true emptiness,” an “absolute openness.”127 He defines
shunyata as “nothing less than what reaches awareness in all of us as our own
absolute self-nature . . . It is the field on which the awareness of our true self-
nature—or, what is the same thing, self-nature as true self-awareness—and the
selfness of each and every thing in the form of its suchness come about simul-
taneously, or rather in unison, or perhaps better still, self-identically.”128 True
emptiness, in other words, is beyond definition; it is the absolute transcendence
of self-object divisions belonging to ordinary, self-centered consciousness.
Out of this transcendence alone, in which there is nothing to grasp or rely
upon, emerges authentic freedom. Authentic freedom is beyond merely subjec-
tive freedom, the choices of the will; it is instead absolute autonomy that is at
the same time absolute service to all things, so that “self and other stand si-
multaneously in the position of absolute master and absolute servant with re-
gard to one another.” Authentic freedom is, Nishitani affirms, “an equality in
love.”129 Only in the field of shunyata is such mutually affirming freedom pos-
sible, in which the self-other dichotomy is resolved, and indeed, “unless the
thoughts and deeds of man one and all be located on such a field, the sorts of
problems that beset humanity have no chance of ever really being solved.”130
When we turn to the literature of the Western esoteric traditions with Nishi-
tani’s Zen Buddhist-influenced perspective in mind, we can see how these ap-
parently disparate views in fact correspond. As we have seen throughout this
study, there is in Western esotericism in all its myriad forms a pervading theme
of alphanumeric gnosis. One goes through language—the means of human dif-
ferentiation between self and other—toward the union of self and other. What
appears to be other—the cosmos and the divine—turns out in this process of

revealing the fundamental self-other unity to be in fact indivisible from our
inner nature. And the means of conjoining self and other turns out to be pre-
cisely what at first seems the principle of separation: language itself.
Here the word language takes on more than the usual valence, encompass-
ing all manner of hieroglyphs, anything that can be read or written, including
paintings. We read and are read, write and are written. Paradoxically, as the
sense of self and other diminishes, our authentic self is confirmed: in this is the
mystery of literature and ultimately of the union of self and other in conscious-
ness. Thus we can see that insofar as it emerges from and draws us toward its
own and our own transcendence, language is indeed divine. Hidden within lit-
erature truly worth reading and within all great art is a nostalgia for paradise, a
calling toward what we are meant to be, joined together with one another, with
nature, and with the divine in the field of authentic freedom, where to be truly
master means to serve in loving compassion.
The Western esoteric traditions, for all their diversity, have at their center
this mystery of the word. Such a view of the word is far indeed from seeing lit-
erature as merely a social, political, or even linguistic construction, for here lit-
erature is not merely a collection of ‘signs’ or ‘signifiers,’ but embodies
different orders of knowledge at once. It can lead us, so Western esotericism
suggests, from a ‘thrown’ or ‘fallen’ condition of divided, alienated conscious-
ness toward a mutuality of awareness that takes place on the infinitely plastic
field of the imagination, in the meeting and reading and writing of all the infi-
nite forms that consciousness can take. This meeting on the field of the imagi-
nation I have called “hieroeidetic knowledge.” And from such knowledge we
may pass to what entirely transcends consciousness, that mysterious point out
of which the geometry of language emerges. But in any case, there can be no
doubt that the Western esoteric traditions, seen as a whole, take their place
among the world’s philosophic and religious traditions as uniquely literary
paths toward paradise.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. See Steven Katz, ed., Mysticism and Language (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
2. See the definition of the Association for the Study of Esotericism [ASE] and
more information on this growing field at www.aseweb.org, the official Web site of the
ASE. I retain the conventional distinctions between the capitalized terms Gnostic or
Gnosticism (when referring specifically to figures or the current belonging to late an-
tiquity) and the uncapitalized gnostic as a more general term not tied to any particular
era. I also retain the distinction maintained by Antoine Faivre between Hermetism (the
current associated with Hermes belonging to late antiquity) and Hermeticism, which
belongs more to the Renaissance and after.
3. See Arthur Versluis, “Methods in the Study of Esotericism,” Esoterica IV
(2002): 1–15 and “Methods in the Study of Esotericism Part II,” Esoterica V (2003):
175–210. See www.esoteric.msu.edu.
4. For an overview of Western esotericism, see Antoine Faivre, Access to Western
Esotericism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). Faivre, who held a
chair at the Sorbonne in Western esoteric currents of thought, published a large body of
work outlining and detailing numerous aspects of esotericism, much of it in French.
There are a number of other scholars now working in this field as well, including
Wouter Hanegraaff, a Dutch scholar, whose encyclopedic book New Age Religion and
Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1996)
reveals the underlying connections between new religious movements today and their
Western esoteric antecedents. The State University of New York Press series of books
in Western esotericism edited by David Applebaum also represents an important con-
tribution to this field, and readers would do well to become familiar with it. See also
the journal Esoterica [www.esoteric.msu.edu ] for articles, mostly by North American
scholars, in this field.
5. See Hanegraaff, ibid.
159
160 NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
6. See Faivre, op. cit., pp. 10–15; see also Faivre L’Ésotérisme (Presses Universi-
taries de France, 1992), pp. 14–21.
7. Jean La Fontaine, Initiation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986),
p. 14.
8. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries (New York: Harper, 1975), p. 223.
9. See Arthur Versluis, “Christian Theosophy and Ancient Gnosticism,” Studies in
Spirituality 7(1997): 228–241; see also Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradi-
tion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 219–233.
10. Victor Sogen Hori, “Koan and Kensho in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum” in Stephen
Heine and Dale Wright, eds., The Koan: Texts and Context in Zen Buddhism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 307.
11. Ibid., p. 309.
12. See, for an explicit example of this inward sojourn and perception, John
Pordage, Sophia, in Arthur Versluis, Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology (St. Paul:
Paragon House, 2000), pp. 76–106. Pordage writes that the invisible paradisal earth of
Sophia is hidden from ratiocination and even scoffed at by those limited to reasoning
alone, but they like everyone have access to this inward realm all the same, whether they
know it or not. See ibid., p. 97.
13. See Versluis, ed., Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology (St. Paul, Paragon
House, 2000), pp. 83 ff.
CHAPTER ONE
1. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), pp. 18 ff.; see also
Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 37 ff.
2. See Charbonneau, The Bestiary of Christ (New York: Parabola, 1991); see also
Dionysius the Areopagite on like and unlike images.
3. Nag Hammadi Library, p. 145.
4. Nag Hammadi Library, p. 151.
5. See Versluis, Gnosis and Literature (St. Paul: Grail, 1996), pp. 51–89.
6. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Theosophic Correspondence (Exeter: Roberts,
1863), p. 248.
CHAPTER TWO
1. All of this is to be found in the ninth chapter of Parzival.

2. See the fifteenth chapter of Parzival.
3. See my discussion in Gnosis and Literature (St. Paul: Grail, 1996) of Piers
Ploughman.
4. See Frederick Goldin, Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères (New York:
Anchor, 1973), pp. 140, 180. Translation is mine.
5. Ramon Lull, The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, E. Peers, trs. (London:
Sheldon, 1978), p. 111.
NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 161
6. A translation of Ars Brevis is to be found in Ramon Lull, Doctor Illuminatus,

A. Bonner, trs. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 298 ff.
7. Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), p. 57.
8. Ibid., p. 197.
9. See Mark Verman, The Books of Contemplation (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1992); see also Scholem, Origins, op. cit., p. 394; see also Moshe Idel,
Rabbi Moses Nahmanides: Explorations, I. Twersky, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1983), p. 66.
10. See J. Dan, ed., The Early Kabbalah (Paulist Press, 1986), p. 59.
11. See Verman, p. 29.
12. Zohar IV.205b, in The Zohar, M. Simon, trs. (London: Soncino, 1984), p. 197.
13. Ibid., IV.205b–206a.
14. See Verman, op. cit., pp. 49–50.
15. Ibid., p. 51.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 52.
18. Ibid., p. 57.
19. Ibid., p. 61.
20. See Scholem, Origins, p. 270.
21. Scholem, Origins, p. 278.
22. See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988), pp. 101–102.
23. Ibid., p. 280.
24. See, for instance, Joseph Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the
Renaissance (Port Washington: Kennikat, 1965), and Françoise Secret, Les Kabbalistes
chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964), as well as Antoine Faivre and F. Tris-
tan, eds., Kabbalistes chrétiens (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979).
25. See “Oration on the Dignity of Man” in E. Cassirer, et al., ed., The Renaissance
Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 250.
26. See Pico della Mirandola, Opera omnia, C. Vasoli, ed. (Hildesheim: Olms,
1969), I.80 ff.
27. Cassirer, op. cit., p. 246.
28. See Arthur Edward Waite, ed., The Hermetic Museum (London: Watkins, 1953)
I.312.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., I.314.
31. Ibid., I.320–323.
32. Ibid., I.325.
33. Ibid., I.331.
34. Ibid., I.351.
35. II.71.
36. Ibid., II.77.
37. See A.B.C. vom Stein der Weisen (Berlin: Christian Ulrich Ringmacher, 1779),
II.75.
38. II.76.
162 NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
39. I have translated this work of Pordage, and also written an extensive commen-
tary on it. This commentary was shared with people from diverse walks, including two
physicists, a theologian, a musician, a cosmologist, and others, in a group called the
Round Table.
40. From von Welling, Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum (Frankfurt:
Fleischerischum, 1784), table of contents.
41. Ibid., p. 371.
42. See Versluis, The Alchemy of Art, forthcoming.
43. See Versluis, “Christian Theosophy and Ancient Gnosticism” in Studies in Spir-
ituality (Fall, 1997).
44. Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1972),
p. 220. For an excellent survey of the scholarship since Yates, see Donald Dickson, The
Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth
Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
45. The texts of the Fama and Confessio in English are most easily found as appen-
dices to Yates, Resicrucian Enlightenment. The following page references are to Yates, for
the reader’s convenience. The original (short) titles of Fama and Confessio were Allge-
meine und General Reformation, der gantzen weiten welt . . . (Cassel: Wessel, 1614) and
Secretioris Philosophiae Considertio brevis . . . (Cassel: Wessel, 1615). The first English
translation was published by Thomas Vaughan in 1652. See, for text, Yates, op. cit., p. 238.
46. Ibid., Fama, p. 241.
47. Ibid., Fama, p. 242.
48. Ibid., Fama, p. 246.
49. Ibid., Fama, p. 251.
50. Ibid., Confessio, p. 252.
54. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1999), especially on Gichtel’s and other theosophers’ tendency
to carefully date their revelations, and even chart them astrologically.
55. Ibid., p. 260.
56. Ibid., p. 221.
57. See Codex Rosae Crucis D.O.M.A.: A Rare and Curious Manuscript of Rosi-
crucian Interest, M.P. Hall, ed. (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research, 1971), p. 49.
58. Ibid., p. 37.
59. Ibid., D.O.M.A. ms., p. 22.
60. See Frances Yates, Theatre of the World, p. 67, and The Rosicrucian Enlighten-
ment, p. 77.
61. C. H. Josten, ed., Elias Ashmole (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), II.681. See, for
background, William Huffman, Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance (London:
Routledge, 1988).
62. See Josten, Ashmole, I.77. See also Marsha Schuchard, Freemasonry, Secret So-
cieties, and the Continuity of the Occult in English Literature (Ph.D. diss., University of
Texas at Austin, 1975), p. 129.
63. Ashmole, I.102–104.
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 163
64. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (London:
Macmillan, 1967), p. 240. See Dickson, op. cit., pp. 162–168.
65. See Marsha Keith Schuchard, Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistc
Freemasonry and Stuart Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 409, and Margaret Bailey, Mil-
ton and Jacob Boehme (New York: Oxford: 1914), pp. 66–67, citing B. M. Sloane, M. S.
654, pp. 247–249.
66. See James Anderson, The Constitutions of the Free-masons: Containing the his-
tory, changes, regulations . . . (London [Philadelphia]: B. Franklin, 1734), Charge I. See
also Bernard Fay, Revolution and Freemasonry, 1680–1800 (Boston: Little, Brown,
1935), p. 110.
67. See George David Henderson, Chavalier Ramsey (London: Nelson, 1952), and
Albert Cherél, Un aventurier religieux au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1926). See also
Schuchard, Freemasonry, p. 191.
68. See Edmond Mazet, “Freemasonry and Esotericism,” in Modern Esoteric Spir-
ituality, A. Faivre, ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 268.
69. See “Le manuscrit graham” in La franc-maçonnerie: documents, fondateurs
(Paris: l’Herne, 1992), pp. 257–272.
70. Mazet, p. 253.
71. Ibid., p. 256.
CHAPTER THREE
1. See M. E. Warlick, Max Ernst and Alchemy (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2001); see also Max Ernst, Beyond Painting and Other Writings by the Artist and His
Friends (New York: Wittenborn, 1948).
2. H. D. believed that surrealism drew on esoteric currents in a confused way, and
without doubt there are bizarre and even deliberately inverted elements in much of sur-
realism. It may well be that a closer investigation of symbolist and surrealist poetry and
art would further reveal its affinities to Satanism, as is in fact suggested in Bernice
Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Soviet and Russian Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1997), especially in Kristi Groberg’s “‘The Shade of Lucifer’s Dark Wing’: Sa-
tanism in Silver Age Russia,” 99–134. Certainly surrealism and related movements such
as symbolism provide much more complicated examples than we can deal with here.
3. On Emerson and Hermeticism, see Versluis, The Hermetic Book of Nature (St.
Paul: Grail, 1997).
4. O. V. de L. Milosz, The Noble Traveller (West Stockbridge: Lindisfarne, 1985),
p. 417.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 414.
7. Ibid., pp. 170–171.
8. Ibid., p. 39.
9. Ibid., pp. 170–171.
10. Ibid., pp. 172–173.
11. Ibid.
164 NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
12. Ibid., pp. 174–175.

13. Ibid.
14. See W. Scott, ed., Hermetica (Boston: Shambhala, 1985), I.115, Lib. I.1 ff.
15. Milosz, op. cit., pp. 178–179.
16. Ibid., pp. 180–181.
17. Ibid., pp. 182–183.
18. See Versluis, trs., Pollen and Fragments: Selected Poetry and Prose of Novalis
(Grand Rapids: Phanes, 1989), for a translation of Hymns to the Night.
19. Milosz, op. cit., pp. 204–205.
20. Ibid., pp. 206–207.
21. Ibid., pp. 210–211.
22. Ibid., p. 296.
23. Ibid., pp. 297–298.
24. Ibid., p. 248.
25. Ibid., p. 464.
26. Ibid., p. 465.
27. Ibid., pp. 224–225.
28. Ibid, pp. 226–227.
29. Ibid., p. 455.
30. Ibid., p. 277.
31. Ibid., p. 299.
32. Ibid., pp. 299–300.
33. Ibid., p. 300.
34. See Versluis, The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2001), pp. 48–52. For a more extensive study, see Steven Bullock,
Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American
Social Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
35. Milosz, p. 303.
36. For a discussion of Postel in relation to Christian theosophy, see Versluis,
Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity (Hudson: Lindisfarne, 1994).
37. Milosz, op. cit., p. 469.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Susan Friedman, Psyche Reborn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981),
pp. 157–206. Friedman writes that “From her [H. D.’s] perspective, hermetic tradition of-
fered a pattern of meaning in coded form to the initiate . . . For the poet of the modernist
era, the harsh world of necessity that Freud described is itself the “rune” that must be de-
ciphered. The ‘true-rune and right spell’ of esoteric tradition contained the code for H. D.
in her search to translate the inner meaning of material reality” (p. 158). The question, of
course, is into what did she translate this inner meaning, and to what end? One might
hope that critics would eventually cease to assume that there is always only a single thing
called “esoteric tradition,” synonymous with “hermetic tradition,” when in fact there are
numerous different esoteric currents of a wide variety, ranging from entirely cosmologi-
cal ones such as astrology or the Tarot to more metaphysical or gnostic ones.
41. H. D., Notes on Thought and Vision (San Francisco: New Directions, 1982),
pp. 8–9, introduction by Albert Gelpi.
42. Ibid., pp. 17–19.

43. Ibid., p. 21.
44. Ibid., p. 23.
45. See H. D., “The Walls Do Not Fall,” 17.
46. Ibid., 13, 20, 24.
47. See M. E. Warlick, Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of a Myth
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); see also, on alchemy and ‘the occult’ in early-
twentieth-century Russia, Irina Gutkin, “The Magic of Words: Symbolism, Futurism,
Social Realism” in B. Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 225–246. Gutkin’s article strongly supports the
fundamental thesis we are here exploring, and I certainly recommend her article, as well
as this entire collection of articles.
48. H. D., “Walls,” 30–31.
49. Ibid., 32.
50. Ibid., 35.
51. Ibid., 39.
52. “Tribute to the Angels,” 1.
53. Ibid., 20.
54. Ibid., 21.
55. Ibid., 33.
56. Ibid., 29.
57. See Jane Augustine, ed., H. D., The Gift (Gainesville: University Press Florida,
1998), p. 1, hereafter cited as TG.
58. Rimius, A Candid Narrative (London: 1753), 70, 9, 19. These passages were
transcribed by H. D. in her “Zinzendorf Notes,” on which see TG, 284–285.
59. H. D., The Gift, p. 259.
60. Ibid., p. 50–51.
61. Ibid., pp. 154–155.
62. Ibid., p. 157.
63. See, for documentation, Georg Heinrich Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission der
Evangelischen Brüder unter den Indianern in Nordamerika (rpt: Hildesheim: Olms,
1989).
64. H. D., The Gift, pp. 156–159.
65. Ibid., p. 165.
66. Ibid., p. 169.
67. Ibid., p. 168.
68. Ibid., “Notes,” pp. 271–272.
69. Ibid., p. 222.
70. Ibid., p. 223.
71. See H. D., Vale Ave in New Directions in Prose and Poetry (New York: 1950; rpt.
Kraus, 1967), 18.
72. Ibid., 66, 50.
73. Ibid., 67.
74. Kathleen Raine, Selected Poems (Hudson: Lindisfarne, 1988), p. 102.
75. There are, of course, other authors we could consider here, chief among them
Gustav Meyrink, and in particular his novel Angel at the Western Window [Der Engel
166 NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
vom westlichen Fenster] (1927). But Meyrink’s works are complex enough to deserve a
study in themselves, so I have decided not to include them here, maintaining our focus
on the Inklings, Fortune, and their circles in mid-twentieth-century England.
76. C. S. Lewis, ed., Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Oxford University
Press: 1947), pp. 43, 70–71.
77. C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (Macmillan: 1965 ed.), p. 291.
78. Ibid., p. 320.
79. Ibid., p. 322.
80. Ibid., p. 323.
81. Ibid., p. 382.
82. Gareth Knight, The Magical World of the Inklings (Shaftesbury: Element,
1990), p. 197.
83. Dion Fortune, Moon Magic (York Beach: Weiser, 1994) p. 10.
84. Ibid., p. 91.
85. Dion Fortune, The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (Columbus: Ariel, n.d.), p. 239.
86. Dion Fortune, The Winged Bull (York Beach: Weiser ed., 1988) p. 112.
87. Ibid., p. 115.
88. See Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (State University of New
York Press, 1994), pp. 104–104, for a discussion of contemporary esoteric magical
groups, including Fortune’s.
89. Williams was a member of Arthur Edward Waite’s magical fraternity, retained
his magical regalia in his office, and while his experience in magical ritual has been
downplayed by some literary critics, without doubt had direct experience in magical ini-
tiation that was reflected in his fiction. See on this point, Gareth Knight, The Magical
World of the Inklings, op. cit., p. 154.
90. Faivre, op. cit., pp. 20–21.
91. See for instance, Maxwell’s account of his growing understanding of the ele-
mental forces like wind and fire, and his intensifying “strange awareness” as a function
of his magical apprenticeship with Vivien Le Fay Morgan, in The Sea Priestess (York
Beach: Weiser ed., 1993), pp. 124–125.
92. Faivre, op. cit., p. 21.
93. Ibid.
94. Subsequent references are to Cecil Collins, The Vision of the Fool and Other
Writings (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 1994), noted hereafter as Vision, and Meditations,
Poems, Pages from a Sketchbook (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 1997), hereafter noted as Med-
itations. See Collins, Vision, p. 40.
95. Collins, Vision, p. 40.
96. Ibid., p. 95.
97. Ibid., p. 87.
98. Ibid., p. 88.
99. Ibid., p. 101.
100. Ibid., p. 102.
101. Ibid., Collins, Meditations, pp. 82–83.
102. E. Ellis and W. B. Yeats, The Works of William Blake, 3 vols. (London: Quaritch,
1893), I.25.
103. Southey, Letters from England (London: Longman, 1814), p. 127.
104. Irina Gutkin, from “The Magic of Words: Symbolism, Futurism, Socialist Re-
alism,” in B. Rosenthal, ed., The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1997) p. 225.
105. Bromley’s is the image on the cover of my book Theosophia (1994); I added
the colors.
106. See Versluis, “Ancient Gnosticism and Christian Theosophy” in Studies in
Spirituality (Fall 1997).
107. Christosophia, I.1, “Vorrede,” and I.31, “Warnung an den Leser.”
108. See, for example, Peter Erb, trs., The Way to Christ (New York: Paulist Press,
1978), II.1 ff., pp. 71 ff.
109. Christosophia IV.31.
110. Ibid., IV.29–30.
111. A. E., Song and Its Fountains (Burdett: Larson, 1991), p. 62.
112. Ibid., pp. 62–63.
113. Ibid., p. 63.
114. Ibid., p. 93.
115. Ibid., p. 94.
116. Ibid., p. 95.
117. Ibid., p. 74.
118. Ibid., p. 78.
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid., p. 39.
121. Ibid., p. 40.
122. Versluis, Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity (Hudson: Lindis-
farne, 1994), p. 199.
123. See my overview of Christian theosophy in Magic and Mysticism, forthcoming.
See Charles C. Knapp, Nicolas Berdyaev: Theologian of Prophetic Gnosticism (Th.D.
Diss., Toronto: 1948), p. 40 and pp. 275 ff. See Berdyaev’s introduction to Jacob
Böhme’s Six Theosophic Points (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1958); See also
The Destiny of Man, pp. 25 ff.; Freedom and the Spirit, pp. 194 ff.
124. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End (New York: Harper, 1957),
pp. 108 ff.
125. Ibid., p. 170.
126. Nishitani Keiji, Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980), p. 103.
127. Ibid., p. 105.
128. Ibid., p. 106.
129. Ibid., p. 285.
130. Ibid.
INDEX
Abulafia, Abraham, 51, 141 Brahe, Tycho, 77

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 53 Bromley, Thomas, 142, 150
A.E., 129, 148–150 Browne, Sir Thomas, 81
Alchemy, 2, 55–67, Bruno, Giordano, 76
Al-Rhazi [Rhazes], 56 Buddhism, 28–29, 147
Amor Proximi, 61–62, 63 Buddhism, Tibetan, 28, 45
Anderson, James, 83
Apocalypse of Baruch, 25
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 5, 42–43
Apocalypse of Ezra, 25
Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosen-
Apuleius, 18
creutz, 75
Arnold of Villanova, 56
Chivalry, 35–43, 46
Art, initiatory nature of, 130–133
Christ, 24, 28, 97, 105
Ascension of Isaiah, 25
Christianity [origins of], 17–19
Ashmole, Elias, 80–82
Clement of Alexandria, 18, 31
Astrology, 2
Cloud of Unknowing, 1
Aurea Catena, 56
Collins, Cecil, ix, 89, 129–135
Comenius, John, 82–83
Baader, Franz von, 68, 79
Confessio Fraternitatis, 72
Backhouse, William, 82
Consciousness, 66
Bacon, Roger, 56
Corbin, Henry, 22
Bahir, 47, 148
Cordovero, Moses, 48
Barrett, Francis, 138
Corpus Hermeticum, 80, 93, 94, 97
Basilides, 28, 31
Cremer, Abbot, 57, 59
Basilius Valentinus, 57
Beatrice, 96
Berdyaev, Nicholas, 102, 154–155 Dante, 4, 5, 40–41, 96
Bernart de Ventadorn, 40 Dee, Arthur, 81–82
Bible, 17 Dee, John, 53, 75, 78, 81–82
Blake, William, 90, 137 Descartes, René, 81, 99
Boethius, 42, 80 Dickinson, Emily, 104
Böhme, Jacob, 1, 5, 10, 14, 53, 63, 64, Dionysius the Areopagite, 20, 27–28, 31,
68–71, 78, 93, 94, 95, 129, 140, 52, 154
141–142, 143–144, 154 Dogen, 11
Book of Life, 24, 30, 59, 139, 152 Dury, John, 82–83
169
170 INDEX
Eckhart, Meister, 1, 2, 8, 50, 140 Hermetica, 21

Eirenaeus Philalethes, 57 Heydon, John, 79
Eleazar of Worms, 51 Hieroedetic knowledge, 25
Eleusinian Mysteries, 105 Hinduism, 19, 140
Eliade, Mircea, 9 Hippolytus, 28, 29
Eliot, T.S., 100, 111 Hiram, 100
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 89, 104, 109, Hirst, Désirée, 153
153–154 Homer, 5
Eriugena, John Scotus, 35, 102 Hori, Victor Sogen, 11
Ernst, Max, 88-89, 106 Hutton, Joseph Edward, 112
Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 37
Esoteric Origins of the American Renais- Imagination, 12–15, 22–24
sance, 104, 111 Initiation, 8–9
Esotericism [defined], 7–8 Isaac the Blind, 51
Esotericism, Jewish, 19 Islam, 72
Faivre, Antoine, 7–8, 127–128 Jabir ibn Hayyan [Geber], 56

Fama Fraternitatis, 72–73 Jerusalem, 25
Faust, Johannes, 77 John, Book of, 19
Flamel, Nicholas, 56
Fludd, Robert, 53, 68, 80–81 Kabbalah [or Cabala], Christian, 44,
Fortune, Dion, 120, 123–126, 127 52–54
Frankenberg, Abraham von, 69 Kabbalah, Jewish, 2, 9, 46–52, 138
Franklin, Benjamin, 101 Katz, Steven, 1
Freemasonry, 2, 46, 79–86, 101–102 Keeble, Brian, 129
Frey, Andreas, 112 Kelley, Edward, 75, 82
Friedman, Susan, 103 Knight, Gareth, 122
Fuller, Margaret, 104, 111 Koan, 2, 10–12, 55
Koran, 140
Geheime Figuren, 77
Gelpi, Albert, 104 La Fontaine, Jean, 8–9
Gichtel, Johann Georg, 63, 78 Larronde, Carlos, 102
Gnosis, 4, 19–21, 27–28 Leade, Jane, 54, 84, 102
Gnosticism, 18–21, 26–31, 50, 105, 137 Lee, Francis, 84
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 90, 97, 99 Lewis, C.S., ix, 89, 103, 120–122, 123,
Grail cycle, 36–39 126, 127
Gutkin, Irina, 139 Loskiel, Georg Heinrich, 112
Lull, Ramon, 42, 43–45, 56
H.D., ix, 89, 103–119
Hardenberg, Friedrich von [Novalis], 95 Maier, Michael, 57–59, 76
Hartlib, Samuel, 82–83 Maistre, Joseph de, 100
Heidegger, Martin, 155 Marcus, 29
Hermes [Trismegistus], 21, 22, 56, 76, Mazet, Edmond, 83, 85
107, 109 Merkabah mysticism, 19, 30, 31
Hermeticism, 65, 89–103 Melville, Herman, 5, 151
Hermetism, 21–22 Merswin, Rulman, 40
INDEX 171
Meyrink, Gustav, 40 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 118

Milosz, Czeslaw, 90 Ramsay, Andrew Michael, 84
Milosz, O.V., ix, 89–103, 105, 137, 141 Reading, 4
Milton, John, 5 Reuchlin, Johannes, 52–53
Minotaur, 26–27 Revelation, Book of, 17, 23–26, 59, 73,
Moravians, 112–113 74, 108, 152
Morienus, 56 Richter, Samuel, 63
Moses de Leon, 48 Rici, Paulus, 53
Mysticism, 2 Rilke, Rainer Marie, 89, 108
Rimius, Henry, 112
Nag Hammadi Library, 19, 25 Ripley, George, 56, 64
Native Americans (and Moravians), 113, Roberts, Bernadette, 8
115, 116 Rosicrucianism, 2, 25, 46, 71–76
Nature [concept of], 66 Rousseau, Jean, 11
New Age, 8 Russian literature, 139
Nishitani Keiji, ix, 154–156
Norton, Thomas, 57, 58 Saint Martin, Louis-Claude de, 32, 90,
Numbers, sacred, 29–30 92, 99
Scholem, Gershom, 19, 47, 50
Olympiadorus, 56 Schuchard, Marsha Keith, 153
Origen, 18, 52 Schwaller de Lubicz, René, 102
Science [and the sciences], 67–69, 136
Pansophy, 64, 75–78 Science and objectification, 6
Paracelsus, 60, 69, 76 Sefer Yezirah, 47–48, 85, 148
Parzival, 36, 37–38 Seidel, Christian, 115, 116
Pascal, Blaise, 99 Self, 4
Pasqually, Martinez de, 99 Shakespeare, William, 87–88, 103, 150,
Philip, Gospel of, 30–31 153
Pico della Mirandola, 52 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 39–40
Piers Ploughman, 5, 32 Solovyov, Vladimir, 102
Plato, 5, 18, 21, 92, 99, 105, 148 Sophia [Wisdom], 14–15, 51, 69, 94,
Platonic archetypes, 123 109, 110
Poimandres, 21 Southey, Robert, 138
Poiret, Pierre, 84 Stellatus, Joseph, 76
Pordage, John, 13, 14, 63, 68, 79, 90 Sufism, 9, 43
Porete, Marguerite, 2 Synesius, 56
Postel, Gillaume, 53, 101 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 79, 90
Prajnaparamita Sutra, 29
Pre-Socratics, 99 Talmud, 140
Prospero, 87–88, 103 Tao te ching, 140
Pyrlaeus, Johann Christoph, 115 Tauler, Johannes, 140
Pythagoras, 70, 92, 99, 148 Templars, 114–115
Thenaud, Jean, 53
Radical ecology, 3 Theosophy, 2, 46, 53
Raimbaut d’Orange, 40 Theseus, 26
Raine, Kathleen, 103, 119 Tolkien, J.R.R., 120, 152
172 INDEX
Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 82 Weishaupt, Adam, 86

Troubadours, 35–43 Welling, Georg von, 63, 64, 79
Willermoz, Jean-Baptiste, 84
Ungrund, 69–70 Williams, Charles, ix, 103, 120, 122–123
Universalism [esoteric], 67–69 Williamson, David, 116
Upanishads, 140
Yates, Frances, 75
Valentinus, 10, 31 Yeats, W.B., 89, 103, 111, 137, 148
Viterbo, Egidio Cardinal, 53
Versluis, Arthur, 10, 104, 111 Zen Buddhism, ix, 2, 9, 10, 55, 156
Zinzendorf, Nicholas, 103, 110, 112–113
Warlick, M.E., 88, 106 Zohar, 48, 148
Washington, George, 101 Zosimos, 56
Suggestions for Further Study
A standard reference for scholars and a general introduction to Western eso-

tericism as a field of study is Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), along with its companion
book, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2000). A useful historical overview is Jean-Paul Corsetti’s Histoire
de l’ésotérisme et des sciences occultes (Paris: Larousse, 1992). Important an-
thologies of scholarship in the field include Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needle-
man, eds., Modern Esoteric Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1992), and
Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanegraaff, Western Esotericism and the Science of
Religion (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), as well as Roelof van den Broek and Wouter
Hanegraaff, Gnosis and Hermeticism: From Antiquity to Modern Times (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998). In the voluminous Ésotérisme,
Gnoses, and Imaginaire Symbolique: Mélange offerts á Antoine Faivre edited
by Joscelyn Godwin et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), readers will find many fur-
ther avenues of research by a wide variety of contributing scholars. An excep-
tionally wide-ranging book is Wouter Hanegraaff ’s New Age Religion and
Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998). Earlier, important if sometimes a bit un-
even background works in the field include the books of Will-Erich Peuckert,
notably Gabalia (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1967) and Pansophie (Berlin: Erich
Schmidt, 1956), as well as the series by Karl Frick titled Die Erleuchteten
(Graz: Akademische, 1973) and Licht und Finsternis, 2 vols. (Graz: Akademis-
che, 1975). Readers may also wish to consult the journals ARIES and Esoterica
(www.esoteric.msu.edu) and to visit the Web site of the Association for the
Study of Esotericism [ASE] at www.aseweb.org. I should note that the two vol-
umes by Cecil Collins cited in Restoring Paradise have subsequently been
173
174 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
combined into a single volume entitled The Vision of the Fool and Other Writ-
ings, enlarged edition (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 2002), edited by Brian Keeble.
This is a beautifully produced book and highly recommended. Many of my own
previous and forthcoming books also deal with themes and subjects touched on
in Restoring Paradise—in particular, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric
Tradition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), Wisdom’s Book:
A Sophia Anthology (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2000), and Theosophia: Hidden
Dimensions of Christianity (Hudson: Lindisfarne, 1994), as well as The Mys-
teries of Love: Eros and Spirituality (St. Paul: Grail, 1996), Gnosis and Litera-
ture (St. Paul: Grail, 1996), and The Esoteric Origins of the American
Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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Restoring Paradise

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RESTORING

Western Esoteric Traditions

David Appelbaum, editor

Western Esotericism, Literature,

Art, and Consciousness

© 2004 Arthur Versluis

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, address State University of New York Press,

Production, Laurie Searl

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Versluis, Authur, 1959–

poet and scholar

Introduction: Initiatory Transmission and

Restoring Paradise began as an introduction to the literary and religious history

exclusive but rather are complementary and overlapping. Cosmological gnosis

call “literature” or “literary tradition,” and acknowledging them will require us

say, symbolic correspondences or “living nature.” It seems odd to exclude from

In order to delve into the field of Western esotericism in relation to language

emphasis on the importance of belief in doctrine that could be characterized as

kensho is not a state of noncognitive consciousness awaiting the monk on

‘mysticism’ to attempt to legislate mystical or gnostic knowledge out of exis-

1. Closed readers—those who come to a work with predetermined theses that

ALCHEMY OF THE WORD

To understand the origins of Western esotericism in all its various guises, we

historicist emphasis, and on the other, an ahistorical, revelatory emphasis. When

the permutations of word, letter, number, and image—the very means by

There is an initiator or revealer, and there is a witness to the revelation. Such a

It is commonplace today to think of the imagination as a means of escapism—

came to mean “phantom” or “apparition” without substance, in fact the word

THE RED THREAD OF GNOSIS

In other words, gnostic knowledge is fundamentally different from ratioci-

absolute transcendence. According to his rather bitter opponent Hippolytus,

From the gnosis of naming emerges a range of related mysteries, including

Nonetheless, we do find traces in chivalric literature of some of the same

through literature; literature is not only entertainment, for it includes other

BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS:

We first encounter Kabbalistic literature in the Sefer ha-Bahir, a work that

bination, utterance, sum and computation of the explication of the Ineffable

traditions, and unlike the relationship of Kabbalism to Gnosticism, the rela-

treatise on Cabala alluded to a Kabbalistic doctrine of universal restoration,

Undoubtedly among the most enigmatic traditions of the human inheritance,

with constant reference to the accumulated prior works in relation to which

Michael Maier (early seventeenth century), Basilius Valentinus and Eirenaeus

measurement and quantity leading to technology; but here, as a kind of coun-

alchemy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Western alchemical

human relationship to nature and to the divine corresponds to a restoration of

THE DIVINE SCIENCE:

Although Western esoteric traditions may be studied in isolation, it is perhaps

humanities. The Copernican revolution, the discovery of more complex tech-

the Rosicrucian announcements, as in for instance Joseph Stellatus’s Pegasus

cathedrals of medieval Europe. Masonry, not surprisingly, flourished in the

Ashmole, editor of the extensive Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum collec-

Yet if early-eighteenth-century Freemasonry, especially in England, had an

Like the Rosicrucianism that preceded it, speculative Masonry is a manifes-

In the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest, something remarkable hap-

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

seem to convey a particular kind of esoteric understanding, as can in fact be

Canticle of Knowledge: O. V. Milosz and Spiritual Transmission

O. V. Milosz is without question among the most learned poets of modern

Milosz was unquestionably Christian in orientation, and when he dedicates

The language here is completely that of Hermeticism: indeed, the poem is